Rather than rely on the old feudal levies, Marthanda Varma began by building a standing army drilled in modern warfare. He also began to take over neighbouring kingdoms one by one. Not surprisingly, the rulers of these kingdoms appealed to the Dutch who repeatedly warned Travancore. Eventually, the VOC Governor of Ceylon dispatched a sizeable force of Dutch marines that landed at the small port of Colachel and marched on the royal palace in Padmanabhapuram in 1741. Marthanda Varma was away but returned in time to defend his capital. The Dutch were now chased back to Colachel where they suffered a humiliating defeat. The Battle of Colachel was a turning point and Dutch power in the Indian Ocean would go into steady decline. Not till the Japanese navy defeated the Russians in 1905 would another Asian state decisively defeat a European power. Colachel is today a small nondescript fishing town and the site of the surrender is marked by a pillar. When I visited the town in December 2013, the pillar commemorating this major military victory was standing neglected amidst heaps of construction debris.
Marthanda Varma’s palace at Padmanabhapuram has survived in better condition and is an excellent example of Kerala’s traditional wooden architecture. It also contains a painting showing Marthanda Varma accepting the surrender of the Dutch commander Eustachius de Lannoy. Interestingly the king offered to hire Lannoy as a general provided he trained his army on European lines. The Dutch captain accepted the offer and would loyally serve Travancore for over three decades. He would not just modernize the army but also build a network of forts using the most advanced European designs of that time. One of the best preserved of these is Vattakottai Fort, just outside the town of Kanyakumari. Built at the edge of the sea, it provides excellent views of the surrounding coastline. One will see a large number of wind turbines turning nearby, an odd reminder of the windmills of Lannoy’s country of origin.
The army trained by Lannoy would help Travancore further expand the kingdom to as far north as Cochin (Kochi) and would help break the Dutch monopoly. Half a century later, it would help Travancore defend itself against Tipu Sultan of Mysore. For his energetic leadership, Lannoy would earn the title of ‘Valiya Kapithaan’ or Great Captain from his men.14 One can visit his grave at Udaygiri Fort that he built not far from the royal palace. The inscription is both in Latin and Tamil, a fitting reflection of his dual identities. Amazingly, an army unit that had fought for Marthanda Varma against Lannoy at Colachel survives in the Indian Army as the 9th Battalion of the Madras Regiment. According to newspaper reports, the regiment recently arranged to take better care of the memorial pillar.
Company’s Empire
While the Dutch were being squeezed by Travancore, the English and the Portuguese were up against another source of indigenous resistance. After the death of Mughal emperor Aurangzeb in 1707, the empire had quickly unravelled and a large part of it was taken over by the Marathas. They had begun their rebellion against the Mughals as mountain guerrillas but were quickly developing capability in other forms of warfare. In 1712, Kanhoji Angre was appointed the Surkhail or Grand Admiral of the Maratha navy. He is often dismissed as a pirate in the writings of Europeans but he was a legitimate official of the Maratha empire and had every right to impose control over the Konkan coast. When the English resisted, he detained a number of EIC ships and forced them to pay a fine. He did the same to the Portuguese.
The reason Angre was able to impose his will on the Europeans was that the Marathas had learned to challenge them at sea. A favourite tactic was to use smaller but fast and manoeuvrable vessels to approach a European ship from astern in order to avoid the cannon broadside. Sometimes they would also tow a larger cannon-laden vessel that would direct its fire at the sails and rigging in order to disable the ship. While the European gunners were trying to extricate themselves from the tangle of rope and canvas, the faster Maratha boats would close in and board the ship.15
The EIC initially agreed to Angre’s demands but were soon found to be violating various conditions. Accusations and counter-accusations flew thick and fast, and Bombay began to prepare for war. A large fleet was assembled in 1718 and sailed down to Angre’s main base at Vijaydurg, a formidable fortress built on a rocky peninsula jutting into the Arabian Sea. The attack was a total failure and the siege was lifted after just four days. The English and the Portuguese would try repeatedly to capture Vijaydurg over the next few years without any success. Eventually, the EIC called for help from the Royal Navy and in 1722, Vijaydurg was attacked by the large combined fleet of the EIC, the Royal Navy and the Portuguese. Yet again, the attackers failed to make a dent and were forced to withdraw. Except for the English, the Europeans would make their peace with Angre one at a time.
