What do you think?
Rate this book
Hooghly : The Global History of a River
The Hooghly, a distributary of the Ganges flowing south to the Bay of Bengal, is now little-known outside of India. Yet for centuries it was a river of truly global significance, attracting merchants, missionaries, mercenaries, statesmen, labourers and others from Europe, Asia and beyond. Hooghly seeks to restore the waterway to the heart of global history. Focusing in turn on the role of and competition between those who struggled to control the river - the Portuguese, the Mughals, the Dutch, the French and finally the British, who built their imperial capital, Calcutta, on its banks - the author considers how the Hooghly was integrated into global networks of encounter and exchange, and the dramatic consequences that ensued. Travelling up and down the river, Robert Ivermee explores themes of enduring concern, among them the dynamics of modern capitalism and the power of large corporations; migration and human trafficking; the role of new technologies in revolutionizing social relations; and the human impact on the natural world. The Hooghly's global history, he concludes, may offer lessons for India as it emerges as a world superpower.
Hardcover
Published February 8, 2021
11 people are currently reading
123 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 31, 2023
A brilliant read about how a river played such an important role in shaping up the history of a country. Ever since the river Saraswati started silting and drying up, an insignificant river called Hooghly occupied centre stage as Portuguese, Dutch, French, Danish and English started trading using this river. The book is a deep dive into early days of 15th and 16th century as various trading companies fought against each other for economic and political supremacy. Thoroughly researched, it is a fascinating read about various battles and back stage plots that ultimately led to the English supremacy and the decline of various European settlements along the banks of Hooghly.
October 4, 2021
Informative but dry facts make it a dreary read.
April 26, 2021
Book: Hooghly: The Global History of a River
Author: Robert Ivermee
Publisher: HarperCollins (8 February 2021)
Language: English
Hardcover: 272 pages
Item Weight: 370 g
Dimensions: 20 x 14 x 4 cm
Country of Origin: India
Price: 371/-
It would not be a hyperbole in the slightest if this reviewer proclaims that he has never before read such a captivating book based on the life and times of a river.
There was a time, when the Hooghly was a waterway of justly international consequence, attracting merchants, missionaries, statesmen, soldiers, labourers, and others from Asia, Europe, and elsewhere.
As the prime artery between lower and upper Bengal, it facilitated travel and communication between the coast and locations inland. Its tributaries and distributaries afforded access to deltaic Bengal, the Gangetic plain, and the Mughal heartland of Hindustan, linking northern and eastern India with territories across the Indian Ocean and beyond.
This book sheds light on the extraordinary period when the Hooghly was at the centre of global history. From the 16th century, consecutive peripheral parties—among them Portuguese, Mughal, Dutch, British, French, and Danish—were drawn to the river.
The Hooghly came to be incorporated into networks of encounter and exchange spanning different cultures and regions and, at least until the turn of the 20th century, was celebrated not only in Bengal and India but across the world.
Consider the geography in a nutshell:
1) The Hooghly marks the start of deltaic Bengal.
2) To the west, the lands immediately bordering the river in its lower reaches are low-lying and alluvial.
3) Further west and north, the land rises and becomes hilly, with rocky hard clay ground, a milder climate, and fast-flowing rivers and streams creating conditions beneficial to winter rice, sugarcane, tobacco, and potatoes.
4) To the east is the delta, flat, swampy, and humid, its often-submerged soil used to produce spring rice and jute in the midst of jungle and mangrove swamps.
5) On its fall, the Hooghly is reunited with the waters of the Jalangi and the Mathabhanga—lesser branches of the Ganges—and joined by the Damodar, the Rupnarayan, the Haldi, and the Rasulpur, all tributaries up-and-coming from the Chota Nagpur Plateau to enter the river on its right.
These contributions compensate for the Hooghly’s loss of fresh water to the innumerable creeks and channels which branch off it into the Sunderbans, as well as its discharge of fresh water into the sea.
In Bengal, worship of the Hooghly and other rivers pre-dated the arrival of Indo-Aryans with their Sanskrit texts—perhaps not astounding when one considers that continued existence depended on the waters. Older folk beliefs and stories were then integrated into the Brahmanical tradition as it spread.
Bengal occupied a place of immense significance in the story of the descent of the Ganges.
After it had been released from heaven, Bhagiratha led the Ganges out of the mountains and across the Indian plains to the Bengal delta, where it flowed into the sea next to the site of the sage Kapila’s ashram on what is now Sagar Island.
