The Bank of Calcutta (a precursor to the present State Bank of India) was founded on 2 June 1806, mainly to fund General Wellesley's wars against

Tipu Sultan Tipu Sultan (born Sultan Fateh Ali Sahab Tipu, 1 December 1751 – 4 May 1799), also known as the Tiger of Mysore, was the ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore based in South India. He was a pioneer of rocket artillery.Dalrymple, p. 243 He i ...

and the

Maratha The Marathi people ( Marathi: मराठी लोक) or Marathis are an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group who are indigenous to Maharashtra in western India. They natively speak Marathi, an Indo-Aryan language. Maharashtra was formed as ...

s. It was the first bank of India and was renamed Bank of Bengal on 2 January 1809.

History

The bank opened branches at Rangoon (1861),

Patna Patna ( ), historically known as Pataliputra, is the capital and largest city of the state of Bihar in India. According to the United Nations, as of 2018, Patna had a population of 2.35 million, making it the 19th largest city in India. ...

(1862), Mirzapur (1862), and

Benares Varanasi (; ; also Banaras or Benares (; ), and Kashi.) is a city on the Ganges river in northern India that has a central place in the traditions of pilgrimage, death, and mourning in the Hindu world. * * * * The city has a syncretic tra ...

(1862). When it became known that the bank intended to open a branch at

Dacca Dhaka ( or ; bn, ঢাকা, Ḍhākā, ), formerly known as Dacca, is the capital and largest city of Bangladesh, as well as the world's largest Bengali-speaking city. It is the eighth largest and sixth most densely populated city ...

, negotiations began that resulted in Bank of Bengal in 1862 amalgamating Dacca Bank (est. 1846). A branch at Cawnpore followed. Among the bank's renowned customers were scholar and politician Dadabhai Naoroji, scientist Jagadish Chandra Bose, India's first President Rajendra Prasad, Nobel laureate

Rabindranath Tagore Rabindranath Tagore (; bn, রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর; 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) was a Bengali polymath who worked as a poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer and painter. He resh ...

, and educationalist

Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar CIE ( bn, ঈশ্বর চন্দ্র বিদ্যাসাগর; 26 September 1820 – 29 July 1891), born Ishwar Chandra Bandyopadhyay, was an Indian educator and social reformer of the nineteenth century ...

. The bank was risk averse and would not lend for more than three months, leading to local businessmen, both British and Indian launching private banks, many of which failed. The most storied bank failure was Union Bank Limited (1829-1848) founded by

Dwarakanath Tagore Dwarkanath Tagore ( bn, দ্বারকানাথ ঠাকুর, ''Darokanath Ţhakur''; 1794–1846) was one of the first Indian industrialists to form an enterprise with British partners. He was the son of Ramlochon Tagore, the founder ...

in partnership with British companies. The Bank of Calcutta, and the two other Presidency banks — the

Bank of Bombay The Bank of Bombay was the second of the three presidency banks (others being the Bank of Calcutta and the Bank of Madras) of the Raj period. It was established, pursuant to a charter of the British East India Company, on 15 April 1840. The b ...

and the

Bank of Madras The Bank of Madras was one of the three Presidency Banks of British India, along with the Bank of Bengal and the Bank of Bombay. It was established on 1 July 1843 through the amalgamation of a number of existing regional banks and headquartere ...

— amalgamated on 27 January 1921. The reorganized banking entity assumed the name

Imperial Bank of India The Imperial Bank of India (IBI) was one of the oldest and the largest commercial bank of the Indian subcontinent, and was subsequently transformed into the State Bank of India in 1955. Initially, as per its royal charter, it acted as the cen ...

. The

Reserve Bank of India The Reserve Bank of India, chiefly known as RBI, is India's central bank and regulatory body responsible for regulation of the Indian banking system. It is under the ownership of Ministry of Finance, Government of India. It is responsible f ...

, which is the central banking organization of India, in the year 1955, acquired a controlling interest in the Imperial Bank of India and the Imperial Bank of India was renamed on 30 April 1955 as the State Bank of India.

Citations and references

Citations References *

History

See also

Citations and references

Further reading