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Recent Trends in the Business History of India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 May 2019

Chinmay Tumbe
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Abstract

The past decade has seen a resurgence of interest in understanding Indian business history. A number of business history books have been published in the academic and nonacademic press. Special issues on India have appeared in leading field journals, more management schools in India and outside are engaging with the field, internship and fellowship opportunities have been initiated, and business archives have sprung up. This article documents these recent trends, examines the emerging scholarship, and identifies gaps that need to be addressed in the future.

Keywords

business historyIndiaarchives
Type
Research Note
Information
Business History Review , Volume 93 , Issue 1: Business and the Environment Revisited , Spring 2019 , pp. 153 - 159
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 2019 

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References

1 Benjamin, N. and Rath, Prabhash Narayana, “Modern Indian Business History: A Bibliographic Survey” (working paper, Pune, India, 2005)Google Scholar; K. Kumar, Ramya T. Venkateswaran, Devi Vijay, Deepali Sharma, K. Srivardhini, and Chinmay Tumbe, “Research on Business and Entrepreneurship History of India: Reflections on the State of the Art and Future Directions” (IIMB Working Paper No. 329, Bangalore, 2011).

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11 See, for instance, the work of Kena Wani (management and Ahmedabad, Duke University), CJ Kuncheria (tobacco, Jawaharlal Nehru University), Mircea Raianu (Tata, Harvard University), Amol Agrawal (banking in South India, IIM Bangalore), Prateek Raj (evolution of business and markets, University College London), and Sudev Sheth (land revenue systems, University of Pennsylvania).

12 Kudaisya, Medha, ed., The Oxford India Anthology of Business History (Delhi, 2011)Google Scholar.

13 For a comprehensive list of journals, archives, resources, and bibliographies on Indian business and economic history, see the “History Links” page on my website, https://sites.google.com/site/chinmaytumbe/home/history-links.

14 Gao, Cheng, Zuzul, Tiona, Jones, Geoffrey, and Khanna, Tarun, “Overcoming Institutional Voids: A Reputation-Based View of Long-Run Survival,” Strategic Management Journal 38, no. 1 (2017): 2147–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Gupta, Bishnupriya, “Discrimination or Social Networks? Industrial Investment in Colonial India,” Journal of Economic History 74, no. 1 (2014): 141–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Tumbe, Chinmay and Krishnakumar, Shashank, “From Bazaar to Big Bazaar: Environmental Influences and Service Innovation in the Evolution of Retailing in India, c. 1850–2015,” Journal of Historical Research in Marketing 10, no. 3 (2018): 312–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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