Tipu Sultan firing at his adversaries during the siege of Seringapatam, 1791

The Battle of Carigat was fought May 13, 1791, between British and Mysorean troops led by Tipu Sultan. In the 1790s three wars against the East India Company and its allies were fought by Hyder Ali and his son Tipu (1750-1799), Muslim ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore in the South of India. They were sophisticated in the use of weapons: cannons, muskets and unprecedented iron-cased rockets.

Surprisingly, one of the world's largest factories of those days was located in Ichapur, near Calcutta. In busy years, like those of the Mysore Wars, 2,000 and more skilled labourers were engaged in the manufacture of gunpowder. Their behaviour in the field of industrial relations is even more surprising: they knew how to raise their wages through collective action and introduced a pension scheme for victims of work accidents in 1783. The workforce consisted of migrants, hailing from as far away as Chittagong in the East to Bishnupur and beyond in the West.