o_19heefouak9i9v4do11ac41pi7a.pdf

ANTONELLA VIOLA
and Alexandria 19 . Among them there were both wholesalers, such as Macropolo D.,
and retailers, such as Pisti & Pelekanos. In the late nineteenth century, shipping companies
from Greece, including Nicachi & Co. 20 , also established themselves in India,
taking advantages of the opening of the Suez Canal which offered a direct and faster
maritime connection between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. In addition, a
few other Greek trading companies from Great Britain, such as Tamvaco & Co.,
moved to India in the two last decades of the century.
Greek traders in British India: main characteristics
When studying the Greek economic and commercial presence in British India the
distinction between Anglo-Greek companies and other Greek companies seems crucial
in order to fully grasp their development, commercial strategies and market orientation.
The Anglo-Greeks owned and managed large, complex and powerful firms
which worked under the protective umbrella of the British Empire to which they
were profoundly linked. From a mere economic perspective, in fact, they seem to
have had few connections with the Greek national state and their business activities,
at least in India, were almost fully embedded in and dependent upon the socioeconomic
structures developed by the British Empire. A study of the re-investment
of profits made in India or elsewhere in Asia by the Anglo-Greeks would be extremely
helpful to clarify to what extent Greece represented a profitable economic
target for them or whether the country was among the main recipients of their foreign
investments. From a socio-cultural point of view, there is little doubt that the
Anglo-Greeks maintained close ties with their ‘motherland’ 21 .
Unlike the Anglo-Greek companies, other Greek companies were usually smaller
in size and had no privileged relationships with the British imperial system. Some
were Indian-based companies, such as Pisti & Pelekanos; more frequently they were
simply the overseas branch offices of trading houses registered elsewhere which operated
through a system of agents. Needless to say, the conditions under which these
firms operated were very unlike those experienced by the Anglo-Greek companies,
which de facto enjoyed all the facilities that the British imperial system offered to British
economic operators, that is, a wide range of facilities or ‘public goods’ 22 not very
19 Frangakis-Syrett, E., ‘The Economic Activities of the Greek Community of Izmir in the
second half of the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries’, in Gondicas, D., and Issawi, Ch,
(eds), Ottoman Greeks in the Age of Nationalism, Princeton, N.J., 1999.
20 Nicachi & Co. was a landing and shipping company from the island of Corfu, active in
Calcutta from the late 1870s onwards. Thacker’s Bengal directory, 1880-1890, APAC, BL, UK.
21 For an interesting picture of the Anglo-Greek lifestyle in India and their attachment to
Greek culture see Marcos- Dodis, Dione, Το Χρονικό twn Ellhnwn stis Indieς 1750-1950 (A
Chronicle of the Greeks in India, 1750-1950), Athens, 2003 (in English and Greek).
22 Shigeru Akita while referring to the services offered by Great Britain within her sphere
of interest, used the expression ‘public goods’. Shigeru Akita (ed.), Gentlemanly Capitalism, Imperialism
and Global History, New York, 2002.
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