Colonial city and the challenge of modernity

British rule in India lasted just under two centuries, from 1757 to 1947. During this period, Bombay gradually emerged as the most significant colonial port city in Asia. Established by the East India Company, the development of Bombay under British rule can to a large extent be seen as a process of dependent urbanism, i.e., a situa tion where "the urban form exists as a channel for the extraction of quantities of surplus from a rural and resource hinterland for pur poses of shipment to the major metropolitan centres."" Historically, dependent urbanism was part of the broader expansion of the capi talist world economy. From the sixteenth century, this economy gave rise to a system of port cities, divided hierarchically between the growing imperial cities of the major European powers and the colo nial cities of the territories into which these powers expanded. In turn, the rise of colonial cities often undermined older cities in the region that had been functionally crucial to ancient trade routes. Before the rise of Bombay in western India, it was Surat, 300 kilo metres to the north, that had served as the major centre of foreign trade until the mid-eighteenth century.

Crucial features of Bombay's evolution as a city in the nineteenth century can be placed within the wider framework of dependent development. The various phases of Bombay's growth occurred pri marily as a result of the wealth accumulated from the export trade in cotton and opium. At the same time, a dominant urban class struc ture emerged from the alliance between European agency houses and elite Indian merchants designed to secure tight command over the chains of rural labour employed in cotton and opium culti vation in the nineteenth century.