Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-956mj Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-16T20:27:03.640Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Banker's Trust and the Culture of Banking among the Nattukottai Chettiars of Colonial South India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2008

David Rudner
David Rudner
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Harvard University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The notion of ‘banker's trust’ has a paradoxical quality, like ‘burning cold’ or ‘military intelligence.’ Common sense (another paradoxical notion) tells us that bankers have no trust. Perhaps this explains the appeal of Marxist and Weberian assumptions that capitalist economies tend to destroy pre-capitalist social formations based on trust. From the classic perspective, ‘primordial’ social ties mandate relations of trust (or something like them) in kin groups and castes only so long as the members of these groups do not operate directly—as bankers do—within a capitalist economic system.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , July 1989 , pp. 417 - 458
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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.)

References

Adas, Michael 1974a The Burma Delta: Economic Development and Social Change on an Asian Rice Frontier 1812–1941. Madison: University of Wisconsin.Google Scholar
Adas, Michael, 1974b ‘Immigrant Asian and the Economic Impact of European Imperialism: The Role of South India Chettiars in British Burma’, Journal of Asian Studies. 33 (3): 385–401.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bagchi, A. K. 1972 Private Investment in India 1900–1939. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bayly, C. A. 1981 ‘Indian Merchants in a Traditional Setting: Benares 1780–1830’, in Morris-Jones, W. H. (ed.), The Imperial Impact: Studies in the Economic History of Africa and India. London: University of London, pp. 171–93.Google Scholar
Bayly, C. A. 1983 Rulers, Townsmen, and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion, 1700–1870. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Breman, Jan 1974 Patronage and Exploitation: Changing Agrarian Relations in South Gujarat, India. Los Angeles and Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Breckenridge, Carol Appadurai 1976 ‘The Sri Minaksi Sundareshvarar Temple: Worship and Endowments in South India, 1833–1925’. Ph.D. dissertation. University of Wisconsin.Google Scholar
Buchanan, Francis H. 1870 ‘A Journey from Madras through the Counties of Mysore, Canara and Malabar’, in John, Pinkerton (ed.), A General Collection of the Best and Most Interesting Voyages. Madras: Higginbotham.Google Scholar
Burma Provincial Banking Enquiry Committeee (BPBEC) 1930 Report Vol. 1: Banking and Credit in Burma. Rangoon: Supt. Govt. Ptg.Google Scholar
Ceylon Banking Commission (CBCR) 1934 Report and Evidence (vols I, II). Colombo.Google Scholar
Chandrasekhar, B. 1980 The Nagarathars of South India. An Essay and a Bibliography on the Nagarathars in India and South-East Asia. Madras: Macmillan Company of India.Google Scholar
Cooper, Chester L. 1959 ‘Money-Lenders and the Economic Development of Lower Burma: An Exploratory Historical Study of the Role of Indian Chettiars’. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation. Washington, D.C.: American University.Google Scholar
Crawfurd, John, 1971 (1837) ‘A Sketch of the Commercial Resources and Monetary and Mercantile System of British India, with Suggestions for their Improvement by Means of Banking Establishments’. Reprinted in Chaudhuri, K. N. (ed.), The Economic Development of India under the East India Company 1814–58. Cambridge: The University Press.Google Scholar
Darling, , SirMalcolm, K.C.I.E. 1947 The Punjab Peasant in Prosperity and Debt. Bombay: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Furnivall, J. S. 1956 Colonial Policy and Practice. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Gough, Kathleen 1981 Rural Society in Southeast India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Harriss, John 1982 Capitalism and Peasant Farming: Agrarian Structure and Ideology in Northern Tamil Nadu. Bombay: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ito, Shoji 1966 ‘A Note on the Business Combine in India, with Special Reference to the Nattukkottai Chettiars’, The Developing Economies (Tokyo) vol. A.: 367–80.Google Scholar
