This monograph aims to analyze the economic and business history of colonial India from a
corporate perspective by clarifying the historical role of institutional developments based on
archival evidence of a representative enterprise. The perspective is distinctively unique in
that it highlights the salience of corporate-level institutional responses to explain the
causes of colonial India's industrial growth in addition to two renowned perspectives focusing
on government economic policy or factor endowment. One of the driving forces of India's high
growth rate since the 1980s is the expansion of modern business corporations whose origins date
back to the colonial era in the mid-nineteenth century. This monograph explores the historical
foundation of the growth of such corporations in colonial India guided by a substantial
collection of documents of Tata Iron and Steel Company whose rich records have not received
the due attention they have long deserved. As clarified by numerous economic and business
historians of leading industrialized countries since the works of Douglass North and Alfred
Chandler this study as well proposes that the development of modern business corporations in
colonial India was broadly supported by the reciprocal evolution of economic institutions and
corporate organizations. Adding a new perspective to the business and economic history of
colonial India the analysis also provides an important case study of the development of
corporate business in the non-Western world to the study of global business history.