On viewing the great river on earth, Kapila kept his pledge and brought Sagara’s sons back to life. As the novel course of the Ganges, the Hooghly is to this day known by many as the Bhagirathi, after Bhagiratha, or simply Ma Ganga (Mother Ganges).
As the title of this book proposes, its purpose is not to study events worldwide, in the manner of some global histories, but to a certain extent to mull over a particular geographical formation—the Hooghly—concerning the ‘global�. Its spotlight is not on a single topic or theme of supposed universal significance but on a set of unified subjects central to understanding an age when events on the Hooghly were of global implication.
As with many global histories, encounters and exchanges between peoples from different backgrounds are at the heart of the study. It takes as one of its main subjects the individuals and populations from distant locations who, at least for a period, made the Hooghly their home, and considers the commodities, ideas, and institutions that travelled with them across borders and boundaries.
Taking after Sebastian Conrad’s outstanding work on the subject, this book assumes as its preliminary premise the insight that global history is not just about encounters and exchanges across cultures, territories, or regions but about processes of integration on a global scale—the rising interplay of assorted parts of the world.
The book focuses on seven locations along the course of the Hooghly. As the book progresses, first up and then down the river, it moves forward in time from the 16th century to the present.
This is how the book shapes up:
Chapter 1 - Hooghly: The Rise and Fall of the Portuguese: -- The opening chapter reflects on the thriving and annihilation of the earliest European settlement on the river, the Portuguese city of Hooghly. Drawing on existing modern accounts, it considers the nature of life in the Portuguese settlement and seeks to comprehend why Shah Jahan considered it essential to attack and destroy Hooghly in 1632—a choice that, it becomes clear, was intimately related to the Portuguese traffic of slaves in the Bay of Bengal. Reflections are offered on the lasting legacies of the Portuguese at Hooghly for the global history of the river.
Chapter 2 - Murshidabad: The Kingdom of the Nawabs of Bengal: --- In the second chapter, the author casts the spotlight on the city of Murshidabad, christened the capital of Bengal by Murshid Quli Khan, a regal officeholder who engineered the severance of Bengal from the Mughal Empire to institute an autonomous state under his personal rule. Charting the dynastic squabbles and warfare that overwhelmed his successors, the author almost forcefully seeks to paint a picture of a kingdom characterised by its pluralism, in which encounters between assorted peoples fostered the materialization of new and syncretic cultural and religious forms combining Islamic and other elements.
Chapter 3 - Plassey: The English East India Company’s Ascent:-- In the third chapter, the pre-eminence of the English East India Company on the Hooghly is brought under inspection. The chapter inspects how the Company took after its Portuguese and Dutch equivalents to press its trading claims and attain commercial monopolies using might and intimidation when required. It explores the alteration of the Company from a commercial persona into a militarised territorial power and considers the immense human costs of the warfare and famine that followed. Plassey, the location of the face-off between English forces and those of the Bengal ruler through which the Company assumed power� serves as an allegory for this catastrophe and offers a sequence of lessons for today about the expansion and mistreatment of corporate power with the inferred consent and support of nation-states.
Chapter 4 - Chandernagore: The French Revolution in Bengal: The section on Chandernagore, turns consideration to the statesponsored French trading companies on the Hooghly. It aims to globalise the history of the French Revolution by showing how events on the Hooghly helped to bring about the revolution, and how, in turn, the revolution impacted Bengal. The actions of the French and English companies on the Hooghly, it is revealed, occupied an important position in metropolitan French anti-colonial thought and wider criticisms of the ancien régime. However, revolutionary ideas like freedom, democracy, and the rule of law would sustain as much as challenge European colonial practices on the river.
Chapter 5 - Serampore: Baptist Missionaries and the Power of Print: -- A diminutive collection of English Baptist missionaries who settled in the Danish town of Serampore are the conceivably astonishing subject of chapter 5. What made the Serampore mission party so significant is that it operated one of the most primitive and most significant printing presses in Bengal. This chapter informs the reader about the inheritance of the mission and its press in areas including education, literature, journalism, political activism, and social and religious reform. It documents the missionaries� brunt on the English government of Bengal and mulls over its authority on those who would challenge and disregard colonial rule.
Chapter 6 - Calcutta: The Unfinished Conquest of Nature: This chapter focuses on Calcutta, which, it is suggested, merits to be recognised as one of the world’s first megacities. The chapter considers the multiple ways in which the expansion of Calcutta during the 19th century was reliant on human control of the Hooghly, for the transport of people and goods, food and water supply, hygiene and sanitation. This was an age of enormous innovations in science and technology, among them steamships and railways, pumping plants and new drainage systems, all of which appeared on the Hooghly. Regardless of these advances, however, the natural environment of Bengal, including the Hooghly itself, remained disorderly and, as such, colonial confidence in the conquest of civilisation over nature was punctuated by self-doubt.
