Abstract:
This paper by Professor Shahnaz Rouse, Sarah Lawrence College, New
York was written when she spent time at the Lahore School of Economics,
as a visiting Professor at the Graduate Institute of Development Studies,
to contribute to its recently started long-term project on the “Economic
History of Pakistan since the Mughals 1520-2020”.
As Professor Rouse points out, her study forms part of a larger project on
Lahore she is undertaking and this working paper is also work in progress
which will be published as a monograph by the Lahore School of
Economics during next year.
The paper traces the colonial history of Lahore and within it examines
three issues: first, military-geo strategic pre-occupations (divided further
into shifting borders and boundaries, (re)making bodies, mobilities,
policing and resistance); second, economic aspects with a detailed
analysis of the coming of railways, railway workshops and new job
opportunities and its socio-economic implications for the city; and third a
(re)turn to representation which according to the author “came to rest
solely on the surface, on the appearance of things, i.e. their legibility”.
This working paper will be of considerable interest to both more general
readers on the development of Lahore under colonial rule but will especially
appeal to both economists and economic historians given its detailed and
carefully nuanced political economy approach which brings out the
economic forces that interacted with the emergence of new classes and
which then shaped socio-economic changes in Lahore during this period.
