Thanks. But again, beware of the two meanings of rich/poor. > "India's wealthiest province, ... rich in muslin, silk yarn" i.e. rich in luxury goods, crafts s

Thanks. But again, beware of the two meanings of rich/poor. > "India's wealthiest province, ... rich in muslin, silk yarn" i.e. rich in luxury goods, crafts serving the 1%. That's what the company was after, because their entire shipping capacity was like a few modern trucks per year, so only super-valuable goods made sense. (And I think you'll find that the top 1% of Bengalis still live pretty well.) > "abject poverty ... generations of Indians living on the sidewalks" i.e. the poorest people. That they were poor in 1650 too wasn't really worth writing down: they were peasants, peasants were poor. That other provinces contributed so little tax in 1850s is really an indication of how little ruling was going on. Sure they got to paint the whole map pink & keep the french out, but (at that time) the company was only a few thousand people. They weren't exactly overseeing the 5-year plan in every village. I think I've been to the same museum, BTW. They had a surprisingly honest section about literature, pointing out that Bengali was the first indian language in which serious writing in the vernacular took off. And this was a blending, I'm told you see poems borrowing from oral & scriptural traditions but written in rhyming schemes taken from english poetry of the time.