Madras

Madras (Chennai) had in 2004 a population of about 4.5 million and was India's fourth-largest city. Its location as a port is not at all ideal: it has a long straight beach beaten by a strong surf and lacks a natural basin for anchoring ships. Before an artificial harbor was constructed in 1911, ships had to anchor at sea, and many small boats were needed for loading and unloading them. Expert boatsmen made a living with this arduous work for centuries. Madras owed its growth to the English East India Company, which established its first outpost here in 1639. The English name Madras was derived from Madraspatnam, which referred to a village with an Islamic religious school (madrasa). Once other important Indian towns reverted to their ancient names in the 1990s, Madras was renamed Chennai in 1996, which reflected its old Tamil name. It is supposed to have been derived from Chennappah, the name of the father of the local landlords who in 1639 had granted land to the British, who then built Fort St. George at this place. In 1522 the Portuguese had established St. Thomé in Mylapore, which is now a part of Chennai.

The coast of this region had attracted international trade since ancient times. Roman ships sailed to Poduke/Arikamedu, about 100 kilometers south of Chennai near present Pondicherry. (According to lore, the apostle St. Thomas was killed and buried at Mylapore, near Madras.) The European East India Companies were mainly interested in the colorful printed cotton textiles produced in this area. The Dutch East India Company made a good business out of selling these textiles in other Asian countries and, eventually, marketing them also in Europe. The British followed this example, but in the eighteenth century they substituted cloth printed in London for that printed in India and imported white cotton cloth, mostly from Bengal. This was a setback for textile exports from Madras.

In the eighteenth century Chennai had a population of about 150,000; by 1816 it had grown to about320,000. In 1842 the first steamer reached Chennai from London, and in 1856 the city was connected to the rapidly expanding British-Indian railway network. This stimulated its growth as a commercial hub. In 1871 it had about 400,000 inhabitants, and in 1891 this number had increased to 450,000. At this time the value of exports via the port of Chennai also increased: it amounted to 64 million rupees in 1871 and reached 116 million rupees in 1891. By 1911 it stood at 240 million rupees. Bombay (Mumbai) exported about twice as much and Calcutta (Kolkata) nearly four times as much as Chennai in that same year; this clearly reflects the hierarchy of these three ports in India's colonial economy. After 1914 the sequence war-depression-war greatly affected this economy. It was only after the achievement of India's independence in 1947 that industrial growth became of greater importance in Chennai, which had so far been mostly an administrative and commercial center. Industries supplying the Indian home market (textiles, manufacturing of trucks and busses, etc.) rose while the port declined. India had copied the institution of the port authority with its own specialized labor force from the British precedent. Originally this was a good idea, because the speedy loading and unloading of ships requires some skills, but in independent India this labor force often went on strike or worked slowly, thus stretching turnaround times in Indian ports out of proportion. The port authority did not mind this; on the contrary, it profited from charging high demurrage fees. This, of course, discouraged shipowners from visiting Indian ports—they would only do so if they had to unload cargo right there. Transit business (breaking bulk) was lost to Indian ports. This also affected Chennai, whose port dwindled to insignificance when compared to nearby Colombo.

Chennai is the capital of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Under British rule it had been the capital of the huge Madras presidency. In independent India the principle of linguistic provinces finally prevailed: those who speak Telugu attained their own state, Andhra Pradesh, and the remaining part, which was for some time called Madras state, then changed its name to Tamil Nadu. Although Chennai was central to the Madras presidency, it is quite an eccentric capital as far as Tamil Nadu is concerned since it is located only 40 kilometers south of the border of Andhra Pradesh, but 650 kilometers north of the southern tip of Tamil Nadu. Several cities with more than 1 million inhabitants can now be found in the more central regions of the state, and Chennai has grown more slowly, decreasing the pressure of "metropolization."

SEE ALSO Bangladesh; Bengal; Calcutta; Cotton; Cowries; East India Company, British; Empire, British; Empire, Mughal; Gujarat; Imperialism; India;Mumbai;Rice;Spices and the Spice Trade;Tea;Textiles;Wheat and Other Cereal Grains.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Neild, Susan. "Colonial Urbanism: The Development of Madras City in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries." Modern Asian Studies 13, no. 2 (1979): 217–246.

Rothermund, Dietmar. An Economic History of India. 2nd edition. London: Routledge, 1993.

Dietmar Rothermund