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Building Urban Infrastructure: The Case of Prince’s Dock, Bombay

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2015

Robert Lewis
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
Matti Siemiatycki
Affiliation:
University of Toronto

Abstract

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Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Donald Critchlow and Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

The authors would like to thank Nick Lombardo and the three anonymous reviewers of JPH.

References

NOTES

1. “The Works at Gunnesh Khind,” Times of India, 25 June 1874.

2. “Editorial,” Times of India, 25 June 1874.

3. “More Indian Exposures,” The Architect 5 (21 January 1871): 36.

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6. Flyvbjerg et al., Megaprojects and Risk.

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12. The archives are limited because they are the record of the British colonial administrator and Indian elite. Whether it is government correspondence, newspaper editorials, or official reports, archival documents are an elite representation of the colonial world. The voices of the vast majority of Bombay’s population are heard only dimly, if at all. Nevertheless, if we proceed with caution, it is possible to work with the archival material in a productive manner and to make an informed interpretation of the building of the Prince’s Dock.

13. Greene, Julie, The Canal Builders: Making America’s Empire at the Panama Canal (New York, 2009)Google Scholar; McCullough, David, Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870–1914 (New York, 2001).Google Scholar

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20. Ibid.; Engerman and Sokoloff, “Digging the Dirt at Public Expense.”

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24. Broeze, “The External Dynamics of Port City Morphology”; Hazareesingh, “Interconnected Synchronicities.”

25. Hyde, Francis, Liverpool and the Mersey: An Economic History of a Port, 1700–1970 (Newton Abbott, 1971)Google Scholar; Pudney, John, London’s Docks (London, 1975).Google Scholar

26. While the railroads were much larger in scale, both in the territory they covered and in money they consumed, the dock as a single, one-time, in-place project was an enormous task that employed thousands of workers as well as a huge amount of administrative, technical, and financial resources. The scale of railroad building in nineteenth-century India can be gleaned from Kerr, Building the Railways.

27. William Baker, “Chairman’s Report,” Bombay Port Trust, Administration Report to 31st March 1877 (Bombay, 1877), 7.

28. Institution of Civil Engineers, “Obituary: Mr. Thomas Ormiston,” Minutes of the Institution of Civil Engineers, vol. 71 (London, 1883), 412.

29. Macdonald, John, “Letter to the Chairman, Bombay Port Trust,” Government of Bombay, Marine Department, 1880, vol. 935, compilation 137.Google Scholar

30. Ormiston, Thomas, “Letter to the Secretary of Government of Bombay,” Government of Bombay, Marine Department, 1880, vol. 935, compilation 137.Google Scholar

31. Macdonald, “Letter to the Chairman, Bombay Port Trust.”

32. Manson, George, “Port Trust-Prince’s Dock Loan,” Bombay Marine Consultations, 1880 (May, No. 264), 3Google Scholar; Government of Bombay, Marine Department, 1879, vol. 935, compilation 137.

33. “Editorial,” Times of India, 25 June 1874; “More Indian Exposures,” 36.

34. Broeze, “The External Dynamics of Port City Morphology,” 253–58; Wacha, Dinshaw, Shells for the Sands of Bombay Being My recollections and Reminiscences (Bombay 1920), 566–69Google Scholar; Dobbin, Christine, Urban Leadership in Western India: Politics and Communities in Bombay City, 1840–1855 (Oxford, 1972)Google Scholar; Hazareesingh, Sandip, The Colonial City and the Challenge of Modernity: Urban Hegemonies and Civic Contestations in Bombay, 1900–1925 (Hyderabad, 2007).Google Scholar

35. The testimony from high-ranking officials, including Lord Lawrence, the Viceroy of India, 1864–69, and the owner of a city newspaper, the Bombay Gazette, in the 1873 report on East India Finances is extremely revealing about the contested nature of the Elphinstone purchase. In particular, see House of Commons, Report from the Select Committee on East India Finances; Together With the Proceedings of the Committee, Minutes of Evidence, and Appendix (London, 1872–74), 30, 212–13, 221, 365–66, 479–500.

