Madras

Madras grew on the Coromandel Coast around Fort St George, the trading post founded by the English East India Company in the seventeenth century. The coast offered access to cotton textiles woven in the Tamil hinterland and shipped across the Indian Ocean. Indian merchants, artisans and labourers settled around the fort, building a town whose fortunes were closely tied to commerce.

In 1639 Company agents obtained a grant of land from a local Nayak, and construction of the fort began the following year. The English settlement expanded as merchants and weavers came to serve its trade. In 1746, during war between Britain and France, French forces captured Madras; it was restored to the British under the peace settlement of 1748. The town subsequently served as a base for British operations during the Carnatic wars and the struggles with Mysore. By the early nineteenth century it was the seat of the Company’s government over a large part of southern India, while older settlements and temples remained woven into its expanding urban landscape.