Short answers, pulled from the story.
Bengal Subah was the largest subdivision of the Mughal Empire, encompassing much of the Bengal region including modern-day Bangladesh, West Bengal, and parts of Bihar, Jharkhand, and Odisha. It existed as an imperial province between 1576 and 1717, after which it became the de facto independent Bengal State under the hereditary Nawabs of Bengal.
Bengal Subah was the wealthiest region in the Indian subcontinent and alone accounted for 40 percent of Dutch imports from Asia, including more than 50 percent of textiles and around 80 percent of silks. Its capital Dhaka had a population exceeding a million people and over 80,000 skilled textile weavers. Under the Nawabs, Bengal contributed more than half the funds flowing into the Mughal imperial treasury in Delhi.
The Battle of Plassey in 1757 was fought between the British East India Company, led by Robert Clive, and the last independent Nawab of Bengal, Siraj-ud-Daulah. The Nawab was defeated largely through the betrayal of his trusted general Mir Jafar, who was then installed as a puppet ruler. The subsequent Battle of Buxar in 1764 completed British dominance, and by 1793 Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa were formally annexed into the British colonial empire.
The Maratha raids on Bengal lasted from 1741 to early 1751, led by Raghuji Bhonsle of Nagpur. Maratha warriors called Bargis massacred 400,000 civilian Bengalis including textile weavers, silk winders, and mulberry cultivators. To end the raids, Nawab Alivardi Khan agreed to pay Rs. 1.2 million annually as tribute, with Rs. 3.2 million paid in arrears; these payments continued until 1758.
Bengal's shipbuilding output during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries has been estimated at 223,250 tons annually, compared with just 23,061 tons produced by nineteen North American colonies from 1769 to 1771. The shipyards of Chittagong and Sandwip built warships for the Ottoman Empire. Bengal also introduced the flushed deck hull design, which the British East India Company adopted in the 1760s for its improved seaworthiness.
The Nawabs of Bengal were hereditary rulers who governed Bengal Subah as de facto independent princes while nominally acknowledging Mughal sovereignty. The first Nawab, Murshid Quli Khan, was elevated to the hereditary title of Nawab by the Mughal court in 1717 after emerging as the dominant power in the province. His descendants formed the Nasiri dynasty, until Alivardi Khan staged a coup following the Battle of Giria in 1740 and founded the short-lived Afsar dynasty.