Genesis of Calcutta: Factory Town 1690–1757
Calcutta was born out of the trading impulse. The instinct to trade is universal in humankind but is kept in check, sometimes through material conditions of the people, at other times through social norms and habit.
A cursory reading of the history of Calcutta can give the impression that East India Company created the city out of nothing. Before there were low lying marshlands, then came the British and willed the city into existence. In fact, nothing can be further from the truth. The city of Calcutta would not be possible without a sophisticated judicial and administrative system that was already in place at the time of British advent. True, the system was in a state of decay after the death of Aurangzeb in 1707 (and this, eventually, turned out to be advantageous to the Company) but it was still functional. John Company[i] initially leased the three villages of Sutanati, Kalikata, and Gobindapur in 1690, was granted zamindari rights in 1717, and ultimately gained ‘free tenure’ of Calcutta in 1758 after the Battle of Plassey[ii]. The birth of Calcutta was thus based on a preexisting institutional structure which the East India Company, after they took control of administration, tax collection and dispensation of justice in Bengal, kept intact for a significant period of time and vestiges of which never went away. So, Calcutta was not a tabula rasa when East India Company built their factory at Fort William.
Calcutta flourished because inside the factory town, the institution of caste-based occupation broke down. That universal instinct to trade, smothered under repressive social customs, found greater freedom within the germinating township. The Company traded with any native who was willing, irrespective of his caste- what mattered was his capital, or labour, or land. Native financiers like Jagat Seth were crucial to the survival of the Company particularly in the initial years.
[i] Informal name of the East India Company
[ii] Ray, A. K. (1902). A Short History of Calcutta (Census of India, 1901). Calcutta: Bengal Secretariat Press.
