Partners, Servants, or Entrepreneurs? Banians in the Nineteenth-Century Bengal Economy
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9628637 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Michael Aldous (Queen's University Belfast, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 94 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 675-697 |
| Publication date | 2020-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Business History Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0007-6805 • E-ISSN: 2044-768X |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0007680520000689 |
| OpenAlex | W2995841491 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 26 |
Banians acted as intermediaries for European merchants in Bengal. They were highly influential in the eighteenth century but their importance waned thereafter. This article reexamines their role in the nineteenth century and argues that their importance persisted but evolved in response to changes in the Bengal economy and issues of contracting and governance. It shows that the banians remained a nexus between the local and global economies, facilitating a bidirectional transfer of knowledge. They enabled the development of innovative Indian business forms and contributed to the emergence of a diverse ecology of organizational forms and ownership in Bengal at the end of the nineteenth century
BENGAL · Business · Corporate governance · Economics · Economy · Geography · Intermediary · Management · Nexus (standard · Political science · Colonial History and Postcolonial Studies · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Historical Economic and Social Studies
East Indian fortunes
Company of Kinsmen
Business, Race, and Politics in British India, c. 1850–1960
Private Investment in India 1900–1939
Business History of India
Avoiding Negligence and Profusion
International Business in the Nineteenth Century
Transfer of Economic Power in Corporate Calcutta, 1950–1970
Trading Firms in Colonial India
Structure and Agency in the World of Asian Commerce during the Era of European Colonial Domination (c. 1750-1950)
Then came the Marwaris
Compradors, Firm Architecture and the ‘Reinvention’ of British Trading Companies
Asian Capital in the Age of European Domination
Discrimination or Social Networks? Industrial Investment in Colonial India
International Business in the Nineteenth Century
Partner in Empire
The Dubashes of Madras
Sahibs, Babus, and Banias
The Origin of the Managing Agency System in India
Banias and the British
Merchant Enterprise in Britain
European Agency Houses in Bengal
Partner in Empire. Dwarkanath Tagore and the Age of Enterprise in Eastern India
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |