Germany- India relations
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| + | =Trade= | ||
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| + | ===1905-1947=== | ||
| + | [https://indianexpress.com/article/research/how-made-in-germany-became-popular-in-colonial-india-10799785/ Adrija Roychowdhury, July 23, 2026: ''The Indian Express''] | ||
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| + | “Sometimes their products get returned because the label is not big enough,” Lubinski says. In her book Navigating Nationalism in Global Enterprise (2022), she recounts a case from Bengal where English goods were fraudulently sold as ‘Made in Germany’ to take advantage of nationalist sentiment. | ||
| + | |||
| + | ''' German dyes reshape India’s colour trade ''' | ||
| + | |||
| + | If the Swadeshi movement gave German products a political advantage, it was the country’s scientific lead in synthetic dyes that secured its commercial dominance. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Historian Prakash Kumar, based at Penn State in the US, explains that before the advent of synthetic dyes, the global trade in natural dyes, including indigo, was dominated by the British Empire. Excluded from this lucrative market, German chemists turned to the laboratory. “The Germans were effectively kept out of it, which led to a concerted effort among them to synthesise indigo,” Kumar said in an email interview. | ||
| + | |||
| + | The breakthrough came in 1899. Building on the work of chemist Adolf von Baeyer, German manufacturers introduced synthetic indigo to international markets. It was purer, cheaper and easier to use than natural indigo, immediately challenging the British-controlled trade. | ||
| + | |||
| + | “By 1899, based on the findings by the chemist Adolf Baeyer, Germany launched the cheaper and purer synthetic indigo on the international market, which immediately started eating into the natural global market dominated by the British,” Kumar explains. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Within a few years, three leading German companies—Bayer (founded in 1863), Hoechst (1863) and BASF (1865)—had expanded production on a scale that fundamentally altered the global dye industry. | ||
| + | |||
| + | “This was difficult chemistry,” Kumar says. “Despite their rigour, no one other than the Germans was able to master the technology or science to manufacture synthetic indigo.” | ||
| + | |||
| + | The success of German chemistry had consequences far beyond Europe. In India, it transformed an industry long embedded in the colonial economy. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Natural indigo had been one of Britain’s most valuable colonial commodities. Produced on plantations in Bengal and Bihar and exported to textile manufacturers globally, it had become closely intertwined with the expansion of British rule. | ||
| + | |||
| + | “The rise of indigo plantations in colonial Bengal paralleled the consolidation of British rule on the Indian subcontinent from the last quarter of the eighteenth century,” Kumar writes in his 2016 paper, ‘Plantation Indigo and Synthetic Indigo: European Planters and the Redefinition of a Colonial Commodity’. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Ironically, the greatest challenge to this colonial enterprise came from German laboratories. | ||
| + | |||
| + | As synthetic indigo became cheaper and more reliable, British planters attempted to defend their market through scientific experimentation and new marketing strategies. “They were defending not only their product, but also the plantation mode of production and were resisting their own demise,” Kumar writes. | ||
| + | |||
| + | But it was a losing battle. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Eventually, economics proved decisive. German synthetic dyes offered greater consistency, lower prices, and easier application than natural dyes, making them increasingly attractive to Indian textile manufacturers. | ||
| + | |||
| + | “The natural indigo industry died due to this competition. The death was a slow one, but it happened,” Kumar says, adding that many European planters eventually shifted to sugarcane cultivation. | ||
| + | |||
| + | The decline of natural indigo illustrates a larger transformation underway in colonial India. German companies were not simply exporting a new product; they were introducing a new model of industrial production in which scientific research displaced plantation agriculture as the source of competitive advantage. The colour trade, once rooted in India’s fields, was increasingly being shaped by laboratories thousands of kilometres away in Germany. | ||
| + | |||
| + | ''' Rebuilding German businesses in India ''' | ||
| + | |||
| + | By the eve of the First World War, India had become one of the German dye industry’s most important overseas markets. According to Lubinski, it ranked as the fifth-largest market by volume—after the United States, China, Great Britain and Austria-Hungary—and the fourth-largest by value. | ||
| + | |||
| + | “The British-Indian statistics show that three-fourths of all synthetic dyes came from Germany,” she writes. | ||
| + | |||
