The Cooum River and the Historical Geography of Old Madras

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The two maps from two different centuries, the one above from the eighteenth century and the one below from the nineteenth century illustrates the phenomenal trasformation in the form, character and morphology of the City of Madras from a Port town serving essentially the needs of the East India Company to an Imperial city, a visible symbol of the British Empire. And between the two lies an important 

historical fact: the city had changed to such an extent that we can hardly recognise the contours of change today. We attempt herein, to study the cartographic representions of Madras to uncover the Historical Geography of the City. We are particularly interested in seeing how the River Cooum has fared in all these momentous changes. Our focus therefore is on the River Cooum, today a dreary sewer trudging placidly through the city. The Map below shows that even in the late nineteenth century there were water bodies like the LOng Tank in Nungambakkam which were drained to fulfill the growing demand for space and the consquences were borne by the people of the city in 2015.

The Cooum is one of the shortest rivers in the region, a mere 75 kms from its source in Tiruvalluvar District and a recent Cultural Heritage study has mapped out nearly 100 temples all along its banks. Three important Saivite Temples are located near the source of the River: Tiruvikolam, IlambaiyanKottur and Tiruverkadu. All these temple are sung in the Tevaram and are therefore Padal Petrra Stalam. The water from the Kosatalaiyar River flowed into the Cooum assuring it a steady inflow. In 1868 the Tamaraipakkam check dam was built which restricted the flow from the Kosatalaiyar River to the Cooum and an open channel was cut to gring, by gravity surplus water to the Red Hills Reservoir located in the outskirts of Madras. Human intervention has played a major role in changing the flow and direction of the river. 

Early Map of Madras

A part of an early Map of Madras

The River as we know from the description left behind by John Lockyer flowed right into Fort Saint George, almost dividing the trapezium shaped settlement into two sections. From the very start of the English settlement, the East India Company sought to change the course of the River and they Company brought with it the onsiderable experience in draining swamps and building dams and canals which had started in England during the reign of the Stuarts. For nearly half a century the East India Company could do little as idt did not have full control over the  northern and western parts of the Plains. Only after the acquisition of the three villages of Pususuvakkam, Egmore and Ningambakkam was it possible to diver the course of the river from the Fort and make the Triplicane River and the Egmore River join so as to create an island. This island can still be recognized as Statue of Sir Thomas Munroe stands on the Island and in the toponyms of Madras Island Ground is sometimes mentioned.

A feature of Company life, and it is unfortunate that this is being destroyed, is the existence of Country Houses built by the important members of the company, the writers, the factors, the military officers etc. It is difficult to believe butthe River Cooum was considered attractive enough for them to builsd huge Bunglows. The large eighteenth century mansion in Nugmbakkam built by Dr Anderson, the successor of William Roxburgh, still exists and I hope I am permitted to visit it some day. His house was known as Pycroft Garden. There was until thirty years back, a Country House just below the Nugambakkam overbridge that connected Spur Tank Road with Poonamalli High Road. A early visitor to Madras in the eighteenth century wrote: "It is a surprise to find a handsome stream winding through the town and suburbs, and presenting broad stretches of silvery water at various points". The Adyar River, also a tributary of the Cooum was separated from the original river due to the interventions made by the Company in the early eightenth century when for reason of security they evicted the Indian settlers from the Fort and settled them in what is called in the Records as (a) Mutialpetai and (b) Peddanaikkenpetai. We have already described these Indian settlements wearlier.

The River was the life line of Madras and it provided a means for communication and transport We still have photographs of the River providing the route through which firewood and rice as delivered from the suburbs to residential areas inSouth Madras. The Buckingham Canal which was the Cochrane Canal of 1806 was the starting point of the decline of a once gentle and clean river.

A Boat on the Cooum in the early Twentieth Century

We can look for the traces of the river by follwing the Old Maps of Madras. The River no longer flows close to the Fort and even the Adyar River has lost its discharge into the Ocean as the sand bar stops the river from entering the By of Bengal. The construction of the Harbour at Madras in the first decade of the twentietn century, as the military and naval rivalry between Britain and Imperial Germany was building up was the last straw. The Cooum was redued to an urban slush pipe. 

