Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the geography and internal worlds of early hotels in colonial Bombay. Run predominantly by Parsi proprietors and catering to a European clientele, hotels promised the material comforts and respectability of an English home in the midst of the bustling urban milieu of Bombay.

Paper long abstract:

Historians have yet to consider hotels in their landscaping and articulations of colonial India: as sites where the separatist discourse of imperialism was staged; in comparison with similar resort/retreat settlements like clubs, gymkhanas and hill stations; as a marriage of the otherwise antithetical commerce and domesticity, as institutionalizing the modern mobile urban condition. This paper will first focus on how hotels came to be located in the two hubs of Bombay, Fort and Byculla, to the exclusion of other strongholds like Colaba and Parel. Secondly it will consider why European travelers preferred staying in hotels to setting up temporary homes in the city, a feasible alternative given the host of residential premises available to let, some for six months or shorter periods. It will conclude with an account of the opening of The Esplanade Hotel in 1871.The Hotel was part of a wider state backed initiative, begun in the 1860's, to redesign the Fort with grand imperial institutions, erasing the older geography of ramparts and congested spaces.