Papers presented by Rohit Prabu since 2019

2025 Atlanta, Georgia

"Information and Economic Organization: The English East India Company and Cloth Procurement in Coromandel in the Eighteenth Century"

Abstract:

The existing historical literature suggests that the political power acquired by the English East India Company (EEIC) was the primary driving force behind its expansion into the hinterlands of three major cotton textile manufacturing centres in Coromandel, Bengal, and Gujarat in India during the eighteenth century. The company used its influence to advance inland and establish direct relationships with weavers. By contrast, this paper investigates whether the EEIC's inland expansion to establish direct connections with weavers was information-induced. The EEIC functioned as an information-processing system, placing a unique emphasis on information. It actively collected, analysed, and utilized information for business decision-making and to monitor markets and agents. Until the late eighteenth century, the company engaged local merchants as intermediaries to procure cloth from inland weavers for export to the British Empire. In Coromandel, these local merchants mediated relationships between company's agents on the coast and the weavers. They had access to more comprehensive, higher-quality, and up-to-date information about the mechanics of the cloth trade. Consequently, the company's agents relied heavily on these local merchants for commercial information—such as market conditions, prices, and contracts—as well as material information, including samples and patterns, which were crucial for managing procurement and shipment. When the company encountered challenges related to the quantity and quality of procurement, its agents attributed these issues primarily to inadequate information about the inland weavers. Recognising that local merchants controlled the flow of information between weavers and the company's agents, the company decided to bypass them and establish direct procurement, which it labelled an “innovation.” This argument underscores a significant relationship between information and economic change—an aspect often overlooked by economic and business historians.

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