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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 December 2020
This article examines the history of the Swiss merchant house Volkart Bros., which was one of the most important exporters of Indian raw cotton and one of the biggest trading firms in South Asia during the colonial period. The study allows for a fresh look at Indian economic history by putting forth two main arguments. First, it charts the history of a continental European firm that was active in South Asia to offer a better understanding of the economic entanglements of the subcontinent with the wider world, which often had a reach beyond the empire. This ties in with recent research initiatives that aim to examine the history of imperialism from a transnational perspective. Second, the history of a private company helps in developing a micro-perspective on the often ambiguous relation between the business goals of individual enterprises and colonial rule. The article argues that this may be evidence of the fact that capitalism and imperialism were two different, although sometimes converging, spatial structures, each with a distinct logic of its own. What is more, the positive interactions between European and Indian businessmen, fostered by a cosmopolitan attitude among business elites, point to the fact that even in the age of empire, the class background of actors could be more important for the establishing of cooperative ventures than the colour of their skin or their geographical origin. It is argued that this offers the possibility of examining the history of world trade in terms of global social history.
I would like to thank Margret Frenz, Moritz von Brescius, and the two anonymous readers of Modern Asian Studies for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. The article relies mostly on those unpublished records from the Volkart Archives in Winterthur that could be accessed for the first time for scholarly study. They have only recently been transferred to the Winterthur Municipal Archives and made accessible to the public.
1 Ernst Müller-Renner, ‘Nachruf im Namen des Personals der Firma Gebrüder Volkart’, in Zur Erinnerung an Theodor Reinhart, 1848–1919 (n.p.; n.d. [Winterthur, 1919]), p. 17.
2 For the history of the firm, see Rambousek, Walter H., Vogt, Armin and Volkart, Hans R., Volkart: the history of a world trading company (Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1990)Google Scholar; Dejung, Christof, Commodity trading, globalization and the colonial world: spinning the web of the global market (New York: Routledge, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 See Parthasarathi, Prasannan, Why Europe grew rich and Asia did not: global economic divergence, 1600–1850 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar for a recent resumption of this argument.
4 This was the rationale of classic works on British imperial history such as Gallagher, John and Robinson, Ronald, ‘The imperialism of free trade’, Economic History Review, NS vol. 6, 1953, pp. 1–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cain, Peter J. and Hopkins, Anthony G., ‘Gentlemanly capitalism and British expansion overseas I: the old colonial system, 1688–1850’, Economic History Review, vol. 39, no. 4, 1986, pp. 501–525CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cain, P. J. and Hopkins, A. G., ‘Gentlemanly capitalism and British expansion overseas II: new imperialism, 1850–1945’, Economic History Review, vol. 40, no. 1, 1987, pp. 1–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This argument was also recently made by Sven Beckert, Empire of cotton: a global history (New York: Knopf, 2014).
5 Sugihara, Kaoru, ‘Japan as an engine of the Asian international economy, c. 1880–1936’, Japan Forum, vol. 2, no. 1, 1990, pp. 127–145Google Scholar; Akita, Shigeru and White, Nicholas J. (eds), The international order of Asia in the 1930s and 1950s (Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2010)Google Scholar.
6 See Lubinski, Christina, ‘Global trade and Indian politics: the German dye business in India before 1947’, Business History Review, vol. 89, no. 3, 2015, pp. 503–530CrossRefGoogle Scholar for the activities of German firms in the Raj.
7 Sugihara, Kaoru, ‘An introduction’, in Japan, China, and the growth of the Asian international economy, 1850–1949, (ed.) Sugihara, Kaoru (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 1–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 Bombay Chamber of Commerce, Report for the year 1908, p. 135.
9 Roy, Tirthankar, The economic history of India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 15–17Google Scholar.
