INDO-JAPAN COOPERATIVE VENTURES IN MATCH MANUFACTURING IN INDIA: MUSLIM MERCHANT NETWORKS IN AND BEYOND THE BENGAL BAY REGION 1900–1930

Abstract

This paper discusses the role of Indian merchants, especially Muslims, in the match trade between Japan and India, and situates the cooperative ventures set up in the middle of the 1920s between Indian merchants and Japanese manufacturers in the context of the economy of the Bengal Bay region. Their inter-regional networks and partnerships were important not just for trade, but also for manufacturing based on the flow of technology, ideas, information, and natural resources. The paper also shows that such ventures unexpectedly caused conflicts with movements in India to promote domestic industry and with the logic of territorial nationalism that lay behind them.