1.
Colonial India
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Colonial India was one of the main types of trade in the world economy and was the main catalyst for the period of European exploration. The search for the wealth and prosperity of India led to the discovery of the Americas by Christopher Columbus in 1492 CE. Having arrived in Calicut, which by then was one of the trading ports of the eastern world. Trading rivalries among the seafaring European powers brought other European powers to India, the Dutch Republic, England, France, and Denmark-Norway all established trading posts in India in the early 17th century. In the later 18th century Great Britain and France struggled for dominance, partly through proxy Indian rulers, the defeat of the redoubtable Indian ruler Tipoo Sultan in 1799 marginalised the French influence. This was followed by an expansion of British power through the greater part of the Indian subcontinent in the early 19th century. By the middle of the century the British had already gained direct or indirect control over almost all of India. Long after the decline of the Roman Empires sea-borne trade with India, the closing of the traditional trade routes in western Asia by the Ottoman Empire, and rivalry with the Italian states, sent Portugal in search of an alternate sea route to India. The first successful voyage to India was by Vasco da Gama in 1498, having arrived there, he obtained from Saamoothiri Rajah permission to trade in the city. The navigator was received with traditional hospitality, but an interview with the Saamoothiri failed to any definitive results. The colonial era in India began in 1502, when the Portuguese Empire established the first European trading centre at Kollam, in 1505 King Manuel I of Portugal appointed Dom Francisco de Almeida as the first Portuguese viceroy in India, followed in 1509 by Dom Afonso de Albuquerque. In 1510 Albuquerque conquered the city of Goa, which had been controlled by Muslims and he inaugurated the policy of marrying Portuguese soldiers and sailors with local Indian girls, the consequence of which was a great miscegenation in Goa and other Portuguese territories in Asia. Another feature of the Portuguese presence in India was their will to evangelise, in this, the Jesuits played a fundamental role, and to this day the Jesuit missionary Saint Francis Xavier is revered among the Catholics of India. The Portuguese established a chain of outposts along Indias west coast and they built the St. Angelo Fort at Kannur to guard their possessions in North Malabar. Goa was their possession and the seat of Portugals viceroy. Portugals northern province included settlements at Daman, Diu, Chaul, Baçaim, Salsette, the rest of the northern province, with the exception of Daman and Diu, was lost to the Maratha Empire in the early 18th century. In 1661 Portugal was at war with Spain and needed assistance from England and this was the beginning of the English presence in India. The Dutch East India Company established trading posts on different parts along the Indian coast and they conquered Ceylon from the Portuguese
2.
Danish India
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Danish India was the name given to the colonies of Denmark in India, forming part of the Danish colonial empire. The Danish presence in India was of significance to the major European powers as they presented neither a military nor a mercantile threat. For this reason their presence was tolerated until 1845, when their alliance with a defeated France led to the colony being ceded to the British East Indian company. The success of Dutch and English traders in the 17th century spice trade was a source of envy among Danish and Norwegian merchants. On March 17,1616, Christian IV the King of Denmark-Norway and it would take an additional two years before sufficient capital had been raised to finance the expedition, perhaps due to lack of confidence on the part of Danish investors. It took the arrival of the Dutch merchant and colonial administrator, Marchelis de Boshouwer, marcelis arrived as an envoy for the emperor of Ceylon, Cenerat Adassin, seeking military assistance against the Portuguese and promising a monopoly on all trade with the island. His appeal had been rejected by his countrymen, but it convinced the Danish King, the first expedition set sail in 1618 under Admiral Ove Gjedde, taking two years to reach Ceylon and losing more than half their crew on the way. Upon arriving in May 1620, they found the emperor no longer desiring any foreign assistance having made a agreement with the Portuguese three years earlier. Nor, to the dismay of the Admiral, was the Emperor the sole, failing to get the Dano-Norwegian-Ceylonese trade contract confirmed, the Dano-Norwegians briefly occupied the Koneswaram temple before receiving word from their Trade Director, Robert Crappe. Crappe had sailed on the scouting freighter Øresund one month prior to the main fleet, Øresund had encountered Portuguese vessels off the Karaikkal coast and was sunk, with most of the crew killed, or taken prisoner. The heads of two members were placed on spikes on the beach as a warning to the Dano-Norwegians. Crappe and 13 of the crew however had escaped the wreck, making it to shore where they were captured by Indians and this was signed on 20 November 1620. The early years of the colony were arduous, with administration and investment. The ships that did return made a profit on their cargo, moreover, the geographical location of the colony was vulnerable to high tidal waves which repeatedly destroyed what people built—roads, houses, administrative buildings, markets, etc. By 1625 a factory had been established at Masulipatnam, the most important emporium in the region, the Danish presence was also unwanted by English and Dutch traders who believed them to be operating under the protection of their navies without bearing any of the costs. Despite this, they could not crush Danish trade, due to diplomatic implications related to their nations involvement in the European wars. 1640 – Danes attempt to sell Fort Danesborg to the Dutch for a second time,1642 – Danish colony declares war on Mogul Empire and commences raiding ships in the Bay of Bengal. Within a few months they had captured one of the Mogul emperors vessels, incorporated it into their fleet,1643 – Willem Leyel, designated the new leader of the colony by the company directors in Copenhagen arrives aboard the Christianshavn
3.
French India
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French India, formally the Établissements français dans lInde, was a French colony comprising geographically separate enclaves on the Indian subcontinent. The possessions were acquired by the French East India Company beginning in the second half of the 17th century. The French establishments included Pondichéry, Karikal and Yanaon on the Coromandel Coast, Mahé on the Malabar Coast and Chandernagor in Bengal. French India also included several loges in other towns, but after 1816, the loges had little commercial importance, by 1950, the total area measured 510 km2, of which 293 km2 belonged to the territory of Pondichéry. In 1936, the population of the colony totalled 298,851 inhabitants, France was the last of the major European maritime powers of the 17th century to enter the East India trade. Historians have sought to explain Frances late entrance in the East India trade, in 1604 a company was granted letters patent by King Henry IV, but the project failed. Fresh letters patent were issued in 1615, and two went to India, only one returning. From 1658, François Bernier, a French physician and traveller, was for years the personal physician at the court of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. La Compagnie française des Indes orientales was formed under the auspices of Cardinal Richelieu and reconstructed under Jean-Baptiste Colbert, in 1667 the French India Company sent out another expedition, under the command of François Caron, which reached Surat in 1668 and established the first French factory in India. In 1669, Marcara succeeded in establishing another French factory at Masulipatam, in 1672, Saint Thomas was taken but the French were driven out by the Dutch. Chandernagore was established in 1692, with the permission of Nawab Shaista Khan, in 1673, the French acquired the area of Pondicherry from the qiladar of Valikondapuram under the Sultan of Bijapur, and thus the foundation of Pondichéry was laid. By 1720, the French had lost their factories at Surat, on 4 February 1673, Bellanger, a French officer, took up residence in the Danish Lodge in Pondichéry, thereby commencing the French administration of Pondichéry. In 1674 François Martin, the first Governor, initiated ambitious projects to transform Pondichéry from a fishing village into a flourishing port-town. The French, though, found themselves in conflict with the Dutch. In 1693 the Dutch captured Pondichéry and augmented the fortifications, the French regained the town in 1699 through the Treaty of Ryswick, signed on 20 September 1697. From their arrival until 1741, the objectives of the French, during this period, the French East India Company peacefully acquired Yanam in 1723, Mahe on Malabar Coast in 1725 and Karaikal in 1739. In the early 18th century, the town of Pondichéry was laid out on a grid pattern, able governors like Pierre Christophe Le Noir and Pierre Benoît Dumas expanded the Pondichéry area and made it a large and rich town. Under the command of the Marquis de Bussy-Castelnau, Dupleixs army successfully controlled the area between Hyderabad and Cape Comorin, but then Robert Clive arrived in India in 1744, a British officer who dashed the hopes of Dupleix to create a French empire India
4.
Portuguese India
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The first viceroy, Francisco de Almeida, established his headquarters in Cochin. Subsequent Portuguese governors were not always of viceroy rank, after 1510, the capital of the Portuguese viceroyalty was transferred to Goa. Until the 18th century, the Portuguese governor in Goa had authority over all Portuguese possessions in the Indian Ocean, from southern Africa to southeast Asia. Portugal lost effective control of the enclaves of Dadra and Nagar Haveli in 1954, and finally the rest of the territory in December 1961. In spite of this, Portugal only recognised Indian control in 1975, after the Carnation Revolution, the first Portuguese encounter with the subcontinent was on 20 May 1498 when Vasco da Gama reached Calicut on Malabar Coast. Anchored off the coast of Calicut, the Portuguese invited native fishermen on board, one Portuguese accompanied the fishermen to the port and met with a Tunisian Muslim. On the advice of this man, Gama sent a couple of his men to Ponnani to meet with ruler of Calicut, over the objections of Arab merchants, Gama managed to secure a letter of concession for trading rights from the Zamorin, Calicuts Hindu ruler. But, the Portuguese were unable to pay the customs duties. Later Calicut officials temporarily detained Gamas Portuguese agents as security for payment and this, however, annoyed Gama, who carried a few natives and sixteen fishermen with him by force. Nevertheless, Gamas expedition was successful beyond all expectation, bringing in cargo that was worth sixty times the cost of the expedition. Matters worsened when the Portuguese factory at Calicut was attacked by surprise by the locals, Cabral also ordered his ships to bombard Calicut for an entire day in retaliation for the violation of the agreement. In Cochin and Cannanore Cabral succeeded in making advantageous treaties with the local rulers, Cabral started the return voyage on 16 January 1501 and arrived in Portugal with only 4 of 13 ships on 23 June 1501. The Portuguese built the Pulicat fort in 1502, with the help of the Vijayanagar ruler, Vasco da Gama sailed to India for a second time with 15 ships and 800 men, arriving at Calicut on 30 October 1502, where the ruler was willing to sign a treaty. Gama this time made a call to expel all Muslims from Calicut which was turned down. He bombarded the city and captured several rice vessels and he returned to Portugal in September 1503. Francisco de Almeida left Portugal with a fleet of 22 vessels with 1,500 men, on 13 September, Francisco de Almeida reached Anjadip Island, where he immediately started the construction of Fort Anjediva. On 23 October, with the permission of the ruler of Cannanore, he started building St. Angelo Fort at Cannanore, leaving Lourenço de Brito in charge with 150 men. Francisco de Almeida then reached Cochin on 31 October 1505 with only 8 vessels left, there he learned that the Portuguese traders at Quilon had been killed
5.
Portuguese East India Company
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Portuguese trade with India had been a crown monopoly since the Portuguese captain Vasco da Gama opened the sea route to India in 1497-99. The monopoly had been managed by the Casa da Índia, the trading house founded around 1500. The Casa was responsible for the yearly India armadas, however, by 1560, the Casas finances were in dire straits and in 1570, King Sebastian of Portugal issued a decree opening up trade to India to any private Portuguese national. This annual contract system was abandoned in 1597, and the royal monopoly resumed, the Iberian Union of 1580, which gave King Philip II of Spain the crown of Portugal, changed little at first. In 1605, he created the Conselho da Índia, to bring affairs in Portuguese India under closer supervision of the Habsburg crown, but this conflicted with older lines of Portuguese authority, and the council was eventually dissolved in 1614. It was around this time that the idea for a chartered private Portuguese East Indies company, organized along the lines of Dutch and English companies, was first broached. Solis argued that a joint stock company could raise more capital, revive the Asian trade. King Philip III of Portugal put the idea in motion in 1624 and appointed D. Jorge Mascarenhas, mayor of Lisbon and member of the Council of State, to head a committee to implement Solis proposal. The Companhia do commércio da Índia finally came into existence in August 1628, the Companhia would be in charge of running & collecting the customs dues payable at the Casa. The Companhia was established with a block of six years. The Companhia was granted a monopoly on trade in coral, pepper, cinnamon, ebony and cowrie shells and it had full administrative & juridical privileges, including the right to keep all spoils from seizures of Dutch and English ships. The crown was the largest investor, committing 1,500,000 cruzados for the first three years, although some municipalities also invested, private individuals were less interested. To make it attractive, subscribers were guaranteed a return of 4% plus dividends. The company was launched with only half the capital it originally sought to raise. The Companhia proved unprofitable, and soon ceased operating and was liquidated in April,1633, the Casa da Índia and the India trade was brought back under the supervision of the Conselho da Fazenda. List of trading companies de Silva, Chandra Richard, the Portuguese East India Company 1628-1633. The First Portuguese India Company, 1628-33, Economic History Review, Vol.30, p. 242-58
6.
