¹ The literature on this subject is enormous, and only a selection of the most recently published works can be given here: Barrett-Brown, M., The Economics of Imperialism (Harmondsworth, 1974)Google Scholar; Kay, G., Development and Underdevelopment (London, 1975)Google Scholar; Bernstein, H. (ed.), Underdevelopment and Development: The Third World Today (2nd edn, Harmondsworth, 1976)Google Scholar; Amin, S., Imperialism and Unequal Development (New York, 1977)Google Scholar; Frank, A. G., Dependent Accumulation and Underdevelopment (London, 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Latham, A. J. H., The International Economy and the Underdeveloped World, 1865–1914 (London, 1978)Google Scholar; Wallerstein, I., The Capitalist World Economy (Cambridge, 1979)Google Scholar; Brewer, A., Marxist Theories of Imperialism, A Critical Survey (London, 1980)Google Scholar; Todaro, M. P., Economic Development in the Third World (2nd edn, London, 1981), chs 3–4Google Scholar; Smith, Tony, The Pattern of Imperialism. The United States, Great Britain, and the Late-industrialising World since 1815 (Cambridge, 1981)Google Scholar; Silva, S. B. D. de, The Political Economy of Underdevelopment (London, 1982)Google Scholar; Hoogvelt, Ankie M. M., The Third Worldin Global Development (London, 1982)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Timmermann, V., Entwicklungstheorie und Entwicklungspolitik (Göttingen, 1982).Google Scholar

² But see the overview in Headrick, D. R., The Tools of Empire. Technology and European Imperialism in the Nineteenth Century (New York, 1981), esp. chs 1–2, 8–10, and 12.Google Scholar

³ Dutt, R., The Economic History of India in the Victorian Age (7th edn, London, 1950)Google Scholar; Anstey, V., Economic Development of India (London, 1952)Google Scholar; Mukherjee, R., The Rise and Fall of the East India Company (Berlin, 1958)Google Scholar; Singh, V. B. (ed.), Economic History of India: 1857–1956 (Bombay, 1965)Google Scholar; Sen, S. K., Studies in Economic Policy and Development of India, 1848–1939 (Calcutta, 1972)Google Scholar; Tripathi, A., Trade and Finance in the Bengal Presidency 1793–1833 (2nd edn, Calcutta, 1979)Google Scholar; Tomlinson, B. R., The Political Economy of the Raj 1914–1947 (London, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also the special issue of the Indian Economic and Social History Review (henceforth IESHR; vol. V, no. 1, of 1968) devoted to a discussion of the impact of the Raj on the Indian economy.Google Scholar

⁴ A general and informative history of Indian shipping since 1500 is offered in Sanjeeva Rao, T. S., A Short History of Modern Indian Shipping (Bombay, 1965)Google Scholar; summary overviews are the shipping section of ch. 16 (by T. P. Kapoor) in Singh, Economic History, and Bhatnagar, K. P. et al. , Transport in Modern India (9th edn, Kanpur, 1974), ch. 33Google Scholar. No satisfactory international history of world shipping is extant, but one should see Fayle, C. E., A Short History of the World's Shipping Industry (London, 1933)Google Scholar, and Sturmey, S. G., British Shipping and World Competition (London, 1962).Google Scholar

⁵ Mookerji, R., Indian Shipping. A History of the Sea-Borne Trade and Maritime History of the Indians from the Earliest Times (Bombay, 1912), p. 5.Google Scholar

⁶ Gupta, A. Das, ‘Trade and Politics in 18th Century India’, in Richards, D. S. (ed.), Islam and the Trade of Asia (Oxford, 1970)Google Scholar; Marshall, P. J., East Indian Fortunes. The British in Bengal in the Eighteenth Century (Oxford, 1976), chs III–IVGoogle Scholar; Qaisar, A. Jan, ‘Shipbuilding in the Moghul Empire during the Seventeenth Century’, IESHR, vol. V (1968), pp. 149–70Google Scholar; Quiason, S. D., English Country Trade with the Philippines (Quezon City 1966)Google Scholar; Nightingale, P., Trade and Empire in Western India 1784–1806 (Cambridge, 1970), pp. 16–17.Google Scholar

