History Of Indigenous Business Enterprises In Bengal

The paper’s main objective is to capture the history of 19th century business innitiatives by the enterprising Bengalis. This period was famous as a period of arrested development for indigenous business enterprises in Bengal. But the evolutionary success of Ramdulal Dey, Dwarkanath Tagore, and others proves the fact that there was no shortage of entrepreneurial skill in that period. Prince Dwarkanath Thakur utilized modern technology for his business ventures followed by Hemendramohan Bose, Kishori Mohan Bagchi and above all the great scientist of Bengal P. C. Ray for bringing lots of success.

The paper seeks to explore the perceptions and response of the Bengali entrepreneurs towards the industrial development of the country. One very relevant research question in this context could be is it the change in behavioral aspect of the Bengali community which played a pivotal role in destroying bengali’s business spirit. IntroductionThe nineteenth century was called a century of arrested development for indigenous business enterprises in Bengal. This topic was in discussion among many scholars for long and there was no single agreed conter arguement to account for it. The standard knowledge informs us that Indians as a nation were not much interested to business. Yet there were many Bengalis who started their own business ventures. How they grew over the years is certainly a very important area of historical research. In the second half of the nineteenth century these Bengali enterprises grew in a little slower pace. The present paper seeks depicts the history of Bengali entrepreneurship in various modern aspects.

The age of great enterprise

India was once a manufacturing hub of industrial products supplied to the needs of Asian and European markets, for centuries. Spinning and weaving and other handicrafts had been the providers of whole-time or part-time employment to millions of people. But all these activities had gradually vanished due to British colonialism. One of the most eminent consequences of the establishment of British empire in India was the disruption of the centuries’ age old union between agriculture and manufacturing industry. As a consequence the decline and destruction of the Indian town handicrafts and village artisan industries was obvious. Thus British rule brought into the picture the destruction of traditional handicrafts, drainage of wealth through direct plunder and revenue extraction, and the transplantation of Western type industrial capitalism in India. Modern business activities by the European agency houses in the early part of the century had a huge element of Indian partnership before new developments drew a line between the black and white spaces. The agency houses were originally the carriers of private European trade in Asian waters.

These agency houses built ships, employed them in the trade of the Indian Ocean, and by a natural extension went into the promotion of insurance companies and banks. In Calcutta they promoted industrial ventures inland: they invested on indigo planters, they financed into silk filature, and even came to manage some indigo concerns themselves. The history of the agency houses can be segregated into three periods. From 1783 to 1813 there were few houses in number and their partners were closely associated with company officials who were also their constituents. The second phase started after the opening of India to private trade in 1813, when a large number of new houses were formed by Britain. The third phase of agency-house history started in 1834 and survived until the commercial crisis of 1847.

In the second phase, although there was moderate participation of the Bengali businessmen but in the third phase they evolved as active partners of various managing agency houses. The agency houses were closely associated with their brokers. Their job was to bring in and guarantee contracts for the supply of exportable production from inland merchants. The brokers were famous as Banians in Calcutta. Sometimes they were the important merchants to conduct business on their own. Raghuram Gosain was the Bengali banian of Palmer & Co. & was a rich merchant in his own way. In the early-nineteenth century banian Ramdulal Dey was a model, who created a great fortune as a factor for the American traders. The banians were English-speaking Bengalis from Brāhmin, Kāyastha, and Banik castes & were financiers of their European principals. Motilal Seal was a Bengali ship-owner and merchant magnate. He lent money while acting as a broker to Oswald Seal & Co. Dwarkanath Tagore in his own unique way was the pioneer entrepreneur among all of the mid-nineteenth century. Dwarkanath Tagore (1794-1846) was a western-educated Bengali Brahmin who was acknowledged as a civic leader of Calcutta during the 1830s and 1840s. Though being a brilliant entrepreneur he extended his business activities to political and social ends. Tagore had a vision of a westernized and industrialized future India and whose inhabitants enjoyed, without discrimination, the rights and liberties of Englishmen. Carr, Tagore & Co. was the first equal partnership firm between European and Indian businessmen and it was the initiator of the managing agency system in India. Dwarkanath formed the firm in 1834 with the partnership of William Carr, a respected indigo trader of Calcutta. Tagore provided the firm’s capital, selected the partners, directed the investment strategy, and throughout his life time. He actively guided the house. Carr, Tagore & Co. was more a patriarchy than a partnership.

When the Calcutta Chamber of Commerce was set up in 1834 Dwarkanath became one of its members, along with Rustomji Cowasji. Tagore’s fortune had been based on landholding and money lending and his primary business interests were in import and export trade, indigo and silk manufacture, sugar refining, ocean shipping, docking, newspapers, insurance and banking. On 2 January 1836, Tagore made the most memorable investment of his entire career. He purchased India’s largest coal mine, the Raniganj Colliery, in Burdwan. To increase the sale of coal, Tagore encouraged a series of coal utilizing enterprises during the next decade and was responsible for leading India into the age of steam enginemore than any other individual outside of government service,. In between 1836 and 1846 Dwarkanath endorsed six joint stock companies: the Calcutta Steam Tug Association (1836), the Bengal Salt Company (1838), the Calcutta Steam Ferry Bridge Company (1839), the Bengal Tea Association (1839), the Bengal Coal Company (1844) and the India General Steam Navigation Company (1844). He was also one of the leaders of the modern system of banking in India. The Union Bank, of which he was a director, backed to the development of natural trade and commerce by spreading commercial credit.