Telugu Historyతెలుగు చరిత్ర

Sir Archibald Campbell

Sir Archibald Campbell was Governor of Madras from 1786 to 1789. On the Governor-General's orders he sent the envoy who arranged the handing over of Guntur, which came to the Company in September 1788. He also settled a group of Telugu Christian cultivators from Oleru, on the Krishna, in a famine-emptied tract of the Chingleput district, named Campbellpuram after him.

Sir Archibald Campbell was the Governor of Madras when Guntur at last came to the East India Company. The Kistna manual names him as the Governor who sent the envoy to the Nizam’s court.1 It also records his help to a group of Telugu Christian farmers.2 See East India Company.

Governor of Madras

Maclean’s list of Governors shows Campbell in office from 6 April 1786 to 7 February 1789.3

Guntur, 1788

After Basalat Jang died in 1782, Guntur stayed for six more years under the Nizam’s renters.4 Lord Cornwallis became Governor-General in September 1786, with orders from London to demand it from the Nizam.1 For fear of Tipu Sultan and of war with France, he waited until May 1788.1 Then he told Campbell to send Captain Kennaway to Hyderabad as his envoy, to arrange the transfer.1

The Nizam was not unwilling, the manual says, because his renters had sent him little revenue from Guntur.1 He agreed to hand it over in September 1788.1 The Company’s arrears of tribute for the Circars were set off against the revenue the Nizam’s men had taken from Guntur.1 The Fifth Report dates the sanad (grant) for Guntur to 18 September 1788.5 See Guntur.

The Oleru Christians

Oleru is a village on the bank of the Krishna, three miles from Repalle.2 A few of its Brahmans and the body of its Kamma cultivators had become Christians.2 In 1787 they moved south in a body, led by an Italian former Jesuit, Father Manenti.2

In the Chingleput district Campbell settled them in a tract that famine had emptied.2 It was called Campbellpuram, and in Mackenzie’s time it was known as Kilacheri.2 The manual says these settlers still formed “a Telugu Christian settlement in the midst of the Tamil people”.2 See Religion.

Footnotes

  1. Mackenzie, Kistna District (1883), p. 85 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7

  2. Mackenzie, Kistna District (1883), p. 282 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6 ↩7

  3. C. D. Maclean (ed.), Manual of the Administration of the Madras Presidency, Vol. II (1885), p. 269, list of Governors of Fort St. George (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  4. Gordon Mackenzie, A Manual of the Kistna District (1883), p. 84 (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

  5. “Acquisitions of Territory by the British in the Presidency of Fort St. George”, in W. K. Firminger (ed.), The Fifth Report from the Select Committee … on the Affairs of the East India Company, Vol. III (1918), p. xxiv, No. XXXIV, the five Circars (archive.org (opens in a new tab)). ↩

Dynasties

East India Company

1759–1858 CE

The English East India Company in the Telugu country, from its first landing on the coast in 1611 to the Crown's take-over in 1858. For a century and a half it traded through factories at Masulipatam, Nizampatnam, Madapollam, Viravasaram, Vizagapatam, Injaram and Bendamurlanka, under farmans of the Golconda kings and the Mughals. Its fort at Madras stood on land granted in 1639 through the Nayaka Damarla Venkatadri. After Forde drove out the French it received the Masulipatam country (1759), the five Northern Circars by the emperor's grant of 1765 and the treaties with the Nizam of 1766 and 1768, Guntur (1788), the Ceded Districts of Rayalaseema (1800) and Nellore with the Carnatic (1801). It governed through Chiefs and Councils, then Collectors. It fixed the coastal zamindars' land revenue permanently in 1802–03, and assessed the Rayalaseema cultivators under Thomas Munro's ryotwari system. It broke the power of the Vizianagaram raja at Padmanabham (1794) and of the poligars. After the Guntur famine of 1832–33 it built the Godavari and Krishna anicuts.

References

Sources (3)
  1. C. D. Maclean (ed.), Manual of the Administration of the Madras Presidency, Vol. II (Appendices) (opens in a new tab), Government Press, Madras, 1885, pp. 269. [Public domain]
  2. Gordon Mackenzie, A Manual of the Kistna District in the Presidency of Madras (opens in a new tab), Government of Madras (Lawrence Asylum Press), 1883, pp. 84–85, 282. [Public domain]
  3. Walter Kelly Firminger (ed.), The Fifth Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons on the Affairs of the East India Company, Vol. III: British Acquisitions in the Presidency of Fort St. George, Madras Appendices, Wilkins' Glossary and Index (opens in a new tab), R. Cambray and Co., Calcutta, 1918, xxiv. [Public domain]

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