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The name Bengal, or Bangla, is derived from the ancient kingdom of Vanga, or Banga. References to it are found in early Sanskrit literature, but its early history is obscure until the 3rd century BCE when it became part of the wider Maurya Empire inherited by Emperor Ashoka.

With the decline of the Maurya power, anarchy once again prevailed. In the 4th century AD, the region became part of the Gupta Empire of Samudra Gupta. Later it came under the control of the Pala rulers.

From the early 13th century until the mid-18th century, when the British established dominance, Bengal was under Muslim rule - at times under governors acknowledging the suzerainty of the Delhi Sultanate but mainly under independent rulers.

In 1757 the British army under Robert Clive defeated the Nawab (ruler) of Bengal, Siraj-Ud-Daulah, at the Battle of Plassey near present-day Palashi. In 1765 Shah Alam II, the titular Mughal emperor of northern India granted the British East India Company the Diwani of Bengal, Bihar, and Orissa (now Odisha)—that is, the right to collect and administer the revenue of those territories.

By the Regulating Act of 1773, Warren Hastings became the first British Governor-General of Bengal. The British-controlled government centered in Calcutta (now Kolkata) was declared supreme: essentially, the Governor-General of Bengal was the chief executive of British India. Thus, the Bengal Presidency, as the province was known, had powers of superintendence over the other British Presidencies of Madras (now Chennai) and Bombay (now Mumbai).

However, Britain was not the only European presence in Bengal. The town of Hooghly, north of Calcutta, was the site of a Portuguese trading post until 1632; Hooghly-Chinsura (Chunchura), the next town south, was a Dutch post until 1825; The next town, Srirampur (Serampore), was a Danish post until 1845; and Chandanagore (Chandnagar) remained in French hands till 1949.

From 1834 the Governor-General of Bengal assumed the title "Governor-General of India", but in 1854 the post was divested of the direct administration of Bengal, which was placed under a lieutenant governor. After this, the government of British India was separated from Bengal.

In 1874 Assam was transferred from the charge of the Lieutenant Governor and placed under a separate Chief Commissioner.

In 1905 the British determined that Bengal had become too unwieldy for a single administration, and despite violent Hindu opposition, it was divided into two provinces, each under its own lieutenant governor: one in West Bengal, one in Bihar, and Odisha was included. , The other included East Bengal and Assam.

In 1911, due to continued opposition to partition, Bengal was placed under a Governor, Bihar, Orissa under a Lieutenant Governor, and Assam once again under a Chief Commissioner. At the same time, Delhi became the capital of India in place of Calcutta.

Bengal constituted an autonomous province in 1937, under the Government of India Act (1935). This situation persisted until the Indian subcontinent was partitioned into two dominions of Pakistan and India following the British withdrawal in 1947. The eastern region of Bengal, largely Muslim, became East Pakistan (later Bangladesh); The western region became the Indian state of West Bengal.

The Partition of Bengal left West Bengal with ill-defined boundaries and a steady flow of non-Muslim, mostly Hindu, refugees from East Pakistan. After 1947 more than seventy lakh refugees entered the already densely populated state and their resettlement put a heavy burden on the administration.

In 1950 the princely state of Cooch Behar (Koch Behar) was integrated with West Bengal. After the linguistic and political reorganization of the Indian states in 1956, West Bengal acquired an area of about 3,140 square miles (8,130 km²) from Bihar. The additional territory provided a link between the previously separate northern and southern parts of the state.

The Indian National Congress (Congress Party) dominated the government of West Bengal during almost all of the state's first three decades. However, in 1977, the Communist Party of India (Marxist; CPI-M) won a majority of seats in the state legislative elections and became the ruling party.

The CPI-M remained in power until it was ousted in 2011 as the world's longest-serving democratically elected communist government. The winner of that year's legislative elections was the All India Trinamool (or Trinamool) Congress (AITC). At that time the Congress party was an ally in the national ruling coalition government. AITC founder and leader, Mamata Banerjee, became the first woman chief minister (head of government) of the state.