Kosambi-ThreeColonialPort-1988

Three Colonial Port Cities in India
Author(s): Meera Kosambi and John E. Brush

Source: Geographical Review, Vol. 78, No. 1 (Jan., 1988), pp. 32-47
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
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THREE COLONIAL PORT CITIES IN INDIA
MEERA KOSAMBI and JOHN E. BRUSH
ABSTRACT. Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta share a distinctive pattern of urban mor-
phology that is part of their colonial past. Basic features are a nucleus with a European-
style fort and open esplanade, segregated, residential areas for Europeans and Indians,
a central business district, and peripheral military and manufactural zones. Evolution of
these features varied in each city, and they survived largely intact until the early twentieth
century.
M ADRAS, Bombay, and Calcutta are distinctive because they share sim-
ilar morphological features that are a mixture of past European and
Indian influences but that are not found in other Indian cities. British
colonial influence on the Indian subcontinent was manifested in various
settlement types, each of which was shaped by the circumstances of its origin
and subsequent evolution. During the period of initial contact between En-
gland and India in the seventeenth century, the English East India Company,
like other European trading enterprises, maintained commercial stations,
called factories, in the preexistent Indian cities along the coasts and inland
waterways. The early factories comprised warehouses enclosed in com-
pounds together with dwellings for merchants and other facilities.' Their
effect on Indian urban structure was minor and ephemeral.
In Madras and later in Bombay and Calcutta, fortified factories were
erected at relatively undeveloped village sites, accessible to seagoing vessels
and completely controlled by the East India Company. Hybrid towns arose
at these three sites where Indian and other merchants, attracted by the
commercial opportunities to be found under English protection, lived in a
segregated fashion in or adjacent to the original European settlements. The
three port towns served as the principal seats of English economic and
military power on the subcontinent and were the bases for expansion inland.2
With the extension of British rule inland, other forms of colonial urbanism
appeared during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The most
common types were the military and civil stations, known as cantonments
and civil lines, that were usually established near indigenous urban centers
but were administered separately.3 Hill stations were another new settlement
' A Historical Atlas of South Asia (edited by Joseph E. Schwartzberg; Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1978), plate VI.B.5, 53, 209.
2 John E. Brush, The Growth of the Presidency Towns, Urban India: Society, Space and Image, Duke
University Program in Comparative Studies on Southeast Asia, Monograph 10, edited by Richard G. Fox,
Durham, N.C., 1970, 91-114.
3 Anthony D. King, Colonial Urban Development: Culture, Social Power and Environment (London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1976).
* DR. KOSAMBI is a reader in sociology at the University of Poona, Pune, India. DR. BRUSH
is an emeritus professor of geography at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey
08903.
COLONIAL PORTS 33
type, established at cool upland sites that were attractive to Europeans during
the hot months for rest and recreation.4
The purpose of this article is to describe and interpret the morphology
of the three port cities that developed exclusively under British rule and
produced a dual pattern of urban space where Indo-British culture evolved
and still flourishes. We trace the origins of the three cities, the emergence
of similar patterns of growth during the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies, and their parallel evolution in the nineteenth century into the early
decades of the twentieth century. Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta are a distinct
group of Indian cities with Western-style central business districts and rel-
atively low central residential population densities.5 We present a model that
elucidates the shared features of the three cities that evolved from colonial
rule.
SCHEMATIC SPATIAL MODEL

The spatial model is our synthesis of the main functional elements in
the three port cities, each of which is a variation on the same basic pattern
(Fig. 1). The principal components are a fort adjacent to the commercial
waterfront, an open esplanade around the fort, separate European and Indian
residential sectors with Western or Indian commercial areas, other residential
zones for immigrant Asians and Eurasians, a peripheral manufactural zone
adjoining the Indian sector, and an outlying military zone bordering the
European sector. This pattern evolved in three main phases. The first was
marked by the establishment of a fortified factory and town. The factory
enclosure adjoined the waterfront and became the nucleus for urban settle-
ment. Growth around the factory had a dual ethnic pattern from the outset,
with segregated European and Indian areas, the white and black towns
respectively, each with commercial and residential functions. The European
town surrounded the factory and was also fortified. At a later date, the Indian
town was enclosed by a defensive wall, as at Madras, or a ditch, as at Calcutta.
At Bombay the wall initially enclosed the dual Indo-European town. In each
place the European town or area was to the south of the original factory site
and the Indian sector. The reason for that arrangement is unclear, but it
might have been deemed strategic for protected escape to ships at anchor
and for access to the safety of the high seas.6
The second phase was associated with the expansion beyond the original
settlement that was a consequence of increased security and commerce. That
phase began in the middle to late eighteenth century. It advanced more
4Joseph E. Spencer and William L. Thomas, The Hill Stations and Summer Resorts of the Orient,
Geographical Review 38 (1948): 637-651.
-'John E. Brush, The Morphology of Indian Cities, in India's Urban Future (edited by Roy Turner;
Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1962), 57-70; John E. Brush, Spatial Patterns
of Population in Indian Cities, Geographical Review 58 (1968): 362-391.
6 Sten Nilsson, European Architecture in India, 1750-1850 (New York: Taplinger Publishing Co.,
1969).
34 THE GEOGRAPHICAL REVIEW
0o- rURAL VILLA GE
SECTOR (
NTERMEDIATE
NON-INDIAN O
~y4) qCO iENCL AVE "14,

