The State of Lahore Under Colonialism: A Political Economic Analysis

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.