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ANTONELLA VIOLA
into less exclusive forms of economic collaboration, generating network-type relations
with a wide range of non-Greek economic operators. Looking at the background of
Greek traders, one can note that trading networks as forms of commercial organization
were mostly a traditional way of conducting business which had a long history in
the Greek socio-economic context. From this point of view the marked preference towards
a network-based organization can be also regarded as the external projection of
a specific entrepreneurial culture ingrained into patterns of business organization and
coordination heavily dependent upon personal relationships, family ties and kinship.
A network-based organization was typical of all Greek traders operating in India;
however the breadth and complexity of their organization was variable. Anglo-Greeks,
for instance, managed to establish the broadest networks within which a large number
of different actors were involved. In the context of the nineteenth-century Indian
economy the inclination towards a business organization based on complex and extensive
trading networks was not typical of Anglo-Greek companies. British firms in
fact also used to work within networks of economic and commercial relationships
which they had established with each other. But these networks, entrenched in the
imperial system, were mostly inter-regional in form –the British Empire was after all
effective at integrating different and distant regions, promoting economic interaction
and commercial exchanges, but was mostly intra-cultural in its essence. From the second
half of the nineteenth century British companies in India became increasingly
isolated from the local social and economic environment, and the interaction with indigenous
entrepreneurial communities was limited to those relations indispensable to
the conduct of commercial exchanges. British businessmen resident in India developed
a set of attitudes towards Indians which were shaped by a combination of racial
prejudice informed by the discriminating social codes of late Victorian culture, fear of
local competition and a lack of knowledge of indigenous ways of conducting business
25 . In spite of the similarities between British and Anglo-Greek traders, the latter
operated quite differently in the Indian market and were in the habit of establishing
not only intra-cultural trading networks, but also inter-cultural networks with non-
Greek economic operators. The Indian firm of Ralli Bros., for instance, had Armenian
and Agrawal banyans (brokers) 26 in Calcutta (the collaboration with Armenians seems
Gang, Ira N., Ethnic networks and International Trade, CEPR Discussion Paper No. 4616, Sept.
2004; Stiles, Curt H. and Galbraith, Craig S. (eds), Ethnic entrepreneurship: structure and process.
International research in the Business Disciplines, vol. 4, Oxford, 2004; Volery, Thierry, ‘Ethnic
Entrepreneurship: a theoretical framework’, in Dana, Léo-Paul (ed.), Handbook of Research on
Ethnic Minority Entrepreneurship, Cheltenham, 2007, pp. 30-41.
25 Misra, M., Business, Race and Politics in British India, 1860-1960, Oxford, 1999 and
‘Business Culture and Entrepreneurship in British India, 1860-1950’, Modern Asian Studies
34:2 (2000) pp. 333-48; Tripathi, D. (ed.), Business and Politics in India: A Historical Perspective,
New Delhi, 1991.
26 The Goenka family, one of the most prominent Agrawal (Marwari) families in Calcutta,
acted as middlemen for Ralli Brothers after which the firm opened up its first branch office in
Calcutta. Ramdutt Goenka, who had left his home in Dundlod (Rajasthan) in the early nineteenth
century, managed to acquire different brokerships with Calcutta-based British companies, among
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