rapidly in Madra andCalcuttEURASIAN Qw
esplanade wereceateOV'Tw aunsrtd4f o

q 9ORIGINAL L /~'p5
AIG 1-ceaicmdlo teclnal ot iy
-) EUROPEAN X~AN\ AlDA
/ FOR \O%~-TYPEBAZAR
th exenuy Duin the seo d pae, fort wer enage,sreghnd
COMMERCIAL WATERFRONT
FiG. 1-Schematic model of the colonial port city.
rapidly in Madras and Calcutta than in Bombay, where it was delayed until
the next century. During the second phase, forts were enlarged, strengthened,
or rebuilt with ramparts, bastions, ravelins, moats, and drawbridges, and
esplanades were created to allow an unobstructed range of gunfire. The
Indian towns expanded in a compact fashion either inside or outside the
walls and as close as possible to the waterfront or fort. Europeans established
new residential settlements, but administrative and commercial activities
remained in or near the fort. Thus separate residential suburbs were formed
at distances of two to five miles from the nuclear settlements. The suburbs
were sparsely populated in contrast with the densities in the Indian towns,
and Europeans were able to distance themselves from the urban centers. It
should be emphasized that early European suburbanization occurred in India
at a time when typical modes of transportation were horses, pony-drawn
carriages, ox-drawn carts, and palanquins carried by coolies.7
The characteristics of the second phase were clearly visible in Madras
and Calcutta by the end of the eighteenth century, but some deviations were
apparent in Bombay. In Madras and Calcutta, improvement of old fortifi-
cations or construction of new ones and their use solely for administrative
or military functions coincided with the European residential shift to easily
accessible rural areas outside the walls, although commercial establishments
remained at central locations. By contrast, the walled town of Bombay with
its dual ethnic character was perpetuated into the twentieth century. Because
of the constraints of space, European suburbanization was less compact,
scattered in localities south and north of the town and later to the west.
7 Meera Kosambi and John E. Brush, Early European Suburbanization in the Indo-British Port Cities,
in Asian Urbanization: Problems and Processes (edited by Frank J. Costa, Ashok K. Dutt, Laurence
J. C. Ma, and Allen G. Noble; Stuttgart: Borntraeger Press, forthcoming).
COLONIAL PORTS 35
The final phase of evolution witnessed the coalescence of the incipient
elements of the previous stage, which were well advanced by mid-nineteenth
century, and the new features that assumed full form in the twentieth
century. The central business districts, located on or adjacent to the sites of
earliest English settlements now contained almost exclusively European types
of commercial, managerial, and administrative activities. The Indian towns
retained both commercial and residential functions, but increased crowding
led to concentric expansion. An intermediate socioecological zone located
between the Europeans and the Indians blurred the simple urban duality.
This zone was occupied by ethnic groups like Parsis, various other non-
Indian Asian immigrants, and mixed-blood Eurasians who had socioeco-
nomic status between the rulers and the ruled masses.
The European residential sector in Madras and Calcutta comprised two
parts: the inner was formerly suburban, still dominantly English, but was
becoming increasingly commercial; the outer was newer, expanding, and
attracting upper-class Indians. Grandiose public buildings in classical Eu-
ropean and eclectic Anglo-Oriental styles were built in or near the central
business districts and near elite residential sections, sometimes on the es-
planades now outmoded for military purposes. The main railroad-passenger
terminals in Madras and Bombay were located at convenient open spaces
taken from the esplanades. Peripheral development of coal-powered indus-
tries like cotton mills on Bombay Island or jute mills along the waterways
near Calcutta were an important component in urban expansion. Industrial
employment produced congested rental housing and squatter settlements in
and around the Indian sectors and industrial suburbs of each city. Military
presence in the forts was much reduced by a shift of troops and materiel to
cantonments outside the main urbanized areas. The components of the sche-
matic spatial model are now discussed in detail for each port city.
MADRAS
Established on the Coromandel Coast of southeastern India in 1639, Ma-

dras was the first of the three cities to be founded. The nucleus of the
settlement, Fort St. George, was completed in 1641.8 The fort stood on high
ground between the sandy beach and a loop of the Elambore River near its
confluence with the Cooum River. The site faced a beach and an open
roadstead where ships had to anchor a mile or more offshore. The fort was
soon surrounded by dwellings and public buildings occupied by Englishmen;
the built-up area was called White Town and was protected by walls. Another
settlement, named Black Town, for Asian merchants and artisans like
weavers and cloth dyers arose to the north. During the eighteenth century
8 B. M. Thirunaranan, The Site and Situation of Madras, in Madras 1639-1939 (edited by C. S.