⁷ Coates, W. H., The Old ‘Country Trade’ of the East Indies (London, 1911)Google Scholar; Parkinson, C. N., Trade in the Eastern Seas, 1793–1813 (Cambridge, 1937)Google Scholar; Staples, A. C., ‘The Trade of the Eastern Indian Ocean 1830 to 1845’, (unpublished M.A. Thesis, University of London, 1965)Google Scholar, and ‘Indian Maritime Transport in 1840’, IESHR, vol. 7 (1970), pp. 61–90Google Scholar, Simkin, C. G. F., The Traditional Trades of Asia (London, 1968), pp. 245–46Google Scholar; Benjamin, N., ‘Arab Merchants of Bombay and Surat (c. 1800–1840)’, IESHR, vol. 13 (1976), pp. 85–95Google Scholar; Tripathi, , Trade and Finance, passim.Google Scholar

⁸ Marshall, , East Indian Fortunes, p. 68Google Scholar, suggests that initially Indian ships were much more expensive than those built on the Thames (£12 to £16 against £6 to £7 per ton), but this opinion is erroneous. The London price to which he refers applied only for the simplest craft of a small size; the cost to build and equip an Eastindiaman in reality amounted to no less than £40 to £60 (Parkinson, C. N., The Trade Winds (London, 1948), p. 144)Google Scholar, while similar craft could be constructed in Bengal for £26 to £33 per ton (Phipps, J., A Guide to the Commerce of Bengal (Calcutta, 1823), p. 132).Google Scholar

⁹ Wadia, R. A., The Bombay Dockyard and the Wadia Master Builders (Bombay, 1955).Google Scholar

¹⁰ See the lists of ships built in India in Phipps, Commerce of Bengal, and Phipps, J., A Collection of Papers Relative to Shipbuilding in India … (Calcutta 1840).Google Scholar

¹¹ See e.g. Coates, W. H., The Good Old Days of Shipping (London, 1900)Google Scholar; Lubbock, B., The Blackwall Frigates (Glasgow, 1924)Google Scholar; SirCotton, Evan, East Indiamen. The East India Company's Maritime Service (London, 1949)Google Scholar; and the complete lists of convict transports in Bateson, C., The Convict Ships 1787–1868 (2nd edn, Sydney, 1974), pp. 338–77Google Scholar; e.g., the notorious Hashemy was a product of India! Well known is Wellesley's opinion of 1800: ‘… the state of perfection which the art of ship-building has … attained in Bengal, promising a still more rapid progress, and supported by abundant and increasing supplies of timber …’ (Letter from the Marquis Wellesley, Governor General of India, to the Court of Directors of the East India Company on the Trade of India, dated Fort William, goth September, 1800 (London, 1812), p. 18).Google Scholar

¹² See e.g. Coates, , Good Old Days, p. 12Google Scholar, and the illustrations in Lubbock, , Blackwall Frigates, opp. p. 49Google Scholar; Armstrong, R., The Merchantmen (London, 1969), p. 62Google Scholar; Ken, Wong Lin, ‘The Strategic Significance of Singapore in Modern Times’, The Great Circle. Journal of the Australian Association for Maritime History, vol. 4 (1982), p. 36.Google Scholar

¹³ Early in 1819 the young free trader Robert Brooks visited Cochin and noted that the shipwright's wages there were lower than anywhere else in India, and that on a yard belonging to a Mr Vernade three large East Indiamen had just been completed at the low cost for the hull of only £19 per ton (Journal of Robert Brooks, held in the private Brooks Collection, London, 12 March 1819). The three vessels were the Glenelg (810 tons), Upton Castle (596 tons), and Diana (506 tons) (Phipps, , Commerce of Bengal, p. 86)Google Scholar; the Diana was wrecked in 1820, but the other two ships had long careers in the Indian and Chinese trades.

