The other leading imported commodities, all having about equal rank. are hardware, ma chinery, iron. steel. and copper, mineral oil, rail way plant and rolling stock, woolens, and sugar.
Great Britain has a practical monopoly for India in the supply of railway material and machinery, and it supplies also the larger part of other metal products, Belgium. of the other countries, sharing most extensively in the trade. Mineral oil is the principal import from the •Lnited States, but Russia now furnishes the bulk of this article. Among several exports of relatively great importance, riee—the only export upon which export duties are levied—is the most prominent and fluctuates the least, reaching an average value in recent years of :bout 13,000,000 tens of rupees. Most of the rice goes to Egypt, the United Kingdom, Ceylon, and the Straits Settlements. During the last quarter of a cen tury there has been a great increase in the exports of oil seeds to Europe. averaging for the last decade nearly 11000.000 tens of rupees. Exports of hides and skins, jute—raw and manu factured—and tea increased very rapidly during the decade ending with 1900, reaching in that year values of £6,975,000, £9,557,000, and £6,117.000 respectively. Raw hides and skins and jute cloth constitute the principal ex ports to the United States. The amount of each increased enormously during the decade and far exceeds that sent to any other country. Exports of manufactured jute increased 20 per cent. during the last decade of the nineteenth cen tury. Nearly all the tea exported goes to the United Kingdom; it has not yet become a formi dable competitor with the Chinese product for the United States markets.
Opium, which is exported to China and the Straits Settlements. is decreasing in amount, the total value for 1900 being £5,469,000. Ex ports of wheat fluctuate widely; the value for 1900, which was higher than the average for five years previously, was £2,606,000; the total for the last decade was much less than that for the preceding ten years. lost of the product goes to the United Kingdom. From 1890 to 1900. ex
ports of indigo averaged about 4.000.000 tens of rupees annually, with a tendency latterly to decline. For more than two decades, ending with 1900, exports of coffee have varied from about 1.500,000 to 2,000.000 tens of rupees. Spices, which once were a large part of the exports. are now relatively insignificant. Treasure has long constituted one of the most valuable imports. and has annually exceeded in amount the exports of treasure for more than half a century. The value for the decade 1890-1900 averaged over 16.000,000 tens of rupees. over two-thirds of whleh was sil ver. Since the Government stopped the free coinage of rupees in 1893 the net imports of gold have been gaining upon those of silver. The exports of gold and silver for the same period averaged over 5.500.000 tens of rupees.
The imports and exports by land are not large, the totals for 1900 being respectively 14.700.000 and 13.759.000, which. however. constituted a considerable increase over the early years of the decade. Over half of the former and nearly half of the latter were to and from Nepal and Kash mir. The most important land imports were grain, pulse, timber. and provisions, while more than one-half the exports were cotton goods. Native craft carry on an extensive coastwise trade, particularly along the coast of Bombay. The traffic along this coast amounts to over one third of the total coastwise trade. The large inland trade increases with the development of means of transportation. The inland and the local trade are very largely in the hands of na tives, there being certain sects or castes, as the Paris of Bombay. who devote themselves espe cially to this branch of industry.
The foreign trade of India is done mainly in vessels, the tonnage of these in 1897-98 amounting to S9 per cent. of the total. This total was greater than that for the corresponding year of either of the two preceding decades. Germany and Austria-llungary are the most important of the other nations represented.