Notes:
Kolkata /kɒlˈkætə/, or Calcutta /kælˈkʌtə/, is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal. Located on the east bank of the Hooghly River, it is the principal commercial, cultural, and educational centre of East India, while the Port of Kolkata is India's oldest port as well as its sole major riverine port. As of 2011, the city had 4.5 million residents; the urban agglomeration, which comprises the city and its suburbs, was home to approximately 14.1 million, making it the third-most populous metropolitan area in India. As of 2008, its economic output as measured by gross domestic product ranked third among South Asian cities, behind Mumbai and Delhi. As a growing metropolitan city in a developing country, Kolkata confronts substantial urban pollution, traffic congestion, poverty, overpopulation, and other logistic and socioeconomic problems.
In the late 17th century, the three villages that predated Kolkata were ruled by the Nawab of Bengal under Mughal suzerainty. After the Nawab granted the East India Company a trading license in 1690, the area was developed by the Company into a an increasingly fortified mercantile base. Nawab Siraj ud-Daulah occupied Kolkata in 1756, and the East India Company retook it in the following year and by 1772 assumed full sovereignty. Under East India Company and later under the British Raj, Kolkata served as the capital of India until 1911, when its perceived geographical disadvantages, combined with growing nationalism in Bengal, led to a shift of the capital to New Delhi. The city was a centre of the Indian independence movemennt; it remains a hotbed of contemporary state politics. Following Indian independence in 1947, Kolkata—which was once the centre of modern Indian education, science, culture, and politics—witnessed several decades of relative economic stagnation. Since the early 2000s, an economic rejuvenation has led to accelerated growth.
As a nucleus of the 19th- and early 20th-century Bengal Renaissance and a religiously and ethnically diverse centre of culture in Bengal and India, Kolkata has established local traditions in drama, art, film, theatre, and literature that have gained wide audiences. Many people from Kolkata—among them several Nobel laureates—have contributed to the arts, the sciences, and other areas, while Kolkata culture features idiosyncrasies that include distinctively close-knit neighbourhoods (paras) and freestyle intellectual exchanges (adda). West Bengal's share of the Bengali film industry is based in the city, which also hosts venerable cultural institutions of national importance, such as the Academy of Fine Arts, the Victoria Memorial, the Asiatic Society, the Indian Museum, and the National Library of India. Though home to major cricketing venues and franchises, Kolkata differs from other Indian cities by giving importance to association football and other sports.
Etymology
The word Kolkata derives from the Bengali term Kolikata ˈkolikat̪a (কলিকাতা), the name of one of three villages that predated the arrival of the British, in the area where the city eventually was to be established; the other two villages were Suutanuti and Govindapur. The term Kolikata is thought to be a variation of Kalikkhetro ˈkalikʰːet̪ro (Bengali: কালীক্ষেত্র), meaning "Field of the goddess Kali". Alternatively, the name may have been derived from the Bengali term kilkila (Bengali: কিলকিলা), or "flat area". The name may have its origin in the words khal ˈkʰal (Bengali: খাল) meaning "canal", followed by kaṭa ˈkata (Bengali: কাটা), which may mean "dug".0 According to another theory, the area specialised in the production of quicklime or koli chun ˈkolitɕun (Bengali: কলি চুন) and coir or kata ˈkat̪a (Bengali: কাতা); hence, it was called Kolikata ˈkolikat̪a (Bengali: কলিকাতা). While the city's name has always been pronounced Kolkata ˈkolkat̪a (Bengali: কলকাতা) or Kolikata ˈkolikat̪a (Bengali: কলিকাতা) in Bengali, the anglicised form Calcutta was the official name until 2001, when it was changed to Kolkata in order to match Bengali pronunciation.
