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GREEK TRADERS IN BRITISH INDIA, 1840-1920
work activity’ 33 . Family-run business can operate, in practice, as highly articulated
forms of business management displaying a remarkable degree of flexibility, ability to
negotiate and rapid response to market changes. Adaptable, resilient, and enduring
family business represented a distinctive feature of the Greek traders in India. Most
Greek companies active in India were in fact family-run companies, and the tendency
to capitalize on resources embedded in the family was widespread among them. They
actually tended to associate members of the family with the allocation of resources,
power and responsibility. The coincidence between the family, and the firm undoubtedly
offered an array of practical advantages. Firstly the reduction of internal transaction
and agency costs; secondly, it gave them the flexibility necessary to operate in a
new economic environment; thirdly, it helped convey information more rapidly. In effect,
the circulation of information and knowledge was faster and more reliable within
a family firm, and all the members of the family could equally benefit from the ‘cultural
baggage’ gained by those who had travelled and worked abroad.
When approaching family business, scholars have stressed above all its flexibility
and adaptability, both important requirements when operating in a host country’s
market. For Greek traders in India, and generally speaking for all traders of the
Greek Diaspora, a family-based business organization was usually combined with a
complex network of personal relationships 34 . At a time when business was still
mostly dependent upon reputation and personal connections, an extensive network
of personal relationships could turn out to be very useful, not to say crucial, for the
success of a business enterprise. Friendships, in the broad sense of the term, were
therefore another important element. It could happen that family ties and bonds of
friendship mingled due to marriage strategies aiming at integrating close and reputable
friends into the family. Therefore, social networks based on intermarriages
underlay and strengthened trading networks.
If the tendency to operate through trading networks and the crucial role of the family
in making these networks work properly and effectively were the most visible characteristics
of Greek traders in India, another distinctive feature must be considered: the
loose hierarchy between the home-office and the branch offices. The Indian branch offices
of Greek trading companies headquartered outside India had large margins of
33 Casson, M., and Cox, H., Firms, Networks and International Business Enterprises, Discussion
Papers in International Investment & Business Studies, University of Reading Working
Papers, Series B, Vol. V (1993/93), No. 167.
34 The literature on the Greek Trade Diaspora is broad. For an initial approach see Mc Cabe,
I., B., Harlaftis, G., and Pepelasis Minoglou, I. (eds), Diaspora Entrepreneurial Networks. Four centuries
of History, Oxford, 2005; Kardasis, V., Diaspora merchants in the Black Sea. The Greeks in
Southern Russia, 1775-1865, Lanham, 2001; Pepelasis Minoglou, I. and Louri, H., ‘Diaspora Entrepreneurial
Networks in the Black Sea and Greece, 1870-1917’, Journal of European Economic
History, 26 (1997), 69-104; Mandilara, A., The Greek Business Community in Marseilles, 1816-
1900: Individual and Network Strategies, Unpublished PhD Thesis, European University Institute,
Florence, 1998; Chatziioannou, M.C., Family Strategy and Commercial Competition: The Geroussi
Merchant House in the nineteenth century, Athens, 2003 (in Greek).
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