Situating Bombay: Colonial Politics, Trade Transformations, and the Making of Urban Space Through the Lens of 18th Century Voyager Alexander Hamilton
Keywords:
Bombay; Colonialism; Maritime Trade; Urbanization; Alexander Hamilton; British Empire; Economic Transformation
Abstract
This study examines Bombay’s 18th-century transformation through Alexander Hamilton’s accounts, challenging narratives that attribute its rise solely to geography. Instead, it highlights the role of British colonial policies, maritime trade networks, and indigenous agency in shaping the city’s urban and economic landscape. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the research explores colonial governance, trade monopolies, and infrastructural developments that redefined Bombay as a strategic imperial hub. By critically reassessing Hamilton’s writings alongside economic and visual records, this study offers a nuanced perspective on Bombay’s evolution under colonial rule.
References
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• Kooiman, D. (1985). Bombay: From Fishing Village to Colonial Port (1662-1947). Journal of Urban History, 12(1), 69–92.
• Kosambi, M. (1993). Bombay in Transition: The Growth and Social Ecology of a Colonial City, 1880-1980. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International.
• Lawson, P. (1993). The East India Company: A History. Routledge.
• Lingohr, M. (2023). Trading Companies in Colonial India. Cambridge University Press.
• Lubentco, A. (2021). Shipbuilding Networks and the Growth of Bombay Dockyards under British Rule. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 64(1), 1-30.
• Markovits, C. (1994). The Global World of Indian Merchants, 1750-1947: Traders of Sind from Bukhara to Panama. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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• Mehta, M. (1991). Text and Context: Language, the Production of Knowledge in Colonial Western India. Indian Economic & Social History Review, 28(3), 293–311.
• Mehta, M. (2007). British Policy, Local Politics and Colonial Consensus: Bombay 1825-1857. Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, 68, 1449-1458.
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• Mehta, S. (2015). Maximum City: The Colonial Port and the Shaping of Bombay. Journal of Urban History, 45(5), 877-899.
• Moosvi, S. (1987). The Economy of the Mughal Empire c. 1595: A Statistical Study. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
• Moxham, R. (2018). Tea and Opium: Two commodities that shaped modern India. Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 47(2), 291-316.
• Nechtman, T. W. (2010). Nabobs: Empire and Identity in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Cambridge University Press.
• Neild-Basu, S. (2018). Unfree labour in the development of the colonial economy: European indentured servants and Kangani recruiters in 18th–19th century India. Slavery & Abolition, 39(3), 518-534.
• Parsuramen, P. N. (1966). The flight of an eagle: Being a study of the life and works of Parsis of Bombay. Parsi Punchayet.
• Ray, I. (2011). Europe through Colonial Eyes: Bengal's 19th Century Representations of Britain, France and Germany. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 31(1), 8–24.
• Riello, G., & Roy, T. (Eds.). (2015). How India Clothed the World: The World of South Asian Textiles, 1500-1850. Brill.
• Rothermund, D. (1993). An Economic History of India: From Pre-Colonial Times to 1991. Routledge.
• Said, E.W. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books.
• Sarkar, S. (2019). Does a Colonial Economy’s Integration with Empire Affect Domestic Living Standards? India, 1757–1930. Explorations in Economic History, 72, 114-135.
• Swamy, P. (2014). Financial Architecture and Economic Development in Colonial India. Center Discussion Paper No. 2014-087. Yale University.
• Tripathi, D. (2004). Towards the Welfare State? English Education and the Origin of the Public Sphere in Colonial India. American Journal of Education, 110(3), 289-317.
• Tripathi, D., & Chandra, N. (Eds.). (2016). Business history of India. Springer.
• Trocki, C. (2018). Opium production in India for Chinese markets: The East India Company monopoly, 1797-1834. Journal of Chinese Overseas, 15(1), 100-117.
• Washbrook, D. A. (1975). Progress and Problems: South Asian Economic and Social History c. 1720-1860. Modern Asian Studies, 22(1), 57–96.
• Yang, A. A. (1998). Bazaar India: Markets, Society, and the Colonial State in Gangetic Bihar. University of California Press.
• Arasaratnam, S. (1995). Maritime India in the Seventeenth Century. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
• Barnett, R. B. (1999). North India Between Empires: Awadh, the Mughals, and the British, 1720–1801. University of California Press.
• Bates, C. (2007). The Hidden Empire: The Territorial and Developmental Dynamics of Early British Expansion. Journal of Historical Geography, 33(2), 196–225.