History
The discovery and archaeological study of Chandraketugarh, 35 kilometres (22 mi) north of Kolkata, provide evidence that the region in which the city stands has been inhabited for over two millennia. Kolkata's recorded history began in 1690 with the arrival of the English East India Company, which was consolidating its trade business in Bengal. Job Charnock, an administrator who worked for the Company, is traditionally credited as the founder of the city; in response to a public petitition, the Calcutta High Court ruled in 2003 that the city does not have a founder. The area occupied by the present-day city encompassed three villages: Kalikata, Gobindapur, and Sutanuti. Kalikata was a fishing village; Sutanuti was a riverside weavers' village. They were part of an estate belonging to the Mughal emperor; the jagirdari (a land grant bestowed by a king on his noblemen) taxation rights to the villages were held by the Sabarna Roy Choudhury family of landowners, or zamindars. These rights were transferred to the East India Company in 1698.:1
In 1712, the British completed the construction of Fort William, located on the east bank of the Hooghly River. Facing frequent skirmishes with French forces, the British began to upgrade their fortifications in 1756. The Nawab of Bengal, Siraj ud-Daulah, protested the militarisation. His warning went unheeded, and the Nawab attacked; he captured Fort William and instigated the gruesome killings of British prisoners of war in the Black Hole of Calcutta. A force of Company soldiers (sepoys) and British troops led by Robert Clive recaptured the city the following year. Declared a presidency city, Calcutta became the headquarters of the Bengal Presidency. Calcutta was named the capital of East India Company controlled territories of India in 1772; beginning in 1864, the hill station of Shimla served as administrative capital during summers.0 In the early 19th century, the marshes surrounding the city were drained; the government area was laid out along the banks of the Hooghly River. Richard Wellesley, Governor-General of India between 1797 and 1805, was largely responsible for the development of the city and its public architecture. Throughout the late 18th and 19th century, the city was a centre of the East India Company's opium trade.
By the 1850s, Kolkata had two areas: White Town, which was primarily British and centred around Chowringhee; and Black Town, mainly Indian and centred around North Calcutta. The city underwent rapid industrial growth starting in the early 1850s, especially in the textile and jute industries; this encouraged British companies to massively invest in infrastructure projects, which included telegraph connections and Howrah railway station. The coalescence of British and Indian culture resulted in the emergence of a new babu class of urbane Indians, whose members were often bureaucrats, professionals, newspaper readers, and Anglophiles; they usually belonged to upper-caste Hindu communities. In the 19th century, the Bengal Renaissance brought about an increased sociocultural sophistication among city denizens. In 1883, Kolkata was host to the first national conference of the Indian National Association, the first avowed nationalist organisation in India. Gradually, Calcutta became a centre for revolutionary organisations associated with the Indian independence movement. The 1905 partition of Bengal along communal lines resulted in widespread public agitation and a boycott of British goods by the Gandhi-led Swadeshi movement. These activities, along with the administratively disadvantageous location of Calcutta on the eastern fringes of India, prompted the British to move the capital to New Delhi in 1911.
The city and its port were bombed several times by the Japanese between 1942 and 1944, during World War II. Coinciding with the war, millions starved to death during the Bengal famine of 1943 due to a combination of military, administrative, and natural factors.0 Demands for the creation of a Muslim state led in 1946 to an episode of communal violence that killed over 4,000. The partition of India led to further clashes and a demographic shift: many Muslims left for East Pakistan; hundreds of thousands of Hindus fled into the city.
During the 1960s and 1970s, severe power shortages, strikes, and a violent Marxist–Maoist movement by groups known as the Naxalites damaged much of the city's infrastructure, resulting in economic stagnation. The Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971 led to a massive influx of thousands of refugees, many of them penniless, that strained Kolkata's infrastructure. During the mid-1980s, Mumbai (then called Bombay) overtook Kolkata as India's most populous city. In 1985, Rajiv Gandhi dubbed Kolkata a "dying city" in light of its socio-political woes.
In the period 1977–2011, West Bengal was governed from Kolkata by the Left Front, which was dominated by the Communist Party of India (CPM). It was the world's longest-serving democratically elected communist government; Kolkata was a key base for Indian communism.0 The city's economic recovery gathered momentum after the 1990s, when India began to institute pro-market reforms. Since 2000, the information technology (IT) services sector has revitalised Kolkata’s stagnant economy. The city is also experiencing marked growth in its manufacturing base
City/Town : Latitude: 22.571377906057748, Longitude: 88.35883098937984Matches 1 to 1 of 1
Last Name, Given Name(s)  |
Death  |
Person ID | Tree | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Plinsinga, Pieter Jans | Between 01 June 1855 and 06 August 1855 | Kolkata, India | I458558 | Veenkoloniale voorouders |
Matches 1 to 2 of 2
| Family |
Marriage |
Family ID | Tree | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Grand / Worlee | 1776 | Kolkata, India | F262379 | Veenkoloniale voorouders |
| 2 | Thomas / Owenjohn | Kolkata, India | F255953 | Veenkoloniale voorouders | |
Matches 1 to 1 of 1
| Family |
Not married or living together |
Family ID | Tree | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Francis / Worlee | About 1780 | Kolkata, India | F262380 | Veenkoloniale voorouders |
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