Latest / The Hidden History of Bengal: Kingdoms, Empires, and Revolution — Fexingo History / The Ruin of Murshidabad: Bengal's Capital After Plassey
Transcript
- Lucas: If you've been stepping into history with us episode by episode, you know we've spent a lot of time around the middle of the 18th century — Plassey, Buxar, the rise of Company power. But there's one place we've only touched in passing: Murshidabad, the Nawab's capital, and what happened to it after the British took control. Luna: Right, the city that was supposedly one of the richest in the world, isn't that right? Lucas: Exactly. Contemporaries compared it to London or Constantinople. By the early 1700s, Murshidabad was the hub of Bengal's silk and cotton trade, the mint for the Mughal Empire's eastern provinces, and home to banking families like the Jagat Seths — who were basically the Rothschilds of India. Their personal fortune was estimated at something like 70 million rupees in the 1740s, which in today's money is just staggering. Luna: And then Plassey happens, and it all unravels. Lucas: Not overnight, but within a decade, yes. The immediate aftermath of Plassey was a looting spree. Clive and his officers took personal shares of the Nawab's treasury — the official figure was around £2.3 million, but that's just what was recorded. There was also systematic extortion from the Jagat Seths and other rich merchants. The Company needed to pay for its armies, and Murshidabad was the cash cow. Luna: So they basically bled the city dry. Lucas: That's exactly the word. By the 1760s, the Company had installed a series of puppet nawabs — Mir Jafar, then his son-in-law Mir Qasim — each of whom had to pay enormous tributes just to stay in power. Mir Qasim eventually rebelled, leading to the Siege of Murshidabad in 1763. He tried to hold the city but was driven out by Company forces, and in the process, the Muradbagh Palace — the main Nawabi residence — was heavily damaged and looted again. Luna: Wait, so the British sacked their own puppet's capital? Lucas: Ironically, yes. Mir Qasim had turned against them, so they had to crush him. And once he fled, the Company's troops — mostly Indian sepoys — went on a rampage. Dutch and French traders in the city wrote letters describing streets littered with broken furniture, smashed porcelain, and bodies. The pearl market, which had been one of the finest in Asia, was cleaned out. The mint was closed down and moved to Calcutta. Luna: So Calcutta basically replaced Murshidabad as the economic centre. Lucas: Completely. The Company deliberately shifted trade and administration to Fort William. Murshidabad went from being a capital of maybe 400,000 people to a provincial backwater within a generation. The Jagat Seths never recovered — their bank was essentially nationalised by the Company, and by the 1770s they were bankrupt. One of them, Jagat Seth Mahatab Rai, was even murdered by a rival faction. Luna: If today was actually useful to you, the way these stay ad-free is listener support — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It helps us keep digging into stories like this. Lucas: Yeah, honestly, every little bit helps. So, after the looting, what remained? Well, the Hazarduari Palace, built later in the 19th century by the British as a residence for the Nawab, still stands — it's now a museum with a thousand doors, hence the name. But the earlier structures, like the Katra Mosque built by Nawab Murshid Quli Khan in the 1720s, are still there, though crumbling. Luna: Murshid Quli Khan — he was the one who actually founded the city, right? Lucas: Right. He moved the capital from Dhaka to Murshidabad in 1704 and built the Katra Mosque as his mausoleum. It's a massive brick structure, very austere compared to Mughal architecture further west. But by the late 1700s, it was being used as a barracks by Company troops, and parts of it were damaged. Today it's neglected, which is a shame because it's a key piece of Bengal's Islamic heritage. Luna: And what about the ordinary people? The weavers, the merchants? Lucas: That's the really tragic part. The Company's policies destroyed Bengal's textile industry. They forced weavers to sell at below-market prices, imposed heavy taxes, and eventually banned the export of finished cloth to compete with British mills. Murshidabad's silk industry, which once employed tens of thousands, collapsed. By 1800, the city was a shadow of itself. The population had dropped to maybe 50,000. Luna: So the ruin of Murshidabad wasn't just about one battle — it was a deliberate, long-term strategy. Lucas: Exactly. It's a textbook case of colonial extraction. The Company didn't just take the treasure; they dismantled the entire economic ecosystem. And they justified it as 'stabilising' the region. But the real story is one of systematic plunder, and the people of Murshidabad paid the price for decades. Luna: It's a sobering reminder of how empires build their wealth. Lucas: Absolutely. And it's a story that's still visible in the crumbling architecture and the quiet streets of modern Murshidabad. If you ever visit, you can see the contrast between the grandeur of the Hazarduari and the decay of the old city. It's a physical map of how power shifted from the Nawabs to the British.