• Baxter, C. (1969). The Marathas 1600-1818, Volume 4 of The New Cambridge History of India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Bhabha, H.K. (1994). The Location of Culture. Abingdon: Routledge.
• Chandavarkar, R. (1994). The Origins of Industrial Capitalism in India: Business Strategies and the Working Classes in Bombay, 1900-1940. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Chandavarkar, S. (1998). Imperial Power and Popular Politics: Class Resistance and the State in India c.1850-1950. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Chandavarkar, R. (2009). History, Culture and the Indian City. Cambridge University Press.
• Chatterjee, R. (2012). The East India Company and the Political Economy of Petitioner Groups in Late 18th Century Bombay. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 32(1), 49-62.
• Chaturvedi, V. (2000). Clothing the Nation: Indian Textiles and Imperial Free Trade, 1750–1930. In E. Hallam & T. Ingold (Eds.), Textiles in Indian Ocean Societies (pp. 205-232). Routledge.
• Deshpande, A. (2020). History of Indian Economy: British Period. PHI Learning Private Limited.
• Dobbin, C. (1972). Urban Leadership in Western India: Politics and Communities in Bombay City 1840-1885. London: Oxford University Press.
• Furber, H. (1976). John Company at Work. Harvard University Press.
• Frykenberg, R.E. (2010). Land Control and Social Structure in Indian History. University of Wisconsin Press.
• Gadgil, D.R. (1971). The Industrial Evolution of India in Recent Times, 1860-1939. Oxford University Press.
• Gazatteer of Bombay City and Island (Vol. 1). (1909). Government Central Press.
• Glover, W.J. (2008). Making Lahore Modern: Constructing and Imagining a Colonial City. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
• Goswami, O. (1985). Then came the Marwaris: Some aspects of the changes in the pattern of industrial control in Eastern India. Indian Economic & Social History Review, 22(3), 225-249.
• Goswami, O. (2001). The Evolution of Banking in India and China: A Comparative Perspective, 1700–1914. Department of Economic History Discussion Papers, London School of Economics and Political Science.
• Goswami, O. (2004). The Port City of Bombay. In F. Broeze (Ed.), Gateways of Asia (pp. 172-198). Routledge.
• Goswami, O. (2009). Trading Companies in Colonial India. Cambridge University Press.
• Goswami, O. (2014). Financial Architecture and Economic Development in Colonial India. Center Discussion Paper No. 2014-087. Yale University.
• Goswami, O. (2017). Colonialism and consumption in British India. Heythrop Journal, 58(3), 434-444.
• Goswami, O. (2018). Merchants, traders, entrepreneurs: Indian business in the colonial era. Springer.
• Goswami, O. (2019). Does a Colonial Economy’s Integration with Empire Affect Domestic Living Standards? India, 1757–1930. Explorations in Economic History, 72, 114-135.
• Goswami, O. (2021). Shipbuilding Networks and the Growth of Bombay Dockyards under British Rule. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 64(1), 1-30.
• Guha-Thakurta, T. (2004). Monuments, Objects, Histories: Institutions of Art in Colonial and Postcolonial India. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Gupta, A. (2007). The Maritime Trade of Early Modern India. New Approaches to Asian History, 19(1), 55-75.
• Gupta, A. (2018). Precolonial Indian Merchants and the Problem of Transregional Trade: The Eighteenth-Century Deccan. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 38(1), 43-54.
• Gupta, N. (2001). Delhi between Two Empires 1803-1931: Society, Government and Urban Growth. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
• Gupta, N. (2006). The Development of the Indian National Congress as a Mass Organization, 1918-1923. In Marshall, P.J. (ed.) The Eighteenth Century in Indian History: Evolution or Revolution? Delhi: Oxford University Press.
• Hazareesingh, S. (2001). Colonial Modernism and the Flawed Paradigms of Urban Renewal: Uneven Development in Bombay, 1900-25. Urban History, 28(2), 235-255.
• Hazareesingh, S. (2009). Colonial modernity and the resistant native: Bombay's imagined interfaces. Cultural Geographies, 16(3), 361-379.
• Hazareesingh, S., & Erikson, E. (2016). Commodity Legacies: Investment, Warfare and Colonialism in the Bombay Deccan, 1796–1860. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 59(1-2), 297-338.
• Hosagrahar, J. (2005). Indigenous Modernities: Negotiating Architecture and Urbanism. London: Routledge.
• Hurd, J. (1983). Railways. In D. Kumar (Ed.), The Cambridge Economic History of India Vol. 2. (pp. 714–743). Cambridge University Press.