¹⁴ On the ‘problem’ of Indian built shipping during the French Wars see Reports and Papers on the Impolicy of Employing Indian Built Ships in the Trade of the East India Company, and of Admitting them to British Registry (London 1809)Google Scholar; Minutes of the Evidence taken before the Select Committee of the House of Commons on Petitions Relating to East-India-built Shipping (London 1814)Google Scholar; Philips, C. H., The East India Company, 1784–1834 (Manchester, rp. 1961), pp. 96, 107–11, 113–17Google Scholar; Tripathi, , Trade and Finance, pp. 50–2, 55, 61–2, esp. 66–9, 71–4, 76–7Google Scholar; Rao, , Modem Indian Shipping, pp. 173–80.Google Scholar

¹⁵ See e.g. the debate in the East India House, as reported in the Asiatic Journal, vol. XVI (07–12 1823)Google Scholar. The true nature of the Lascar Acts has often not been recognized, see e.g. Kitchen, J., The Employment of Merchant Seamen (London, 1980), p. 100.Google Scholar

¹⁶ See the first two references of note 14. The East India Company—as its European rivals—had already much earlier been forced to replace seamen who had died on the outward voyage or in Asia with local mariners. In the mid 1780s this caused the first serious concern in London about the largescale presence of the ‘Black Poor’ (Barker, Anthony J., The African Link. British Attitudes to the Negro in the 17th and 18th Centuries (London, 1978), pp. 30—1)Google Scholar. The first favourable mention oflndian sailors by an Englishman dates from 1615 (Thorner, W. R., Life at Sea in the Age of Sail (London, 1972), p. 57)Google Scholar, the first regulations concerning their employment on British ships were passed at Calcutta in 1783 (Dixon, C., ‘Lascars: the Forgotten Seamen’, in Ommer, R. and Panting, G. (eds), Working Men Who Got Wet (St. John's, Newfoundland, 1980), p. 266).Google Scholar

¹⁷ Dixon, , ‘Lascars’, p. 268.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Here the experiences of the French Wars cast their shadow over otherwise primarily economic concerns. During the debates on the Navigation Acts in 1847 and 1848 the admirals' lobby used similar arguments.

¹⁹ Cf. the very similar situation in the Netherlands where in 1821 shipping registered in the Dutch East Indies was discriminated against by a regulation that declared it to be foreign as far as the tariffon imports and other dues were concerned. The target here was the British merchants operating from Batavia who through the use of colonial-flag vessels evaded the Dutch protectionist tariff (Wright, H. R. C., Free Trade and Protection in the Netherlands 1816–1830 (Cambridge, 1955), p. 193Google Scholar; Broeze, Frank, ‘The Merchant Fleet of Java 1820–1850’, Archipel, vol. 18 (1979), pp. 252–3).Google Scholar

²⁰ This prejudice is well documented in the testimony given by British shipowners to several parliamentary Select Committees, and Brassey, T., British Seamen (London, 1875)Google Scholar; see also the remarks in the London Illustrated News of 15 October 1853 on the near record passage from Melbourne to London of the lascar crewed Marlborough.

²¹ Gundara, J., ‘British Intervention: Repercussions on Commerce and Communications in the Nineteenth Century Western Indian Ocean’ (unpublished paper, International Conference on Indian Ocean Studies, Perth 1979, Section III), pp. 39–41.Google Scholar

²² See e.g. the lists of ships owned at Calcutta and Bombay, with names of masters, in Phipps, , Commerce of Bengal, pp. 91–5 and 101Google Scholar; all nine Indian-owned vessels at Calcutta had European commanders, while at Bombay of the twenty-six such ships 22 had British and only 2 Indian masters (of the other two no name was given). Marshall dates the beginning of this ‘underdevelopment’ as early as the beginning of the 18th century (East Indian Fortunes, p. 63)Google Scholar. For a comparative view of the situation in the Dutch East Indies see Broeze, , ‘Merchant Fleet of Java’, pp. 251–69.Google Scholar

²³ See esp. Kling, B., Partner in Empire: Dwarkanath Tagore and the Age of Enterprise in Eastern India (Berkeley, 1976)Google Scholar, and also Marshall, , East Indian Fortunes, pp. 265–7Google Scholar. Three of the twenty-two British masters of Indian-owned ships at Bombay in 1821 held shares in their vessels (Phipps, , Commerce of Bengal, p. 101).Google Scholar

²⁴ This conclusion is based on a close scrutiny of the H. M. Customs, Bill of Entry, Bill A, arrivals at London and Liverpool, for those decades.

