The EIC's Forgotten Mapmaker: James Rennell and the Survey of Bengal

Before the British could tax Bengal, they had to know where it was. In the 1760s, the East India Company hired a young surveyor named James Rennell to map the newly acquired Diwani territories. Over two decades, Rennell produced the first scientifically accurate maps of Bengal and northern India, defining borders, rivercourses, and roads that shaped colonial administration and military campaigns. This episode follows Rennell's extraordinary career: from his apprenticeship under Captain John Knight on the frigate 'America', to his survey of the Ganges and Brahmaputra river systems, to the publication of his landmark 'Bengal Atlas' in 1779. We explore how Rennell combined Mughal-era revenue records (the 'ain' of Abul Fazl) with his own trigonometrical surveys, the challenges of mapping monsoon-flooded deltas, and the political uses of his maps during the Rohilla War and the First Anglo-Maratha War. Along the way, we meet the Indian surveyors—pundits and qanungos—who did much of the ground work, and reflect on how mapping is never neutral. #JamesRennell #SurveyOfBengal #EastIndiaCompany #BengalAtlas #Cartography #MughalEmpire #RobertClive #WarrenHastings #RohillaWar #AngloMarathaWar #Ganges #Brahmaputra #Pundit #Qanungo #AbulFazl #AinIAkbari #ColonialScience #FexingoHistory Keep every episode free: buymeacoffee.com/fexingo