Bengal in the context of Zamindari system

The Bay of Bengal forms the northeastern part of the Indian Ocean, located between the Indian subcontinent and the Indochinese peninsula, south of the Bengal region. Spread across an area of 2,600,000 km (1,000,000 sq mi), it is bordered by many of the countries in South Asia and Southeast Asia.

Geopolitically, the bay is bound by mainland India on the west and northwest, Bangladesh in the north, Myanmar in the northeast and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands of India in the east. Its southern limit is a line between Sangaman Kanda in Sri Lanka, and the northwesternmost point of Sumatra in Indonesia.

Tibet (/tɪˈbɛt/ ), Xizang or Hsi-tsang is a region in the western part of East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau. It is the homeland of the Tibetans. Other ethnic groups also reside on the plateau, including Mongols, the Monpa, the Tamang, the Qiang, the Sherpa, the Lhoba, and since the 20th century, the Han and the Hui. Tibet is the highest region on Earth, with an average elevation of 4,380 m (14,000 ft). Lying within the Himalayas, the highest point in Tibet is Mount Everest – the highest peak on Earth, standing 8,848 m (29,000 ft) above sea level.

The Tibetan Empire emerged in the 7th century. At its height in the 9th century, the Tibetan Empire extended far beyond the Tibetan Plateau, from the Tarim Basin and Pamirs in the west, to Yunnan and Bengal in the southeast. It then collapsed and divided into a variety of territories in the 9th century after the battle of U-Yor (Chinese:伍约之战 Tibetan:དབུ་གྱོར་བཁྲུག་པ་བྱས). Lhasa was central part of Wu Ru (Chinese:伍如 Tibetan: དབུ་རུ), the battle of U-Yor lasted for 12 years in Wu Ru and also marked the end of Wu Ru.

Sonargaon or Șonargă (Bengali: সোনারগাঁও; Bengali pronunciation: [ˈʃonaɾɡãʋ]; lit. Golden Hamlet) is a historic city in central Bangladesh. It corresponds to the modern day subdistrict Sonargaon Upazila of Narayanganj District in Dhaka Division.

Sonargaon is one of the old capitals of the historic region of Bengal and was an administrative center of eastern Bengal. It was also a river port. Its hinterland was the center of the muslin trade in Bengal, with a large population of weavers and artisans. According to ancient Greek and Roman accounts, an emporium was located in this hinterland, which archaeologists have now identified with the Wari-Bateshwar ruins of the Gangaridai Empire. The area was a base for the Vanga, Gangaridai, Samatata, Sena, and Deva dynasties.

Fakir, faqeer, or faqīr (/fəˈkɪər/; Arabic: فقیر (noun of faqr)), derived from faqr (Arabic: فقر, 'poverty'), is an Islamic term traditionally used for Sufi Muslim ascetics who renounce their worldly possessions and dedicate their lives to the worship of God. They do not necessarily renounce all relationships, or take vows of poverty, but the adornments of the temporal worldly life are kept in perspective. The connotations of poverty associated with the term relate to their spiritual neediness, not necessarily their physical neediness, which they adopt to seek purity and mystical knowledge and so earn God's love.

They are characterized by their reverence for dhikr (a devotional practice which consists of repeating the names of God with various formulas, often performed after the daily prayers). Sufism in the Muslim world emerged during the early Umayyad Caliphate (661–750 CE) and grew as a mystic tradition in the mainstream Sunni and Shia denominations of Islam, which according to Eric Hanson and Karen Armstrong was likely in reaction to "the growing worldliness of Umayyad and Abassid societies". Sufi Muslim ascetics (fakirs and dervishes) were highly influential and greatly successful in spreading Islam between the 10th and 19th centuries, particularly to the furthest outposts of the Muslim world in the Middle East and North Africa, the Balkans and Caucasus, the Indian subcontinent, and finally Central, Eastern, and Southeast Asia. Sufi Muslims have spread throughout several continents and cultures over a millennium, originally expressing their beliefs in Arabic, before spreading into Persian, Turkish, Indian languages, and a dozen other languages.

