While ports are traditionally considered national infrastructure sites that connect states to
global markets special economic zones and past free ports are portrayed as threats to national
sovereignty. This book calls these narratives into question as it explores the history of
planning Mumbai's ports and free zones during periods of global and regional transition from
the British Raj to national independence to economic liberalization. The book opens with a
study of an unsuccessful plan hatched by merchants in 1833 to make Bombay a free port to deal
with an emerging British India and the advent of free trade. The book ends with how India's
current special economic zones and emphasis on port expansion are part of broader goals to
reposition India in transregional Asian trade to connect Mumbai with northern India and to
enact local plans for a global city that threaten the very port that first connected Mumbai to
the world. To understand the functionality of these port and zone projects beyond typical
policy prescriptions this book proposes portals of globalization as a spatial format that
fosters processes of reterritorialization.
