The development of the zamindari (tax collector and later landlord) class and its later interaction with the British would have immense economic and social implications for twentieth-century Bengal. Bengal was treated as the "Breadbasket of India" and, as the richest province in the empire, was drained of its resources to maintain the Mughal Army. The Mughals, however, did not expend much energy protecting the countryside or the capital from Arakanese or Portuguese pirates; in one year as many as 40,000 Bengalis were seized by pirates to be sold as slaves, and still the central government did not intervene. Local resistance to imperial control forced the emperor to appoint powerful generals as provincial governors. Yet, despite the insecurity of the Mughal regime, Bengal prospered. Agriculture expanded, trade was encouraged, and Dhaka became one of the centres of the textile trade in South Asia.