The Muslim conquests on the Indian subcontinent mainly took place between the 13th and the 18th centuries, establishing the Indo-Muslim period. Earlier Muslim conquests on the Indian subcontinent include the invasions which started in the northwestern Indian subcontinent (modern-day Pakistan), especially the Umayyad campaigns in India. Later during the 8th century, Mahmud of Ghazni, sultan of the Ghaznavid Empire, invaded vast parts of Punjab and Gujarat during the 11th century. After the capture of Lahore and the end of the Ghaznavids, the Ghurid ruler Muhammad of Ghor laid the foundation of Muslim rule in India in 1192. In 1202, Muhammad Bakhtiyar Khalji led the Muslim conquest of Bengal, marking the easternmost expansion of Islam at the time.

The Ghurid Empire soon evolved into the Delhi Sultanate in 1206, ruled by Qutb ud-Din Aibak, the founder of the Mamluk dynasty. With the Delhi Sultanate established, Islam was spread across most parts of the Indian subcontinent. In the 14th century, the Khalji dynasty under Alauddin Khalji, extended Muslim rule southwards to Gujarat, Rajasthan, and the Deccan. The successor Tughlaq dynasty temporarily expanded its territorial reach to Tamil Nadu. The disintegration of the Delhi Sultanate, capped by Timur's invasion in 1398, caused several Muslim sultanates and dynasties to emerge across the Indian subcontinent, such as the Gujarat Sultanate, Malwa Sultanate, Bahmani Sultanate, Jaunpur Sultanate, Madurai Sultanate, and the Bengal Sultanate. Some of these, however, were followed by Hindu reconquests and resistance from the native powers and states, such as the Telugu Nayakas, Vijayanagara, and Rajput states under the Kingdom of Mewar.

Gupta or Shrigupta (Gupta script: Gu-pta, fl. late 3rd century CE) was the founder of the Gupta dynasty of Magadha (eastern India). He is identified with king Che-li-ki-to (believed to be the Chinese transcription of "Shri-Gupta"), who, according to the 7th-century Chinese Buddhist monk Yijing, built a temple near Mi-li-kia-si-kia-po-no (Mṛgaśikhāvana) for Chinese pilgrims. This temple was located somewhere in eastern India: based on the identification of its location, modern scholars variously locate Gupta's territory in present-day eastern Uttar Pradesh or Bengal region.

Chandragupta II (r.c. 375–415), also known by his title Vikramaditya, as well as Chandragupta Vikramaditya, was an emperor of the Gupta Empire. Modern scholars generally identify him with King Chandra of the Delhi iron pillar inscription.

He continued the expansionist policy of his father Samudragupta through military conquests and marital alliances. Historical evidence attests to his remarkable victories, which include the defeat of the Sassanids, the conquest of the Western Kshatrapas and the vassalization of the Hunas. Under the reign of Chandragupta II, the Gupta Empire reached its zenith, directly controlling a vast territory which stretched from the Oxus River in the west to the Bengal region in the east, and from the foothills of the Himalayas in the north to the Narmada River in the south. Chandragupta II expanded his influence and indirectly ruled over the Kuntala region of Karnataka through a marriage alliance with Kadambas, and during his daughter Prabhavatigupta's 20-year-long regency, he effectively integrated the Vakataka kingdom into the Gupta Empire.

Kumaragupta I was Gupta emperor from 415 until his death in 455. A son of the Gupta king Chandragupta II and Queen Dhruvadevi, he seems to have maintained control of his inherited territory, which extended from Gujarat in the west to Bengal region in the east.

Kumaragupta performed an Ashvamedha sacrifice, which was usually performed to prove imperial sovereignty, although no concrete information is available about his military achievements. Based on the epigraphic and numismatic evidence, some modern historians have theorized that he may have subdued the Aulikaras of central India and the Traikutakas of western India. The Nalanda mahavihara was possibly built during his reign.

French India, formally the Établissements français dans l'Inde (English: French Settlements in India), was a French colony comprising five geographically separated enclaves on the Indian subcontinent that had initially been factories of the French East India Company. They were de facto incorporated into the Republic of India in 1950 and 1954. The enclaves were Pondichéry, Karikal, Yanaon on the Coromandel Coast, Mahé on the Malabar Coast and Chandernagor in Bengal. The French also possessed several loges ('lodges', tiny subsidiary trading stations) inside other towns, but after 1816, the British denied all French claims to these, which were not reoccupied.

