Urban Growth and Municipal Development in the Colonial City of Madras, 1860-1900

Abstract

Madras City, founded in the mid-seventeenth century, was the earliest colonial port city established by the British in India. Like the other port cities of Asia which were the creation of European powers, Madras functioned primarily as a base for overseas trade. As it grew and developed, its morphological and spatial patterns were dictated by the presence of a western population which at first was exclusively trade-oriented, but over the centuries became involved in banking, business and administration. As the British shifted from their role as traders to rulers of the Indian Subcontinent, they added a new dimension to the cities they created—a municipal apparatus to monitor urban growth, to regulate the use of land, and to insure that certain areas, especially those where they resided, would receive adequate urban facilities. The cities they founded had certain characteristics: each contained a large indigenous populace, far outnumbering the colonial elite that was effectively in charge of urban development. The residential areas of these urban dwellers were spatially segregated from those of the Europeans, and more densely populated. Indigenous and colonial life-styles determined the nature of settlement patterns and, in turn, molded the form of the built environment.

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