Lionel Abrahams saw India's London financial operations as a large waterway system comprising ‘rivers running into a lake at one side and so many rivers running out of the lake at the other side’. The goal of India Office (IO) officials like himself was to connect ‘incoming rivers with … outgoing rivers’, a task he acknowledged was ‘sometimes difficult’. To truly understand the IO's financial operations one must extend this analogy. India's waterways did not exist in isolation. They formed part of a much larger system, the City of London, which in turn was connected to and fed a vast ocean of international finance and trade. Moreover, as in nature, the IO's collection of rivers, lakes and streams comprised a highly complex ecosystem, a community of diverse self-interested institutions and individuals, which through mutual dependency ultimately operated in a manner that was both harmonious and sustainable, and ensured that each organisation and actor achieved at least some of their goals. Previous commentators on Indian finance have overlooked this ecosystem. To them, India was an interloper in a primeval jungle, where it was ruthlessly savaged by its denizens, which fed on its entrails for decades. This book disagrees. It rather argues that Indian finance was an integral component of the City environment, contributing to and benefitting from the natural balance this habitat attained.