The Black Hole: Money, Myth and Empire

by JanDalley (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2007

  $3.67

  The story of the Black Hole of Calcutta was once drilled into every British schoolchild: how in 1756 the Nawab of Bengal attacked Fort William and locked the survivors in a tiny cell, where over a hundred souls died in insufferable heat. British retribution was swift and merciless, and led to much of India falling completely under colonial dominion. The Black Hole is the story of the propagation of a myth that arose as the British Empire came into being: a myth about the barbarism of a people the colonials sought to rule, and how that myth - based on improbable exaggeration and half-truth - helped justify the march of empire for two hundred years.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2006

  $4.62

  One small event in 18th-century India has proved an enduring myth, and an enduring puzzle. In 1756, the Nawab of Bengal besieged the British East India Company's fort at Calcutta, and 146 people were locked in a tiny cell. The following morning, only 23 emerged: all the rest had died horribly of suffocation or thirst. That is the version enshrined in the history books for centuries. But was it true? What really happened in the Black Hole is shrouded by layers of self-interest, emotion and propaganda. Its real power is as a symbol. Jan Dalley takes us through a rattling history of the buccaneer 'hatmen' of the East India Company, tracing the growth of the fledgling city of Calcutta. She brilliantly, and with fabulous and pointed detail, describes the places and the people of this amazing story, whether it is the Eurasian teenage bride Mary Carey, the lone woman survivor, the weak English officer class running the Fort of Calcutta, or the imperious, truculent Nawab of Bengal, Siraj-ud-daulah. The way in which the narrative was told and re-told, and how it became one of those stories around which nations form an idea of themselves, is the focus of this book. The Black Hole will fascinate everyone interested in India, in British history and in a new look at Empire.