The purpose of this article is to survey the field of historical studies concerned with “middle” cities (populations 100,000 to one million) in the post-Independence period of South Asia— which includes the nations of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bhutan, and the Maldives—with particular focus on places with populations between 100,000 and 200,000 and places that are rapidly growing to enter this category. The discussion begins with a statistical overview of the explosive growth of urbanization in South Asia since 1947-1948. The argument then moves into the colonial past to sketch the preconditions for urban change at the beginning of the British colonial period and the British-led contributions to “secondary” urban growth through initiatives in transportation systems, the cantonment, the hill station, and the agrarian marketing-and-administrative center. The argument then shifts back to approaches that may aid in the understanding of post-colonial economic and technological processes that built on the colonial framework to propel urban growth for middle cities; case studies here include central place theory, analysis of grass-roots capitalist development and entrepreneurship, and the impact of state-designed industrial planning. The article concludes with observations on the challenges presented to the historical profession by this gigantic field of urban expansion.
For example, the Census of India categorizes an urban area as having a minimum population of 5,000, at least 75 percent of male working population engaged in non-agricultural pursuits, and a population density of at least 400 per square kilometer. Urban areas with more than 100,000 inhabitants, consisting of individual places or an "agglomeration" of contiguous places, are called cities, or Class I urban units. Smaller urban sites, including Class II (50,000 to 99,999 inhabitants), Class III (20,000 to 49,999), Class IV (10,000 to 19,999), and Class V (5,000 to 9,999) are called towns. It is possible for a settlement with less than 100,000 persons to become a city through the constitution of a municipal governmental body for it by administrative action of a state government.
2.
Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd , Middletown: A Study in Contemporary American Culture (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1929); Middletown in Transition: A Study in Cultural Conflicts (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1937).
3.
United Nations, World Urbanization Prospects: The 2005 Revision (New York: United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, 2005), 1, 47-49, 53, 126-28.
4.
Ibid, 52, 126.
5.
In this paper I have made an effort to portray all individual cities mentioned in the text on the maps included as part of the paper, but I have not included the names of states or provinces (although Figure 3 shows their boundaries). I ask those unfamiliar with these regional divisions to access them in atlases or on the Internet.
6.
Statistics for the population of South Asian cities in 2007, used for the construction of Figure 1 and 3 and at many places in the text of this paper, come from World Gazetteer (http://www.worldgazetteer .com, accessed October 2007).
7.
K.N. Chaudhury , "Some Reflections on the Town and Country in Mughal India," Modern Asian Studies12, no. 1 (1978): 77-96.
8.
Leela Visaria and Pravin Visaria, "Population 1757-1947," In Dharma Kumar and Tapan Raychaudhuri, ed., The Cambridge Economic History of India 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 466, 490.
9.
Otto H. Koenigsberger, "New Towns in India," Town Planning Review23, no. 2 (1952): 95-132; Jugendra Sahai, Urban Complex of an Industrial City (Allahabad: Chugh Publications, 1980), 25; R. Ramachandran, Urbanization and Urban Systems in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989), 60-62.
10.
Robert G.Varady, "Modern Agents of Change," In Ian J. Kerr, ed., Railways in Modern India ( New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), 257-61.
11.
K. Dharmasena, "Colombo: Gateway and Oceanic Hub of Shipping," In Frank Broeze, ed., Brides of the Sea: Port Cities of Asia from the 16th-20th Centuries (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989), 152-72; Rhoads Murphy, "Colombo and the Re-making of Ceylon: A Prototype of Colonial Asian Port Cities," In Frank Broeze, ed., Gateways of Asia: Port Cities of Asia in the 13th-20th Centuries ( London and New York: Kegan Paul International, 1997), 191-210; Nihal Perera, Decolonizing Ceylon: Colonialism, Nationalism, and the Politics of Space in Sri Lanka (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999).
12.
Daniel Thorner, "The Pattern of Railway Development in India," In Ian J. Kerr, ed., Railways in Modern India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press , 2001), 80-96; Ellen McDonald Gumperz, "City-Hinterland Relations and the Development of a Regional Elite in Nineteenth-Century Bombay ," In Ian J. Kerr, ed., Railways in Modern India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), 97-126.
13.
R. Ramachandran, Urbanization and Urban Systems in India, 67.
14.
Ranajit Das Gupta, Labour and Working Class in Eastern India: Studies in Colonial History (Calcutta: K. P. Bagchi, 1994), 27.
15.
Vasant P. Pethe , "Factors in Demographic-economic Evolution of a City of Maharashtra: A Case Study of Sholapur City," In Makrand Mehta, ed., Urbanization in Western India: Historical Perspective (Ahmedabad: Gujarat University, 1988), 337-51; Atiya Habeeb Kidwai, "Urban Atrophy in Colonial India: Some Demographic Indicators," In Indu Banga, ed., The City in Indian History: Urban Demography, Society, and Politics (New Delhi: Manohar; Columbia MO: South Asia Publications, 1991), 149-71.
16.
Sukanta Chaudhuri, ed., Calcutta: The Living City 1 (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990), 35; Anand Yang, Bazaar India: Markets, Society, and the Colonial State in Bihar (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 92-93.
17.
Anand Yang, Bazaar India, 180-84, 194-97.
18.
Anthony D. King , Colonial Urban Development: Culture, Social Power, and Environment (London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976), 98.
19.
Rajendra Joshi , "Naya Shahar (Beawar): The Emergence of a Colonial Town," In Makrand Mehta, ed., Urbanization in Western India: Historical Perspective ( Ahmedabad: Gujarat University, 1988 ), 109-29.
20.
Dane Kennedy , The Magic Mountains: Hill Stations and the British Raj (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996).
21.
Pamela Kanwar , Imperial Simla: The Political Culture of the Raj (Delhi: Oxford University Press , 1990).
22.
Abdul Rehman and James L.Wescoat, J.r., Pivot of the Punjab: The Historical Geography of Medieval Gujrat (Lahore: Dost Associates Publishers, 1993).
23.
Sir Malcolm Darling, The Punjab Peasant in Prosperity and Debt, 4th edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1947), 114.
24.
Reeta Grewal , "Urban Revolution under Colonial Rule," In Indu Banga, ed., Five Punjabi Centuries: Polity, Economy, Society and Culture, c. 1500-1990 ( New Delhi: Manohar, 1997), 438-54.
25.
J.G. Beazley and F.H. Puckle, The Punjab Colony Manual 1, revised edition (Lahore: Superintendent, Government Printing, Punjab, 1926), 255-62; Imran Ali, The Punjab under Imperialism, 1885-1947 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), 89-91.
26.
Reeta Grewal , "Urban Revolution under Colonial Rule," 441-42.
27.
Mohammad Waseem , "Urban Growth and Political Change at the Local Level: The Case of Faisabad City, 1947-75," In Akbar S. Ahmed, ed., Pakistan: The Social Sciences' Perspective (Karachi: Oxford University Press , 1990), 207-28.
28.
Raj Nath Thakur , Micro-regional Central Place System in India (A Case Study of the Siwan Region) (New Delhi: Inter-India Publications, 1985).
29.
Hans Schenk, "Alleppey: From a Port without a City to a City without a Port," In Frank Broeze, ed., Gateways of Asia: Port Cities of Asia in the 13th-20th Centuries ( London and New York: Kegan Paul International, 1997), 294-317.
30.
Jean Deloche, Transport and Communications in India Prior to Steam Locomotion. Volume 2: Water Transport, James Walker, trans. (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994), 2:81, 91.
31.
Robert L.Hardgrave, J.r., The Nadars of Tamilnad: The Political Culture of a Community in Change (Berkeley andLos Angeles: University of California Press, 1969).
32.
Per Hilding, Technology in a Controlled Economy: The Match Industry in India ( Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press and Nordic Institute of Asian Studies, 1992); D. Chandramohan, "Thiru. P. Ayya Nadar: The Great Visionary," In 100th Year Celebrations of Shri. P. Ayya Nadar, The Architect of Modern Sivakasi 1905-2005 (Sivakasi: Ayya Nadar Janaki Ammal College, 2005), 125-32.
33.
T.K. Moulik and P. Purushotham, "The Match Industry in Sivakasi: A Case Study of Technology, Working Conditions and Self-Employment," Economic and Political Weekly, Review of Management (May 1982), M43-53; Smitu Kothari, "There's Blood on Those Matchsticks," Economic and Political Weekly (July 2, 1983), 1191-1202; E.K. Warrier, The Match Industry in Sivakasi, Sattur: Towards Removal of Child Labour. Report of a study presented to the Ministry of Labour, Government of India (Madras: Madras Institute of Development Studies, 1985); Government of Tamil Nadu, Report on Survey of Child Labour in the Match Belt: Tamil Nadu (Madras: Department of Social Welfare, 1994).
34.
Robert L. Hardgrave, Jr., The Nadars of Tamilnad, 111-12.
35.
I wish to acknowledge the assistance provided by V. Geetha, who helped coordinate a research excursion to Sivakasi in January 2006, where we were able to engage in conversations with industrial personnel within the printing industry and several managers of match works, and go on an extended tour of a match production facility.
36.
(1952) J.J.F. Heins and E.N. Meijer, "Population Movements to a Growth-pole: The Case of Hosur, Tamil Nadu," Third World Planning Review12, no. 3 ( 1990): 231-47; Joanne Heyink Leestemaker, "Women at the Labor Markets of Hosur," In J. J. F. Heins, E. N. Meijer, and K. W. Kuipers, ed., Factories and Families: A Study of a Growth Pole in South India ( New Delhi: Manohar, 1992), 71-88.
37.
Pithampur Auto Cluster (http://www.pautocluster.com , accessed October 2007).
38.
Dozens of additional sites within South Asia that could be classified as middle cities or small cities remain occluded in this study because they officially fall within the boundaries of the metropolitan regions surrounding mega-cites or tier-two cities, and contribute their populations to the total populations of those regions.
39.
D.G. Pandya, Pattern of Urban Settlements in Gujarat (Ahmedabad: Karnavati Publications, 1999); Centre for Policy Research, The Future of Urbanisation: Spread and Shape in Selected States (New Delhi: Centre for Policy Research, 2001).
40.
National Highways Authority of India ( http://www.nhai.org, accessed October 2007).