Presidencies and provinces of British India
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Provinces of India, earlier Presidencies of British India and still earlier, Presidency towns, were the administrative divisions of British governance in the subcontinent. Collectively, they were called British India, in one form or other they existed between 1612 and 1947, conventionally divided into three historical periods. During 1612–1757, the East India Company set up factories in several locations, mostly in coastal India and its rivals were the merchant trading companies of Holland and France. By the mid-18th century, three Presidency towns, Madras, Bombay, and Calcutta had grown in size, during the period of Company rule in India, 1757–1858, the Company gradually acquired sovereignty over large parts of India, now called Presidencies. However, it increasingly came under British government oversight, in effect sharing sovereignty with the Crown. At the same time it gradually lost its mercantile privileges, following the Indian Rebellion of 1857, the Companys remaining powers were transferred to the Crown. In the new British Raj, sovereignty extended to a few new regions, increasingly, however, unwieldy presidencies were broken up into Provinces. In 1608, the English East India Company established a settlement at Surat, and it was followed in 1611 by a permanent factory at Machilipatnam on the Coromandel Coast, and in 1612 the company joined other already established European trading companies in Bengal. Company rule in Bengal, however, ended with the Government of India Act 1858 following the events of the Bengal Rebellion of 1857 and these rulers were allowed a measure of internal autonomy in exchange for British suzerainty. British India constituted a significant portion of India both in area and population, in 1910, for example, it covered approximately 54% of the area, in addition, there were Portuguese and French exclaves in India. Independence from British rule was achieved in 1947 with the formation of two nations, the Dominions of India and Pakistan, the latter also including East Bengal, present-day Bangladesh. The term British India also applied to Burma for a time period, starting in 1824, a small part of Burma. This arrangement lasted until 1937, when Burma commenced being administered as a separate British colony, British India did not apply to other countries in the region, such as Sri Lanka, which was a British Crown colony, or the Maldive Islands, which were a British protectorate. It also included the Colony of Aden in the Arabian Peninsula, the original seat of government was at Allahabad, then at Agra from 1834 to 1868. Bombay Presidency, East India Companys headquarters moved from Surat to Bombay in 1687, the East India Company, which was incorporated on 31 December 1600, established trade relations with Indian rulers in Masulipatam on the east coast in 1611 and Surat on the west coast in 1612. The company rented a trading outpost in Madras in 1639, meanwhile, in eastern India, after obtaining permission from the Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan to trade with Bengal, the Company established its first factory at Hoogly in 1640. Almost a half-century later, after Emperor Aurengzeb forced the Company out of Hooghly, by the mid-18th century the three principal trading settlements, now called the Madras Presidency, the Bombay Presidency, and the Bengal Presidency were each administered by a Governor. After Robert Clives victory in the Battle of Plassey in 1757, in 1772, the Company also obtained the Nizāmat of Bengal and thereby full sovereignty of the expanded Bengal Presidency
7.
East India Company
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The company also ruled the beginnings of the British Empire in India. The company received a Royal Charter from Queen Elizabeth I on 31 December 1600, wealthy merchants and aristocrats owned the Companys shares. Initially the government owned no shares and had only indirect control, during its first century of operation the focus of the Company was trade, not the building of an empire in India. The company eventually came to rule large areas of India with its own armies, exercising military power. Despite frequent government intervention, the company had recurring problems with its finances, the official government machinery of British India had assumed its governmental functions and absorbed its armies. Soon after the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, London merchants presented a petition to Queen Elizabeth I for permission to sail to the Indian Ocean, one of them, Edward Bonventure, then sailed around Cape Comorin to the Malay Peninsula and returned to England in 1594. In 1596, three ships sailed east, however, these were all lost at sea. Two days later, on 24 September, the Adventurers reconvened and resolved to apply to the Queen for support of the project, the Adventurers convened again a year later. For a period of fifteen years the charter awarded the newly formed company a monopoly on trade with all countries east of the Cape of Good Hope and west of the Straits of Magellan. Anybody who traded in breach of the charter without a licence from the Company was liable to forfeiture of their ships and cargo, the governance of the company was in the hands of one governor and 24 directors or committees, who made up the Court of Directors. They, in turn, reported to the Court of Proprietors, ten committees reported to the Court of Directors. According to tradition, business was transacted at the Nags Head Inn, opposite St Botolphs church in Bishopsgate. Sir James Lancaster commanded the first East India Company voyage in 1601, in March 1604 Sir Henry Middleton commanded the second voyage. Early in 1608 Alexander Sharpeigh was appointed captain of the Companys Ascension, thereafter two ships, Ascension and Union sailed from Woolwich on 14 March 1607–8. Initially, the company struggled in the trade because of the competition from the already well-established Dutch East India Company. The company opened a factory in Bantam on the first voyage, the factory in Bantam was closed in 1683. During this time belonging to the company arriving in India docked at Surat. In the next two years, the company established its first factory in south India in the town of Machilipatnam on the Coromandel Coast of the Bay of Bengal
8.
Company rule in India
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Company rule in India refers to the rule or dominion of the British East India Company over parts of the Indian subcontinent. The Companys rule lasted until 1858, when, after the Indian rebellion of 1857, with the Government of India Act 1858, the British government assumed the task of directly administering India in the new British Raj. The English East India Company was founded in 1600, as The Company of Merchants of London Trading into the East Indies, in 1640, after receiving similar permission from the Vijayanagara ruler farther south, a second factory was established in Madras on the southeastern coast. Bombay island, not far from Surat, a former Portuguese outpost gifted to England as dowry in the marriage of Catherine of Braganza to Charles II, was leased by the Company in 1668. Two decades later, the Company established a presence on the eastern coast as well, far up that coast, in the Ganges river delta, the Company thus became the de facto ruler of large areas of the lower Gangetic plain by 1773. It also proceeded by degrees to expand its dominions around Bombay, the Anglo-Mysore Wars and the Anglo-Maratha Wars left it in control of large areas of India south of the Sutlej River. With the defeat of the Marathas, no native power represented a threat for the Company any longer, the proliferation of the Companys power chiefly took two forms. The first of these was the annexation of Indian states and subsequent direct governance of the underlying regions. The annexed regions included the North-Western Provinces, Delhi, Assam, in 1854 Berar was annexed, and the state of Oudh two years later. The second form of asserting power involved treaties in which Indian rulers acknowledged the Companys hegemony in return for limited internal autonomy, since the Company operated under financial constraints, it had to set up political underpinnings for its rule. The most important such support came from the alliances with Indian princes during the first 75 years of Company rule. In the early 19th century, the territories of these princes accounted for two-thirds of India, in return, the Company undertook the defense of these subordinate allies and treated them with traditional respect and marks of honor. Subsidiary alliances created the states, of the Hindu maharajas. 1765, Nawabs of Bengal and Murshidabad, annexed after the Battle of Buxar,1795, Asaf Jah II the Nizam of Hyderabad was defeated at the Battle of Kharda, after the Maratha-Mysore War. 1799, Fall of Mysore after Siege of Seringapatam,1801, Nawab of the Carnatic, Nawab of Junagarh, Rohilkhand of Lower Doab, annexed. 1803, Rohilkhand of Upper Doab, annexed, nonresistance from the Emperor, clives victory, and the award of the diwani of the rich region of Bengal, brought India into the public spotlight in Britain. By 1772, the Company needed British government loans to stay afloat, the rights and duties of the British government with regards the Companys new territories came also to be examined. It could do this while concurrently being subject to oversight and regulation by the British government and parliament, the Court of Directors of the Company were required under the Act to submit all communications regarding civil, military, and revenue matters in India for scrutiny by the British government
9.
British Raj
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The British Raj was the rule by the British Crown in the Indian subcontinent between 1858 and 1947. The rule is also called Crown rule in India, or direct rule in India, the resulting political union was also called the Indian Empire and after 1876 issued passports under that name. It lasted until 1947, when the British Indian Empire was partitioned into two sovereign states, the Dominion of India and the Dominion of Pakistan. The British Raj extended over almost all present-day India, Pakistan and this area is very diverse, containing the Himalayan mountains, fertile floodplains, the Indo-Gangetic Plain, a long coastline, tropical dry forests, arid uplands, and the Thar desert. In addition, at times, it included Aden, Lower Burma, Upper Burma, British Somaliland. Burma was separated from India and directly administered by the British Crown from 1937 until its independence in 1948, among other countries in the region, Ceylon was ceded to Britain in 1802 under the Treaty of Amiens. Ceylon was part of Madras Presidency between 1793 and 1798, the kingdoms of Nepal and Bhutan, having fought wars with the British, subsequently signed treaties with them and were recognised by the British as independent states. The Kingdom of Sikkim was established as a state after the Anglo-Sikkimese Treaty of 1861, however. The Maldive Islands were a British protectorate from 1887 to 1965, India during the British Raj was made up of two types of territory, British India and the Native States. In general, the term British India had been used to also to the regions under the rule of the British East India Company in India from 1600 to 1858. The term has also used to refer to the British in India. The terms Indian Empire and Empire of India were not used in legislation, the monarch was known as Empress or Emperor of India and the term was often used in Queen Victorias Queens Speeches and Prorogation Speeches. The passports issued by the British Indian government had the words Indian Empire on the cover, in addition, an order of knighthood, the Most Eminent Order of the Indian Empire, was set up in 1878. At the turn of the 20th century, British India consisted of eight provinces that were administered either by a Governor or a Lieutenant-Governor, during the partition of Bengal the new provinces of Assam and East Bengal were created as a Lieutenant-Governorship. In 1911, East Bengal was reunited with Bengal, and the new provinces in the east became, Assam, Bengal, Bihar, there were 565 princely states when India and Pakistan became independent from Britain in August 1947. The princely states did not form a part of British India, the larger ones had treaties with Britain that specified which rights the princes had, in the smaller ones the princes had few rights. Within the princely states external affairs, defence and most communications were under British control, the British also exercised a general influence over the states internal politics, in part through the granting or withholding of recognition of individual rulers. Although there were nearly 600 princely states, the majority were very small
10.
British rule in Burma
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The annexed territories were designated the minor province, British Burma, of British India in 1862. After the Third Anglo-Burmese War in 1885, Upper Burma was annexed, and the following year and this arrangement lasted until 1937, when Burma began to be administered separately by the Burma Office under the Secretary of State for India and Burma. British rule was disrupted during the Japanese occupation of much of the country during the Second World War, Burma achieved independence from British rule on 4 January 1948. They were administered separately by the British with a Burma Frontier Service, the Frontier Areas were inhabited by ethnic minorities such as the Chin, the Shan, the Kachin and the Karenni. By 1931 Burma had 8 divisions, split into a number of districts, in Danuphyu, south of Ava, the Burmese general Maha Bandula was killed and his armies routed. The 1826 Treaty of Yandabo formally ended the First Anglo-Burmese War, the longest, fifteen thousand European and Indian soldiers died, together with an unknown number of Burmese army and civilian casualties. The campaign cost the British five million sterling to 13 million pounds sterling that led to a severe economic crisis in British India in 1833. After 25 years of peace, the British and Burmese fighting started afresh, King Mindon tried to readjust to the thrust of imperialism. He enacted administrative reforms and made Burma more receptive to foreign interests, but the British effected the Third Anglo-Burmese War, which lasted less than two weeks during November 1885. British troops entered Mandalay on 28 November 1885 and Burma was attached to the British Empire on 1 January 1886, Burmese armed resistance continued sporadically for several years, and the British commander had to coerce the High Court of Justice to continue to function. The British decided to all of Upper Burma as a colony. The new colony of Upper Burma was attached to the Burma Province on 26 February 1886, Rangoon, having been the capital of British Lower Burma, became the capital of the province. It was also one of the first Southeast Asian countries to receive Buddhism, before the British conquest and colonisation, the ruling Konbaung Dynasty practised a tightly centralised form of government. The king was the executive, with the final say on all matters. The country had two codes of law, the Rajathat and Dammathat, and the Hluttaw, the centre of government, was divided into three branches—fiscal, executive, and judicial. In theory the king was in charge of all of the Hluttaw but none of his orders got put into place until the Hluttaw approved them, thus checking his power. Further dividing the country, provinces were ruled by governors who were all appointed by the Hluttaw, conflict began between Myanmar and the British when the Konbaung Dynasty decided to expand into Arakan in the state of Assam, close to the British possessions in India. This close contact led to the first Anglo-Burmese War, which the British won with the aid of the Siamese, Myanmar was forced to cede Assam and other northern provinces
11.
Princely state
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A princely state, also called native state or Indian state, was a nominally sovereign monarchy under a local or regional ruler in a subsidiary alliance with a greater power. At the time of the British withdrawal,565 princely states were recognised in the Indian subcontinent, apart from thousands of zamindaris. Rulers of salute states entitled to a gun salute of eleven guns and above received from the British the style of Highness, while the Nizam of Hyderabad had the unique style of Exalted Highness. At the other end of the scale, the principality of Lawa covered an area of 49 km2, or smaller than Bermuda. Some two hundred of the states had an area of less than 25 km2. The era of the princely states effectively ended with Indian independence in 1947, by 1950, almost all of the principalities had acceded to either India or Pakistan – thirteen to Pakistan and the rest to India. During this time, the princely states were merged into unions, each of which was headed by a former ruling prince with the title of Rajpramukh. In 1956, the position of Rajpramukh was abolished and the federations dissolved, the Indian Government formally derecognised the princely families in 1971, followed by the Government of Pakistan in 1972. The widespread expansion of Islam during this time brought many principalities into tributary relations with Islamic sultanates, notably the Delhi Sultanate, in the south, however, the Hindu Vijayanagara Empire remained dominant until the mid-17th century, among its tributaries was the future Mysore Kingdom. The Turco-Mongol Mughal Empire brought a majority of the existing Indian kingdoms and principalities under its suzerainty by the 17th century, beginning with its foundation in the early 16th century. The advent of Sikhism resulted in the creation of the Sikh Empire in the north by the early 18th century, at the same time, the Marathas carved out their own states to form the Maratha Empire. Through the 18th century, former Mughal governors formed their own independent states, India under the British Raj consisted of two types of territory, British India and the Native states or Princely states. In general the term British India had been used also to refer to the regions under the rule of the East India Company in India from 1774 to 1858, the term has also been used to refer to the British in India. More prestigious Hindu rulers often used the title Raja, Raje or a variant such as Rana, Rao, also in this class were several Thakurs or Thakores and a few particular titles, such as Sardar, Mankari, Deshmukh, Sar Desai, Raja Inamdar, Saranjamdar. The most prestigious Hindu rulers usually had the prefix maha in their titles, as in Maharaja, Maharana, Maharao, etc. The states of Travancore and Cochin had queens regnant styled Maharani, generally the female forms applied only to sisters, spouses and widows, there were also compound titles, such as rajadhiraj, Raj-i-rajgan, often relics from an elaborate system of hierarchical titles under the Mughal emperors. For example, the addition of the adjective Bahadur raised the status of the one level. Furthermore, most dynasties used a variety of titles, such as Varma in South India
12.
