William Benedict Hamilton-Dalrymple is an India-based Scottish historian and art historian, as well as a curator, photographer, broadcaster and critic. He is also one of the co-founders and co-directors of the world's largest writers' festival, the annual Jaipur Literature Festival. He is currently a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.
Fort William is a fort in Hastings, Calcutta (Kolkata). It was built during the early years of Britain's administration of Bengal. It sits on the eastern banks of the River Hooghly, the major distributary of the River Ganga. One of Kolkata's most enduring British-era military fortifications, other than those in Bombay (Mumbai) and Madras (Chennai), it extends over an area of seventy hectares.
Job Charnock was an English administrator with the East India Company. He is commonly regarded as the founder of the city of Calcutta ; however, this view is challenged, and in 2003 the Calcutta High Court declared that he ought not to be regarded as the founder. There may have been inhabitants in the area since the first century CE. The High Court was right in claiming that villages that constituted colonial Calcutta were not established by Charnock or the British Raj itself, but Charnock’s ambition-driven doggedness toward setting up a East Indian Company frontier along the Eastern border of India that he could control on his own terms played a huge role in the creation of present day city of Calcutta.
Kolkata was a colonial city. The British East India Company developed Calcutta as a city by establishing an artificial riverine port in the 18th century CE. Kolkata was the capital of the British India until 1911, when the capital was relocated to Delhi. Kolkata grew rapidly in the 19th century to become the second most important city of the British Empire after London and was declared as the financial (commercial) capital of the British India. This was accompanied by the development of a culture that fused Indian philosophies with European tradition.
The association of Armenians with India and the presence of Armenians in India are very old, and there has been a mutual economic and cultural association of Armenians with India.
Mahadaji Shinde, later known as Mahadji Scindia or Madhava Rao Scindia, was a Maratha statesman and general who served as the Raja of Gwalior from 1768 to 1794. He was the fifth and the youngest son of Ranoji Rao Scindia, the founder of the Scindia dynasty. He is reputed for having restored the Maratha rule over North India and for modernizing his army.
Raj Bhavan is the official residence of the Governor of West Bengal, located in Kolkata, the capital of West Bengal. Built in 1803, it was known as Government House during the Company rule in India and the British Raj.
St. Paul's Cathedral is a Church of North India (CNI) cathedral of Anglican background in Kolkata, West Bengal, India, noted for its Gothic architecture and dedicated to Paul the Apostle. It is the seat of the Diocese of Calcutta. The cornerstone was laid in 1839; the building was completed in 1847. It is said to be the largest church in Kolkata and the first Anglican cathedral in Asia. It was also the first new-built cathedral in the overseas territory of the British Empire. The edifice stands on Cathedral Road on the "island of attractions," the site chosen in order to provide for more space for the growing population of the European community in Calcutta in the 1800s.
Kalikata was one of the three villages which were merged to form the city of Kolkata in India. The other two villages were Gobindapur and Sutanuti. Job Charnock, an administrator with the British East India Company is traditionally credited with the honour of founding the city. He settled in the village of Sutanuti.
Johan / Johann Joseph Zoffany was a German neoclassical painter who was active mainly in England, Italy, and India. His works appear in many prominent British collections, including the National Gallery, the Tate Gallery and the Royal Collection, as well as institutions in continental Europe, India, the United States and Australia. His name is sometimes spelled Zoffani or Zauffelij.
Lieutenant-Colonel James Achilles Kirkpatrick was an East India Company officer and diplomat who served as the Resident at Hyderabad Deccan from 1798 until 1805. Kirkpatrick also ordered the construction of the Koti Residency in Hyderabad, which has since come to serve as a major tourist attraction.
The Victoria Memorial is a large marble monument on the Maidan in Central Kolkata, having its entrance on the Queen's Way. It was built between 1906 and 1921 by the Government of India. It is dedicated to the memory of Queen Victoria, the Empress of India from 1876 to 1901.
The Black Hole of Calcutta was a dungeon in Fort William, Calcutta, measuring 14 by 18 feet, in which troops of Siraj-ud-Daulah, the Nawab of Bengal, held British prisoners of war on the night of 20 June 1756. John Zephaniah Holwell, one of the British prisoners and an employee of the East India Company, said that, after the fall of Fort William, the surviving British soldiers, Indian sepoys, and Indian civilians were imprisoned overnight in conditions so cramped that many people died from suffocation and heat exhaustion, and that 123 of 146 prisoners of war imprisoned there died. Some modern historians believe that 64 prisoners were sent into the Hole, and that 43 died there. Some historians put the figure even lower, to about 18 dead, while questioning the veracity of Holwell's account itself.
Charnockite, St. Thomas Mount, located to the south of the Chennai city, in Pallavaram suburb, Tamil Nadu, is a characteristically profuse exposure of quartz–feldspar–hypersthene rock, illustrated by occurrence of two pyroxene facies metamorphism.
Sir William Emerson was a British architect, who was President of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) from 1899 to 1902, and worked extensively in India. He was the original architect chosen to build Liverpool Cathedral.
The Armenian Holy Church of Nazareth is an 18th-century Armenian Apostolic church at Kolkata (Calcutta), India, serving as the centre of the Armenian Community of Calcutta and the seat of the Armenian Vicariate of India and the Far East. It is affiliated with the Mother See of Holy Etchmiadzin of the Armenian Apostolic Church. It was first built in the year 1688 during the Moghal era and rebuilt in 1724 on the old cemetery of the Armenian community, through the efforts of Agha Nazar after the original wooden structure perished in a fire in 1707.
The Lascar War Memorial, located on Napier Road in the Hastings area of Kolkata, is a memorial dedicated to the memory of the 896 lascars who died serving on ships of the Royal Navy and British Merchant Service during World War I.
The location of the grave of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal emperor at Yangon, Myanmar is in dispute. He was buried at the back of his enclosure, but by 1903 the location of his grave was forgotten. After some protests, the British were forced to construct a stone slab to mark the site of his grave. The location of his burial was once again found in 1991, when excavators found the skeleton of the last Mughal emperor there. A mausoleum was constructed and inaugurated in 1994.
The CESC Tunnel is situated under the Hooghly River in Kolkata, West Bengal, India. This is the first underwater tunnel in Asia, completed in 1931. It is used for electric power transmission from Kolkata to Howrah.
