NDA (II) 2018 General Ability Test · Question 142 of 146

Correct — B, Fort St. George. The English East India Company acquired the strip of coast that became Madras in 1639, through negotiations led by Francis Day with the ruler of Chandragiri, and the fort raised on it was completed on 23 April 1644 at a cost of £3,000. That date is St. George's Day, the feast of England's patron saint, which is how the fort got its name. It was the first English fortress in India, and the settlement that grew up around it — the White Town inside the walls and the Black Town outside — became the city of Madras. The fort still stands and houses the Tamil Nadu legislative assembly.

• (a)Fort William — Fort William is the Company's fortified settlement in Calcutta, not Madras, and it is named after King William III. It is the standard partner to Fort St. George in this kind of question, which is why it is offered first.
• (c)Elphinstone Circle — Elphinstone Circle is in Bombay, not Madras, and it is not a fortified settlement at all. It was planned in 1869 and completed in 1872 as a garden and business quarter, named after a Governor of Bombay, and was renamed Horniman Circle after independence.
• (d)Marble Palace — The Marble Palace is a nineteenth-century private mansion in north Calcutta, built by a wealthy Bengali merchant family. It is a house, not a Company settlement, and it is in the wrong city.

The three Presidency towns each grew out of a fortified Company post, and the fort names are the shorthand historians use for them — Fort St. George for Madras from 1639, Fort William for Calcutta from the 1690s, and Bombay, which the Company received from the Crown in 1668 after it came to Charles II as part of Catherine of Braganza's dowry. Madras is the eldest of the three, which is why so much early Company administration, coinage and record-keeping starts there.

Only one of the four options is even a fort, which makes this a quicker item than it looks. Of the two forts, Fort William belongs to Calcutta and Fort St. George to Madras; and the remaining two options are Bombay and Calcutta landmarks of the nineteenth century, far too late to be a Company settlement. A neat mnemonic is that the fort is named for the patron saint of England and Madras is where the English arrived first — saint and seniority together.

• Fort St. George at Madras was founded in 1639 and completed on 23 April 1644, St. George's Day.
• It was the first English fortress in India and the nucleus of the city of Madras.
• Fort William is the Company's fortified settlement at Calcutta; Bombay came to the Company from the Crown in 1668.
• Elphinstone Circle in Bombay was planned in 1869 and renamed Horniman Circle after independence.
• Fort St. George today houses the Tamil Nadu legislative assembly.

• Swapping Fort William and Fort St. George; William belongs to Calcutta, George to Madras.
• Treating any famous colonial-era landmark as a Company settlement — a garden circle and a private mansion are neither.
• Dating Madras later than Calcutta; the Madras settlement of 1639 is the older of the two.

Asked as a place-name identification item where two of the four options are not forts at all.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Fort William, the East India Company's fortified settlement, is located at

  • (a)Madras
  • (b)Bombay
  • (c)Calcutta
  • (d)Surat

  Answer(c) Calcutta — named after King William III, and the counterpart of Fort St. George at Madras.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Fort St. George was completed on 23 April 1644, a date chosen because it is

  • (a)the Company's founding anniversary
  • (b)St. George's Day
  • (c)the King's birthday
  • (d)the day the site was purchased

  Answer(b) St. George's Day — the feast of the patron saint of England, from which the fort takes its name.