Hinterland of a Hinterland: The Changing Capital Cities of Sultanate and Mughal Bengal

Abstract

Urban research on Bengal has emphasized colonial Calcutta (postcolonial Kolkata) and its hinterland, paying less attention to precolonial centres and processes of urbanization. Between the thirteenth and the early eighteenth centuries, the trading village of Kalikata lay on the coastal margin of Bengal. The regional capitals of the Sultanate and Mughal periods were located further inland at Gour, Pandua, Rajmahal, Dhaka, and Murshidabad, in the hinterlands of imperial capitals in the Delhi region. Bengal capitals changed frequently with fluvial and geopolitical conditions, which had implications for their economic and architectural development. Coastal trading settlements competed with one another in commercial and military matters, which established a new hinterland by the late eighteenth century, with ‘hinterland’ defined as the economic catchment region of the maritime port of Calcutta. This article retraces these processes from chronicles, revenue records, and archaeological surveys. Our examination concludes with the national eclipse of Calcutta by New Delhi in the early twentieth century, and the prospect of climate-driven retreat to inland capitals in Bengal in a twenty-first-century shift that would resemble urban patterns of the precolonial era.