Bangladesh

In the mid-eighth century, after a period of disorder, a chieftain named Gopala was raised to power and founded the Pala dynasty, which would rule Bihar and Bengal from the 8th to the 12th century. The Palas were devout patrons of Buddhism, and it was through missionaries from their kingdom that Buddhism was finally established in Tibet. Under Pala patronage a distinctive school of art arose, of which many noteworthy sculptures in stone and metal survive, and great centres of monastic learning flourished across the delta.

The supreme monument of this Buddhist Bengal is the Somapura Mahavihara at Paharpur, built by the second Pala king, Dharmapala, around the turn of the ninth century. One of the largest Buddhist monasteries south of the Himalayas, it drew scholars and monks from across Asia and remained a renowned intellectual centre until the 12th century. Its cruciform plan, perfectly adapted to its religious function, represents a unique artistic achievement; UNESCO inscribed the ruins as a World Heritage Site in 1985.

The last important Pala king, Ramapala, did much to strengthen the dynasty, but on his death Pala power was eclipsed by the rising Senas, a Hindu dynasty that united Bengal under a Brahmanical order in the twelfth century. The Sena age was a brief but brilliant Hindu revival in literature and religion. It ended abruptly: around 1204 the Turkish general Bakhtiyar Khalji swept into Bengal, overthrowing Sena rule and opening the land to a new faith and a new political order.

Turning points

1. c. 750 CEFormation

   Gopala founds the Pala dynasty

   Gopala is raised to power amid disorder and founds the Pala dynasty, a Buddhist imperial line that would rule Bengal and Bihar for some four centuries and spread Buddhism as far as Tibet.

   [1]

2. c. 800 CECulture & Ideas

   Somapura Mahavihara built at Paharpur

   The Pala king Dharmapala builds the great monastery of Somapura at Paharpur, one of the largest Buddhist viharas south of the Himalayas and a centre of learning for centuries; today a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

   [2] [1]

3. c. 1204 CEWar & Rupture

   Turkish conquest ends Sena rule

   The general Bakhtiyar Khalji conquers Bengal, ending the Hindu Sena dynasty and inaugurating centuries of Muslim rule in the delta.

   ↗See the data

   [4] [3]

Figures of the era

After the Turkish conquest, Bengal was loosely tied to the Delhi Sultanate, but its distance from Delhi and the difficulty of the riverine terrain encouraged independence. In 1342 Shamsuddin Iliyas Shah defeated his rivals, ascended the throne at Lakhnauti, and founded the Iliyas Shahi dynasty, consolidating an independent Sultanate of Bengal that would endure, under several dynasties, for more than two centuries. By campaigning across the delta he became master of the whole of Bengal.

Islam, which had come in the wake of the Turkish conquest, gradually transformed the social and religious fabric of the land. Muslim immigrants — traders, travellers and preachers — settled in the cities of Gaur, Pandua, Satgaon and Sonargaon, while Sufi saints established hospices in the countryside, reclaiming land and teaching new farming techniques to marginal communities. This patient process explains the eventual emergence of a Muslim majority in the eastern delta that would one day become Bangladesh.

The sultans were significant patrons of culture, fostering the growth of the Bengali language and a syncretic court life that drew on Persian, Arabic and indigenous traditions. Under Husain Shah (reigned 1494–1519) and his Husain Shahi successors the sultanate reached a cultural and territorial height. Independent Bengal finally fell when the Mughal emperor Akbar's armies defeated the last sultan at the Battle of Rajmahal in 1576, drawing the delta into the Mughal Empire.

Turning points

1. 1342Formation

   Iliyas Shah founds the Bengal Sultanate

   Shamsuddin Iliyas Shah unifies Bengal's principalities and establishes the independent Iliyas Shahi Sultanate at Lakhnauti, beginning more than two centuries of sovereign Muslim rule.

   [5]

2. 1494Politics & Power

   Reign of Husain Shah

   Alauddin Husain Shah presides over a golden age of the Bengal Sultanate, patronising Bengali literature and extending the kingdom's frontiers.

   [6]

3. 1576War & Rupture

   Mughal conquest of Bengal

   Akbar's forces defeat the last independent sultan at the Battle of Rajmahal, ending the Bengal Sultanate and absorbing the delta into the Mughal Empire.

