Chandernagore being a major trading port, a number of craftsmen worked for the European export market.
Stay: Try the basic, state-operated RabindraBhavan in
Chandernagore. Tel: (033) 2683 5840
While his discussion of competing French and English interests in
Chandernagore and other places, and the eventual decline of French presence in India is very readable, the chapter ignores the issue of mixed race marriages altogether, save a few passing references.
(94) The British takeover also had included an assault on the French factory at
Chandernagore, which removed the Compagnie des Indes from play.
The same author tells of later 'English theatres of a rather ephemeral nature' in the wider neighbourhood, at
Chandernagore (1808), Kidderpore (1815) and Dum Dum (1817, a cantonment theatre), and others named as the Athenaeum (1812), the fashionable Private Subscription Theatre (1813) and the Sans Souci (1839, rebuilt 1841).
For example, in the process of postcolonial partition,
Chandernagore and Junagadh voted for joining India in 1948; and in 1947 Sylbet voted for joining Pakistan.
He helped build up
Chandernagore, France's colony adjacent to Calcutta in Bengal, and he cultivated good relations with British traders.
Principal battles: Siege of Arcot (1751);
Chandernagore, Plassey (1757); Siege of Pondicherry (1760-1761).
Contacts between France and India date far back in time; they are anterior to the French East India Company and to its trading posts, of which Pondicherry and
Chandernagore remain the most famous.
Cruise past the forgotten splendour of Murshidabad, the last capital of the Nawabs, the European settlements at Bandel and
Chandernagore and the multicultural ISKCON township at Mayapur.
