HISTORY OF COXSBAZAR

The greater Chittagong area including Cox's Bazar was under the rule of Arakan Kings from the early 9th century until its conquest by the Mughalsin 1666 AD. When the Mughal Prince Shah Shuja was passing through the hilly terrain of the present day Cox’s Bazar on his way to Arakan, he was attracted to the scenic and captivating beauty of the place. He commanded his forces to camp there. His retinue of one thousand palanquins stopped there for some time. A place named Dulahazra, meaning "one thousand palanquins," still exists in the area. After the Mughals, the place came under the control of the Tipras and the Arkansas, followed by the Portuguese and then the British

The name Cox's Bazar originated from the name of a British East India Company Officer officer, Captain Hiram Cox who was appointed as the Superintendent of Palonki (today's Cox's Bazar) outpost after Warren Hastings became the Governor of Bengal following the  British East India Company Act in 1773. Captain Cox was especially mobilized to deal with a century long conflict between Arakan refugees & local Rakhine people at Palonki. The Captain had rehabilitated many refugees in the area, but had died (in 1799) before he could finish his work. To commemorate that, a market was established and named after him, called Cox's Bazar (market of Cox). Cox's Bazar then was first established in 1854 and became a municipality in 1869.^[

After the Sepoy Mutiny  in 1857, the British East India Company was highly criticized and questioned on humanitarian grounds, specially for its Opium trade monopoly over the Indian Sub Continent. However, after its dissolution on 1 January 1874, all of the company's assets including its Armed Forces were acquired by the British Sub Continent. After this historic take over, Cox's Bazar was declared a district of the Bengal Province under the British Crown.

After the end of British rule in 1947, Cox's Bazar remained as a part of East Pakistan. Captain Advocate Fazlul Karim, the first Chairman (after independence from the British) of Cox's Bazar Municipality established the Tamarisk Forest along the beach to draw tourist attention in this town and also to protect the beach from tidal waves. He also donated many of his father-in-law’s and his own lands for establishing a Public Library and a Town Hall for the town. He was inspired to build Cox's Bazar as a tourist spot after seeing beaches of Bombay and Karachi, and one of the pioneers in developing Cox's Bazar as such. He founded a Maternity Hospital, the Stadium and the drainage system by procuring grants from the Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation through correspondence. Mr. T. H. Matthews, the principal of the Dacca Engineering College (1949~1954) was his friend who had helped him in doing this. Engineer Chandi Charan Das was the government civil engineer who had worked on all these projects. In 1959 the municipality was turned into a town committee. In 1961 the erstwhile Geological Survey of Pakistan initiated investigation of radioactive minerals like monazite around the Cox's Bazar sea-beach area.

In 1971, Cox's Bazar wharf was used as a naval port by the Pakistan Navy's gunboats. This and the nearby airtrips of the Pakistan Air Force were the scene of intense shelling by the Indian Navy during Bangladesh Liberation War. During the war, Pakistani soldiers killed many people in the town including eminent lawyer Jnanendralal Chowdhury. The killing of two freedom fighters named Farhad and Subhash at Badar Mokam area is also recorded in history.

After the independence of Bangladesh Cox's Bazar started to get the administrative attention. In 1972 the town committee of Cox's Bazar was again turned into a municipality. In 1975, The Government of Bangladesh established a pilot plant at Kalatali. Later, in 1984 Cox's Bazar subdivision was promoted to a district and five years later (in 1989) the Cox's Bazar municipality was elevated to B-grade. In 1994 (jobs) the Marine Fisheries and Technology Station (MFTS) was established at Cox's Bazar. MFTS is a research station of Bangladesh Fisheries Research Institute (BFRI) headquartered in Mymenshing. The station covers a land area of four hectares and contains five laboratories.In April 2007 Bangladesh got connected to the submarine cable network as a member of the SEA-ME-WE-4 Consortium, as Cox's Bazar was selected as the landing station of the submarine cable.

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