Chapter 7 - Sagar Island: The Hooghly’s Global Future: The Hooghly would come to absorb an significant position in Bengali nationalist rejoinders to colonial rule. By the turn of the 20th century, Calcutta’s standing as the economic and political capital of India was under threat and the international magnitude of the Hooghly was in decline. The concluding chapter, Sagar Island, reflects on the Hooghly’s inclusive history and deems the impending connotation of the river to the surfacing of India as a global superpower today. The author suggests that the actors shaping the Hooghly’s upcoming potential must learn from the blunders of the past if the great of the 21st century, among them the climate emergency and increasing levels of disparity—are to be met.
Can any story of this river be complete without the mention of religious fervour?
The author shows, how, eventually, the expansion of new religious movements within the Hindu fold led to the foundation of other spiritual centres along the river.
The author shows, how, inspired by Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Vaishnavism centering on the cult of Krishna as an embodiment of the Supreme Lord Vishnu and leave-taking from Brahmanism by emphasising extensiveness over caste, devotion over ritual, and the Bengali over the Sanskrit language, in the regions adjacent to the upper Hooghly produced a population of Krishna-following peasant cultivators distinct from the Brahmin owners of the land. It would in due course renovate Chaitanya’s birthplace of Mayapur, facing Nabadwip across the river, into a foremost pilgrimage centre.
Kali, the venerated Goddess of Time, Creation, Destruction, and Power, was later singled out by Bengali Hindus as the definitive reality or ‘Brahman�. The centre of Kali worship became a temple constructed on the consecrated original channel of the Hooghly in what is now the Kolkata suburb of Kalighat.
The story of the descent of the Ganges was integrated into Kali worship.
And the book also shows you, how metropolitan political thought shaped the implement of colonial power by the English and French trading companies on the Hooghly.
Similarly, that exercise of power had insinuations for economy, society, and politics in Europe; in France, for example, it intensely impacted the development of Enlightenment thought that would lead to the French Revolution.
Grab a copy if you choose. You would be entertained and enlightened.
Author: Robert Ivermee
Publisher: HarperCollins (8 February 2021)
Language: English
Hardcover: 272 pages
Item Weight: 370 g
Dimensions: 20 x 14 x 4 cm
Country of Origin: India
Price: 371/-
It would not be a hyperbole in the slightest if this reviewer proclaims that he has never before read such a captivating book based on the life and times of a river.
There was a time, when the Hooghly was a waterway of justly international consequence, attracting merchants, missionaries, statesmen, soldiers, labourers, and others from Asia, Europe, and elsewhere.
As the prime artery between lower and upper Bengal, it facilitated travel and communication between the coast and locations inland. Its tributaries and distributaries afforded access to deltaic Bengal, the Gangetic plain, and the Mughal heartland of Hindustan, linking northern and eastern India with territories across the Indian Ocean and beyond.
This book sheds light on the extraordinary period when the Hooghly was at the centre of global history. From the 16th century, consecutive peripheral parties—among them Portuguese, Mughal, Dutch, British, French, and Danish—were drawn to the river.
The Hooghly came to be incorporated into networks of encounter and exchange spanning different cultures and regions and, at least until the turn of the 20th century, was celebrated not only in Bengal and India but across the world.
Consider the geography in a nutshell:
1) The Hooghly marks the start of deltaic Bengal.
2) To the west, the lands immediately bordering the river in its lower reaches are low-lying and alluvial.
3) Further west and north, the land rises and becomes hilly, with rocky hard clay ground, a milder climate, and fast-flowing rivers and streams creating conditions beneficial to winter rice, sugarcane, tobacco, and potatoes.
4) To the east is the delta, flat, swampy, and humid, its often-submerged soil used to produce spring rice and jute in the midst of jungle and mangrove swamps.
5) On its fall, the Hooghly is reunited with the waters of the Jalangi and the Mathabhanga—lesser branches of the Ganges—and joined by the Damodar, the Rupnarayan, the Haldi, and the Rasulpur, all tributaries up-and-coming from the Chota Nagpur Plateau to enter the river on its right.
These contributions compensate for the Hooghly’s loss of fresh water to the innumerable creeks and channels which branch off it into the Sunderbans, as well as its discharge of fresh water into the sea.
