Place · Nawabi capital city · India

Murshidabad

Function

Trade & production

Tradition

Bengal Nawabi and Company history

Confidence

Established / referenced

Location

24.180, 88.270

Connections (7)

• Bengal commodity corridorChamparan indigo landscape

  Murshidabad was the nawabi capital of Bengal and the richest city the Company took, and the commercial system it ran — silk, cotton, saltpetre, and the banking of the Jagat Seths — is what Company rule inherited after Plassey. The indigo of north Bihar belongs to the later phase of the same arrangement: a crop grown under compulsion for a European market, which is the form the Bengal economy took once the revenue and the trade were in the same hands.

• Power passed toPlassey (Palāśī)

  Murshidabad was the richest city the Company had ever traded in and Plassey was fought thirty kilometres from it, in June 1757, and decided by Mir Jafar's defection rather than by fighting. The Jagat Seth bankers of the city financed the conspiracy; the Nawab's treasury was carried down to Calcutta in boats. The transfer of Bengal from a nawabi capital to a Company settlement took about eight years and began with a banking decision.

• Power passed toKolkata: Fort William & the Maidan

  Murshidabad was the capital and Calcutta the port until 1757; after Plassey the Company took the revenue administration downriver and the Nawabi court was left with its palaces and its ceremonial. The Jagat Seth bankers who financed the transfer lost their position within a generation, because the new government raised money in London instead.

• Site withinHazarduari, Murshidabad

  Hazarduari, Murshidabad sits inside Murshidabad and forms one piece of its layered sacred, royal or civic landscape. The city carries this entry as one of the sites that make its urban fabric legible — a shrine, monument, institution or craft tradition specifically anchored at this location — and the city's broader history reads better when the stop is seen in its context rather than in isolation. The surrounding streets, markets and other heritage ensembles around it belong to the same single city.

• Site withinKatra Masjid, Murshidabad

  Katra Masjid, Murshidabad sits inside Murshidabad and forms one piece of its layered sacred, royal or civic landscape. The city carries this entry as one of the sites that make its urban fabric legible — a shrine, monument, institution or craft tradition specifically anchored at this location — and the city's broader history reads better when the stop is seen in its context rather than in isolation. The surrounding streets, markets and other heritage ensembles around it belong to the same single city.

• Site withinKirīteśwarī, Murshidabad

  Kirīteśwarī, Murshidabad sits inside Murshidabad and forms one piece of its layered sacred, royal or civic landscape. The city carries this entry as one of the sites that make its urban fabric legible — a shrine, monument, institution or craft tradition specifically anchored at this location — and the city's broader history reads better when the stop is seen in its context rather than in isolation. The surrounding streets, markets and other heritage ensembles around it belong to the same single city.

• Site withinThe Ganges' eastward migration

  The Ganges' eastward migration lies within Murshidabad — the two sites sit about 4 km apart, well inside the city's historical boundary and part of the same urban or peri-urban landscape. The Ganges' eastward migration is one of the specific sites that give Murshidabad its layered character, and reads differently when seen as a stop within the larger city rather than as an isolated monument on an open map. The surrounding neighbourhoods, roads and other heritage ensembles belong to the same single urban fabric.

On these journeys

• The Grand Trunk Road — Kabul to Chittagong
• Early modern ports & companies
• Bengal — sultanate, delta and nawabi
• The Gangā — Gomukh to the Sundarbans
• Bengal before partition — the delta as one landscape

Sources

Wikipedia, “Nabagram, Murshidabad”. The East India Company and VOC factory records; Om Prakash, European Commercial Enterprise in Pre-Colonial India.

• Wikipedia — Nabagram, Murshidabad