Question

Eluciate the process through which bombay emerged as a trading city from a humble group of island villages

Answer 1

Bombay: The Prime City of India 
 Bombay was a group of seven islands. 
 1661: The control of Bombay passed into the British hands after the marriage of Britain’s King Charles II to the Portuguese princess. 
 Bombay became the principal Western port for the East India Company. At first, Bombay was the major outlet for cotton textiles from Gujarat. 
 It became an important administrative and industrial centre of Western India. 
 1819: Bombay became the capital of the Bombay Presidency after the Maratha defeat in the Anglo-Maratha war. 
 1854: First cotton textile mill was established in Bombay 
 1919-1926: Women formed 23% of the mill workforce 
 Late 1930s: Women’s jobs were increasingly taken over by machines or men 

 With the rapid and unplanned expansion of the city, the crisis of housing and water supply became acute by the mid-1950s. 
 More than 70% of the working people lived in the thickly-populated chawls of Bombay. Chawls were multi-storeyed old structures. 
 Merchants, bankers and building contractors owned these chawls. Each chawl was divided into one-room tenements with no private toilets. 
 Lower castes were kept out of many chawls and often had to live in shelters made of corrugated sheets, leaves or bamboo poles. 
 Town planning emerged from fears of social revolution and the fears about the plague epidemic. 
 1898: The City of Bombay Improvement Trust was established. It focused on clearing poor homes out of the city centre. 
 Land Reclamation in Bombay 
 The need for additional commercial space in the mid-19th century led to the formulation of several government and private plans for the reclamation of more land from sea. 
 1864: The Back Bay Reclamation Company won the right of reclaiming the Western foreshore from the tip of Malabar Hill to the end of Colaba. 
 As population started growing in the early 19th century, every bit of the available area was built over and new areas were reclaimed from the sea. 
 Bombay as the City of Dreams: The World of Cinema and Culture 
 1896: Harishchandra Sakharam Bhatwadekar shot a scene of a wrestling match in Bombay’s Hanging gardens and it became India’s first movie. 
 1913: Dadasaheb Phalke made Raja Harishchandra 
 By 1925, Bombay became the film capital of India. 
 Many people in the film industry were migrants from cities such as Lahore, Madras and Calcutta.



Madhumita Das answered this

The main stages in the emergence of Bombay as a metropolitan city were

1. Bombay started as a group of seven islands. In 1661, the control of Bombay passed into the British hands after the marriage of Britain’s King Charles II to the Portuguese princess. 

2. The British developed as the principal port in Western India. A series of Land Reclamation Schemes were launched in Bombay starting in 1784. This greatly expanded the area of Bombay.

3. In 1819, Bombay became the capital of the Bombay Presidency after the Maratha defeat in the Anglo-Maratha war. It became an important administrative and industrial centre of Western India. 

4 In 1854, the first cotton textile mill was established in Bombay . From then on, Bombay became the centre of the cotton textile industry in India. This led to a huge influx of migrant population from all over the country who were looking for jobs in the industries of Bombay.

5. From the early 20th century, Bombay also became the centre of the film industry in India. After independence, Bombay has remained the preeminent financial and industrial city of the country.
 

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