When They Rose to the Occasion: Gujarati Women and Business in the Western Indian Ocean during the 19th Century

Ghulam A. Nadri, Georgia State University

Women are conspicuously absent from the narratives of the business history of early modern and colonial India. They are usually not visible in the documents and even occasional references to women are often shrouded with anonymity. This has led to the assumption that the business of trade, especially long-distance maritime trade, was the men’s domain and women rarely if at all participated in it directly or proactively. Consequently, the literature on Indian and Indian Ocean merchants is almost completely silent on women. The critics of the colonial-era view of a gender-based binary between public and private spheres have focused more on women laborers and domestic and farm workers and not on women of the merchant households. This paper discusses the role some women of Gujarati merchant households played in the family business in the 19th century. There were occasions, such as death of the husband and head of the household, when a woman had to step up and take control of the family’s property and businesses until these were passed on to his successor. Many women were also actively involved in philanthropy and community welfare programs, and by doing so they played a significant role in accumulating social capital necessary for the success and expansion of business. Based on a few letters written by such women and several contemporary accounts of their activities, this paper discusses how these women rose to the occasion and to what extent they claimed autonomy and exercised their business-related decision-making rights. The paper aims to argue that while these women, perhaps more than many others, embodied the social and familial ethos of colonial modernity, they were also fully prepared and capable to step out of their assigned sphere, assume business responsibilities, and take initiatives to secure and improve the family’s finances and businesses.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 29. Decentering Modernity : Women, Household, and Decision Making in Colonial and Postcolonial South Asia