This article examines the evolution of mill districts in Shanghai and Mumbai across the 20th century as cases of political heritage—in which the socio-spatial formations of factory and neighbourhood produced new meanings of citizenship for the workers in each city. Using historical materials from the textile industry in each city, government reports, housing data, and secondary sources, this article first traces the origins of Shanghai’s textile industry in the 19th century to its connections with Bombay’s textile mills, then examines the emergence of working-class neighbourhoods as they acquired distinctive patterns of tenement housing, shopfronts, and street life. The main finding is that despite clear differences in the two cities in terms of religion, culture, and politics, the ‘mill district’ became a socio-cultural formation central to the identity and memory of generations of textile workers in Shanghai and Mumbai. A concluding section examines the similar process in each city in the 21st century in which mill compounds and neighbourhoods were converted into high-end commercial real estate and sites for consumption and leisure.

中文翻译：

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纺织区的政治遗产：上海和孟买

本文以政治遗产为例，考察了20世纪上海和孟买工厂区的演变，其中工厂和邻里的社会空间形态为每个城市的工人带来了新的公民身份。本文使用每个城市纺织业的历史资料，政府报告，住房数据和第二手资料，首先追溯19世纪上海纺织业的起源与上海与孟买纺织厂的联系，然后研究可操作性的出现-等级街区，因为他们获得了不同的物业单位住房，店面和街道生活模式。主要发现是，尽管两个城市在宗教，文化和政治方面存在明显差异，“工厂区”成为一种社会文化形态，对上海和孟买的几代纺织工人的身份和记忆至关重要。结论部分探讨了21世纪每个城市的类似过程，在该过程中，工厂建筑群和社区被转变为高端商业房地产和消费休闲场所。