| + | German dyes first entered India in the 1870s and 1880s through occasional shipments handled by import-export houses such as Ullmann Hirschhorn & Co., Bell Brandenburg & Co., and established British trading firms including Graham & Co. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Rather than relying solely on European intermediaries, German manufacturers also cultivated relationships with Indian chemists, merchants and dealers, laying the foundations for a durable commercial presence. | ||
| + | |||
| + | One of their most significant collaborations was with the Indian chemist Tribhuvandas Kalyandas Gajjar. In 1890, Gajjar established the industrial school Kala Bhavan at the behest of the Baroda ruler Sayajirao Gaekwad III. Recognising India’s potential as a market for synthetic dyes, Gajjar advised Bayer that the company should train Indian students and professional dyers in the use of its products if it wished to make India one of its largest customers. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Bayer acted on the suggestion. It helped finance the establishment of a laboratory at Surat and deputed several experts to teach at Gajjar’s institution. The partnership reflected a strategy that extended beyond selling dyes; German companies sought to create technical expertise to sustain demand for their products. | ||
| + | |||
| + | The company simultaneously expanded its commercial presence. In 1892, Bayer appointed Charles J Vernon, a former employee of Graham & Co., as its managing director in Bombay. Four years later, the agency was incorporated as Farbenfabriken Bayer & Co. Ltd., becoming Bayer’s first wholly owned subsidiary in Asia. In the decade preceding the First World War, Bayer’s sales in India increased sevenfold. Other German dye manufacturers followed a similar trajectory. | ||
| + | |||
| + | The war abruptly interrupted that success. “With the outbreak of the war, the total imports of dyes into India fell abruptly to one-third of pre-war amounts,” Lubinski writes. | ||
| + | |||
| + | The disruption extended well beyond trade. Kumar explains that following the Treaty of Versailles, the victorious Allied powers gained access to German scientific and industrial knowledge, including developments in synthetic dyes. “They took away the ‘secret’ indigo-making formula,” he says. | ||
| + | |||
| + | Yet Germany’s commercial ties with India proved more resilient than its political fortunes. Although Germans remained barred from entering India in the immediate aftermath of the war, the networks they had built before 1914 endured. Their Indian associates continued to manage businesses, maintain commercial relationships, and establish new contacts with German manufacturers. | ||
| + | |||
| + | One such example was Calcutta chemist J C Das Gupta, who travelled to Bayer’s headquarters in Leverkusen in 1921 to establish direct links with the company and propose new forms of commercial cooperation. | ||
| + | |||
| + | German firms, meanwhile, found innovative ways to rebuild their Indian operations. From the early 1920s, many resorted to what Lubinski describes as ‘cloaking’—concealing German ownership behind companies registered in neutral countries or under non-German identities. Bayer, for example, revived its Indian business through a Milan-based firm and, in 1921, dispatched its employee Giulio Gut—a German by birth who had acquired Italian citizenship—to support operations in Bombay. | ||
| + | |||
| + | The recovery, however, proved temporary. | ||
| + | |||
| + | ''' German dye industry shattered after World War II ''' | ||
| + | |||
| + | The outbreak of the Second World War once again severed Germany’s commercial ties with India. Hundreds of Germans were interned, company assets were expropriated for a second time, and Indian employees were dismissed as German businesses were shut down. | ||
| + | |||
| + | “The German synthetic industry was virtually destroyed after the Second World War and even taken over by the Americans,” Kumar says. | ||
| + | |||
| + | By the 1950s and 1960s, however, the international business landscape changed. “The world turned into an era of multinationals, an entirely new corporate and industrial climate where thinking in terms of nation was a bit of an anachronism,” Kumar explains. | ||
| + | |||
| + | For German dye companies, the Indian story had come full circle. They never ruled the subcontinent, nor did they possess colonies comparable to Britain’s. Yet through chemistry, scientific training, commercial partnerships and technological expertise, they shaped one of colonial India’s most important industries. Their success demonstrated that influence in an empire could be exercised not only through political authority, but also through knowledge, technology, and trade. | ||
| + | |||
| + | ''' Further reading: ''' | ||
| + | |||
| + | Christina Lubinski, ‘Navigating nationalism in global enterprise: A century of Indo-German business relations’, Cambridge University Press, 2023 | ||
| + | |||
| + | Christina Lubinski, ‘Global trade and Indian politics: The German dye business in India before 1947,‘ The Business History Review, 2015 | ||
| + | |||
| + | Christina Lubinski, Valeria Giacomin & Klara Schnitzer, ‘Internment as a business challenge: Political
