ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the general identity of the writing of urban history in India. It is a historiographical writing and the Calcutta chapter of this historiography is the subject of our study here. The British historians who wrote on India were panegyrists of the Empire. Their main intention was to write the exploits of the British in India. Out of this mist of imperial eulogies we try to find in this chapter how Calcutta, from an unsure form, assumed for itself the most sanguine identity as the second city of the Empire
