2 messages, 2nd one is long admistrative history of Bengal.-------Johnnie
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>Date: Wed, 20 Mar 1996 13:42:36 GMT
>From: Ronald Whistance-Smith <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: Re: West Bengal
At 09:54 AM 3/19/96 EST, you wrote:
>----------------------------Original message----------------------------
>Has anyone heard of a COUNTRY called 'West Bengal', if so where is it?
>
>
>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> Don Fruehling Phone: (218) 720-5620
> GIS Specialist FAX: (218) 720-5539
> [log in to unmask]
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>
West Bengal is a State of India, not a Country. Its capitol is Calcutta.
Any modern atlas would have given you the answer.>
Ron Whistance-Smith
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>Date: Wed, 20 Mar 1996 12:04:46 +0000
>From: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Bengal: The true story
This may be a long one: delete now if you are not a
student of administrative history.
Bengal was first used by the (British) East India
Company as a territorial term in the eighteenth century
to denote the lands under the administration of the
'Governor of the Presidency of Fort William in Bengal'.
(Fort William was and is the military and
administrative headquarters within Calcutta.)
As the Company's territorial control expanded, the
extent of the area called the 'Bengal Presidency' also
expanded, to include areas later called Bihar and
Orissa, United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh), Central
Provinces (now included in Madhya Pradesh), Punjab
(including present-day Haryana and Delhi), North-West
Frontier Province, Assam, Burma, and Andaman and
Nicobar Islands.
The order establishing the office of Governor-General
of India in 1834 provided that the Governor-General was
also to be Governor of Bengal. In consequence the
Indian princely states in political relations with the
government in Calcutta (Hyderabad, Mysore, Gwalior and
states in Central India, Rajputana states, Punjab
states, Baluchistan, and tribal areas on the North-West
Frontier) were successively included in statements of
the widest (and loosest) extent of the 'Bengal
Presidency'. This extent remained valid longest as the
ecclesiastical registration area (for the goverenment
recording of copies of registers of baptisms, marriages
and burials) centred on Calcutta. In this sense
'Bengal Presidency' included every area not
specifically Bombay Presidency or Madras Presidency.
At the same time as the establishment of the office of
Governor-General, the administration began to fragment
from the centre. In 1834 a separate
lieutenant-governorship was established in Agra for the
'North-Western Provinces [later Upper Provinces] of the
Bengal Presidency', as distinct from the 'Lower
Provinces' centred on Calcutta. Upper Provinces
rapidly became a separate entity, and the term Bengal
as a province was used increasingly after 1834 only for
the area centred on Calcutta and which included also
Bihar, Orissa, Central Provinces, Assam, and Burma.
In 1854 the offices of Governor-General of India and
Governor of Bengal were split, establishing a separate
lieutenant-governorship and administration for Bengal,
and removing the anomaly of the 'Governor-General's
province'. In the wake of the 1858 India Act Punjab
was created a separate lieutenant-governorship, and, so
far as Bengal was directly concerned, subsidiary Chief
Commissionerships were established for Central
Provinces (1861), Burma (1862), Andaman and Nicobar
Islands (1873) and Assam (1874). From then to 1905 the
term 'Bengal' could mean (1) the whole Presidency, (2)
less usually, the Province including the Chief
Commissionerships, or (3) increasingly, the narrow
Province, meaning Bengal, Bihar and Orissa.
Short-lived administrative reforms of 1905 divided
Bengal and joined eastern Bengal to Assam in the new
lieutenant-governorship of East Bengal and Assam. The
remainder, western Bengal, Bihar and Orissa was
constituted as the new province of Bengal, under its
lieutenant-governor. This division of Bengal was NOT
along the same lines as the partition of Bengal in
1947, but it did bring into the public mind the idea
that Bengal could (and perhaps should) be divided along
ethnic/religious lines.
The 1905 reforms were unpicked totally in 1912, Assam
was detached from eastern Bengal, and became a chief
commissionership on its own again (until elevated to
the status of a province with its own Governor in the
general changes of 1921). Bihar and Orissa were
detached from western Bengal to become the new province
of Bihar & Orissa (B & O), with its own
lieutenant-governor. That left eastern and western
Bengal to come together as still another new province
of Bengal, this time without Bihar and Orissa.
From the 1920s onwards, therefore, there were the
following separate provinces in the territory of the
old Bengal Presidency: Bengal, Bihar and Orissa
(divided in turn in 1936 in form Bihar and Orissa as
separate provinces), Assam, Burma, United Provinces,
Central Provinces, Punjab, and North-West Frontier
Province.
It was the province of Bengal as most narrowly defined,
therefore, which was partitioned in 1947 to create East
Pakistan (now Bangladesh), and the Radcliffe Award (see
J R V Prescott, Map of Mainland Asia by Treaty,
Melbourne 1975) drew a very different line from that of
the 1905 division. The chief difference was the
allocation of the bulk of Jessore and Khulna districts
to western Bengal, though there complex considerations
further north as well.
After partition the resulting reduced Indian province
based on Calcutta was called 'West Bengal', not
'Bengal'. There is no analogy with the Punjab
partition: both India and Pakistan have provinces named
Punjab, without 'East' or 'West'.
When patrons ask for a 'map of Bengal', the answer has
to be two more questions: 'At what time period?' and
'Serving what administrative purpose?' Requests for
maps of 'West Bengal' or 'western Bengal' need to be
met with the additional question 'What do you or your
source understand by West Bengal, which meant different
things at different times?'
Dr A S Cook
Map Archivist
India Office Records
London
[log in to unmask]
'Purveyor of the information you didn't know you didn't
know, and never realised you needed to know.'
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