The Richest East India Merchant: The Life and Business of John Palmer of Calcutta, 1767-1836

Contents: Preface. Maps. 1. The world of John Palmer. 2. The Prince of merchants. 3. The management of John Palmer and Company, Strategies, structures and problems. 4. Parenthood and patronage: Race, kinship, society and Anglo-Indian business culture. 5. John Palmer and the politics of East India Company. 6. Ruin and failure 1820-1830. 7. John Palmer’s life and legacy. Appendices: The state of John Palmer & Co’s affairs following failure. Notes. Bibliography. Index.

 

John Palmer, a merchant in Calcutta, dominated commercial life in India and the Far East for over thirty years in the early nineteenth century. He ran a global business, an ‘agency house’, which engaged in banking, the opium trade, shipping and plantation agriculture. The book explores how Palmer developed close relations with Indian society, crossing ethnic and religious divides in an effort to sustain his commercial empire. It provides a snapshot of commercial and personal life in early British India, and tells an often-poignant tale of enterprise, love, stoicism, prejudice and personal folly. When Palmer & Co went bankrupt in 1830, owing millions to its creditors, it set off a crisis of confidence which by 1834 had destroyed all the agency houses, and plunged the British Indian Empire into the worst economic depression in living memory. This is the first in-depth study of an Indian agency house, but it is more than just a business history. Palmer’s personal and family life was inextricably intertwined with his business interests, and his domestic circumstances shaped the development of his firm and its ultimate fate.