When Bengal was the Richest Place in the World
A Trip up the Hooghly River
In the early 1700s, Bengal was one of the richest places in the world. Generating 5% of global GDP, its capital Murshidabad had more wealth than the British aristocracy combined.
Indeed, so rich was this region that foreign trading companies all competed with each other for the favours of the Bengali elite. Indeed for two centuries, a forty-mile stretch of this river hosted the trading posts of five European empires.
Chandannagar, for example, became a small French colony. It became home to numerous revolutionaries and, intriguingly, to Virginia Woolf’s (and my own) Bengali ancestors. A Dutch colony, meanwhile, was established at Chinsurah, and a Portuguese one at Bandel.
Calcutta would of course become the great British city in the region, described by Lord Clive as “one of the most wicked places in the Universe... Rapacious and Luxurious beyond conception.”
