Synopsis The book is a history of the people who speak Bengali in Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal and other Bengali-speaking areas of the country - from the earliest recorded times to 1947 when the Indian subcontinent was partitioned into India and Pakistan, and nearly two-thirds of undivided Bengal went out of India. The study starts with the origin of the Bengalee race and traces the growth of Bengali language, which is the one great motivating force that binds together racially different people who converse in this language. The study focuses on the political history of the Bengalees from the earliest times to the time when the two Bengals stopped sharing a common political history. It delves into the cultural, linguistic, literary and social aspects of Bengal’s development only in so far as they have a direct impact on the political developments of the time.