The Chettiars were moneylenders from Chettinad, in Tamil Nadu, India. In the 18th and 19th centuries they spread with British dominion into Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and Burma (Myanmar). They played a major role in financing the "reclamation" of the swamps and jungles of southern Burma, which turned the Irrawaddy Delta into the rice bowl of the British Empire. Chettiars lent mostly on collateral, including the land being reclaimed. When the Great Depression hit, world rice prices plunged, Burmese farmers defaulted, and the Chettiars foreclosed. By 1938, they owned a quarter of the land in Burma's main rice-growing districts. But not for long. Anger about British rule and the Depression found an easy target in these foreign moneylenders who had alienated native Burmese from their own soil. After the Japanese invaded, the Chettiars were forcibly expelled.I know all that because I just read the first two chapters of Sean Turnell's new and vigorously written Fiery Dragons: Banks, Moneylenders and Microfinance in Burma. (A chunk of the book is free through Google.) Alas, I learned too late that he was to present it here in Washington in April.I perused (and ordered) the book because I wanted to learn about what I thought could be a powerful exhibit in a court trial of history's moneylenders, an illustration of how credit inevitably sucks wealth toward the already wealthy. Turns out Turnell's text would be a powerful exhibit---for the defense. He convinced me that the Chettiars' rates were not so high, that they generally faced competition from each other and more informal moneylenders, and that they would much rather have had their loans paid back than repossess people's land.Chapter 3 chronicles the even more dismal story of the credit cooperative model in Burma, which the British brought in from Germany. You can read Sean's paper about it too.I like these dueling quotes:
The vitriolic quote has precedents. Here's Henry Wolff in 1893:
Henry William Wolff, People's Banks: A Record of Social and Economic Success
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