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A Judge in Madras: The Memoirs of Sidney Wadsworth | EXCERPT

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The memoirs of Sidney Wadsworth are a vital source on Britain’s colonial history during the first half of the twentieth century. Recounting his long and distinguished career in the Indian Civil Service, Wadsworth paints an entertaining picture of the many places in Madras province where he served, with illuminating portraits of the important British and Indian figures with whom he associated. In A Judge in Madras, we see through his eyes the growth of Indian nationalism and the rise of Gandhi, and the impact of the Second World War on Madras.

 

The city in which Sidney Wadsworth started and ended his Indian career is a place which marks the very earliest involvement of Britain in the subcontinent. About four hundred years ago Madras, under the name of Madraspatnam, was a tiny rural village on the Coromandel Coast, the southeastern coastal region of India which lies between the Eastern Ghats range and the Bay of Bengal. The village was located in the region referred to by Europeans as the Carnatic. The town of Arcot was the capital of the area and its ruler, the Nawab of the Carnatic, was also referred to as the Nawab of Arcot. Scattered about in the neighbourhood of Madraspatnam were other villages, such as Egmore, Vepery and Triplicane, which were eventually to become the crowded districts of the great city of Madras. Apart from Arcot there was one other small town in the area, the Portuguese settlement of Mylapore, which had been established as the viceroyalty of São Tomé de Meliapore in 1523 and whose tall church façades provided a landmark for the Portuguese ships that occasionally cast anchor there.

By 1639 the Portuguese had been in India for nearly 150 years and their influence was waning with the arrival of the Dutch and, in 1600, the British employees of the East India Company. The first British settlement in India was established in 1611 at Masulipatam, about 300 miles to the north of Madraspatnam. Having set up a main agency which conducted a considerable amount of business, the East India Company formed a fortified sub-agency at Armegon, near Nellore on the coast to the south of Masulipatam. The prime concern of the agen-cies was arriving at good bargains on the Company’s behalf; getting the best prices for European broadcloths and brocades, and buying Indian muslins, calico and natural produce as cheaply as possible for export to London where they were sold at a large profit. However, local officials exacted ruinous payments from the British, and Francis Day, the Company’s representative at Armegon, was instructed to find a suitable site for a new settlement.

At that time the Coromandel Coast was under the control of the Raja of Chandragiri-Vellore. Under the raja, local chiefs or governors known as nayaks ruled over individual districts. Damarla Venkatadri Mayakudu, the Nayak of Wandiwash, who ruled the section of the region from Pulicat (thirty-seven miles north of Madraspatnam) to the Portuguese settlement of Mylapore, was persuaded in 1639 to lease a sandy strip of land lying between the Cooum and Egmore rivers to the East India Company. The raja was succeeded by his nephew in 1642, after which a new grant was issued. The grant affected the legal and civic development of the English settlement by allowing the British to administer English common law amongst the settlers and civil law between the settlers and the other European, Jewish, Armenian, Muslim and Hindu communities with whom the Company dealt. Furthermore, it expanded Company property by attaching an addi-tional piece of land known as the Narimedu, or jackal ground, to the west of the village of Madraspatnam.

When the tract of land at Madraspatnam had been formally acquired in February 1640, the English colony at Armegon was shipped down the coast. With Andrew Cogan at the head, assisted by Day and another chief official, it included some three or four British ‘writers’, a gunner, a surgeon, a garrison of some twenty-five British soldiers under a lieu-tenant and a sergeant, a number of English carpenters, blacksmiths and coopers, and a small staff of English servants for kitchen and general work. In the course of a few months a number of buildings were fit for occupation. The main building in the middle of the fort was the ‘factory’ and it was here that the Company’s chief officials, who were called ‘factors’ (agents), assisted by writers and apprentices, transacted the Company’s business, and were also given accommodation. In the early days of Madras all the principal employees of the Company, from the governor to the most junior apprentice, lived together. Their bedrooms were in the same house and they had their meals at the same table. Included among the other buildings were warehouses for Company goods and also barrack-like residences for the Company’s subordinate British employees, civil and military, according to their rank. From the beginning the settlement was called Fort St George, but it was several years before the buildings were surrounded by a high, fortified wall with cannons positioned on all sides of the bastioned rampart.

At its start Fort St George was extremely small. Its external length parallel with the seashore was only 108 yards and its depth 100 yards, and due to the limitations a town soon sprang up outside the wall. The personal needs of the numerous settlers had to be supplied and purveyors, bazaar traders and workmen made themselves readily available. The requirements of the mercantile business were even greater. The Company’s agents wanted not only native employees in their office (shroffs (cashiers), dubashes (interpreters), peons (orderlies), clerks and porters) but they also required wholesale buyers of the cloth and other articles that they imported from England and merchants who could supply them with large quantities of the Indian wares that the Company exported to England. Ten years after the acquisition of Madras the population of the external town was estimated at about 15,000. The Fort itself had to be enlarged since the growth of Company business demanded more factors and writers from England and more warehouses for the increasing amount of goods.

In time Indian and other immigrants flocked to settle down beneath the Company umbrella. The town that grew up was divided into two sections, ‘the White Town’ and ‘the Black Town’. The inhabitants of White Town included any British settlers not in Company service of whose presence the Company approved, also all approved Portuguese and Eurasian immigrants from Mylapore and a certain number of Indian Christians. Black Town was the Asiatic settlement and the great majority of the original Indian settlers were not Tamils (comprising the majority of the population in the area) but Telegus, written down as ‘Gentoos’ in Company records. The original Black Town covered the ground that was to become the site of the Law College and the High Court and was at first without fortification, but to avoid the perils of adventurous marauders the town was enclosed by a mud wall, and in the reign of Queen Anne (1702–14) a masonry wall was erected. Meanwhile, numerous houses and streets had sprung up outside the wall on the site of the district of Georgetown which still existed in Sidney’s day.

To read more, order your copy of A Judge in Madras today.

A Judge in Madras
About the Book - A Judge in Madras

The memoirs of Sidney Wadsworth are a vital source on Britain's colonial history during the first half of the twentieth century. Recounting his long and distinguished career in the Indian Civil Service, Wadsworth paints an entertaining picture of the many…

About the Author - Caroline Keen

Caroline Keen is a historian, holding a PhD from SOAS University of London. Her previous books include Princely India and the British: Political Development and the Operation of Empire and An Imperial Crisis in British India: The Manipur Uprising of…

To read more, order your copy of A Judge in Madras, by Caroline Keen today!

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