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GREEK TRADERS IN BRITISH INDIA, 1840-1920
of the Anglo-Greek companies is undoubtedly Ralli Brothers, 15 which was one of the
leading firms in the nineteenth-century South Asian market. Often considered the ‘archetype’
of the entrepreneurship of the Greek Diaspora 16 the company opened its first
Indian branch office in Calcutta in 1851. A few years after their arrival in India, the
Rallis had become members of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce. 17 Ten years later,
the firm established itself in Bombay and Karachi. India soon became the most important
market for the Rallis, and the ‘Indian business’ throve until World War I,
when the upward trend of Anglo-Indian trade came to an end and British trading
houses in India faced a period of generalized difficulties. Like other British firms, Anglo-Greek
trading companies were profoundly linked to the British imperial system
which became, in this case, an ideal ‘container’ for their activities. These traders profited
from the facilities and services that the British Empire offered, and exploited its
economic channels for their own purposes. However, they also opened new trading
circuits and pioneered new patterns of economic exchange for the Empire’s benefit as
well as their own. In a nutshell, they widened the commercial horizons of the British
Empire by creating large and effective exchange circuits which stretched from the
Mediterranean and the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, in most cases also reaching the
Far East. Looking more closely at their activities, one notices that Anglo-Greek traders
in India handled prevalently large-scale trades and industrial activities such as jute
and cotton production, manufacturing and export, and grain and rice trade. Trading
in fibers and textiles, in particular, seems to have been a crucial activity for many Anglo-Greek
companies. They owned several industrial assets (jute or cotton factories,
for instance) which served as a further fillip to their import-export business.
By the end of the nineteenth century newcomers were joining the Anglo-Greeks in
South Asia, opening up branch offices in the main Indian cities. Among the new
Greek firms which were established in India in last decades of the century, several
were owned and run by Greeks from the Ottoman Empire, such as Pallachi F. C. &
Co., Vafiadis Th. & Co., Pisti & Pelekanos, Andricopoulos S.Z. and Macropolo D. 18 By
and large, these new companies were engaged in the tobacco trade and cigarette
manufacturing. Their headquarters were located in Smyrna (Izmir), Istanbul, Cairo
15 On the activities of Ralli Bros. see Chapman, S.D., ‘Stephen Pandia Ralli’ and ‘Stephen
Augustus Ralli’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, http://www.oup.com/oxforddnb;
Mango, Anthony, Adventure account: the story of the Rallis in India, Ralli Bros India LDT, 1998;
Jones, G., The multinational traders, London, 1999; Vourkatioti, Katerina,‘Anglo-Indian Sea
Trade and Greek Commercial Enterprises in the second half of the 19th century’, in International
Journal of Maritime History, vol XI, No 1, June 1999; Moulakis, Ch., O οίκος των
Αδερφών Ράλλη, Αθήνα, 1964.
16 Vourkatioti, K., ‘The House of Ralli Bros. (C.1814-1961) in Chatziioannou, M.C. and Harlaftis,
G. (eds), Following the Nereids: Sea Routes and Maritime Business, 16th-20th centuries, Athens,
2006.
17 Thacker’s Bengal Directory, various issues 1853-1880, Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections
(APAC), British Library (BL), UK.
18 Thacker’s Bengal Directory, 1880-1890, APAC, BL, UK.
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