10 This is an argument put forth by Roy, Tirthankar, ‘Trading firms in colonial India’, Business History Review, vol. 88, no. 1, 2014, p. 38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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12 Andreas Zangger, Koloniale Schweiz: Ein Stück Globalgeschichte zwischen Europa und Südostasien (1860–1930) (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2011); Schär, Bernhard C., ‘Introduction: the Dutch East Indies and Europe, ca. 1800–1930: an empire of demands and opportunities’, BMGN—Low Countries Historical Review, vol. 134, no. 3, 2019, pp. 4–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schär, B. C., ‘From Batticaloa via Basel to Berlin: transimperial science in Ceylon and beyond around 1900’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, vol. 48, no. 2, 2019, pp. 230–262CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
13 Dejung, Christof, ‘Jenseits der Exzentrik: Aussereuropäische Geschichte in der Schweiz. Einleitung zum Themenschwerpunkt’, Schweizerische Zeitschrift für Geschichte, vol. 64, no. 2, 2014, pp. 195–209Google Scholar; Patricia Purtschert and Harald Fischer-Tiné (eds), Colonial Switzerland: rethinking colonialism from the margins (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Walter Sauer (ed.), k. u. k. kolonial: Habsburgermonarchie und europäische Herrschaft in Afrika (Wien: Böhlau, 2002); Andrew Zimmerman, Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German empire, and the globalization of the New South (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).
14 Beckert, Empire of cotton.
15 Claude Markovits, The global world of Indian merchants, 1750–1947: traders of Sind from Bukhara to Panama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
16 Arthur Cecil Pointon, The Bombay Burman trading corporation limited 1863–1963 (London and Southampton: Millbrook Press, 1964); Marika Vicziany, ‘Bombay merchants and structural changes in the export community 1850 to 1880’, in Economy and society: essays in Indian economy and social history, (eds) Kirti N. Chaudhuri and Clive J. Dewey (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 163–196.
17 For this argument, see, among others, David Cannadine, Ornamentalism: how the British saw their empire (London: Penguin, 2001); David Motadel, ‘Qajar shahs in imperial Germany’, Past and Present, no. 213, 2011, pp. 191–235.
18 Charles A. Jones, International business in the nineteenth century: the rise and fall of a cosmopolitan bourgeoisie (Brighton: Wheatsheaf, 1987); Christof Dejung, David Motadel and Jürgen Osterhammel (eds), The global bourgeoisie: the rise of the middle classes in the age of empire (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019).
19 For this aspect, see, among others, David Hardiman, ‘Usury, dearth and famine in Western India’, Past and Present, no. 152, 1996, pp. 113–156; Laxman D. Satya, Cotton and famine in Berar (New Delhi: Manohar, 1997).
20 For the global social history approach, see Stearns, Peter, ‘Social history and world history: toward greater interaction’, World History Connected, vol. 2, no. 2, 2005Google Scholar (online); Pomeranz, Kenneth, ‘Social history and world history: from daily life to patterns of change’, Journal of World History, vol. 18, no. 1, 2007, pp. 69–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jürgen Osterhammel, The transformation of the world: a global history of the nineteenth century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014), pp. 744–778; J. Osterhammel, ‘Hierarchies and connections: aspects of a global social history’, in An Emerging Modern World, 1750–1870, (eds) Sebastian Conrad and Jürgen Osterhammel (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), pp. 661–888; Christof Dejung, ‘Transregional study of class, social groups, and milieus’, in Handbook of transregional studies, (ed.) Matthias Middell (Milton Park and New York: Routledge, 2019), pp. 74–81.
21 For this notion, see, among others, David K. Fieldhouse, ‘“A new imperial system?” The role of the multinational corporations reconsidered’, in Imperialism and after: continuities and discontinuities, (eds) Wolfgang J. Mommsen and Jürgen Osterhammel (London: Allen and Unwin, 1986), pp. 225–240; Cátia Antunes and Amélia Polónia (eds), Beyond empires: global, self-organizing, cross-imperial networks, 1500–1800 (Leiden: Brill, 2016).
