2 messages, 2nd one is long admistrative history of Bengal.-------Johnnie ----------------------------------------------------------------- >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] >--------------------------------------------------------------------------- > 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 ------------------------------------------------------------------ >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.'