Social and Economic Contexts of the Coromandel Coast of South India in the Colonial Period and the Indian Diaspora Formation

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Historical Archaeology in the Indian Ocean" , at the 2020 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

The Coromandel coast in South India, which was in the continuous focus of the European maritime powers, had a dynamic role in the political and commercial activities of the Indian Ocean region from the 16th to early 20th centuries. This paper focuses on the socio-economic contexts in areas surrounding Dutch, Danish, English and French enclaves between Chennai to Nagapattinam, and the dynamics of Indian diaspora formation. We argue that to understand such movements one has to look to a longer-term history. The political instability of South India from the 13th century and the lack of a state system perhaps had stronger impact on the marginalised sections of the society, who were willing to migrate to the foreign lands in search of better prospects, but only to be exploited by the colonial system. To make this argument we rely on a combination of landscape archaeology, vernacular Tamil literature, and archival records.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2020   •
• Historical Archaeology in the Indian Ocean

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Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 493