Ports Towns Cities : A Historical Tour of the Indian Littoral

Contents: 1. Introduction/Lakshmi Subramanian. 2. The first urbanization in the Indian subcontinent/Ranbir Chakravarti. 3. Early Historical Urban Centres, c. 600 BCE -- 300 CE/Ranbir Chakravarti. 4. Coastal settlements and communities: Defining the maritime landscape in Early South Asia/Himanshu Parabha Ray. 5. The Mughal Port Cities of Surat and Hugli/Farhat Hasan. 6. Mapping the landscape of Pondicherry in the seventeenth century/S. Jeyaseela Stephen. 7. Calcutta, The English City on the Ganges: Temperament and architecture in the eighteenth century/Jonathan Roy Barlow. 8. The call of the sea: Maritime Mumbai, c. 1660--2000/Mariam Dossal. 9. Madras: Queen of the Coromandel/Lakshmi Subramanian. Index. Contributors.

"The maritime profile of the Indian subcontinent has emerged in recent years as an important area of historical investigation and has revived interest in port cities, which are transit points for a whole range of new developments, from colonialism to consumption, from cosmopolitan cultural expressions to expanding economic opportunities. Central to the maritime story has been the rise and fall of the Indian city, which was the conduit for change and transformation, the crucible of culture and exchange. From the towns of the Indus Civilization and urban centres of Ancient India, to the Mughal ports and the cities of colonial times, there is an underlying thread of continuity that is related to the functions and potential of urban formations. This volume profiles Indian cities along the vertices of overseas trade and thereby charts Indian maritime history from a new vantage point that does not adhere to conventional assumptions of subcontinental politics.

In addressing some of these issues of historiography through a survey of select port cities over along time period, this book attempts to redress the land bias that has characterized the writing of India's history." (jacket)