risk management and German multinationals in Colonial India (1914–1947)’, Business History, 2018 | ||
| + | |||
| + | Prakash Kumar, ‘Plantation indigo and synthetic indigo: European planters and the redefinition of a colonial commodity‘, Comparative studies in society and history, 2016 | ||
| + | |||
| + | *This article is part of ‘The Lesser Colonisers of India’, a series that uncovers how commercial enterprises from countries other than Britain played a significant role in shaping colonial India. The first story was about a Swedish matchbox company that shaped colonial India, followed bye the story of the Swiss company Volkart Bros and the Czech shoe company Bata. | ||
=YEAR-WISE DEVELOPMENTS= | =YEAR-WISE DEVELOPMENTS= | ||
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GERMANY- INDIA RELATIONS]] | GERMANY- INDIA RELATIONS]] | ||
[[Category:India|G | [[Category:India|G | ||
| + | GERMANY- INDIA RELATIONS]] | ||
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| + | [[Category:Foreign Relations|G GERMANY- INDIA RELATIONS | ||
| + | GERMANY- INDIA RELATIONS]] | ||
| + | [[Category:Germany|I GERMANY- INDIA RELATIONS | ||
| + | GERMANY- INDIA RELATIONS]] | ||
| + | [[Category:India|G GERMANY- INDIA RELATIONS | ||
GERMANY- INDIA RELATIONS]] | GERMANY- INDIA RELATIONS]] | ||
Latest revision as of 23:00, 9 September 2026
This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content. |
Contents |
[edit] Trade
[edit] Imports
[edit] 1905-1947
Adrija Roychowdhury, July 23, 2026: The Indian Express
“Sometimes their products get returned because the label is not big enough,” Lubinski says. In her book Navigating Nationalism in Global Enterprise (2022), she recounts a case from Bengal where English goods were fraudulently sold as ‘Made in Germany’ to take advantage of nationalist sentiment.
German dyes reshape India’s colour trade
If the Swadeshi movement gave German products a political advantage, it was the country’s scientific lead in synthetic dyes that secured its commercial dominance.
Historian Prakash Kumar, based at Penn State in the US, explains that before the advent of synthetic dyes, the global trade in natural dyes, including indigo, was dominated by the British Empire. Excluded from this lucrative market, German chemists turned to the laboratory. “The Germans were effectively kept out of it, which led to a concerted effort among them to synthesise indigo,” Kumar said in an email interview.
The breakthrough came in 1899. Building on the work of chemist Adolf von Baeyer, German manufacturers introduced synthetic indigo to international markets. It was purer, cheaper and easier to use than natural indigo, immediately challenging the British-controlled trade.
“By 1899, based on the findings by the chemist Adolf Baeyer, Germany launched the cheaper and purer synthetic indigo on the international market, which immediately started eating into the natural global market dominated by the British,” Kumar explains.
Within a few years, three leading German companies—Bayer (founded in 1863), Hoechst (1863) and BASF (1865)—had expanded production on a scale that fundamentally altered the global dye industry.
“This was difficult chemistry,” Kumar says. “Despite their rigour, no one other than the Germans was able to master the technology or science to manufacture synthetic indigo.”
The success of German chemistry had consequences far beyond Europe. In India, it transformed an industry long embedded in the colonial economy.
Natural indigo had been one of Britain’s most valuable colonial commodities. Produced on plantations in Bengal and Bihar and exported to textile manufacturers globally, it had become closely intertwined with the expansion of British rule.
“The rise of indigo plantations in colonial Bengal paralleled the consolidation of British rule on the Indian subcontinent from the last quarter of the eighteenth century,” Kumar writes in his 2016 paper, ‘Plantation Indigo and Synthetic Indigo: European Planters and the Redefinition of a Colonial Commodity’.
Ironically, the greatest challenge to this colonial enterprise came from German laboratories.
As synthetic indigo became cheaper and more reliable, British planters attempted to defend their market through scientific experimentation and new marketing strategies. “They were defending not only their product, but also the plantation mode of production and were resisting their own demise,” Kumar writes.
But it was a losing battle.
Eventually, economics proved decisive. German synthetic dyes offered greater consistency, lower prices, and easier application than natural dyes, making them increasingly attractive to Indian textile manufacturers.
“The natural indigo industry died due to this competition. The death was a slow one, but it happened,” Kumar says, adding that many European planters eventually shifted to sugarcane cultivation.
The decline of natural indigo illustrates a larger transformation underway in colonial India. German companies were not simply exporting a new product; they were introducing a new model of industrial production in which scientific research displaced plantation agriculture as the source of competitive advantage. The colour trade, once rooted in India’s fields, was increasingly being shaped by laboratories thousands of kilometres away in Germany.