36. Hazareesingh, “Interconnected Synchronicities.”

37. Dossal, Mariam, Theatre of Conflict, City of Hope: Bombay/Mumbai 1660 to the Present Times (New Delhi, 2010).Google Scholar

38. Hazareesingh, “Interconnected Synchronicities.”

39. Dossal, Miriam, Imperial Designs and Indian Realities: The Planning of Bombay City, 1845–1875 (Bombay, 1991)Google Scholar; Ranade, Rekhe, Sir Bartle Frere and His Times: A Study of His Bombay Years (New Delhi, 1990).Google Scholar

40. “The Chamber of Commerce,” Times of India, 16 September 1874.

41. House of Commons, Report from the Select Committee.

42. Engerman and Sokoloff, Digging the Dirt at Public Expense.

43. “The Dock Question,” Times of India, 18 August 1874.

44. “Memorial Against the Proposed Docks,” Times of India, 7 July 1874. See also “The Native Merchants Protest Against the Proposed Docks,” Times of India, 24 July 1874, and “Bombay Port Trust. Docks,” Bombay Marine Proceedings, No. 1034 (August 1874), 14.

45. The archival sources tell us very little about the world of the native merchant. Other than memorials to government and newspaper reports, the documentary record is silent on the activities and opinions of small Indian businesses.

46. “Bombay Port Trust,” Times of India, 22 June 1874; Government of Bombay, Bombay Marine Consultations, No. 1034 (August 1874), 14.

47. Hazareesingh, “Interconnected Synchronicities,” 26–29.

48. Government of Bombay, Bombay Marine Consultations, No. 371 (March 1877), 23; “The Prince’s Dock, Times of India, 10 February 1877.

49. Government of Bombay, Bombay Marine Consultations, No. 758 (June 1877), 16.

50. “The Supreme Government’s Decision on the Dock Question,” Times of India, 18 February 1874.

51. “Editorial,” Times of India, 14 September 1874.

52. “Editorial,” Times of India, 30 July 1874.

53. Ballard, John and Manson, G., “Statement of Capital Debt Account,” in Bombay Port Trust, Annual Report, 1873– 1874Google Scholar; Government of Bombay, Public Works Department, Local Proceedings 1873 and 1874, Part II, Civil Works, No. 211 (May 1874).

54. Government of Bombay, Bombay Marine Consultations, No. 1082 (July 1876), 43.

55. Government of Bombay, Bombay Marine Consultations (December 1873), 26.

56. “Editorial,” Times of India, 14 September 1874.

57. Kerr, Building the Railways, 169.

58. Chandavarkar, Rajnarayan, History, Culture, and the Indian City (Cambridge, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 67 and 22. See also Morris, David, The Emergence of an Industrial Labor Force in India (Berkeley, 1965)Google Scholar. Numerous studies show a similar case in the building of nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century megaprojects in Asia and the Americas. For example, see Conniff, Michael, Black Labor on a White Canal: Panama, 1904–1981 (Pittsburgh, 1985).Google Scholar

59. “Factory Labour in India,” Times of India, 1 May 1879.

60. Bombay Port Trust, Administration Report for the Year Ending March 31st 1879 (Bombay, 1879), appendix.

61. Government of Bombay, Bombay Civil List Corrected to 1st January 1877 (Bombay, 1877); Bombay Port Trust, Administration Report for the Year Ending March 31st 1879, appendix. See Conlon, Frank, “Industrialization and the Housing Problem in Bombay, 1850–1940,” in Changing South Asia: Economy and Society, vol. 4, ed. Ballhatchet, Kenneth and Taylor, David (London, 1984), 157–60Google Scholar; Dossal, Imperial Designs and Indian Realities, 196–200.