Departing from visual material, personal letters, and information on the cultivation of seeds and plants, Annette Amberg engages in a critical reading of the archive of the Swiss trading company Volkart Brothers (V.B.). Founded in 1851 in both Winterthur and Bombay by two brothers from the Zurich countryside, the company had become the leading exporter of raw cotton from India by the end of World War I. Through a close reading of different types of images used for promotional materials or as in-house information between the firm’s early days and the independence and Partition of India and Pakistan, Amberg traces what is shown and what is transmitted beyond the official message. By combining threads of colonial entanglements, she shows that, against the social and political turmoil of the time, the clean and neutral self-image of the 'visible hand of the market' (Sven Beckert) can no longer be sustained today.