ABSTRACT
During the Mughal period Dacca was both a centre of trade and commerce, and an important manufacturing town. A centre of consumption and a Shah Bandar, it attracted merchants and traders, Indian and foreign. Any sharp decline in Dacca's trade and commerce only began from 1765 when the East India Company became the ruler of Bengal. The Armenian traders of Dacca were among those pioneers who first imported and sold European goods. The trade in European goods became a new source of wealth in Dacca, many merchants earning considerable profits, while the availability of these fashionable commodities enhanced the importance of the city as the chief emporium in East Bengal not only for foreign but for local goods too. In the early nineteenth century when trade and commerce were declining, many Armenian families, such as the Pogoses, Aratoons, Michaels, Sarkies and Stephens, invested their capital in land and became zamindars.
