page_title: Bengal Presidency
section_title: Economy
hierarchical_section_title: Bengal Presidency / Economy
caption_attribution_description: English: Narayanganj Jute Mill in 1906
context_page_description: The Bengal Presidency, officially the Presidency of Fort William and later Bengal Province, was a subdivision of the British Empire in India. At the height of its territorial jurisdiction, it covered large parts of what is now South Asia and Southeast Asia. Bengal proper covered the ethno-linguistic region of Bengal. Calcutta, the city which grew around Fort William, was the capital of the Bengal Presidency. For many years, the Governor of Bengal was concurrently the Viceroy of India and Calcutta was the de facto capital of India until the early 20th-century.
  The Bengal Presidency emerged from trading posts established in Mughal Bengal during the reign of Emperor Jahangir in 1612. The Honourable East India Company, a British monopoly with a Royal Charter, competed with other European companies to gain influence in Bengal. After the decisive overthrow of the Nawab of Bengal in 1757 and the Battle of Buxar in 1764, the HEIC expanded its control over much of the Indian subcontinent. This marked the beginning of Company rule in India, when the HEIC emerged as the most powerful military force in the subcontinent. The British Parliament gradually withdrew the monopoly of the HEIC.
context_section_description: In Bengal, the British inherited from the Mughals the biggest revenue earnings in the Indian subcontinent. For example, the revenue of pre-colonial Dhaka alone was 1 million rupees in the 18th century (a high amount in that era). Mughal Bengal accounted for 12% of the world's GDP and was a major exporter of silk, cotton, saltpeter, and agricultural produce. With its proto-industrial economy, Bengal contributed to the first Industrial Revolution in Britain (particularly in textile manufacture during the Industrial Revolution). After 1757, the British placed Bengal under company rule (which led to Bengali deindustrialization). Other European powers in the region included the French East India Company, the Dutch East India Company, the Ostend Company and the Danish East India Company. Initially, the English East India Company promoted opium cultivation which caused the Opium Wars with Qing China. The East India Company's promotion of indigo farming caused the Indigo revolt. The British were much criticized for favoring textile imports and suppressing local muslin production. The chaos of the Company rule period culminated in the Indian Mutiny in 1857. In 1858, the British government gained direct control of Indian administration. Bengal was plugged into the market-driven economy and trade networks of the British Empire.
  The Bengal Presidency had the largest gross domestic product in British India. The first British colonial banks in the Indian subcontinent were founded in Bengal. These included the General Bank of Bengal and Bihar (1733); Bank of Hindostan (1770), Bank of Bengal (1784); and the General Bank of India (1786). Other banks in Bengal included the Bank of Calcutta (1806), Union Bank (1829); Government Savings Bank (1833); The Bank of Mirzapore (c. 1835); Dacca Bank (1846); Kurigram Bank (1887), Kumarkhali Bank (1896), Mahaluxmi Bank, Chittagong (1910), Dinajpur Bank (1914), Comilla Banking Corporation (1914), Bengal Central Bank (1918), and Comilla Union Bank (1922). Loan offices were established in Faridpur (1865), Bogra (1872), Barisal (1873), Mymensingh (1873), Nasirabad (1875), Jessore (1876), Munshiganj (1876), Dacca (1878), Sylhet (1881), Pabna (1882), Kishoreganj (1883), Noakhali (1885), Khulna (1887), Madaripur (1887), Tangail (1887), Nilphamari (1894) and Rangpur (1894).
  The earliest records of securities dealings are the loan securities of the British East India Company. In 1830, bourse activities in Calcutta were conducted in the open air under a tree. The Calcutta Stock Exchange was incorporated in 1908. Some of the leading companies in British Bengal included Messrs. Alexander and Co, Waldies, Martin Burn, M. M. Ispahani Limited, James Finlay and Co., A K Khan & Company, the Calcutta Chemical Company, Bourne & Shepherd, the Indo-Burmah Petroleum Company, Orient Airways, Shaw Wallace, Carew & Co, Aditya Birla Group, Tata Group, Balmer Lawrie, Biecco Lawrie, Braithwaite, Burn & Jessop Construction Company, Braithwaite & Co., Bridge and Roof Company, Britannia Industries, Burn Standard Company and Andrew Yule and Company. Some of these enterprises were nationalized after the Partition of India.
  Agricultural products included rice, sugarcane and vegetables. The main cash crops were jute and tea. The jute trade was central to the British Bengali economy. Bengal accounted for the bulk of the world's jute production and export. Raw jute was sourced from the hinterland of Eastern Bengal. The British government declared the Port of Narayanganj as a "Tax Free Port" in 1878. Rally Brothers & Co. was one of the earliest British companies in the jute business of Narayanganj. British firms used middlemen, called beparis, to source raw jute from the hinterland. In 1907, 20 firms were engaged in the jute trade of Narayanganj, including 18 European firms. Hindu merchants opened several cotton mills in the 1920s, including the Dhakeshwari Cotton Mill, the Chittaranjan Cotton Mill and the Laxmi Narayan Cotton Mill. Other goods traded in Narayanganj included timber, salt, textiles, oil, cotton, tobacco, pottery, seeds a
caption: Labourers at a jute mill in the Port of Narayanganj, 1906
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