Srinivasachari; Madras: Madras Tercentenary Committee, 1939), 325-339; George Kuriyan, Distri-
bution of Population in the City of Madras, Indian Geographical Journal 16 (1941): 58-70.
the Indian settlement expanded northward and across the Elambore River
as well as southward to the opposite side of the meandering Cooum River.
Madras underwent important physical changes during the mid-eigh-
teenth century after attack and occupation by the French. Fort St. George
was enlarged and strengthened, and the part of Black Town located closest
to the northern rampart was demolished to create an esplanade. The inhab-
itants of Black Town in turn shifted northward and westward. Although
protected by walls on the inland sides, Black Town remained open along
the beach and the esplanade toward White Town and the fort. Open space
was also maintained southwest of the fort at the river confluence. Thus a
broad, unobstructed military defensive zone was created on the inland ap-
proaches to the strongly fortified British settlement.9
By the late eighteenth century the East India Company was securely in
possession of the area. The era was marked by the beginning of suburban-
ization, which spread in an arc three to five miles in width from the core.
Wealthy officers and businessmen could afford to leave the fort and the
congested waterfront for sumptuous mansions on open land purchased in
village tracts. The preferred direction of suburban expansion was initially
westward in Vepery and Egmore and in Nungambakkam along the Cooum
River (Fig. 2). Country houses with extensive gardens proliferated there over
a broad southwestern quadrant on a treeless expanse, called the Choultry
Plain, located between Nungambakkam and Mylapore. The pattern of sub-
urbanization set in India by the British colonial elite before 1800 replicated
a phenomenon occurring in Great Britain and continental Europe.'0
Functional changes occurred in Fort St. George and Black Town before
and during the first half of the nineteenth century. The fort became an
administrative rather than military precinct. Troops were quartered in a
cantonment, located beyond the Adyar River some eight miles southwest of
the city center. Establishments for banking, insurance, and wholesale trade
shifted into Black Town along streets fronting the beach north of the fort or
adjacent to the esplanade, opposite the fort, and along Popham's Broadway
in the heart of Black Town. A secondary commercial concentration, mainly
concerned with retail sale of European goods and services, formed a ribbon
south of Cooum River along the road to St. Thomas Mount. That shift was
a direct response to the increased importance of the southwest as the prime
European residential sector. Much farmland in the outer villages was con-
verted gradually to nonagricultural uses, and the inhabitants became de-
pendent on urban employment."
The Indian population of Madras remained heavily concentrated in or
near Black Town and Triplicane, where locally specialized bazaars provided
' Jacques Dupuis, Madras et le Nord du Coromandel (Paris: Maisonneuve, 1960),389-537; S. Muthiah,
Madras Discovered: A Historical Guide to Looking Around (Madras: East-West Press, 1981).
I0 James E. Vance Jr., This Scene of Man (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 228, 257-259.
11 Susan J. Lewandowski, Migration and Ethnicity in Urban India: Kerala Migrants in the City of
Madras, 1870-1970 (New Delhi: Manohar, 1980).
COLONIAL PORTS 37
MADRAS 191 1 DENSITY OF POPULATION
MADRAS 191 1
I4.&4~f ~ HARBOR
i I OF
i&TNWN' A L
X7- ESPLANADE
eGm ~~~ST. GEORGE PERSONS PER

ACRE
~gr * GOV'T HOUSE
I1 O F
EU7 -25
/ G l5.\r? BAY
EU 26 -60
o BENGAL EU 61 - 100
* 101 - 150
1 .5 0 1 2 mi
1 .5I 0I i.jl.
1 2 mi 1 0 1 2 3 km
,.,
1 0 1 2 3 km FIG. 3-Population density in Madras 1911.
FIG. 2-Madras 19 1.
TRADE AND FINANCE CHRISTIANS

