THE relationship between business and politics in preindustrial societies
has seldom been clear from historical records. I have argued elsewhere
that the major banking firms of Mughal India were central to the
imperial system. These 'great firms' were not parasites, passively supportive
of the state because it preserved the law and order necessary for
trade; they were not self-contained caste communities interacting with
the government through the leaders of panchayats or guilds. Their
functions were as important to the government as those of its official
treasurers, and their desertion of the Mughal Empire in the eighteenth
century helped bring about its collapse.