Dictionary of Hinduism (Oxford)
° Bangalore ° Bombay (Mumbai) ° Calcutta
° Delhi ° Goa ° Indore ° Jodhpur ° Madras (now Chennai)
° New Delhi ° Tellicherry ° Varkala
James Rennell (1742-1830) is known as the "Father of Indian Geography." His magnificent mapping of the Indian subcontinent, one of the largest and most impressive maps of India to appear in the 18th century. This chart depicts the subcontinent from Bombay (Mumbai) and Aurangabad, south including the northern half of Sri Lanka (Ceylon). Color coded according to political territory, noting British Possessions (red), the territory claimed by the independent holdout Rajah of Mysore (Purple), the Marhatta Countries (Green), the Nizam Dominions (Orange), the Carnatick (Yellow), and the Travancore (Blue). This includes the routes of various military marches and campaigns relating to the British conquest of India, including the 1784 March of British Prisoners from Condapoor to Madras, the march of the Marquis of Cornwallis, the march of General Medows, and the march of General Abercromby. Also shows the acquisitions of the British through the Partition Treaty of 1792. This map was engraved by R. Baker and printed in by William Faden, “Royal Geographer to the King and to the Prince of Wales”.
(Click on map image for additional views and details.)
The history of British India began with the royal charter awarded to the East India Company in 1600. Despite early Portuguese oppositon to its intrusion, and faced with Dutch hostility in the Spice Islands to the East, the Company focused on its India trade: textiles (calicos and muslins), silk, pepper from the Malabar Coast, saltpetre, etc.
Until the end of the 18th Century, India was a maritime nation, making her own ships, manned by Indian crews, carrying the trade of Indian merchants.
During the early 19th century, trade with the West became a monopoly of the East India Company: ships trading with England were liable to forfeiture under an Act of 1814, unless their captain and 75% of the crew were British, which would have been impossible for an Indian company to accomplish. The British claimed that the "native sailors of India are to the disgrace of our national morals, on their arrival here led into scenes which soon divest them of the respect and awe they had entertained in India for the European character."
By the second half of the nineteenth century all of India was under the control of the British Empire. Queen Victoria was proclaimed 'Empress of India' in 1876 by the British Prime Minister of the day Benjamin Disraeli. Britain was at the height of the industrial revolution and its trade with India, particularly in cotton, was powering this success. No-one, be they Muslim or Christian was going to be allowed to interfere with this arrangement. The Middle East as a gateway to India via land or sea was a very important region of the world for Britain.
Fortunes were made in the East Indian and Spice Island trade, since precious spices brought huge rewards to successful importers. The glittering wealth of the Portuguese and Spanish courts, of Italian port cities, Dutch trading firms, German bankers and British speculators was followed by the extraordinarily successful entry in 1672 of the United States into the spice trade. Competitive sailing boats helped make Salem the capital of spices in the first half of the 19th century.
A certain Elihu Yale, who was born in 1649 in Boston, made his fortune as a spice merchant in India; he gave material support from his family home in Wales to help build up the institution that was to become Yale University.
Other desirable spices sought in trade with India were black pepper (which goes back to pre-history), fenugreek, coriander, tilak, and turmeric.
India produces almost all of the tumeric in the world—and uses 80% of it.
Bombay
August 19, 1893, Colonies and India
London, Middlesex, United Kingdom
THE BOMBAY RIOTS.
The religious riots between the Mahomedans and Hindoos in Bombay have been on a scale of magnitude and danger without precedent in that great town, where there are many intervening elements—the Parsee element, for example—to keep these hereditary foes apart. Seventy-six per cent, of the population of the Bombay Presidency are Hindoos, whilst only 17 per cent, are Mahomedans, so that in point of numbers, the Mahomedan is tremendously over-weighted. For his numerical deficiency he compensates by his greater pugnacity and the memory of those far-off dominant days when the Hindoos crouched at his conquering feet. The remedy for these religious fights is simple and effective. The combatants are separated by a bayonet charge, or, in desperate cases, by a volley of musketry. In the present instance the disturbances have extended over so wide an area as to be beyond the immediate control of the authorities. It is no easy task to cope with 50,000 riotous fanatics. The public mind, meanwhile, has been impressed by the accounts in the newspapers, and the riots should serve as an admirable object lesson to those Radicals anxious to see India ruled by Universal Suffrage. What would happen if we were to leave the country is clear enough. The Mussulman of the North would fight his way to the top, and triumphantly slaughter the sacred cow in every Hindoo fane between Peshawur and Pondicherry. The truth of the now famous allegory, suggested by the beasts in the Zoological Gardens, which Lord Roberts applied with so much felicity in his recent speech at Glasgow to the permanent race conflict in the great dependency, has had startling proof.
