Making the Modern Slum

"This is a refreshingly original and challenging account of the exclusionary logic of colonial urbanization. The British not only controlled the production of space in Bombay; they also shaped an Orwellian discourse that disguised slum-making as housing reform. Highly recommended."—Mike Davis, author of Planet of Slums

"The relevance of Making the Modern Slum is not limited to urban studies of Bombay, or indeed of South Asian colonial cities. Chhabria's ability to ask fundamental questions about the city and its archive makes a major contribution to our understanding of the modern city as a construct."—Swati Chattopadhyay, author of Unlearning the City: Infrastructure in a New Optical Field

"An extensive and wide-ranging analysis of the dynamics of urban change—a work of insight and originality."—Jim Masselos, honorary reader in history, University of Sydney

"Sheetal Chhabria's bracing, meticulously researched monograph establishes, against received wisdom, that the slum is not peripheral to but constitutive of the city, the internal other against which the city proper is continually measured and refashioned. By carefully demonstrating how and where the forces of capitalism, the shifting policies of the state, and the resistances of various social strata come together and fall apart, Making the Modern Slum offers a masterful paradigm for new critical histories of the governance of poverty."—Rupa Viswanath, University of Göttingen

"Making the Modern Slum: The Power of Capital in Colonial Bombay seems like a book written to explain precisely this moment. It asks: how can we understand the relationship between "the city" and its laboring poor? This book is a must read for everyone interested in urban, housing, and economic justice, as well as for scholars of South Asia concerned with the subcontinent's enduring inequalities."—New Books in South Asia (NBN)

"[A] searing reminder of the long history of urban dependence on migrant labor in India."—Dissent

"Chhabria makes key contributions to our understanding of urban histories that are relevant not just for historians but for many who are interested in more contemporary urban planning issues."—South Asian History and Culture

"It is a forceful, passionate, and well-researched challenge to our assumption that cities predate urbanism, and its relevance extends well beyond the "limits" of Bombay."—Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians

"[I]nvaluable reading for scholars of South Asia and for anyone interested in "slums" in the Global South."—Journal of Asian Studies