The Meanings of a Port City Boundary: Calcutta’s Maratha Ditch, c.1700–1950

Abstract

Abstract Global histories have fixated on connections, notably in their treatment of colonial and postcolonial port cities. While such cities have been intensely connected places, however, they have also been intensely bounded ones. The present article takes as an example of this phenomenon the archetypal port city of Calcutta (now Kolkata) and its historical boundary, the Maratha Ditch. From the eighteenth century to the twentieth century, the ditch was a vital site of meaning-making that sustained lasting political, legal and social divisions. It separated Calcutta, in an evolving fusion of concrete and abstract, formal and informal ways, from the surrounding province of Bengal and from the rest of India. Nonetheless, for generations of rulers, citizens and outside observers, refiguring or repurposing the ditch was a means to remake the city. The story told here is instructive in two broad respects. Firstly, it suggests a new way to study the history of a port city like Calcutta: from its margins. Secondly, it provides the basis for a new historical geography of the urban world: one attentive to boundaries and connections alike.