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Zones of reterritorialization: India’s free trade zones in comparative perspective, 1947 to the 1980s*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 October 2017

Megan Maruschke
Megan Maruschke*
Affiliation:
University of Leipzig, Global and European Studies Institute, Emil-Fuchs-Straße 1, 04105 Leipzig, Germany E-mail: megan.maruschke@uni-leipzig.de
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Abstract

During the period of decolonization and the Cold War, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and US development agencies promoted free trade zones to developing countries. However, other zones emerged prior to and apart from these policy models, some of which, including India’s early zones, took on features of this model only by the 1980s. To make sense of zones within and beyond a UNIDO model, this article understands them through their connection to the rise of nation-state territoriality around the world. The zone is thereby a spatial strategy used in processes of state (re)territorialization to rearticulate state spatiality under the global condition. This article explores such a perspective by situating the history of India’s early free trade zones comparatively.

Keywords

export processing zonefree trade zoneIndiareterritorializationspecial economic zone
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 12 , Issue 3 , November 2017 , pp. 410 - 432
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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Footnotes

*

The research for this article was generously supported by the DFG Research Training Group (GK) 1261 ‘Critical junctures of globalization’, the DAAD ‘A new passage to India’ scholarship, and the DFG Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 1199 ‘Processes of spatialization under the global condition’. My sincere thanks to Matthias Middell, Patrick Neveling, Dara Orenstein, and the editors of the Journal of Global History for their helpful comments, suggestions, and criticisms.

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