Percorsi della globalizzazione nella prima metà del XX secolo: il caso di “West End Watch Company”

Through time globalization has not followed a uniform trend. For example, between 1914 and 1945 there was a strong slowdown in the international trade dynamics. This paper investigates an interesting case study concerning a Swiss watchmaker and its economic activity in the first half of the 20th century. West End Watch (WEW) was established in the end of the 19th century in Switzerland. Right from the beginning, its business appeared to be deeply involved in the globalization process. Even its name took inspiration from a London fashionable district, revealing a deep relationship with Britain and its political and economic interests in the Near and Far East. WEW has always enjoyed a special reputation, based on the specific technical features of its products and their remarkable presence in some strategical international markets (India, Middle East, China and South-East Asia). WEW watches were (and actually are) solid and reliable, suitable for every kind of use even in very bad or extreme conditions and therefor commonly adopted by the military forces as a part of their equipment. With regard to the international distribution network of the Company, Bombay represented a very important hub. The watches, here arrived after a long and often difficult journey from Switzerland to Asia, had to pass a quality control before proceeding further to their final destinations. Transports at that time and in that area specifically could be complicated and dangerous. In this paper the Authors describe the route followed by WEW watches on their journey from Switzerland to Bombay in 1922. We could rebuilt this route from the storytelling derived by the diary of M. De Siebenthal, a young WEW employee in charge of bringing a consignment of watches to Bombay before the dreaded doubling of import taxes in India.