Bazaars, landlords and the Company government in late eighteenth-century Calcutta

This article focuses on the bazaars of Calcutta in the late eighteenth century to bring out the tussle between the Company and the landowners over issues of land and customary collection. The debate regarding the bazaar reveals the concerns of the Company about rent and tax. Who had the right to tax, the individual proprietor of the land or the state? What were the limits of landowners’ rights? These questions, I suggest, were linked to deeper debates over the meaning of terms and definition of categories. In this article, I explore how Company officials sought to understand the notion of the ‘bazaar’. My discussion will develop through a focus on a particular dispute between two landowners in Calcutta where the Company had to intervene. Together, the long discussions in the Council, the examination of the sites, testimonies by the witnesses and the arguments put forward by the proprietors themselves—created a maze of documents, from which the Company tried to glean out the ‘bazaar’.