#eic

Black Hole of Calcutta

The Black Hole of Calcutta refers to a prison cell which was used to hold 146 mostly British prisoners captured after the Nawab of Bengal had taken over the city from the East India Company. Interred on 20 June 1756 in a tiny cell in Fort William, 123 of the prisoners died of dehydration and suffocation.

The number of the Black Hole deaths may have been exaggerated, but testimonies to the event actually happening are numerous. The East India Company used the story as a justification for taking over Calcutta completely. It was really in the next century, though, that knowledge of the incident was spread through textbooks and literature as one of a host of equally dubious means to justify Britain's colonial presence in India. The incident's grip on the popular imagination can be seen in the long-lasting use of the expression "like the Black Hole of Calcutta" to refer to any dark and forbidding place.

Background

In the mid-18th century, the British East India Company (EIC) was seeking to expand its control of trade and territory in India. The rich region of Bengal was an obvious target, and Calcutta (Kolkata) became a major trading port for the company. The French East India Company was also present in the region at Chandernagore (Chandannagar) further up the coast. Balancing between these two foreign companies, both essentially representatives of their respective government's imperial ambitions in India, was the Nawab of Bengal, Siraj ud-Daulah (b. 1733), nominally under the suzerainty of the Moghul emperors in Delhi. Siraj ud-Daulah wanted to remove the EIC from Calcutta since it would not pay to improve the city's fortifications, and so he marched on the city in June 1756. A short siege followed, and the city fell. The fate of those captured was the source of the infamous Black Hole legend.

The British Library is celebrating the completion of a four-year project to conserve two unique but badly degraded silk flags dating from the 1790s.

The flags are a set of colours belonging to the Royal East India Volunteers formed by the East India Company in London during the French Wars to protect East India House and the Company warehouses ‘against hazard from insurrections and tumults’ and to assist the City government in times of disorder. 

The REIV were embodied at two separate periods, from 1796 to 1814 and then from 1820 to 1834.  The field officers were elected from Company directors, and commissioned officers were recruited from clerks and officials at East India House and the warehouses.  The supervisory grades in the warehouses became non-commissioned officers who led labourers serving as privates. By 1799 there were three regiments with about 1500 men.  A register of labourers in the REIV soldiers 1820-1832 has survived giving age, height, home address, reason for discharge from the corps.  Some men were discharged because training clashed with their warehouse duties or secondary afternoon jobs. Others were judged unfit to serve – Charles Twort was discharged for having bad feet and corns.

Each REIV regiment had a set of colours.  It appears that Lady Jane Dundas embroidered all three sets. Her husband Henry Dundas wrote to Company director David Scott on 4 November 1796 that Lady Jane had taken a fancy that she ought to work a pair of colours for the East India Corps and that she needed instructions. Lady Jane presented the colours at three public ceremonies in April 1797, July 1797, and June 1799.

One set of colours was presented to the re-embodied REIV on 14 June 1821. When the REIV was finally disbanded in 1834, these colours were deposited in the museum at East India House. Sir George Birdwood found the colours later in the 19th century at the India Store Depôt at Lambeth and placed them in the Military Committee Room at the India Office in Whitehall.  They were still on display in Whitehall as late as 1963. 

In 1895 the colours were lent to Empire of India Exhibition at Earl’s Court.  The catalogue described them as ‘tattered and torn in the most approved fashion but no tale of glory hangs thereby. Only in marches and reviews in London Fields did these colours wave to the breeze, and damp and the ravages of rats and mice are responsible for their present condition’.

The colours had become fragile, fragmentary and soiled. Large areas of silk loss made the flags very hard to interpret. Surprisingly, the complex embroideries which decorated the centre of the flags were predominately intact although structurally very weak.

The conservation treatment of these two flags included: surface cleaning; removal of the central embroideries; wet cleaning; crease removal; mounting on a padded board covered by a digitally printed image of the flag to enable interpretation and covering with a specially dyed nylon net which prevents the loss of the fragmentary silk.

The conservation will enable access, display and research by ensuring the longevity of these precious and important flags.

🇱🇹 During @ESCinConcert, @RoryGannon spoke with #Lithuania's #ESC2024 representative @SilvestrasBelte about his #Eurovision entry "Luktelk", as well his secret #JESC history and his pride in his sexuality. What do you think of the song? Can it win?

Before taking to the stage at Amsterdam’s Eurovision in Concert, Rory spoke with Silvester Belt for an interview. He is representing Lithuania at the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest with the song “Luktelk”. Check out our interview with Silvester Belt here! In his interview with Rory, Silvester talked about his secret Junior Eurovision participation. He also reflected on the domestic reaction to…

VIRTUE: Virtual Interactive Reality Toolkit for Understanding the EIC

This is a desktop and VR application I'm releasing on Steam for free on Christmas Day that will let you explore simulated particle collisions in the future Electron-Ion Collider.

And for other students also in nuclear/particle physics, you can upload your own data and detector geometry by modifying JSON files within the application folder, to use this as your own event display.

Please check it out!