22 See James G. Carrier (ed.), Meanings of the market: the free market in Western culture (Oxford: Berg, 1997); Hartmut Berghoff and Jakob Vogel (eds), Wirtschaftsgeschichte als Kulturgeschichte: Dimensionen eines Perspektivenwechsels (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2004); Robert Lee (ed.), Commerce and culture: nineteenth-century business elites (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011); Christof Dejung, Monika Dommann and Daniel Speich Chassé (eds), Auf der Suche nach der Ökonomie: Historische Annäherungen (Tübingen: Mohr, 2014) for the application of cultural historical approaches to economic and business history.
23 Thomas L. Friedman, The world is flat: the globalized world in the twenty-first century (London: Penguin, 2006).
24 Roland Robertson, ‘Glocalization: time-space and homogeneity-heterogeneity’, in Global modernities, (eds) Mike Featherstone, Scott Lash and Roland Robertson (London: Sage, 1995), pp. 25–44.
25 C. A. Bayly, Rulers, townsmen and bazaars: North Indian society in the age of British expansion, 1770–1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).
26 Peter Harnetty, Imperialism and free trade: Lancashire and India in the mid-nineteenth century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1972), pp. 36–58; Satya, Cotton and famine in Berar, p. 160; Beckert, Sven, ‘Emancipation and empire: reconstructing the worldwide web of cotton production in the age of the American Civil War’, The American Historical Review, vol. 109, no. 5, 2004, pp. 1405–1438CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
27 Vicziany, ‘Bombay merchants and structural changes’, pp. 167–169 and 181.
28 V.B. news, published by Volkart Brothers, Winterthur, and devoted to the interests of their employees, no. 9, 1923, pp. 14–16.
29 Jakob Anderegg, Volkart Brothers, 1851–1976: a chronicle (Winterthur: Volkart Bros., 1976), pp. 756f.; Bombay Chamber of Commerce, Report for the year 1898.
30 Vicziany, ‘Bombay merchants and structural changes’; Rajnarayan Chandavarkar, The origins of industrial capitalism in India: business strategies and the working classes in Bombay, 1900–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 45–52.
31 V.B. news, no. 9, 1923, p. 16; Volkart Archives, Winterthur [VA], Dossier 30: Patel Cotton Comp., Patel/Volkart Cotton Merger, Volkart Bombay Pvt. Ltd. 1961.
32 Alfred D. Chandler, Scale and scope: the dynamics of industrial capitalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004); Stanley Chapman, The rise of merchant banking (London: George Allen, 1984).
33 The groundbreaking examination of this aspect is, of course, Rajat Kanta Ray, ‘Asian capital in the age of European domination: the rise of the bazaar, 1800–1914’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 29, no. 3, 1995, pp. 449–554.
34 August F. Ammann, Reminiscences of an old V.B. partner: special number of the V.B. news, published by Volkart Bros. and devoted to the interests of their employees (Winterthur: Volkart Bros., 1921), pp. 58–60.
35 Ibid., p. 59.
36 Lakshmi Subramanian, Three merchants of Bombay: Trawadi Arjunji Nathji, Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy and Premchand Roychand: doing business in times of change (New Delhi: Allan Lane, 2012), pp. 139–141.
37 Bayly, Rulers, townsmen and bazaars; Jack Goody, The East in the West (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
38 Jürgen Kocka, Capitalism. a short history (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016); Jane Gleeson-White, Double entry: how the merchants of Venice created modern finance (New York: W.W. Norton, 2012).
39 V.B. news, no. 4, 1922, p. 17.
40 Ralli Brothers’ Calcutta handbook. Volume II: Articles, Calcutta, September 1888, p. 26.
41 VA, Dossier 27: Instruction Manuals: Vorschriften für den Geschäftsbetrieb der indischen Filialen von Volkart Brothers [no date, circa 1920–1924].
42 Georg Reinhart, Gedenkschrift zum fünfundsiebzigsten Bestehen der Firma Gebrüder Volkart (Winterthur: Volkart Bros., 1926), p. 77.
43 V.B. news, no. 2, 1921, pp. 13f.
44 Ammann, Reminiscences, p. 21.
45 Satya, Cotton and famine in Berar. During the late nineteenth century, a similar development took place in other colonial possessions, for example, in Africa. For more on this topic, see Beckert, Empire of cotton.
