Kollam

Kollam, called Quilon by European merchants, is an old port on the southern Malabar coast, between Ashtamudi Lake and the sea. The rulers of Venad drew their strength from its harbour and its trade in pepper and ginger. Muslim merchants and Saint Thomas Christians lived side by side in the town, and Chinese ships called at its roadstead. Ibn Battuta, who visited in 1342, noted the Chinese merchants who traded there.

In 1329 the pope appointed a bishop of Quilon, and its Christian community drew European attention long before the Portuguese came. The Portuguese opened a trading post in 1502 to buy pepper from a port beyond Calicut's reach, but relations with local Muslim merchants broke down and violence destroyed the post and a church. They then built the fortified position of St Thomas at Tangasseri in 1517. In 1578 the first book printed in an Indian language, a Tamil Christian text, came off a press at Kollam. In 1661 a Dutch fleet took the fort, and the port joined the sphere of the Dutch East India Company.

In the eighteenth century the rising kingdom of Travancore took Kollam, and its victory over the Dutch at Colachel in 1741 ended Dutch ambitions on the coast. In 1809 a Travancore force under its minister Velu Thampi fought the East India Company's troops at Quilon and lost.