Abstract
TORESIDENTS OF EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY CALCUTTA the subject of this paper might well have seemed a mare's nest-or at least a topic for mock-encomium. The intellectual life of the city was overshadowed by its political feuds, its lawsuits and its duels, its heroic trading ventures (often implemented by force or guile), and its hectic social activities. Henry Thomas Colebrooke complained to his father that Hastings had filled the country with unscrupulous harpies, who [had] adopted one pursuit-a fortune.' Alexander Macrabie, writing in 1775, described a dinner party attended by leading officials in the Bengal administration: . . the evening was stupid enough, and the supper detestable.... With respect to conversation, we have had three or four songs screeched to unknown tunes; the ladies regaled with cherry-brandy, and we pelted one another with bread-pills a' la mode de Bengal. As for the English clergy, One rivals Nimrod in hunting, a second supplies bullocks for the army, another is a perfect connoisseur in Chinese garden-
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