MADRAS 191 1 MADRAS 1911
;x>usit~ORER tS
PERCENT OF
PERCENT OF PEOPULATION
t W,@ . .. - 0-2
Dfi, m3-6
7 - 14
15 - 19
U -15- 26
D i g S1 .5 0 1 2 mi
X~~~1 km ._i..w10123km
FIG. 4-Distribution of trade and financial ac- FIG. 5-Distribution of Christians in Madras
tivities in Madras 1911. 1911.
indigenous types of goods and services. Even the most affluent persons,
Hindus, Muslims, other Asians, and mixed-blood Eurasian Christians main-
tained a strong preference for residence near workplaces in the midst of caste
fellows, coreligionists, and social or linguistic kindred.
The next stage in the evolution of Madras occurred in the latter half of
the nineteenth century under imperial government after the termination of
the East India Company in 1858. The focal point of business and traffic flow
was located at the southeastern corner of Black Town, which was renamed
Georgetown in 1906. The administrative functions of the presidency of Ma-
dras, now a province in British India, continued to be performed inside Fort
St. George or in nearby new buildings. Government House, the official
residence of the governor, stood near Cooum River, at the head of Mount
Road. The customs house, the high-court structure, the central post-and-
telegraph building, the municipal offices, and structures for banks and news-
papers were located north of the fort on the esplanade or near new port
facilities. The Madras breakwaters, constructed in 1889 and improved in
1910, together with docks, warehousing, and railroad facilities, provided
modern transportation links between overseas trade and the wide hinterland
of the city on peninsular India.12 Railroad-passenger terminals and sidings
were conveniently placed at central sites taken from the esplanade.
At the beginning of the twentieth century the municipality of Madras
had a semicircular shape of approximately nine miles of seafrontage and a
total area of 27.6 square miles. Georgetown, with one-third of the total
population of the municipality, had only 9 percent of its area. Because of
concentration of commercial and shipping activities in the easternmost parts
of Georgetown, population density was lower there than elsewhere in the
area (Fig. 3). Population density in other parts of Madras diminished sharply,
with the exception of the compactly built old weaving town of Chintadripetta
and the northern shoreline division in Tondiarpet. The average population
density of Madras was 30 persons an acre in 1911, but in some peripheral
areas it was less than 10 persons an acre.
The population of Madras during the final decades of colonial rule was
less male dominated and less heterogeneous than that of Bombay or Calcutta.
The sex ratio in 1901 was approximately 102 males to 100 females. Tamil,
which was spoken by 63 percent of the population, was the majority language
in all census divisions of the city; Telugu, accounting for 21 percent of the
population, was the second language of the city. English was spoken by only
3 percent of the population. Native-born persons accounted for 68 percent
of the city inhabitants in 1901; 28 percent came from other places in the
province of Madras; and less than 4 percent was born elsewhere in India or
abroad.13
Significant features of the socioecological structure of the population can
be discerned in the 1911 census, because the details of distribution of oc-
cupational and religious groupings are available for twenty census divisions.14
Trade and finance employed 17 percent of the workers in the entire city,
but in the census divisions of Georgetown and the Fort the proportion went
as high as 29 percent (Fig. 4). Public administration and other governmental
12 C. C. Armstrong, Port of Madras, Journal of the Madras Geographical Association 14 (1939): 146-154.
13 Census of India 1901, Vol. XV-B, Part III (Madras, 1902).
]4 Census of India 1911, The City of Madras (Madras, 1912).
COLONIAL PORTS 39
functions employed 14 percent, and this group in Georgetown, the Fort,
Vepery, and Triplicane accounted for as much as 20 percent.
In terms of religion, 80 percent of the population in 1911 was Hindu, 12
percent Muslim, and 8 percent Christian. Muslims were concentrated in
Triplicane and in Georgetown near the harbor; Christians were most nu-
merous in Vepery and Egmore, which were particularly attractive to Eura-
sians, and in Tondiarpet, where they were fisherfolk and laborers. Christians
of European birth were chiefly in Vepery and Egmore, but they had above-
average proportions in the eastern sections of Georgetown and in the western
and southern elite residential divisions (Fig. 5).
The differentiation of functional areas based on the original nuclei of
settlement continued into the twentieth century. Among the colonial elite,
workplaces and residences reflected the early pattern of suburbanization.15
However, urban settlement was not dense outside the central area of the
city, and principal built-up zones were separated from each other by stretches
of open land that maintained parklike or semirural landscapes in municipal
boundaries.
BOMBAY
Bombay was the second of the English port cities to be established. The
site was on an island, originally a group of seven islands that were gradually
merged by filling the salt marshes, located off the Konkan Coast of western
India. Acquired by King Charles II from Portugal in 1661, the island was
transferred in 1667 to the East India Company. Bombay Castle, the fortified
factory of the company, was the nucleus of urban development and stood
on the shore adjacent to the deep natural harbor (Fig. 6). West of the castle
was a large space called Bombay Green, around which settlement clustered
in a semicircle to form a mixed commercial and residential town. It was
subsequently enclosed by a semicircular wall with land access through three
gates.
This fortification was called Bombay Fort, the name that still identifies
the area. Within the wall the area was initially divided into two districts:
the straggling European sector on the southern side of the green, and the
crowded Indian sector to the north, with streets lined by thatched dwellings
and a population that sustained a well-supplied bazaar. The inhabitants of
the Indian sector were, by and large, from the mercantile communities of
the adjacent, commercially well-developed region of Gujarat. The company
had encouraged those merchants to settle there in order to increase the trade
of Bombay. They also brought religious diversity, for they were Hindu,
Muslim, Jain, and Parsi.16
]5 Susan J. Lewandowski, Urban Growth and Municipal Development in the Colonial City of Madras,
1860-1900, Journal of Asian Studies 34 (1975): 341-360.
16 Meera Kosambi, Bombay and Poona: A Socio-Ecological Study of Two Indian Cities, 1650-1900
(Ph.D. dissertation, University of Stockholm, Department of Sociology, Stockholm, 1980).
BOMBAY BOMBAY
IMAHIM
1911 1911
SION
WORLI
N
PAREL
it ~~~POPULATION
DENSITY
/ BYCULLA
0 MAZAGON Persons
q-'' Former Per Acre
Z) Native
Town BOMBAY - 1- 50
HOUSE HRO E3 51 - 100
B A BACK
C K X ~HARBO
~FORT 101 - 300
~ ombay
B A V ~~Castle 301 - 700
AS 5,- 1 .5 0 1 2 mi
1 .5 0 1 2 mi
00 C)O1 0 1 2 3 km 1 0 1 2 3 km
FIG. 6-Bombay 1911. FIG. 7-Populatio.n density in Bombay 1911.
BOMBAY BOMBAY
1901 1901
t . . :v:,WORKERS PERSONS BORN