Partition of India
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The Partition of India was the division of British India in 1947 which accompanied the creation of two independent dominions, India and Pakistan. The Dominion of India is today the Republic of India and Dominion of Pakistan, the partition involved the division of two provinces, Bengal and the Punjab, based on district-wise Hindu or Muslim majorities. It also involved the division of the British Indian Army, the Royal Indian Navy, the Indian Civil Service, the railways, and the central treasury, between the two new dominions. The partition was set forth in the Indian Independence Act 1947 and resulted in the dissolution of the British Raj, the two self-governing countries of India and Pakistan legally came into existence at midnight on 14–15 August 1947. The violent nature of the created an atmosphere of hostility. The term partition of India does not cover the secession of Bangladesh from Pakistan in 1971, nor the earlier separations of Burma and Ceylon from the administration of British India. It does not cover the incorporation of the enclaves of French India into India during the period 1947–1954, nor the annexation of Goa, other contemporaneous political entities in the region in 1947, Sikkim, Bhutan, Nepal, and The Maldives were unaffected by the partition. The Hindu elite of Bengal, among many who owned land in East Bengal that was leased out to Muslim peasants. The pervasive protests against Curzons decision took the form predominantly of the Swadeshi campaign led by two-time Congress president, Surendranath Banerjee, sporadically—but flagrantly—the protesters also took to political violence that involved attacks on civilians. The violence, however, was not effective, as most planned attacks were either preempted by the British or failed, the unrest spread from Calcutta to the surrounding regions of Bengal when Calcuttas English-educated students returned home to their villages and towns. Since Calcutta was the capital, both the outrage and the slogan soon became nationally known. In conjunction, they demanded proportional legislative representation reflecting both their status as rulers and their record of cooperating with the British. This led, in December 1906, to the founding of the All-India Muslim League in Dacca, although Curzon, by now, had resigned his position over a dispute with his military chief Lord Kitchener and returned to England, the League was in favour of his partition plan. In the three decades since that census, Muslim leaders across northern India, had intermittently experienced public animosity from some of the new Hindu political and social groups. In 1905, when Tilak and Lajpat Rai attempted to rise to positions in the Congress. It was not lost on many Muslims, for example, that the rallying cry, World War I would prove to be a watershed in the imperial relationship between Britain and India. Indias international profile would thereby rise and would continue to rise during the 1920s, back in India, especially among the leaders of the Indian National Congress, it would lead to calls for greater self-government for Indians. Secretary of State for India, Montagu and Viceroy Lord Chelmsford presented a report in July 1918 after a long fact-finding trip through India the previous winter
13.
Dutch East Indies
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The Dutch East Indies was a Dutch colony. It was formed from the colonies of the Dutch East India Company. During the 19th century, Dutch possessions and hegemony were expanded and this colony was one of the most valuable European colonies under the Dutch Empires rule, and contributed to Dutch global prominence in spice and cash crop trade in the 19th to early 20th century. The colonial social order was based on racial and social structures with a Dutch elite living separate from. The term Indonesia came into use for the location after 1880. In the early 20th century, local intellectuals began developing the concept of Indonesia as a nation state, Japans World War II occupation dismantled much of the Dutch colonial state and economy. Following the Japanese surrender in August 1945, Indonesian nationalists declared independence which they fought to secure during the subsequent Indonesian National Revolution, the word Indies comes from Latin, Indus. The original name Dutch Indies was translated by the English as the Dutch East Indies, the name Dutch Indies is recorded in the Dutch East India Companys documents of the early 1620s. Scholars writing in English use the terms Indië, Indies, the Dutch East Indies, the Netherlands Indies, centuries before Europeans arrived, the Indonesian archipelago supported various states, including commercially oriented coastal trading states and inland agrarian states. The first Europeans to arrive were the Portuguese in the late 15th century, following disruption of Dutch access to spices in Europe, the first Dutch expedition set sail for the East Indies in 1595 to access spices directly from Asia. When it made a 400% profit on its return, other Dutch expeditions soon followed, recognising the potential of the East Indies trade, the Dutch government amalgamated the competing companies into the United East India Company. The VOC was granted a charter to wage war, build fortresses, a capital was established in Batavia, which became the centre of the VOCs Asian trading network. Smuggling, the expense of war, corruption, and mismanagement led to bankruptcy by the end of the 18th century. The company was dissolved in 1800 and its colonial possessions in the Indonesian archipelago were nationalised under the Dutch Republic as the Dutch East Indies. From the arrival of the first Dutch ships in the late 16th century, to the declaration of independence in 1945, although Java was dominated by the Dutch, many areas remained independent throughout much of this time, including Aceh, Bali, Lombok and Borneo. Piracy remained a problem until the mid-19th century, finally in the early 20th century, imperial dominance was extended across what was to become the territory of modern-day Indonesia. In 1811, British forces occupied several Dutch East Indies ports including Java, Dutch control was restored in 1816. Under the 1824 Anglo-Dutch Treaty, the Dutch secured British settlements such as Bengkulu in Sumatra, in exchange for ceding control of their possessions in the Malay Peninsula, the resulting borders between British and Dutch possessions remain between Malaysia and Indonesia
14.
Dutch East India Company
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It is often considered to be the worlds first truly transnational corporation and the first company in history to actually issue bonds and shares of stock to the general public. In other words, the VOC was officially the first publicly traded company of the world, the company was also considered by many to be the very first major and the greatest corporation in history. Statistically, the VOC eclipsed all of its rivals in international trade for almost 200 years of existence. Between 1602 and 1796 the VOC sent almost a million Europeans to work in the Asia trade on 4,785 ships, the VOC enjoyed huge profits from its spice monopoly through most of the 17th century. Having been set up in 1602, to profit from the Malukan spice trade, in 1619 the VOC established a capital in the city of Jayakarta. Over the next two centuries the Company acquired additional ports as trading bases and safeguarded their interests by taking over surrounding territory and it remained an important trading concern and paid an 18% annual dividend for almost 200 years. Around the world and especially in English-speaking countries, the VOC is widely known as the Dutch East India Company, the name ‘Dutch East India Company’ is used to make a distinction with the East India Company and other East Indian companies. The abbreviation VOC stands for Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie or Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie in Dutch, the VOC monogram was possibly the first globally-recognized corporate logo. The logo of the VOC consisted of a large capital V with an O on the left and it appeared on various corporate items, such as cannon and coins. The first letter of the hometown of the conducting the operation was placed on top. An Australian vintner has used the VOC logo since the late 20th century, the flag of the company was orange, white, and blue, with the company logo embroidered on it. Before the Dutch Revolt, Antwerp had played an important role as a centre in northern Europe. At the same time, the Portuguese trade system was unable to supply to satisfy growing demand. Demand for spices was relatively inelastic, and therefore each lag in the supply of pepper caused a rise in pepper prices. These three factors motivated Dutch merchants to enter the spice trade themselves. Further, a number of Dutchmen like Jan Huyghen van Linschoten and Cornelis de Houtman obtained first hand knowledge of the secret Portuguese trade routes and practices, thereby providing opportunity. The stage was set for Houtmans 1595 four-ship exploratory expedition to Banten, the main pepper port of West Java. Houtmans expedition then sailed east along the north coast of Java, losing twelve crew to a Javanese attack at Sidayu, half the crew were lost before the expedition made it back to the Netherlands the following year, but with enough spices to make a considerable profit
15.
Indian subcontinent
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Geologically, the Indian subcontinent is related to the land mass that rifted from Gondwana and merged with the Eurasian plate nearly 55 million years ago. Geographically, it is the region in south-central Asia delineated by the Himalayas in the north, the Hindu Kush in the west. Politically, the Indian subcontinent usually includes Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, sometimes, the term South Asia is used interchangeably with Indian subcontinent. There is no consensus about which countries should be included in each and it is first attested in 1845 to refer to the North and South Americas, before they were regarded as separate continents. Its use to refer to the Indian subcontinent is seen from the twentieth century. It was especially convenient for referring to the region comprising both the British India and the states under British Paramountcy. The term Indian subcontinent also has a geological significance and it was, like the various continents, a part of the supercontinent of Gondwana. A series of tectonic splits caused formation of basins, each drifting in various directions. The geological region called the Greater India once included the Madagascar, Seychelles, Antartica, as a geological term, Indian subcontinent has meant that region formed from the collision of the Indian basin with Eurasia nearly 55 million years ago, towards the end of Paleocene. The Indian subcontinent has been a particularly common in the British Empire. The region, state Mittal and Thursby, has also labelled as India, Greater India. The BBC and some sources refer to the region as the Asian Subcontinent. Some academics refer to it as South Asian Subcontinent, the terms Indian subcontinent and South Asia are sometimes used interchangeably. There is no accepted definition on which countries are a part of South Asia or Indian subcontinent. In dictionary entries, the term subcontinent signifies a large, distinguishable subdivision of a continent, the region experienced high volcanic activity and plate subdivisions, creating Madagascar, Seychelles, Antartica, Austrolasia and the Indian subcontinent basin. The Indian subcontinent drifted northeastwards, colliding with the Eurasian plate nearly 55 million years ago and this geological region largely includes Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The zone where the Eurasian and Indian subcontinent plates meet remains one of the active areas. The English term mainly continues to refer to the Indian subcontinent, physiographically, it is a peninsular region in south-central Asia delineated by the Himalayas in the north, the Hindu Kush in the west, and the Arakanese in the east
16.
Dutch Ceylon
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Dutch Ceylon was a governorate established in present-day Sri Lanka by the Dutch East India Company. It existed from 1640 until 1796, in the early 17th century, Sri Lanka was partly ruled by the Portuguese and Sri Lankan kingdoms, who were constantly battling each other. Although the Portuguese were not winning the war, their rule was burdensome to the people of those areas controlled by them. While the Dutch were engaged in a war of independence from Spanish rule. The Dutch interest in Ceylon was to have a battle front against the Iberians at that time. The Dutch were invited by the Sri Lankans to liberate the country from the Portuguese and they signed the Kandyan Treaty of 1638 with Rajasinghe II and soon embarked on a war against their common enemy. As such the Dutch were appointed as a protector of the country, meanwhile, however, Rajasinghe II approached the French and offered them the Trincomalee fort as a check against Dutch power. The Dutch captured Trinco from the French and controlled all the provinces of the island. Rajasinghe and the Dutch were both playing a game trying to outwit each other, and the treaty of 1638 was never implemented. The Dutch ruled all the Tamil provinces and brought Tanjore Tamil slaves to work in the Cinnamon gardens in the Western Province, the capital of Dutch Coromandel was in Pulicat and they brought needed manpower from the Indian colonies. Portuguese rule was always in the provinces and the people whom they converted were the coastal folk. They were the backbone of their power, many of the Princes they converted had either died or were no longer Catholic. The rest of the Ceylon remained in the Buddhist-Hindu religion, the Dutch were used by the Sinhala king to take revenge on the Portuguese who wanted to expand their rule. The war with Portugal was against their ruler the King of Spain, once Portugal obtained its freedom from Spain the Netherlands settled for peace with Portugal. Then they divided the areas of Ceylon amicably under a treaty signed in Goa. Slowly, the Dutch became the rulers of coastal and outer areas of Ceylon and Indonesia, and the Portuguese were left with smaller pieces of territory than those of the Dutch and the English. In the east, Portugal held territories not only in Ceylon but in India, in the Persian Gulf, from 1580 to 1640, the throne of Portugal was held by the Habsburg kings of Spain resulting in the biggest colonial empire until then. The Azores were the last part of Portugal to resist Philips reign over Portugal, the Netherlands meanwhile were in open revolt against their Habsburg overlord and declared themselves a Republic in 1581
17.