Calcutta
The Bengali name Kalikata was used for a village as early as the 15th century, but the area was little more than a village before the British established the British East India Company in the area. In 1690 Job Charnock, an agent of the British East India Company, established a trading fort nearby. The British called the settlement Calcutta, an Anglicized version of Kalikata. The British established Fort William to protect their trade in the city of Calcutta, in the region of Bengal. The Nawab of Bengal, Siraj Ud Daulah, laid siege to the fort. It was a bloody battle, ending with corpses from the garrison being thrown into a ditch, which became known as the "Black Hole of Calcutta."
Still, because of the fortunes to be made by bringing spices into Europe, trade continued. In the 17th and 18th centuries, both the Dutch and the English East India Company regularly had to field the complaint that their eastern traffic was beggaring the country. In England the mattter was repeatedly raised in Parliament, where the East India Company had to defend itself from the charge of putting the country's scarce capital to flight for the sake of spices. The issue was especially acute for the English, since aside from a strictly limited amoun tof pepper smuggled out from under the eyes of the Dutch in India or squeezed from the malaria-plagued Sumatran port of Benkulen, all of England's spices arrived via middlemen. For this reason, in 1662, King Charles II issued a proclamation forbidding the purchase of cinammon, cloves, netmet, and mace from parties other than the producers themselves—a measure aimed at the Dutch. Eventually, this was forgotten.
The Oxford Book of Indian Business. Dwijendra Tripathi. Oxford University Press
This comprehensive volume provides an understanding of the roots of modern business practices in India. It is the first authoritative history of Indian business in the modern period that charts the course of the transition of business from mercantile capitalism to industrial capitalism. The author begins with a discussion of the backdrop in 1700: the period that shaped the strategies and structures that characterize the contours of Indian business today. He goes on the detail the aftermath of the imperial crisis; the onslaught of the industrial revolution and its impact in India; the rise of the managing agency system; and the beginning of industrial capitalism. The author analyzes the development of joint-stock firms; the new industrial elite; company laws; modern banking and charts the course of the Indian business through the critical first world war period up to the depression and the Second World War. He demonstrates the growth of the business in free India and discusses the emergence of public sector; the changing managerial structure; technology choices; and the development of business education. Case studies of the pioneers of Indian business included in the study provide insights into their contribution to the growth of Indian business and society.
In 1857, the American clipper James Baines, Captain Charles MacDonald, loaded a cargo in Calcutta consisting of 2,200 blaes of jute, 6213 bales of linseed, 6,682 bags of rice, adn 40 bales of cowhides for delivery to Liverpool, England. In Liverpool, when the stevedores removed the lower hatches, volumes of smoke poured from the afterpart of the main hold and were unable to stop the fire. The James Baines was scuttled, the main and mizen masts fell, crushing the roofs of the dock sheds; then the foremast came down, and by evening the ship was burnt to the water's edge. The sudden end of this powerful clipper, considered one of Donald McKay's finest creations, stunned Liverpool, was spoken of as a national disaster, and Captain McDonald did not long survive his ship: He retired broken-hearted to the cottage of his widowed mother at Glengarriff, contracted pneumonia, and died some days later.
Allens Indian Mail, August 15, 1863
London, United Kingdom
Stevens Point Daily JournalTHE BRITISH EAST INDIA STEAM NAVIGATION COMPANY have been no less unfortunate than their magnificent rival. The S. S. Sydney, lately purchased from Government, sailed from Calcutta on Wednesday the 24th June, having on board some 540 men, women, and children, belonging to the regiment of Sikh Pioneers, bound for Colombo. But no sooner did she fairly get out to sea than her total unfitness to be employed on such service was proved beyond a doubt. Between decks the water was frequently knee deep, and not a berth in the whole ship that might not have served as a bath. The misery of the poor soldiers, and their still more helpless wives and little ones, was truly pitiable, but they bore up manfully through their sickness, and worked at the pumps night and day. The greatest fear entertained was lest the fires should be put out, the danger of which was more than once very imminent; however, by constant exertions and by throwing a portion of her cargo overboard, she was kept afloat, and late on Saturday evening passed Saugor on her return to Calcutta.
Stevens Point, Wisconsin
August 26, 1897
THE WAR IN INDIA
Situation on the Frontier is Growing Worse
Bombay, Aug. 20.—The latest dispatches received from the front indicate that the situation on the frontier Is getting worse. It is evident that the Indian government must face a grave crisis, involving heavy expenditure and probably great loss of life. The government is confronted with the following state of affairs: Khybar pass has fallen into the hands of theAfridis; the posts in Kurrain valley are threatened by the powerful tribe of the Orakzal; the Mohand tribesmen are meditating a renewal of hostilities around Fort Shubkdar, while thousands of troops are engaged in crushing the revolt in the Swat valley and two large brigades are holding the Tochi valley, where the Malisud-Mazirls are again restless.The authorities are convinced that Port Ali-Musjid could only have fallen after desperate fighting, as the native garrison of Khybar rifles was made up of men who rendered valuable assistance in the Black mountain expedition of 1888. The fall of the fort is a very serious blow, for it isolates Fort Lundi- Kotnl, which Is at the extreme end of Khybar pass, garrisoned by 300 Khybar rifles, and necessitates the prompt reconquest of the pass.