46 Bombay Chamber of Commerce, Report for the year 1908, p. 135.
47 Arno Schmidt, Baumwollkultur in Indien: Bericht über Reise nach Indien, Dezember 1911–Januar 1912 (n.p.: Internationaler Verband der Baumwoll-Spinner- und Weber-Vereinigungen, n.d.), pp. 34 and 84f.
48 Harnetty, Imperialism and free trade, p. 102.
49 To read about the not uncommon peasant revolts in colonial India, see Eric Stokes, The peasant and the Raj: studies in agrarian society and peasant rebellion in colonial India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978); Sumit Guha, The agrarian economy of the Bombay Deccan: 1818–1941 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985); Ranajit Guha, Elementary aspects of peasant insurgency in colonial India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983).
50 Harnetty, Imperialism and free trade, pp. 104–107.
51 Maharashtra State Archives [MSA], Mumbai, Revenue Department, 1874, Vol. 26, No. 658: Cotton—Complaint made by Messers. Gaddum & Co. against the Cotton Inspector at Dhollera for seizing eight bales of cotton of low quality purchased by them: letter from Messrs. Gaddum & Co., Bombay, to the Chief Secretary to Government, Revenue Department, Bombay, 25 February 1874.
52 MSA, Revenue Department, 1869, Vol. 8, No. 90: Cotton—Report on the working of the Cotton Fraud Department for 1868–69, Appendix H: J. H. Merritt, Inspector of Cotton, Bombay, to G. F. Forbes, Esq., Officiating Inspector-in-Chief, Cotton Department, Bombay, 28 May 1869.
53 MSA, Revenue Department, 1876, Vol. 29, No. 15: Cotton—Administration Report of the Cotton Department for 1874–75 & 1875–76: Administration Report of the Cotton Department for the year 1875–76, 14.
54 Harnetty, Imperialism and free trade, pp. 102–122; Charles W. Macara, Trade stability and how to obtain it (Manchester: Sherrat and Hughes, 1925), pp. 204–206.
55 Nehru Memorial Library, New Delhi, Manuscript Section, Purshotamdas Thakurdas Papers, File No. 6: Surat Factory, Kapas, 13.1.1913 to 18.6.1923: Gulabbhai Nagarji Desai, Divisional Superintendent of Agriculture, Northern Division, Surat, to the Deputy Director of Agriculture, Poona, 11 December 1918; R. B. Ewbank, Registrar Co-operative Societies, Bombay Presidency, Poona, to Purshotamdas Thakordas, Bombay, 3 May 1919; Mohanlal L. Dantwala, The marketing of raw cotton in India (Calcutta: Longmans, Green and Co., 1937), pp. 47f.; B. L. Sethi, ‘History of cotton’, in Cotton in India. A monograph, (ed.) Indian Central Cotton Committee (Bombay: Indian Central Cotton Committee, 1960), p. 16.
56 Volkart Bros., Calculationstabellen Gebrüder Volkart Winterthur (Winterthur: Volkart Bros., 1873), p. 11.
57 Dantwala, The marketing of raw cotton, p. 31. See also Mr. N. P. Dantra, Agent, Messrs. Volkart Bros., ‘Nagpur, 13 November 1917’, in Minutes of evidence, Vol. 5, 1920, (ed.) Indian Cotton Committee, p. 20
58 John Forbes Watson, Report on cotton gins and the cleaning and quality of Indian cotton. Part I: Summary and conclusion (London: William H. Allen, 1879), p. 162.
59 Samuel Smith, The cotton trade of India: being a series of letters written from Bombay in the spring of 1863 (London: Effingham, Wilson, 1863), pp. 12, 21f., 28; Harnetty, Imperialism and free trade, p. 101f.; Dietmar Rothermund, Government, landlord, and peasant in India: agrarian relations under British rule, 1865–1935 (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, 1978).
