ABSTRACT
Over the ten years from 1913, the records of board meetings of the Mercantile Bank of India do not offer explanation of or debate over the progress of the bank. Anyone reading the minutes of those meetings could be forgiven for asking whether there was any kind of political trouble in that period or whether there was any significant change in the fortunes of the bank itself. The directors' minutes scarcely make any reference to the Great War; neither do they hint that the size of the bank, in balance-sheet terms, all but trebled between 1914 and 1920. The board had by this time adopted a highly formal, almost taciturn style of recording their decisions. This chapter attempts to decipher these decisions, to explain the bank's remarkable growth and to assess the impact of the First World War on its business.
