The governor-general of India was the representative of the monarch of the United Kingdom in their capacity as the emperor/empress of India and after Indian independence in 1947, the representative of the monarch of India. The office was created in 1773, with the title of governor-general of the Presidency of Fort William. The officer had direct control only over his presidency but supervised other East India Company officials in India. Complete authority over all of British territory in the Indian subcontinent was granted in 1833, and the official came to be known as the governor-general of India.
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.
Farrukhsiyar, also spelled as Farrukh Siyar, was the tenth Mughal Emperor from 1713 to 1719. He rose to the throne after deposing his uncle Jahandar Shah. He was an emperor only in name, with all effective power in the hands of the courtier Sayyid brothers. He was born during the reign of his great-grandfather Aurangzeb, as the son of Azim-ush-Shan and Sahiba Niswan. Reportedly a handsome man who was easily swayed by his advisers, he was said to lack the ability, knowledge and character to rule independently. He was executed by Maharaja Ajit Singh of Marwar.
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 an 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 the present-day city of Calcutta.
Kolkata was a colonial city. The British East India Company developed Calcutta as a village 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 fall of a culture that fused Indian philosophies with European tradition.
The Treaty of Alinagar was signed on 9 February 1757 between Robert Clive of the British East India Company and the Nawab of Bengal, Mirza Muhammad Siraj ud-Daulah. Alinagar was the short-lived name given to Calcutta given by the Nawab after it was captured by him. The Nawab had seized the English fort at Calcutta, but facing the threat of Afghans in the rear and the military might of the English, he signed the treaty.
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. Today there are about a hundred, most of whom currently live in or around Kolkata.
Mirza Azim-ush-Shan was the second son of the 8th Mughal Emperor Shah Alam I better known as Bahadur Shah I by his second wife a Rathore Rajput Princess Amrit Kanwarji of Kishangarh. He was the great grandson of Shah Jahan and the grandson of Aurangzeb during whose reign he was the imperial subahdar (governor) of Bengal Subah from the year 1697 to his death in 1712.
The Nawab of Bengal was the hereditary ruler of Bengal Subah in Mughal India. In the early 18th-century, the Nawab of Bengal was the de facto independent ruler of the three regions of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa which constitute the modern-day sovereign country of Bangladesh and the Indian states of West Bengal, Bihar and Odisha. The Bengal Subah reached its peak during the reign of Nawab Shuja-ud-Din Muhammad Khan. They are often referred to as the Nawab of Bengal, Bihar and Orissa. The Nawabs were based in Murshidabad which was centrally located within Bengal, Bihar, and Odisha. Their chief, a former prime minister, became the first Nawab. The Nawabs continued to issue coins in the name of the Mughal Emperor, but for all practical purposes, the Nawabs governed as independent monarchs. Bengal continued to contribute the largest share of funds to the imperial treasury in Delhi. The Nawabs, backed by bankers such as the Jagat Seth, became the financial backbone of the Mughal court.
The Sayyid brothers refers to Syed Hassan Ali Khan Barha and Syed Hussain Ali Khan, who were two powerful nobles during the decline of the Mughal Empire.
John Borthwick Gilchrist was a Scottish surgeon, linguist, philologist and Indologist. Born and educated in Edinburgh, he spent most of his early career in India, where he made a study of the local languages. In later life, he returned to Britain and lived in Edinburgh and London. In his final years, he moved to Paris, where he died at the age of 81.
The siege of Calcutta was a battle between the Bengal Subah and the British East India Company on 20 June 1756. The Nawab of Bengal, Siraj ud-Daulah, aimed to seize Calcutta to punish the company for the unauthorised construction of fortifications at Fort William. Siraj ud-Daulah caught the Company unprepared and won a decisive victory.
Murshid Quli Khan, also known as Mohammad Hadi and born as Surya Narayan Mishra, was the first Nawab of Bengal, serving from 1717 to 1727.
Belgachia is a neighbourhood of North Kolkata in Kolkata district in the Indian state of West Bengal.
Coinage under British governance of the Indian subcontinent can be divided into two periods: East India Company (EIC) issues, pre-1835; and Imperial issues struck under direct authority of the crown. The EIC issues can be further subdivided into two subcategories: the Presidency issues, which comprise separate Madras Presidency, Bombay Presidency, and Bengal Presidency issues; and uniform coinage for all British territories from 1835 to 1858. Imperial issues bear obverse portraits of Queen Victoria, Edward VII, George V, and George VI. No British India coins were issued during the brief reign of Edward VIII.
The 1903 New Year Honours, announced at the time as the Durbar Honours, were appointments to various orders and honours of the United Kingdom and British India. The list was announced on the day of the 1903 Delhi Durbar held to celebrate the succession of King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra as Emperor and Empress of India. The membership of the two Indian Orders were expanded to allow for all the new appointments.
Gabriel Boughton was an East India Company (EIC) ship surgeon who travelled to India in the first half of the seventeenth century and became highly regarded by Mughal royalty.
Dastak was a trade permit mostly issued to European traders by officials of the East India Company. The trade permit waived customs or transicharges for personal goods. The power to issue trade permits was conferred upon Company officials by the Mughal Emperor Farrukhsiyar after William Hamilton, a surgeon associated with the Company cured him of a disease.
Edward Hare was an English surgeon and writer. He served as Director-General of Hospitals in Bengal, India. Hare is best known for his medical work in using quinine for treatment of malaria fevers. He was also a vegetarianism activist.
Jagat Seth was a wealthy merchant, banker and money lender family from Murshidabad in Bengal during the time of the Nawabs of Bengal.
