Machilipatnam (), also known as Masulipatnam, Masulipatam, or Bandar (), is a city in Krishna district of the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, located from Vijayawada. It is a municipal corporation and the administrative headquarters of Krishna district. It is also the mandal headquarters of Machilipatnam mandal in Machilipatnam revenue division of the district. The ancient port town served as the settlement of European traders from the 16th century, and it was a major trading port for the Portuguese, British, Dutch and French in the 17th century.
Etymology
During the 17th century, it was known by the names Masulipatnam, Masulipatam, Masula, and Bandar (bandar translates to 'port' in Persian). The port town in the ancient times was also referred with the name Maesolia.
History
Early history
Ancient geographical sources place the coast around present-day Machilipatnam within a region called Masalia or Maisolia. The first-century CE Periplus of the Erythraean Sea describes Masalia as a region extending inland and producing large quantities of cotton cloth. Ptolemy's second-century Geography likewise refers to Maisolia. Modern scholarship places Masalia or Maisolia around the mouth of the Krishna River, including the area of present-day Machilipatnam.
The lower Krishna was an active maritime region during the early centuries CE. The Periplus names Kontakosylla, generally identified with Ghantasala, and another port called Allosygne within Masalia. An inscription from Ghantasala records a mahanavika, or master mariner, and classical geographical accounts place in the same region a departure point for ships sailing across the Bay of Bengal towards Southeast Asia. Archaeological and epigraphic evidence from the Krishna delta indicates that settlements along the river and coast participated in wider networks of trade during this period.
Political activity in the lower Krishna is recorded more directly in the third century CE. The Kondamudi copper plates of the Brihatphalāyana ruler Jayavarman were issued from Kūdūra and record a grant of the village Pāṇṭūra in the district of Kūdūrāhāra. D. C. Sircar identified Kūdūra with modern Guduru, near Machilipatnam, while other historians have proposed Koduru near Ghantasala.
Evidence from Machilipatnam itself becomes clearer in the medieval period. Three inscriptions recorded on a pillar of the Ramalinga temple in Robertsonpet dated from the 12th century, while an inscription dated 1397 in a temple within the fort recorded a private grant. In 1478 the army of the Bahmani ruler Muhammad Shah III reached and occupied Masulipatnam as Bahmani power expanded into the lower Krishna region.
During the early 16th century, the Krishna coast lay between the competing spheres of the Gajapati Empire, the Vijayanagara Empire and the emerging Qutb Shahi state of Golconda. Krishnadevaraya's campaigns brought Vijayanagara into the Krishna delta, including the capture of Kondavidu in 1515 and Kondapalli soon afterwards. Control of the coast remained contested during the following decades as Golconda expanded eastwards.
Rise of Masulipatnam
By the middle of the 16th century, Masulipatnam was participating in the textile trade of the northern Coromandel coast but had not yet become its principal port. Around 1550 it supplied textiles to the larger commercial centre at Pulicat. Its position changed rapidly after about 1570, when the consolidation of the Golconda Sultanate under Ibrahim Qutb Shah coincided with the expansion of a network of ports around the Bay of Bengal that operated substantially outside Portuguese control.
By the early 1580s, merchants sailing from Masulipatnam had developed substantial connections with Pegu in lower Burma and the Aceh Sultanate in Sumatra. Muslim merchants owned and operated ships from the port without Portuguese cartaz passes and generally avoided Portuguese-controlled Malacca. Masulipatnam consequently became one of the principal ports in a Bay of Bengal trading system linking the Deccan with Southeast Asia.
By about 1590 its connections had also expanded westwards. Ships from Masulipatnam sailed towards the Red Sea, carrying merchandise as well as Muslim pilgrims travelling on the Hajj. The port's commercial networks thus stretched from Southeast Asia to the western Indian Ocean by the end of the century.
Seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
Masulipatnam developed into Golconda's principal seaport during the 17th century. Cotton textiles produced in the northern Coromandel and the Godavari Delta passed through the port for export, while silver and other imports moved inland towards Golconda and Hyderabad. The customs and textile trades of Masulipatnam contributed substantially to the prosperity of the Qutb Shahi state during the 1620s and 1630s.
The expanding trade attracted merchants from across the Indian Ocean as well as European chartered companies. The Dutch East India Company established itself at Masulipatnam in the early 17th century, and the English East India Company founded a settlement there in 1611. The English settlement served as the company's principal base on this part of the east coast until its operations increasingly shifted towards Madras after 1640. Dutch and English merchants entered commercial networks already operated by Indian, Persian, Armenian and other Asian merchants.
Masulipatnam's relative position weakened later in the century as commerce increasingly shifted towards Madras and political conditions within Golconda changed. The Mughal conquest of Golconda in 1687 further disrupted the commercial and political connections linking the port with the Deccan interior, although the decline had begun before the conquest. Masulipatnam nevertheless remained an important regional port into the 18th century.
