ORGANIZATION OF BRITISH POWER IN BENGAL 247 the Company on a broader basis. A commission to Bengal put down malpractices and re-established the trade. Hugli became the head agency in Bengal, with a control over the agencies at Balasor, on the Orissa coast, at Kasimbazar near Murshidabad, in the Gan- getic delta, and at Patna on the higher Ganges in Be- har, as well as a supervision over the out-stations or local houses for buying goods. Each factory had a chief, with three assistants or councillors, a regular subor- dination of authorities, and a code of rules for the con- duct of life and of business. In the lowest grade of the new staff appears the name of a youth, Job Char- nock— the future founder of Calcutta. Bengal thus took its rank as one of the five impor- tant seats of the Company's trade, and was placed, to- gether with Bantam and the Persian factories, under the control of Madras, itself subordinate to the presi- dency of Surat. The year 1658, the last of the Pro- tector's life, saw the Company's affairs in the East remodelled upon a system of graduated dependence and control, under which its factories were to grow into settlements and finally into the British Indian Empire. The same year saw the deposition of the Indian sov- ereign, Shah Jahan, by his rebel son Aurangzib, and the commencement of the half-century of bigot rule under which the empire of the Moghuls slowly declined toward its fall.
