Sutanuti was one of the three villages which were merged to form the city of

Kolkata Kolkata, also known as Calcutta ( its official name until 2001), is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of West Bengal. It lies on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River, west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary ...

(formerly known as Calcutta) in

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

, along with Gobindapur and Kalikata. Sutanuti was set up along the banks of the

Hooghly river The Hooghly River (, also spelled ''Hoogli'' or ''Hugli'') is the westernmost distributary of the Ganges, situated in West Bengal, India. It is known in its upper reaches as the Bhagirathi. The Bhagirathi splits off from the main branch of the G ...

, which is a tributary of the

Ganges river The Ganges ( ; in India: Ganga, ; in Bangladesh: Padma, ). "The Ganges Basin, known in India as the Ganga and in Bangladesh as the Padma, is an international which goes through India, Bangladesh, Nepal and China." is a trans-boundary rive ...

. The British had bribed Mughal officials into granting rights of three cities, Gobindapur, Sutanuti and Kalikata, to the

British East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company that was founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to Indian Ocean trade, trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (South A ...

in 1651. The British built a factory and warehouse there, where goods for export were stored, and many offices were built where company officials sat. This became the base for the company's trades, known as factors. As trade increased the company persuaded merchants and traders to settle there. By 1696 the British had started building fortifications there, which eventually led to the

Battle of Plassey The Battle of Plassey was a decisive victory of the British East India Company, under the leadership of Robert Clive, over the Nawab of Bengal and his French Indies Company, French allies on 23 June 1757. The victory was made possible by the de ...

in 1757. The factory eventually turned into Fort William. Eventually the village grew and merged with the other two settlements to form Kolkata. Sutanuti is now part of North Kolkata.

See also