When Job Charnock landed at
Sutanati in 1690 the place was no more than an ordinary Bengal village on the
banks of the Hooghly. Yet, by the middle of the nineteenth century, it was
being described as the second city of the British Empire. With the help of archival
records, this volume plots the various stages of the journey on the part of the
three villages of Sutanati, Kalikata
and Gobindapur which collectively
came to be called Calcutta (renamed Kolkata). The story is broken up into three
sections the first of which deals with the unplanned growth of the place till
the town fell to the forces led by the nawab, Shiraj-ud-Daula, in 1756. During
this time the main effort on the part of the authorities was directed at
cleaning up the place and setting up essential facilities such as a hospital, a
jail, a mayor’s court, strengthening the banks of the river, etc. The second
period, which extended till the end of the eighteenth century, saw the
expansion of Calcutta southward and eastward which kept the authorities busy
with issues such as compensation for acquired land, the formation of today’s
Maidan, the building of the arterial Circular Road, the setting up of bazars,
and improving the drainage system. The third period marked the advent of the
town-planning era set in motion by Lord Wellesley. The volume takes the story
to the point where the Lottery Committee
was formed in 1817.