Dutch-Maratha relations under Shivaji during 1660-80: A survey of the research done till date, new discoveries and importance of Dutch records for studying the life of Shivaji. Sanshodhak (ISSN 2394-5990), Year 85, vol.2, June 2017. (pp 54-74) (original) (raw)
Related papers
The book, titled Beknopte Historie van het Mogolsche Keyzerryk en de Zuydelyke Aangrensende Ryken, printed in 1758, discusses in short the History of the Mughal Empire and other Kingdoms in India. This small work, comprising of only 120 pages, is noteworthy, primarily owing to its treatment of Maratha History as a separate topic in its own right, and also because of its concise, informative style. This paper translates the Maratha-related portion from the book and offers a few comments about the contents thereof.
During the famous Dakshin Digvijay aka the Southern Conquest, Chhatrapati Shivaji succeeded in capturing the entire Adilshahi Karnataka; i.e. the part of Coromandel coast & adjoining hinterland, which was under Adilshahi kingdom before. After the conquest of the province, he began reorganizing the administration therein. During the process, his officials viz. Raghunath Pandit & others granted kauls (letters of assurance) to the Dutch for trading at Tegenepatnam & Porto Novo. The latter port city was the cause of some dispute between the Dutch & the Marathas, which was amicably resolved in the end around February-March 1680. The present paper describes these events with the help of four kauls, detailed translation of which is presented here for the first time.
Chhatrapati Shivaji, during his famous " conquest of south " a.k.a. Dakshin Digvijay, conquered Adilshahi Karnataka during May-September 1677. After capturing the famous fort of Gingi and other places, he began setting up and reorganizing the administration of the newly won province. Therein, he granted two kauls to the Dutch East India company aka VOC (Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie), one to Albert van Weede, head of Tegenapatnam factory and one to Jacques Caulier, governor of the Dutch Coromandel, continuing their trading rights given to them by the Adilshah except for the purchase of slaves. This paper gives the complete translation of both the kauls alongwith their original Dutch texts. The kaul given to Jaques Caulier is being published in the whole for the very first time here.
A Dutch Report on the Maratha invasions of Bengal - Observations & Remarks.
Quarterly of the Bharat Itihas Sanshodhak Mandal, Pune. Year 99, Volumes 1-4, April 2022 - March 2023. Pages 167-192., 2023
This paper provides a full English translation (along with original Dutch text) of a Dutch report of the Maratha invasions (during 1742 CE) of Bengal, and also offers some observations & remarks of the author about the same.
During a recent visit to the Nationaal Archief at The Hague, Netherlands, I discovered a sizable corpus of letters, hitherto unknown , exchanged between the Dutch East India Company (more commonly known as Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, i.e.VOC) and Shivaji, the founder of the Maratha polity. These letters, besides being the first known example of Dutch-Shivaji direct correspondence, reveal a huge amount of information about the political & economic events that took place in India at that time along with the structure of bureaucratic machinery. This paper discusses 6 letters and 1 kaul (letter of assurance) given by Shivaji & his officials to the VOC regarding the management of trade at Vengurla in 1676.
Quarterly of the Bharat Itihas Samshodhak Mandal, Pune. Year 95, Volumes 1-4, April 2018-March 2019. Pages 141-160.
The nine years' war (1688-97) in Europe divided the continent into France and her enemies. It was fought in Europe, the Americas and Asia alike. As a result, the Franco-Dutch enmities flared up in India. The Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) aka the Dutch East India Company, with support from Rajaram, the 3 rd Maratha Chhatrapati, succeeded in driving out the French from Pondicherry during 1693 and made it a Dutch trading post but had to give it back to the French in 1699, following the treaty of Ryswick in 1697. Rajaram, who had to flee the Maratha homeland in the wake of a full-scale Mughal attempt of the conquest of Deccan, made the Fortress of Gingee in the South Carnatic his base and faced the Mughals. With his arrival, the European powers in the Coromandel viz. the British, the French and the Dutch were anxious not to antagonize either the Marathas or the Mughals. Regarding the issue of Pondicherry, Rajaram had initially supported the French but later on chose to support the Dutch instead. Using diverse sources, this paper traces these complex developments from the Maratha angle, giving full translations of a Kaul and a letter from Rajaram to the Dutch.
