On 10th July 1800, Lord Richard Wellesley, the Governor General of British India at the time, founded Fort William College in Calcutta. The college was located within the Fort William complex. It was created to provide language instruction in various Indian vernacular languages to the civil and military personnel of the East India Company. At this College, numerous books were translated from multiple languages, including Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, Bengali, Hindi, and Urdu, into English. This institution was a center for higher education and served as a school for oriental studies.