CDS (I) 2023 General Knowledge · Question 80 of 120

Correct — B, The Battle of Colachel. Fought on 10 August 1741, Colachel was Marthanda Varma of Travancore's victory over the Dutch East India Company, and it is the standard textbook instance of an Asian power defeating a European naval power in India. The Dutch had backed Travancore's rivals along the Malabar coast and had landed at Colachel; Marthanda Varma's forces cut them off and forced a surrender. Among the prisoners was the Dutch commander Eustachius De Lannoy, who was paroled, took service with Travancore, rose to be its senior admiral — the Valiya Kappithan — modernised its army along European lines and built the Nedumkotta line of fortifications in the north of the kingdom. Colachel lies in Kanyakumari district of present-day Tamil Nadu.

• (a)The Battle of Porto Novo — Porto Novo, on the Coromandel coast, was fought in July 1781 — forty years later, in the Second Anglo-Mysore War, where Sir Eyre Coote's British force met Hyder Ali. It has nothing to do with Travancore or the Dutch.
• (c)The Battle of Pollilore — Pollilur belongs to the same Anglo-Mysore conflict, where Hyder Ali's forces destroyed Colonel Baillie's detachment in 1780. Again the parties are the British and Mysore, not Travancore and the Dutch.
• (d)The Battle of Changanassery — Changanassery is a town in Kottayam district of Kerala and does not figure as the site of any battle in the standard accounts of Travancore's wars. It is here to sound plausibly Keralan.

Marthanda Varma, who ruled Travancore from 1729, is remembered for welding a set of quarrelsome chiefdoms into a single centralised kingdom with a standing army paid from the treasury. His expansion northwards along the coast collided with Dutch commercial interests, and the Dutch attempt to check him ended at Colachel in 1741. The victory removed Dutch influence from the region as a serious force and made Travancore the dominant power in the far south of the peninsula.

The item is really asking whether you can attach the right European power to the right Indian ruler. Three of the four option names are drawn from the Anglo-Mysore wars of the 1780s, which is a different decade, a different opponent and a different coast. Two anchors settle it quickly. First, the Dutch in India lose their great set-piece battle to Travancore, not to the British — the British destroyed Dutch power at Bedara in Bengal in 1759, but the Malabar story ends at Colachel. Second, the date 1741 is well before the Carnatic and Mysore wars, so any option tied to the Anglo-French or Anglo-Mysore struggles is out of period. Note that the stem says only 'the Travancore King'; the ruler was Marthanda Varma, and the Dutch commander De Lannoy's later career in Travancore service is the detail examiners most often add.

• The Battle of Colachel was fought on 10 August 1741 between Travancore under Marthanda Varma and the Dutch East India Company.
• The Dutch commander Eustachius De Lannoy was captured, later took service with Travancore and rose to be its senior admiral, the Valiya Kappithan.
• De Lannoy reorganised the Travancore army on European lines and built the Nedumkotta line of fortifications; he is buried at Udayagiri Fort.
• Colachel is on the coast of Kanyakumari district in present-day Tamil Nadu.
• Marthanda Varma ruled Travancore from 1729 and is credited with creating a centralised state with a standing army.

• Attaching the Dutch defeat to the British rather than to Travancore.
• Placing an eighteenth-century Malabar battle among the Anglo-Mysore engagements of the 1780s.
• Assuming Colachel is in Kerala because Travancore was; the site lies in Kanyakumari district of Tamil Nadu today.

As a name-the-battle item, or inverted into a which-European-power-was-defeated question, sometimes with De Lannoy's later career as the hook.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Eustachius De Lannoy, who was captured in 1741 and later became the senior admiral of Travancore, originally commanded the forces of which European power?

  • (a)Portugal
  • (b)France
  • (c)The Netherlands
  • (d)Denmark

  Answer(c) The Netherlands — he led the Dutch East India Company force defeated at Colachel and then took service under Marthanda Varma.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which ruler of Travancore defeated the Dutch at Colachel in 1741?

  • (a)Rama Varma
  • (b)Marthanda Varma
  • (c)Chithira Thirunal
  • (d)Swathi Thirunal

  Answer(b) Marthanda Varma — he ruled from 1729 and built Travancore into the dominant power of the far south.