Sukriti Issar, «Historicizing Real Estate: The East India Company in Early Colonial Bombay», Enterprise & Society, 2023

Nous vous signalons la parution d’un article de Sukriti Issar intitulé « Historicizing Real Estate: The East India Company in Early Colonial Bombay » dans la revue Enterprise & Society, paru en octobre 2023.

Extract

Property-as-real-estate emerged in Bombay at least by the turn of the nineteenth century. Real estate is historicized through previously unexplored archival sources (qualitative and quantitative) by analyzing how property was transacted in a colonial port, and how it became embedded in global circuits of commerce and the accumulation strategies of locals and the English East India Company. The paper demonstrates the existence by this time of legal institutions of publicity and property registration, specialized intermediaries, price-finding mechanisms such as auctions, and imaginaries of a property market as an abstract entity marked by general trends and values. Contrary to the literature that sees prices in this period as erratic and inconsistent, a systematic analysis of prices suggests a rationalized and standardized property market. These findings push back the timeline usually associated with the development of real estate in India.