60 Satya, Cotton and famine in Berar, p. 242.
61 Roy, ‘Trading firms’, pp. 22f.
62 VA, Dossier 1, B) die Teilhaber, 1) Salomon Volkart, 3) Privat-Copierbuch, 9 January 1867–25 August 1870: Sal. Volkart to Spitteler, acting BM Cochin, 22 July 1869; Volkart Bros., Calculationstabellen, pp. 13 and 31–33; VA, Dossier 14: Japan: Winterthur to Osaka, copies to Bombay, Karachi, Tuticorin, 10 April 1918 (Diktat von E. Müller-Renner).
63 Calangutcar, Archana, ‘Marwaris in opium trade: a journey to Bombay in the 19th century’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, Vol. 67, 2006/2007, pp. 745–753Google Scholar; Rolf Bauer, The peasant production of opium in nineteenth century India (Leiden: Brill, 2019).
64 Erika Rappaport, A thirst for empire: how tea shaped the modern world (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017), pp. 86–110.
65 See Manjapra, Kris, ‘Asian plantation histories at the frontiers of nation and globalization’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 52, no. 6, 2018, pp. 2137–2158CrossRefGoogle Scholar for the nineteenth-century transfer of the plantation system from the Americas to South Asia.
66 Watson, Report on cotton gins, p. 162.
67 Rappaport, Thirst for empire, pp. 93–103.
68 Omkar Goswami, ‘Then came the Marwaris: some aspects of the changes in the pattern of industrial control in Eastern India’, Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 22, no. 3, 1985, pp. 225–250; Goswami, O., ‘Sahibs, babus, and Banias: changes in industrial control in Eastern India, 1918–50’, The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 48, no. 2, 1989, pp. 289–309CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Gordon T. Stewart, Jute and empire: the Calcutta jute wallahs and the landscapes of empire (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), pp. 26–44.
69 The comparison of indigo and cotton may provide evidence for the contingency of the ways in which commodity chains were organized. Even though with both commodities, exporters faced rather similar problems in terms of quality and credit, cultivation methods and upcountry buying developed rather differently after the mid-nineteenth century. In the cotton trade, the ryoti system was used well into the twentieth century. In contrast, the indigo trade saw a backward integration by which export traders became plantation owners and managers after the 1850s. See Michael Aldous, ‘From traders to planters: the evolving role and importance of trading companies in the 19th century Anglo-Indian indigo trade’, Business History, doi: 10.1080/00076791.2019.1623787.
70 Jean Rutz, Agent Volkart Bros., ‘Guntur (28.2.18)’, in Minutes of evidence, Vol. 5, 1920, (ed.) Indian Cotton Committee, p. 19; Harnetty, Imperialism and free trade, pp. 83–93.
71 Thomas Ellison, A hand-book of the cotton trade: or a glance at the past history, present condition, and future prospects of the cotton commerce of the world (Liverpool: Withney and Grimley, 1858), p. 39.
72 Harnetty, Imperialism and free trade, p. 93.
73 Bombay Chamber of Commerce, Report for the year 1908, p. 135.
74 Ellinger, Barnard and Ellinger, Hugh, ‘Japanese competition in the cotton trade’, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, vol. 18, no. 2, 1930, pp. 185–231CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Kagotani Naoto, ‘Up-country purchase activities of Indian raw cotton by Toyo Menka's Bombay branch, 1896–1935’, in Commercial networks in modern Asia, (eds) Shinya Sugiyama and Linda Grove (Richmond: Curzon, 2001), pp. 205–208.
75 VA, Dossier 62: ex GR persönliches Archiv II, Personelle und organisatorische Probleme, Wirtschaftlichkeitsrechnungen 1918–1932: Baumwoll-Umsatz-Ziffern 1925/26–1928/29.
76 VA, Dossier 16: USA, Brazil, Mexico, Guatemala/Costa Rica, Turkey, I. USA: Notiz von Peter Reinhart vom 20. September 1950, ‘Entwicklung des amerikanischen Baumwollgeschäftes’.
77 Beckert, ‘Emancipation and empire’, p. 1421; Sugihara, ‘An introduction’; Akita and White (eds), The international order of Asia.