Kanhoji Angre died in 1729 and his descendants would harass the EIC for the next two decades. On one occasion, Tulaji Angre would engage a fleet of no less than thirty-six ships. However, the internal politics of the Marathas came to the EIC’s rescue. Tulaji Angre had been part of the faction opposed to Peshwa Balaji Baji Rao who was the supreme leader of the Marathas. In 1756, Vijaydurg found itself under siege with the EIC fleet blockading it from the sea and the Marathas from land. The fort and its harbour fell after heavy bombardment from land and sea. Although the Marathas would remain powerful on land for another half a century, they would no longer be a factor in the Indian Ocean.
By the middle of the eighteenth century, with the Portuguese and Dutch in decline, the British had emerged as the strongest naval power in the Indian Ocean. However, the directors of the EIC would have still baulked at the idea of a land empire beyond a few fortified bases along the coast. It was the French, their main rivals, who first attempted to control inland territory. The key person behind this new strategy was Joseph Francois Dupleix, the Governor of Pondicherry. Note that at this time, the British and the French were at war in Europe but their companies in India had initially refrained from attacking each other. This changed when a British fleet plundered French ships in the Straits of Malacca in 1745. Dupleix immediately requested support from the French naval base in Mauritius. When reinforcements arrived the following year, the French marched on Madras and captured it without much difficulty.
The EIC now complained to the Nawab of Arcot who was the Mughal governor of the area (although by this time the Mughal empire was rapidly dissolving). The Nawab arrived in Madras with a large force but was decimated by French cannon. It was a clear demonstration of the sharp improvements in military technology that were taking place in Europe as it approached the Industrial Revolution. With the largest British settlement under his control and the Indians in awe of his firepower, it would have seemed that Dupleix was in a position to dramatically expand the French territory. However, he was repeatedly undermined by his colleagues and superiors. In 1749, he was forced to hand back Madras to the British as part of a peace deal in Europe.
Dupleix was not yet done, however. Within a year he had managed to place his own candidates as rulers of Hyderabad and the Carnatic coast. Just when the Maratha navy was being tamed on the west coast, the French seemed to have taken control of the east coast. The two European companies began to prepare for war and both recruited a large number of Indian soldiers and drilled them in modern warfare. What followed was a series of engagements known as the Carnatic Wars. The mounting cost of these wars would eventually force the French to recall Dupleix. Meanwhile, the British hand would be strengthened by a decisive victory over the ruler of Bengal in 1757. The British would occupy the French settlement of Chandannagar in Bengal and a few years later would also take over Pondicherry. Both of them were later returned to French rule as part of a peace deal but they would never regain their former importance.
Anyone with even a passing interest in Indian history would have heard of the Battle of Plassey in 1757 where British troops led by Robert Clive defeated Siraj-ud-Daulah, the Nawab of Bengal. Clive had 800 European soldiers, 2200 Indian sepoys and a contingent of artillerymen. The Nawab’s army had 35,000 infantrymen, 15,000 cavalry, 53 cannons and also a small Fr
ench contingent. This would appear like a big numerical advantage except that a large segment of the Nawab’s army, led by the turncoat Mir Jafar, did not take part in the battle. The French contingent put up some resistance, as did the men led by two loyalists Mir Madan and Mohanlal. However, unsure of how many troops he still controlled, Siraj-ud-Daulah fled the battlefield (later he would be captured and killed). The British losses were ‘4 English soldiers killed, 9 wounded, 2 missing, 15 sepoys killed, 36 wounded’.16 One of the most decisive victories in history was not much more than a skirmish. Mir Jafar became the new Nawab of Bengal but no one was in any doubt that it was Robert Clive who was in charge. This is how the East India Company came to control a major chunk of Indian territory.
The Battle of Plassey has a curious but almost forgotten epilogue. On hearing about Clive’s victory, the Dutch decided that they could revive their fortunes by making a surprise attack on Calcutta. It is quite possible that Mir Jafar had secretly encouraged them. So in 1759, the VOC sent a fleet of seven ships from Batavia (now Jakarta) carrying 300 European and 600 Malay soldiers. They made their way up the river but were routed by the British. It is not clear what the Dutch were thinking but it should have been obvious that Calcutta was not Pulau Run of a hundred years earlier.
