The Story of Madras

By Glyn Barlow

"The Story of Madras" aims to present the ancient orient city as an exciting corner of the world. The author shares a good deal of the Madras history and complements it with descriptions of the city's most prominent buildings and other sights. It is an interesting last-era tourist book, which can still be attractive to the modern user.

• Language: English
• Publisher: DigiCat
• Release date: Nov 21, 2022
• ISBN: 8596547417378

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Glyn Barlow

The Story of Madras

EAN 8596547417378

DigiCat, 2022

Contact: [e-mail]

Table of Contents

1921

PREFACE

ILLUSTRATIONS

ERRATUM

CHAPTER I

BEFORE THE BEGINNING

CHAPTER II

THE BEGINNING

CHAPTER III

FORT ST. GEORGE

CHAPTER IV

DEVELOPMENT

CHAPTER V

'THE WALL'

CHAPTER VI

EXPANSION

CHAPTER VII

OUTPOSTS

CHAPTER VIII

THE CHURCH IN THE FORT

CHAPTER IX

ROMAN CATHOLIC, MADRAS

CHAPTER X

CHEPAUK PALACE

CHAPTER XI

GOVERNMENT HOUSE

CHAPTER XII

MADRAS AND THE SEA

CHAPTER XIII

THE STORY OF THE SCHOOLS

CHAPTER XIV

HERE AND THERE

CHAPTER XV

'NO MEAN CITY'

INDEX

1921

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PREFACE

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This little book is not a History of Madras, although it contains a good deal of Madras history; and it is not a Guide to Madras, although it gives accounts of some of the principal buildings in the city. The book will have fulfilled its purpose if it helps the reader to realize that the City of Madras is a particularly interesting corner of the world. This fact is often forgotten; and even many of the people who live in Madras itself, and who are aware that Madras has played an important part in the making of India's history, are strangely uninterested in its historic remains. They are eloquent perhaps in denouncing the heat of Madras and its mosquitoes and the iniquities of its Cooum river; but they have never a word to say on its enchanting memorials of the past. Madras has memorials indeed. Madras is an historical museum, where the sightseer may spend many and many an hour—in street and in building—studying old-world exhibits, and living for the while in the fascinating past. Madras is not an ancient city; its foundation is not ascribed to some mythic king who ruled in mythic times; it has no hoary ruins, too old to be historic and too legendary to be inspiring. But Madras is old enough for its records to be romantic, and at the same time is young enough for its earliest accounts of itself to be—not unsatisfying fables, but interesting fact. The story of Madras fills an absorbing page of history, and the sights of Madras are well worthy of sympathetic interest—especially on the part of those whose lines of life are cast in the historic city itself or within the historic presidency of which it is the capital.

In the following pages certain places and events have been briefly described more than once with different details; any such repetitions are due to the fact that the Story of Madras has been told in a series of vignettes, appertaining to particular buildings or particular conditions, and each vignette had to be complete in itself. It is hoped that such repetitions will be of familiar interest, rather than tedious.

In respect of the facts that are recorded, apart from general history, I am indebted principally to the valuable Records of Fort St. George, which the Madras Government have been publishing, volume by volume, during several years, and which I have studied with interest since the first volume appeared. Of other works that I have consulted, I must specially mention Colonel Love's Vestiges of Madras, which is a very mine of information.

G.B.

Madras

, 1921.

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ILLUSTRATIONS

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CHRONOLOGICAL NOTES

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ERRATUM

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On page 1, for 'Madraspatnam' read 'Madraspatam.'

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CHAPTER I

BEFORE THE BEGINNING

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Three hundred years ago, Madras, under the name of 'Madraspatnam' was a tiny rural village on the Coromandel Coast. Scattered about in the neighbourhood there were other rural villages, such as Egmore, Vepery, and Triplicane, which are crowded districts in the great city of Madras to-day. In Triplicane there was an ancient temple, a centre of pilgrimage, dating, like many village temples in India, from very distant times; this was the Parthasarathy temple, which is the 'Triplicane Temple' still. A little fishing village called Kuppam, lying directly on the seashore, sent out, even as Kuppam does now, its bold fishermen in their rickety catamarans in perilous pursuit of the spoils of the sea. There was one small town in the neighbourhood, namely, the Portuguese settlement at Mylapore, where the tall façades of the several churches, peeping over the trees, formed a land-mark for the Portuguese ships that occasionally cast anchor in the roads.

Such was the scene in 1639, the year in which our story of Madras begins. The Portuguese had already been in India for nearly a century and a half; and under their early and able viceroys they had made themselves powerful. The stately city of Goa was the capital of their Indian dominions, and they had settlements at Cochin, Calicut, Mylapore, and elsewhere. But the influence of the Portuguese was now on the wane. For nearly a century they had been the only European power in India and the Eastern seas; but merchants in other European countries had marked with jealous eyes the rich profits that the Portuguese derived from their Eastern traffic, and competitors appeared in the field. First came the Dutch, who in India established themselves at Pulicat, some twenty-five miles north of Mylapore. Holland had lately thrown off the yoke of Spain, and was full of new-born vigour; and Dutch trade in the East—chiefly in the East India Islands—was pushed with a rancorous energy that roused the vain indignation of the decadent Portuguese. Six years later, in 1600, came the English. The English traders were employees of the newly-established East India Company, and were sent out to do business for the Company in the East; and they had to face the opposition of the Dutch as well as of the Portuguese. Their earliest enterprise was in the East India Islands, and it was eleven years before they gained their first footing in India, at Masulipatam. Here they established an agency and did very considerable business; later they formed a fortified sub-agency at Armagaum, a good way down the coast, not far from Nellore. At first their fortunes went well; but local rulers exacted ruinous dues, and at Armagaum in particular the local ruler, alarmed at the influence that the English merchants had gained, set himself so seriously to the work of handicapping their trade that Mr. Francis Day, the Company's representative at