著者

伊藤 正二

出版者

社会経済史学会

雑誌

社会経済史学 (ISSN:00380113)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.45, no.5, pp.511-536,599-59, 1980-02-29 (Released:2017-07-15)

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Most of the Indian zaibatstu, the owners of the larger industrial houses of present day India belong, community-wise, to the Marwaris, the Gujerati-Banyas, or the Parsis. This article examines the nature of business activity and institution of each of these three major business communities just before and after the time of their entry into modern industrial enterprises, i.e., around the middle of the 19th century in the case of the Parsis and the Gujerati-Banyas and at the turn of the present century in the case of the Marwaris. The main purpose of this article is to find out that these communities shared some common features when they entered the modern industrial fields in spite that they did so, as is well known, at different times and through different paths. The conclusions are as follow; Firstly, the fact that most of the owners of the present day Indian zaibatsu belong to a very few particular business cnmmunities originates from the historical facts that only the large scale merchant capitalists were in a position to start modern industry in the backward and colonial economy and that a few business communities dominated the industrial fields right from the beginning of the Indian modern industrial capitalism. Secondly, the success as prominent merchant class by the particular communities, especially the Marwaris and the Chettiars, and perhaps all the other successful business communities, was not a little due to existence of some kind or other of the institutions that accomodated unsparingly the needs and wants of their own communities' members. Thirdly, those merchants wgre no doubt basically compradors. But the few Parsis and Marwaris that first ventured in modern industry had been of less comprador nature: They had been engaged in such relatively independent business as foreign trade on their own account, or speculation on large scale. This article, en Passant, notes that absorption and amalgamation movement was not so unimportant a factor, as is usually argued, for bringing forth the larger managing agency houses so far as the cotton textile industry of Bombay, the strong-hold of Indian capitalists, during the nineteenth century is concerned. There occurred very many failures of the cotton mills then, which certainly helped some of the mnaging agency houses to emerge as dominant ones.