Black Hole Incident is the name given to an event that took place during Nawab sirajuddaula's capture of Calcutta on 20 June 1756. The story of the tragedy is based on the narrative of one person, john zepheniah holwell, the defender of Calcutta. For fifty years since then little notice was taken of the incident.
Black Hole Incident is the name given to an event that took place during Nawab sirajuddaula's capture of Calcutta on 20 June 1756. The story of the tragedy is based on the narrative of one person, john zepheniah holwell, the defender of Calcutta. For fifty years since then little notice was taken of the incident. But it appeared to be a significant event in the writings of subsequent British historians, james mill (History of British India, fifth edition, ed by Horace Hayman Wilson 10 vols., 1858). The focus on the incident grew so intense that the 'Black Hole' became, along with palashi (1757) and the Great Revolt (1857-58), one of the three events which 'every English schoolboy knew' about India. However, now it is thought that the story is largely untrue and is greatly exaggerated.
Sirajuddaula arrived before the gate of fort william on 16 June 1756 with a force of 30,000 troops to capture it from the English. After two days of fighting, Governor drake found it impossible to withstand the nawab's forces and, on June 19, escaped with the main body of the English residents of the fort to Fulta.
The British who had surrendered were well treated. The victorious troops of the nawab plundered the Europeans of their valuables, but did not ill-treat them. But later at night, some European soldiers got drunk and assaulted the native guards who, in their turn, sought justice from their nawab. The nawab ordered the confinement of those soldiers who had misbehaved with the natives. Holwell later complained that the nawab ordered the European prisoners to be confined in a 'Black Hole', a chamber of 18 feet by 14 feet 10 inches (5.48 × 4.29m), with only one small window. The prisoners were crowded into that 'Black Hole' throughout that hot night of June, and in the morning many were found to have perished of suffocation or their wounds. The number of victims afterwards given out and accepted in Europe was 123 dead out of 146 confined. It rose to 200 men in the story told by some English fugitives sheltered in Chandernagar, now chandannagar.
Percival Spear (The Oxford History of India, 1958) was convinced that some thing like the 'Black Hole' incident, as described by Holwell, had actually occurred as the combined result of ignorance, apathy and confusion on the part of the nawab's agents in the confused circumstances of the overrunning of the Fort William, though the numbers involved and details are not certain. Spear's argument was that the details of Holwell might be exaggerated, but the fact remains that 123 people who defended Calcutta have to be accounted for, and that the evidence for their death in battle is more slender than for their death in the 'Black Hole'.
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Black Hole Incident is the name given to an event that took place during Nawab sirajuddaula's capture of Calcutta on 20 June 1756. The story of the tragedy is based on the narrative of one person, john zepheniah holwell, the defender of Calcutta. For fifty years since then little notice was taken of the incident.
Answer:
Black Hole Incident is the name given to an event that took place during Nawab sirajuddaula's capture of Calcutta on 20 June 1756. The story of the tragedy is based on the narrative of one person, john zepheniah holwell, the defender of Calcutta. For fifty years since then little notice was taken of the incident. But it appeared to be a significant event in the writings of subsequent British historians, james mill (History of British India, fifth edition, ed by Horace Hayman Wilson 10 vols., 1858). The focus on the incident grew so intense that the 'Black Hole' became, along with palashi (1757) and the Great Revolt (1857-58), one of the three events which 'every English schoolboy knew' about India. However, now it is thought that the story is largely untrue and is greatly exaggerated.
Sirajuddaula arrived before the gate of fort william on 16 June 1756 with a force of 30,000 troops to capture it from the English. After two days of fighting, Governor drake found it impossible to withstand the nawab's forces and, on June 19, escaped with the main body of the English residents of the fort to Fulta.
The British who had surrendered were well treated. The victorious troops of the nawab plundered the Europeans of their valuables, but did not ill-treat them. But later at night, some European soldiers got drunk and assaulted the native guards who, in their turn, sought justice from their nawab. The nawab ordered the confinement of those soldiers who had misbehaved with the natives. Holwell later complained that the nawab ordered the European prisoners to be confined in a 'Black Hole', a chamber of 18 feet by 14 feet 10 inches (5.48 × 4.29m), with only one small window. The prisoners were crowded into that 'Black Hole' throughout that hot night of June, and in the morning many were found to have perished of suffocation or their wounds. The number of victims afterwards given out and accepted in Europe was 123 dead out of 146 confined. It rose to 200 men in the story told by some English fugitives sheltered in Chandernagar, now chandannagar.
Percival Spear (The Oxford History of India, 1958) was convinced that some thing like the 'Black Hole' incident, as described by Holwell, had actually occurred as the combined result of ignorance, apathy and confusion on the part of the nawab's agents in the confused circumstances of the overrunning of the Fort William, though the numbers involved and details are not certain. Spear's argument was that the details of Holwell might be exaggerated, but the fact remains that 123 people who defended Calcutta have to be accounted for, and that the evidence for their death in battle is more slender than for their death in the 'Black Hole'.