The early period

The name Kalikata was mentioned in the rent-roll of the Mughal emperor Akbar (reigned 1556–1605) and also in the Manasa-mangal of the Bengali poet Bipradas (1495). The history of Kolkata as a British settlement, known to the British as Calcutta, dates from the establishment of a trading post there by Job Charnock, an agent of the English East India Company, in 1690. ... Charnock had previously had disputes with officials of the Mughal Empire at the river port of Hugli (Hooghly) and had been obliged to leave, after which he attempted unsuccessfully to establish himself at other places down the river. When the Mughal officials, not wishing to lose what they had gained from the English company’s commerce, permitted Charnock to return once more, he chose Calcutta as the seat of his operations. The site was apparently carefully selected, being protected by the Hugli (Hooghly) River on the west, a creek to the north, and salt lakes to the east. Rival Dutch, French, and other European settlements were higher up the river on the west bank, so that access from the sea was not threatened, as it was at the port of Hugli. The river at this point was also wide and deep; the only disadvantage was that the marshes to the east and swamps within the area made the spot unhealthy. Moreover, before the coming of the English, three local villages—Sutanati, Kalikata, and Gobindapore, which were later to become parts of Calcutta—had been chosen as places to settle by Indian merchants who had migrated from the silted-up port of Satgaon, farther upstream. The presence of these merchants may have been to some extent responsible for Charnock’s choice of the site.