Delhi
Lakshmi Narayan, became the first Vakil of the East India Company at the Mughal Court of Delhi. Motilal's father, Gangadhar, was a police officer in Delhi in 1857, when it was engulfed by the Mutiny. When the British troops shelled their way into the town, Gangadhar fled with his wife Jeorani and four children to Agra where he died four years later. Three months after his death Jeorani gave birth to a boy who was named Motilal. Motilal spent his childhood at Khetri in Rajasthan, where his elder brother Nandial became the Diwan. In 1870 Nandlal quit Khetri, qualified as a lawyer and began to practice law at Agra. When the High Court was transferred to Allahabad, he moved with it. Motilal Nehru as the father of Jahawarlal "Pandit" Nehru, who was born in November 1889, and who became the first Prime Minister of India in 1947.Goa Goa was coveted and ruled by a great number of Indian kingdoms and dynasties from the 4th century onwards as her shoreline is lapped by the warm waters of Arabian Sea and all the treasures of the ancient world were borne across that sea from the Arabian Pensinsula to the shores of India. Ancient trade routes along the coasts of Africa, Arabia, and India held the same promise of wealth and adventure which lured Sinbad the Sailor to the sea.
Shortly after 3000 B.C., ships raced along the coasts to southern Arabia and India, exchanging copper ore from Oman, teakwood from India, and incense from Arabia for wheat, cheese, and barley from northern kingdoms.
The first kingdom to rule Goa and Konkan were Bhojas, who were the feudatories of Ashoka in 4th and 5th centuries AD. The city of Chandrapur (present Chandor) was founded by Prince Chandraditya, son of Chalukya King Pulakesin from 566 to 597 A.D. after this, Goa was ruled consecutively by Silahara Dynasty, Kadamba Danasty, and finally Hoysalas from 1022 to 1342 A.D.
By 1510 Goa Dourada (Golden Goa) was the center of the world's spice trade and one of the richest places on earth. It is said that more people lived in Goa than in London or Paris.
During the 17th century, Portuguese invaders destroyed several Hindu temples in Margao.
When the Portuguese colonised part of Goa in the sixteenth century, they based their operations in the central district of Tiswadi, notably in the international emporium City of Goa, now Old Goa.
Madras
The East India Company purchased Madras in 1639 and established a fort and trading post at the small fishing village of Chennai. It is the capital city of Tamilnadu state. This coastal center of trade has drawn traffic from all over the world for centuries; it later became the main base of the Company and developed into a modern city under the Company. Masras is the gateway to Southern India and the largest city in southern India located on the Coromandel Coast of the Bay of Bengal.
Varkala
The old town has remained a Hindu pilgrimage center since the 12th century. This 924 foot tunnel was under construction by the British for nearly 14 years in the cliffs adjacent to the Arabian Sea; the work started in 1869 and was completed in 1870. The tunnel was part of a canal used to carry goods and people between Thiruvananthapuram and Kollam. Once a civil engineering marvel, trade routes and commerce through this area are virutally forgotten and the tunnel is no longer used for commercial purposes.London and China Telegraph, London, England
October 21, 1890
NETHERLANDS INDIA.
The Netherlands India Government have decided to recognise no concessions made to others than Netherlanders, or Residents in Netherlands India.
Another little war has come suddenly upon the military authorities in Netherlands India. It has broken out in districts to the North East of the Padang highlands in West Sumatra, where the Battaks, a half-civilised inland tribe, have been making raids into Netherlands territory. Peaceable means having failed, forcible measures have been resorted to, and one hundred soldiers are under orders for the eeat of disturbance.
The coolie question remains a source of trouble and difficulty in Deli, and the Courant would fain see the business of recruiting in China put into European hands. At present, in that portion of the empire which furnishes coolie supplies to the East Coast of Sumatra, the latter country stands in evil repute as a place where labourers are brought under slavery. The idea seems to be that with Chinese official countenance once made sure of, the prejudice against Deli among the coolie class in China would soon die away.
Servants of the Dynasty: Palace Women in World History
Anne Walthall, Professor of History, University of California
Mothers, wives, concubines, entertainers, attendants, officials, maids, drudges. By offering the first comparative view of the women who lived, worked, and served in royal courts around the globe, this work opens a new perspective on the monarchies that have dominated much of human history. Written by leading historians, anthropologists, and archeologists, these lively essays take us from Mayan states to twentieth-century Benin in Nigeria, to the palace of Japanese Shoguns, the Chinese Imperial courts, eighteenth-century Versailles, Mughal India, and beyond. Together they investigate how women's roles differed, how their roles changed over time, and how their histories can illuminate the structures of power and societies in which they lived. This work also furthers our understanding of how royal courts, created to project the authority of male rulers, maintained themselves through the reproductive and productive powers of women.