Thanjavur (Tanjore) was one of the important successor states of the Vijayanagara Empire in South India. After a war between the Nayakas of Thanjavur & Madurai, the former was killed, and thereafter, Thanjavur was quickly seized by Ekoji, an Adilshahi general, who was also the half brother of Shivaji. Thus the Thanjavur Maratha dynasty was born. The Maratha monarchs of Thanjavur and their officials issued 7 kauls 1 to VOC i.e. Dutch East India Company during 1676-91, which provide us varied and detailed information about the nature and extent of the operations of VOC in Koromandel region, along with its relations with the Thanjavur Kings. During this time, at least two armed conflicts between the VOC and Thanjavur Maratha Kingdom took place. The reason behind choosing the year 1690-91 as the limit is that the year is significant for both VOC as well as Thanjavur Marathas-the former saw its headquarters shifted & the latter had to face Mughal invasion & pay tribute to Mughals. Despite the importance of both VOC & Thanjavur Marathas Kingdom in the political & economic History of the Koromandel coast, their relations with each other have never been explored in detail till date. This paper is a modest first attempt to rectify the glaring gap in the available literature.
Indian Historical Review, 2017
The Dutch East India Company (VOC) shared a history of two hundred years of coexistence with the locals in Bengal. And yet their official reports had little to say about this relation, except frequent complaints against the locals and the accompanying, inherent distrust. There has been, however, a significant amount of historiography that has developed in the recent decades on Indo-Dutch contacts based on the information available in the sources. This article aims to add more nuances to these dynamics, by showing how the Company and its officials were seen by the locals in Bengal. It argues that the local–Dutch relation had not just been about static characterisations of 'partnership', 'cooperation' or 'conflict', but was rather dependant on personal networks and profit motives backed by diverse social positions. The Dutch in the perception of the locals had different meanings, images and implications. Through the study of three objects—local texts, a Dutch painting and a legal case—this article aims to capture precisely these very perceptions in contributing towards the complex of Indo-Dutch interactions in seventeenth century Bengal. I had a book in my hands to while away the time, and it occurred to me that in a way a landscape is not unlike a book—a compilation of pages that overlap without any two ever being the same. People open the book according to their taste and training, their memories and desires: for a geologist the compilation opens at one page, for a boatman at another, and still
The seventeenth century was the Golden Age of the Netherlands, or the Republic of the (Seven) United Provinces as it was then called. The Dutch were on the cutting edge of academia, art, science, engineering and defence and were well-known for their world-wide trading in the Levant, the Baltic, Africa, Asia (known as the East Indies), the Caribbean and the Americas (together known as the West Indies). One of the most remarkable of organisations created in the United Provinces was the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC), the Dutch East India Company. It created a territorial legacy in Asia that would last until the middle of the twentieth century, a hundred and fifty years after its disappearance, and has become one of the symbols of Dutch entrepreneurial spirit and empire. This essay will analyse the creation, overseas evolution and the decline of the VOC as well as explain its territorial legacy to the Netherlands.
This third volume (593 pp.) in the series of Dutch Sources on South Asia c. 1600-1825 is a guide to Dutch archival materials and two-dimensional works of art kept in repositories outside the Netherlands. It contains detailed descriptions of the voluminous archives and collections deriving from the Dutch East India Company (VOC) stored in Chennai, Colombo, Jakarta, Cape Town, London and Paris, as well as miscellaneous Dutch sources scattered elsewhere in South Asia, Europe, North America and the Far East. Together with Volumes 1 and 2, which deal with the National Archives of the Netherlands and other repositories in the Netherlands respectively, it covers all known Dutch sources worldwide relating to more than two centuries of intensive Dutch contacts with the Indian subcontinent and Sri Lanka.