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Calicut's E&S Company
Senior citizens of Calicut would recall that the tea dust they bought some half a century ago used to come in large plywood chests and was dispensed by the retailer in pounds or its fractions. These...
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Mambram Thangal and Mahatma Gandhi
When Mambram Pookoya Thangal had challenged British authority in the 1840s, his followers had believed that he was invested with powers to perform miracles. It was even said that he could stop the...
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Calicut - about a Hundred Years Ago
S.K.Pottekkatt courtesy WikipediaThe colonial writers of the 19th and early 20th century like Logan and Evans-Innes have left detailed descriptions of the province of Malabar during their time. But, as...
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Terrorist Acts in Calicut
Calicut is in the news for all the wrong reasons. There was a series of bomb blasts in the city a couple of years ago. The peace-loving citizens of Calicut thought it was some amateurish attempt to...
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Did the British Really Conquer Us?
JahangirThe title is intended to provoke. We hear the refrain that those who came to trade conquered us and colonised us. How far is it true? Was it a one-sided conquest or did our rulers aid and abet...
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The Unsung Heroes of the Bomb Case
We had touched upon the 1942 Keezhariyur Bomb Case in an earlier post (click here). Many readers responded that they were not aware of this incident in the history of Calicut's fight for Indian...
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Baudelaire and the Girl from Malabar
Charles BaudelaireCourtesy WikipediaCharles Baudelaire (1821-1867) was a French Romantic poet who is considered as a pioneer among the French Symbolists of the 19th Century. His most famous work, Les...
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Calicut and the decline of Venice
The Silk Route (red) and traditional coastal spice route (blue) courtesy: WikipediaWhen Vasco Da Gama reached the shores of Calicut, the first to greet him was a Muslim merchant from Tunis with the...
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Remembering Conolly - the Malabar Collector between 1846 and 1855
Maddy has, in a recent post, mentioned the contributions of H.V. Conolly, Malabar Collector between 1842 and 1855 – a brilliant career which was cut short at the age of 49 when he was brutally killed...
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A Jews Street in Calicut?
A view of the Jews Street with shops at the far endIt was young Toufeek Zakariya, a history enthusiast, avid blogger (http://relicsofcranganore.blogspot.com) and an accomplished calligrapher...
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A Kochi Girl in the Mughal Court - 1707-1732
Cochin -1656 courtesy:www.farelli.infoPortuguese had ruled Cochin for nearly 160 years between 1503 and 1663 before the Dutch invasion. Although the...
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Remembering Dr.K.B. Menon
We had occasion to recall the great contribution of Dr.K.B.Menon to the freedom struggle in the context of the Kizhariyur Bomb Case of which he was the first accused. His story inspired us to do some...
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One Hundred Years of a local Logan
One Hundred Years of a local LoganLogan’s Malabar Manual (1887) has inspired many of his successors to study the customs, traditions and the economy of the area in great detail. The most notable of...
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Portrait of a Young Zamorin
The image that comes to mind of the Zamorin is usually that of an old patriarch presiding over the destinies of his territory from the Calicut palace. The formula for succession - the eldest male...
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A New Look at Calicut's China Ties
Dr.Liu Yinghua examining the manuscripts at the Calicut University Historians of Calicut deal with the Chinese period in its history as a brief interlude of about a quarter of a century between 1400and...
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Men Who Ruled Malabar
Malabar came under British rule in 1792, although it was only in 1800 that a proper administrative structure was put in place, after a prolonged period of turbulence. It constituted an important...
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Travails of Trading in Malabar
Travails of Trading in Malabar Vasco da Gama was supposed to have made his agenda clear to the first person he had met on Calicut coast. The story goes that in reply to a question from the Genoese...
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Calicut's Contribution to Sanskrit Scholarship
Medieval Calicut was known as a prosperous entrepot, often described as the Emporium of the World. People of several nationalities speaking a variety of languages used to visit this busy trading centre...
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Did a tsunami hit Calicut coast in 1847?
After the disastrous tsunami of 2004, researchers have been digging into the past to document all cases of possible tsunamis which happened in the past. We were alerted to the possibility of a tsunami...
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Was Zheng He a Colonialist?
Early this year, I was invited to participate in a lively discussion at the Nalanda Srivijaya Centre of the Institute of South East Asian Studies (ISEAS), Singapore. Key speakers were Prof. Geoff Wade...
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