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rate of almost 5 per cent between 1913 and 1938; in 1938 mill production supplied

almost two-thirds of the domestic market for cotton textiles, with imports restricted
to about one-tenth. The most successful industrialists in Ahmedabad, and later in
Coimbatore and other inland centres, were those who had close links to the local
labour and capital markets, and were able to influ-ence supply and distribution
networks directly. The development of the cotton textile industry in India can be
characterised as a process of 'relentless impro-visation in the use of old machinery,
the manipulation of raw materials and the exploitation of cheap labour',23 coupled
to the success of emerging groups of industrial entrepreneurs in devising and
adapting market-substituting insti-tutions to secure stability in the supply of labour,
capital, raw materials and an adequate level of technology. As the number of
improvisers increased, and as the institutional networks necessary for their success
became more decentral-ised, so the apparently 'modern' cotton textile industry in
Bombay gave way to more 'traditional' ones elsewhere.

EXPATRIATE ENTERPRISE IN EASTERN INDIA: JUTE, TEA, COAL In contrast to Bombay,


the industrial history of eastern India was heavily influenced by the emergence of
managing agency firms run by British expa-triates, which represent the classic
colonial business sector in India. By the late nineteenth century these networks
were widespread, with the commercial and industrial economy of Calcutta the
largest single focus of their activity. Through their agency, British businessmen and
investors, resident both in the United Kingdom and South Asia, were involved in
almost all sectors of the 'organised' economy of the Indian subcontinent from the
186os until the 195os. Even in their heyday in the last quarter of the nineteenth
century, how-ever, colonial firms were never entirely dominant. In transportation
their role was overshadowed by that of the Government of India, which had become
the chief manager of railway activity by the 19oos. In banking, too, the position of
European private businessmen was a limited one. Their banks financed foreign
trade, in conjunction with the official remittance mechanism, but the links between
the credit used for this and the domestic capital markets were often tenuous. Indian
indigenous bankers were entirely responsible for the finan-cing of agricultural
production and cottage industry before 1914, while the public sector played by far
the largest role in making the market for foreign

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