NDA (II) 2022 General Ability Test · Question 54 of 150

Correct — B, Madraspatam. In 1639 Francis Day, a factor of the English East India Company, negotiated with the ruler of Chandragiri for a strip of the Coromandel coast then known as Madraspatam. The Company built its trading post there and raised a fortified settlement around it — Fort St George, completed on 23 April 1644, which is described as the first English fortress in India. The settlement grew into the city of Madras, today's Chennai, and became one of the three Presidency towns.

• (a)Cuddalore — The Company's Fort St David at Cuddalore came into English hands later in the seventeenth century and remained subordinate to Madras. It is not the 1639 acquisition.
• (c)Kalahasti — Srikalahasti is an inland temple town in present-day Andhra Pradesh, not a coastal site suited to a maritime trading post, and no English factory of 1639 was founded there.
• (d)Karwar — Karwar is a west-coast port in present-day Karnataka. The question asks specifically about the site the Company acquired in 1639, which was on the eastern Coromandel coast and became Madras.

The English East India Company built its Indian presence as a chain of coastal factories, each a walled warehouse plus living quarters that gradually acquired guns and jurisdiction. The Coromandel post at Madraspatam in 1639 was the point at which a factory first became a fort, and the fort in turn became the nucleus of a Presidency — the administrative form through which the Company would eventually govern territory.

This item is really a date test on the Company's early settlements, so fix a short ladder in memory. Masulipatnam came in 1611 on the Coromandel coast, the Surat firman followed in 1613 on the west, Madraspatam was acquired in 1639, Bombay was transferred to the Company later in the century, and Calcutta came last among the Presidency towns. Only Madraspatam matches 1639, and it is also the only option that is both coastal and South Indian in the Company's early record.

• Francis Day obtained Madraspatam in 1639 from the ruler of Chandragiri.
• Fort St George, built on that site, was completed on 23 April 1644 and is described as the first English fortress in India.
• The Company's earlier factories included Masulipatnam in 1611 and Surat in 1613.
• Madraspatam grew into Madras, one of the three Presidency towns, and is now Chennai.

• Mixing up the 1611 Masulipatnam factory, the 1613 Surat firman and the 1639 Madraspatam grant.
• Assuming Fort William at Calcutta or Fort St David at Cuddalore came first — Fort St George did.

A date-to-place item on the Company's early settlements, sometimes dressed up as a match list of factories and years.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Fort St George, described as the first English fortress in India, was built at

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

  Answer(b) Madras — built on the Madraspatam site acquired in 1639 and completed in 1644.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  In 1613 the English East India Company was permitted to set up a factory at

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

  Answer(b) Surat — under a firman from the Mughal emperor Jahangir.