Merchant

Information on Merchants and Bankers, Trade and Commerce, including Banks

Bank of Bengal, Calcutta

See also:

• Commerce and trade reading list
• Opium trade

External links

• Merchants and Bankers Dan Byrnes’ site has many references to India related merchants and trade.

Other parts of the site can be accessed via Merchant Networks. A search facility is available at the bottom of the page. India related information includes:

• On the Hodson Lists for Families of British India
• Decline of indigo business in India
• Listings for British-India (but you must scroll down this page a considerable way)

The email listings, both old and new also contain references to India.

• A Short History of British India Steam Navigation 1856-1956 from B I Ship. Contains details of the firm of Mackinnon, Mackenzie & Co, and the establishment of The Calcutta & Burmah Steam Navigation Co Ltd which became the British India Steam Navigation Co
• "Routes into Networks: The Structure of English Trade in the East Indies, 1601-1833" by Emily Erikson and Peter Bearman 2004. Columbia University Working Papers Series
• Indian banking Wikipedia
• "200 years and going strong" by Shiv Kumar June 26, 2005 tribuneindia.com. The State Bank of India had its origins in the Bank of Calcutta established on June 2, 1806, subsequently renamed the Bank of Bengal on January 2, 1809
• "The Rise and Fall of the Oriental Bank in the Nineteenth Century: A Product of the Transformations that Occurred in the World Economy or the Result of its Own Mismanagement" by John McGuire, South Asia Research Unit, Curtin University, Perth WA. Paper presented to Asian Studies Association of Australia, 15th Biennial Conference, National Convention Centre, Canberra, 29 June - 2 July 2004. Now an archived webpage.
• "Who Controls India’s Economy? A Continuing Pattern of Concentration of Wealth" by Ashoka Mehta The New International, March-April 1951 www.marxists.org
• Brewing in 19th-century India barclayperkins
• The Legacy Continues...A history of Price Waterhouse, Lovelock & Lewes and PricewaterhouseCoopers Pvt. Ltd. in India by Rathin Datta. The first chapter, to page 50, covers the period from 1880 to independence. html version, pdf

Historical books online

• The East India Trade in the XVIIth century, in its Political and Economic Aspects by Shafaat Ahmad Khan 1923 Archive.org
• Travels in India by Jean Baptiste Tavernier, baron of Aubonne, tr. from the original French edition of 1676, with a biographical sketch of the author, notes, appendices, etc., by V. Ball. 1889 Volume 1, Volume 2 Archive.org
• A new account of the East Indies by Alexander Hamilton 1744 Volume 1, Volume 2 Google Books
• A philosophical and political history of the settlements and trade of the Europeans in the East and West Indies by Abbé Guillaume-Thomas-François Raynal 1804 edition, first published in an English translation 1783 Volume 1,Volume 2 (out of 6 volumes) Google Books
• "East Indies" from The Universal Cambist, and Commercial Instructor: being a general treatise on exchange, including the monies, coins, weights and measures of all trading nations and their colonies : with an account of their banks and paper currencies, Volume 1 by Patrick Kelly 1811 Google Books
• Oriental commerce: containing a geographical description of the principal places in the East Indies, China, and Japan, with their produce, manufactures, and trade by William Milburn 1813 Google Books

Volume 1. Contents, Volume 1. India commences Chapter 12, page 154. Volume 2, Contents, Volume 2

1825 revised edition, Contents by William Milburn and Thomas Thornton Google Books

• Useful Tables, forming an Appendix to the Journal of the Asiatic Society: part the first, Coins, Weights, and Measures of British India by James Prinsep 1834 Google Books
• Sketch of the commercial resources and monetary and mercantile system of British India: with suggestions for their improvement, by means of banking establishments 1837 Google Books
• The rise, progress, and present condition of banking in India, Index by Charles Northcote Cooke 1863 Google Books
• A Financial Chapter in the History of Bombay City 1864-65 by Dinsha Edulji Wacha 2nd Edition 1910 Archive.org. Includes the failure of the Bank of Bombay.
• ‪How to Develope Productive Industry in India and the East: Mills and Factories for Ginning, Spinning, and Weaving Cotton; Jute and Silk Manufactures... Etc., Etc. by P R Cola, late sole proprietor of the Arkwright Cotton Mills, Bombay. 1867 Google Books
• "‪Russian Trade with India". Supplement to the Gazette of India‬ November 26, 1870 Google Books
• "Commerce and Companies": being a reprint from "The Pioneer", from August 1884 to September 1885 1885 Archive.org
• "Commerce and Trade" page 555 The Indian Empire, its People, History, and Products by William Wilson Hunter 2nd Edition 1886 Archive.org Contents
• A Dictionary of the Economic Products of India by George Watt There were ten volumes in total, including an Index volume: Volume I, Abaca to Buxus 1885; Volume VI, Part II Sabadilla to Silica 1893; Volume VI, Part III Silk to Tea 1893 Archive.org

All the remaining volumes are available to read online on the Digital Library of India website. (Vol- II Cabbage to Cyperus; Vol- III Dacrydium to Gordonia; Vol-IV (Gossypium to Lonociera); Vol-V (Linum to Oyster); Vol-Vi Part-I (Pachyrhizus to Rye); Vol-VI Part-IV (Tectona to Zygophillum), together with an Index volume). Restricted viewing, probably accessible to those in North America, and some other countries: Hathi Trust Digital Library ten volumes

The commercial products of India : being an abridgment of The dictionary of the economic products of India by Sir George Watt 1908 Archive.org Index

• The history of the Bank of Bengal: an epitome of a hundred years of banking in India by CP Symes Scutt 1904 Archive.org
• The Old 'Country Trade' of the East Indies by William Herbert Coates, Comm. R N R (retired) 1911 Archive.org
• Businesses in Calcutta c 1917 from Bengal and Assam, Behar and Orissa : their history, people, commerce and industrial resources by Somerset Playne , J W Bond 1917 Archive.org
• Early European Banking in India : With some reflections on present conditions by H Sinha,1927 may be downloaded as a pdf from GIPE, Pune Digitised Books (Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics (GIPE), Pune)
• History of Indian Currency and Exchange by B.E. Dadachanji 3rd enlarged edition 1934 is available to read online on the Digital Library of India website. The 1927 edition is also available.
• Problems of Indian Currency and Exchange by N R Sarker 1944 Archive.org
• History and Problems of Indian Currency 1835-1949 by D K Malhotra 1949 Archive.org
• Life Assurance In India by P.A.S. Mani 1950 Archive.org
• British Agency Houses in India are mentioned page 65 Merchants to Multinationals: British Trading Companies in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries by Geoffrey Jones 2002 Preview Google Books