East India Company

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Encyclopaedia Britannica

Overview of the Company's shift from trade to colonial rule, including the grant of diwani rights and its economic consequences in Bengal.

Est. 1947 · Bengal✺A Bilingual Archive

Referenced In Events

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1760-1800

Fakir-Sannyasi Resistance

The Fakir-Sannyasi Resistance was a long wave of armed uprisings led by Muslim fakirs and Hindu sannyasis against the East India Company in Bengal. Beginning in 1760 and gaining momentum in 1763, the movement grew out of restrictions on alms collection, revenue pressure, and the social disruption created by Company rule. It continued in recurring phases through the famine years and late eighteenth-century crackdowns, making it one of the earliest sustained anti-colonial resistances in Bengal.

1764

Battle of Buxar

In 1764, the Battle of Buxar gave the East India Company a decisive military advantage over the combined forces of Mir Qasim, Shuja-ud-Daula, and Shah Alam II. While Plassey opened the gate in Bengal, Buxar consolidated Company coercive power at a wider regional scale. The outcome set the stage for the 1765 diwani arrangement and deeper colonial revenue extraction.

1765

East India Company Gets Diwani Rights in Bengal

In 1765, the East India Company secured the diwani, or the right to collect revenue, in Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa. That settlement turned post-Plassey influence into formal fiscal power. Revenue extraction, administrative leverage, and political authority began to flow through the Company, even as Mughal and nawabi institutions remained in place.

1770

Great Bengal Famine

The famine of 1770 devastated Bengal, producing catastrophic mortality across agrarian and urban communities. Crop failure, grain-market distortions, and rigid revenue collection under East India Company authority combined to turn environmental stress into a social collapse. The crisis became an early warning of how colonial political economy could magnify human vulnerability.