78 Anderegg, Chronicle, pp. 71 and 540.
79 VA, Dossier 25: I/P/C Terms of European Staff: Circular to all Employees on Home Agreement, Winterthur, 15 June 1954.
80 Geoffrey Jones, Merchants to multinationals: British trading companies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 213–215. Employees at Ralli also enjoyed long careers at the trading firm: Guildhall Library, London [GL], Records of Ralli Bros., Ms. 23836: Historical material on the company, 1902–1952: Leoni M. Calvocoressi, The House of Ralli Brothers, 1952.
81 VA, Dossier 2: Die Teilhaber II, Theodor Reinhart: Dr. Th. Reinhart, Winterthur to Colombo, 20 December 1877. Unfortunately, the sources do not reveal how the employees coped with their eventual return to Switzerland.
82 Ammann, Reminiscences, pp. 24–27, 31, 43 and 55.
83 V.B. news, no. 2, 1921, pp. 12f.; V.B. news, no. 11, 1924, pp. 12–16. Heinz Frech gave similar descriptions of his hunting trips in the area surrounding Karachi during the 1950s: Heinz W. Frech, Baumwolle, Stahl und Stolpersteine: 40 Jahre mit Volkart, Alusuisse und Von Roll (Frauenfeld: Huber, 2001), pp. 55f.
84 VA, Dossier 12: Tuticorin/Madras, Madras, 8. Miscellaneous information: Madras to Winterthur, 9 December 1938.
85 VA, Dossier 48: Artikel/Abhandlungen/Gedichte/Briefe etc. von ehemaligen Mitarbeitern: W. Haesli, Ballade, 1926 (translation: Paul Cohen).
86 Ibid.
87 Anderegg, Chronicle, pp. 130–132 and 209f.
88 Ibid., p. 132.
89 Up until the 1830s, Europeans living on the subcontinent often wore Indian clothing and had relationships with Indian women. Afterwards, black tailored suits became standard attire for the British and other Europeans in India, and even Indian food was increasingly viewed with disdain. More and more Europeans used this as a way of remaining aloof from their Indian surroundings, which they saw as hostile: Elizabeth M. Collingham, Imperial bodies: the physical experience of the Raj, c. 1800–1947 (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001).
90 V.B. news, no. 3, 1921, p. 20; V.B. news, no. 7, 1923, pp. 5–9.
91 Ammann, Reminiscences, p. 22.
92 Frech, Baumwolle, Stahl und Stolpersteine, p. 53.
93 VA, Dossier 63: ex GR persönliches Archiv III, Calcutta—Wirtschaftlichkeits Probleme 1928–31: Werner Reinhart to Winterthur, Bombay, 17 October 1928.
94 VA, Dossier 25: I/P/C Terms of European Staff: Allgemeine Richtlinen Personal, ca. 1966.
95 Ammann, Reminiscences, p. 22.
96 Stephan Steinmann, Seldwyla im Wunderland: Schweizer im alten Shanghai, 1842–1941 (Zürich: Studentendruckerei, 1998), pp. 24 and 50.
97 VA, Dossier 1, B) die Teilhaber, 1) Salomon Volkart, 3. Privat-Copierbuch, 9 January 1867–25 August 1870: Sal. Volkart to Hausheer, Cochin, 29 December 1869.
98 VA, Dossier 25: I/P/C Terms of European Staff.
99 VA, Privates von Hr. Werner Reinhart, Karachi (Management-Wechsel) 1929 (Nov.): WR, Karachi, 1 November 1923 to Herrn Gebr. Volkart Winterthur.
100 Anderegg, Chronicle, pp. 109 and 134f.; VA, Dossier 9: Tellicherry, 2. Table of Events: 1930.
101 Dejung, Christof and Zangger, Andreas, ‘British wartime protectionism and Swiss trading firms in Asia during the First World War’, Past and Present, no. 207, 2010, pp. 181–213CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
102 See Jones, Geoffrey, ‘The end of nationality? Global firms and “borderless worlds”’, Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte, vol. 51, no. 2, 2006, pp. 149–165CrossRefGoogle Scholar for a further discussion of this issue.