We can infer from the records left behind by visitors tht as late as the eighteenth century, that boats plied on the Cooum near the Thomas Gate. The establishment of the settlement of Chidadripettai was amde possible by changing the course of the River and reclaiming land. The area where the General Hospital and the Medical College stands today extending up to the Southern Railway Headquarters and Central Station were part of the land drained by the River.After the French were forced to leave Madras in 1749, this area was levelled and all the Country Houses shifted to Nugambakkam or further up to Saint Thomas Mount. The bridge over the river is still called Garden Bridge and this harkens back to the days when the river provided nourishment to Garden Houses in that area,

The Buckingham Canal whose construction began in 1806 and ended in 1867 stretched from Markanam near Pondicherry to Kakinada in Andhra Pradesh. Begun as a famine relief project this Canal disrupted the inflow of water into the River ans the river was diverted into a temporary basin in order to facilitate the construction. The Canal was 750 kilometers long and was an excellt, indeed marvellous feat of engineering/

John Bruce: From Armagon to Madras Historical Explanation and Realities

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The East India Company, for all its notoriety, well deserved or imputed by the hind sight of History, was indeed a global trading organization with the capability to raise Capital, outfit ships and undertake perilous voyages across the world in quest of pepper, cloves and other condiment. Sitting in their palatial rooms in Leadenhall Street the Directors lorded over a large maritme empire beset with all the problems that commercial enterprises face: supply chain impedimants, rivals in competition, local adventurers out to make a quick killing, political instability and a host of other challenges. From 1600 when the Company was chartered by Queen Elizaben to 1708 when the united Company was formed to the abolition of the East India Company in 1858 was charecterized by momentous events that needed a faithful chronicler and for the first phase of its History, the Company found one in John Bruce (1745-1826).

Headquarters of the East India Company, London

John Bruce along with Rober Orme were the only two official Historiographers of the East India Company. Both were Scots and both were appointed by Henry Dundas, the Earl of Melville, the unofficial Tsar of "india Interests."Henry Dundas has been accused f favoring his fellow Scots in app  political conflicts over the Constitution, Conduct and Character of the East India Company. And the influence of Adam Smith in the field of Political Economy added intellectual strength to the crtics of the Company who wanted the East India Company to be stripped of its trede privileges, particularly the monopoly over the India Trade. And with Lord Macartney.s visit to China, the trade over China as well. To deal with the political, leagal and commercial challenges, Henry Dundas created the Office of the Historiographer whose job was to provide public defenses of Company Conduct and Character as demanded from time to time. John Bruce did his job in an admirable fashion and his work is still worth reading. His prose is rather poor while his subordiante at Leadenhall, Charles Lamb was certainly a superb essayist, Bruce wrote a heavy turgid bureaucratic prose but regnant with facts and details which makes his Annals of the Honourable East India Company published in 1810 valuable. He had at his disposal two assets:Lemon, his assistant and a veritable treasure trove of primary records under his custody. And from the sources under his custody John Bruce created a narrtive that stretched from the creation of the East India Company to the merger of the London Merchant company in 1708 and beyond almost till the Battle of Plassey, 1757.

The Board Room

The character of the East India Company bafflesd contemporaries even as it continues to facinate contemporaries. Was it a "sovereign" power? Was it a Military Power? Was it an exclusive trading Power with monopoly over the most lucrative market of the contemporary world, India? And so on. The Annals is as its name suggests, an annual yearly record of the "transactions" of the  Company both at the London end as well as the commercial end'. Based on the Reports sent to the Headquarters and the Correspondence with the factors of the Company John Bruce strings his narrative along. A minute eye for detail makes the Annals a fascinating work. My question here is simple: How does John Bruce account for the establishment of Madras. What context does he give for the momentous decision and how does he explain the shifys in Company strategies and policies towards India in general and the Coromandl coast in particular.

A feature of John Bruce's metodology is to place that East India Company squarely in a global context, a Wheels of Commerce method in the early nineteenth century. The earliest settlement of the Company was the Presidency of Surat which commanded the trade of India and even sought to enter Persia. Here the Company faced local hostility in spite of the favorable response from the Mughal Emperor Jehangir, opposition from the Dutch and resistance from the Portuguese. Hormuz held by the Portuguese wa the prize both sought. The polical climate not being conducive toward English interests, the Company established a second settlement in Masulipattinam in 1614' Once again ill luck followed the Company as the local Nayaka who was favorably disposed towards the East India Company was defeated by the Sultan of Golconda. The reason for the shift to the West coast as we can glean from the Records provided by John Bruce is clear: the callioe of the East coast had a market in Bantam, Sumatra and that invstment alone could finance the acquisition of Spices without the need for the outflow of any bullion from the Cmpany. The Dutch, in spite of the alliance in Europe through the Treaty of 1619 were in no mood to accomodate English interests and in 1623 the Amboyna Massacre made the situation difficult for the Company which had to fall back on the Coromandel Coast. With Masulipatinam abandoned, the Company set up another settlement in Armagon but here again difficulties in procuring the trading commodities prevented the Company from establishing itself. The Raja of Tanjore offered a site but bythenFrancis Day and Cogan had identifed Madras and in 1639 the Company formally took possession of the strip of Coastline on which they built the Fort later called Fort St. George.