²⁵ Thus the Wadia's in 1829 completed the first steamer for the EIC's mail service from Bombay to Suez, the Hugh Crawford, whose engine had been built by the leading Glasgow engineer Robert Napier. The same arrangement applied to all other mail steamers in the 1830s, as it had as early as 1823 with the very first ETC steamship, the Diana. Significantly, the first iron steamer was imported in its entirety from Britain: the appropriately named Nemesis (1840) was integrally designed and built as a steamship, and as such spelled an end to Indian ship-building, just as her manoeuvrability and firepower swept away China's exclusive Canton system of trade with the westerners.

²⁶ One sees, e.g., the experiences of such diverse areas as Liberia (Syfert, D. N., ‘The Liberian Coasting Trade, 1822–1900’, Journal of African History, vol. 18 (1977), pp. 217–35)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, tne Dutch East Indies (from the lists of ships and shipowners in the annual Regeeringsalmanak), or Western Australia (Henderson, G., ‘From Sail to Steam’, unpublished M.A. Thesis, University of Western Australia, 1977).Google Scholar

²⁷ Graham, G. S., ‘The Ascendancy of the Sailing Ship, 1850–85’, Economic History Review, 2nd Series, vol. IX (1956), pp. 74–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thornton, R. H., British Shipping (2nd edn, Cambridge, 1959)Google Scholar; Robinson, H., Carrying British Mails Abroad (New York, 1964)Google Scholar; Davies, Peter N., ‘The Development of the Liner Trades’, in Matthews, K. and Panting, G. (eds), Ships and Shipbuilding in the North Atlantic Region (St John's, Newfoundland, 1978), pp. 175–99Google Scholar, and Broeze, Frank, ‘An' these my engines …’, Hemisphere, vol. 23 (1979), pp. 152–9Google Scholar. By 1869 the annual total of mail subsidies paid by the British government amounted to c. £1 million.

²⁸ See e.g. Meeker, R., History of Shipping Subsidies (New York, 1904)Google Scholar; Furuta, R. and Hirai, Y., A Short History of Japanese Merchant Shipping (Tokyo, 1967), ch. XIIGoogle Scholar; Wehler, H. U., Bismarck und der Imperialismus (3rd edn, Cologne/Bonn, 1971), pp. 239–57Google Scholar; Randier, J., Histoire de la marine marchande française (Paris, 1980), chs 1–3Google Scholar; Broeze, Frank, ‘The International Diffusion of Ocean Steam Navigation’, Economisch en Sociaal-Historisch Jaarboek, vol. 45 (1982) pp. 77–95.Google Scholar

²⁹ Digby, William, ‘Prosperous’ British India (London, 1901), p. 88Google Scholar. Mukerji noted that in 1912 no more than one-seventh of India's coastal traffic was carried by Indian sailing vessels; in the overseas trades their movements amounted to no more than 95,000 out of a total of 11,800,000 tons. The fleet comprised some 7,280 little vessels of under 20 tons, and another 130 craft of up to 80 tons; Indian shipyards built between 50 and 125 sailing boats per year (Indian Skipping, pp. 254–5.)Google Scholar

³⁰ For the factual information, on which the following passages are based, see Rao, , Modem Indian Shipping, ch. IV.Google Scholar

³¹ Of neither company has an adequate history yet been written, but one should see Harcourt, Freda, ‘The P & O Company: Flagships of Imperialism’, in Palmer, S. and Williams, G. (eds), Charted and Uncharted Waters (London [1982]), pp. 6–28Google Scholar, and for the very early period Thorner, D., Investment in Empire. British Railways and Steam Shipping Enterprise in India, 1825–1849 (Philadelphia, 1950)Google Scholar. Commissioned house histories are Boyd Cable, A Hundred Years of the P. and O. (London, 1937)Google Scholar; Divine, D., Those Splendid Ships (London, 1960)Google Scholar; Blake, George, B. I. Centenary 1856–1956 (London, 1956)Google Scholar. Useful are also Bolitho, H., Lord Inchcape (London, 1936)Google Scholar; SirGriffith, Percival, The History of the Inchcape Group (London, 1977)Google Scholar. Traditional British attitudes could not have been summed up more cuttingly and succinctly than in Blake's condescending words: ‘The whole story of the Indian effort in the field of shipping, and of the little freight and rate wars that inevitably ensued, is long and really rather tedious.… The company's record in these matters is beyond question’, (pp. 170, 171).Google Scholar

