Immigrant Entrepreneurs in Colonial Burma—An Exploratory Study of the Role of Nattukottai Chettiars of Tamil Nadu, 1880-1930

Despite our long tradition of academic pursuit and scholarly research it is a curious, albeit unfortunate, fact that in relation to the subcontinent as a whole the scholarly inputs in the area of modern South Indian history of the nineteenth and twentieth century is woefully scant. It is only recently that scholars, particularly from the Western world, have begun to envince some interest in this region. However, most of them have sought to focus their attention on processes of political, social and institutional change. Consequently, vital areas in the field of the economic history of the region still awaits scholarly investigation. Entrepreneurship is one such important areas. To this day there is no full-length study on the entrepreneurial history of the region.’ Not that the entrepreneurs of South India were in any way less enterprising and less adventurous than their counterparts in the North and therefore unworthy to merit investigation. The lack of such studies has serious implications. It, as it were, precludes and limits our understanding of such vital questions as (a) the character of the industrial capitalist class that emerged in South India under conditions of colonial