Indian merchant networks outside India in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: A preliminary survey

Modern Asian Studies

Volumn 33, Issue 4, 1999, Pages 883-911

  Markovits, Claude ^a  

^a CNRS   (France)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ECONOMIC HISTORY; HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY; MIGRANT WORKER; NINETEENTH CENTURY; TWENTIETH CENTURY;

INDIA;

EID: 0032723347     PISSN: 0026749X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0026749X99003467     Document Type: Article

References (57)

1. For a recent synthesis, see South Asians Overseas. Migration and Ethnicity, ed. by C. Clarke, C. Peach and S. Vertovec (Cambridge, 1990).
2. Calculated from Fiji Census.
3. K. S. Sandhu, Indians in Malaya. Some Aspects of their Immigration and Settlement (1786-1957) (Cambridge, 1969), Table 14, p. 247. In the Straits Settlements colony, where the Indian population was almost entirely urban, the proportion in commercial occupations reached 14.3% (15.3% for males). In the Malay States, where most Indians worked in rubber estates, it was much lower.
4. 18.1%. Calculated from Census of India, 1931, Vol. XI, Part II.
5. 3,305 out of 6,395. Uganda Census Returns, 1931.
6. Calculated from Uganda Census Returns, Table XXX, p. 39.
7. Calculated from Kenya, Report on the Non-native Census Enumeration, Table XII, p. 53.
8. There were 10,491 'Indian Tamil' (as distinct from 'Ceylon Tamil') male earners in trade and finance, presumably Chettiars and other Hindus from the Madras Presidency, as against 10,417 'Indian Moors' (as distinct from 'Ceylon Moors'), mostly Tamilian-speaking Muslim immigrants from India. As for the 2,796 'other' male earners in trade and finance, there are no precise indications as to their religion. From Census Publications, Ceylon, 1921.
9. There were 38,371 'Non-Burmese Mahomedans' employed in trade, finance and insurance, who can safely be assumed to have been Indian Muslims, and 30,973 Hindus, Sikhs and others (there were very few Sikh, Jain and Parsi traders in Burma). Census of India, 1921, Vol. X, Burma, Part II, Tables, by S. G. Grantham (Rangoon, 1923), Imperial Table XX, pp. 440-1.
10. For testimonies of the presence of Hindu merchants in Muscat at the end of the fifteenth century, see C. H. Allen, 'The Indian Merchant Community of Masqat', Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, vol. 44, 1981, p. 39.
11. C. A. Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars. North Indian society in the age of British expansion, 1770-1870 (Cambridge, 1983), p. 386.
12. According to the British traveller, Valentia, there were in Mocha around 1810 some two hundred and fifty resident Banyans (Hindu merchants). Quoted in R. Pankhurst, 'Indian Trade with Ethiopia, the Gulf of Aden and the Horn of Africa in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries', Cahiers d'Etudes Africaines, 55 XIV/3, 1974, p. 455.
13. In a petition addressed to the Viceroy, Lord Curzon, dated z November 1903, ten prominent British Indian merchants of Bahrein wrote: 'May it be known to Your Lordship that we came up the Persian Gulf about two hundred years ago . . .'. Enclosed in India Office Records (IOR), Politics and Secret Department Records L/P & 8/7/134.
14. Allen, 'The Indian Merchant Community of Masqat', p. 45.
15. R. G. Gregory, India and East Africa. A History of Race Relations within the British Empire 1890-1939 (Oxford, 1971), p. 18.
16. B. Benedict, Indians in a Plural Society. A Report on Mauritius (London, 1961), p. 26.
17. N. R. Chakravarti, The Indian Minority in Burma (London, 1971), p. 56.
18. J. S. Mangat, A History of the Asians in East Africa c. 1886 to 1945 (Oxford, 1969), p. 7.
19. Gazetteer of the Province of Sind, compiled by E. H. Aitken (Karachi, 1907), p. 395.
20. R. A. Huttenback, Gandhi in South Africa, British Imperialism and the Indian Question, 1860-1914 (London, 1971), p. 41.
21. In the first half of the 188os, yearly non-labour migration was on average 2,000-3,000. In the second half of the decade, it rose to an average of 5,000-6,000 and in the 1890s reached 7,000-8,000. Sandhu, Indians in Malaya, Appendix 3, pp. 312-13.
22. It rose from 129,566 in 1881 to 282,908 in 1891, according to the revised estimates of Chakravarti, Indian Minority in Burma, Table 2.6, p. 22.
23. G. Prunier, l'Ouganda et la question indienne (1896-1972) (Paris, 1990), p. 25.
24. Sandhu, Indians in Malaya.
25. Calculated from Sandhu, Indians in Malaya.
26. See A. Lemon, 'The political position of Indians in South Africa', in Clarke, Peach and Vertovec (eds), South Asians Overseas, p. 131.
27. K. Davis, The Population of India and Pakistan (Princeton, 1951), Table 35, p. 99.
28. Where, in 1921, there were 5,065 'Indo-Mauritians' (Indians born in Mauritius) in commerce and finance, as against 882 'Indians' (Indians born in India). Census of 1921.
29. Calculated from Census of India, 1931, Vol. XI.
30. The term seems to have been first used by Abner Cohen in his 'Cultural Strategies in the Organization of Trading Diasporas', in C. Meillassoux (ed.), The Development of Indigenous Trade and Markets in West Africa (London, 1971), p. 267. For a discussion, see Philip D. Curtin, Cross-Cultural Trade in World History (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 1-14.