³² Quoted in Rao, , Modern Indian Shipping, p. 74.Google Scholar

³³ Harris, F. R., Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata (2nd edn, Bombay, 1958), pp. 92–8Google Scholar, The War of Freights (Bombay 1896—pamphlet in the University of Western Australia, Reid Library, Erulkar Collection), Bombay Chronicle, 5 February 1937.Google Scholar

³⁴ Marx, D. Jr., International Shipping Cartels (Princeton, 1953)Google Scholar; Sturmey, , British Shipping, ch. XIIIGoogle Scholar; Deakin, B. M., Shipping Conferences (Cambridge, 1973)Google Scholar; Moore, K. A., The Early History of Freight Conferences (London, 1981).Google Scholar

³⁵ See e.g. Inchcape's outburst to Hirachand: ‘Motherland! Whose motherland? We are all children of the British Empire …!’ (as recounted by Walchand Hirachand in his speech on the occasion of the opening of Scindia House, 23 December 1938, in Opening Ceremony of Scindia House (Bombay, 1938, Erulkar Collection, EP 3/19), p. 32Google Scholar; a slightly different version in Khanolkar, G. D., Walchand Hirachand (Bombay 1969), p. 190)Google Scholar. See also the speech of the chairman, Narottam Morarjee, to the 5th ordinary General Meeting of Scindia, 24 October 1924 (Erulkar Collection EP 25/5).

³⁶ Sir John Biles, member of the Indian Mercantile Marine Committee, was specifically sent to Japan to gather information and analyse the causes of the growth of Japanese shipping, and many witnesses appearing before the Committee explicitly referred to the maritime renaissance of that country.

³⁷ It was foremost the abuses resulting from the deferred rebate that led to the investigations of the Royal Commission on Shipping Rings (1906–09) and the American Alexander Committee (1912–14), and the establishment of the Imperial Shipping Committee (1920). South Africa and the United States outlawed the deferred rebate, and also in India widespread criticism was voiced, but despite urgings from e.g. the Indian Fiscal Commission nothing was undertaken (Narain, Brij, Indian Economic Life (Lahore, 1929), p. 82).Google Scholar

³⁸ As the Bombay University Professor of Economics, Shah, K. T., called it in his testimony to the Indian Mercantile Marine Committee (Report and Evidence (Calcutta, 1924), p. 207)Google Scholar: ‘Government elects to worship the overturned idol of “laissez faire” …’.

³⁹ On the recruitment and employment of Indian seamen see Desai, D., Maritime Labour in India (Bombay, 1940)Google Scholar; Mowat, J., Seafarer's Conditions in India and Pakistan (Geneva, ILO, 1949)Google Scholar; Mazarello, T. G., Maritime Labour in India (Bombay, 1961)Google Scholar; Broeze, Frank, ‘The Muscles of Empire. Indian Seamen under the Raj, 1919–1939’, IESHR, vol. 18 (1981), pp. 43–67Google Scholar; Dixon, ‘Lascars’. Also several non-British companies serving India engaged crews there, e.g. the prominent Hansa company of Bremen (Prager, H. G., D DG Hansa (Herford, 1976), pp. 32–3).Google Scholar

⁴⁰ This was extensively demonstrated by the testimony given by the great majority of British witnesses (often managers of the shipping agencies in India) before the Indian Mercantile Marine Committee (Report and Evidence, passim) and the Royal Commission on Labour in India (Evidence, vol. V, parts 1–2 (London, 1931), passim)Google Scholar. Interestingly and significantly, those witnesses who had actually commanded Indian seamen (e.g. Henry Digby-Beste, subsequently the first commander of the training-ship Dufferin) held completely contrary views (Broeze, , ‘Muscles of Empire’, p. 57)Google Scholar. One should also see the condescending attitude of Clement Jones in his British Shipping (London, 1923), p. 129.Google Scholar

⁴¹ The Statesman, 16 November 1924.

