Aims and objectives
When Burma, Malaya and other Southeast Asian countries were brought under British colonial rule in the early 19th century, Chettiar capital played a crucial role in making these countries leading suppliers of rice, rubber, tin and timber to European markets. EAP1615 proposes to preserve and digitise a Chettiar family archive containing mercantile records produced during their business ventures in historic Burma and Malaya. These materials, written primarily in Tamil, date from the 1890s to 1946.
Existing literature on the Chettiar mercantile history is based on colonial records and secondary sources. Few researchers have had access to primary sources thus far. When fully digitised for EAP1615, this family archive will be the first complete collection of this type. It will be an invaluable source for study of mercantile networks and business practices, forms of exchange in labour contracts and caste networks. This archive is also valuable for the understanding the nature of pedagogic training in elementary arithmetic skills and its application by the Chettiar accountants, the fine-art of account keeping and computational prowess that gave Chettiars their reputation. Building this public archive of hitherto ignored and endangered sources will help tell the story that connects the school to the accountant’s desk to the movement of capital, commodities and labour across the Indian Ocean.
