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² Gupta, M., ‘Lord William Bentinck in Madras, 1803–1807, (Ph.D. thesis, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1969), pp. 238–48.Google Scholar

³ In 1812, the coinage of star pagodas and their fractions was discontinued but the older coins were allowed to circulate still. In 1818, the Governor declared the silver rupee as the standard coin of the Presidency. All public payments were thenceforth to be made in rupees and public accounts were to be kept in rupees rather than in pagodas, as units of account. Ramachandran, C., East India Company and South Indian Economy (Madras, New Era Publications, 1980), pp. 97–106.Google Scholar

⁴ Cortesao, Armando (ed.), The Suma Oriental of Tomé Pires (London, Hakluyt Society, 2nd Series, no. LXXXIX, 1944), pp. 93–5.Google Scholar

⁵ Cooke, C. N., The Rise, Progress, and Present Condition of Banking in India (Calcutta, 1863; reprinted, Bombay, State Bank of India, Central Office, 1976), p. 52.Google Scholar

⁶ Mitra, K. P., ‘Currency in Orissa’, Bengal Past and Present, July-December 1939.Google Scholar

⁷ Ibid.

⁸ Mukhopadhyay, Tarun Kumar, ‘The Agrarian Society of Orissa’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Calcutta University, 1979) pp. 50–6.Google Scholar

⁹ Ibid., pp. 144–8.

¹⁰ Gupta, , ‘The Economic Life of a Bengal District’, ch. 14.Google Scholar

¹¹ Cooke, , The Rise, Progress and Present Condition of Banking in India, pp. 49–52.Google Scholar

¹² Cf. Bayly, C. A., Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 274–5, 371.Google Scholar

¹³ Cowries continued to be used in Thailand as legal tender down to the middle of the nineteenth century. Was this further evidence of eastward movement of media which had been demonetized further west or was it just a characteristic of an economy with a low degree of commercialization and penetration by capitalism? See Coinage of the Rattanakosin Era (Bangkok, Government of Thailand, Treasury Department, Ministry of Finance, 1982), pp. 478–9.Google Scholar

¹⁴ For evidence of the depression of prices see Srinivasaraghavaiyangar, S., Memorandum on the Progress of the Madras Presidency during the Last Forty Years of British Administration (Madras, Superintendent, Government Press, 1893)Google Scholar; Thomas, P. J. and Nataraja Pillai, B., Economic Depression in the Madras Presidency (Madras, Diocesan Press, 1933)Google Scholar; and Sarada Raju, A., Economic Conditions in the Madras Presidency 1800–1850 (Madras, University of Madras, 1941), ch. XV.Google Scholar

¹⁵ For a general discussion of the impact of a major alteraton in the composition of exports and output see Bagchi, A. K., The Political Economy of Underdevelopment (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982), chs 4 and 5.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Guha, Amalendu, Jamidarkālin Goalpārā Jilār Ārthāsamājik Abasthā (in Assamese) (Dhubri, Tripathnath Chakraborty, 1984), p. 20.Google Scholar Guha takes his data from Mills, A. J. M., Report on the Province of Assam (Calcutta, Superintendent of Government Printing, 1854).Google Scholar

¹⁷ See, in this connection, Bagchi, A. K., Money and Credit as Areas of Conflict in Colonial India, Occasional Paper No. 51, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, November 1982;Google Scholar and Bayly, Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars, chs 9–12.

¹⁸ For details of their lending operations see Bagchi, A. K., The Evolution of the State Bank of India, Vol. IGoogle Scholar, The Roots 1806–1876 (to be published), ch. 3.

¹⁹ Douglas, J., Bombay and Western India—A Series of Stray Papers, Vol. I (London, 1893)Google Scholar, ‘The Forbes Correspondence’.

²⁰ See Bagchi, , The Evolution of the State Bank of India, Vol. I, ch. 12, for a more detailed account.Google Scholar

²¹ Chandavarkar, A. G. writes in Kumar, D. and Desai, M. (eds.), The Cambridge Economic History of India, vol. 2 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 776Google Scholar: ‘Following the commercial crises of 1829–32, which virtually put an end to the Agency Houses and their associated banks and till about 1860, when legal recognition was given to limited liability, only twelve banks, all of them European, were launched.’ This statement is plainly wrong, unless one defines any bank with a European director, or with European officials, as a ‘European’ bank, irrespective of the controlling interest in the bank.

²² Bagchi, A. K., ‘Reflections on patterns of regional growth in India under British rule’, Bengal Past and Present, 1976; and idem, ‘Merchants and Colonialism’, Occasional Paper no. 38, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, 1981.Google Scholar

²³ For details, see Cooke, The Rise, Progress and Present Condition of Banking in India, pp. 329–36, 352–62;Google Scholar and Bagchi, , The Evolution of the Stale Bank of India, vol. I, ch. 14.Google Scholar

²⁴ This argument is made in a rudimentary form in a letter from Keerpoy Factory, dated 18 February 1812, West Bengal State Archives, Fort William, Board of Trade Commercial Proceedings, vol. 266, 3–23 March 1812.Google Scholar

²⁵ Porter, K. W.: The Jacksons and the Lees (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1937), vol. I, pp. 57–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

²⁶ See the excerpts from the Calcutta Gazette, dated 8 and 12 February 1827, in Das, A. C. Gupta (ed.), The Days of John Company: Selections from Calcutta Gazette 1824–1829 (Calcutta, Superintendent, Government Printing, West Bengal, 1959).Google Scholar

²⁷ Cf. Motilal Seal's deposition on 3 July 1841 at the hearing on the case of the insolvent firm of Frith & Co., in the Court for Relief of Insolvent Debtors in Calcutta (uncatalogued records of the Calcutta High Court). See also the Englishman, 21 May 1846, (excerpted in Allen's Indian Mail, 24 July 1846Google Scholar), regarding the bankruptcy of Tulloh & Co. of Calcutta.

²⁸ I am indebted to David Washbrook for drawing my attention to this point.