Masulipatam

Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Hyderabad. These are considered today's major metropolis of India. But looking back at history, there have been innumerable towns and cities that dwindled slowly with time. The capital of West Bengal today is Kolkata and for a major part of the British Raj, the colonial Calcutta served as the capital of British India. But prior to the establishment of the city, it was Murshidabad that served as the capital of the Mughal Bengal province. The port of Goga on the eastern Kathiawadi coast was a major trading hub centuries before the development of Surat. Tatta served as a key harbour before the foundation stones of Karachi was laid, and similarly, there are countless examples of such majestic cities that once shined on the Indian subcontinent. This post shall talk about one such harbour that attracted every European coloniser and the conquest of which would seal the fate of that conquerer in India. The port of Masulipatam, or what is today known as Machilipatnam. 

The earliest reference to Masulipatam was made in the ancient Greek text Periplus of the Erythraean Sea as the port of Maisolia. But the actual European interest in the port (which was also referred to as Bandar) opened up in the 16th century, on the arrival of the Portuguese in 1598. They remained here till 1610, referring the town as Masulipatão. It was during this period, in 1605, the year when Mughal Emperor Jalaluddin Mohammad Akbar died, the Qutb Shahi Sultan, Muhammad Quli Qutb Shah of Golconda granted a trading charter to the Dutch in order to open a factory at the port. This was the era where every European was trying their best to open trade factories on the Indian subcontinent and there have been paintings made on the interactions between Mughal emperors and European traders, popular even today. For the Dutch, Masulipatam was strategically important as it opened its door to its single-most largest Asian colony, Indonesia, or as it was then known as the Dutch East Indies. The Dutch were followed by the English who arrived here in 1612, although it was Surat where they opened their first trading post in 1618. Another trading post was opened by the French in 1669 after their successful post at Surat three years ago. As the French influence grew in the territory of Northern Circars (today's coast of Andhra Pradesh and Odisha), between 1750 to 1753, Masulipatam along with the entire province was granted to the French General Marquis de Bussy-Castelnau by the then Nizam of Hyderabad. Later the British took over and added Northern Circars (to be pronounced as Sarkars) in 1766 to the East India Company territories. 

Highlighting the Dutch era that lasted between 1605 to 1750, a period of more than a century that still finds its remains in the form of graveyards and cemeteries. Spelt as Mazulipatnam or Masulepataem on various maps, the Dutchman Steven van der Hagen was the first one to bring black cotton fabrics from the port in 1605. From 1662, the Dutch also had a representative in the Golconda Sultanate to sort out problems arising at the harbour. Even after the Mughal takeover of the town in 1687 (by Aurangzeb), the VOC settlement in Masulipatam remained unchanged. Had it not been for the French and later the English, Masulipatam would have had flourished as a major Dutch port on the Indian subcontinent and the Dutch expansion would have reached as far as Bengal as it already had its trading ports there. 

During the Dutch era, it is reported that Masulipatam used to be one of the most dynamic, densely populated and prosperous merchant towns in the whole of India, famous for its painted chintzes and cloths. In 1670, a Dominican monk compared the harbour with Babel for its multilingual cosmopolis as multiple languages - Persian, Armenian, Arabic, French, Dutch and English - could be heard by the populace here. Serving as the chief port on the Coromandel coast, the town is sandwiched between two of the most important rivers of India - Krishna (or Kistna) and the Godavari (or Godavery). The coast of Masulipatam lies between the mouths of these two rivers. And maybe this was the reason for its slow demise as nature played its havoc on the town in the form of continuous floods. 

In the early late 17th and early 18th centuries, the French, the Dutch and the English had their individual lodges or factories set up here. Even the Danes had a minor factory at Masulipatam between 1625 to 1643. But with rising flood issues and constant attack of new regional power - the Marathas - the Dutch had to shift to nearby settlements of Narsapur (in Medak district, Telangana), Jaggernaikpoeram (Jagannaickpur, Kakinda) and Bheemunipatnam (in Visakhapatnam). After the Dutch abandoning the port in 1756, just a year before the English expansion started from Bengal, it was now that the English were aggressively taking charge of whatever would remain of the Dutch. In the 19th century, due to floods and heavy rains, even the English had to abandon the township and declared it as 'uninhabitable'. But the shutting down of Masulipatam was less affected by floods as compared to the collapse of its two key trading goods - muslin and diamonds. With the rise of the British Madras Presidency, newer ports such as Vizag (or Visakhapatnam) and Madras (Chennai) took over and Masulipatam got the back seat. If this wasn't enough, the devastating cyclone of 1824 permanently faded its glory. 

Even the name of Masulipatam as a separate district ceased to exist when in 1859, a separate district of Kistna (Krishna) was made including Guntur and West Godavari districts. In 1925, further modifications lead to what is today's Krishna district, with Masulipatam as its headquarters. Moreover, in the same vicinity, a new township was developed during the British era, called Bezwada or Bezvadu. Today, this town is known as Vijayawada and is the second-largest city of Andhra Pradesh. 

Although the city is now known by its Telugu spelling, Machilipatnam, the town remains one of those coastal strongholds that witnessed every European trader and merchant, prospering and booming at the time when Europe was yet to see any of its current superpowers. Below here is a recreation of the Masulipatam district dating before 1859, originally mapped by the Church Mission Society. Interestingly, the region was marked as one of the territories of 'Telugu Country' - the other two being Guntoor and Rajahmundry.