Trading tastes
A little obscure village on the left bank of river Hooghly, now known as Kolkata, became the city of Calcutta under the influence of its many rulers. The Portugese landed in the village Kalikatta in 1517. In 1580, Akbar, gave them a charter to settle here. Basically traders by profession, the Portugese would buy things like muslin, spices, cotton, rice, and other agricultural products here and then sell them off at high prices at various ports in the East. Initially the Portugese would stay in Kalikatta during the rainy season, trade and then head back to Goa where rains would be over . With time this practice gave way to permanent settlements and records say that by 1670s ‘there were at least 20,000 Portuguese and their descendants in Bengal’. Though the political influence of the Portugese diminished after the arrival of Dutch and finally the East India Trading Company yet even today it pervades the life in Bengal in many other ways. One of the ways in which the Portugese influence ...