ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the history of the city from the perspective of industry. It looks at the state of the city’s industry after the collapse of the Union Bank in 1848, the failure of Indo-British partnership in all business activities in Calcutta circles and the collapse of Fort Gloster enterprises. Indians feared to invest in any venture in association with Europeans after these disasters and the little industrialization that Calcutta had seen in the previous decades shrank completely. The process of de-industrialization, which began in the middle of the eighteenth century, continued till independence, resulting in India being one of the world’s poorest areas.