ENGAGED IN IN EUROPE
TRADE Per Cent
Per Cent
EDI1-2
6 -10 4
11 - 15 *15 - 25
15 16 20n
\ jo " ~16 - 20
/1 .5 o 1 2 mi 1 .50 '' 2 mi
v ~1 0 1 2 3 k m 1 0 1 2 3 km
FIG. 8-Distribution of trading activities in FIG. 9-Distribution of Europeans in Bombay

Bombay 1901. 1901.
The second stage of morphological evolution in Bombay began after 1803,

when the Indian sector inside the wall was partially devastated by fire.
Thereafter the expanding Indian population was accommodated largely out-
side the fort in a locality known as Native Town, consciously modeled after
COLONIAL PORTS 41
similar areas in Madras and Calcutta.17 Between the wall and Native Town
a semicircular space 800 yards in width was reserved for an esplanade for
defense. Suburban residences for Europeans arose on the narrow peninsula
of Colaba alongside the cantonment. This area was linked to the fort by a
causeway that was broadened by strips of reclaimed land. European sub-
urbanization also occurred on other parts of the island, initially at Parel,
several miles north of the fort beyond Native Town, and later at Malabar
Hill, where successive government houses were erected. During the early
nineteenth century the remainder of Bombay Island was largely rural, with
coconut groves, orchards, and rice fields interspersed with small farming or
fishing hamlets and several large nucleations like the old port of Mahim and
the Portuguese village of Mazagon.
The basic components of colonial morphology in Bombay were the fort,
the esplanade, Native Town, the cantonment, and the garden suburbs. They
underwent further changes during the late nineteenth century as a result of
population growth. Native Town expanded; extensive new docks and ware-
houses were constructed on reclaimed land north of the original waterfront.
Two railroad lines, linking to the mainland via Salsette Island, traversed
Bombay Island on a north-south axis; a cluster of cotton mills arose near the
railroad lines north of Native Town.
With prosperity during the last decades of the nineteenth century, land-
uses in Bombay intensified. Fort ramparts and gates, no longer needed for
defensive purposes, were removed by the 1860s. In their place governmental
and public buildings for the secretariat, the high court, communications
offices, and the university were erected. In the old English or southern part
of the fort, sites vacated by the residential shift to suburbs were redeveloped
for commercial and public uses and eventually formed a Western type of
central business district. Much of Bombay Green was lost to commercial
buildings, when the original area was absorbed in Horniman Circle, the
nodal point of the new business district. The northern part of the fort was
little altered, and Indians, especially Parsis who had become highly successful
entrepreneurs, continued to reside there. Concurrently the indigenous pat-
tern of mixed residential-commercial landuses was intensified in Native
Town, where population density rose to approximately 700 persons an acre
by 1911 (Fig. 7). That figure was much higher than could be found in
comparable Indian sections of Madras or Calcutta.
The 1911 census provided data on nonresidential building use in many
parts of the city.'8 Offices were concentrated mainly in the southern part of
the fort, and in its northern section were both offices and retail shops.
Warehousing extended along the harbor front northward from the esplanade.
Retail shops were densely clustered in Native Town near the esplanade. By
17 S. M. Edwardes, The Rise of Bombay: A Retrospect (Bombay: Times of India Press, 1902), 229.
18 Census of India 1911, Vol. VIII, Bombay (Bombay, 1912).
contrast, the high percentages of residents engaged in trade in the 1901 census
indicated commercial concentrations in Native Town and the northern sec-
tion of the fort (Fig. 8).19 Mills for cotton spinning and weaving and workers'
housing were in Parel and Byculla along the perimeter of the built-up land
near the railroads.
The population of Bombay was large and ethnically diverse.20 Of the
776,000 inhabitants recorded in the 1901 census, 65 percent was Hindu, 20
percent Muslim, 6 percent Christian, and 6 percent Parsi. Marathi, dominant
in the adjacent part of the Bombay presidency, was the primary language
with 53 percent of the population, followed by Gujarati with 26 percent and
Hindi or Urdu with 15 percent. English was the mother tongue of only 2
percent of the population. The largest concentrations of Marathi-speaking
Hindus were on the northern half of the island and in peripheral areas;
other native groups were relatively more concentrated in the central areas.
Clusters of Hindus, mainly Gujarati-speaking, and Gujarati- and Urdu-speak-
ing Muslims were found in congested Native Town. North Fort was pre-