John Bruce in spite of the distance and lack of documents embodying diverse perspectives constructed a good account of the vissistitudes of fortunes.

The Redoubt at Egmore: Possible Location and History

A look at the world of politics, statecraft, diplomacy and books

1733 Map of Madras showing the Egmore Redoubt

Redoubt Pic Story of Madras

The Map given on the left is an important histoical document in that it gives us on overview of what Madras looked like in the first quarter of the eighteeenth century. More importantly, it illustrates the exact location of the Egmore Redoubt: the square bounded area outside the dark boundary lines towards the left top corner of the map. This Map was apparentlydone during the Governorship of Pitt when Madras underwent dramatic expansion. Right below we have the only surviving illustration of theEgmore Redoubt. The location geneally identified with the Redoubt is the Egmore Railway Station on theGandhi Irwin Road, opposite the Archives. This identification which was suggeted by Professor Srinivasachari in his "Place Names Of Madras"which he published in 1936 in the volume of essay commemoration the 300 years of the foundation of the City in 1636.

The identification seems to be slightly off the mark because there are historical documents that when sifted carefully give us a better site.

The location of the Redoubt was outside of the Bounded Hedges that surrounded the East India Company's self procalimed limits of its possessions. There was a Choultry in the place where the Redouby was constructed. And the purpose was strictly military. If we keep these factors in mind we get a better understanding of the location. The documents sate clearly that the Redoubt will have a brick wall around the Choultry in order to lodge such "forces as we shall send to defend peace". While there were frequent skirmishes with Dawood Khan, Mafuz Khan and even on ocassion with the Portuguese, the English faced only one serious contender, the French located in Pondicherry.And the defence of Madras implied guardingthe access points to the City. The obvious attacks from the sea were warded off as Love points out in his Vestiges of Old Madras by strengthening the Sea Gate with heavy weapons. And popular memory has it that the Fortification Walls were constructed with money collected from the Residents of the Black Town, that is the indigenous people and hence the name Wall Tax Road, The attaks on Madras by Dadood Khan prompted Thomas Pitt, whose granson was to become the Prime Minister of England, to seriously consider the issue of defenses.Kanchipuram and and Poonamalee were importantl towns frequently attacked by the Maharattas who controlled the Fort of Ginji and Vellore. Adding to the owes of the East India Company were polegars like Lingappa who commanded considerble armed following in the vicinity of Madras and preyed upon the trade and mechaindise passing through the area. It was during the invasion of the French under Count de Lally that we hear of the military role of the Egmore Redoubt.

The Consultations of the Governor in Council of the year 1710 state that a sum of 350 pagodas was sanctioned for the maintenance of the Choultry clearly a recognition that it was a useful asset. However the location of the Choultry in Egmore presented some thorny issues. Did East India Company have jurisdiction over thie area. Dawood Khan claerly a most colorful figure in the history of the time one one of his visits to Madras with the sole purpose of cadging liquor from the Governor, remarked that if the English came to trade why did they need fortifications, guns and cannon. A question that the Governor parried. By July 1711 a furter 563pagodas was spent in strngthening the Choultry and making it a Redoubt, a masonary fort.Apart from naking it a fort, the Company decided to build a Powder Mill in the same locaton. The reason recorded in the Consultations for the Year 1711 is the poor quality of gun powder available and the erratic supply from Europe which was involved in its usual seasonal conflicts. Brohiers was put in charge f the Powder Mill which was located within the Redoubt. By 1713 a total of 5060 pagodas had been expended on the Fortifications and th Powder Mill. The Redoubt had a dual purpose: to hold the Choultry Plains and was a Signal Post to alert the forces atFort St. George should an Army or Cavalry be seen. If these aspects are kept in mind it is clear that the location at the Egmore Station would have been quite futile to its stated purposes.

We have some other cluse about the location of the Egmore Redoubt in Robert Orme's Military Transactions of the British Nation in Hindustan. Wrting about the defense of Madras by Col Lawrence during the invasion of Lally he sates that the Choultry Plain extends two miles west of the Enclosures which bound St Thomas Mount and this plain extends right up to Mylapore. There is a reference to Chindradipettah as being close to the Redoubt and this is obviously a weaving village, chinna tari pettai. And there is a settlement by that name close to where we have located theRedoubt.

The Choultry Plain consisisted of (1) Puddupakkam (2) Chindradripet (3) Roypettah (4) Nungambakkam (5) Triplicane. Egmore itself came under the shifting sands of competing claims and various warlords of the time lid claim to it. The claim was finally setteld when Egmore was acquired by the Comapny.

Given these factors, and the location of the Redoubt given in the Map it appears that the location was much further west from where Srinivasachari located it.

  (This is only a tentative identification as this Historian has not had the opportunity of traveling to Madras and making an on the spot assessment)