Owners, creditors and traders
Women in late colonial Calcutta
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8960958 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ishita Chakravarty (Vidyasagar College, Kolkata, West Bengal, India, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 56 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 427-456 |
| Publication date | 2019-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Indian Economic & Social History Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0019-4646 • E-ISSN: 0973-0893 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0019464619873800 |
| OpenAlex | W2983502016 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 12 |
This article tries to reconstruct the world of the property-owning, mortgage-holding and money-lending women in late colonial Bengal and especially in Calcutta, the commercial capital of British India until the First World War. It argues that as all poor women occupying the urban space were not either sex workers or domestic servants, similarly all middle-class women in colonial Calcutta were not dependent housewives, teachers and doctors. At least a section of them engaged in other gainful economic activities. However, existing scholarship sheds very little light on those women who chose other means of survival than the bhadramahila: those who bought and sold houses, lent money for interest, acquired mortgages, speculated in jute trade and even managed indigenous banking business. Evidence of court records suggests that they, along with the lady teacher, the lady doctor, the midwife and the social worker or later members of political organisations, could be found in considerable numbers in late colonial Calcutta. Due to the enactment of stringent laws to control moneylending, on the one hand, and the commercial decline of Calcutta, on the other hand, these women were possibly driven out of the shrinking market of the 1940s and 1950s
Ancient history · BENGAL · Capital (architecture · Colonialism · Creditor · Debt · Economic growth · Economic history · Economics · Indigenous · Middle class · Political science · Scholarship · Sociology · Finance · History · Law · South African History and Culture · South Asian Cinema and Culture · South Asian Studies and Diaspora
The Spoils of Partition
The Government of Social Life in Colonial India
Women, Monastic Commerce, and Coverture in Eastern India circa 1600–1800 CE
The Capture of Maryam-uz-Zamānī's Ship
Women, Occupations and Work in the Victorian Censuses Revisited
The economic role of middle-class women in Victorian Glasgow
Widows, Family, Community, and the Formation of Anglo-Hindu Law in Eighteenth-Century India
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,33 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2022 (3) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |