Nagapattinam

Nagapattinam is a port on the Coromandel Coast, close to the mouths of the Kaveri. It was a gateway between the fertile Chola country and the Bay of Bengal, drawing merchants and religious communities from across the sea. The Chudamani Vihara, a Buddhist monastery founded with the support of a Srivijayan ruler and the Chola king Rajaraja I, reflected connections between the Tamil coast and Southeast Asia. The town also housed Hindu temples and later Christian churches, bearing witness to the varied communities of a trading port.

Portuguese merchants established a commercial centre at Nagapattinam in the sixteenth century under the Nayaks of Thanjavur. Dutch forces displaced them in the seventeenth century, and the port became an important centre of the Dutch East India Company on the Coromandel Coast. Its warehouses and ships linked the textile-producing hinterland with markets around the Indian Ocean. The British captured Nagapattinam in 1781 during war with the Dutch, and its transfer was confirmed in the peace settlement of 1784. The port continued to serve the delta under its new rulers, though its place in maritime trade changed with the fortunes of competing European companies.