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The Bengal Presidency, originally comprising east and west Bengal, was a colonial region of the British Empire in South-Asia and beyond. It comprised areas which are now within Bangladesh, and the present day Indian States of West Bengal, Assam, Bihar, Meghalaya, Odisha and Tripura. Penang and Singapore were also considered to be administratively a part of the Presidency until they were incorporated into the Crown Colony of the Straits Settlements in 1867. Calcutta was purchased by the English in 1698 and declared a Presidency Town of the East India Company in 1699, but the beginning of the Bengal Presidency as an administrative unit can be dated from the treaties of 1765 between the East India Company and the Mughal Emperor and Nawab of Oudh which placed Bengal, Meghalaya, Bihar and Odisha under the administration of the Company. At its height, further territory was gradually added in the form of the annexed princely states of Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Haryana, and Himachal Pradesh and portions of Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and Maharashtra in present-day India, as well as the provinces of North West Frontier and Punjab, both now in Pakistan, and most of Burma (also known as Myanmar). In 1874 Assam, including Sylhet, was severed from Bengal to form a Chief-Commissionership, and the Lushai Hills were added to that in 1898. The Presidency of Bengal, unlike those of Madras and Bombay, eventually included all of the British possessions north of the Central Provinces (Madhya Pradesh), from the mouths of the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers to the Himalayas as well as the Punjab. In 1831, the North-Western Provinces were created, which were subsequently included with Oudh in the United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh). Just before the First World War the whole of Northern India was divided into the four lieutenant-governorships of the Punjab: the United Provinces, Bengal, Eastern Bengal and Assam, and the North-West Frontier Province, with each under a Commissioner. At its greatest extent, the presidency covered the major cities of Calcutta, Dacca, Chittagong, Rangoon, Penang, Singapore, Cuttack, Lahore, Delhi, Agra, Lucknow, Patna, Srinagar and Peshawar. ==Early history== The East India Company formed its earliest settlements in Bengal in the first half of the 17th century. These settlements were of a purely commercial character. In 1620 one of the Company’s factors was based in Patna; in 1624–1636 the Company established itself, by the favor of the emperor, on the ruins of the ancient Portuguese settlement of Pippli, in the north of Odisha; in 1640–1642 an English surgeon, Gabriel Boughton, obtained establishments at Balasore, also in Odisha, and at Hughli, some miles above Calcutta, where the Portuguese already had a settlement. The difficulties which the Company’s early agents encountered more than once almost induced them to abandon the trade, and in 1677–1678 they threatened to withdraw from Bengal altogether. In 1685, the Bengal factors, seeking greater security for their trade purchased from the grandson of Aurangzeb, in 1696, the villages which have since grown up into Calcutta, the metropolis of India, namely Kalikata, Sutanuti and Govindpur. They were given exemption from trade duties and exactions in part of Bengal in 1717 by the Emperor Farrukhsiyar. During the next forty years the British had a long and hazardous struggle alike with the Mughal governors of the province and the Maratha armies which invaded it. In 1756 this struggle culminated in the fall of Calcutta to Nawab Siraj Ud Daulah followed by Clive’s battle of Plassey and recapture of the city. The Battle of Buxar established British military supremacy in Bengal, and procured the treaties of 1765, by which the provinces of Bengal, Bihar and Odisha passed under British administration. The other important institution which emerged in this period was the Bengal Army. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Bengal Presidency」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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