Book review: The Black Hole of Empire … / Partha Chatterjee
In 1756, Siraj-ud-daulah, ruler of Bengal, captured Calcutta (Kolkata) and allegedly imprisoned 146 Europeans overnight in a cramped room, where 123 of them subsequently died of suffocation. The story of “The Black Hole of Calcutta” was crucial to the “founding myth of the British Empire in India”. In The Black Hole of Empire: history of a global practice of power, Chatterjee examines the changing representations of the event in the history and political ideology of imperial and modern India