Bengal faced changes after the british came to

Calcutta

By Parnika Vaid

Contents in this presentation

• Who selected the place Calcutta for a British trade settlement and why was it particularly selected

• Social and intellectual life in the 18th century

• The Baboo culture and the Bengal renaissance

• The growth of the state after the British came to India

THE AGENT OF BRITISH COMPANY JOB CHARNOK

• In 1960 Job Charnok an agent of the east India company chose

this place a British trade settlement this site was carefully selected being protected by the river Hooghly river on the best

and a creek to the North

Social and intellectual life in the 18th century

In 1772, Calcutta became the capital of British India, a decision made by Governor General Warren Hastings. On January 29, 1780, Hickey's Bengal Gazette or the Calcutta General Advertiser became the first newspaper to be printed in India, and is an invaluable chronicle of the social life of Anglo-Indian society in Calcutta. Contemporary memoirs such as those of William Hickey record the consumption of enormous meals, washed down by copious quantities of claret, port, madeira

and other wines, followed by the smoking of Hookahs.[9]

After the death of his English wife, Charlotte, (who is buried in Park Street Cemetery) Hickey married a Bengali girl called Jemdanee, who died in childbirth in 1796, prompting him to write in his journal that "Thus did I lose as gentle and affectionately attached a girl as ever man was blessed with".[10] Such unions between Europeans, English, French and Portuguese, and local women, both Hindu and Muslim, were common throughout the 18th century in Calcutta, and are the origin of the city's substantial Anglo-Indian (or Eurasian) community today: by the early 19th century, however, increasing racial intolerance made marriages of this kind much rarer.

• Calcutta's intellectual life received a great boost in 1784 with the foundation of the Asiatic Society of Bengal by Sir William Jones, with the encouragement of Warren Hastings, himself no mean Oriental scholar. Jones worked closely with the pandits of the Kalighat Temple, together with the local ulema, in translating and producing new editions of rare and forgotten texts.

• His study of Sanskrit with Pandit Ramlochan at Nadiya led him to posit the existence of the Indo-European family of languages. Many distinguished scholars, English and Bengali, such as Henry Thomas Colebrooke, James Prinsep and Pandit Radhakanta Sarman would grace the Society's meetings and publications over the following century, vastly enriching knowledge of India's culture and past.[11]

The baboo culture and the bengalrenaissance

• In the time of British India, Calcutta was regarded as "the second city of the British Empireand was aptly renamed "City of Palaces" and the Great Eastern Hotel was regarded as the "Jewel of the East".[citation needed

] Calcutta at that time was famous for its "Baboo Culture", a mixture of English Liberalism, European fin de siecle decadence, Mughal conservatism, and indigenous revivalism, inculcating aspects of socio-moral and political change.

This culture was fostered in its wake by theZamindari system, the Dayabhaga System the Hindu Joint Family System, the Mitakshara System, the Muslim Zenana System, the Protestant spirit of free capitalist enterprise, the Mughal-inspired feudal system and the Nautch.[citation needed] This also fostered the Bengal Renaissance,[citation needed] an awakening of modern liberal thinking in 19th century Bengal, and which gradually percolated to the rest of India.

Growth• In 1750, Calcutta had a population of 120,000.[12] The centre of

Company control over the whole of Bengal from 1757, Calcutta underwent rapid industrial growth from the 1850s, especially in the textile sector, despite the poverty of the surrounding region. Trade with other nations also grew. For example, the first U.S. merchant ship arrived in Kolkata in 1787. In fact, the U.S Consulate in Calcutta is the U.S. Department of State's second-oldest consulate and dates from November 19, 1792.[13]

• Despite being almost totally destroyed by a cyclone, in which 60,000 died, on 5 October 1864, Calcutta grew, mostly in an unplanned way, in the next 150 years from 117,000 to 1,098,000 inhabitants (including suburbs), and now has a metropolitan population of approximately 14.6million.

BENGAL, ONCE THREATENED BY THE BRITISH STILL HAD

SOME PRECIOUS MONUMENTS

THANK YOU