This book plots three definitive stages of Kolkata?s historical development, starting with Job Charnock?s arrival in 1690 and ending with the setting up of the Lottery Committee in 1817. With the help of archival records, the author has traced the various stages of the journey on the part of the three villages of Sutanati, Kalikata and Gobindapur which collectively came to be called Calcutta (renamed Kolkata). Archival maps and pictures amply illustrate how Calcutta eventually came to be described as the ?second city of the British Empire?.