Tipu Sultan—Tiger or Tyrant?
Despite their success in Bengal and control over the sea, the British were far from being the masters of India. The Marathas would remain the biggest threat to their hegemony for another half a century till they were finally defeated in the Third Anglo-Maratha War of 1817–18. The East India Company also had to contend with the hostility of a number of other rulers such as Tipu Sultan, the ruler of Mysore. Tipu is often portrayed as a great patriot in Indian history textbooks for having opposed British colonization but his record is not so straightforward. While it is true that he fought the British, he was constantly trying to subjugate other Indians—the Marathas, the Nizam of Hyderabad, Travancore, the Kodavas of Coorg to name just a few. He was also considered a usurper by many of his own subjects.
Tipu Sultan came to the throne in 1782 on the death of his father Hyder Ali. Hyder Ali had usurped the throne of Mysore from the Wodeyar dynasty that he served as a military commander. Over the next few years, Tipu crushed all dissent within his kingdom as well as took over the smaller kingdoms adjoining Mysore. The Karnataka coast and the Kodavas of Coorg (now Kodagu in Karnataka) soon found themselves under savage assault. The indiscriminate cruelty of Tipu’s troops is not just testified in both Indian and European accounts but also in the letters and instructions that Tipu himself sent to his commanders on the field:17
You are to make a general attack on the Coorgs and, having put to the sword or made prisoners the whole of them, both the slain and prisoners, with the women and children, are to be made Mussalmans . . . Ten years ago, from ten to fifteen thousand men were hung upon the trees of that district; since which time the aforesaid trees have been waiting for men . . .
Around 1788, Tipu Sultan turned his attention on the Kerala coast and marched in with a very large army. The old port city of Calicut was razed to the ground. Hundreds of temples and churches were systematically destroyed and tens of thousands of Hindus and Christians were either killed or forcibly converted to Islam. Again, this is not just testified by Tipu’s Sultan’s enemies but in his own writings and those of his court historian Mir Hussein Kirmani.18 Interestingly, one of the things that Tipu loudly denounced in order to justify his cruelty was the matrilineal customs of the region.
Not surprisingly, hundreds of thousands of refugees began to stream south into Travancore. Tipu now used a flimsy excuse to invade the kingdom founded half a century earlier by Marthanda Varma. Travancore’s forces were much smaller than those of Mysore, but Lannoy had left behind a well-drilled army and a network of fortifications. A few sections of these fortifications have survived to this day and can be seen north of Kochi, not far from where the ancient port of Muzeris once flourished. Tipu’s army was repeatedly repulsed by the Nair troops but Travancore knew that it was up against a much larger military machine and was forced to ask the EIC for help.
The British responded by putting together a grand alliance of Tipu’s enemies that included the Marathas and the Nizam of Hyderabad and, in 1791, they marched on Mysore. Within a few months, the allies had taken over most of Tipu’s kingdom and were bearing down on his capital Srirangapatna. Eventually, he was forced to accept humiliating terms—half his kingdom was taken away and he was made to pay a big war indemnity. Given his record of reneging on treaties, the EIC kept two of his sons hostage till he paid the indemnity.
Friendless in India, Tipu now began to look for allies abroad. It is known that he exchanged letters with Napoleon and had great hopes of receiving support from the French. He also wrote to the Ottoman Sultan in Istanbul and urged a joint jihad against the infidel British. The problem was that Napoleon had occupied Egypt and the Ottomans considered the French the real infidel enemies and the British as allies! The Ottoman Sultan’s reply, later published in the Madras Gazette, makes the point clearly: ‘We make it our special request that your Majesty will please refrain from entering any measure against the English.’19
British intelligence was fully aware of what Tipu was doing and decided to finish him once and for all. The allies again marched on Srirangapatna in 1799. The Mysore army was a shadow of its former self and the allies had little difficulty in reaching the capital. After three weeks of bombardment, the walls were breached. Tipu Sultan died fighting, sword in hand. The allies would restore Mysore to the old Wodeyar dynasty from whom Tipu’s father had usurped the throne. Napoleon would do little to rescue his ally but the siege of Srirangapatna would bolster the reputation of a thirty-year-old British colonel named Arthur Wellesley. Now remembered as the Duke of Wellington, he would defeat Napoleon sixteen years later at Waterloo.