   ↗See the data

   [3] [4]

Figures of the era

Under Mughal rule Bengal became the wealthiest province (subah) of the empire, its fertile delta producing vast surpluses of rice, sugar, silk and cotton. In 1610 the Mughal governor moved the provincial capital to Dhaka, which grew into one of the great commercial cities of Asia and the operational base for imperial campaigns into Assam. Bengal's revenues were the financial engine of the Mughal state, and its riverine ports drew Portuguese, Dutch, French and English traders.

The most fabled of Bengal's products was Dhaka muslin, a cotton fabric of extraordinary lightness and transparency prized by Mughal emperors and European nobility alike and renowned across the world as 'woven air'. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Mughal Bengal was the foremost muslin exporter on earth, and the delta as a whole accounted for a large share of European trade with Asia — Bengal alone supplied a substantial part of Dutch imports from the continent.

As Mughal central authority weakened after the death of Aurangzeb in 1707, the governors of Bengal became effectively autonomous rulers, the nawabs. Wealthy, populous and only loosely tethered to a fading Delhi, the Bengal of the early eighteenth century was a glittering prize. It was precisely this prosperity that drew the ambitions of the European trading companies, and above all the English East India Company, whose fortified factory at Calcutta would soon bring it into open conflict with the nawab.

Turning points

1. 1610Economy & Trade

   Dhaka becomes the Mughal capital of Bengal

   The Mughal governor establishes Dhaka as the capital of the Bengal subah, and the city grows into a hub of administration, military power and the global muslin trade.

   ↗See the data

   [3]

2. 17th–18th centuryEconomy & Trade

   Dhaka muslin and the wealth of Bengal

   Mughal Bengal becomes the world's foremost exporter of fine muslin and a leading source of European trade with Asia, making the province the richest in the empire.

   ↗See the data

   [3]

3. 1717Politics & Power

   The nawabs of Bengal become autonomous

   As Mughal central power fades after Aurangzeb's death, the governors of Bengal rule as near-independent nawabs over the empire's wealthiest province.

   [3]

On 23 June 1757 the East India Company army under Robert Clive defeated Siraj-ud-Daulah, the last independent nawab of Bengal, at the Battle of Plassey — a victory secured less by force than by the treachery of the nawab's commander Mir Jafar, who had been bribed to hold back his troops. The defeat handed the Company effective control of Bengal's revenues and is conventionally taken to mark the beginning of British political dominance over the whole of India.

Company rule brought ruin to a once-rich province. In 1769–70 the Great Bengal Famine killed an estimated ten million people — roughly a third of the population — as monsoon failure combined with the Company's refusal to relax its land-revenue demands even as peasants starved. Over the following century Bengal's celebrated textile industry was undercut and dismantled in favour of British manufactures, and the wealthiest province of the Mughal world was reduced to a colonial supplier of raw jute and a periphery of empire.

Bengal also became a crucible of resistance. In 1905 the viceroy Lord Curzon partitioned the province into a Hindu-majority west and a Muslim-majority east with its capital at Dacca, ostensibly for administrative ease but with the effect of dividing the population along religious lines. The move provoked the Swadeshi movement and a wave of nationalist agitation that forced its annulment in 1911 — but it had planted the idea of a separate Muslim-majority eastern Bengal that would resurface, decisively, four decades later.

Turning points

1. 23 Jun 1757Colonisation

   Battle of Plassey

   Robert Clive's East India Company forces defeat Nawab Siraj-ud-Daulah after the betrayal of Mir Jafar, beginning British political control of Bengal and, in time, of India.

   ↗See the data

   [7] [8]

2. 1769–1770Catastrophe

   The Great Bengal Famine

   An estimated ten million people — about a third of Bengal's population — die as monsoon failure compounds the East India Company's insistence on collecting land revenue from a starving peasantry.

   ↗See the data

   [3]

3. 1905Politics & Power

   First Partition of Bengal

   Viceroy Lord Curzon divides Bengal into a Muslim-majority east (capital Dacca) and a Hindu-majority west, sparking the Swadeshi movement; the partition is annulled in 1911.

   [9]

Figures of the era

When British India was partitioned in August 1947, Muslim-majority eastern Bengal became East Pakistan, the eastern wing of a new state whose two halves were separated by more than a thousand miles of Indian territory and divided by language, culture and economy. Power and investment were concentrated in West Pakistan, and Bengalis — though a majority of Pakistan's population — quickly came to feel like a neglected and exploited periphery within their own country.

