o_19heefouak9i9v4do11ac41pi7a.pdf

Antonella Viola
GREEK TRADERS IN BRITISH INDIA, 1840-1920:
AN INTRODUCTORY APPROACH TO THE STUDY OF THEIR BUSINESS ACTIVITIES
T
his paper is concerned with the study of Greek traders in British India from
approximately 1840 to 1920. Its main goal is to discuss the different perspectives
from which the business activities of Greek traders 1 can be studied. It tries,
therefore, to find a suitable ‘toolbox’ to approach the Greek economic presence in
South Asia by answering a number of key questions: shall we employ the theoretical
tools recently developed in the field of business history or shall we simply turn, once
again, to the traditional methodological approaches used to analyze diasporic mercantile
communities? Should we regard Greek traders in India as part of the Greek Diaspora
or should we fit them into a much broader framework? What are the benefits of
employing one of these approaches? What would be the immediate advantage of
combining the assumptions and analytical tools of different approaches in order to
create an ad hoc set of tools which would enable us to comfortably explore the Greek
commercial presence in South Asia? This paper suggests that an ideal line of enquiry
for exploring the business activities of Greek traders in India is to employ an approach
which combines the theoretical assumptions of studies on trade diasporas with
the devices developed by business historians to survey the growth of the firm and reconstruct
the main evolutionary stages the firm goes through over time.
Greek traders in India: a brief overview
Before engaging in a theoretical discussion, some general premises to introduce the
argument are necessary. The first and crucial point is that the economic and commercial
activities of the Greeks in British India are an under-researched topic. In
fact, little is known about how they operated in southern Asia and how, in practice,
they conducted their businesses within the Indian market. 2 In spite of the lack of
in-depth knowledge about their business in the India market, it is possible to identify
these traders and single out some of their main features.
A great variety of economic operators can be included under the heading
‘Greek traders in British India‘. From a taxonomical point of view Greek traders
represented a composite group which included trading companies of any sort or
1 ‘Traders’, ‘trading company’ and ‘firm’ are used interchangeably.
2 The author has conducted initial research on the economic activities of Greeks in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in India within the framework of her doctoral dissertation
on Italian traders in South Asia.
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