Dutch Coromandel
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Coromandel was a governorate of the Dutch East India Company on the Coromandel Coast between 1610 until the companys liquidation in 1798. It is part of what is today called Dutch India, in 1606, a Dutch ship stopped on the shores of the Karimanal Village near Pulicat, north of the mouth of the lake requesting water. Local Muslims offered food and help to the Dutch and they struck a trade partnership to procure and supply local merchandise to the Dutch for trade in the East Indies. Queen Eraivi, a wife of King Venkata II, ruled Prelaya Kaveri and during her reign in 1608 the Dutch East India Company was given permission to build a fort and do trading. Under pressure from the Dutch, an English trading post was established in 1619, the Dutch establishment met with stiff resistance from the Portuguese, who conducted several attacks on the harbor. In 1611, Venkatatapati turned against the Portuguese and the Jesuits were ordered to leave Chandragiri, the Portuguese tried unsuccessfully to recapture Pulicat in 1614,1623, and 1633, respectively, but never succeeded. From 1616 to 1690, Pulicat was the headquarters of Dutch Coromandel. In the 1620s, the Dutch East India Company established a factory in Pulicat. Its output was so substantial that for decades it was able to keep many of the major Dutch trading centers in the East Indies. In 1615, the first VOC mint in India was established in Fort Gelria where, initially, Kas copper coins with VOC monogram, the Pulicat mint operated till 1674, when a new mint was established at Nagapattinam. These coins were used in Ceylon. The headquarters of the colony shifted to Nagapattinam in 1690, after the Dutch had begun working on their Fort Vijf Sinnen three years earlier, the heavily armed fort in the end proved useless in the 1781 Siege of Negapatam, in which the British took the fort. In the Treaty of Paris of 1784 which ended the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War of which this siege was part, Nagapattinam was not restored to Dutch rule, the headquarters of the colony shifted back to Pulicat. By the early 18th century, Pulicats population has been estimated to have declined to just over 10,000, in 1746, the monsoon failed, resulting in a devastating famine. In the larger towns of Pulicat and Santhome alone the death toll was put at 15,000, cloth prices increased 15% and little was available even at that price. An even more significant cause of the Dutch decline was conquest of the area by the Golconda forces commanded by Mir Jumla. Owing to the Kew Letters written by Dutch stadtholder William V, Prince of Orange, the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814 restored Dutch Malabar to Dutch rule in 1818, but seven years later the colony was again left to the British, owing to the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824. Except for two breaks, Dutch rule of Pulicat lasted for 214 years between 1606 and 1825 till the King of Arcot acceded Chingleput District to the British in 1825
18.
Dutch Malabar
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Dutch presence in the region started with the capture of Portuguese Quilon, and ended with the occupation of Malabar by the British in 1795. They possessed military outposts in 11 locations, Alleppey, Ayacotta, Chendamangalam, Pappinivattom, Ponnani, Pallipuram, Cranganore, Chetwai, Cannanore, Cochin, and Quilon. The Dutch virtually ruled Malabar for a period of over 130 years, the Kingdom of Cochin was under the complete influence of the Dutch and the king was a mere puppet of the Dutch East India Company. They enlarged the Royal Palace built by the Portuguese at Mattancheri for the King of Cochin, in 1744, an impressive country house, later called Bolgatty Palace, was erected on Bolghatty Island for the Dutch Governors. The Dutch contributed a work called Hortus Indicus Malabaricus on the medicinal properties of Malabar plants. In Cochin, the Dutch established an orphanage for poor European children, although also motivated by the lucrative pepper trade on Malabar, the primary aim for the Dutch in capturing the coast from the Portuguese was to secure Dutch Ceylon from Portuguese invasions. After failed attempts to capture the main Portuguese fort of Goa in 1604 and 1639, in 1650s the Dutch possessed only the unfortified factories at Kayamkulam and Cannanore. They took Quilon on 29 December 1658, but it was reconquered by the Portuguese on 14 April 1659. It was agreed that Calicut, the most powerful ruler in Malabar, according to the treaty between the two parties, Fort Cranganore was to be made over to Calicut after its successful capture. Van der Meyden dispersed a Nair detachment sent to stop his advance on the way, the Portuguese made no attempt to resist and fled by the backwaters. On March 21, Rijckloff Van Goens signed a treaty with the chief of Paliyam on a ship anchored off the coast. Dutch forces soon landed and attacked the palace of the queen at Mattanceri, subsequently, the queen was taken as a prisoner. Later in December 1661, Portuguese Quilon was captured by a Dutch expedition under Rijckloff Van Goens and this is often regarded as the beginning of the Dutch presence in Malabar. On January 3,1662 Van Goens was joined by the Calicut army in a siege of Fort Cranganore in the tropical heat, after a fortnight, the fort surrendered, and the Dutch demolished the structure with the exception of the bastion, where they stationed a garrison. A new treaty was now signed between Calicut and Van der Meyden, Calicut agreed to cede Fort Cranganore and Vypin to the Dutch after the capture of the Portuguese fort at Cochin. The allies moved towards Cochin and marched upon the palace of the Raja on 5 February 1662, the raja was killed in the subsequent battle along with two of his juniors. The Dutch installed another prince on the throne and proceeded to besiege the Portuguese fort, Cochin and the chief of Paliyam provided supplies to the Dutch, who faced heroic Portuguese resistance during the prolonged siege. The Native rulers of Porca and Cembakasseri kept the besieged supplied with provisions, though disrupted by monsoon rains and the deaths of the ruler of Calicut and important Dutch officers, the garrison finally capitulated on January 8,1663
19.
Dutch Bengal
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Bengal was a directorate of the Dutch East India Company in Bengal between 1610 until the companys liquidation in 1800. It then became a colony of the Kingdom of the Netherlands until 1825, Dutch presence in the region started by the establishment of a trading post at Pipili in the mouth of Subarnarekha river in Odisha. The former colony is part of what is today called Dutch India, from 1615 onwards, the Dutch East India Company traded with Bengals. In 1627, a trading post was established in Pipely, in 1635 a settlement was established at Chinsurah adjacent to Hooghly to trade in opium, salt, muslin and spices. They built a fort called Fort Gustavus, a church and several other buildings, a famous Frenchman, General Perron who served as military advisor to the Mahrattas, settled in this Dutch colony and built a large house here. The only other Dutch East India Company settlement to have this right was Dutch Ceylon, Dutch Bengal was occupied by British forces in 1795, owing to the Kew Letters written by Dutch stadtholder William V, Prince of Orange, to prevent the colony from being occupied by France. Fort Gustavus has since been obliterated from the face of Chinsurah and the church collapsed due to disuse. Hugli-Chinsurah is now the town of the Hooghly district in modern West Bengal. Het personeel van de Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie in Azie in de achttiende eeuw, meer in het bijzonder in de vestiging Bengalen
20.
Dutch Suratte
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Suratte or Soeratte was a famous trading city on the north coast of what is now India, in the modern state of Gujarat, lying on the river Tapti. The city, now known as Surat, became a directorate of the Dutch East India Company in 1616, the British had established a factory in the Suratte in 1609 or 1612, after delivering a blow to the Portuguese. It is part of what is known as Dutch India. Pieter van den Broecke established a Dutch trading post in Suratte in 1616, the Dutch East India Company was compelled to form this post after the sultan of Aceh no longer allowed them to buy cheap cotton on the local market. By 1759, the Dutch East India Companys trade had fallen substantially, trade had largely moved to British Bombay, with Suratte playing only a subordinate role. Due to the Kew Letters Dutch Suratte was relinquished to the British in 1795
21.
Indonesia
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Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a unitary sovereign state and transcontinental country located mainly in Southeast Asia with some territories in Oceania. Situated between the Indian and Pacific oceans, it is the worlds largest island country, with more than seventeen thousand islands. At 1,904,569 square kilometres, Indonesia is the worlds 14th-largest country in terms of area and worlds 7th-largest country in terms of combined sea. It has an population of over 260 million people and is the worlds fourth most populous country. The worlds most populous island, Java, contains more than half of the countrys population, Indonesias republican form of government includes an elected legislature and president. Indonesia has 34 provinces, of which five have Special Administrative status and its capital and countrys most populous city is Jakarta, which is also the most populous city in Southeast Asia and the second in Asia. The country shares land borders with Papua New Guinea, East Timor, other neighbouring countries include Singapore, Vietnam, the Philippines, Australia, Palau, and the Indian territory of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Despite its large population and densely populated regions, Indonesia has vast areas of wilderness that support the second highest level of biodiversity. The country has abundant natural resources like oil and natural gas, tin, copper, agriculture mainly produces rice, palm oil, tea, coffee, cacao, medicinal plants, spices and rubber. Indonesias major trading partners are Japan, United States, China, the Indonesian archipelago has been an important region for trade since at least the 7th century, when Srivijaya and then later Majapahit traded with China and India. Local rulers gradually absorbed foreign cultural, religious and political models from the early centuries CE, Indonesian history has been influenced by foreign powers drawn to its natural resources. Indonesia consists of hundreds of native ethnic and linguistic groups. The largest – and politically dominant – ethnic group are the Javanese, a shared identity has developed, defined by a national language, ethnic diversity, religious pluralism within a Muslim-majority population, and a history of colonialism and rebellion against it. Indonesias national motto, Bhinneka Tunggal Ika, articulates the diversity that shapes the country, Indonesias economy is the worlds 16th largest by nominal GDP and the 8th largest by GDP at PPP, the largest in Southeast Asia, and is considered an emerging market and newly industrialised country. Indonesia has been a member of the United Nations since 1950, Indonesia is a member of the G20 major economies and World Trade Organization. The name Indonesia derives from the Greek name of the Indós, the name dates to the 18th century, far predating the formation of independent Indonesia. In 1850, George Windsor Earl, an English ethnologist, proposed the terms Indunesians—and, his preference, in the same publication, one of his students, James Richardson Logan, used Indonesia as a synonym for Indian Archipelago. However, Dutch academics writing in East Indies publications were reluctant to use Indonesia, they preferred Malay Archipelago, the Netherlands East Indies, popularly Indië, the East, and Insulinde
22.
Dutch West Indies
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The Netherlands Antilles was a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The country consisted of several island territories located in the Caribbean Sea, the islands were also informally known as the Dutch Antilles. The country came into being in 1954 as the successor of the Dutch colony of Curaçao and Dependencies. All the island territories that belonged to the Netherlands Antilles remain part of the kingdom today, as a group they are still commonly called the Dutch Caribbean, regardless of their legal status. The islands of the Netherlands Antilles are all part of the Lesser Antilles island chain, within this group, the country was spread over two smaller island groups, a northern group and a western group. No part of the country was in the southern Windward Islands and this island sub-group was located in the eastern Caribbean Sea, to the east of Puerto Rico. There were three islands, collectively known as the SSS islands, Sint Maarten Saba Sint Eustatius and they lie approximately 800–900 kilometers north-east of the ABC Islands. This island sub-group was located in the southern Caribbean Sea off the north coast of Venezuela, the Leeward islands are subject to hurricanes in the summer months, while those islands located in the Leeward Antilles are warmer and drier. Spanish-sponsored explorers discovered both the leeward and windward island groups, however, the Spanish Crown only founded settlements in the leeward islands. In the 17th century the islands were conquered by the Dutch West India Company, from the last quarter of the 17th century, the group consisted of six undisputedly Dutch islands, Curaçao, Aruba, Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, Saba and Sint Maarten. In the past, Anguilla, the present-day British Virgin Islands, St. Croix, the various islands were united as a single country — the Netherlands Antilles — in 1954. The country was dissolved on 10 October 2010, in the second half of the 18th century Sint Eustatius became the commercial hub of the north-eastern Caribbean, earning the nickname the Golden Rock. From 1815 onwards Curaçao and Dependencies formed a colony of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, slavery was abolished in 1863, and in 1865 a government regulation for Curaçao was enacted that allowed for some very limited autonomy for the colony. Although this regulation was replaced by a constitution in 1936, the changes to the government structure remained superficial, the island of Curaçao was hit hard by the abolition of slavery in 1863. Its prosperity was restored in the early 20th century with the construction of oil refineries to service the newly discovered Venezuelan oil fields, colonial rule ended after the conclusion of the Second World War. In May 1948 a new constitution for the territory entered into force, among other things, universal suffrage was introduced. The territory was also renamed Netherlands Antilles, after the Dutch constitution was revised in 1948, a new interim Constitution of the Netherlands Antilles was enacted in February 1951. A consolidated version of this remained in force until the dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles in 2010
23.
Suriname
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Suriname, officially known as the Republic of Suriname, is a sovereign state on the northeastern Atlantic coast of South America. It is bordered by French Guiana to the east, Guyana to the west, at just under 165,000 square kilometers, it is the smallest country in South America. Suriname has a population of approximately 566,000, most of live on the countrys north coast, in and around the capital and largest city. Long inhabited by cultures of indigenous tribes, Suriname was explored and contested by European powers before coming under Dutch rule in the late 17th century. In 1954, the country one of the constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. Its indigenous peoples have been active in claiming land rights and working to preserve their traditional lands. Suriname is considered to be a culturally Caribbean country, and is a member of the Caribbean Community, while Dutch is the official language of government, business, media, and education, Sranan, an English-based creole language, is a widely used lingua franca. Suriname is the territory outside Europe where Dutch is spoken by a majority of the population. The people of Suriname are among the most diverse in the world, spanning a multitude of ethnic, religious, and linguistic groups. This area was occupied by cultures of indigenous peoples long before European contact, remnants of which can be found in petroglyph sites at Werehpai. The name Suriname may derive from a Taino indigenous people called Surinen, British settlers, who founded the first European colony at Marshalls Creek along the Suriname River, spelled the name as Surinam. When the territory was taken over by the Dutch, it part of a group of colonies known as Dutch Guiana. The official spelling of the countrys English name was changed from Surinam to Suriname in January 1978, a notable example is Surinames national airline, Surinam Airways. The older English name is reflected in the English pronunciation, /ˈsʊrᵻnæm/ or /ˈsʊrᵻnɑːm/, in Dutch, the official language of Suriname, the pronunciation is, with the main stress on the third syllable and a schwa terminal vowel. Indigenous settlement of Suriname dates back to 3,000 BC, the largest tribes were the Arawak, a nomadic coastal tribe that lived from hunting and fishing. They were the first inhabitants in the area, the Carib also settled in the area and conquered the Arawak by using their superior sailing ships. They settled in Galibi at the mouth of the Marowijne River, while the larger Arawak and Carib tribes lived along the coast and savanna, smaller groups of indigenous peoples lived in the inland rainforest, such as the Akurio, Trió, Warrau, and Wayana. Beginning in the 16th century, French, Spanish, and English explorers visited the area, a century later, Dutch and English settlers established plantation colonies along the many rivers in the fertile Guiana plains
24.
