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History of Mumbai
Following
the first war of Independence in 1857, the East India Company was
accused of mismanagement, and Bombay reverted to the British crown.
With the outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861, and the opening
of the Suez Canal in 1869, exports, specially cotton, from Bombay
became a major part of the colonial economy.
The Great Indian Peninsular
Railway facilitated travel within India. This network of commerce
and communication led to an accumulation of wealth. This was
channelled into building an Imperial Bombay by a succession of
Governors. Many of Bombay's famous landmarks, the Flora Fountain and
the Victoria Terminus, date from this time.
The water works, including the Hanging Gardens and the lakes were
also built at this time. The Bombay Municipal Corporation was
founded in 1872. However, this facade of a progressive and
well-governed city was belied by the plague epidemics of the 1890s.
This dichotomy between the city's symbols of power and prosperity
and the living conditions of the people who make it so continues
even today.
The construction of Imperial Bombay continued well into the 20th
century. Landmarks from this period are the Gateway of India, the
General Post Office, the Town Hall (now the Asiatic Library) and the
Prince of Wales Museum. Bombay expanded northwards into the first
suburbs, before spreading its nightmare tentacles into the the
northern suburbs. The nearly 2000 acres reclaimed by the Port Trust
depressed the property market for a while, but the Backbay
reclamation scandal of the '20s was a testament to the greed for
land.
The freedom movement reached a high pitch of activity against this
background of developing Indian wealth. Gandhi returned from South
Africa and reached Bombay on January 12, 1915. Following many
campaigns in the succeeding years, the end of the British imperial
rule in India was clearly presaged by the Quit India declaration by
the Indian National Congress on August 8, 1942, in Gowalia Tank
Maidan, near Kemp's Corner. India became a free country on August
15, 1947. In the meanwhile, Greater Bombay had come into existence
through an Act of the British parliament in 1945.
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