Bombay Before Mumbai: Essays in Honour of Jim Masselos
Few cities have lodged themselves in the collective imagination quite like Mumbai. Known variously as the 'City of Gold', 'Urbs Prima in Indis', and 'Maximum City', it has attracted a wave of serious historical attention over the past ten years or so. This essay collection gathers some of the sharpest minds working on the city's past, offering a richly layered portrait of what Bombay was, and how it became what it is today. The contributors examine how urban communities took shape, how power operated within the city's shifting geography, and how nationalist impulses gradually reshaped a colonial streetscape. It's ambitious in scope, and it largely delivers. The volume is structured as a tribute to Jim Masselos, a historian who has spent more than fifty years illuminating corners of Bombay that other scholars simply walked past. His work has ranged from the habits of the city's privileged classes to the daily realities of its most marginalised residents, covering ground that few thought to tread before him. Those who came after him owe a considerable debt. The essays here respond to his scholarship directly, engaging with his ideas in ways that feel genuinely critical rather than merely reverential. For readers already interested in South Asian urban history, this collection offers fresh perspectives and sustained analytical rigour. For those coming to the subject newly, it's a stimulating introduction to a city whose past is anything but straightforward.
- Author: Prashant Kidambi Manjiri Kamat Rachel Dwyer
- Publisher: Penguin Viking
- Genre: Architecture
- ISBN: 978-0670093496
- Pages: 464 pages