Stay updated with breaking news from Murshid quli. Get real-time updates on events, politics, business, and more. Visit us for reliable news and exclusive interviews.
How a French governor in Bengal wanted to drive the English out from India in the 18th century An excerpt from ‘Hooghly: The Global History of a River’, by Robert Ivermee. Capture of Chandernagor by the Royal Navy, 1757 | Dominic Serres / Public Domain The governorship of Chandernagore was awarded to Jean-Baptiste Chevalier, an enterprising and patriotic Bengal veteran who in the 1750s had led a series of expeditions to establish trading links with the kingdom of Assam. Under Chevalier’s direction, signs of prosperity began to return to Chandernagore. Trade picked up, with three or four ships arriving each year from Europe. Commercial links were re-established with South East Asia and the Persian Gulf. Chevalier played a leading role in the revival of private trade, organising voyages to export Bengali sugar and rice to the Isle de France and the Île Bourbon (Reunion Island). ....
Book: Author: Sudeep Chakravarti, Price: Rs 799: Plassey, more than two centuries after a transformative moment in global history, continues to befuddle us with its labyrinthine maze of tropes intrigue, vanity, conspiracy, betrayal, plunder, what have you. When you pronounce the word, you become complicit, somehow, in the layered and dialectical politics of nomenclature infusing its narratives, subplots, and dramatis personae. A momentous battle or a skirmish with a fate foretold? A necessary pit-stop in the inexorable march of imperialism, or a conspiracy of diabolical machinations? If the latter, a ‘conspiracy’ hatched by scheming Company men or by duplicitous Indians? A debauched, intemperate prince unfit to rule, or a fiercely independent but ultimately hapless ....