Bengal

   Bengal was a large region in northeastern India and an object of British colonial interest since 1633. After coming under the control of the East India Company during the eighteenth century, Bengal served as the springboard for the British conquest of the entire Indian subcontinent. Long before the heyday of British rule in India, the East India Company in Bengal operated as a state within a state whose predatory entrepreneurship produced overnight fortunes from ventures in salt, opium, tobacco, timber, and boat-building and made it scandalous with Parliament back in Britain. Divided by Lord Curzon in 1905, over nationalist protests that resulted both in a nationalist boycott of British goods and the founding of the Muslim league, Bengal was reunified in 1911.

   See also <>.

   FURTHER READING:

    James, Lawrence. Raj: The Making and Unmaking of British India. New York: St. Martin’s, 1997.

   CARL CAVANAGH HODGE