Book Review

Asia

In the nineteenth century, as British rule integrated the Indian economy into the international system, there was a large flow of foreign, primarily British, capital into India with consequent external ownership of much of the modern sector. The managing agency system was one of the principal instruments through which foreign control was exercised. Managing agencies were private partnership firms, the senior partners resident in Britain and the junior partners in India, that controlled a diverse range of joint-stock companies to which they provided entrepreneurial, banking, and managing services under the terms of a legal agreement known as an agency contract (rather than by ownership of shares in the companies). At the end of the nineteenth century, there were about sixty of these managing agencies, a significant proportion of them in Calcutta, where they were most active in such areas as jute, tea plantations, mining, and shipping.

1

Managing agencies have been the subject of considerable attention by historians, most of whom have criticized their concentration on primary production and exports at the expense of manufacturing industry as leading to distorted economic growth in India. Maria Misra extends this discussion to an analysis of the relationship between the commercial, political, and social life of British businessmen engaged in these agencies, chiefly in Calcutta, in order to assess their impact on imperial rule itself. A recurrent theme throughout the book is that British businessmen, with a mindset based on social isolation and racial exclusivity, were far more imperialistic than British officials themselves, with negative consequences for the good of their commercial interests as well as for political relationships within the Indian empire.

. . .