By 1950, the total area measured 510 km (200 sq mi), of which 293 km (113 sq mi) belonged to the territory of Pondichéry. In 1936, the population of the colony totalled 298,851 inhabitants, of which 63% (187,870) lived in the territory of Pondichéry.

Company rule in India (also known as the Company Raj, from Hindi rāj, lit. 'rule') refers to regions of the Indian subcontinent under the control of the British East India Company (EIC). The EIC, founded in 1600, established its first trading post in India in 1612, and gradually expanded its presence in the region over the following decades. During the Seven Years' War, the East India Company began a process of rapid expansion in India, which resulted in most of the subcontinent falling under its rule by 1857, when the Indian Rebellion of 1857 broke out. After the rebellion was suppressed, the Government of India Act 1858 resulted in the EIC's territories in India being administered by the Crown instead. The India Office managed the EIC's former territories, which became known as the British Raj.

The range of dates is taken to have commenced either in 1757 after the Battle of Plassey, when the Nawab of Bengal Siraj ud-Daulah was defeated and replaced with Mir Jafar, who had the support of the East India Company; or in 1765, when the Company was granted the diwani, or the right to collect revenue, in Bengal and Bihar; or in 1773, when the Company abolished local rule (Nizamat) in Bengal and established a capital in Calcutta, appointed its first Governor-General of Fort William, Warren Hastings, and became directly involved in governance. The East India Company significantly expanded its influence throughout the Indian subcontinent after the Anglo-Mysore Wars, Anglo-Maratha Wars, and Anglo-Sikh Wars. Lord William Bentinck became the first Governor General of India in 1834 under the Government of India Act 1833.

The Bengal Sultanate (Middle Bengali: শাহী বাঙ্গালাহ্, Classical Persian: سلطنت بنگاله) was a late medieval sultanate based in the Bengal region in eastern South Asia between the 14th and 16th century. It was the dominant power of the Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta, with a network of mint towns spread across the region. The Bengal Sultanate had a circle of vassal states in the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, including parts of Odisha in the southwest, parts of Bihar in the northwest, parts of Assam in the northeast, Arakan in the southeast, and Tripura in the east.

The Bengal Sultanate controlled large parts of eastern South Asia during its five dynastic periods, reaching its peak under Jalaluddin Muhammad Shah. Its raids and conquests reached Nepal in the north, Brahmaputra Valley (modern-day Assam) in the east, and Jaunpur and Varanasi in the west. It was reputed as a thriving trading nation. Its decline began with an interregnum by the Sur Empire, followed by Mughal conquest and disintegration into petty kingdoms. The Bengal Sultanate was a Sunni Muslim monarchy with Bengali, Turco-Persian, Afghan and Abyssinian elites. The most prominent dynasties were the Ilyas Shahi, House of Ganesha and Hussain Shahi. The kingdom was known for its religious pluralism where non-Muslim communities co-existed peacefully. While Persian was used as the primary official, diplomatic and commercial language, it was under the Sultans that Bengali first received court recognition as an official language. The cities of the Bengal Sultanate are termed as Mint Towns where the historical taka was minted. These cities were adorned with stately medieval buildings. In 1500, the royal capital of Gaur was the fifth-most populous city in the world. Other notable cities included the initial royal capital of Pandua, the economic hub of Sonargaon, the Mosque City of Bagerhat, and the seaport and trading hub of Chittagong. The Bengal Sultanate was connected to states in Asia, Africa, the Indian Ocean, and Europe through maritime links and overland trade routes. The Bengal Sultanate was a major trading center on the coast of the Bay of Bengal. It attracted immigrants and traders from different parts of the world. Bengali ships and merchants traded across the region, including in Malacca, China, and the Maldives.

Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive, KB, FRS (29 September 1725 – 22 November 1774), also known as Clive of India, was the first British Governor of the Bengal Presidency. Clive has been widely credited for laying the foundation of the British East India Company (EIC) rule in Bengal. He began as a "writer" (the term used then in India for an office clerk) for the EIC in 1744, however after being caught up in military action during the fall of Madras, Clive joined the EIC's private army. Clive rapidly rose through the military ranks of the EIC and was eventually credited with establishing Company rule in Bengal by winning the Battle of Plassey in 1757. In return for supporting the Nawab Mir Jafar as ruler of Bengal, Clive was guaranteed a jagir of £90,000 (equivalent to £10,200,000 in 2023) per year, which was the rent the EIC would otherwise pay to the Nawab for their tax-farming concession. When Clive left India in January 1767 he had a fortune of £401,102 (equivalent to £67,900,000 in 2023) which he remitted through the Dutch East India Company.

Blocking impending French mastery of India, Clive improvised a 1751 military expedition that ultimately enabled the EIC to adopt the French strategy of indirect rule via puppet government. In 1755 he was hired by the EIC to return to India, where he secured the company's trade interests by overthrowing the ruler of Bengal, the richest state in India. Back in England from 1760 to 1765, he used the wealth accumulated from India to obtain an Irish barony from the Prime Minister, Thomas Pelham-Holles, and a seat in Parliament via Henry Herbert, 1st Earl of Powis, representing the Whig party in Shrewsbury, Shropshire (1761–1774), as he had previously done in Mitchell, Cornwall (1754–1755).

The Nawabs of Bengal were the Independent hereditary rulers of Bengal. In the early 18th-century, the Nawab of Bengal was the independent ruler of Bengal (Bengal, Bihar and Orissa which constitute the modern-day Indian states of West Bengal, Bihar and Odisha and the sovereign country of Bangladesh). 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 (Bengali: বাংলা, বিহার ও উড়িষ্যার নবাব). The Nawabi Bengal's capital 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 governed as independent monarchs. The Nawabs, backed by bankers such as the Jagat Seth, became the financial backbone of the Subcontinent court.

The Nawabs, especially under the rule of Alivardi Khan of 16 years, were heavily engaged in various wars against the Marathas. Towards the end, he turned his attention to rebuilding and restoring Bengal.

Kolkata, also known as Calcutta (its official name until 2001), is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of West Bengal. It lies on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River, 80 km (50 mi) west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary financial and commercial centre of eastern and one of the gateways to northeastern India. Kolkata is the seventh most populous city in India with an estimated city proper population of 4.5 million (0.45 crore) while its metropolitan region Kolkata Metropolitan Area is the third most populous metropolitan region of India with a metro population of over 15 million (1.5 crore). Kolkata is regarded by many sources as the cultural capital of India and a historically and culturally significant city in the historic region of Bengal.

The three villages that predated Calcutta were ruled by the Nawab of Bengal under Mughal suzerainty. After the Nawab granted the East India Company a trading license in 1690, the area was developed by the Company into Fort William. Nawab Siraj ud-Daulah occupied the fort in 1756 but was defeated at the Battle of Plassey in 1757, after his general Mir Jafar mutinied in support of the company, and was later made the Nawab for a brief time. Under company and later crown rule, Calcutta served as the de facto capital of India until 1911. Calcutta was the second largest city in the British Empire, after London, and was the centre of bureaucracy, politics, law, education, science and the arts in India. The city was associated with many of the figures and movements of the Bengali Renaissance. It was the hotbed of the Indian nationalist movement.

The First Opium War (Chinese: 第一次鴉片戰爭; pinyin: Dìyīcì yāpiàn zhànzhēng), also known as the Anglo-Chinese War, was a series of military engagements fought between the British Empire and the Chinese Qing dynasty between 1839 and 1842. The immediate issue was the Chinese enforcement of their ban on the opium trade by seizing private opium stocks from mainly British merchants at Guangzhou (then named Canton) and threatening to impose the death penalty for future offenders. Despite the opium ban, the British government supported the merchants' demand for compensation for seized goods, and insisted on the principles of free trade and equal diplomatic recognition with China. Opium was Britain's single most profitable commodity trade of the 19th century. After months of tensions between the two states, the Royal Navy launched an expedition in June 1840, which ultimately defeated the Chinese using technologically superior ships and weapons by August 1842. The British then imposed the Treaty of Nanking, which forced China to increase foreign trade, give compensation, and cede Hong Kong Island to the British. Consequently, the opium trade continued in China. Twentieth-century nationalists considered 1839 the start of a century of humiliation, and many historians consider it the beginning of modern Chinese history.

