Calcutta in Colonial Transition

Calcutta in Colonial Transition PDF

Author: Ranjit Sen

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2019-03-14

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 0429576110

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book brings home the story of how three clustered villages grew into a primate city, in which a garrison town, a port city and the capital of an empire merged into one entity—Calcutta. This and its companion volume Birth of a Colonial City examine the geopolitical factors that were significant in securing Calcutta's position in the light of growing influence of the East India Company and subsequently the British Empire. A definitive history of Calcutta in its nascent years, this book discusses the challenges of city-planning, the de-industrialization at the hands of British imperialists, the catastrophic fall of the Union Bank, the advent of British capital, and the rise of the Bengali business enterprise in the colonial era. It also underlines how Calcutta facilitated the development of a political consciousness and the pivotal political and cultural role it played when the movement for independence took hold in the country. This volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of modern South Asian history, British Studies, city and area studies.

Birth of a Colonial City

Birth of a Colonial City PDF

Author: Ranjit Sen

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2019-03-20

Total Pages: 262

ISBN-13: 0429638981

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Long before Calcutta was ‘discovered’ by Job Charnock, it thrived by the Hugli since times immemorial. This book, and its companion Colonial Calcutta, is a biographical account of the when, the how and the what of a global city and its emergence under colonial rule in the 1800s. Ranjit Sen traces the story of how three clustered villages became the hub of the British Empire and a centre of colonial imagination. He examines the historical and geopolitical factors that were significant in securing its prominence, and its subsequent urbanization which was a colonial experience without an antecedent. Further, it sheds light on Calcutta’s early search for identity — how it superseded interior towns and flourished as the seat of power for its hinterland; developed its early institutions, while its municipal administration slowly burgeoned. A sharp analysis of the colonial enterprise, this volume lays bare the underbelly of the British Raj. It will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of modern history, South Asian history, urban studies, British Studies and area studies.

Kolkata — The Colonial City in Transition

Kolkata — The Colonial City in Transition PDF

Author: Sumana Bandyopadhyay

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-12-20

Total Pages: 395

ISBN-13: 1000603717

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book explores the spatial characteristics of the city of Kolkata in India in terms of the physical, economic, social, political, and environmental aspects of urban geography, and focuses upon the inherent processes that impact its transformation. It discusses different facets of urban geography and highlights the contemporary challenges of a major primate city in South Asia, which represents the conflicts between the traditional and the modern, the rich and the poor, the skyscrapers and the shanties. With its detailed empirical research and mapping exercises based on real-time remote sensing data, the book offers an understanding of a range of contemporary urban issues. It examines the spatial consequences of urban sprawl, land-use changes, ecological crisis, climate change, critical disasters, dynamics of the peri-urban interface, neighborhood restructuring, debates around heritage conservation, housing poverty, gray spaces, governance and the political landscape of the city. This book will be useful to students, teachers, and researchers of geography, especially human geography and urban geography, urban studies, urban development and planning, regional planning, social geography, governance, ecology, economics, and South Asian studies. It will also benefit urban planners, development professionals, and those interested in the study of the city of Kolkata and its transformations.

Texts of Power

Texts of Power PDF

Author: Partha Chatterjee

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 9780816626878

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Scholars from the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences in Calcutta explore t genealogy of India's contemporary intellectual modernity, concentrating on Bengal the first modern province. The topics include colonial and nationalist literature, art, politics, child rearing, historical memory, and th

Representing Calcutta

Representing Calcutta PDF

Author: Swati Chattopadhyay

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2005-09-20

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 1134289413

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Detailed account of the modern birth of one of South Asia's most important cities Draws on art history, postcolonial theory and spatial theory Particularly useful for courses on urban development, post-colonialism and South Asia

A Hygienic City-Nation

A Hygienic City-Nation PDF

Author: Nabaparna Ghosh

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-10-29

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1108883427

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Calcutta, the centre of British imperial power in India, figures in scholarship as the locus of colonialism and the hotbed of anti-colonial nationalist movements. Yet, historians have largely ignored how the city shaped these movements. A Hygienic City-Nation is the first academic work that examines everyday urban formations in the colonial city that informed the broad global forces of imperialism, nationalism, and urbanism, and were, in turn, shaped by them. Drawing on previously unexplored archives of the Calcutta Improvement Trust and neighbourhood clubs, the author uncovers hidden stories of the city at the everyday level of neighbourhoods or paras, where kinship-like ties, caste, religion, and ethnicity constituted new urban modernity. Ghosh focuses on an emergent discourse on Hindu spatial hygiene that powered nationalist pedagogic efforts to train city dwellers in conduct fit for the city-nation. In such pedagogic efforts, upper-caste Bengalis were pitted against the lower-caste working poor and featured as ideal inhabitants of the city: the citizen.

The Transition to a Colonial Economy

The Transition to a Colonial Economy PDF

Author: Prasannan Parthasarathi

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2001-04-19

Total Pages: 190

ISBN-13: 9780521570428

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

According to widespread belief, poverty and low standards of living have been characteristic of India for centuries. Challenging this view, Prasannan Parthasarathi demonstrates that, until the late eighteenth century, labouring groups in South India, those at the bottom of the social order, were in a powerful position, receiving incomes well above subsistence. The decline in their economic fortunes, the author asserts, was a process initiated towards the end of that century, with the rise of colonial rule. Building on revisionist interpretations, he examines the transformation of Indian society and its economy under British rule through the prism of the labouring classes, arguing that their treatment by the early colonial state had no precedent in the pre-colonial past and that poverty and low wages were a product of colonial rule. The book promises to make an important contribution to the economic history of the region, and to the study of colonialism.

Lanterna Rally - Theme by Grace Themes