History of Mumbai
The historical development of Mumbai, from its early settlements and Portuguese and British rule to its emergence as a major Indian metropolis.
Seven Islands of Bombay: The seven islands that formed the core of the settlement later joined into modern Mumbai. Their geography shaped the earliest settlements and the long process of building a continuous city.
Hornby Vellard: An eighteenth-century embankment project that protected Bombay from flooding and enabled reclamation between its islands. It was an early major intervention in the geography that defined the growing city.
Gerald Aungier: An English East India Company administrator who governed Bombay from 1669 to 1677 and promoted its development. His policies helped establish Bombay as a commercial and administrative center.
Bombay textile industry: The cotton-mill sector that made Bombay a major industrial city from the nineteenth century through the twentieth century. Mill employment drew migrants and shaped neighborhoods, labor politics, and the urban economy.
Koli people: An Indigenous fishing community of Mumbai’s coast, with settlements predating Portuguese and British rule. Koli villages preserve the city’s precolonial human history and coastal economy.
Bombay Reclamation: The filling and joining of tidal flats and channels to create usable land in and around Bombay. Reclamation physically transformed the island settlement into a larger, connected urban area.
Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy: A Parsi merchant and philanthropist who became one of nineteenth-century Bombay’s wealthiest public benefactors. His philanthropy helped build civic institutions during the city’s rapid expansion.
Great Bombay textile strike: A prolonged 1982 strike by Bombay textile workers, led by Datta Samant, that involved roughly 250,000 workers. The strike hastened the decline of the mill economy and transformed central-city land use.
Silhara dynasty: A medieval dynasty that ruled parts of the Konkan coast, including the Mumbai islands, from the ninth to thirteenth centuries. Its rule left early religious and political landmarks on the islands.
Great Indian Peninsula Railway: A railway company founded in 1845 that opened India’s first passenger railway, between Bombay and Thane, in 1853. Rail links connected the port city to inland markets and accelerated its growth.