SOAS Research Online

Abstract

The rise of British rule in India in the late eighteenth century was accompanied by the emergence of extensive business networks based on London, Calcutta and Canton. These networks, which organised the private trade of British civilians and military personnel in India, linked the export and import economies of Bengal, Madras, Java, the Philippines, the Malay peninsula and southern China, and came to dominate much of the regional trade of the Indian Ocean, as well as its links to Europe. Many of those engaged in this activity were Scots, and the connections between them - based in part on kinship - provided the institutional setting for the remittance of private money from Asia to Europe. While the activities of the East India Company provided an important part of the setting for these activities, much of them also depended on private enterprise and non-official networks. As a result, the volume of capital remitted from Bengal to Britain during the 1790s and 1800s was much larger than has previously been estimated.