The only time I ever saw the Oscar-winning Hollywood actress Tilda Swinton up close was back in 2018 at the Bangla Academy premises. At a Dhaka Lit Fest session, she spoke passionately about the alternate education model followed at Scotland’s Drumduan School that she was a cofounder.
Never did I think that while exploring the historic lanes of Old Dhaka eight years later, I would come across an astonishing, full-circle connection to her ancestry.
On a July morning this year, I visited Nimtali Deuri—the grand, lone-surviving gateway of an 18th-century nawab palace located on the grounds of the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh. There, I uncovered a fascinating piece of history: Tilda Swinton's great-great-great-great-grandfather, Captain Archibald Swinton, oversaw the construction of the now-defunct Nimtali Palace over 250 years ago.
The historic Mughal-era gateway, renovated in recent years, is now under the care of the Society and houses the Asiatic Society Heritage Museum. While glancing through the artifacts, I stumbled upon archived letters, documents, and old newspaper clippings on display. They tell the tale of how Archibald Swinton, a British East India Company soldier, had to compensate a Persian-origin Bengal nawab by building him Nimtali Palace after he was evicted from his original mansion.
The history here is intriguing and goes much deeper than just a palace.
Nawab Alivardi Khan, who ruled Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa from 1740 to 1756, appointed Jasarat Khan as the Naib Nazim (Deputy Governor) of Dhaka in 1755. Jasarat Khan had come from Persia to seek fortune and prestige in the wealthy Mughal Subah of Bengal. He lived in the Dhaka Fort, built by Subahdar (provincial governor) Islam Khan—the Mughal governor who founded modern Dhaka in 1610. Centuries later, this same fort served as the Central Jail of Bangladesh until July 2016, when all prisoners were relocated to a newly built facility in Keraniganj.
During the second half of the 18th century, Archibald Swinton (then a lieutenant in the British forces) took over the fort in the aftermath of the Fakir-Sannyasi Rebellion—an armed uprising led by mendicants and ascetics.
The political landscape was highly volatile. After the 1757 defeat of Nawab Siraj-ud-Daulah at the Battle of Plassey, the British toyed with the traitor Mir Jafar and his son-in-law Mir Qasim, awarding Bengal’s throne to one over the other. Nawab Mir Qasim held power for the better part of 1763. As relations deteriorated and war broke out between Mir Qasim and the British East India Company, the conflict caught the local administration in its crosshairs.
Stationed at his capital in Munger in Bihar, Mir Qasim suspected Dhaka’s Naib Nazim of showing leniency and maintaining a secret liaison with British merchants in Dhaka. On July 7, 1763, he deposed Jasarat Khan from his position and held him captive at his military camp.
On that exact same day, the East India Company officially declared war on Mir Qasim in Calcutta and reinstated Mir Jafar as the Nawab of Bengal.
At the same time, the Fakir-Sannyasi Rebellion was escalating. Triggered by the East India Company's heavy taxation, restrictions on religious pilgrimages, and the economic strangulation of local landlords, the ascetics began an armed resistance that lasted from 1763 to 1800.
Mir Qasim’s army joined forces with the ascetics, who launched a surprise assault on the British trading outpost (the factory) in Dhaka on that fateful July 7, 1763. Outnumbered and unprepared, the British staff and their small sepoy contingent abandoned their stockpiles of cloth, treasure, and ammunition to flee to Laxmipur.
The rebels' triumph, however, was short-lived. Recognizing Dhaka's immense strategic and commercial value, the British mobilized a massive, heavily armed punitive expedition from nearby garrisons. On July 16, they marched back toward Dhaka and on the very following day they reoccupied the city, forcing the lightly armed ascetics—who relied primarily on swords, spears, and basic matchlocks— out into the surrounding jungles.
After Jasarat Khan was dislodged and held captive by Mir Qasim, Archibald Swinton stormed Dhaka, captured the fort, and converted it into a British military residence.
Jasarat Khan, however, survived his captivity. Following the decisive British victory over Mir Qasim, Lord Robert Clive, then Governor of Bengal, released and officially reinstated Jasarat Khan as Dhaka’s Naib Nazim in 1765. As Dhaka Fort – the nawab’s original residence – no longer in his possession the Naib Nazim and his family had to take temporary shelter in the Bara Katra complex.
Recognizing their prior cordial relationship with Jasarat Khan—and acknowledging that they had seized his original home—the British East India Company resolved to fund and build a suitable new palace-cum-office for him. Lord Clive instructed Archibald Swinton to orchestrate the project, selecting the northern, neem-tree-filled Nimtali ward of Dhaka as the site.
Built by 1766, the Nimtali Palace became the permanent seat for Jasarat Khan and the subsequent five Naib Nazims until the title was fully abolished in 1843.
The dramatic sequence of events—the joint attack by Mir Qasim’s forces and the ascetics, the British abandonment of Dhaka, the heavily armed counter-attack on July 16, 1763, and the subsequent British recapture of the city on July 17—was thoroughly chronicled in a letter sent from Dhaka to England on October 6, 1763.
As the Chief of the East India Company’s trading outpost in Dhaka, William Billers was required to provide the Court of Directors in London with an exhaustive account of the financial losses and security failures stemming from the July 7 assault. His October 6 correspondence serves as a crucial eyewitness record. Billers systematically broke down the dates, explaining exactly how the East India Company's factory fell, the panic that ensued, and how the subsequent counter-offensive was executed.
A major component of the letter involved cataloging the massive loss of Company merchandise—primarily fine Bengali muslin and silk—and assessing the structural damage inflicted on the factory during the rebel occupation.
Crucially, Billers warned his superiors that these "mendicant warriors" were not typical bandits. He emphasized that they operated with deep coordination, held massive influence over the local peasantry, and possessed the tactical capability to defeat organized British outposts. His intelligence ultimately shifted British policy, prompting Warren Hastings to later launch a brutal, decades-long campaign to suppress the ascetics.
This detailed account was eventually published on May 18, 1764, in the London newspaper Lloyd’s Evening Post. The narrative of the East India Company recapturing Dhaka was also featured on February 1, 1765, in the Scottish periodical Scots Magazine.
I was able to reconstruct this precise historical chronology centering on Nimtali Deuri thanks to the museum's preservation of these letters, documents, and newspaper clippings. Today, these events are brought to life across the museum gallery: the Mir Qasim panel details the English abandonment of Dhaka, while the Archibald Swinton panel documents the British recapture of the city on July 17, 1763.
While the vast residential quarters, sprawling lawns, and secondary buildings of Nimtali Palace fell into ruin and vanished over the centuries, the grand archway—the Nimtali Deuri—survived. Today, this historic gatehouse stands within the premises of the Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, serving as a silent testament to post-Plassey Bengal’s volatile transition from fracturing nawab rule to British colonial dominance—a history in which Captain Archibald Swinton played a definitive part.