The town became a contested possession during the struggles involving the Nizam of Hyderabad, the French and the British in the Northern Circars. During the Carnatic Wars, French forces controlled Masulipatnam until East India Company troops commanded by Francis Forde captured it in the Siege of Masulipatam in April 1759. On 14 May, Salabat Jung granted the Company the Circar of Masulipatam and eight associated districts, along with the Circar of Nizampatam, and agreed to exclude French forces from his territories.
Dutch cemetery and VOC community
The Dutch cemetery at Masulipatam preserves inscriptions documenting the personnel and families of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) establishment on the northern Coromandel Coast. The Dutch residential quarter was historically known as Hollandpalem, later Valandupalem, while the former Dutch council house survived in the compound of the District Munsiff's Court. The cemetery contained numerous armorial tombstones carved in local stone, and some earlier burials were associated with the former factory and council-house compound.
The earliest recorded cemetery inscription in the catalogue is that of Johannes Nantius of Middelburg, a junior merchant who died in 1646. In 1662 Evert Everman of Bremen, skipper of the VOC ship Pegu, was buried there; his stone depicted him in contemporary dress with a sword. A particularly important inscription is that of Pieter Smit, who died in 1677 aged 39. Born at Tayouan in Formosa, Smit had become a senior merchant, second-ranking official in the Coromandel government and chief of the Masulipatam factory and its dependencies. His career illustrates the movement of VOC officials between the Company's Asian possessions.
The same year saw the burial of Abraham Florisse Bolwerck of Elbing, who served as a kranckbesoecker, a lay religious functionary responsible for visiting and consoling the sick. Johannes Huysman was recorded by 1682 as a merchant and second-ranking officer of the Masulipatam factory, while Marten van den Briel served as a junior merchant and administrator of the spice warehouse. Such inscriptions provide evidence for the commercial, administrative and religious organisation of the VOC settlement rather than merely recording individual deaths.
A large family monument records a concentrated series of deaths in 1687 connected with Jacob Corbesier, a Utrecht-born senior merchant selected as second-ranking official by the Governor of Pulicat. Among those commemorated were his wife Margarieta Booms, members of the Frontenius family and Willem Frontenius of Pulicat, a Company assistant who drowned while travelling between Masulipatam and Palakollu. The catalogue notes that records of Fort St. George reported a major contagion at Masulipatam in 1687 and associates this epidemic context with several deaths commemorated on the monument.
By the eighteenth century, Masulipatam continued to function as an administrative centre for the VOC's northern Coromandel establishments. Paulus Verryn, who died there in 1725, was a senior merchant, second-ranking official of the Coromandel government and chief of the northern district. Later inscriptions describe Gosewyn Maire in similar terms as senior merchant, chief of the northern district and second-ranking official of the whole Coromandel Coast. The cemetery therefore records the development of Masulipatam from an early VOC factory into an important administrative centre linking Pulicat, the Godavari factories, Nagapattinam, Ceylon and other parts of the Company's Asian network.
British rule
Masulipatnam became an administrative centre under East India Company rule. A chief and council initially administered the division from the town, and in 1794 a collector responsible to the Madras Board of Revenue was appointed there. The surrounding district was known as Masulipatnam district before being reorganised and renamed Krishna district in 1859, with Masulipatnam remaining its headquarters.
On 1 November 1864, a severe cyclone and storm surge devastated Masulipatnam and the neighbouring coast. Contemporary accounts described much of the town as destroyed, and the death toll was later estimated at about 30,000. The disaster severely damaged the port and became one of the most destructive cyclones recorded on the Andhra coast.
The city's commercial importance declined during the colonial period as larger ports and railway-connected commercial centres developed elsewhere, but it continued to serve as the administrative centre of Krishna district. Its population grew from about 36,000 in 1871 to nearly 40,000 by 1901.
Twentieth century
During the early 20th century, Machilipatnam became an important centre of Telugu journalism, national education and political activity. Krishna Patrika began publication there in 1902 and developed into an influential Telugu nationalist newspaper, particularly during the long editorship of Mutnuri Krishna Rao.
The Swadeshi movement also stimulated the development of national education in the city. Local leaders including Kopalle Hanumantha Rao, Mutnuri Krishna Rao and Bhogaraju Pattabhi Sitaramayya were associated with the creation of the Andhra Jateeya Kalasala. The institution combined literary and scientific education with vocational and artistic training and became closely associated with the nationalist movement in coastal Andhra.
Machilipatnam also became the birthplace of a major regional financial institution. Pattabhi Sitaramayya established Andhra Bank in the city in 1923, with financial backing from Raja Yarlagadda Sivarama Prasad. The bank commenced business on 28 November 1923 and later expanded across India before its nationalisation in 1980.