Kannangara, D. M. 1961 ‘Formative Influences in Ceylon's Banking Development’, Ceylon Journal of History and Social Studies 3 (1): 82–95.Google Scholar
Kopytoff, Igor 1986 ‘The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process’, in Arjun, Appadurai (ed.), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Krishnan, V. 1959 Indigenous Banking in South India. Bombay: Bombay State Cooperative Union.Google Scholar
Madras 1903 ‘Statement exhibiting the Moral and Material Progress and Condition of India during the Year 1901–02 and the Nine Preceding Years’, PP. 1903, vol. XLIV. Madras.Google Scholar
Madras Provincial Banking Enquiry Committee (MPBEC) 1930 Report and Evidence (vols I-III). Madras.Google Scholar
Mahadevan, Raman 1976 ‘The Origin and Growth of Entrepreneurship in the Nattukottai Chettiar Community of Tamilnadu 1880–1930’. M. Phil. Thesis. Jawaharlal Nehru University.Google Scholar
Marriott, McKim 1976 ‘Hindu Transactions: Diversity without Dualism’, in Kapferer, B. (ed.), Transaction and Meaning: Directions in the Anthropology of Exchange and Symbolic Behavior. Philadelphia: Ishi.Google Scholar
Masters, Allene 1957 ‘The Chettiars in Burma: An Economic Appraisal of a Migrant Community, Population Review, vol. I (01).Google Scholar
Mencher, Joan 1978 Agriculture and Social Structure in Tamil Nadu. New Delhi: Allied Publishers Pvt. Ltd.Google Scholar
Michie, Barry H. 1978 ‘Baniyas in the Indian Agrarian Economy: A Case of Stagnant Entrepreneurship,’ Journal of Asian Studies 37 (4): 637–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moreno, Manuel 1982 ‘The God of Healing Poisons: Thermic Complementarity and Exchanges in Two South Indian Pilgrimages’. Ms.Google Scholar
Naidu, B. V.Narayanaswamy, 1941 ‘The Nattukkottai Chettiars and their Banking System’, in Naidu, B. V. N. (ed.), Raja Sir Annamalai Chettiar Commemorative Volume; pp. 457–72. Annamalai University, pp. 457–72.Google Scholar
Narayan, R. K. 1952 The Financial Expert. A Novel. London: Methuen.Google Scholar
Nadarajan, M. 1966 ‘The Nattukottai Chettiar Community and South-East Asia’, in Xavier, S. Thaninayagam (ed.), Proceedings of the First International Conference–Seminar of Tamil Studies, vol. I. Kuala Lumpur: International Ass. of Asian Research.Google Scholar
Pillai, A. Savarinatha 1930 Monograph on Nattukkottai Chettis Banking Business. Madras Provincial Banking Enquiry Committee Report. Volume III: 1170–217.Google Scholar
Price, Pamela G. 1979 ‘Resource and Rule in Zamindari South India, 1802–1903’. Ph.D. dissertation. University of Wisconsin.Google Scholar
Rao, Raja 1978 (originally 1939) Kantapura. Madras: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ray, Rajat K. 1979 Industrialization in India. Growth and Conflict in the Private Corporate Sector 1914–47. Delhi. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rudner, David 1985 ‘Caste and Commerce in Indian Society: A Case Study of Nattukottai Chettiars, 1600–1930’. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar
Rudner, David 1987 ‘Religious Gifting and Inland Commerce in Seventeenth Century South India’, Journal of Asian Studies. Forthcoming.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sahlins, Marshall 1966 ‘On the Sociology of Primitive Exchange’, in Michael, Banton (ed.), The Relevance of Models for Social Anthropology. London: Tavistock Publications.Google Scholar
Siegelman, Phillip 1962 ‘Colonial Development and the Chettiar: A Study in Political Economic Ecology of Modern Burma’. Ph.D dissertation. University of Minnesota.Google Scholar
Thomas, P. J. 1941 ‘Nattukkottai Chettiars—Their Banking System’, in Narayanaswamy, B. V. Naidu (ed.), Raja Sir Annamalai Chettiar Commemorative Volume. Annamalai University, pp. 840–54.Google Scholar
Thurston, Edgar 1909 Castes and Tribes of Southern India. Delhi: Cosmo Publications. vol. V: 249–71.Google Scholar
Tun Wai, U. 1962 (1954) Burma's Currency and Credit. Calcutta: Orient Longman.Google Scholar
Vakil, C. N. and Mahajan, S. K. 1927 Currency and Prices in India. Bombay and London.Google Scholar
Washbrook, David 1975 ‘The Development of Caste Organization in South India 1880–1925,’ in Baker, C. J. and Washbrook, D. A., (eds) South India: Political Institutions and Political Change 1880–1940. Delhi: Macmillan Company of India Ltd.Google Scholar
Washbrook, David 1976 The Emergence of Provincial Politics: The Madras Presidency, 1870–1920. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weersooria, W. S. 1973 The Nattukkottai Chettiar: Merchant Bankers in Ceylon. Delhiwala, Sri Lanka.Google Scholar