Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T13:21:57.083Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Traveling Entrepreneurs, Traveling Sounds: The Early Gramophone Business in India and China

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 July 2017

Christina Lubinski  and
Andreas Steen
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

During the first global economy, roughly from Western industrialization to World War I, the gramophone, much like other consumer goods, circulated relatively freely around the world. This paper compares the market in India and China asking how gramophone companies established themselves there and focuses on the interaction between Western businesspeople and local partners. The article first shows how agents started exploring strategies for “localizing” music and, second, how in both countries their interaction with local partners was first shaped by curiosity and commercial interest, and later by traditionalism and nationalism, the latter of which paradoxically both inhibited and enabled Western business. Based on diaries, corporate files, trade journals, and consular reports, the paper shows that the highly localized and politicized demand for music made access to local knowledge a crucial competitive advantage.

Keywords

Chinagramophone industryIndiainternational businessnationalism
Type
Cultural Brokers and the Making of Global Soundscapes, 1880s to 1930s
Information
Itinerario , Volume 41 , Special Issue 2: Cultural Brokers and the Making of Global Soundscapes, 1880s to 1930s , August 2017 , pp. 275 - 303
Copyright
© 2017 Research Institute for History, Leiden University 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Christina Lubinski is associate professor at the Centre for Business History at Copenhagen Business School. Her main research interest is the history of foreign business in India. Her article “Global Trade and Indian Politics: The German Dye Business in India before 1947” (Business History Review) received the Henrietta Larson Article Award in 2016. Andreas Steen is associate professor of Modern Chinese History and Culture at Aarhus University, Denmark. He studied Sinology, English Philology, and Modern Chinese Literature at the Free University of Berlin and Fudan University, Shanghai. His current fields of interest and research concentrate on modern Chinese history and popular culture, in particular popular music, the cultural industries, sound, and memory studies.

References

Bibliography

Unpublished primary sources Google Scholar
EMI Group Archive Trust Hayes, UK (EMI), Courtesy of EMI Group Archive Trust.Google Scholar
Federal Archives Germany [Bundesarchiv] Berlin, Germany.Google Scholar
Siemens Archiv-Akte [Siemens Corporate Archives] (SAA), Munich, Germany.Google Scholar
Thomas Edison Papers, Rutgers University, US, Available online: http://edison.rutgers.edu.Google Scholar
Published primary sources Google Scholar
Record catalogues, British Library Collection (http://sounds.bl.uk/sound-recording-history/early-record-catalogues).Google Scholar
Trade journals of the gramophone industry:Google Scholar
Germany: Zeitschrift für Instrumentenbau, Phonographische Zeitschrift, Die Sprechmaschine Google Scholar
US: Talking Machine World Google Scholar
UK: Talking Machine News, The Voice Google Scholar
Advertisements:Google Scholar
Times of India Google Scholar
Ray Choudhury, R., comp., Early Calcutta Advertisements, 1875–1925 [a Selection from the Statesman]. Bombay: Nachiketa Publications, 1992.Google Scholar
Government reports:Google Scholar
Commercial Intelligence Department. Prices and Wages in India, 24th issue. Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, India, 1907.Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Commerce, and H. D. Baker. Special Consular Report No. 72: British India with Notes on Ceylon, Afghanistan and Tibet. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1915.Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Commerce and Labor. Special Consular Reports No. 55: Foreign Trade in Musical Instruments. Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1912.Google Scholar
Great Britain India Office. Statistical Abstract Relating to British India from 1892/3 to 1901/02, Compiled from Official Records and Papers Presented to Parliament. London: 1903.Google Scholar
Great Britain Trade Commissioner for India. Trade of India: Report on the Conditions and Prospects of British Trade in India, at the Close of the War, by His Majesty’s Senior Trade Commissioner in India and Ceylon. London: H. M. Stationery off. printed by Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1919.Google Scholar

