Mission to Madurai: Dutch Embassies to the Nayaka Court of Madurai in the Seventeenth Century
Markus Winlk
New Delhi: Manohar Publishers and Distributors, 2013
The transition to the rule of the European Companies in the seventeenth century over parts of South India is a complex problem in the historiography. On the one hand the nature of the source material changes with documents in Dutch, Portuguese, Latin and of course English and French and on the other, we have continuity in political and economic forms which add to the over all complexity of the historiographical questions. Few Indian historians with the sole exception of Sanjay Subrahmanyam have ventured to research this span of time and the reasons are not hard to determine: the linguistic resources required is extremely challenging and in our Universities here in India, teaching foreign languages as part of the Ph D programme is just absent. So there is little that has been published on the relations between the Nayaka kingdoms of Southern India and the representatives of the European companies. The Dutch were particularly active in the region after the conquest of Sri Lanka and the acquisition of Cochin and Negapattinam along the Kerala and Coromandel coast respectively. Markus Wink has published eight Reports written by ambassadors of the Dutch sent to the Nayaka court at Madurai.
There have been a few studies in recent years relating to the political and economic history of the southern part of the Tamil region. David Ludden's Peasant History in South India . was based on English language sources available in the Archives of Tamil Nadu and the celebrated monograph of Nicholas Dirks, The Hollow Crown: The Ethno history of a South Indian Little Kingdom was based on archival records as well as a dense "thick description" of social and political relations emanating from the statecraft of caste and its hierarchical variations in the Kallar territories. To these we may add M SS Pandian's work on the Nanchil Nadu and its social and agrarian history during the rule of the Travancore rulers, the last of the little kings of the deep South. The arrival of the Christian Missionaries, first the Catholics and later the evangelists of the London Missionary Society added another layer of complexity to the tangled history of the area. Afterall Robert Cauldwell celebrated "Dravidian" theory is still a hot subject of debate, polemic and of course the starting point of the identity politics that still grips the region. Hence any new addition of source material will be welcome.
The Dutch interacted with the Court of the Nayakas using a host of local intermediaries making the embassies sent to Madurai "courtly encounters" in which the Asian and the European engaged with each other using categories of thought and concepts of politics and culture derived from their own historical experience and perspectives. We get the distinct impression that the Dutch were able to see through the charade that passed off as Court or Darbar under the nayakas. Their agents were well informed about court factions and the shifting sands of dynastic politics Above all they were aware of the hollwness of the political and military pretensions of the nayaks.
This is a valuable compilation of documents that sheds light on one of the more complex areas of historical inquiries and we must thank the author for making these documents available to historians interested in the early history of colonial rule in the area.
Markus Winlk
New Delhi: Manohar Publishers and Distributors, 2013
There have been a few studies in recent years relating to the political and economic history of the southern part of the Tamil region. David Ludden's Peasant History in South India . was based on English language sources available in the Archives of Tamil Nadu and the celebrated monograph of Nicholas Dirks, The Hollow Crown: The Ethno history of a South Indian Little Kingdom was based on archival records as well as a dense "thick description" of social and political relations emanating from the statecraft of caste and its hierarchical variations in the Kallar territories. To these we may add M SS Pandian's work on the Nanchil Nadu and its social and agrarian history during the rule of the Travancore rulers, the last of the little kings of the deep South. The arrival of the Christian Missionaries, first the Catholics and later the evangelists of the London Missionary Society added another layer of complexity to the tangled history of the area. Afterall Robert Cauldwell celebrated "Dravidian" theory is still a hot subject of debate, polemic and of course the starting point of the identity politics that still grips the region. Hence any new addition of source material will be welcome.
The Dutch interacted with the Court of the Nayakas using a host of local intermediaries making the embassies sent to Madurai "courtly encounters" in which the Asian and the European engaged with each other using categories of thought and concepts of politics and culture derived from their own historical experience and perspectives. We get the distinct impression that the Dutch were able to see through the charade that passed off as Court or Darbar under the nayakas. Their agents were well informed about court factions and the shifting sands of dynastic politics Above all they were aware of the hollwness of the political and military pretensions of the nayaks.
This is a valuable compilation of documents that sheds light on one of the more complex areas of historical inquiries and we must thank the author for making these documents available to historians interested in the early history of colonial rule in the area.
