UPSC Prelims 2018 · Question 68 of 99
UPSC Prelims 2018 question on East India Company Bengal Exports
- ExamUPSC CSE
- Year2018
- PaperGeneral Studies Paper I
- SubjectModern History
- TopicAdvent of Europeans in India
- DifficultyMedium
- TypeDirect
The staple commodities of export by the English East India Company from Bengal in the middle of the 18th century were
Show answer
Answer: D. Cotton, silk, saltpetre and opium
Analysis
The staple exports were cotton, silk, saltpetre and opium, so the answer is (d).
Cotton, raw silk, saltpetre and opium were the major commodities exported from Bengal by the English East India Company in the middle of the eighteenth century.
Option (a) is the closest distractor, since raw cotton and opium are genuinely part of the picture, but it substitutes oil-seeds for silk and saltpetre. Saltpetre is the item that decides the question, being a key ingredient of gunpowder and therefore a strategic Bengal export. Options (b) and (c) list minerals and precious metals, which were largely goods flowing into India rather than out of it.
Source
Old NCERT, Bipan Chandra.
How to crack it
Anchor on saltpetre. It is the one commodity in this list that appears nowhere else in the syllabus, so it functions as a marker for eighteenth century Bengal trade, and any option containing it is likely to be the intended answer. Note also the direction of trade: gold and silver flowed into India to pay for its textiles before the Company reversed that flow, which is why option (c) is implausible on principle.