Work and Society in the East India Company Settlements in Bengal, 1650-1757

This dissertation examines the history of work in the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the English East India Company (EIC) settlements in Bengal between 1650 and 1757. By 1650, both companies had firmly established trading networks in Bengal, and by the early years of the eighteenth century, the profitability of trade in Bengal had become very clear to both companies. The volume and value of trade grew steadily until 1757, when the EIC defeated the Nawab of Bengal, Siraj-ud-Daulah, at the Battle of Plassey, thereby inaugurating direct colonial conquest of the region. During this period of trade, when neither company had political sway over the region and very little intrusion into the producing hinterland, they employed hundreds, sometimes thousands, of workers each year. How did these corporate entities manage labor in time and place, where their political control over workers was severely challenged? To answer this question, this dissertation specifically looks at workers who were directly employed by the companies. In doing so, it brings to light the lives and work of laboring people–boatmen, cartmen, coolies, silk reelers, slaves, sailors and soldiers—thus far ignored by social and economic historians of South Asia and the Indian Ocean. Most importantly, it reveals a world of work marked by the workers’ assertion of their right to mobility and “customary” payments. By emphasizing workers’ agency, I argue that the European companies’ control over the workers was far from total. Building on the rich body of work on the economic, social and labor histories of Mughal India and the Indian Ocean, this work proposes to shift the focus of eighteenth-century South Asian history from economic histories of trade and the history of both European and Asian mercantile and political elites to the social history of working people. It also brings labor history into the pre-colonial history of South Asia