Indian big business under the Company and the Raj

This chapter charts chronologically the development of big business in colonial India, from its precolonial roots through a phase of staggered growth in the nineteenth century, marked by wide fluctuations, culminating in the twentieth century with the rise of a few big, family-based groups, such as those of the Tatas and the Birlas, that occupied a dominant position in the Indian economy at the time of independence.