Jobbers and the Emergence of Trade Unions in Bombay City

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Abstract
For the city of Bombay the establishment of British rule over Maharashtra (1818) inaugurated a period of extensive growth in trade, industry and banking. In search of wealth and power merchant communities and trading castes, mainly from the Northern province of Gujarat, settled in Bombay to exploit the economic opportunities that arose under the British raj. In the mid nineteenth century Indian entrepreneurs started a textile industry, which proved to be a new way to invest capital and to make profit. The management functions in their Bombay mills were filled by Europeans or Indians with an educated, middle-class background. The social and linguistic position of these people prevented their easy communication with the local labour-force of marathi-speaking peasant origin. Therefore, from the creation of the industry, mill-owners and management cadres delegated the task of labour recruitment to a special class of men, called jobbers.

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