Segregation and the Social Relations of Place, Bombay, 1890–1910

For many, a defining feature of the colonial Indian city is the high rate of segregation of its European and Indians residents. Building on recent work that explores the messy realities of social and spatial relations, this paper argues that the social geographies of the colonial city were built on the social relations of place—the network of social relations that are bound up with a particular material setting. The result was that social spaces were centred on overlapping geographic patterns, intense negotiations over space, and heterogeneous lived-in spaces. In this paper, these points are examined through the case of Bombay's Modern Town at the turn of the twentieth century. Modern Town was supposedly the home of the city's European population and it stood in sharp contrast to the city's Native Town. However, Modern Town did not conform to the spatial topographies described by most writers. While formal residential segregation existed, social and economic articulation and interaction ensured that the district's social spaces were meshed in differentiated and complex ways.