Product Description

Since 1600 the English East India Company traded with the Indian sub-continent and tried to avoid becoming involved in internal Indian politics. However, one event was crucial in converting English influential opinion to an interventionist policy - the infamous Black Hole of Calcutta, when on the night of June 21, 1756, 123 English prisoners suffocated to death on the orders of Siraj-ud-Daula, Nawab (ruler) of Bengal. Thenceforth England regarded Indian rulers as savages like Siraj, and considered that they were unfit to govern India. From this it was but a short step to the establishment of partial and eventually complete English political control over the areas in which the English Company traded. But what is the truth of the Black Hole? Did 123 die? Did Siraj-ud-Daula deliberately order their deaths, or indeed did the Black Hole happen at all? Noel Barber sheds light on this unfortunate episode.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #353597 in Books
• Published on: 2003-07-30
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

About the Author
Noel Barber (born 1909) is the author of among other titles, The Sultans, The White Desert and A Sinister Twilight.

Customer Reviews

A different view of a long held Colonial 'myth'
Having 'borrowed'and unfortunately lent out, never to be returned, this book from a pub for whom I used to play football, I read a different viewpoint of one of the great myths of the Colonial history of India. This excellent book gives a different viewpoint from the propagandist story emerging from the sub-continent untinged by British bias.
A compelling and vital read for anyone interested in the real history of British India.

"Imaginative" History?
Noel Barbers book on the infamous Black Hole of Calcutta is a seriously flawed work. At the beginning he - honestly at least - admits that he has imaginatively reconstructed the history of the event and gives a couple of examples of where he has done this. Apart from this warning, one has no idea where the imagination begins and ends?

The imagination itself has more than a whiff of racial superiority about it, with Oriental stereotypes abound which rapidly become irratating. These are counter balanced by a vivid potrayal of the pathetic Governor and the Head of the Military in Calcutta aswell as countless other functionaries both civil and military.

There are only a few pages to put the events into any context so unless you have existing knowledge of India in the 18th Century you are going to be left a bit high and dry. The interpretation itself is fatally lamed by the racial attitudes and the undefined "imaginative" element. It is quite easy to read - I read it in a couple of sittings - but didnt feel it cast much in the way of light into the infamous Black Hole and the fall of Calcutta. Im sorry I bought the dam thing!