Plague and Urban Policy in Bombay, 1896–1914

Vanessa Caru & translated by Oliver Waine — 2022-11-18T06:00:00Z

What consequences can an epidemic have on a city? Vanessa Caru describes the ways in which a plague epidemic in Bombay at the turn of the 20th century changed the British colonial authorities' attitudes, the urban policies they implemented, and ultimately even the very morphology of the city.
On September 18, 1896, the first case of bubonic plague, in all likelihood spread by rats on board a boat from Hong Kong, was detected in Bombay (today Mumbai). As the first Indian city to be infected,

- From the Field / colonial urban planning, Mumbai, India, Bombay, history, urban policy, epidemic

Metropolitics

Plague and Urban Policy in Bombay, 1896–1914