The Maritime history of Bengal (Bengali: বাংলার সামুদ্রিক ইতিহাস; Bānglāra Sāmudrika Itihāsa), represents the era of recorded human interaction with the sea in the southern region of Bengal, including shipping and shipbuilding, shipwrecks, naval warfare, and military installations and lighthouses, which were built to protect or assist navigation and development in Bengal. The Bay of Bengal is located to the south of the Bengal and there are navigable rivers that have greatly facilitated the influence of maritime transport and trade.[1][2]
The maritime trade of Bengal was centered on the Bay of Bengal. For most of the 16th and 17th centuries, the major ports of Bengal, Satgaon and Chittagong, and later Hooghly, maintained significant commercial links with Burma, Malacca and Aceh. The second trade route connected Bengal with Sri Lanka, the Maldives and the Malabar Coast, and the third, subsidiary route connected Bengal with Gujarat and West Asia. Bengal's coastal trade with the Karamandal was equally important, which depended on Bengal's annual grain imports. The main exports of Bengal's coastal and overseas transport were various types of manufactured goods and agricultural products—clothes, rice, wheat, gram, sugar, opium, clarified butter, and salt. In return, Bengal imported spices, camphor, porcelain, silk, sandalwood, ivory, metals, conch shells, and cowrie. With the arrival of the Portuguese in the 16th century, Bengal entered the Euro-Asian exchange network, becoming the center of the region's economy.
- ^ Das, Amitava; Sanyal, Rajat; Chakraborty, Rajib, eds. (2025). Classical Bangla. Kolkata: Institute of Language Studies and Research (ILSR), Kolkata. p. 138. ISBN 9788198479358.
- ^ Niyogi, Subhro (13 March 2022). "Take a boat ride into bengals maritime-history at indias only dedicated museum". The Times of India. Kolkata. Retrieved 14 February 2025.
Patia boats used in the Talsari-Digha belt use an overlapping technology that dates back to the 11th and 12th centuries as recorded in a plaque at the Jagannath temple in Puri, on stone reliefs at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, and at Indian Museum in Kolkata. .... But unlike the Viking ships that also used overlap planking but were replaced after the 11th century by other boat-making technologies, the overlap-planking technology (clinker) used in Bengal's boats continued to evolve and has survived the test of time.