The East India Company: The World's Most Powerful Corporation (The Story of Indian Business) by Tirthankar Roy Page A

these conflicts, the Company’s officers had already started discussing among themselves the need to build forts in their trading stations. The idea was not a new one. The Portuguese had shown the way. Although the Indian Ocean ceased to be a battleground in the 1630s, the Dutch maintained a larger military presence than the English. The death of Shah Jahan and the wars of succession in the 1660s added further to the growing feeling of insecurity. Between 1632 and 1690, three fortified settlements came up in India, in Madras, Bombay and Calcutta, in that order. These three sites embodied a whole new package of trade, naval defence, and politics, which would become the focal point of Company trade and territorial expansion in the eighteenth century.
Madras
    The Company’s seventh voyage of 1611 under Anthony Hippon had attempted to set up a factory on the Coromandel at Pulicat, in the hope of sharing the coast-to-coast trade with the Dutch who were already stationed there. The move failed due to Dutch protestation in thecourt of the queen who ruled that part of the coast. Hippon then sailed north towards the mouth of the river Krishna. Although a coast well known for cyclonic storms, the spot where he chose to land was reasonably sheltered from the sea. Nothing further came of this trip, even though a settlement of some sort continued here until 1687, when, repeatedly ravaged by fevers, it was dismantled. Three years after Hippon, another expedition to Pulicat was thwarted. After hosting the English to a lavish banquet, the Dutch forbade them to trade.
    Hippon and his companions carried on and landed at Masulipatnam where a more permanent but small station was set up. This port was ruled by the agents of Golconda, who wanted it to become a free port rather than a monopoly of any single European power. It was not until 1632 that Golconda’s own authority over Masulipatnam was secure enough for the English to trade freely. For some time, therefore, the English also tried a ‘miserable’ shelter called Armagaon. When they returned to Masulipatnam in 1632, they found that the weavers and dyers who had earlier supplied them cloth had all died in the 1630 famine.
    Nevertheless, the importance of Coromandel grew as a partner in trade with Bantam. Coromandel supplied the cotton cloth used as payment for pepper.Coromandel, in addition, was the source of hand-painted cotton in great demand in Europe and Asia alike. Another big attraction of Coromandel was the trade in diamonds from Golconda, which formed both a lucrative commodity as also a means of remitting money from India to Europe.
    In 1632, Francis Day (1605–70) arrived in the nearly ruined factory at Armagaon as a Company factor. Surrounded by hostile powers, Day began to look for a safer place for a factory. On a journey from Masulipatnam to Pondicherry, he settled on a spot between two villages, Madrasipatnam and Chinnapatnam. Located close to a Portuguese church and settlement, the site was purchased from the local ruler Damarla Venkatadri. Day described many advantages of the site to his colleagues at Masulipatnam. Cloth was cheaper to obtain, the coast was good for landing, the settlement was nearer the sources of painted cloth, and above all, the friendly local ruler had offered to construct the fort there before Day moved in, on the promise that he would be reimbursed in the form of Persian horses.
    When Day arrived in 1640, he discovered to his horror that the king had in mind a fort made of palmyra leaves. Taking matters into his own hands, he began constructing a fort with sturdier raw materials, possiblyon St George’s Day. The move did not make London happy, so Day had to start construction with his own money. The powers in London left any decision to prevent the coming up of the fort or punishment of Day to the Surat authorities. Officials in Surat, in turn, ‘hoped’ that the factors in Coromandel had considered all possible angles before building a fort