Dr Robert Ivermee – “Hooghly: The Global History of a River”
A brief overview: “The Hooghly River is now little known outside Bengal, yet for centuries it was a river of truly global significance, attracting merchants, missionaries, mercenaries, statesmen, labourers and others from Europe, Asia and beyond. This talk, based on the presenter’s recent book, Hooghly: The Global History of a River, will discuss the different European parties who established themselves on the river: the Portuguese, the Dutch, the French, the Danish and finally the British, who built their imperial capital, Calcutta, on its banks. It will consider how the Hooghly was integrated into global networks of encounter and exchange during the age of European colonialism, and the dramatic consequences – political, economic, social, cultural and environmental – that ensued.
Dr Robert Ivermee is a historian of British and wider European colonialism in South Asia. He is Associate Professor at the Catholic University of Paris. Hooghly: The Global History of a River has just been released in paperback (London: Hurst, 2024).