In Bengal, worship of the Hooghly and other rivers pre-dated the arrival of Indo-Aryans with their Sanskrit texts—perhaps not astounding when one considers that continued existence depended on the waters. Older folk beliefs and stories were then integrated into the Brahmanical tradition as it spread.
Bengal occupied a place of immense significance in the story of the descent of the Ganges.
After it had been released from heaven, Bhagiratha led the Ganges out of the mountains and across the Indian plains to the Bengal delta, where it flowed into the sea next to the site of the sage Kapila’s ashram on what is now Sagar Island.
On viewing the great river on earth, Kapila kept his pledge and brought Sagara’s sons back to life. As the novel course of the Ganges, the Hooghly is to this day known by many as the Bhagirathi, after Bhagiratha, or simply Ma Ganga (Mother Ganges).
As the title of this book proposes, its purpose is not to study events worldwide, in the manner of some global histories, but to a certain extent to mull over a particular geographical formation—the Hooghly—concerning the ‘global�. Its spotlight is not on a single topic or theme of supposed universal significance but on a set of unified subjects central to understanding an age when events on the Hooghly were of global implication.
As with many global histories, encounters and exchanges between peoples from different backgrounds are at the heart of the study. It takes as one of its main subjects the individuals and populations from distant locations who, at least for a period, made the Hooghly their home, and considers the commodities, ideas, and institutions that travelled with them across borders and boundaries.
Taking after Sebastian Conrad’s outstanding work on the subject, this book assumes as its preliminary premise the insight that global history is not just about encounters and exchanges across cultures, territories, or regions but about processes of integration on a global scale—the rising interplay of assorted parts of the world.
The book focuses on seven locations along the course of the Hooghly. As the book progresses, first up and then down the river, it moves forward in time from the 16th century to the present.
This is how the book shapes up:
Chapter 1 - Hooghly: The Rise and Fall of the Portuguese: -- The opening chapter reflects on the thriving and annihilation of the earliest European settlement on the river, the Portuguese city of Hooghly. Drawing on existing modern accounts, it considers the nature of life in the Portuguese settlement and seeks to comprehend why Shah Jahan considered it essential to attack and destroy Hooghly in 1632—a choice that, it becomes clear, was intimately related to the Portuguese traffic of slaves in the Bay of Bengal. Reflections are offered on the lasting legacies of the Portuguese at Hooghly for the global history of the river.
Chapter 2 - Murshidabad: The Kingdom of the Nawabs of Bengal: --- In the second chapter, the author casts the spotlight on the city of Murshidabad, christened the capital of Bengal by Murshid Quli Khan, a regal officeholder who engineered the severance of Bengal from the Mughal Empire to institute an autonomous state under his personal rule. Charting the dynastic squabbles and warfare that overwhelmed his successors, the author almost forcefully seeks to paint a picture of a kingdom characterised by its pluralism, in which encounters between assorted peoples fostered the materialization of new and syncretic cultural and religious forms combining Islamic and other elements.
Chapter 3 - Plassey: The English East India Company’s Ascent:-- In the third chapter, the pre-eminence of the English East India Company on the Hooghly is brought under inspection. The chapter inspects how the Company took after its Portuguese and Dutch equivalents to press its trading claims and attain commercial monopolies using might and intimidation when required. It explores the alteration of the Company from a commercial persona into a militarised territorial power and considers the immense human costs of the warfare and famine that followed. Plassey, the location of the face-off between English forces and those of the Bengal ruler through which the Company assumed power� serves as an allegory for this catastrophe and offers a sequence of lessons for today about the expansion and mistreatment of corporate power with the inferred consent and support of nation-states.
Chapter 4 - Chandernagore: The French Revolution in Bengal: The section on Chandernagore, turns consideration to the statesponsored French trading companies on the Hooghly. It aims to globalise the history of the French Revolution by showing how events on the Hooghly helped to bring about the revolution, and how, in turn, the revolution impacted Bengal. The actions of the French and English companies on the Hooghly, it is revealed, occupied an important position in metropolitan French anti-colonial thought and wider criticisms of the ancien régime. However, revolutionary ideas like freedom, democracy, and the rule of law would sustain as much as challenge European colonial practices on the river.
Chapter 5 - Serampore: Baptist Missionaries and the Power of Print: -- A diminutive collection of English Baptist missionaries who settled in the Danish town of Serampore are the conceivably astonishing subject of chapter 5. What made the Serampore mission party so significant is that it operated one of the most primitive and most significant printing presses in Bengal. This chapter informs the reader about the inheritance of the mission and its press in areas including education, literature, journalism, political activism, and social and religious reform. It documents the missionaries� brunt on the English government of Bengal and mulls over its authority on those who would challenge and disregard colonial rule.
