Arrowsmith, Aaron

1809

Composite: (Sheets 1-3) Map of the Province of Malabar, Drawn from Various Surveys By A. Arrowsmith

A. Arrowsmith Hydrographer to H.R.H. the Prince of Wales

London

Composite Map

99

67

India

Kerala (India)

Malabar Region (India)

(Composite map of) (Sheets 1-3) Map of the Province of Malabar, Drawn from Various Surveys By A. Arrowsmith

15782.004

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Arrowsmith, Aaron

1809

Map of the Province of Malabar, Drawn from Various Surveys By A. Arrowsmith

British Library (2 examples): Cartographic Items Maps 56310.(1.) and Cartographic Items Maps 56310.(2.); Bibliothèque nationale de France: GE C-5324; Bodleian Library (Oxford University): (E) D10:25 (17); TU Darmstadt, Universitäts- und- Landesbibliothek: LK Mappe 79/27; Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek: ALB Port 249,11; OCLC: 556499851, 1176763031, 948015904, 921706532; Susan GOLE (ed.), A Series of Early Printed Maps of India in Facsimile (New Delhi: Jayaprints 1984), Plate 53; The Journal of the Royal Geographic Society of London, vol. 26 (1856), p. cxxxi;

"Very rare – Aaron Arrowsmith’s map of the ‘Province of Malabar’, depicting what is the northern half of today’s Kerala state (including Kochi, Kozhikode and Kannur), a region then newly conquered by the British East India Company that remained a locus of insurgency – the first accurate and detailed map of the region, predicated upon recent military surveys executed during and in the aftermath of the Third and Fourth Anglo-Mysore Wars, it features of wealth of information that appears in print for the first time, coloured in Arrowsmith’s resplendent signature hues, a private commission made as a strategic aid for the British Indian Army and civil service and a vital source map for Arrowsmith’s famous 1816 general map of India. The Province of Malabar (later the District of Malabar) was a jurisdiction of British India, created in 1792, that covered the territory which approximates the northern half of today’s Kerala State. The province took its name from the Malabar Coast, the southwestern littoral of India. Beginning in the 12th century, the was dominated by the kingdom of the Zamorin of Calicut (Kozhikode), a powerful state made wealthy by maritime trade and high-value tropical agriculture. To the south of the Calicut state was the Kingdom of Cochin (Kochi), a smaller, but wealthy, rival power. The term ‘Province of Malabar’ was first used by Marco Polo around 1320 to describe the Calicut state. Notably, in 1498, Calicut was the first place in India encountered by a modern European mariner, upon the arrival of Vasco da Gama. For the next century and a half, Portugal maintained a strong presence in the region, making Cochin a protectorate. In the mid-17th century, they we replaced as the dominant colonial power by the Dutch, while Britain and France held the small trading ports of Tellicherry and Mahé respectively. In 1755, Calicut lost its role as the leading regional indigenous power when it was defeated at the Battle of Purakkad (1755) by a new rival, the Kingdom of Travancore, established in 1729, that controlled what is today southern Kerala. In 1766, Hyder Ali, the leader of the incipient Indian superpower, the Sultanate of Mysore, invaded and conquered Calicut and Cochin, integrating their lands into his state. In 1790, early in the Third Anglo-Mysore War (1790-2), the forces of the British East India Company (EIC), with the assistance of many of the nairs, or local rulers (who despised the Mysoreans), conquered the northern part of the Malabar Coast, territory which was ceded to Britain by the Treaty of Seringapatam (1792), that ended the conflict. The British immediately declared the conquered territory to be the ‘Province of Malabar’, to be ruled as part of the EIC’s Madras Presidency. In 1795, British gained de jure dominance over what is today Kerala upon signing protectorate agreements with Cochin and Travancore. In 1799, during the Fourth Anglo -Mysore War (1798-9), the British vanquished Mysore, slaying their brave and industrious leader, Tipu Sultan. They thus eliminated the last existential threat to British power in Southern India, assuming control over the Mysorean territories. However, the British had severely misread the mood of people of the Malabar Coast. The nairs who had supported the British efforts to defeat Mysore, perhaps rightly, expected to be restored to positions of significant power. However, the EIC merely accorded them roles as ineffectual figureheads. The British also proceeded to impose heavy taxes upon the province to pay for their armies, which proved very unpopular. The nairs found all this to be an intolerable betrayal, and so some proceeded to rebel again British rule. The most serious insurgency was launched in 1793 by the Pazhassi Raja, the ruler of Kottayam, although this conflict did not break into full-scale warfare until after 1799. His movement was soon joined by several lesser potentates. The British encountered great trouble battling the insurgency, fighting in the dense jungles of the mountain of the Western Ghats. The had to deploy an army of 15,000 men, of which they soon suffered 4,000 casualties. Yet, by 1806, the British managed to overpower the rebels. That year, the EIC dissolved the Calicut state and assumed formal direct rule over the Province of Malabar, essentially removing any authority enjoyed by the local nairs, in return for granting them 20% of the region’s annual tax revenues as pensions. However, just when the British, once again, assumed that they had won the day in the Malabar Coast, their protectorates of Cochin and Travancore turned on them, in what became known as the Travancore Rebellion (1808–9). This insurgency received military support from the Sikh Empire in the Punjab, one of Britain’s great remaining nemeses on the Indian Subcontinent. While the rebellion was put down, and British assumed greater oversight of the Cochin and Travancore, the situation in the later state remained restive. In 1812, the British foiled a plotted coup orchestrated by Travancore’s prime