Netherlands Antilles
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The Netherlands Antilles was a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The country consisted of several island territories located in the Caribbean Sea, the islands were also informally known as the Dutch Antilles. The country came into being in 1954 as the successor of the Dutch colony of Curaçao and Dependencies. All the island territories that belonged to the Netherlands Antilles remain part of the kingdom today, as a group they are still commonly called the Dutch Caribbean, regardless of their legal status. The islands of the Netherlands Antilles are all part of the Lesser Antilles island chain, within this group, the country was spread over two smaller island groups, a northern group and a western group. No part of the country was in the southern Windward Islands and this island sub-group was located in the eastern Caribbean Sea, to the east of Puerto Rico. There were three islands, collectively known as the SSS islands, Sint Maarten Saba Sint Eustatius and they lie approximately 800–900 kilometers north-east of the ABC Islands. This island sub-group was located in the southern Caribbean Sea off the north coast of Venezuela, the Leeward islands are subject to hurricanes in the summer months, while those islands located in the Leeward Antilles are warmer and drier. Spanish-sponsored explorers discovered both the leeward and windward island groups, however, the Spanish Crown only founded settlements in the leeward islands. In the 17th century the islands were conquered by the Dutch West India Company, from the last quarter of the 17th century, the group consisted of six undisputedly Dutch islands, Curaçao, Aruba, Bonaire, Sint Eustatius, Saba and Sint Maarten. In the past, Anguilla, the present-day British Virgin Islands, St. Croix, the various islands were united as a single country — the Netherlands Antilles — in 1954. The country was dissolved on 10 October 2010, in the second half of the 18th century Sint Eustatius became the commercial hub of the north-eastern Caribbean, earning the nickname the Golden Rock. From 1815 onwards Curaçao and Dependencies formed a colony of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, slavery was abolished in 1863, and in 1865 a government regulation for Curaçao was enacted that allowed for some very limited autonomy for the colony. Although this regulation was replaced by a constitution in 1936, the changes to the government structure remained superficial, the island of Curaçao was hit hard by the abolition of slavery in 1863. Its prosperity was restored in the early 20th century with the construction of oil refineries to service the newly discovered Venezuelan oil fields, colonial rule ended after the conclusion of the Second World War. In May 1948 a new constitution for the territory entered into force, among other things, universal suffrage was introduced. The territory was also renamed Netherlands Antilles, after the Dutch constitution was revised in 1948, a new interim Constitution of the Netherlands Antilles was enacted in February 1951. A consolidated version of this remained in force until the dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles in 2010
25.
Pulicat
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Pulicat is a historic seashore town in North of Chennai in Thiruvallur District, of Tamil Nadu state, South India. It is about 60 kilometres north of Chennai and 3 kilometres from Elavur, on the island of Sriharikota. Pulicat lake is a salt water lagoon which stretches about 60 kilometres along the coast. With lakeside and seashore development as well as several Special Economic Zones including a US $1 billion Medical SEZ, coming up in nearby Elavur, the Portuguese established a trading post in Pulicat in 1502 with the help of the Vijayanagar rulers. They built a fort there and held this fort until 1609 when they were defeated by the Dutch, the Dutch occupied Pulicat fort in 1609. Pulicat was till 1690 the capital of Dutch Coromandel. It repeatedly changed possession, until finally occupied by the British in 1825 and it became part of the Madras Presidency, which later became Madras state in independent India and renamed Tamil Nadu in 1968. The Dutch church has built over several times and is rather dilapidated today. The old lighthouse still stands at the bank of the lake. The cemetery dating to 1622 has been taken under the wing of the Archaeological Survey of India, the grand, Dutch inscribed tombs and graves, carved with skeletons rather than the cross, have been quite well preserved. The cemetery lies behind the market and visitors often dont know that it is there, many thousands of visitors per year come to the area which is renowned for its history and natural beauty. Modern Pulicat is a model for religious unity, every year in the month of April, people of Pulicat irrespective of religion celebrate Kottaikuppam Madha Thiruvizha. Kottaikuppam - Kottai means Fort & Kuppam means group of people live, Madha Thiruvizha means Festival for Lady Mary. Pulicat is within the Pulicat Lake Bird Sanctuary, every year between the months of October and March, thousands of migratory birds land here. Though many species can be seen, the Flamingos are the most visible, covering the surrounding the lake
26.
Portuguese Ceylon
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Portuguese Ceylon refers to the control of the Kingdom of Kotte by the Portuguese Empire, in present-day Sri Lanka, after the countrys Crisis of the Sixteenth Century and into the Kandyan period. Portuguese presence in the island lasted from 1505 to 1658 and their arrival was largely accidental, seeking control of commerce over territorial conquest. The Portuguese used these internal divisions to their advantage during the Sinhalese–Portuguese War and this allowed the Portuguese sufficient claim to the Kingdom of Kotte upon Dharmapalas death in 1597. Portuguese rule began with much resistance by the local population, eventually, the Kingdom of Kandy sought help from the Dutch Empire in their efforts to rid the island of the Portuguese. The Dutch Empire initially entered into agreement with the Kingdom of Kandy, after the collapse of the Iberian economy in 1627, the Dutch–Portuguese War saw the Dutch conquest of most of Portugals Asian colonies. Eventually, Portugals Ceylonese territories were ceded to the Netherlands, nevertheless, there remain elements of Portuguese culture in Sri Lanka today from this colonial period. First contact between Sri Lanka and the Portuguese happened in 1505-6 and it was largely accidental and it wasnt until 12 years later that the Portuguese sought to establish a fortified trading settlement. Direct Portuguese rule began after the death of Dharmapala of Kotte who bequeathed the Kingdom of Kotte to the Portuguese monarch, by 1600 the Portuguese had consolidated the main centers of rebellion, the Kelani and Kalu ganga basins, leaving the border regions left to Sinhalese resistance. Gaston Pereira, Kandy fights the Portuguese, Sri Lanka, Vijitha Yapa Publications, July 2007. ISBN 978-955-1266-77-6 Channa Wicremasekera, Kandy at War, Sri Lanka, Vijitha Yapa Publications,2004. ISBN 955-8095-52-4 Michael Roberts, Sinhala Consciousness in the Kandyan Period, Sri Lanka, Vijitha Yapa Publications,2004. Johor Bahru, Dynasty of Jaffna King’s Historical Society, senaka Weeraratna, Repression of Buddhism in Sri Lanka by the Portuguese Ceylon and the Portuguese, 1505-1658. Author, Pieris, P. E. 1874-, Naish, Richard Bryant, 1891- Subject, Sri Lanka -- History Portuguese History in Ceylon
27.
Precious stones
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A gemstone is a piece of mineral crystal which, in cut and polished form, is used to make jewelry or other adornments. However, certain rocks or organic materials that are not minerals are used for jewelry and are therefore often considered to be gemstones as well. Most gemstones are hard, but some soft minerals are used in jewelry because of their luster or other properties that have aesthetic value. Rarity is another characteristic that lends value to a gemstone, apart from jewelry, from earliest antiquity engraved gems and hardstone carvings, such as cups, were major luxury art forms. A gem maker is called a lapidary or gemcutter, a worker is a diamantaire. The carvings of Carl Fabergé are significant works in this tradition, the traditional classification in the West, which goes back to the ancient Greeks, begins with a distinction between precious and semi-precious, similar distinctions are made in other cultures. In modern usage the precious stones are diamond, ruby, sapphire, other stones are classified by their color, translucency and hardness. Another unscientific term for semi-precious gemstones used in art history and archaeology is hardstone, in modern times gemstones are identified by gemologists, who describe gems and their characteristics using technical terminology specific to the field of gemology. The first characteristic a gemologist uses to identify a gemstone is its chemical composition, for example, diamonds are made of carbon and rubies of aluminium oxide. Next, many gems are crystals which are classified by their crystal system such as cubic or trigonal or monoclinic, another term used is habit, the form the gem is usually found in. For example, diamonds, which have a crystal system, are often found as octahedrons. Gemstones are classified into different groups, species, and varieties, for example, ruby is the red variety of the species corundum, while any other color of corundum is considered sapphire. Other examples are the Emerald, aquamarine, red beryl, goshenite, heliodor, and morganite, gems are characterized in terms of refractive index, dispersion, specific gravity, hardness, cleavage, fracture, and luster. They may exhibit pleochroism or double refraction and they may have luminescence and a distinctive absorption spectrum. Material or flaws within a stone may be present as inclusions, gemstones may also be classified in terms of their water. This is a grading of the gems luster, transparency. Very transparent gems are considered first water, while second or third water gems are those of a lesser transparency, there is no universally accepted grading system for gemstones. Diamonds are graded using a system developed by the Gemological Institute of America in the early 1950s, historically, all gemstones were graded using the naked eye
28.
Indigo
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Indigo is a deep and rich color close to the color wheel blue, as well as to some variants of ultramarine. The color indigo is named after the indigo dye derived from the plant Indigofera tinctoria, the first known recorded use of indigo as a color name in English was in 1289. Species of Indigofera were cultivated in Peru, India, East Asia, the earliest direct evidence for the use of indigo dates to around 4000 BCE and comes from Huaca Prieta, in contemporary Peru. Pliny mentions India as the source of the dye, imported in small quantities via the Silk Road, the Greek term for the dye was Ἰνδικὸν φάρμακον, which, adopted to Latin as indicum and via Portuguese gave rise to the modern word indigo. El Salvador has lately been the biggest producer of indigo, Indigo was actually a plant that got its name because it came from the Indus Valley, discovered some 5,000 years ago, where it was called nila, meaning dark blue. And by the 7th Century BC, people starting using the plant as a dye — the Mesopotamians were even carving out recipes for making indigo dye onto clay tablets for record-keeping. By 1289, knowledge of the dye made its way to Europe, but it wasn’t until 1640 when demand started to pick up for indigo. Spanish explorers discovered an American species of Indigo and began to cultivate the product in Guatemala, the English and French subsequently began to encourage indigo cultivation in their colonies in the West Indies. Indigo dye could be made from two different types of plants — the indigo plant, which produced the best results, the British were producing indigo with woad, a plant that yielded a lesser quality dye, but a plant they could grow. They even tried to hold their monopoly on indigo dye by managing to ban the indigo plant for years, but eventually the British began to focus on tea and other crops — and meanwhile, the French started to get their fair share of the market. The French had gone to war with Britain, so the British could hardly rely on the French for this precious blue dye, consequently, the British had to turn to their colonies in America. It was Eliza Lucas from South Carolina who figured out how to grow the indigo plant, the same indigo dye is contained in the woad plant, Isatis tinctoria, for a long time the main source of blue dye in Europe. Woad was replaced by true indigo as trade routes opened up, the Early Modern English word indigo referred to the dye, and not to the color itself, and indigo is not traditionally part of the basic color-naming system. Modern sources place indigo in the spectrum between 420 and 450 nanometers, which lies on the side of color wheel blue. However, the correspondence of this definition with colors of actual indigo dyes is disputed, isaac Newton introduced indigo as one of the seven base colors of his work. In a pivotal experiment in the history of optics, the young Newton shone a narrow beam of sunlight through a prism to produce a band of colors on the wall. He linked the seven prismatic colors to the seven notes of a major scale, as shown in his color wheel, with orange. Indigo is therefore counted as one of the colors of the rainbow
29.
Silk
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Silk is a natural protein fiber, some forms of which can be woven into textiles. The protein fiber of silk is composed mainly of fibroin and is produced by insect larvae to form cocoons. The best-known silk is obtained from the cocoons of the larvae of the mulberry silkworm Bombyx mori reared in captivity, Silk is produced by several insects, but generally only the silk of moth caterpillars has been used for textile manufacturing. There has been research into other types of silk, which differ at the molecular level. Silk is mainly produced by the larvae of insects undergoing complete metamorphosis, Silk production also occurs in Hymenoptera, silverfish, mayflies, thrips, leafhoppers, beetles, lacewings, fleas, flies, and midges. Other types of arthropod produce silk, most notably various arachnids such as spiders, the word silk comes from Old English sioloc, from Greek σηρικός serikos, silken, ultimately from an Asian source. Several kinds of silk, which are produced by caterpillars other than the mulberry silkworm, have been known and used in China, South Asia. However, the scale of production was far smaller than for cultivated silks. Thus, the way to obtain silk suitable for spinning into textiles in areas where commercial silks are not cultivated was by tedious. Commercial silks originate from reared silkworm pupae, which are bred to produce a silk thread with no mineral on the surface. The pupae are killed by either dipping them in boiling water before the adult moths emerge or by piercing them with a needle. These factors all contribute to the ability of the cocoon to be unravelled as one continuous thread. Wild silks also tend to be difficult to dye than silk from the cultivated silkworm. Genetic modification of domesticated silkworms is used to facilitate the production of more types of silk. Silk fabric was first developed in ancient China, the earliest example of silk fabric is from 3630 BC, and it was used as wrapping for the body of a child from a Yangshao culture site in Qingtaicun at Xingyang, Henan. Legend gives credit for developing silk to a Chinese empress, Leizu, because of its texture and lustre, silk rapidly became a popular luxury fabric in the many areas accessible to Chinese merchants. Silk was in demand, and became a staple of pre-industrial international trade. In July 2007, archaeologists discovered intricately woven and dyed silk textiles in a tomb in Jiangxi province, Silk is described in a chapter on mulberry planting by Si Shengzhi of the Western Han
30.
