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A Tale of Two Coromandel Towns: Madraspatam (Fort St. George) and Sāo Thomé de Meliapur

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2011

George D. Winius
George D. Winius
Affiliation:
(Brown University)
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Extract

I first came upon Henry Davison Love's Vestiges of Old Madras a decade ago in The Hague. The four volumes were published at London in 1913 and have been very lately reprinted by the Oriental Books Reprint Corporation of Delhi. The dull cloth bindings of the Indian edition, however, hardly conjure the thrill I experienced the first time I watched the original volumes heave into view on the book conveyor of the Royal Library. Probably no one had checked them out for over fifty years, and they sparkled pristinely, as though they had been delivered from a time warp. Golden letters embellished on ivory-coloured boards flashed richly out from maroon and black mouldings decorated with slender urns and caryatids. How much we miss today for not having editions like that!

Type
Articles
Information
Itinerario , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , March 1994 , pp. 51 - 64
Copyright
Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 1994

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References

Notes

1 From Blusse, J. Leonard, Strange Company: Chinese Settlers, Mestizo Women and the Dutch in V.O.C. Batavia (Leiden 1986) 35–48.Google Scholar

2 Prakash, Om, The Dutch Factories in India, 1617–1623: a Collection of Dutch East India Company Documents pertaining to India (New Delhi 1984) 146, 255.Google Scholar

3 See Furber, Holden, Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient, 1600–1800 (Minneapolis 1976) 108.Google Scholar

4 See Foster, William, The Founding of Saint George, Madras (London 1902).Google Scholar

5 One will recall the Restoraçāo of 1640 and that in 1641, D.Joao IV dispatched ambassadors to Amsterdam, Paris and London, with instructions to seek recognition of the new regime and peace on the basis of the mutual friendship which had prevailed prior to Philippine takeover of Portugal in 1580. In the case of France and The Netherlands, both then at war with Spain, to ask for military assistance against a common enemy. Of the three missions, none proved wholly satisfactory, since the French were willing enough to make a peace, but had just entered the Thirty Years War directly and would promise little save token military aid. the English were likewise willing but would promise no arms or troops, at least for the moment, while the Dutch balked at the Portuguese demand that territories conquered by their India Companies be returned - including parts of Brazil, Ceylon and Africa. The best they would promise was a few troops and a ten-year truce which entirely begged the issue of reparation of territories. The truce was so porous and fill of vitiating conditions – it did not begin until six months after ratification in the case of Brazil and a year in the case of Asia – that it only served to increase the aggression of both India companies while they waited for the truce to go into effect. About the only substantive benefit the Portuguese derived from all their diplomatic activity was comparatively meaningless peace treaties with the French and the Swedes and the more useful one of 29 January 1642 with the English. No real peace with the Dutch was signed until 1661.

6 Love, Henry Davison, Vestiges of Old Madras (4 vols.; London 1913) I, 34–35.Google Scholar

7 In fact everyone was washed upon the beach in a swirl of surf until the nineteenth century, if only because the Madras area had no harbour, but merely a long, sandy shoreline; in season, vessels anchored off the coast and were tended by boats and lighters. The British constructed an artificial breakwater only about a century ago, which for the first time made Madras into a true harbour city.

8 Manucci, Niccolao, Storia do Mogor, or Mugul India (4 vols.; London, 1907–1908) III, 431–436Google Scholar, 438–455. Jean Baptiste Tavemier says that Frei Efrem was released through the good offices of the Qutb Shah of Golconda, but this seems unlikely, given the testimony collected by Manucci. See Penny, Fran, The Church in Madras, Being the History of the Ecclesiastical and Missionary Action of the East India Company in the Presidency of Madras in the XVII and XVIII Centuries (2 vols.; London 1902–1904) I, 218.Google Scholar

9 Much of the friction, even after the Treaty of London became known, was due to the fact that the English refused to recognize the subordination of any Portuguese priest who tried to serve the Portuguese moradores at Fort St. George to the Portuguese monarchy, as vassals under the Padroado. Whenever they were found in the precincts of the Fort, the English expelled them. The Anglicans also claimed that the Portuguese clergy from Sao Thome led profligate lives and kept prostitutes, though this may be no more than a Protestant invention in an age of general religious intolerance. The presence of the French clergy in Madraspatam continued to rankle the Portuguese and even led to diplomatic protests at the highest levels; for instance, as late as 1670, the Portuguese ambassador to the Court of St. James wrote to the directors of the Company in London, complaining about the two French clergymen. See Penny, Church in Madras 1, 78, 218–219.

10 Winius, George D. and Vink, Marcus P., The Merchant-Warrior Pacified. The VOC (the Dutch East India Company) and Its Changing Political Economy in India (New Delhi 1991) 58.Google Scholar

11 See Vink, Marcus P., ‘The Entente Cordiale, the Dutch East India Company and Portuguese Shipping through the Straits of Malacca, 1641–1663’, in RC; Revista de Cultura (1991) 289–309.Google Scholar

12 Ibidem.

13 Colenbrander, H.T. ed., Daghregister gehouden in 'I Casteel Batavia, etc., 1643–1644 (The Hague 1899) 127.Google Scholar

14 VOC 1342, O.B.P. 1680, fl. 1521 r & v, Algemeen Rijksarchief, The Hague.

15 See Love, Vestiges, I, 175, 197.

16 Winius and Vink, Merchant-Warrior, 87. See for instance, the case of Robert Cowan.

17 Consultations, 1680, of 22–111–1680. Reprinted in Penny, Church in Madras, I, 79.

18 Thekkedath, Joseph, History of Christianity in India from the Middle of the Sixteenth Century to the End of the Seventeenth Century, 1542–1700 (Bangalore 1982) 203–204.Google Scholar

19 Love, Vestiges, II, 46–49.

20 Ibidem, I, 538.

21 Ibidem, I, 433 n. 3.

22 Ibidem, I, 433 n. 3.

23 For descriptions of the towns, see Hamilton, Alexander, A New Account of the East Indies (London 1727).Google Scholar

24 Manucci, Storia do Mogor, II, 297–298.

25 Love, Vestiges, I, 574–575.