Chapter 6 - Calcutta: The Unfinished Conquest of Nature: This chapter focuses on Calcutta, which, it is suggested, merits to be recognised as one of the world’s first megacities. The chapter considers the multiple ways in which the expansion of Calcutta during the 19th century was reliant on human control of the Hooghly, for the transport of people and goods, food and water supply, hygiene and sanitation. This was an age of enormous innovations in science and technology, among them steamships and railways, pumping plants and new drainage systems, all of which appeared on the Hooghly. Regardless of these advances, however, the natural environment of Bengal, including the Hooghly itself, remained disorderly and, as such, colonial confidence in the conquest of civilisation over nature was punctuated by self-doubt.
Chapter 7 - Sagar Island: The Hooghly’s Global Future: The Hooghly would come to absorb an significant position in Bengali nationalist rejoinders to colonial rule. By the turn of the 20th century, Calcutta’s standing as the economic and political capital of India was under threat and the international magnitude of the Hooghly was in decline. The concluding chapter, Sagar Island, reflects on the Hooghly’s inclusive history and deems the impending connotation of the river to the surfacing of India as a global superpower today. The author suggests that the actors shaping the Hooghly’s upcoming potential must learn from the blunders of the past if the great of the 21st century, among them the climate emergency and increasing levels of disparity—are to be met.
Can any story of this river be complete without the mention of religious fervour?
The author shows, how, eventually, the expansion of new religious movements within the Hindu fold led to the foundation of other spiritual centres along the river.
The author shows, how, inspired by Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Vaishnavism centering on the cult of Krishna as an embodiment of the Supreme Lord Vishnu and leave-taking from Brahmanism by emphasising extensiveness over caste, devotion over ritual, and the Bengali over the Sanskrit language, in the regions adjacent to the upper Hooghly produced a population of Krishna-following peasant cultivators distinct from the Brahmin owners of the land. It would in due course renovate Chaitanya’s birthplace of Mayapur, facing Nabadwip across the river, into a foremost pilgrimage centre.
Kali, the venerated Goddess of Time, Creation, Destruction, and Power, was later singled out by Bengali Hindus as the definitive reality or ‘Brahman�. The centre of Kali worship became a temple constructed on the consecrated original channel of the Hooghly in what is now the Kolkata suburb of Kalighat.
The story of the descent of the Ganges was integrated into Kali worship.
And the book also shows you, how metropolitan political thought shaped the implement of colonial power by the English and French trading companies on the Hooghly.
Similarly, that exercise of power had insinuations for economy, society, and politics in Europe; in France, for example, it intensely impacted the development of Enlightenment thought that would lead to the French Revolution.
Grab a copy if you choose. You would be entertained and enlightened.
October 12, 2021
Informative and easy to read. An excellent writing style, it was no problem picking up the story even after a gap of a couple of days at a time.
Now I'm curious to read about other rivers that are comparable...
Now I'm curious to read about other rivers that are comparable...
May 15, 2024
Interesting read while staying on the banks of river Hooghly
November 10, 2023
"Hooghly: The Global History of a River" is an enlightening exploration of the Hooghly River's role in shaping history, trade, and culture across continents. Meticulously researched and eloquently written, the book offers a captivating journey through time, revealing the river's profound impact on societies and economies worldwide.
March 31, 2025
This is a unique book that I stumbled upon in a bookstore. It was quite a long and slow read, with many interruption. But, it is qualitatively impressive. Robert Ivermee has astutely picked most interesting historical phases surrounding the most important river of South Bengal and how it relates to present day.
I was particularly interested in this book as a person who was involved with the river from his childhood. But, even if you are not a Bengali, you can find this book fascinating if you are a history buff. Hooghly river was once the most important river in the world with respect to geo-political, financial, and cultural aspect. So much of Indian history post 1400s are shaped by this river - which is - organized and written industriously by the author. Chapters are named as places of interests beside the banks of Hooghly and dedicated to specific eras of historical significance.
I do recommend it, highly.
I was particularly interested in this book as a person who was involved with the river from his childhood. But, even if you are not a Bengali, you can find this book fascinating if you are a history buff. Hooghly river was once the most important river in the world with respect to geo-political, financial, and cultural aspect. So much of Indian history post 1400s are shaped by this river - which is - organized and written industriously by the author. Chapters are named as places of interests beside the banks of Hooghly and dedicated to specific eras of historical significance.
I do recommend it, highly.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
Can't find what you're looking for?
Get help and learn more about the design.