Kanakalatha Mukund (née Narasimhan) is an Indian historian.
Her father was a member of the Indian Civil Service and an Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations.
[7] In her research on mercantile networks in Madras and the interaction between local and English traders, Mukund showed that the richest Indian merchants acted as moneylenders as well as brokers of letters of credit and forward agreements between producers such as weavers and the English.
The Indian traders themselves were divided along caste lines and competed with each other; the tension between them often erupted into violence.
[8] While in the earlier period of their interaction, the Indian producers were able to resist English attempts to control their supplies, over time, as English power expanded over south India, both the producers and their Indian merchant capitalist began to lose out, so that by 1725, south Indian textile commerce began to collapse.