Calcutta in the Nineteenth Century :An Archival Exploration

This collection examines Calcutta’s rapid transformation from a cluster of three villages into the second city of the British Empire. Bidisha Chakraborty and Sarmistha De, two talented archivists, remind us that the ancient and crumbling British legacy scattered all around Calcutta was once a fledgling imperial dream of the most astounding scope.

The English East India Company started out as a trading company but soon found itself saddled with administrative responsibilities. The British built Calcutta around Fort William, not just for the burgeoning European population but also as the nerve centre of their growing Indian empire. As word spread about how the British wanted to make Calcutta the ‘London of the East’, people from all over Bengal, India and the rest of the world flocked to Calcutta throughout the nineteenth century.

This book delves into several archival sources and unearths not just the grandeur of such an ambitious undertaking but also the meticulous planning that went with it. Through rare photographs, plans, blueprints and other documentary evidence we get a glimpse of Calcutta as the British wanted the city to be. This book shows not just how much they achieved but also the inevitable resistance that they faced. One is also made aware of the complex coloniser-colonised dialectic that lay behind the growth of a city like Calcutta.