⁴² For an overview of Indian shipping in this period, see Rao, , Modern Indian Shipping, ch. VGoogle Scholar; Indian National Steamship Owners' Committee, Revival of National Shipping and its Struggles (Bombay, 1940)Google Scholar, Jog, N. G., Saga of Scindia (Bombay, 1969), pp. 1–118Google Scholar, and Khanolkar, , Walchand Hirachand, ‘Middle Period—(1919–1939)’.Google Scholar

⁴³ Khan, Aga, India in Transition (Bombay/Calcutta, 1918), p. 199Google Scholar. See also Mookerji's conclusion: ‘It therefore behoves Government and all who are interested in the material progress of India to be fully alive to the importance and necessity of reviving and restoring on modern lines a lost industry that rendered such a brilliant service in the past, and with which are so vitally bound up the prospects of Indian economic advancement.’ (Indian Shipping, p. 256.)Google Scholar

⁴⁴ Haji, S. N., Economics of Shipping. A Study in Applied Economics (Bombay, 1924), p. 363.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ B. Chatterji notes the struggle between Scindia and BISN as the fourth issue in the battle of Indian business with Government in the 19205 to demonstrate that British economic policies had disastrous consequences for the Indian economy (behind the question of the Rupee ratio, cotton industry protection, and control over the Bengal jute industry). Chatterji, B., ‘Business and Politics in the 1930s’, Modem Asian Studies, vol. 15 (1981), p. 534, n. 22.Google Scholar

⁴⁶ Sen, S. N., The House of Tata (1839–1939) (Calcutta, 1975), p. 38.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ Liu, K. C., Anglo-American Steam Ship Rivalry in China, 1862–1874 (Cambridge Mass., 1962), ch. 4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁸ This lends considerable support for the notion that Gandhi was perfectly aware of practical economic issues (as denied by e.g. Brown, Judith M. in her ‘The Mahatma and Modern India’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 3 (1969), pp. 326–7).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁴⁹ Walchand Hirachand and M. A. Master were amongst a delegation of Bombay entrepreneurs who called on Gandhi to explain their views on the needs for the protection of India industry and enterprise (Gopalaswami, K., Gandhi and Bombay (Bombay, 1969), p. 257).Google Scholar

⁵⁰ Speech of the chairman, Narottam Morarjee, to the 7th General Meeting of Scindia, 30 October 1926 (Erulkar Collection, EP 25/7).

⁵¹ In 1934 the Government of India in the course of the negotiations leading up to the Delhi commercial agreement requested the Government of Japan to use its influence in refraining Japanese shipping companies from participating in the Indian coastal trades; no specific commitment was given in response, but Japanese ships were subsequently withdrawn.

⁵² See e.g. Dewey, Clive J., ‘The Eclipse of the Lancashire Lobby and the Concession of Fiscal Autonomy to India’, in Dewey, Clive J. and Hopkins, A. J. (eds), The Imperial Impact (London, 1978)Google Scholar; Dewey, Clive J., ‘The Government of India's “New Industrial Policy”, 1900–1925: Formation and Failure’, in Chaudhuri, K. N. and Dewey, Clive J. (eds), Economy and Society (Delhi, 1979)Google Scholar; Chatterji, B., ‘The Abolition of the Cotton Excise, 1925: A Study in Imperial Priorities’, IESHR, vol. 17 (1980), pp. 335–76Google Scholar; Iftikhar-ul-Awwal, , ‘Genesis and Operation of the Bengal State Aid to Industries Act, 1931’, IESHR, vol. 17 (1980), pp. 409–19Google Scholar, and Gallagher, J. and Seal, A., ‘Britain and India between the Wars’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 15 (1981), pp. 387–414CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In 1918 the Indian Munitions Board planned a shipbuilding branch (Khan, Aga, India in Transition, p. 198)Google Scholar, but the end of the war intervened and nipped this initiative in the bud. Significantly, in the second world war, it was Scindia that moved to establish India's first modern shipyard at Visakhapatnam.

