Indian Merchants and Entrepreneurs in Historical Perspective

Although a substantial Corpus of historical literature has grown over the past two decades on Indian Business, most of the existing works cover short span of time with the result that we do not often get a comprehensive account of the operations of Indian businessmen at different period of time. It is also felt that economic historians do not pay adequate attention to non-economic factors shaping and nourishing a business enterprise. This volume attempts to fill the gap which exists in this area of teaching and research. This work provides a comprehensive and kaleidoscopic view of the business operations of merchants and sharafs over a period of three centuries. It will, hopefully, attract the special attention of Indian Businessmen beside the learned teachers in Universities, keen researchers, and the other readers interested in business history in general and Gujarat in particular. Economic historians, in recent years, have shown lively interest in the behavior of the Indian Economic System during the Mughal and the Colonial periods of Indian History. Some historians have argued with force that as Compared to Western Europe, India was economically and technologically back ward in the medieval period and that it was not until the British rule that India made a real break-through towards a direction of modernization and growth. Others have argued with equal vigous that the Mughal Indian economy contained within itself the germs of transformation to a capitalistic mode of production. They have pointed out that the Indian Economy would have made a smooth transition towards the modern capitalistic enterprises had it not been for the intervention of the exploitative colonial rule. In this volume, the author has also tried to analyse how the medieval Gujarati businessmen responded to their environment, how they perceived opportunities, exploited them, and nurtured and developed their family enterprises. This study will prove useful not only to professional historians, teachers, and research scholars, but also to those business people who care to reflect on their past and learn from the experience of their historical fellow-travellers.