This book is the result of a fruitful collaboration between the Eastern Command of the Indian Army and a team of three professional researchers. Designed to acquaint the readers with an authoritative history of Fort William, it has tried to steer a middle course in the face of two methodological opposites; a coffee table publication and a research monograph. There has been an attempt to weave a historical narrative in a form that would appeal to academics, defence personnel and the general public alike. The task has not been an easy one. The Fort William occupies a pride of place in the history of the Bengal, nay Indian psyche, and the present volume seeks to capture its story through a historical continuum. The project, conceived in 1990, aimed at unfolding the history of the Fort in two parts; the first, encompassing the period between the days of the Old Fort and 15 August 1947; and the second, covering the post independence years. This aim has to be modified as even though there are rich archival records of the Company's heyday, when the Fort constituted the cornerstone of British military power and glory, the document base is exceedingly narrow for the post 1858 British period, when the Fort lost its military importance and merely retained a symbolic value for imperial authority.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Basudeb Chattopadhyay
Basudeb Chattopadhyay is currently Asutosh Professor of Medieval and Modern Indian History and Head of the Department of History, University of Calcutta. He has published extensively on colonial Calcutta. His latest works include Crime and Control in Early Colonial Bengal, 1770-1860 (Calcutta, 2000) and the Fown Hall of Calcutta (Calcutta, 1998).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Bhaskar Chakrabarty
Bhaskar Chakrabarty: Reader, Department of History, Calcutta University.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Suranjan Das
Suranjan Das is Professor of History at the University of Calcutta and Director, Netaji Institute for Asian Studies Group of the University of Calcutta. He received the D. Phil degree from the University of Oxford for the dissertation on ‘Communal Riots in Bengal 1905-1947’ which was subsequently published by Oxford University Press. His other publications include Caste and Communal Politics in South Asia (edited jointly with Sekhar Bandopadhyay: 1993), The Goondas: Towards A Reconstructioin of the Calcutta Underworld (jointly with Jayanta K. Ray: 1996) and Electoral Politics in South Asia (edited jointly with Subho Basu: 2000). Dr. Das was a Junior Research Fellow at St. Antony’s College, Oxford, and has been a Visiting Fellow in Maison Des Sciences De L’Homme, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and University of New Mexico. He was also elected a Visiting Professor by the British Academy.
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