French business icons of colonial Bombay

This article is the second in a two-part series. Read the first part here.

Mumbai is the home of flourishing Indo-French business ties that gained traction in 1998 when the two nations signed a strategic partnership agreement. A decade later, French President Nicholas Sarkozy’s visit to India–and Mumbai–with a business delegation of top French companies opened doors wider for French foreign direct investment and manufacturing in India. French engagements in India now range from the strategic to the cultural, from Evian water, French wines, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals to the most sophisticated defence, digital, transport, and climate change technologies.

The Mumbai-Pune belt hosts 40% of the 1,000 French companies in India, Capgemini, amongst the biggest French firms in India, is headquartered in Pune. Close by, French electricity giant, Electricité de France (EDF), is constructing the world’s largest nuclear power plant[1] at Jaitapur (Maharashtra) which will benefit Mumbai greatly.[2]

These economic ties may appear recent, but Bombay was home to France’s leading bank, shipping, agency houses, insurance, and retail outlets, 150 years ago.

Bombay-France engagements began in the aftermath of the Crimean War (1853-56)[3], when allies, France and Great Britain signed a Free Exchange Agreement in 1860,[4] expanding French trade and investments in British India. France possessed colonies[5] on the Indian subcontinent, the most important being Pondicherry, an important stopover for French merchants heading towards l’Indo Chine Francaise (French Indochina), comprising Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, the focus of French trade in the East. But this treaty opened new territory for them.

The old headquarters of French Bank on Homji Street, Fort. It shifted into its own building in February 1953. The Bank was then called Comptoir Nationale d’ Escompte de Paris, between the years 1889 and 1966.

The first French financial institution was established in Bombay in 1862, French bank – Comptoir d’ Escompte de Paris[6] or CEP, today’s BNP Paribas-[7], two years after it opened overseas branches in the British Indian capital of Calcutta and in the Treaty Port of Shanghai. Bombay’s first European bank, CEP, focused on facilitating foreign trade, especially with France. Its integration in Bombay’s financial markets, was evident when minutes of CEP’s July 1866 annual general meeting referred to the fall in contributions of its most profitable foreign branches, Bombay and Calcutta, from 50% to 29% of overseas turnover—a result of Bombay’s cotton and stock market crash. By 1872, both branches had recovered their primacy and their contributions.

CEP was also active in the City of London then, as now, a global financial center that facilitated the British pound and Indian rupee trade between Bombay, Calcutta, and London. In addition to clients like the French agency houses of Lyons and Louis Dreyfus (London), CEP traded with the British Indian government and Bombay’s big agencies: James Finlay, Ralli Brothers, Forbes Campbell, and Sassoon and Spinner.[8]

Exports of raw cotton drove the trade between Bombay and France in the second half of the 19^th century. CEP’s clients, Bombay’s biggest agencies, used this Bank’s overseas network to facilitate exports of Indian goods via Great Britain and other European nations into France, a facet of India-France trade from the earliest days. Even at its zenith, the French East India Company (1664-1789) could not meet French demand for Indian goods, as its trade was half that of the English Company.[9]

As trade grew, French commercial, shipping, and diplomatic services were drawn to the city. Fluent French speaker, Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata[10], first cousin of Jamsetjee N. Tata, founder of the Tata group, was the point person with L’ Union Fire Insurance Company, whose agent in the city was Tata & Sons.

A poster of the famous French shipping line, Messageries Maritime.

Marseille-based, iconic French passenger-freight ocean liner, Compagnie des Messageries Maritime[11], stopped at Bombay on its way to its second home port, Saigon, in the Far East[12]. The company opened a secondary line to Bombay sometime in the 1860s[13] and delivered mail there.

Even before Messageries introduced its Bombay stopover, numerous shipping lines with connections to the ports of Marseille, Le Havre, and Bordeaux, including the British Indian Bombay Bengal Steam Ship Co., carried Indian cotton to Le Havre and returned with French goods.[14] Advertisements from 1848 onwards in The Times of India touted French products for sale in Bombay’s Fort area: French hats, fabrics from Meiffre Neveu & Co., and perfumes from Parisian perfumery Rigaud & Co.

An announcement by Messrs. Meiffre Neveu & Co. in The Times of India (Bombay).

Commodities like raw cotton, linseed, hides, sesame, indigo, jute sacks, pepper, rice and groundnuts from India were in high demand in France in the early 20^th century. Only Indian goods that competed with those sourced from French colonies were subject to tariffs. Indian fabrics, especially silks, were coveted, although the silks of Kashmir overtook Bengal silks in popularity.

After the German occupation of Paris in 1940, CEP was declared ‘enemy property’ by the British Indian government till the absurdity of this was corrected a year later. German businesses, however, remained sanctioned during all of the Second World War.