In the 18th century, the European demand for Chinese luxury goods (particularly silk, porcelain, and tea) created a trade imbalance between China and Britain. European silver flowed into China through the Canton System, which confined incoming foreign trade to the southern port city of Guangzhou. To counter this imbalance, the British East India Company began to grow opium in Bengal and allowed private British merchants to sell opium to Chinese smugglers for illegal sale in China. The influx of narcotics reversed the Chinese trade surplus and increased the numbers of opium addicts inside the country, outcomes that seriously worried Chinese officials.

The Tibetan Empire, or the Empire of Tibet (Tibetan: བོད་ཆེན་པོ, Wylie: bod chen po, lit. 'Great Tibet') was centered on the Tibetan Plateau and formed as a result of expansions under the Yarlung dynasty's 33rd king, Songtsen Gampo, in the 7th century. It expanded further under Trisong Detsen and reached its greatest extent under Ralpachen, stretching east to Chang'an, west beyond modern Afghanistan, south into modern India and the Bay of Bengal. It is referred to as Tufan or Tubo (吐蕃) in Chinese sources.

The Yarlung dynasty was founded in 127 BC in the Yarlung Valley along the Yarlung River, south of Lhasa. The Yarlung capital was moved in the 7th century from the Yungbulakang Palace to Lhasa by the 33rd ruler Songtsen Gampo, and into the Red Fort during the imperial period which continued to the 9th century. The beginning of the imperial period is marked in the reign of the 33rd ruler of the Yarlung dynasty, Songtsen Gampo. The power of Tibet's military empire gradually increased over a diverse terrain. During the reign of Trisong Detsen, the empire became more powerful and increased in size. At this time, a 783 treaty between the Tibetan Empire and the Tang dynasty defined the borders, as commemorated by the Shol Potala Pillar in Lhasa. Borders were again confirmed during the later reign of the 40th king Ralpachen through his 821–823 treaty, which was inscribed on a pillar at Jokhang. In the opening years of the 9th century, the Tibetan Empire controlled territories extending from the Tarim Basin to the Himalayas and Bengal, and from the Pamirs into what are now the Chinese provinces of Sichuan, Gansu and Yunnan. The murder of King Ralpachen in 838 by his brother Langdarma, and Langdarma's subsequent enthronement followed by his assassination in 842 marks the simultaneous beginning of the dissolution of the empire period.

Chittaranjan Das (5 November 1870 – 16 June 1925), popularly called Deshbandhu (friend of the country), was a Bengali freedom fighter, political activist and lawyer during the Indian Independence Movement and mentor of Subhas Chandra Bose. He was the founder-leader of the Swaraj Party in undivided Bengal during the period of British Colonial rule in India. His name is abbreviated as C. R. Das.He was closely associated with a number of literary societies and wrote poems, apart from numerous articles and essays.

The partition of India in 1947 was the division of British India into two independent dominion states, the Union of India and Dominion of Pakistan. The Union of India is today the Republic of India, and the Dominion of Pakistan is the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the People's Republic of Bangladesh. The partition involved the division of two provinces, Bengal and the Punjab, based on district-wise non-Muslim (mostly Hindu and Sikh) or Muslim majorities. It also involved the division of the British Indian Army, the Royal Indian Navy, the Indian Civil Service, the railways, and the central treasury, between the two new dominions. The partition was set forth in the Indian Independence Act 1947 and resulted in the dissolution of the British Raj, or Crown rule in India. The two self-governing countries of India and Pakistan legally came into existence at midnight on 14–15 August 1947.

The partition displaced between 12 and 20 million people along religious lines, creating overwhelming refugee crises associated with the mass migration and population transfer that occurred across the newly constituted dominions; there was large-scale violence, with estimates of loss of life accompanying or preceding the partition disputed and varying between several hundred thousand and two million. The violent nature of the partition created an atmosphere of hostility and suspicion between India and Pakistan that plagues their relationship to the present.