dominantly Parsi, in contrast with the southern portion where the few
remaining residents were predominantly English-speaking Christians. Out-
side South Fort, Colaba cantonment had the largest concentration of Chris-
tians and English speakers. The close correlation between Christian speakers
of English and persons born in Europe was clearly demonstrated by data in
the 1901 census (Fig. 9).
By the early twentieth century, the social ecology of Bombay was an
expression of the hierarchy of political and economic power and of spatial
segregation of colonials from the indigenes. The small British minority, ex-
ercising unchallenged power in 1911, and their close intermediaries, the
Gujarati-speaking Parsis, were located in the original fort area, in Colaba
cantonment, and in the suburb of Malabar Hill. Other Gujaratis, both Hindu
and Muslim, who benefited from participation in commerce and industry
under British rule, lived mainly in Native Town where they were as close
as legally possible to the old fort. The numerically dominant Hindu Marathi
speakers were the chief source of labor in the city; they resided in the least
desirable dockside and interior industrial tracts or remained in the semirural
northern reaches of Bombay Island.
CALCUTTA
Calcutta was the last of the port cities to be founded by the English.
Because of its access to the rich, well-populated hinterland of Bengal and
"9 Census of India 1901, Vol. XI, Bombay Town and Island (Bombay, 1902).
20 Meera Kosambi, Bombay in Transition: The Growth and Social Ecology of a Colonial City, 1880-
1980 (Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1986).
21 Brush, footnote 2 above, 96.
COLONIAL PORTS 43
northern India and because of early English success there, Calcutta eventually
became the largest of the three ports.21 Its site on the Hooghly River proved
to be advantageous despite the problems of navigating ninety miles of shift-
ing tidal channels from the Bay of Bengal and the debilitating health con-
ditions encountered by Europeans.22
Between 1686 and 1689 the English factory was located at Sutanati, then
an important local market for raw cotton and yarn. The Sutanati site was
abandoned, and another factory was erected at Calcutta and was well estab-
lished by the end of the eighteenth century. Fort William was built here to
accommodate factors and their goods on a site beside an excavated water-
storage reservoir, known as the Red Tank. Around it arose a residential town
of well-built brick and plaster houses that was initially protected by a wooden
palisade wall. The company leased from Mogul authorities a tract that was
approximately two miles in width and five miles in length on the east bank
of the Hooghly and included the village lands of Gobindpur, Calcutta, and
Sutanati. A defensive ditch, dug in 1742 to protect these settlements from
invasion by roving bands of Maratha cavalry, bounded the northern and
eastern perimeters of the villages. They later formed the city of Calcutta,
bounded by Circular Road and Tolly's Nullah (Fig. 10).23
Victory at the battle of Plassey in 1757 gave the British possession of
Bengal and opened the way for their control of the Gangetic plains. In 1773
Calcutta became the administrative seat for all the company's territories on
the subcontinent. Fort William proved inadequate in the siege of 1757 and
was replaced by a new fort and a two-square-mile esplanade, known as the
Maidan, on lands of Gobindpur village. The town of Calcutta was rebuilt
around the site of the old fort. Beside the Red Tank were erected a customs
house, warehouses, residences for company junior partners and employees,
a courthouse, a town hall, and churches. Tank Square, later named Dalhousie
Square, became the center of British business activities. By 1803 an imposing
government house was erected with its front on the esplanade. It served as
the official residence and headquarters of administration for the company.
The new Fort William had only military command and strategic defense
functions. Additional troops were stationed at the cantonment at Barrackpore,
approximately eight miles north of the fort, and near Alipore to the south.
Suburbanization had been started by the British during the last decades
of the eighteenth century. Sizable country houses were built at several out-
lying rural locations by the most affluent British. Among the localities were
Chowringhee to the east, along the main streets eastward from Tank Square,
near Circular Road created by filling the Maratha Ditch, and Alipore and
Garden Reach to the south.
22 Rhoads Murphey, The City in the Swamp: Aspects of the Site and Early Growth of Calcutta,
Geographical Journal 130 (1964): 241-256.
23 A. K. Ray, A Short History of Calcutta, in Census of India 1901, Vol. VII, Part I (Calcutta, 1902).
CALCUTTA AND SUBURBS CALCUTTA 1911

