4 - The Making of a Natural Harbour

Summary

The Cochin Harbor Project (1920–1936) forms the subject of Chapter 4. Through a close reading of the official correspondence relating to the development project, this chapter will trace the differing visions of development articulated by those involved with the project and analyze how these changed over time. Conceived as a solution for the political and environmental issues confronting multiple state authorities in the first quarter of the twentieth century, the Cochin Harbor Project would be dogged by uncertainties from the time of its inception. These uncertainties stemmed not only from the participation of princely states in the modernization of a port in British India but also from the technological choices made during the project’s execution to reconcile divergent interests. Through a close analysis of the technological choices made over the course of the project’s execution, this chapter will examine the reasons why the harbour’s development took the form that it did. It will discuss these decisions not only in the context of the economic aims of the colonial state but also equally of the political aspirations of the region’s princely states.