Session 2- Maritime Heritage of Mumbai by Dr. Chhaya Goswami

...With the naissance of a rich ship building and seafaring culture and craft manufacturing traditions, the coastal region of Bombay appeared prepared to face global challenges and competition. The rapidly changing Gulf politics in the second half of the eighteenth century paved way to major economic shifts. The consequential ports of trade, like Bandar Abbas, Basra and Surat, lost their importance and diverted trade of the Gulf to Muscat, Mandvi and Bombay in the second half of the eighteenth century. Bombay was especially a significant centre for this commerce since it was at this harbour, that goods from the Persian Gulf, Red Sea, Africa, India and Europe entered the Arabian waters. Bombay’s strategic location between traditional pearling regions of the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Mannar and the Red Sea and its commercial viability along the East-West naval route made Bombay the commercial capital of the nineteenth century.

...To the physical landscape of the Bombay coast, the merchants had built networks to sustain a mercantile economy, involving relationship with interior groups to obtain commodities for trade. The decaying remains such as the lighthouses, docks, forts and dharmashalas or Musafirkhanas (rest houses) adjacent to the Bombay harbour reflect the existential of once a busy mercantile age. For centuries, forts and lighthouses have stood on the coasts where so much of our maritime history has played out. It is fair to say that the story of Mumbai’s maritime heritage is incomplete without the stories of her forts and lighthouses, docks, rest houses, esplanade land among others.