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Going Dutch in the Archives
Who ever connects Madras with the Dutch! But there has indeed been a long connection, in some ways even earlier than with the English, though it is only now slowly coming into greater focus among researchers into the historical.
Researchers will find it still easier to access the records in the future as a result of UNESCO's Rs. 80-lakh grant to preserve and microfilm the 1,765 volumes of Dutch records in the Tamil Nadu Archives and Holland's Leyden University, and the Dutch National Archives' plans to work together with the local institution to translate the documents.
Significantly, the original Dutch records in the Archives pre-date the English, the former dating to 1657 and the latter to 1670. Which is perhaps as it should be, for the Dutch were on the Coromandel Coast before the English.
To ensure a steady supply of textiles to its eastern settlements, the Dutch first established their presence at Masulipatam in 1605, at Pulicat in 1610 and then at points north like Bimlipatam, before establishing a presence in Sadras and Negapatam (I'm using their spellings) in 1660 and in Cochin in 1663.
The heyday of the Dutch on the coasts of the Coromandel and Malabar was in the 1670s, when its fleet aggressively ruled the seas. In 1673, it made possible the capture of San Thomé by Golconda, and the English began to think their foe in Europe was eyeing Fort St. George. Governor William Langhorne wrote in February, 1673:
"Wee have certainely found out by their own confession that 5 of the 50 peones which Mierza kept heere, and lately put in the roome of others at the Sea Side towards Triblicane, were not his, but the Dutch our Enemy's people, soe plotted between them and him; which, it is plaine, was out of all ill intent to betray this Fort and all our lives and the honble Companys estate into the hands of the Dutch, our declared enemyes... "
Why the Dutch did not go through with their plans to take over Fort. St. George and why all the strongly garrisoned Dutch settlements surrendered one after the other to weaker English forces between June and October, 1781, effectively ending the Dutch connection with colonial India, may be amongst the mysteries explained once the Dutch records are translated.
S.MUTHIAH
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