⁵³ They were Scindia's manager, M. A. Master and, as his adviser, David S. Erulkar. In the previous maritime sessions the managers of BISN's agencies in India had acted as shipowner's delegates for India.

⁵⁴ Imperial Shipping Committee, British Shipping in the Orient (38th report, London, 1939), p. 103Google Scholar: ‘… there must be created in a greater degree than exists to-day a genuine Indian interest in the mercantile marine of the Commonwealth.… [T]he aspirations of India to enter into the field of shipping operations are natural [my italics, F.B.] and should be fairly met in a co-operative spirit by the United Kingdom lines …’.

⁵⁵ Khanolkar, , Walchand Hirachand, pp. 284–87Google Scholar, and Aga Khan to Hirachand, 13 July 1939, with notes by Hirachand, in Erulkar Collection, file 31.

⁵⁶ See e.g. the Observations on the Report of the Imperial Shipping Committee on British Shipping in the Orient, published by the Indian National Steamship Owners' Association (Bombay, 1939, Erulkar Collection, EP 3/12).Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Walchand Hirachand to M. A. Master, cable, 31 July 1939 (Erulkar Collection, file 31), refers to the great fear among ‘responsible official sources’ of Japanese competition in Asian waters.

⁵⁸ Markovits, Claude, ‘Indian Business and the Congress 1937–39’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 15 (1981), pp. 510, 526.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵⁹ The pamphlet Opening of Scindia House (Bombay, 1938, Erulkar Collection, EP 3/19) contains the text of all speeches held as well as that of many of the telegrams and congratulatory messages received.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ In contrast to all other major episodes in the development of modern Indian shipping these negotiations are not mentioned at all in the literature. The relevant documentation is in the Erulkar Collection, file 31.

⁶¹ Ibid., minutes of interview, 22 June 1939, Strictly Confidential.

⁶² Ibid., minutes of interview, 21 July 1939.

⁶³ Vaidya, K. B., The Sailing Ship Traffic on the West Coast of India and its Future (Bombay, 1945), chs II and VIIGoogle Scholar. This traditional sector has tenaciously survived to the present: see Sanjeeva Rao, T. S., ‘A Future for Indian Commercial Sail’, Fairplay International Shipping Weekly, 30 August 1979 (showing that there are still some 8,500 such craft on the Indian register)Google Scholar, and Martin, Esmond Bradley, ‘The Present-Day Indian Dhow Trade’, The Great Circle, vol. 4, no. 2 (10 1982), pp. 105–18.Google Scholar

⁶⁴ See e.g. the position paper ‘How the present domination by British shipping interests in the maritime trade of India affects the Lascar and how the development of an Indian mercantile marine will help him’, in Erulkar Collection, file 1.

⁶⁵ See the correspondence in Erulkar Collection, file 60.

⁶⁶ In contrast to the P & O and BISN Scindia was not regarded as ‘hostile’ by the seamen's unions (D. Desai to author, 1 September 1979).

⁶⁷ Gandhi, M. K., ‘The Giant and the Dwarf’, Young India, 26 March 1931.Google Scholar

⁶⁸ Cf. Thorner, D. S., ‘Great Britain and Development of India's Railways’, Journal of Economic History, vol. XI (1951), pp. 389–402CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Lehmann, F., ‘Great Britain and the Supply of Railway Locomotives to India: A Case Study of “Economic Imperialism”', IESHR, vol. 2 (1965), pp. 297–306.Google Scholar

⁶⁹ My views here run largely parallel to Tripathi's conclusion that by 1833 the Bengal economy was ripe for an industrial revolution as well as the appropriate protectionist policy to shield it from the destructive force of unrestricted British competition (Trade and Finance, pp. 220–1).Google Scholar

⁷⁰ Comparative studies of the development of the shipping industry and policy of countries such as Indonesia, the Philippines, Pakistan or Egypt, as well as India, would be most instructive.