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‘After Shaking his Hand, Start Counting your Fingers’: Trust and Images in Indian Business Networks, East Africa 1900-2000

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2011

Gijsbert Oonk
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Extract

In this study, I examine how ‘ethnic’ trading networks are created and recreated, but may also fracture and fall apart. This occurred among some Indian groups in East Africa, who initially strengthened their economic and cultural ties with India by maintaining intensive trade relations and taking brides from the homeland. However, after just one generation, their economic focus was on East Africa, Japan and the UK. Many of today's well-off Indian businessmen in East Africa show little economic interest in India. In fact, Gujarati businessmen in East Africa created new, rather negative images of their counterparts in Gujarat. During the last century, their overall image of Indians in India was transformed from one of a ‘reliable family or community members’ to one of ‘unreliable, corrupt and, untrustworthy ‘others’.

Type
Articles
Information
Itinerario , Volume 28 , Issue 3 , November 2004 , pp. 70 - 88
Copyright
Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 2004

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