Fort Geldria, Pulicat – History
Dutch Ownership:
This ruined fort was once the seat of power of the
Dutch East India Company, or Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, which arrived
in the continent in the 16th century. After gaining control of Masulipatnam of
present-day Andhra Pradesh in 1605, Tegenepatnam in 1608, the Dutch made their
way to Pulicat in 1610. With their large armed sailing vessels, the Dutch
ousted the Portuguese, who had dominated the seaport for several decades after
establishing a trading post in 1502. Pulicat was then turned into the
Coromandel headquarters of the Dutch East India company.
For almost two centuries, Pulicat was the
administrative stronghold of the Dutch, who led a flourishing trade off the
Coromandel coast. Hundreds of diamonds were exported to western countries from
this port. Thousands of barrels full of fine spices such as nutmeg, cloves and
mace were shipped from Dutch settlements in Indonesia and Ceylon to be
transported to Deccan India. Indigo, pepper and pearls were traded in bulk
across its various settlements.
At Pulicat, the gunpowder factory set up by the
Dutch proved to be invaluable as they sought to establish their hegemony in the
East during the 17th century using arms and ammunition. The fort was built on the
shores of Pulicat Lake, which provides access to
the Bay of
Bengal and
the Coromandel
Coast, an
important area for trade and a scene of rivalry between the colonial powers of
the Dutch, the Portuguese, and the British.
A Portuguese fort had existed previously on the
spot, and Fort Geldria was built on its foundations, with the permission of
Queen Oboyama, wife of Vijayanagara
Emperor Venkatapathi Raya, based in Chandragiri
Fort, who was supposed to
contribute financially and become part-owner. This process, however, proved too
slow for the Dutch, and they decided to finance and build it
themselves. Local tradition holds that a Dutch ship, stranded in 1606,
found aid among a group of expatriate Muslims, and thus began a trade
partnership. Within one month of completion, the fort came under attack from a
local chieftain, Etheraja.
After he was repulsed, the Portuguese attacked the
fort from both land and sea but were fought off. The Dutch formed an alliance
with the local traders and the Portuguese were kept at bay. The fort, which was
supplied by the Gouden
Leeuw in
1618 with 130 Dutch soldiers and 32 guns, became a focal point in the
local turmoil and provided refuge to people from the Portuguese
colonies. In 1619, the chief at Fort Geldria was accorded the title of
Governor and Extraordinary Councillor of the Indies.
In the second half of the seventeenth century, the
fort's importance as a trading post (it dealt mainly in cotton fabrics) began to decline, due partly to
competition with the British but mostly as a result of the southward expansion
of the Mughal
Empire. By
1689, the government moved to Negapatnam and subsequently to Ceylon. When the director's seat moved, the fort was left
with 18 guns and 40 men. The fort was restored in 1714, and was occupied by the
British from 1781 to 1785. Fort Geldria's success as a trading post seems
unaffected by the changes of power.
In 1786, for instance, caravans loaded with merchandise
come in every month from places like Golkonda and Suratte and ships sail in from the Red Sea, Goa, and Malabar; there is a lively trade in cotton fabric and a
flourishing industry in the dyeing of textiles. A 1792 description of Dutch
trading posts in the East reports trade in sugar, arrack, Japanese copper and spices. In 1795, the Dutch surrendered the fort to
the British and blew it up in 1804 or 1805, before finally giving ownership to
the British on 1 June 1825.
British & Indian Ownership:
When a transfer to the British through a treaty was
negotiated. But 20 years before that during the Anglo-Dutch wars, much of
Castle Geldria was demolished by the British. Reporting on the act of transfer,
van der Kemp, a Danish historian, recorded, “On the first of June 1825, at noon
the official ceremony was held. A resident, Obdam, and the Englishman Krawley,
both garlanded and carried in palanquins, arrived in procession, followed by
dancing girls, drums and trumpets. At the flagstaff there awaited them the
document of transfer on a silver plate covered with a gold cloth. After the
proclamation was read, the Dutch flag was lowered and the ceremony closed with
a 21-gun salute.”
The British held the fort from 1825 until Indian
independence. Fort Geldria is currently maintained by the Archaeological
Survey of India.