1911
POPULATION DENSITY
ESPLANAQg i
Persons
m C ALCT TA T OWN 4m
ARE A WITHMN |t <
Per Acre NS .. .....
O tDERt SUSUPOS SHdo. EJ13 -40
m oWER SUBUROS 5A mD 41 - 125
~126 -200
U201 -255
FI. 10Clut 1911.

15 0 B 2- km
1 .5 0 1 2 mi
1 0 1 2 3 km
FIG. 11-Population density in Calcutta 1911.
CALCUTTA 1911 CALCUTTA 1911

ENGLISH SPEAKERS CHRISTIANS
Per Cent
Per Cent of
Population
'~~~~
L 1 & below ZIj 1 & below
Li2-5 2-5
6: 6-20
m11-35 U21 -37
N t~~~~~~~~
1 .5 0 1 2m 1.5 0 1 m i
10123km 1 0 1 2 3 km
FIG. 12-Distribution of English speakers in FIG. 13-Distribution of Christians in Cal-

Calcutta 191 1. cutta 1911.
Tank Square by the late 1880s was the central business district of Calcutta,
the focus of commercial and bureaucratic functions. Chowringhee and streets
fronting the northern and eastern sides of the Maidan had become the locale
of upper-class shopping and social activities by the early decades of the
nineteenth century. The recreational asset of the Maidan was augmented
with gardens, a riverside promenade, paths for horse riding, and a horse-
racing course.
COLONIAL PORTS 45
The Indian sector of Calcutta composed two-thirds of the area bounded
by Circular Road and contained four-fifths of the population.24 Indian eco-
nomic activity focused on Burra Bazaar or Great Market, a densely inhabited
retailing and wholesaling complex adjacent to the river anchorage north of
Tank Square. Initially Bengali cloth merchants and moneylenders were the
principal entrepreneurs, but they were gradually displaced by northern
Indian merchants who dominated the bazaar in the nineteenth century.
Large numbers of transient laborers handled and transported jute, the chief
export of the city.25 They and their employers were northern Hindi or Urdu
speakers, so Hindustani became the language of commerce rather than Ben-
gali, the prevailing language of the region and of the majority of the city
inhabitants. Another identifiable socioecological zone was located between
the Indian and European areas. It reflected the intermediate economic and
social role of Anglo-Indians, Portuguese, Armenians, Jews, Parsis, Chinese,
and Greeks in the functioning of the city.
The advent of railroads and of the industrial revolution circa 1850 in-
creased the volume of exports and the numbers of jute mills and employees
in and around Calcutta. Beginning in 1859, scores of mills for jute spinning
and weaving were erected at Howrah near the main railroad terminals that
were opposite Calcutta, as well as elsewhere upstream and downstream.
Shipping and docking facilities were improved in the 1890s by construction
of wet docks at Kidderpore, approximately two miles downstream from the
original waterfront in Calcutta. Population growth in the city and its sur-
rounding region made Calcutta the largest metropolis in India. The 1901
census recorded 848,000 inhabitants in the original municipal area as delim-
ited in 1850 together with some suburban residents.26
The early-twentieth-century spatial patterns of Calcutta had the strong
imprint of the past (Fig. 11). Some urban spaces were dominated by British
colonials: the central business district around Dalhousie Square, Fort William
and the Maidan, and adjacent Chowringhee, which was still the elite Eu-
ropean residential sector. Residential density in 1911 for the central business
district was approximately fifty persons an acre, but in Chowringhee it was
less than forty persons an acre.27 By contrast, the densities in Indian resi-
dential zones were high. Burra Bazaar, the center of indigenous trading
activities, had a residential density of 280 persons an acre, and the entirely
Indian northern and eastern wards formed a continuous belt with densities
ranging from 125 to more than 200 persons an acre. In 1911 the close asso-
ciation of English speakers and Christians with the colonial area of Calcutta
24 Pradip Sinha, Calcutta in Urban History (Calcutta: Firma K L M Pvt., 1978).

