Trade and Commerce in Colonial Bombay: A History of the Emergence of its Business and Financial Establishments, c.1661–1935

Contents: Introduction. 1. The Portuguese Bullion Trade in Seventeenth-Century Western India. 2. British Monetary Concerns and the Establishment of the Bombay Mint, c.1661–1710. 3. The Bombay Government and Merchants Engaged in Bullion Trade, c.1710–40. 4. Trade, Finance, and Politics in Mid-Eighteenth-Century Bombay, c.1740–80. 5. Bombay’s Bullion Trade with Europe, China, and Japan, c.1780–1820. 6. Bombay’s Emergence as the Financial Capital of India, from Bombay Mint to the Reserve Bank of India, c.1820–1935. Conclusion. Appendices. Glossary. Bibliography. Index.

Trade and Commerce in Colonial Bombay: A History of the Emergence of its Business and Financial Establishments, c.1661–1935 examines the evolutionary history of the Bombay Mint along with the banking institutions which led to an efflorescence of trade and commerce in colonial Bombay. From a small trading island in the seventeenth century, Bombay developed into a financial centre during British rule.

The book also investigates the effect of import of bullion from parts of South America, Europe, and Asia and its role in India’s economic development. The monetary concerns of the British paved the way for trade and commerce in Bombay with the introduction of English currencies minted in the Bombay Mint. The idea of banking thus developed from this Mint under the governorship of Charles Boone in 1720. Origins of banking in South Asia and South-East Asia can, thus, be traced to the Bombay Presidency. Given the dynamic role that the British Government and Indian merchants played, the period between 1661 and 1935 constituted a critical phase in transforming Bombay into a leading entrepôt for international trade as well as a thriving cosmopolitan city in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.