• Jain, P. C. (2011). Indigenous Banking and Early Colonial Urbanisation in the Bombay Deccan. Economic and Political Weekly, 46(41-42), 66–76.
• King, A.D. (1976). Colonial Urban Development: Culture, Social Power and Environment. London: Routledge.
• Knowles, R. (2014). Imperial Dreams: The Planning of Bombay City in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century. In Spaces of Colonialism: Delhi's Urban Governmentalities (pp. 181-206).
• Kooiman, D. (1985). Bombay: From Fishing Village to Colonial Port (1662-1947). Journal of Urban History, 12(1), 69–92.
• Kosambi, M. (1993). Bombay in Transition: The Growth and Social Ecology of a Colonial City, 1880-1980. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International.
• Lawson, P. (1993). The East India Company: A History. Routledge.
• Lingohr, M. (2023). Trading Companies in Colonial India. Cambridge University Press.
• Lubentco, A. (2021). Shipbuilding Networks and the Growth of Bombay Dockyards under British Rule. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 64(1), 1-30.
• Markovits, C. (1994). The Global World of Indian Merchants, 1750-1947: Traders of Sind from Bukhara to Panama. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Marshall, P.J. (ed.) (2003). The Eighteenth Century in Indian History: Evolution or Revolution? Delhi: Oxford University Press.
• Mehta, M. (1991). Text and Context: Language, the Production of Knowledge in Colonial Western India. Indian Economic & Social History Review, 28(3), 293–311.
• Mehta, M. (2007). British Policy, Local Politics and Colonial Consensus: Bombay 1825-1857. Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, 68, 1449-1458.
• Mehta, S. (2004). Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found. Review of: Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found. The International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 28(2), 418-422.
• Mehta, S. (2015). Maximum City: The Colonial Port and the Shaping of Bombay. Journal of Urban History, 45(5), 877-899.
• Moosvi, S. (1987). The Economy of the Mughal Empire c. 1595: A Statistical Study. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
• Moxham, R. (2018). Tea and Opium: Two commodities that shaped modern India. Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 47(2), 291-316.
• Nechtman, T. W. (2010). Nabobs: Empire and Identity in Eighteenth-Century Britain. Cambridge University Press.
• Neild-Basu, S. (2018). Unfree labour in the development of the colonial economy: European indentured servants and Kangani recruiters in 18th–19th century India. Slavery & Abolition, 39(3), 518-534.
• Parsuramen, P. N. (1966). The flight of an eagle: Being a study of the life and works of Parsis of Bombay. Parsi Punchayet.
• Ray, I. (2011). Europe through Colonial Eyes: Bengal's 19th Century Representations of Britain, France and Germany. Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, 31(1), 8–24.
• Riello, G., & Roy, T. (Eds.). (2015). How India Clothed the World: The World of South Asian Textiles, 1500-1850. Brill.
• Rothermund, D. (1993). An Economic History of India: From Pre-Colonial Times to 1991. Routledge.
• Said, E.W. (1978). Orientalism. New York: Pantheon Books.
• Sarkar, S. (2019). Does a Colonial Economy’s Integration with Empire Affect Domestic Living Standards? India, 1757–1930. Explorations in Economic History, 72, 114-135.
• Swamy, P. (2014). Financial Architecture and Economic Development in Colonial India. Center Discussion Paper No. 2014-087. Yale University.
• Tripathi, D. (2004). Towards the Welfare State? English Education and the Origin of the Public Sphere in Colonial India. American Journal of Education, 110(3), 289-317.
• Tripathi, D., & Chandra, N. (Eds.). (2016). Business history of India. Springer.
• Trocki, C. (2018). Opium production in India for Chinese markets: The East India Company monopoly, 1797-1834. Journal of Chinese Overseas, 15(1), 100-117.
• Washbrook, D. A. (1975). Progress and Problems: South Asian Economic and Social History c. 1720-1860. Modern Asian Studies, 22(1), 57–96.
• Yang, A. A. (1998). Bazaar India: Markets, Society, and the Colonial State in Gangetic Bihar. University of California Press.
Published
2025-04-04
How to Cite
Kalra, D., & Arora, N. (2025). Situating Bombay: Colonial Politics, Trade Transformations, and the Making of Urban Space Through the Lens of 18th Century Voyager Alexander Hamilton. International Journal of Social Science Research and Review, 8(4), 282-295. https://doi.org/10.47814/ijssrr.v8i4.2680
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