ABSTRACT
The iron and steel industry attracts many studies in historiography. In the British context, it discusses the industry's overall development in the pre-modern and modern periods, as also certain specific questions on labour organization and trade. This chapter reviews the availability of iron ore in Bengal to ascertain whether the industry's prosperity suffered for the want of minerals. It discusses the status of traditional iron smelting around the middle of the nineteenth century and also discusses deindustrialisation issue in India. The chapter focuses on the development process of large-scale iron smelting in Bengal, by highlighting its comparative cost advantages vis-a-vis Britain. It analyses how the government's store purchase policy promoted imports from England, against the interests of the domestic industry. The chapter provides the data of a comparative status of engineering industries between Bengal and India in 1906. It demonstrates that Bengal had a major cluster of engineering industries, however, accounting for 41.27 per cent of total employment.
