The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204–1760*

The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204–1760 is as much an essay in geography as in history, for the Bengal delta was a frontier of many facets. Eaton traces the establishment and evolution of the Indo-Islamic community from the year 1204, when Persianized Turks from North India swept into and annexed the former Hindu states of the lower Ganges delta, to 1760, when the British East India Company rose to political dominance in the region. Whether Bengal was ruled as a province of the Delhi sultans, as an independent kingdom under local sultans, or as a province of the Mughal empire, sociopolitical developments were accompanied by economic transformation—the eastward expansion of the agrarian frontier and the advance of settled agricultural communities, organized around wet rice cultivation