minister, Iravi Tamby, and Vira Varma, the nephew of Pazhassi Rajah, the late ruler of Kottayam. That same year they also put down the Kurichia Revolt, launched by the Wayanand tribe, in the interior above Cannanore (Kannur), that aimed to make Vira Varma the Zamorin with sovereign powers. In 1814, the British gained sovereign title to the city and islands of Cochin, although the rest of the kingdom remained a princely state. Henceforth, the British kept the Malabar Coast under very tight supervision and eventually developed cordial relationships with the local rulers. As such, the Raj did not experience any serious resistance to its rule until the advent of the Indian Independence movement beginning in the 1920s. The Map in Focus This very rare and attractive large format work is the first accurate and detailed map of the Province of Malabar, roughly encompassing the northern half of modern Kerala. It was published in August 1809, just as the EIC had finally subdued the major resistance to their rule, by Aaron Arrowsmith, the world’s premier cartographer of the early 19th century. Importantly, the map was likely made as a private commission by the EIC to serve as an aid to its senior officers (for military strategy) and officials (ex. for tax collection, etc.), which explains why the map was published in a print run that was too small to be otherwise commercially viable. Arrowsmith, who had unrivalled sources within the Indian mapping establishment, predicated the map upon previously unpublished surveys conducted by British military engineers over the previous two decades. During the Third Anglo-Mysore War (1890-2), and in the period since, the almost constant unrest motivated the British to conduct what were, in many cases, scientifically advanced surveys of much of the region. While this mapping was executed peameal, and was not of uniform quality, overall, the level of planimetric accuracy is quite impressive. A precisely accurate survey of Kerala would have to wait some years. Mapping of the region was considered a priority for the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India (1802-70), the ongoing mega-project to systematically map the entire Indian Subcontinent to the highest scientific standards to the scale 1 inch to the mile. While a trigonometric surveying network called the ‘Great Arc Series’ had been run up the Malabar Coast in 1806, it would take quite some time to fill in the mapping regulated by these triangles. The present map extends from Cochin, in the far south, up along the coast, past the great ports of Calicut (Kozhikode) and ‘Cananor’ (Kannur), up north just past Mount Delly, the 285-metre-high landmark that was the only littoral highland in the region (and the first thing in India sighted by Vasco da Gama in 1498). Other notable ports include, just south of Kannur, the EIC outpost of Tellicherry and nearby Mahé, until recently a French colonial possession. The coastal lowlands, which are punctuated by numerous rivers and lagoons, are shown to rise to the heights of the Western Ghats, which are expressed by energetically engraved hachures. The scene also extends inland, beyond the limits of the province to show, in the far upper right, Seringapatam, formerly the capital of the once mighty Sultanate of Mysore. The region is shown to be divided into named taluks, administrative jurisdictions (somewhat akin to counties), which are outlined in the bright hues that were a signature of Arrowsmith’s work. The road network is carefully delineated, while innumerable cities, towns and villages are labelled, plus the locations of residences of certain local luminaries such as ‘Oonat Moopa’s House’, in the taluk of Valatra. The map also includes some notes referencing the British-Mysore Wars, such as, in the Pangea area of northern ‘Koork’ (Coorg), a line that notes that this territory was ‘Given up by the Coork Rajah to Tippoo [Tipu Sultan] in 1792’. Of special interest, is the appearance, in the south, of the ‘Travancore Lines’, locally referred to as ‘Nedumkotta’, being a great wall 48 km long, 20 feet wide and 12 feet high that ran from Paliport, on the coast inland to the foothills of the Western Ghats. This wall was constructed on the orders of the Rajah of Travancore between 1762 and 1775, for the purpose of preventing Hyder Ali’s Mysorean armies from invading his domains. The wall was well-built and proved highly effective, as it severely hindered Hyder’s forces, making it impossible for them to conquer Travancore. Subsequently, the wall also stymied the British Indian Army. Sections of the wall still survive to the present day. As for Aaron Arrowsmith (1750 -1823), the mapmaker to the Prince of Wales (later George IV), he was the most consequential mapmaker of the early 19th century. He was responsible for groundbreaking works predicated upon privileged sources, all beautifully engraved with his resplendent signature colour scheme. His many masterpieces include his A Map Exhibiting all the New Discoveries in the Interior Parts of North America (1802); A map of the United States of North America (1796), and most relevant to the present work, To The Honble. the Court of Directors of the East India Company This Improved Map of India Compiled From all the Latest & most Authentic Materials… (1816), the finest general map of India of its era, which used the present work as key source. Upon his death, his work ably continued by his nephew, John Arrowsmith (1790 - 1873). A Note on Rarity The present map is very rare. Arrowsmith was likely made the work as a private commission in only a very small print run. We can trace only 6 institutional examples, held by the British Library (2 examples); Bibliothèque nationale de France; Bodleian Library (Oxford University); TU Darmstadt, Universitäts- und- Landesbibliothek; and the Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek. Moreover, we are aware of only a single other example of the map as appearing on the market, being an uncoloured example once offered by a French bookdealer. " (Alexander Johnson/Dasa Pahor, 2023)

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Arrowsmith, Aaron