Despite shared values of liberty, equality, fraternity, secularism, and democracy, early gains in France-India relations did not take off after Indian independence in 1947 because of Cold War politics. What remained as a beacon for India-France relations in Bombay was the French consulate, amongst the oldest continuous diplomatic missions in the city, and CEP–today’s BNP Paribas– celebrating 160 years of its establishment in the city this year. BNP Paribas, an amalgamation, has its roots in CEP. This bank has shifted headquarters from the historic Fort area, where it was resident since 1953, to Mumbai’s contemporary, upscale Bandra-Kurla Complex. Perhaps this displays its engagement with a modern and vibrant Indian economy that is ready to trade with Europe again under a new low tariff regime, as it once did in the past.

Sifra Lentin is Fellow, Bombay History, Gateway House.

This article is the second in a two-part series. Read the first part here.

This article was exclusively written for Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations. You can read more exclusive content here.

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References:

[1] The Jaitapur project will have six EPR nuclear reactors with a gross installed capacity of 9900 MW. EPR or European Pressurised Reactor is a third generation pressurised water reactor design. For more details: https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/projects/jaitapur-nuclear-power-plant-india/

[3] The Crimean War, also known as the Russian War, pitched the allied nations of Britain, France, the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Sardinia against the Russian Empire. At its simplest, the war was fought to prevent Russia gaining territorial control of various regions in eastern Europe, then under Ottoman control, and of routes into British India.

[4] In the Anglo-French Agreement of 1860, France pledged to reduce its protective tariffs to 20 percent by 1864. In return, Britain granted duty-free imports of all French products except wines and spirits. This landmark bilateral trade agreement is also known as the Cobden-Chevalier Treaty.

[5] France had Mahe on India’s west coast, Chandernagore in Bengal, and Yanam, Karaikal and Pondicherry on the Coromandel Coast.

[6] The Minutes of the general body meeting on 31 July 1860 specified the activities of the bank’s branches as being: discounting commercial bills, bills of exchange and providing counter-guarantees. The maximum tenure of these instruments was 180 days. Branches offices also conducted foreign exchange transactions.

See https://cdn-pays.bnpparibas.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/140/files/2015/06/BNP-Paribas-in-India1.pdf

[7]The 4 May 1966 merger between Comptoir d’ Escompte de Paris and Banque Nationale pour le Commerce et l’ Industrie (BNCI) led to the formation of Banque Nationale de Paris (BNP). A 1999 merger between BNP and Paribas led to the formation of BNP Paribas.

[8] See https://cdn-pays.bnpparibas.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/140/files/2015/06/BNP-Paribas-in-India1.pdf p. 38.

[9] French East India Company (USA, Encyclopaedia Britannica Micropedia Vol. 3, 1980) p. 762.

[10]In the early 20^th century, the most celebrated couple in the city was the suave Ratanji D. Tata and his young, pretty, blonde, blue-eyed French bride Suzanne Briere. It was their son Jeh (Jehangir) R.D. Tata, who was the founder of Air India and helmed Tata Sons as chairman for 50 years, a company that controls India’s largest conglomerate. J.R.D. Tata and his parents are all buried at the family mausoleum at the famous Père Lachaise cemetery (Paris).

[11]Compagnie des Messageries Maritimes (also known as ‘MesMar’ or ‘MM’) was established in 1851 as Messageries Nationales, later called Messageries Impériales, and from 1871, Compagnie des Messageries Maritimes. Its rectangular house flag, with the letters MM on a white background and red corners, was famous in shipping circles, especially on the Europe-Asia shipping routes. In 1977 it merged with Compagnie Générale Transatlantique to form Compagnie Générale Maritime. In 1996, CGM was privatized and sold to Compagnie Maritime d’Affrètement (CMA) to form CMA CGM, one of the nine biggest ship owners controlling 87% of the world’s fleet. Also See: https://www.shiphub.co/cma-cgm-group and https://lastoceanliners.com/line/messageries-maritimes/?l=MES

[12]Compagnie des Messageries Maritimes (also known as ‘MesMar’ or ‘MM’) was established in 1851 as Messageries Nationales, later called Messageries Impériales, and from 1871, Compagnie des Messageries Maritimes. Its rectangular house flag, with the letters MM on a white background and red corners, was famous in shipping circles, especially on the Europe-Asia shipping routes. In 1977 it merged with Compagnie Générale Transatlantique to form Compagnie Générale Maritime. In 1996, CGM was privatized and sold to Compagnie Maritime d’Affrètement (CMA) to form CMA CGM, one of the nine biggest ship owners controlling 87% of the world’s fleet. Also See: https://www.shiphub.co/cma-cgm-group and https://lastoceanliners.com/line/messageries-maritimes/?l=MES

[13] Edwardes, S.M., The Gazetteer of Bombay City and Island Volume 1 (Bombay, The Government Photozinco Press, Reprint 1977), p.397.

[14] The Times of India 1 March 1914 (advertisement of Ellerman’s City and Hall Shipping lines); The Times of India 1919 and 1914 (advertisement of Compagnie Des Messageries Maritime).