31. The term seems to have been first used by Abner Cohen in his 'Cultural Strategies in the Organization of Trading Diasporas', in C. Meillassoux (ed.), The Development of Indigenous Trade and Markets in West Africa (London, 1971), p. 267. For a discussion, see Philip D. Curtin, Cross-Cultural Trade in World History (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 1-14.
32. See Allen, 'The Indian Merchant Community of Masqat'.
33. M. Rheda Bhacker, Trade and Empire in Muscat and Zanzibar. Roots of British Domination (London, 1992), p. 172. However, Kutchis continued to be involved in the slave trade in Portuguese territory. A memorandum dated 3 January 1876 concluded that the Government of India had no jurisdiction over Kutchis in Mozambique and referred the question to the Foreign Office. IOR, Political & Secret Memorials c. 1840-1947 L/P& S/18, Memorandum B 12.
34. According to a survey of holders of trading licenses in Uganda done in 1954, there were 1,300 Lohana amongst the 5,809 Indian license holders. Although they were a little less numerous than the Patidars, they were economically the most powerful community in Uganda. See H. S. Morris, The Indians in Uganda (London, 1966), Table 6, pp. 184-5.
35. See Allen, 'The Indian Merchant Community of Masqat'.
36. See ibid.
37. L. C. Jain, Indigenous Banking in India (London, 1929), p. 83. For the Shikarpuris, I have drawn on my personal research on the history of Sindhi merchant networks, based on a variety of primary sources.
38. Gazetteer of the Province of Sind. I am preparing a history of the Sindworkies.
39. See Macartney's diary for November 1913, enclosed in Macartney to Deputy Secretary, Government of India in the Foreign Department, dated 9 December 1913, in which he reports having registered at Yarkand '20 Hoshiarpuri Hindus'. IOR, Political & Secret Separate (or Subject) Files 1902-1931 L/P& S/10/330.
40. Sandhu, Indians in Malaya, p. 119.
41. There is a vast literature on the Chcttiars, to which I shall not refer in detail. However, mention should be made of D. W. Rudner, Caste and Capitalism in Colonial India. The Nattukottai Chettiars (Berkeley, 1994), the most recent and most complete work on the question.
42. Chakravarti, Indian Minority in Burma, p. 79. See also M. Yegar, The Muslims of Burma (Wiesbaden, 1972).
43. Chakravarti, Indian Minority in Burma, p. 79. See also M. Yegar, The Muslims of Burma (Wiesbaden, 1972).
44. U. Mahajani, The Role of Indian Minorities in Burma and Malaya (Bombay, 1960), p. 98.
45. Sandhu, Indians in Malaya, pp. 119-20.
46. Mentioned in letter dated 26 May 1917 from J. E. C. Jakes, Deputy Secretary to the Government of Bombay, to Foreign Secretary, Government of India, in the Foreign and Political Department. The letter was enclosed in a file concerning demands by Indian merchants for the opening of a British Consulate in Tuléar, a port in Southwest Malagasy, where there were hundreds of British Indians engaged in trade. IOR, India Foreign Proceedings (External), 1917.
47. Calculated from British Malaya, a Report on the 1931 Census.
48. Calculated from Report on the non-native enumeration . . . in . . . Kenya, 1926.
49. Mentioned in K. A. Gillion, Fiji's Indian Migrants (Melbourne, 1964), p. 134.
50. 'profits and gains of a business accruing or arising without British India were not chargeable, even if received or brought within British India, provided they were not received or brought in within three years of the end of the year in which they accrued or arose'. Report of the Indian Taxation Enquiry Committee of 1924-1925, vol. I (Madras, 1926), p. 191. The same report candidly acknowledged that 'administrative difficulties are experienced in ascertaining whether income has actually been received in British India' and that 'much fraud occurs'.
51. He wrote: 'mercantile capitalists, such as the Nattukottai Chetties of South India, began to vote on the issue with their feet and to take their capital out of India in protest at legal insecurities and frustrations'. D. A. Washbrook, 'Law, State and Agrarian Society in Colonial India', in C. Baker, G. Johnson and A. Seal (eds), Power, Profit and Politics: Essays on Imperialism, Nationalism and Change in Twentieth-Century India (Cambridge, 1981), p. 676.
52. Report of the Bombay Provincial Banking Enquiry Committee 1929-30, vol. 4 (Bombay, 1930), Evidence of the Shikarpuri Shroffs' Association, p. 351.
53. See David Cheesman, '"The Omnipresent Bania": Rural Moneylenders in Nineteenth-Century Sind', Modern Asian Studies, vol. 16, no. 3, 1982, pp. 445-62.
54. See E. Bonacich, 'A Theory of Middleman Minorities', American Sodological Review, Vol. 38, October 1973, pp. 583-94.
55. Rudner, in Caste and Capitalism, pp. 80-1, quotes figures for 1935-1942 tending to show that Chettiars in Burma could charge lower rates of interest than their Burmese and Chinese competitors, but admits that no figures are available to him that 'allow for a precise reconstruction of the Burmese credit market between 1870 and 1930'.
56. All figures calculated from Census of India, 1931, Vol. XI, pp. 192-3.
57. Mahajani, The Role of Indian Minorities, p. 17.