Rebuilding German businesses in India
By the eve of the First World War, India had become one of the German dye industry’s most important overseas markets. According to Lubinski, it ranked as the fifth-largest market by volume—after the United States, China, Great Britain and Austria-Hungary—and the fourth-largest by value.
“The British-Indian statistics show that three-fourths of all synthetic dyes came from Germany,” she writes.
German dyes first entered India in the 1870s and 1880s through occasional shipments handled by import-export houses such as Ullmann Hirschhorn & Co., Bell Brandenburg & Co., and established British trading firms including Graham & Co.
Rather than relying solely on European intermediaries, German manufacturers also cultivated relationships with Indian chemists, merchants and dealers, laying the foundations for a durable commercial presence.
One of their most significant collaborations was with the Indian chemist Tribhuvandas Kalyandas Gajjar. In 1890, Gajjar established the industrial school Kala Bhavan at the behest of the Baroda ruler Sayajirao Gaekwad III. Recognising India’s potential as a market for synthetic dyes, Gajjar advised Bayer that the company should train Indian students and professional dyers in the use of its products if it wished to make India one of its largest customers.
Bayer acted on the suggestion. It helped finance the establishment of a laboratory at Surat and deputed several experts to teach at Gajjar’s institution. The partnership reflected a strategy that extended beyond selling dyes; German companies sought to create technical expertise to sustain demand for their products.
The company simultaneously expanded its commercial presence. In 1892, Bayer appointed Charles J Vernon, a former employee of Graham & Co., as its managing director in Bombay. Four years later, the agency was incorporated as Farbenfabriken Bayer & Co. Ltd., becoming Bayer’s first wholly owned subsidiary in Asia. In the decade preceding the First World War, Bayer’s sales in India increased sevenfold. Other German dye manufacturers followed a similar trajectory.
The war abruptly interrupted that success. “With the outbreak of the war, the total imports of dyes into India fell abruptly to one-third of pre-war amounts,” Lubinski writes.
The disruption extended well beyond trade. Kumar explains that following the Treaty of Versailles, the victorious Allied powers gained access to German scientific and industrial knowledge, including developments in synthetic dyes. “They took away the ‘secret’ indigo-making formula,” he says.
Yet Germany’s commercial ties with India proved more resilient than its political fortunes. Although Germans remained barred from entering India in the immediate aftermath of the war, the networks they had built before 1914 endured. Their Indian associates continued to manage businesses, maintain commercial relationships, and establish new contacts with German manufacturers.
One such example was Calcutta chemist J C Das Gupta, who travelled to Bayer’s headquarters in Leverkusen in 1921 to establish direct links with the company and propose new forms of commercial cooperation.
German firms, meanwhile, found innovative ways to rebuild their Indian operations. From the early 1920s, many resorted to what Lubinski describes as ‘cloaking’—concealing German ownership behind companies registered in neutral countries or under non-German identities. Bayer, for example, revived its Indian business through a Milan-based firm and, in 1921, dispatched its employee Giulio Gut—a German by birth who had acquired Italian citizenship—to support operations in Bombay.
The recovery, however, proved temporary.
German dye industry shattered after World War II
The outbreak of the Second World War once again severed Germany’s commercial ties with India. Hundreds of Germans were interned, company assets were expropriated for a second time, and Indian employees were dismissed as German businesses were shut down.
“The German synthetic industry was virtually destroyed after the Second World War and even taken over by the Americans,” Kumar says.
By the 1950s and 1960s, however, the international business landscape changed. “The world turned into an era of multinationals, an entirely new corporate and industrial climate where thinking in terms of nation was a bit of an anachronism,” Kumar explains.
For German dye companies, the Indian story had come full circle. They never ruled the subcontinent, nor did they possess colonies comparable to Britain’s. Yet through chemistry, scientific training, commercial partnerships and technological expertise, they shaped one of colonial India’s most important industries. Their success demonstrated that influence in an empire could be exercised not only through political authority, but also through knowledge, technology, and trade.
Further reading:
Christina Lubinski, ‘Navigating nationalism in global enterprise: A century of Indo-German business relations’, Cambridge University Press, 2023
Christina Lubinski, ‘Global trade and Indian politics: The German dye business in India before 1947,‘ The Business History Review, 2015
Christina Lubinski, Valeria Giacomin & Klara Schnitzer, ‘Internment as a business challenge: Political risk management and German multinationals in Colonial India (1914–1947)’, Business History, 2018
Prakash Kumar, ‘Plantation indigo and synthetic indigo: European planters and the redefinition of a colonial commodity‘, Comparative studies in society and history, 2016
- This article is part of ‘The Lesser Colonisers of India’, a series that uncovers how commercial enterprises from countries other than Britain played a significant role in shaping colonial India. The first story was about a Swedish matchbox company that shaped colonial India, followed bye the story of the Swiss company Volkart Bros and the Czech shoe company Bata.
