A village bought in 1639 grew into British rule over most of South India
In 1639 an East India Company agent named Francis Day secured a grant of land at a fishing village called Madraspatinam and built Fort St George there. From that foothold grew the Madras Presidency, which at its height covered nearly all of South India and, for a while, Ceylon too.
The English came to the east coast for cloth. After Queen Elizabeth I chartered the East India Company on 31 December 1600, envoys negotiated with the Mughal emperor Jahangir for trading posts. Masulipatnam, founded in 1611, became the oldest English post on India's eastern seaboard, followed by Armagon in 1625. A shortage of cotton cloth and pressure from the Sultan of Golconda pushed the Company south, where Day bargained with the Raja of Chandragiri for the Madras site. By 1641 Fort St George was the Company's headquarters on the Coromandel Coast.
Its status seesawed. The agency became a presidency in 1652, dropped back in 1655, and was raised again in 1684 under Elihu Yale. Pitt's India Act of 1785 made Madras one of the Company's three presidencies. Ceylon was attached from 1793 until 1815, after which the head was titled Governor and answered to the viceroy in Calcutta. By 1908 the province had twenty-two districts, each run by a District Collector, subdivided down to villages. Madras city was the capital, with the hill town of Ooty serving as a summer retreat.
The territory carried a long history of its own. Stone Age dolmens show early settlement; the Tamil Pandya dynasty ruled the north from 230 BC, and the Cholas expanded across Tamil Nadu in the 10th century. Malik Kafur's capture of Madurai in 1311 brought a period of decline before the Vijayanagar Empire, founded in 1336, restored the Tamil and Telugu lands. The southwestern parts, Kerala and Tulu Nadu, kept a distinct language and culture.
In the 20th century Madras was the first presidency to introduce dyarchy after the Montagu–Chelmsford Reforms, with a Governor sharing power with a prime minister, and it produced many leading figures of the independence movement. It was officially the Presidency of Fort St George until 1937. On 26 January 1950, when India became a republic, it became Madras State, covering land now in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and neighbouring states.
Source: Madras Presidency
