Job Charnock

Charnock was an administrator of the English East India Company credited with the establishment of a British trading post at today’s Kolkata.

Born in Lancashire, Charnock worked for a private trading company before he decided to join the East India Company. After he arrived in India, Charock was first stationed at Cossimbazar, north of present-day Kolkata, and then at Patna, in Bihar. In 1686 he became the chief agent of the EIC at Hugli on the Hugli River. Around that time he married an Indian widow, allegedly a Rajput princess whom he rescued from her husband’s funeral pyre.

Clashing with the Muhal viceroy in Bengal over imposition of customs duty, Charnock moved his operations 27 miles south to Sutanati that would later become part of Calcutta (Kolkata). Calcutta was the capital of British India until 1911 when the capital was relocated to Delhi.