25 Prajnananda Banerjee, Calcutta and Its Hinterland-A Study in Economic History of India 1833-
1900 (Calcutta: Progressive Publishers, 1975).
26 Census of India 1901, Vol. VII, Calcutta Town and Suburbs, Part III (Calcutta, 1902).
27 Census of India 1911, Vol. VI, City of Calcutta, Part II (Calcutta, 1913).
was evident (Figs. 12 and 13). Ward statistics from the 1911 census provided
only hints about the intermediate socioecological zone to the east of the
central business district and the Maidan. That zone bordered the prime
residential areas and attracted English speakers and Christians of indigenous
or Eurasian descent. Ballygunge and Alipore were areas of European and
mixed residential expansion. Elsewhere peripheral wards were predomi-
nantly Bengali, and densities in those wards tended to be moderate or low,
a reflection of the disadvantageous circumstances of employment, income,
and housing.
Landuse at Dalhousie Square was almost exclusively commercial, financial
service, and governmental. European-type architecture and lifestyle created
an urban environment more in harmony with London than the rest of India.
The best-quality retail stores, restaurants, theaters, and exclusive clubs or
other European types of amenities were in structures on streets leading south
into Chowringhee. Municipal sewerage, water supply, street paving, street
lighting, and electric street cars were first installed in southern Calcutta and
later extended to the Indian sectors of the city.
Industrial enterprises, commonly initiated with British capital and man-
agement but increasingly operated by Indians during the late colonial period,
had proliferated in the environs of Calcutta. Because Calcutta had no space
for large plants, Howrah on the east bank of the Hooghly, where the railroads
from northern, central, and southern India had their terminals, was the
favored location. Manufacturing in Howrah included food processing, jute
textiles, chemicals, shipbuilding, and heavy steel fabrication.
CONCLUSION
The schematic model depicts the urban morphology of colonial origin
shared by Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta. Each city nevertheless had unique
features. The patterns in Madras and Calcutta were similar, spreading in
radial-concentric fashion, westward for the former and eastward for the latter,
from their cores on commercial waterfronts. The core contained a fort that
was a center for administrative and military functions, a surrounding es-
planade, and an adjacent Western-style central business district juxtaposed
with an Indian bazaar. The Indian residential sector engulfed this commercial
area, but the European residential sector had a relatively small Western-style
shopping district. Separating these two sectors was an intermediate ethnic
residential zone. An industrial area in the Indian sector and a cantonment
in the European sector were on the peripheries.
The confines of an insular site at Bombay caused spatial distortions. The
central business district occupied the area formerly enclosed by fort walls
or the space opened by removal of the walls and reclaimed land beyond the
esplanade. The densely populated Indian sector with mixed commercial and
residential landuses was located northward adjacent to the sparsely populated
business district. The same relative positions were duplicated in Madras and
COLONIAL PORTS 47
Calcutta; however, the European residential sector in Bombay was attenuated
and discontinuous. In sum, it is apparent how the morphology of the three
Indo-British ports was molded by colonial rule. Further investigations should
reveal the degree to which similar spatial patterns were developed in other
Asian port cities of colonial origin.

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Three Colonial Port Cities in India

Author(s): Meera Kosambi and John E. Brush

SCHEMATIC SPATIAL MODEL

0o- rURAL VILLA GE

~y4) qCO iENCL AVE "14,

esplanade wereceateOV'Tw aunsrtd4f o

Established on the Coromandel Coast of southeastern India in 1639, Ma-

8 B. M. Thirunaranan, The Site and Situation of Madras, in Madras 1639-1939 (edited by C. S.

eGm ~~~ST. GEORGE PERSONS PER

TRADE AND FINANCE CHRISTIANS

t . . :v:,WORKERS PERSONS BORN

FIG. 8-Distribution of trading activities in FIG. 9-Distribution of Europeans in Bombay

The second stage of morphological evolution in Bombay began after 1803,

CALCUTTA AND SUBURBS CALCUTTA 1911

FI. 10Clut 1911.

FIG. 11-Population density in Calcutta 1911.

CALCUTTA 1911 CALCUTTA 1911

FIG. 12-Distribution of English speakers in FIG. 13-Distribution of Christians in Cal-

24 Pradip Sinha, Calcutta in Urban History (Calcutta: Firma K L M Pvt., 1978).

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