Plans to restore the fort involve a cooperation between Dutch architects and scholars
and the Tamil Nadu government, with financial help from the Dutch and Indian
governments. The plans propose a restoration of the wetland eco-system of
the area and of the remaining Dutch structures, including the well-preserved
cemetery with 76 tombstones carved in the Netherlands.
Slave Trade Capital:
Evidence of European slave trade is scant and
periodic. It began with Portuguese traders in the 1500s when they transported
hundreds of slaves in large cargoes to Portugal, Manila and even Mexico, wrote Richard B Allen, in his
book European Slave Trading in
the Indian Ocean, 1500-1850. But the Dutch exceeded their numbers by
far. Between 1624 and 1665, the Dutch shipped over 11,000 slaves from Arakan,
now known as Rakhine State of Myanmar.
Slaves from Bengal and from settlements further in
the South at Tegenpatnam and Carcal were brought to Pulicat, clad in dungarees
made of coarse cotton cloth and sold at rates that varied each year. A slave in
Pulicat could be sold anywhere between 4 guilders to 40 guilders, the currency
of the Dutch. According to Dijk, slaves in Pulicat were occasionally
categorized as Muslim, Hindu or even caffers, an offensive term for Black Africans. Natural
calamities resulting in famine, failed harvests and food shortage only led to
the growth of the trade.
When famines struck, the prices of rice and other
food grains rose exorbitantly and the price of slaves became much cheaper. Dijk wrote:
“The insatiable demand by Europeans, especially the
Dutch, for slaves thus procured on the South-Eastern Coromandel Coast appears
to have become well known in the interior, and offered enslavement as an
alternative to starvation during times of scarcity and famine. The trade was
run mainly by the Dutch at Pulicat who employed brokers at Madras for slave
catching. The shipping was done at Madras port itself.”
— Wil O Dijk, Seventeenth-century Burma and the
Dutch East India Company, 1634-1680.
Even battles and revolts against rulers led to booms
in slave trade. The export of Coromandel slaves spiked during a famine that
took place at the time of a revolt in 1645 by the Nayaka Hindu rulers of
Thanjavur, Gingee and Madurai against the crumbling Vijayanagara empire. The
subsequent invasion of the Bijapur army led to the devastation of fertile
agricultural lands of Thanjavur, pushing more people into slavery. In 1646,
around 2,118 slaves were exported to Batavia, which is now the city of Jakarta
in Indonesia. An overwhelming majority of these slaves were from Southern
Coromandel, wrote Dijk, as far as Tondi, Adirampattinam and Kayalpatnam along
the Tamil Nadu coast.
“For the Dutch, the Coromandel slave trade was the
most useful means of augmenting the supply of labour in their colonies,” Dijk
writes. “The Coromandel slaves were reputedly malleable and subject to
disciplined control. They were agricultural workers and there was a fair
proportion of skilled labourers among them.”
The Dutch slave trade continued towards the end of
the 1700s, even with the competing slave trade of the French and the British.
“The traffic was large enough to attract the
attention and incur the displeasure of local Mughal officials, as a result of
which Governor Elihu Yale and his council banned the purchase and exportation
of slaves from Madras and neighboring ports in May 1688 on pain of a 50-pagoda
fine for each slave illegally purchased and exported,” wrote Allen.
Despite the ban, the Dutch slave trade continued
sporadically till the end of the 18th century. The British East India company
officials were well aware about this, especially in the late 1700s, when the
VOC factories in Pulicat, Bimilipatnam (a neighbourhood of Vishakhapatnam) and
Jaggernatpuram facilitated the acquisition and shipment of slave cargoes to
Mauritius and the Reunion.
Allen even notes that in 1792, officials from the
British East India company in Masulipatnam sent a note to their Dutch
counterparts in Jaggernatpuram saying that they had received information that
contractors of slave-carrying vessels openly resided in the factory, who had
most recently transported 500 people as slaves from the country. “We are also
informed that this traffic is openly countenanced by you, and written passes
granted, in consideration of which, seven rupees per head is paid for each
slave exported,” the note read.
In the 1780s and 1790s, abolitionist sentiments had
grown among officials of the British East India company. Correspondence between
the Madras Presidency and the Dutch in Pulicat led to the gradual phasing out
of slave trade. Except for the works of a few scholars, very little is known
today about this sordid past of Pulicat. Like the ruins of Castle Geldria, it
lies buried in a largely forgotten history of Dutch colonial rule in India.
