Hugli Trade

The Bengal river commerce centered on the Hugli (Hooghly) River, where European companies sited factories upstream of the Bay of Bengal. The English East India Company traded at Hugli from the 1650s before founding Calcutta in 1690; the Dutch, French, Danish, and Portuguese held their own settlements (Chinsurah, Chandannagar, Serampore). Exports were Bengal cotton and silk piece-goods, saltpetre, sugar, and opium. The river’s shifting bars and the James and Mary shoal made pilotage hazardous for deep-draft Indiamen.