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How did British trade policies affect India’s cotton textile industry in the 1800s?

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Map of North America in 1763 using color coding to show colonial territories: the 13 American colonies in red along the Atlantic coast, other British territory in orange across much of present-day Canada, Spanish territory in purple covering most of the southern and western regions, Russian territory in green in the northwest, and large areas of unclaimed land in white. Major bodies of water such as the Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean, Gulf of Mexico, and Hudson Bay are labeled. — Western colonialism North America during the colonial period.

In the 1800s, British trade policies fundamentally reshaped India’s economy, systematically undermining its indigenous cotton textile industry to benefit British commercial interests.12

Beginning around 1800, the influx of machine-made cotton goods from Britain steadily displaced Indian handicraft production. These imported textiles were cheaper and more competitive, effectively squeezing out all but the highest and coarsest grades of Indian-made cloth. The expansion of the railroad network further accelerated this decline by allowing these low-cost, mass-produced British goods to be transported rapidly into inland towns and villages, destroying the traditional markets that local craftsmen relied upon.13

As a result, many Indian weavers were forced to abandon their looms and spinning wheels to return to agriculture, increasing the population's dependence on the land. By the latter half of the 19th century, India had been largely reduced to a colonial economy—serving as a supplier of raw materials and a captive market for British manufactured articles. Even as India later developed its own power-mill industry, British interests maintained pressure on the government to impose "equalizing" excise taxes on Indian-manufactured cloth to protect the dominance of mills in Lancashire.312