SBR-9527559 Upton/Chattopadhyay This doctoral-dissertation-improvement award supports archival and field research into the mid-nineteenth-century change in the reality and perception of Calcutta as a city. Earlier research has allowed the investigators to propose that the change coincided with socio-economic changes in the city (namely, the rise of a Bengali middle class) that affected the urban morphology and image. These changes, in turn, may have affected subsequent city planning and investment patterns. The research will be carried out via archival research in London and in Calcutta, using travel journals, letters, newspaper and journal articles in English and in Bengali, along with photographs and sketches to provide insights into the natures of the built environment in nineteenth-century Calcutta. In addition, the research will entail field observation of historic buildings in representative sections of contemporary Calcutta. The project should result in a case study of the interaction of social change, land-use change, and popular image in a colonial setting. These interactions have relevance to contemporary urban social change in culturally heterogeneous settings.
