Laccadive High Sea

The Laccadive islands lie off the Malabar coast, a chain of coral atolls between the Arabian Sea and southern India. They were known to sailors in antiquity and later lay on routes linking South Asia with the Middle East. Portuguese interest in the islands' coir brought intervention at the end of the fifteenth century, but islanders drove them out in 1545. In the late eighteenth century the northern Amindivi group came under Tipu Sultan of Mysore, before passing to Britain after his defeat in 1799.