Community Origins of Industrial Entrepreneurship: Evidence from 19th Century India

Speaker: Bishnupriya Gupta, Professor of Economics, University of Warwick

Abstract: We examine the role played by community networks in the transition from trade to industry in nineteenth century India. We document the entry of traders that engaged in cotton trade into cotton textiles production in Western India as the American civil war ended. Using a novel dataset of entry into industry at the level of the entrepreneur, we find that the Parsis, as a community, were the pioneers in followed by other trading groups. We find that individual entrants were more likely to join a firm where the majority of the directors belonged to the same community. We make comparisons with the entry of Marwari jute traders into the jute industry after the First World War in Eastern India. This was an industry dominated by British firms and the entry of Indian traders though community based remained less important.