Urbanisation, Trade and Markets in Colonial 6engal: A Case Study of Murshidabad (C. 1757-1857)

Abstract

City planning is not a colonial or modern invention. A tightly executed plan is vividly discernible in the scores of unearthed ruins of the Harappan Civilisation that flourished more than four millennia ago. Its cities and townships had grid patterned streets. uniform rows of brick housing, plumbing, public baths, drainage, granaries and other public spaces and amenities that strongly presume an efficient and well-endowed, if somewhat unimaginative municipal ' administration.1 The earliest connection of the East India Company with this district was marked by the establishment of a factory at Kasimbazar