active 1737-1758 William Watts

William Watts was a British East India Company official, active in Bengal in the mid-1700s and generally identified as having lived from about 1722 to 1764. Reliable reference sources describe him as chief of the Cossimbazar or Kasimbazar factory and a key company representative at the nawab's court in Murshidabad.

Sources also agree that he played an important part in the intrigue surrounding the fall of Siraj ud-Daulah and the rise of Mir Jafar, events that led to the Battle of Plassey in 1757. Banglapedia notes that Watts lived in Bengal for a long time and was proficient in Bangla, Hindustani, and Persian, which helped him build local ties and made him especially useful to Robert Clive.

He is remembered in literary and historical terms for Memoirs of the Revolution in Bengal, Anno Dom. 1757, a contemporary account of the conflict later published in 1760. The Library of Congress describes the book as a narrative of the struggle that brought Bengal under East India Company control, which makes it valuable today as a vivid primary source as well as a revealing record of colonial ambition.