Nawab of Bengal

The richest province in India, and the state a trading company took apart to get at its revenues. Bengal became effectively independent of the Mughals under Murshid Quli Khan around 1717, and its nawabs governed a territory producing a large share of the subcontinent's output - cotton textiles, silk and saltpetre exported across Asia and Europe, with Dhaka muslin so fine it was traded by name. The English East India Company held trading privileges there and abused them, fortifying Calcutta without permission and evading duties. Siraj ud-Daulah took the city in 1756 in response, an episode that produced the Black Hole story whose numbers later scholarship has substantially reduced. Robert Clive retook Calcutta and won at Plassey in June 1757 mainly by arranging in advance that the nawab's commander Mir Jafar would not fight. The Company installed Mir Jafar, then replaced him, and in 1765 obtained the diwani, the right to collect Bengal's land revenue - a company with the tax base of a large state. The famine of 1770 killed perhaps a third of the population. The nawabs continued as pensioners. Murshidabad was the capital and is now a small town in West Bengal. The province covered modern Bangladesh, West Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. Bengal may have produced around a tenth of world manufacturing output in the early eighteenth century. Dhaka muslin was effectively lost as a craft and has only recently been reconstructed. Plassey was decided by prearrangement more than by fighting, and the battle lasted a few hours in the rain.

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