Bengal Presidency

The Bengal Presidency, officially the Presidency of Fort William in Bengal and later Bengal Province, was a subdivision of British India. At the height of its territorial jurisdiction, it covered large parts of what is now South Asia and Southeast Asia. Bengal proper covered the ethno-linguistic region of Bengal (present-day Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal). Calcutta, the city which grew around Fort William, was the capital of the Bengal Presidency. For many years, the Governor of Bengal was concurrently the Governor-General of India and Calcutta was the de facto capital of India until 1911. The Bengal Presidency emerged from trading posts established in Mughal Bengal during the reign of Emperor Jahangir in 1612. The East India Company (HEIC), a British monopoly with a Royal Charter, competed with other European companies to gain influence in Bengal. After the decisive overthrow of the Nawab of Bengal in 1757 and the Battle of Buxar in 1764, the HEIC expanded its control over much of the Indian subcontinent. This marked the beginning of Company rule in India, when the HEIC emerged as the most powerful military force in the subcontinent. The Bengal Army was made up of recruits from Bengal, Bihar and Oudh. The British Parliament gradually withdrew the monopoly of the HEIC. By the 1850s, the HEIC struggled with finances. After the Indian Mutiny of 1857, the British government assumed direct administration of India. The Bengal Presidency was re-organized. In the early 20th century, Bengal emerged as a hotbed of the Indian independence movement and the Bengali Renaissance. From the late eighteenth century till the early twentieth century, Bengal was the center of the British colonial administration in India, as well as education, politics, law, science and the arts. It was home to the largest city in British India and the second-largest city in the British Empire. At its territorial height from 1849 to 1853, the Bengal Presidency extended from the Khyber Pass to Singapore. In 1853, the Punjab was established as a province.

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