Secondary sources

Arnold, D. Everyday Technology: Machines and the Making of India’s Modernity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bhattacharyya, A. Swadeshi Enterprise in Bengal. 2 vols. Calcutta: Mita Bhattacharyya, distributed by Seagull Bookshop, 1986.Google Scholar
Caso, Frank. “Emile Berliner.” In Immigrant Entrepreneurship: German-American Business Biographies, 1720 to the Present, vol. 2, edited by William J. Hausman. German Historical Institute. Last modified March 25, 2014. http://www.immigrantentrepreneurship.org/entry.php?rec=34, 2012.Google Scholar
Domosh, M. American Commodities in an Age of Empire. New York: Routledge, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Du Jun, Min. “BEKA China Records (1906–1949).” In The Lindström Project. Contributions to the History of the Record Industry. Vol. 6,Our Trip Around the World: the Oriental Expedition of Beka Records in 1905/06 = Unsere Reise um die Welt, edited by F. Wonneberg, H. Bumb, P. Gronow, and C. Hofer, 86–103. Vienna: Gesellschaft für Historische Tonträger, 2015.Google Scholar
Du Jun, Min. “The Development of Chinese Records to 1911,” Antique Phonograph News, Jan.–Feb. 2008. See http://www.capsnews.org/apn2008-1.htm, accessed 13 Sept. 2016.Google Scholar
Farrell, G. Indian Music and the West. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
Gaisberg, F. W. Music on Record. London: Robert Hale, 1946.Google Scholar
Gauss, S. Nadel, Rille, Trichter: Kulturgeschichte des Phonographen und des Grammophons in Deutschland (1900–1940). Cologne: Böhlau, 2009.Google Scholar
Ge, Tao. Changpian yu jindai Shanghai shehui shenghuo(Music Records and Social Life in Modern Shanghai). Shanghai: Cishu Publishing House, 2009.Google Scholar
Gerth, Karl. China Made—Consumer Culture and the Creation of the Nation. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Goldstein, Joshua. Drama Kings—Players and Publics in the Re-Creation of Peking Opera 1870–1937. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gracyk, Tim, with Frank Hoffmann. Popular American Recording Pioneers, 1895–1925. London/New York: Routledge, 2008.Google Scholar
Jones, A. F. Yellow Music: Media Culture and Colonial Modernity in the Chinese Jazz Age. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Kenney, W. H. Recorded Music in American Life: The Phonograph and Popular Memory, 1890–1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Kinnear, M. S. The Gramophone Company’s First Indian Recordings, 1899–1908. Bombay: Popular Prakashan, 1994.Google Scholar
Kittler, F. A. Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Lubinski, C. “Local Responsiveness in Distant Markets: Western Gramophone Companies in India before World War I.” Management and Organizational History 10:2 (2015): 170–188.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lubinski, C.. “Siemens’ Early Business in India: A Family Multinational’s Quest for Unity, 1847–1914.” In Family Multinationals: Entrepreneurship, Governance, and Pathways to Internationalization, edited by C. Lubinski, J. Fear, and P. Fernández Perez, 38–54. New York: Routledge, 2013.Google Scholar
Luo, Liangsheng. “Xiqu changpian shihua (Historical Account of Beijing-Opera Records).” in Jingju tanwanglu sanbian (Beijing Opera Stories and Memories, Vol. 3). Beijing 1996, 397–416.Google Scholar
Martland, P. “Caruso’s First Recordings: Myth and Reality,” ARSC Journal 25:2 (1994): 192–201.Google Scholar
Martland, P.. “Gaisberg, Frederick William (1873–1951).” In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Martland, P.. Recording History: The British Record Industry, 1888–1931. Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Martland, P.. Since Records Began: Emi, the First 100 Years. London: Batsford, 1997.Google Scholar
McKee, Delber. “The Chinese Boycott of 1905–1906 Reconsidered: The Role of Chinese Americans.” Pacific Historical Review 55:2 (1986): 165–191.Google Scholar
Mei, Lanfang. “Xiqu changpian” (Opera Records), 1961. In Quanji (Complete Works), edited by Mei Lanfang, vol. 3. Hebei: Hebei Education Publishing House, 2000.Google Scholar
Millard, A. J. America on Record: A History of Recorded Sound. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.Google Scholar
Moore, J. N. A Voice in Time: The Gramophone of Fred Gaisberg, 1873–1951. London: Hamilton, 1976.Google Scholar
Neuman, D. M. The Life of Music in North India: The Organization of an Artistic Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.Google Scholar
Ng, Wing Chung. The Rise of Cantonese Opera. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Parthasarathi, V. “The Scramble for Sound.” ArtConnect: The IFA Magazine 4:1 (2010): 40–55.Google Scholar
Qian, Nairong. Shanghai Changpian 1903–1949 (Shanghai Music Records 1903–1949). Shanghai: People’s Publishing House, 2014.Google Scholar
Ray Choudhury, R. Early Calcutta Advertisements, 1875–1925 [A Selection from the Statesman]. Bombay: Nachiketa Publications, 1992.Google Scholar
Robinson, A. Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye—the Biography of a Master Film-Maker. London: I.B. Tauris, 2004.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sampath, V. “My Name Is Gauhar Jan!” The Life and Times of a Musician. New Delhi: Rupa, 2010.Google Scholar
Sarkar, S. The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal, 1903–1908. 2nd ed. Ranikhet: Permanent Black, distributed by Orient Blackswan, 2010.Google Scholar
Schafer, R. Murray. The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World. 1977. Reprint, Rochester: Destiny Books, 1994.Google Scholar
Shapiro, C. and Varian, H. R.. Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Sharma, A. N. and Joshi, M. B.. Bajanaamā: A Study of Early Indian Gramophone Records. Lucknow: Kathachitra Prakashan, 2012.Google Scholar
Steen, A. “Heinrich Bumb and Beka in China: A Strange Artistic Experience.” In Contributions to the History of the Record Industry. Vol. 6, Our Trip Around the World: the Oriental Expedition of Beka Records in 1905/06, The Lindström Project. Contributions to the History of the Record Industry. Vol. 6, Our Trip around the World—the Great Beka Expedition in 1905/06, edited by F. Wonneberg, H. Bumb, P. Gronow, and C. Hofer, 122–29. Vienna: Gesellschaft für Historische Tonträger, 2015.Google Scholar
Steen, A.. Zwischen Unterhaltung und Revolution: Grammophone, Schallplatten und die Anfänge der Musikindustrie in Shanghai, 1878–1937. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2006.Google Scholar
Steen, A.. Zai yule yu geming zhejian: Liushengji, changpian yu Shanghai yinyue gongye de chuqi. Shanghai: Cishu Publishing House, 2015.Google Scholar
Su, Yi. Jingju erbai nian gaikuang(200 Years of Beijing Opera: An Overview). Beijing: Yanshan Publishing House, 1995.Google Scholar
Suisman, D. Selling Sounds: The Commercial Revolution in American Music. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Tripathi, D. The Oxford History of Indian Business. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Washington Post. “Phonographs in the Orient: Consul General Sammons Reports that they are Growing in Favor.” Dec. 29, 1905, p. 1.Google Scholar
Wong, Sin-Kong. “Die for the Boycott and Nation: Martyrdom and the 1905 Anti-American Movement in China.” Modern Asian Studies 35:3 (2001): 565–588.Google Scholar
Yeh, Catherine Vance. Shanghai Love: Courtesans, Intellectuals and Entertainment Culture, 1850–1910. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006.Google Scholar