Potassium nitrate
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Potassium nitrate is a chemical compound with the chemical formula KNO3. It is a salt of potassium ions K+ and nitrate ions NO3−. It occurs as a mineral niter and is a solid source of nitrogen. Potassium nitrate is one of several nitrogen-containing compounds collectively referred to as saltpeter or saltpetre, major uses of potassium nitrate are in fertilizers, tree stump removal, rocket propellants and fireworks. It is one of the constituents of gunpowder and has been used since the Middle Ages as a food preservative. Potassium nitrate, because of its early and global use and production, has many names, by the 15th century, Europeans referred to it as saltpeter and later as nitrate of potash, as the chemistry of the compound was more fully understood. The Arabs called it Chinese snow and it was called Chinese salt by the Iranians/Persians or salt from Chinese salt marshes. Potassium nitrate has a crystal structure at room temperature, which transforms to a trigonal system at 129 °C. Potassium nitrate is soluble in water, but its solubility increases with temperature. The aqueous solution is almost neutral, exhibiting pH6.2 at 14 °C for a 10% solution of commercial powder and it is not very hygroscopic, absorbing about 0. 03% water in 80% relative humidity over 50 days. It is insoluble in alcohol and is not poisonous, it can react explosively with reducing agents and this was used for the manufacture of gunpowder and explosive devices. The terminology used by al-Rammah indicated a Chinese origin for the gunpowder weapons about which he wrote, at least as far back as 1845, Chilean saltpeter deposits were exploited in Chile and California, USA. A major natural source of nitrate was the deposits crystallizing from cave walls. Extraction is accomplished by immersing the guano in water for a day, filtering, traditionally, guano was the source used in Laos for the manufacture of gunpowder for Bang Fai rockets. Perhaps the most exhaustive discussion of the production of material is the 1862 LeConte text. He was writing with the purpose of increasing production in the Confederate States to support their needs during the American Civil War. Since he was calling for the assistance of rural farming communities and he details the French Method, along with several variations, as well as a Swiss method. Many references have been made to a method using only straw and urine, LeConte describes a process using only urine and not dung, referring to it as the Swiss method
31.
Opium
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Opium is the dried latex obtained from the opium poppy. The latex also contains the closely related opiates codeine and thebaine, the word meconium historically referred to related, weaker preparations made from other parts of the opium poppy or different species of poppies. The production of opium has not changed since ancient times, through selective breeding of the Papaver somniferum plant, the content of the phenanthrene alkaloids morphine, codeine, and to a lesser extent thebaine has been greatly increased. For the illegal trade, the morphine is extracted from the opium. It is then converted to heroin which is two to four times as potent, and increases the value by two to four times, the reduced weight and bulk make it easier to smuggle. Evidence from ancient Greece indicate that opium was consumed in several ways, including inhalation of vapors, suppositories, medical poultices, Opium is mentioned in the most important medical texts of the ancient world, including the Ebers Papyrus and the writings of Dioscorides, Galen, and Avicenna. Widespread medical use of unprocessed opium continued through the American Civil War before giving way to morphine and its successors, Opium has been actively collected since prehistoric times. Though western scholars typically estimate this to be around 1500 BCE, Indian scholars maintain that the verses and the history contained in them have been orally transmitted thousands of years before. A common name for males in Afghanistan is Redey, which in Pashto means poppy and this term may be derived from the Sanskrit words rddhi and hrdya, which mean magical, a type of medicinal plant, and heart-pleasing, respectively. The upper Asian belt of Afghanistan, Pakistan, northern India, numerous finds of P. somniferum or P. setigerum from Bronze Age and Iron Age settlements have also been reported. The first known cultivation of poppies was in Mesopotamia, approximately 3400 BCE, by Sumerians, who called the plant hul gil. Tablets found at Nippur, a Sumerian spiritual center south of Baghdad, described the collection of juice in the morning. Opium production continued under the Babylonians and Egyptians, Opium was used with poison hemlock to put people quickly and painlessly to death, but it was also used in medicine. The Ebers Papyrus, c. 1500 BCE, describes a way to stop a child using grains of the poppy plant strained to a pulp. Spongia somnifera, sponges soaked in opium, were used during surgery, the Egyptians cultivated opium thebaicum in famous poppy fields around 1300 BCE. Opium was traded from Egypt by the Phoenicians and Minoans to destinations around the Mediterranean Sea, including Greece, Carthage, and Europe. By 1100 BCE, opium was cultivated on Cyprus, where surgical-quality knives were used to score the poppy pods, and opium was cultivated, traded, Opium was also mentioned after the Persian conquest of Assyria and Babylonian lands in the 6th century BCE. From the earliest finds, opium has appeared to have ritual significance, and anthropologists have speculated ancient priests may have used the drug as a proof of healing power
32.
Black pepper
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Black pepper is a flowering vine in the family Piperaceae, cultivated for its fruit, which is usually dried and used as a spice and seasoning. When dried, the fruit is known as a peppercorn, when fresh and fully mature, it is approximately 5 millimetres in diameter, dark red, and, like all drupes, contains a single seed. Peppercorns, and the ground pepper derived from them, may be described simply as pepper, or more precisely as black pepper, green pepper, black pepper is native to south India and is extensively cultivated there and elsewhere in tropical regions. Currently, Vietnam is the worlds largest producer and exporter of pepper, dried ground pepper has been used since antiquity for both its flavour and as a traditional medicine. Black pepper is the worlds most traded spice and it is one of the most common spices added to cuisines around the world. The spiciness of black pepper is due to the chemical piperine, black pepper is ubiquitous in the modern world as a seasoning and is often paired with salt. The word pepper has its roots in the Tamil word for long pepper, todays pepper derives from the Old English pipor. and from Latin which was the source of Romanian piper, Italian pepe, Dutch peper, German Pfeffer, French poivre, and other similar forms. In the 16th century, pepper started referring to the unrelated New World chili pepper as well, Pepper was used in a figurative sense to mean spirit or energy at least as far back as the 1840s, in the early 20th century, this was shortened to pep. Black pepper is produced from the still-green, unripe drupes of the pepper plant. The drupes are cooked briefly in hot water, both to them and to prepare them for drying, the heat ruptures cell walls in the pepper. The drupes are dried in the sun or by machine for several days, during which the pepper around the seed shrinks and darkens into a thin, once dried, the spice is called black peppercorn. On some estates, the berries are separated from the stem by hand, once the peppercorns are dried, pepper spirit and oil can be extracted from the berries by crushing them. Pepper spirit is used in medicinal and beauty products. Pepper oil is used as an ayurvedic massage oil and used in certain beauty. White pepper consists solely of the seed of the pepper plant and this is usually accomplished by a process known as retting, where fully ripe red pepper berries are soaked in water for about a week, during which the flesh of the pepper softens and decomposes. Rubbing then removes what remains of the fruit, and the seed is dried. Sometimes alternative processes are used for removing the outer pepper from the seed, ground white pepper is used in Chinese and Thai cuisine, but also in salads, cream sauces, light-coloured sauces, and mashed potatoes. White pepper has a different flavour from black pepper, it lacks certain compounds present in the layer of the drupe
33.
Maluku Islands
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The Maluku Islands or the Moluccas are an archipelago within Indonesia. Tectonically they are located on the Halmahera Plate within the Molucca Sea Collision Zone, geographically they are located east of Sulawesi, west of New Guinea, and north and east of Timor. The islands were also the core of the Spice Islands known to the Chinese and Europeans. The name was due to the nutmeg, mace and cloves that were originally found there. The Maluku Islands formed a province from Indonesian independence until 1999. A new province, North Maluku, incorporates the area between Morotai and Sula, with the arc of islands from Buru and Seram to Wetar remaining within the existing Maluku Province, North Maluku is predominantly Muslim, and its capital is Sofifi on Halmahera island. Maluku province has a larger Christian population, and its capital is Ambon, though originally Melanesian, many island populations, especially in the Banda Islands, were exterminated in the 17th century during the spice wars. A second influx of Austronesian immigrants began in the twentieth century under the Dutch. Between 1999 and 2002, conflict between Muslims and Christians killed thousands and displaced half a million people, the name Maluku is thought to have been derived from the term used by Arab traders for the region, Jazirat al-Muluk. The Maluku Islands were a single province from Indonesian independence until 1999 when they were split into North Maluku and Maluku, North Maluku province includes Ternate, Tidore, Bacan, Halmahera Morotai, the Obi Islands, and the Sula Islands. Evidence of increasingly long-distance trading relationships and of more frequent occupation of many islands, onyx beads and segments of silver plate used as currency on the Indian subcontinent around 200BC have been unearthed on some of the islands. Arab merchants began to arrive in the 14th century, bringing Islam, peaceful conversion to Islam occurred in many islands, especially in the centres of trade, while aboriginal animism persisted in the hinterlands and more isolated islands. Archaeological evidence here relies largely on the occurrence of pigs teeth, the Portuguese had conquered the city state of Malacca in the early 16th century and their influence was most strongly felt in Maluku and other parts of eastern Indonesia. On the return trip, Francisco Serrão was shipwrecked at Hitu island in 1512, there he established ties with the local ruler who was impressed with his martial skills. The spice trade soon revived but the Portuguese would not be able to fully monopolize nor disrupt this trade, both Serrão and Ferdinand Magellan, however, perished before they could meet one another. The Portuguese first landed in Ambon in 1513, but it became the new centre for their activities in Maluku following the expulsion from Ternate. European power in the region was weak and Ternate became an expanding, fiercely Islamic and anti-European state under the rule of Sultan Baab Ullah and his son Sultan Said. By the 1560s there were 10,000 Catholics in the area, mostly on Ambon, the Pela Gandong community relationship system is between various Christian and Muslim villages throughout the regions
34.
Cape Colony
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The Cape of Good Hope, also known as the Cape Colony, was a British colony in present-day South Africa and Namibia, named after the Cape of Good Hope. The British colony was preceded by an earlier Dutch colony of the same name, the Dutch lost the colony to Britain following the 1795 Battle of Muizenberg, but had it returned following the 1802 Peace of Amiens. It was re-occupied by the British following the Battle of Blaauwberg in 1806, the Cape of Good Hope then remained in the British Empire, becoming self-governing in 1872, and uniting with three other colonies to form the Union of South Africa in 1910. It then was renamed the Cape of Good Hope Province, South Africa became fully independent in 1931 by the Statute of Westminster. In the north, the Orange River, also known as the Gariep River, served as the boundary for some time, from 1878, the colony also included the enclave of Walvis Bay and the Penguin Islands, both in what is now Namibia. An expedition of the Dutch East India Company led by Jan van Riebeeck established a trading post, van Riebeecks objective was to secure a harbour of refuge for Dutch ships during the long voyages between Europe and Asia. Reflecting the multi-national nature of the trading companies, the Dutch also granted vrijburger status to a number of former Scandinavian and German employees as well. In 1688 they also sponsored the immigration of two hundred French Huguenot refugees who had fled to the Netherlands upon the Edict of Fontainebleau. There was a degree of assimilation due to intermarriage. Many of the colonists who settled directly on the frontier became increasingly independent, known as Boers, they migrated westwards beyond the Cape Colonys initial borders and had soon penetrated almost a thousand kilometres inland. Some Boers even adopted a nomadic lifestyle permanently and were denoted as trekboers, Dutch traders imported thousands of slaves to the Cape of Good Hope from the Dutch East Indies and other parts of Africa. By the end of the century the Capes population swelled to about 26,000 people of European descent and 30,000 slaves. In 1795, France occupied the Seven Provinces of the Netherlands and this prompted Great Britain to occupy the territory in 1795 as a way to better control the seas in order stop any potential French attempt to reach India. The British sent a fleet of nine warships which anchored at Simons Town and, following the defeat of the Dutch militia at the Battle of Muizenberg, the Dutch East India Company transferred its territories and claims to the Batavian Republic in 1798, and ceased to exist in 1799. In 1806, the Cape, now controlled by the Batavian Republic, was occupied again by the British after their victory in the Battle of Blaauwberg. The temporary peace between Britain and Napoleonic France had crumbled into open hostilities, whilst Napoleon had been strengthening his influence on the Batavian Republic. The British, who set up a colony on 8 January 1806, hoped to keep Napoleon out of the Cape, in 1814 the Dutch government formally ceded sovereignty over the Cape to the British, under the terms of the Convention of London. The British started to settle the border of the colony
35.
Kew Letters
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It urged them to continue resistance in cooperation with Great Britain against the armed forces of the French Republic that had invaded the Dutch Republic and forced him to flee to England. In particular the letters to the colonial governors played an important role, the governors of Malacca, Amboina, and West Sumatra complied without a fight. Cochin surrendered after a brief bombardment, the rest of the Dutch enclaves in southern India and seaside Sri Lanka were quickly overrun. Elsewhere, though the governors did not comply with the order to put their military installations at British disposal, in the 1801 Oranienstein Letters, William V and his son did recognise the Batavian Republic, and renounced their hereditary stadtholderate
36.
