active 1737-1758 William Watts

William Watts is known today chiefly through Memoirs of the Revolution in Bengal, Anno Dom. 1757. Library of Congress and Project Gutenberg both identify him as active between 1737 and 1758, and describe the book as an account of the events surrounding the Battle of Plassey and the transfer of power in Bengal.

The work stands out because it was written by someone directly involved in the world he describes. Modern catalog and ebook records consistently present it as a firsthand narrative tied to the East India Company and the political upheaval that helped establish British power in Bengal.

Very little biographical detail beyond those active dates could be confirmed from the sources found here, so the safest picture is of an eighteenth-century British writer and participant-observer whose reputation rests on this single important historical memoir.