The Srirangapatna fort lies on a river island just off the Bangalore–Mysore highway. The final siege is so well documented that one can wander around the area and get a very good feel of how the last weeks unfolded. Tipu’s personal effects were taken by the victors and most of them were shipped to England where they can be seen in various museums.
Tipu died a warrior’s death, defending his fort to his last breath. Moreover, despite the extreme cruelty towards Hindus and Christians in Kerala and Coorg, there are also instances of his making generous grants to temples. His critics will argue that most of these were given after his defeat in 1791. It is difficult to say if this was a genuine change of heart or a tactical retreat by a cornered bully desperately looking for new friends. Still, given his record of brutality towards fellow Indians, it is difficult to think of him as a great freedom fighter. At best, he belongs to the shades of grey that mark a lot of history.
10
Diamonds and Opium
End of Dutch Spice Monopoly
Despite the failure to expand its empire into India, the VOC retained control over Sri Lanka and much of South East Asia till the end of the eighteenth century. However, its monopoly over the spice trade was about to be dealt a body blow by the emergence of plantations in other parts of the world. Over the years, many attempts had been made to grow expensive Asian spices outside their places of origin. Pepper, originally from south India, had spread to Sumatra and elsewhere but cloves and nutmeg had proved impossible to grow outside their original habitats. Moreover, the Dutch were aware that other Europeans wanted to break their monopoly and jealously guarded against any attempt to smuggle out seedlings.
The first systematic attempt at transplanting these spices was made by a French adventurer, Pierre Poivre, who had started life as a missionary in China and rose to become the administrator of Mauritius. Interestingly, his efforts were constantly opposed by Dupleix who may have been privately running a parallel effort to steal seedlings. Poivre personally captained a ship to the Spice Islands, narrowly escaped being exposed by a Dutch patrol ship, and procured a small number of seedlings. Unfortunat
ely, the plants did not survive for long in Mauritius. A few years later, Poivre sent out a protégé called Provost to make a new attempt to procure seedlings. Sailing through VOC-controlled waters, the French managed to find a small island where the locals, unknown to the Dutch, had succeeded in transplanting clove and nutmeg. Provost procured seedlings from them before heading for Mauritius but was stopped by Dutch customs officials. The price for being caught smuggling was death, so this must have been a tense moment. However, the French managed to convince the officers that they had been blown off course and escaped a full inspection.1
Provost returned to Mauritius with four hundred rooted nutmeg trees and seventy rooted clove trees. Within a couple of decades there were spice plantations in Zanzibar, Madagascar and the Caribbean. The VOC’s spice monopoly had been shattered. Poivre returned to France a very wealthy man. After his death, his widow would marry Pierre Samuel Dupont, a liberal politician and publisher. During the French Revolution, the couple would narrowly escape the guillotine and head for North America where Dupont would use his wife’s wealth to set up a successful gunpowder factory near Wilmington, Delaware. Dupont’s business would flourish and survives today as one of the world’s largest chemical companies. In contrast, the VOC’s fortunes would go into rapid decline and the company would be dissolved in 1799.
The transplanting of spices was by no means the only instance of economic espionage. Indian textile technology was also stolen and copied by the Europeans. Indian cottons, especially wood-block prints called ‘chintz’, were so popular in Europe that governments often imposed severe import restrictions and bans on usage. A French missionary called Father Coeurdoux managed to get some Indian weavers, whom he had converted to Christianity, to reveal the secrets of the technique to him. Over time, further details were sent back by agents of the French East India Company. Thus, by the 1760s, French and English factories were churning out chintz on an industrial scale.2 Western countries today often accuse Asian economies of violating intellectual property rights but it is worth remembering that their own economic rise was based on stealing ideas from others.
The Ocean of Churn: How the Indian Ocean Shaped Human History Page 21