103 Georg Reinhart, Aus meinem Leben (Winterthur: n.p., 1931), pp. 301–305.
104 VA, Dossier 64: Geschäftsordnung 1915/1921 mit Nachträgen bis 1940/Upcountry Bookkeeping Instructions 1912–1926/Upcountry Instructions 1952: General regulations and instructions for the use of Volkart Brothers up-country-agencies, Winterthur 1912, p. 4.
105 GL, Records of Ralli Bros., Ms. 23834: Report to the Chairman of Ralli Brothers Limited, 12 April 1939, p. 15.
106 VA, Dossier 5: Bombay III: India General, 24. Some staff notes/terms, Programme: Volkart Brothers Athletic Sports, Saturday, 24 February 1940, W.I.F.A. Grounds; VA, Dossier 24: I/P/C Terms of Local Staff, I. General notes on staff terms: Bombay to Vevey, 29 February 1940.
107 VA, Dossier 64: Geschäftsordnung 1915/1921 mit Nachträgen bis 1940/Upcountry Bookkeeping Instructions 1912–1926/Upcountry Instructions 1952: Geschäfts-Ordnung, 15 February 1925.
108 VA, Konferenz-Protokolle vom 5. Januar 1945–27. Juni 1947: Protokoll vom 3. August 1945.
109 VA, Rapporte von Herrn Georg Reinhart anlässlich seiner Inspektionsreise nach Indien etc. im Jahre 1923: GR, Osaka, to Winterthur, 28 May 1923.
110 VA, Dossier 24: I/P/C Terms of Local Staff, IV. Branches: General staff terms/Unions, 1. Bombay: Winterthur an alle Häuser, 11 March 1920.
111 VA, Konferenz-Protokolle vom 5. Januar 1945–27. Juni 1947: Protokoll vom 3. August 1945.
112 VA, Dossier 26: Finance/Exchange 1887–1973 Inland financing—shroffage agreements, Winterthur an Karachi, 30 August 1928.
113 Tomlinson, Brian R., ‘Colonial firms and the decline of colonialism in Eastern India 1914–47’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 15, no. 3, 1981, pp. 455–486CrossRefGoogle Scholar; David K. Fieldhouse, Unilever overseas: the anatomy of a multinational 1895–1965 (London: Croom Helm, 1978), pp. 162–203; Champaka Basu, Challenge and change: the ITC story, 1910–1985 (London: Sangam, 1988), pp. 130–138; Geoffrey Jones, Renewing Unilever: transformation and tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 170f.
114 Lubinski, ‘Global trade and Indian politics’.
115 VA, Dossier 3: Bombay I: 5. Cotton general correspondence—incl. the boycott of European Firms in 1932: Winterthur to Bombay, 18 March 1932.
116 Ibid.
117 VA, Dossier 27: Instruction Manuals: Vorschriften für den Geschäftsbetrieb der indischen Filialen von Volkart Brothers [no date, circa 1920–24].
118 Volkart Bros., Situationsbericht der Firma Gebrüder Volkart, no. 24, 1922.
119 National Archives of India, New Delhi, Home Department Political Branch, File No. 33/6, 1931: F. H. Sykes, Government House, Bombay, to the Earl of Willingdon, 19 March 1932.
120 VA, Dossier 3: Bombay I: 5. Cotton general correspondence—incl. the boycott of European Firms in 1932: Bombay to Winterthur, 4 March 1932.
121 Tomlinson, ‘Colonial firms’, p. 457; Fieldhouse, Unilever, pp. 164f.
122 VA, Dossier 3: Bombay I, 5. Cotton general correspondence—incl. the boycott of European Firms in 1932: Bombay to Winterthur, 9 November 1927.
123 VA, Dossier 59: PR-Privatarchiv: Notizen/Briefe/Personelles etc., Historisches betr. Geschäft: PR, Shanghai to Winterthur, 6 June 1934. See Rajat Kanta Ray, Industrialization in India: growth and conflict in the private corporate sector, 1919–47 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 262–279; R. P. T. Davenport-Hines and Geoffrey Jones (eds), British business in Asia since 1860 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Geoffrey Jones, Merchants to multinationals: British trading companies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 289 for the history of managing agencies in India.
