The New Fort William and the Dockyard: Constructing Company’s Calcutta in the Late Eighteenth Century

Abstract

In this article I will try to show how certain schemes of infrastructural development of a space often do not produce the desired effect, but instead set in motion a whole range of activities that brings forth a range of other issues. Through the study of the building of the New Fort William and the project of construction of a dockyard in Calcutta in the second half of the eighteenth century, I intend to focus on some of the key issues that shed light on the urban settlement in the post-Plassey period. The building of the New Fort William and the dockyard were important projects that shaped the space of the town. But the projects themselves did not have the intended effect on the settlement—the fort took a long time to complete and the dockyard could not be built in the first attempt. The halted and aborted efforts did leave a mark on the space of the town, brought in new forms of labour regulations and put forth questions of proprietary rights of individual and the Company. These projects also shed light on the relationship between the Company settlement and the rest of the province.