[edit] YEAR-WISE DEVELOPMENTS
[edit] 2024
[edit] India protests German remarks on Kejriwal’s arrest
Abhimanyu Kulkarni, March 24, 2024: NDTV
India summoned a German envoy today to protest against the country's remarks on the arrest of Arvind Kejriwal in the Delhi liquor policy case. The Ministry of External Affairs said that German foreign ministry spokesperson's remarks were a "blatant interference in India's internal matters”.
The Deputy Head of Mission of the German Embassy, George Enzweiler, was today called by the MEA today to lodge an official protest. Mr Enzweiler was seen leaving the Ministry of External Affairs office in the national capital's South Block today morning.
"We see such remarks as interfering in our judicial process and undermining the independence of our judiciary," MEA said in a statement after the meeting.
"India is a vibrant and robust democracy with rule of law. As in all legal cases in the country, and elsewhere in the democratic world, law will take its own course in the instant matter. Biased assumptions made on this account are most unwarranted," it added.
New Delhi and Berlin share good ties, and the two countries have been coming closer on strategic issues, including defence technology.
The complaint comes hours after the German Foreign Ministry said they expected Mr Kejriwal to get a fair and impartial trial as India is a democratic nation.
"We have taken note, India is a democratic country. We assume and expect that the standards relating to independence of Judiciary and basic democratic principles will also be applied in this case. Like anyone facing accusations, Mr Kejriwal is entitled to a fair and impartial trial, this includes he can make use of all available legal avenues without restrictions. The presumption of innocence is a central element of the rule of law and must apply to him," the spokesperson of the German Foreign Ministry said earlier.
Mr Kejriwal has been arrested in the Delhi liquor policy scam case; the central agency has accused the AAP leader of being a "conspirator". The ED believes the now-scrapped policy provided an impossibly high profit margin of nearly 185 per cent for retailers and 12 per cent for wholesalers.
A local court remanded Kejriwal in ED custody till March 28 "for his detailed and sustained interrogation" regarding his role in the alleged Delhi excise policy scam.
The ED's case is that the Delhi liquor policy 2021-22 provided an exceptionally high-profit margin of 12 per cent for wholesalers and nearly 185 per cent for retailers. A key focus of the investigation into the Delhi liquor policy case was on an alleged network of middlemen, businessmen and politicians which the central agencies have called the "South Group".
[edit] 2024: India- Germany intergovernmental consultations
Sachin Parashar, Oct 26, 2024: The Times of India
New Delhi : The 7th India Germany intergovernmental consultations (IGC) cochaired by PM Narendra Modi and Chancellor Olaf Scholz resulted in eight major outcomes, including a Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty that is expected to bolster joint efforts against terrorism and separatist elements.
Scholz appreciated India’s support for just and lasting peace in Ukraine, and the readiness to use its ties with all parties to facilitate a political solution, as Modi maintained war cannot solve any problem and stressed India stood ready to make every possible contribution towards restoration of peace. Later in a joint statement, India and Germany delivered a message to Russia that the threat of use of nuclear weapons was unacceptable.
The joint statement also backed Israel’s “legitimate security concerns” as India and Germany reaffirmed their commitment to a two- state solution and condemned Hamas’ terror attacks on Oct7, 2023 besides expressing concern over the large-scale loss of civilian lives and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Another important agreement signed was for exchange of classified information that, Modi said, reflected deep mutual trust between the two countries amid growing defence and security cooperation.
Reaffirming commitment to green and sustainable development, both leaders launched an Indo-German Green Hydrogen Roadmap. Among geopolitical issues, the Russia-Ukraine war, West Asia conflict and Indo-Pacific situation were discussed in detail in the meeting.
Modi also raised the issue of tensions in the Indo-Pacific saying there are serious concerns about the rule of law and freedom of navigation in the region. “In such times, the strategic partnership between India and Germany has emerged as a strong anchor,’’ he said. Scholz will travel to Goa on Saturday where the German naval frigate BadenWuerttemberg and combat support ship Frankfurt am Main, as announced by the Indian govt earlier, will make a port call as part of Germany’s Indo-Pacific deployment.
Scholz also backed an ambitious India-EU FTA, which remains under discussion, underscoring the “enormous potential” to further build and expand trade and investment between the two countries.