124 VA, Dossier 16: USA, Brazil, Mexico, Guatemala/Costa Rica, Turkey, I. USA: Notiz von Peter Reinhart vom 20. September 1950, ‘Entwicklung des amerikanischen Baumwollgeschäftes’.
125 Dejung, Commodity trading, pp. 289–292.
126 Ibid., pp. 253–259.
127 Christof Dejung and Niels P. Petersson, ‘Introduction: power, institutions, and global markets—actors, mechanisms and foundations of world-wide economic integration, 1850s–1930s’, in Foundations of world-wide economic integration: power, institutions and global markets, 1850–1930, (eds) Christof Dejung and Niels P. Petersson (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 1–17.
128 Jones, ‘The end of nationality?’, pp. 149–165. Margrit Müller, for instance, argues that the regional pattern of Swiss exports became more global after 1918, with 30 per cent of exports going to Asia and the Americas: Margrit Müller, ‘From protectionism to market liberalisation: patterns of internationalisation in the main Swiss export sectors’, in Path breakers: small European countries responding to globalisation and de-globalisation, (eds) Margrit Müller and Timo Myllyntaus (Bern: Peter Lang, 2008), pp. 113–149.
129 Dejung, Commodity trading, pp. 260–264.
130 See, in particular, Roy, Tirthankar, ‘Transfer of economic power in corporate Calcutta, 1950–1970’, Business History Review, vol. 91, no. 1, 2017, pp. 3–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar for the challenges European enterprises faced in the post-independence period.
131 Roy, ‘Trading firms’, p. 40.
132 Tata Group, Tata (Mumbai: Tata, 2009), pp. 6–7.
133 VA, Konferenz-Protokolle vom 16. Januar 1953–6. Januar 1959: BR, Zu Protokoll, 23. Oktober 1953.
134 VA, Konferenz-Protokolle vom 16. Januar 1953–6. Januar 1959: Konferenz vom 17. Dezember 1953 und Konferenz vom 17. März 1954; VA, Bilanzen, 1952/3 und 1953/54, Kurzer Rückblick auf das Jahr 1953/54, 6 October 1954. A similar process of divestment was followed in 1962 by James Finlay, one of the largest British tea producers, who also formed a joint venture with Tata in order to exit India. This confirms how networks of a global commercial class were able to respond to the growing pressures of economic nationalism; see Michael Aldous and Tirthankar Roy: ‘Reassessing FERA: examining British firms’ strategic responses to “Indianisation”’, Business History, doi: 10.1080/0076791.2018.1475473.
135 VA, Dossier 29: Voltas Ltd. (1954), 4. The formation of Voltas Ltd.
136 Tata Central Archives, Pune, Tata Sons: Rack 3, Box 37, TS-Vol-21 and TS-Vol-24; VA, Dossier 29: Voltas Ltd. (1954), 1. Correspondence leading up to formation of Voltas Ltd.: Interview with A.H. Tobaccowala, managing director of Voltas, BusinessIndia, Dec. 24, 1979–Jan. 6, 1980; Anderegg, Chronicle, p. 598. Western companies that took part in such joint ventures included American firms like Harvester (tractors) and Carrier (refrigeration systems), and the Swiss companies Rieter (spinning mill machinery) and Hoffmann-La-Roche (chemical products).
137 Anderegg, Chronicle, pp. 603–604.
138 VA, Dossier 30: Patel Cotton Comp., Patel/Volkart Cotton Merger, Volkart Bombay Pvt. Ltd. 1961; Anderegg, Chronicle, pp. 706–714.
139 Anderegg, Chronicle, pp. 543–548 and 628–642; VA, Dossier 35: Consolidated Coffee Ltd. (1967), 5.
140 Anderegg, Chronicle, pp. 624–625.
141 VA, Dossier 34: Volkart Pakistan Ltd. (1963), Reorganisation VPL/MM 1976.
142 VA, Bilanzen, Bilanz 1960–61.