Battle of Colachel
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The Battle of Colachel was fought on 10 August 1741 between the Indian kingdom of Travancore and the Dutch East India Company, during the Travancore-Dutch War. The Dutch never recovered from the defeat, and no longer posed a large threat to India. Almost all the pepper that the Dutch imported into their country came from the kingdom of Kayamkulam, when Marthanda Varma became king of the small kingdom of Venad, he started a policy of assimilating neighboring kingdoms into the new kingdom of Travancore. In a series of battles, Marthanda Varma annexed the kingdoms of Attingal, with this threat to their commercial interests in view, the Dutch Governor of Ceylon Gustaaf Willem van Imhoff wrote to Marthanda Varma demanding that he should end the aggression against Kayamkulam. Marthanda Varma wrote back to Van Imhoff, ordering him not to interfere in matters that did not concern him, in a subsequent meeting, Imhoff demanded that Marthanda Varma restore the annexed kingdom of Kayamkulam to its former ruling princess, threatening to invade Travancore should he refuse. Marthanda Varma countered that he would overcome any Dutch forces that were sent to his kingdom, thus, the interview ended in tension and subsequently led to the Travancore-Dutch War. In 1741, the Dutch installed a princess of the Elayadathu Swarupam as the ruler of Kottarakara in defiance of the demands of Marthanda Varma, the Travancore army inflicted a crushing defeat upon the combined Kottarakara-Dutch armies and assimilated Kottarakara into Travancore, forcing the Dutch to retreat to Cochin. Following this, Marthanda Varma captured all of the Dutch forts in the area and they captured the territory up to Padmanabhapuram and laid siege to the Kalkulam fort. In the words of the historian, Professor A. Sreedhara Menon, A disaster of the first magnitude for the Dutch. Subsequent peace treaties with Travancore saw the transfer of the remaining Dutch forts which were incorporated into the Nedumkotta lines, when De Lannoy and Donadi were paroled, they took up service with Travancore and modernized the Travancore Army into an effective fighting force. De Lennoy modernized the existing firearms and introduced better artillery and, more importantly, trained the Travancore army in the European style of military drill and military tactics. He was one of the commanders of the Tranvancore army during the battle of Ambalapuzha where his erstwhile employers were fighting on behalf of Cochin. Another direct outcome of the event at Kulachal was the takeover of the pepper trade by the state of Travancore. This development was to have repercussions on the Dutch and the trading world of Kerala at large. In 1753 the Dutch signed the Treaty of Mavelikkara with the Dutch agreeing not to obstruct the Rajas expansion and this marked the beginning of the end of Dutch influence in India. The VOC continued to sell Indonesian spices and sugar in Kerala until 1795, the Indian government has built a pillar of victory in Kulachal to commemorate the event. The Indian Post Department released a Rupee 5 stamp on April 1,2004 to commemorate the tercentenary of the raising of the 9th Battalion of Madras Regiment, Battle of Diu Battle of Swally Nagam ayya. Travancore state manual Iyer, Dr. S. Krishna, Travancore-Dutch Relations, Nagercoil, CBH Publications,1994,164 pgs
37.
Travancore
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The Kingdom of Travancore (/ˈtrævəŋkɔər/, Malayalam, തിരുവിതാംകൂർ Thiruvithamkoor, was an Indian kingdom from 1729 until 1949. It was ruled by the Travancore Royal Family from Padmanabhapuram, the official flag of the state was red with a dextrally-coiled silver conch shell at its center. In the early 19th century, the became a princely state of the British Empire. When the region was part of the Chera empire, it was known as Thiruvazhumkode. It was contracted to Thiruvankode, and anglicised by the English to Travancore. In course of time, the Ay kingdom, part of the Chera empire, which ruled the Thiruvazhumkode area, became independent, the Aayis controlled the land from present day Kollam district in the north, through Thiruvananthapuram district, all in Kerala, to the Kanyakumari district. There were two capitals, the one at Kollam and a subsidiary one at Thrippapur. The kingdom was also called Venad. Kings of Venad had, at times, travelled from Kollam and built residential palaces in Thiruvithamcode. By the time of King Marthanda Varma, the half of the kingdom had become dominant. During his reign, it absorbed the north and Thiruvithamcode or Travancore became the official name, Travancore was located at the extreme southern tip of the Indian subcontinent. Geographically, Travancore was divided into three distinct regions, the eastern highlands, the central midlands, and the western lowlands. Venad was a state at the tip of the Indian Subcontinent. Till the end of the 11th century AD, it was a principality in the Ay Kingdom. The Ays were the earliest ruling dynasty in southern Kerala, who, at their zenith and their capital during the first Sangam age was in Aykudi and later, towards the end of the 8th century AD, was at Quilon. Though a series of attacks by the resurgent Pandyas between the 7th and 8th centuries caused the decline of the Ays, the dynasty was powerful till the beginning of the 10th century, when the Ay power diminished, Venad became the southernmost principality of the Second Chera Kingdom. An invasion of the Cholas into Venad caused the destruction of Kollam in 1096, however, the Chera capital, Mahodayapuram, also fell in the subsequent Chola attack, which compelled the Chera king, Rama varma Kulasekara, to shift his capital to Kollam. Thus the end of the Second Chera dynasty in the 12th century marks the independence of Venad, the history of Travancore began with Marthanda Varma, who inherited the kingdom of Venad, and expanded it into Travancore during his reign
38.
Marthanda Varma
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Marthanda Varma was ruler of the southern Indian state of Thiruvithaamkoor from 1729 until his death in 1758. He is most celebrated for crushing the Dutch expansionist designs at the Battle of Colachel in 1741, Marthanda Varma, then adopted a European mode of martial discipline and expanded his domain to encompass what became the modern state of Travancore. Marthanda Varma built a standing army of about 50,000, reduced the power of the Nair aristocracy. His alliance in 1757 with the ruler of Kochi, against Kingdom of Kozhikode, Travancore under Marthanda Varma did make a determined bid to consolidate its power by the use of maritime outlets. At his accession to the throne in early 18th century, the only route remaining was Thiruvithaamkoor to build an elaborate, the control of trade was also seen as crucial in the statecraft of the period. These principles were put into practice by Marthanda Varma and it was also the policy of Marthanda Varma to extend patronage to the Syrian Christians, a large trading community in Thiruvithaamkoor, as a means of limiting European involvement in trade. The key commodity was pepper, but other goods also came to be defined as Royal Monopoly Items, Thiruvananthapuram became a prominent city in Kerala under Marthanda Varma. Prime ministers under Marthanda Varma - Arumukham Pillai, Thanu Pillai, Marthanda Varmas policies were continued in large measure by his successor and nephew, Karthika Thirunal Rama Varma, who went on to successfully defend Thiruvithaamkoor against the Kingdom of Mysore. Marthanda Varma was born in 1705 to queen Karthika Thirunal and Raghava Varma of Kilimanur royal house, queen Karthika Thirunal - an adoptee from the Kingdom of Kannur in the north - was the senior queen of Attingal at the time. The state was ruled by chief Ravi Varma during this period, trippappur swaroopam then, was a small chiefdom extending from Edava in the north to Aruvamozhi in the south. According to historians, within this state the power of the chief was only nominal then, due to the power of the nobles, chief among them being the Barons of the Eight Houses. The powers of the ruler were also to a great extent curbed by the power of the Council of Eight and a Half, the rivalries of European powers like the Dutch and the English made the situation more complex. It was into these conditions, where the chief was powerless under the nobles of the state. It is also known that the prince advised the chief to sign treaty with the English East India Company, after being pleased by the maturity and administrative talent of his nephew, Rama Varma anointed the teenager as the Prince of Neyattinkara. After crushing the power of the feudal lords (the Nair aristocracy known as the Ettuveetil Pillamar, Marthanda Varma turned his attention to the neighbouring petty chiefdoms. The chief was brought to Thiruvananthapuram and lodged almost as state prisoner in the Valikoikkal palace, a contingent of Thiruvithaamkoor army under Dalawa Arumukham Pillai was stationed at Quilon. Marthanda Varma next turned his attention towards the little chiefdom of Marta, the neighbouring chiefdom of Kayamkulam - sensing an imminent invasion by Thiruvithaamkoor - soon allied itself with the Kochi, Purakkad and Vadakkumkur. The Kayamkulam chief was also successful in rescuing the Kollam chief from his Thiruvananthapuram prison, the allies built new fortification and strengthened their defences against the threat from Thiruvananthapuram
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Pagoda (coin)
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The pagoda was a unit of currency, a coin made of gold or half gold minted by Indian dynasties as well as the British, the French and the Dutch. It was subdivided into 42 fanams, the pagoda was issued by various dynasties in medieval southern India, including the Kadambas of Hangal, the Kadambas of Goa, and the Vijaynagar Empire. There were two types of pagoda coined by foreign traders, the most valuable was the star pagoda, worth approximately 8 shillings, equivalent to £7 in 2015, issued by the East India Company at Madras. The second was the Porto Novo pagoda, issued by the Dutch at Tuticorin and also by the Nawabs of Arcot, the French struck local gold pagodas and silver fanams under contract by the nawabs. The silver coins of the French were called fanon which were equivalent to the local fanam, Madras fanam Coinage of Asia Sources of Karnataka History - Numismatics European East India Companies coins - photos The Pagoda - A Proclamation Coin Proclamation Coin - Indian Gold Pagoda
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Venkateswara
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Venkateswara, also known as Śrīnivāsa, Bālājī, Veṅkaṭā, Venkata Ramana and Veṅkaṭācalapati, Govindha is a form of the Hindu god Vishnu. Venkateswaras most prominent shrine is the Tirumala Venkateswara Temple located in Tirupathi, Venkateswara literally means Lord of Venkata. The word is a combination of the words Venkata and isvara, according to the Brahmanda and Bhavishyottara Puranas, the word Venkata means destroyer of sins, deriving from the Sanskrit words vem and kata. Thirumalai finds mention in Sangam literature, where Sangam landscape was classified into five categories, known as thinais, based on the mood, the season, tolkappiyam, mentions that each of these thinai had an associated deity and mentions Thirumaal as presiding in Mullai region- the forests. Tirumala hill is located in the town of Tirumala, where Tirumala Venkateswara Temple is located on this hill. The ancient Tamil texts describe the Venkata as the northernmost part of Tamilakam, according to the Tirumala sthala Purana, the legend of Venkateswara is as follows, Once, sages headed by Kashyapa began to perform a fire sacrifice on the banks of the Ganges. Sage Narada visited them and asked them why they were performing the sacrifice, unable to answer, the sages approached Sage Bhrigu to determine the worthy patron god among the Trimurti, the Hindu trinune gods. Bhrigu first went to Satyaloka, the abode of the god Brahma, at Satyaloka, he found Brahma reciting the four Vedas in praise of Vishnu, with each of his four heads, and attended upon by his consort Saraswati. Brahma did not notice Bhrigu offering obeisance, the angry sage cursed Brahma and left Satyaloka. He then reached Kailash, the abode of the god Shiva, Bhrigu found Shiva deep in meditation with his wife Parvati by his side. Feeling ignored, Bhrigu cursed Shiva too and left for Vaikuntha, at Vaikuntha, Vishnu was resting on the serpent Shesha with his consort Lakshmi in service at his feet. Bhrigu was infuriated and kicked Vishnu on his chest, the place of Lakshmi in Vishnus body, to pacify the sage, Vishnu held his legs and pressed them gently. He squeezed the extra eye in Bhrigus foot - the symbol of his egotism, the sage realized his folly and apologized to Vishnu. There upon, Bhrigu concluded that Vishnu was supreme of the Trimurti, Lakshmi was angered by Vishnus action of placating Bhrigu who had kicked her place in Vishnus body and thus insulted her. She abandoned her heavenly abode and resided in Karavirapur on earth, taking pity on Vishnu, Brahma and Shiva assumed the forms of a cow and its calf to serve him. Lakshmi in the form of a cowherdess sold the cow and calf to the king of the Chola country, the Chola king sent them to graze on the Venkata Hill along with his herd of cattle. Discovering Vishnu on the ant-hill, the cow provided its milk, meanwhile, at the palace, the cow was not yielding any milk, for which the Chola queen chastised the royal cow herder severely. To find out the cause of lack of milk, the cow herder followed the cow secretly, angered by the conduct of the cow, the cow herder flung his axe to harm the cow
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Vishnu