The first great grievance was language. When the central government moved to make Urdu the sole state language of Pakistan, Bengalis, more than half the population, resisted. On 21 February 1952 students in Dhaka defied a ban on demonstrations to demand that Bengali be recognised as a state language; police opened fire, killing several, among them Abul Barkat, Rafiq Uddin Ahmed and Abdul Jabbar. The martyrs of the Language Movement became sacred to Bengali nationalism, and in 1999 UNESCO proclaimed 21 February International Mother Language Day in their memory.

The Language Movement transformed cultural identity into political demand. Through the 1950s and 1960s the Awami League, led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, channelled Bengali resentment into a programme of autonomy, embodied in its Six-Point demand of 1966 for self-government of the eastern wing. Repression and economic neglect deepened, and the catastrophic Bhola cyclone of November 1970 — which killed hundreds of thousands and was met with a sluggish central response — convinced many Bengalis that only self-rule could secure their future.

Turning points

1. 1947Politics & Power

   Partition creates East Pakistan

   The partition of British India makes Muslim-majority eastern Bengal into East Pakistan, a wing of the new state separated from its western half by a thousand miles of India.

   [3]

2. 21 Feb 1952Culture & Ideas

   The Bengali Language Movement

   Students in Dhaka demanding that Bengali be a state language of Pakistan are shot by police; the martyrs become foundational to Bengali nationalism and, later, to UNESCO's International Mother Language Day.

   [10] [11]

3. 1966Politics & Power

   The Awami League's Six-Point demand

   Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's Awami League issues a six-point programme for the political and economic autonomy of East Pakistan, the charter of Bengali self-determination.

   [12] [13]

Figures of the era

In December 1970 the Awami League won a sweeping victory, taking 167 of the 169 East Pakistani seats and an outright majority in Pakistan's National Assembly. When West Pakistan's leaders refused to let Mujibur Rahman form a government, Bengal rose in protest. On the night of 25 March 1971 the Pakistani army launched Operation Searchlight, a savage crackdown targeting students, intellectuals and the Hindu minority; on 26 March, shortly before his arrest, Mujib proclaimed Bangladesh's independence. Mukti Bahini guerrillas fought a nine-month war as some ten million refugees fled into India.

Britannica records that possibly a million Bengalis were killed in the conflict, which ended when India intervened in December and the Pakistani army surrendered at Dhaka on 16 December 1971, founding the People's Republic of Bangladesh. The new nation's start was harsh: war damage and the failures of relief produced a devastating famine in 1974, and on 15 August 1975 Mujib and most of his family were assassinated in a military coup. A counter-coup in November brought Ziaur Rahman to power; he founded the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and ruled until his own assassination in 1981, followed by the long military presidency of H. M. Ershad until 1990.

Civilian democracy returned in 1991, settling into a fierce rivalry between the Awami League under Mujib's daughter Sheikh Hasina and the BNP under Zia's widow Khaleda Zia. Over these decades Bangladesh transformed economically: a ready-made garment industry employing some four to five million workers, most of them women, made the country the world's second-largest clothing exporter and contributed roughly a tenth of its GDP. Hasina governed for fifteen unbroken years from 2009 until a student-led mass uprising over a job-quota system drove her from power and into exile in India on 5 August 2024, after which the Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus led an interim government charged with reform and fresh elections.

Turning points

1. Dec 1970Politics & Power

   Awami League wins the election

   The Awami League secures 167 of the 169 East Pakistani seats and a National Assembly majority; West Pakistan's refusal to hand over power ignites the crisis that leads to war.

   [12] [13]

2. 26 Mar 1971Independence

   Declaration of independence

   After the Pakistani army launches Operation Searchlight on 25 March, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman proclaims Bangladesh's independence on 26 March, beginning the Liberation War.

   ↗See the data

   [14] [12]

3. 16 Dec 1971Independence

   Victory and the birth of Bangladesh

   After a nine-month war in which possibly a million Bengalis were killed and ten million fled to India, Indian forces intervene and the Pakistani army surrenders at Dhaka, founding the People's Republic of Bangladesh.

   ↗See the data

   [14]

4. 15 Aug 1975Politics & Power

   Assassination of Mujib and military rule

   Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and most of his family are killed in a coup; a counter-coup brings Ziaur Rahman to power, beginning fifteen years of military-dominated rule.

   [12] [15]

5. 5 Aug 2024Politics & Power

   The 2024 uprising and Hasina's fall

   A student-led mass uprising over a civil-service job-quota system forces Sheikh Hasina to resign after fifteen years and flee to India; the Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus is appointed to head an interim government.

   [16]

Figures of the era