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Vishnu is one of the principal deities of Hinduism, and the Supreme Being in its Vaishnavism tradition. Along with Brahma and Shiva, Vishnu forms a Hindu trinity, however and his avatars most notably include Krishna in the Mahabharata and Rama in the Ramayana. He is also known as Narayana, Jagannath, Vasudeva, Vithoba and he is one of the five equivalent deities worshipped in Panchayatana puja of the Smarta Tradition of Hinduism. In Hindu inconography, Vishnu is usually depicted as having a dark, or pale blue complexion and having four arms. He holds a padma in his left hand, Kaumodaki gada in his lower right hand, Panchajanya shankha in his upper left hand. A traditional depiction is Lord Vishnu reclining on the coils of Ananta, accompanied by his consort devi Lakshmi, yaska, the mid 1st-millennium BCE Vedanga scholar, in his Nirukta, defines Vishnu as viṣṇur viṣvater vā vyaśnoter vā, one who enters everywhere. He also writes, atha yad viṣito bhavati tad viṣnurbhavati, that which is free from fetters, the medieval Indian scholar Medhātithi suggested that the word Vishnu has etymological roots in viś, meaning to pervade, thereby connoting that Vishnu is one who is everything and inside everything. Vishnu is a Vedic deity, but not a prominent one when compared to Indra, Agni, just 5 out of 1028 hymns of the Rigveda, a 2nd millennium BCE Hindu text, are dedicated to Vishnu, and he finds minor mention in the other hymns. Though a minor mention and with overlapping attributes in the Vedas, he has important characteristics in various hymns of Rig Veda and he is also described in the Vedic literature as the one who supports heaven and earth. In the Vedic hymns, Vishnu is invoked alongside other deities, especially Indra and his distinguishing characteristic in Vedas is his association with light. Two Rigvedic hymns in Mandala 7 refer to Vishnu, in section 7.99 of the Rgveda, Vishnu is addressed as the god who separates heaven and earth, a characteristic he shares with Indra. In the Vedic texts, the deity or god referred to as Vishnu is Surya or Savitr, in hymn 7.99 of Rigveda, Indra-Vishnu are equivalent and produce the sun, with the verses asserting that this sun is the source of all energy and light for all. In other hymns of the Rigveda, Vishnu is a friend of Indra. In the Yajurveda, Taittiriya Aranyaka, Narayana sukta, Narayana is mentioned as the supreme being, the first verse of Narayana Suktam mentions the words paramam padam, which literally mean highest post and may be understood as the supreme abode for all souls. This is also known as Param Dhama, Paramapadam or Vaikuntha, Rig Veda 1.22.20 a also mentions the same paramam padam. In the Atharvaveda, the mythology of a boar who raises goddess earth from the depths of cosmic ocean appears, in post-Vedic mythology, this legend becomes one of the basis of many cosmogonic myth called the Varaha legend, with Varaha as an avatar of Vishnu. Several hymns of the Rigveda repeat the mighty deed of Vishnu called the Trivikrama and it is an inspiration for ancient artwork in numerous Hindu temples such as at the Ellora Caves, which depict the Trivikrama legend through the Vamana avatar of Vishnu. Trivikrama refers to the three steps or three strides of Vishnu
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Hugli-Chuchura
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Chinsurah is a city in the state of West Bengal, India. It lies on the Hooghly River,35 km north of Kolkata and it is located in the district of Hugli and is home to the district headquarters. Chuchura houses the Commissioner of the Burdwan Range and it forms a part of the Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority region. The District Court building of Chinsurah is the longest building in West Bengal, Hooghly-Chuchura was a municipality formed by the merging of two towns, Hugli and Chinsura, in 1865. The names are spelled in other ways including Hooghly, Hugli, Hughli, Ugulim, Chinsura, Chunchura, Chuchro, the Grand Trunk Road passes through the town. Chuchura and Hugli are historic stations on the Howrah-Burdwan main line of the Eastern Railway, ferry services on the River Hugli serves as a link with the district of North 24 Parganas. Hugli-Chuchura is located at 22. 90°N88. 39°E /22.90,88.39 and this city is situated on the flood plain on the right bank of river Bhagirathi-Hooghly. The Portuguese founded the town of Hooghly-Chuchura in 1579, but the district has thousands of years of heritage in the form of the kingdom of Bhurshut. The city flourished as a port and some religious structures were built. One such structure is a Christian church dedicated to a statue of Mary, in the 17th century, political disorder struck the city and the Mughal governor of Bengal expelled the Portuguese. The fleeing Portuguese lost the statue in the river, but local people found it on the river bank. The arrested Portuguese were taken to Delhi, where a sentence of trampling by elephants was decreed. When the emperor Shah Jahan heard this he ordered the priests released and granted a piece of land on the bank of the river Hooghly, there the Portuguese constructed a church to house the statue, which still receives pilgrims today. The church was renovated in the 1980s and has declared as a basilica by the authority of Rome. In 1656 the Dutch erected a factory on the site of the town, at that time Calcutta was the principal settlement in Dutch Bengal, who used it as a base for the Dutch intra-Asian opium trade. In 1759 the garrison of Chinsura, on its march to Chandernagore, the Battle of Chinsurah lasted less than half an hour and ended with the rout of the Dutch attackers. In 1795, during the Napoleonic wars, a British garrison occupied the settlement, the peace of 1814 restored Hughli to the Dutch. However, in 1825, the Dutch ceded many of their possession in India to the British, both Chinsurah and Hooghly played a role in the Bengal renaissance and the Indian independence movement
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Rijcklof van Goens
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Van Goens was the Governor of Zeylan and Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies. He was the Governor of Zeylan from 12 May 1660 to 1661, then in 1663 and he was also served as Council Member of India during 1679. Van Goens was born in Rees and he wrote extensively about his travels to Ceylon and India. His writing about visits to the palaces of Sultan Agung and his successors are important references for historians of the Mataram era in Java and he died in Amsterdam, aged 63. On 20 February 1673, Van Goens with a fleet of 6,000 men attacked Bombay, soon, The Treaty of Westminster concluded between England and the Netherlands in 1674, relieved the British settlements in Bombay of further apprehension from the Dutch. In 1679 when Rijckloff van Goens arrived at Cape Town, while recuperating from an illness and he recommended to the Chamber of Seventeen, the governing body of the Dutch East India Company, that land should be granted to Simon van der Stel. Dutch East India Company Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies www. vocsite. nl
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Dutch Empire
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The Dutch Empire comprised the overseas colonies, enclaves, and outposts controlled and administered by Dutch chartered companies and subsequently, the Dutch Republic and the modern Netherlands. This was reflective of the fact that the network of the Dutch Empire was commercial exchange as opposed to sovereignty over a homogeneous landmass. The companies brief domination of global commerce contributed greatly to a commercial revolution, in their search for new trade passages between Asia and Europe Dutch navigators explored and charted vast regions such as New Zealand, Tasmania, and parts of the eastern coast of North America. Shortly after reaching its zenith, the Dutch Empire began to decline as a result of the Anglo-Dutch Wars, in which it lost many of its colonial possessions and trade monopolies to the British Empire. Nevertheless, some portions of the empire survived until the advent of global decolonisation following World War II, namely the East Indies, three former colonial territories—Aruba, Curaçao, and Sint Maarten—are retained as constituent countries within the Netherlands. In 1566, a Protestant Dutch revolt broke out against rule by Roman Catholic Spain, led by William of Orange, independence was declared in the 1581 Act of Abjuration. The revolt resulted in the establishment of an de facto independent Protestant republic in the north by Treaty of Antwerp, the coastal provinces of Holland and Zeeland had for centuries prior to Spanish rule been important hubs of the European maritime trade network. Their geographical location provided convenient access to the markets of France, Scotland, Germany, England, efficient access to capital enabled the Dutch in the 1580s to extend their trade routes beyond northern Europe to new markets in the Mediterranean and the Levant. In the 1590s, Dutch ships began to trade with Brazil and the Dutch Gold Coast of Africa, and towards the Indian Ocean, by attacking Portuguese overseas possessions, the Dutch forced Spain to divert financial and military resources away from its attempt to quell Dutch independence. Thus began the several decade-long Dutch-Portuguese War, in 1594, the Compagnie van Verre was founded in Amsterdam, with the aim of sending two fleets to the spice islands of Maluku. The first fleet sailed in 1596 and returned in 1597 with a cargo of pepper, the second voyage, returned its investors a 400% profit. The success of these led to the founding of a number of companies competing for the trade. The competition was counterproductive to the interests as it threatened to drive up the price of spices at their source in Indonesia whilst driving them down in Europe. As a result of the caused by inter-company rivalry, the Dutch East India Company was founded in 1602. The directors of the company, the Heeren XVII, were given the authority to establish fortresses and strongholds, to sign treaties. The company itself was founded as a joint stock company, similarly to its English rival that had founded two years earlier, the English East India Company. The Spanish-Dutch War was for the Dutch part of their struggle for independence and religious freedom, the Netherlands became part of the domains of the Spanish branch of the Habsburg dynasty when Emperor Charles V divided the holdings of the Habsburg Empire following his abdication in 1555. From 1517, the port of Lisbon in Portugal was the main European market for products from India that was attended by other nations to purchase their needs
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Batavia, Dutch East Indies
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Batavia was the name of the capital city of the Dutch East Indies and corresponds to the present-day city of Jakarta. The establishment of Batavia at the site of the city of Jayakarta by the Dutch in 1619 led to the Dutch colony that became modern Indonesia following World War II. Batavia became the center of the Dutch East India Companys trading network in Asia, monopolies on nutmeg, black pepper, cloves and cinnamon were augmented by non-indigenous cash crops like coffee, tea, cacao, tobacco, rubber, sugar and opium. To safeguard their commercial interests, the company and the colonial administration, Batavia lies on the north coast of Java, in a sheltered bay, over a flat land consisting of marshland and hills, and crisscrossed with canals. Batavia was a city for about 320 years until 1942 when the Dutch East Indies fell under Japanese occupation during World War II. During the Japanese occupation and again after Indonesian nationalists declared independence on August 17,1945, the period started with the founding of the walled city of Batavia by the Dutch East India Company following the destruction of the port city of Jayakarta. The period ends with the dissolution of the Dutch East India Company, in 1595, merchants from Amsterdam embarked upon an expedition to the East Indies archipelago. Under the command of Cornelis de Houtman, the expedition reached Bantam, capital of the Sultanate of Banten, in 1602, the English East India Companys first voyage, commanded by Sir James Lancaster, arrived in Aceh and sailed on to Bantam. There he was allowed to build a trading post that became the center of English trade in Indonesia until 1682, in 1602, the Dutch government granted a monopoly on Asian trade to the Dutch East India Company. In 1603, the first permanent Dutch trading post in Indonesia was established in Bantam, in 1610, Prince Jayawikarta granted permission to Dutch merchants to build a wooden godown and houses on the east bank of the Ciliwung River, opposite to Jayakarta. This outpost was established in 1611, as Dutch power increased, Jayawikarta allowed the British to erect houses on the west bank of the Ciliwung River, as well as a fort close to his customs office post, to keep the forces balanced. In December 1618, the relationship between Prince Jayawikarta and the Dutch escalated, and Jayawikartas soldiers besieged the Dutch fortress, containing the godowns Nassau. A British fleet of 15 ships arrived under the leadership of Sir Thomas Dale, after a sea battle, the newly appointed Dutch governor, Jan Pieterszoon Coen, escaped to the Moluccas to seek support. Meanwhile, the commander of the Dutch garrison, Pieter van den Broecke, along with five men, was arrested during negotiations. Later, Jayawikarta and the British entered into a friendship agreement, the Dutch army was on the verge of surrendering to the British when, in 1619, Banten sent a group of soldiers to summon Prince Jayawikarta. Jayawikartas friendship agreement with the British was without approval from the Bantenese authorities. The conflict between Banten and Prince Jayawikarta, as well as the relationship between Banten and the British, presented a new opportunity for the Dutch. Coen returned from the Moluccas with reinforcements on 28 May 1619 and razed Jayakarta to the ground on 30 May 1619, only the Padrão of Sunda Kelapa remained
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Governorate of Ambon
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Ambon was a governorate of the Dutch East India Company, consisting of Ambon Island and ten neighbouring islands. Steven van der Hagen captured Fort Victoria on 22 February 1605 from the Portuguese in the name of the Dutch East India Company, until 1619, Ambon served as the capital of the Dutch possessions in East Asia. In that year Batavia was founded to function as the port for the Dutch East India Company in Asia. The island was the center of clove production until the 19th century. The Dutch prohibited the rearing of the clove-tree in all the islands subject to their rule. In 1513, the Portuguese were the first Europeans to land on Ambon Island and they established a factory in 1521, but did not obtain peaceable possession of it until 1580. Indeed, the Portuguese never managed to control the trade in spices, and failed in attempts to establish their authority over the Banda Islands. The creole trade language Portugis however was well into the 19th century and many families still have Portuguese names. The Portuguese were dispossessed by the Dutch on 22 February 1605, Ambon was the headquarters of the Dutch East India Company from 1610 to 1619 until the founding of Batavia, now Jakarta, by the Dutch. Around 1615, the English founded a settlement on the island at Cambello, in 1623, the Dutch uncovered a plot by VOC-employed Japanese mercenary soldiers to seize Fort Victoria and assassinate the governor, purportedly in conspiracy with the English merchants. During questioning most suspects were waterboarded, among those who confessed,10 VOC mercenary soldiers and 10 English East India Company employees were found guilty of treason and were executed by a local Dutch court. On request of England, the judges were recalled to the Netherlands and put on trial. The 17th-century propaganda of a deliberate and gruesome slaughter of innocent merchants surfaces even in popular historical narratives. In 1795, the Batavian Republic was established with the help of French forces in the territory of the Dutch Republic, the latest stadtholder, William V, Prince of Orange asked the British in the Kew Letters to temporarily occupy the Dutch colonies. Indeed, in 1796, British Admiral Rainier sailed to Ambon to take the colony, Ambon was retaken by the British in 1810, but once more restored to the Dutch by virtue of the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1814. A History of Modern Indonesia Since c.1300
