HISTORY OF CHENNAI
Name
The name Chennai is an eponym, etymologically derived from Chennapatnam, the name of the town that grew up around Fort St George, built by the British in 1640. The town was most likely named after Damarla Chennappa Nayak, father of the ruling chieftain of the area, Venkatapathy Nayak, although some believe Chennapatnam was named after the Chenna Kesava Perumaltemple, as the word Chenni in Tamil means face, and the temple was thought of as the face of the city.
The former name, Madras, is derived from Madraspatnam, a fishing village that lay to the north of Fort St. George. The origin of the name Madraspatnam is a subject of disagreement. One theory holds that the Portugese, who arrived in the area in the sixteenth century, may have named the village Madre de Deus. However, historian S. Muthiah believes that the village's name came from the once prominent Madeiros family (variously known as Madera or Madra in succeeding years), who had consecrated the Madre de Deus church in Santhome in 1575 (demolished in 1997). Another theory says that the village was named after a Mohammadan college (a madrasa) which was located in the area. After the British gained possession of the area in the seventeenth century, the two towns, Madraspatnam and Chennapatnam, eventually merged. The British referred to the united town as Madraspatnam, while the locals preferred to call it Chennapatnam.
  chennai
The city was officially renamed Chennai in 1996, about the same time that many Indian cities were undergoing name changes. Madras was seen as a Portuguese name.
History
The region around Chennai has served as an important administrative, military, and economic centre since the first century. It has been ruled by various South Indian dynasties, notably the Pallava, the Chola, the Pandya, and Vijaynagar. The town of Mylapore, now part of Chennai, was once a major Pallavan port. The Portuguese arrived in 1522 and built a port called São Tomé after the Christian apostle, St Thomas, who is said to have preached in the area between 52 and 70 CE. In 1612, the Dutch established themselves near Pulicat, just north of the city.
  chennai history

 

On 22 August 1639, Francis Day of the British East India Company bought a small strip of land on the Coromandel Coast from the Vijayanagara King, Peda Venkata Raya in Chandragiri. The region was ruled by Damerla Venkatapathy, the Nayak of Vandavasi. He granted the British permission to build a factory and warehouse for their trading enterprises. A year later, the British built Fort St George, which became the nucleus of the growing colonial city. In 1746, Fort St George and Madras were captured by the French under General La Bourdonnais, the Governor of Mauritius, who plundered the town and its outlying villages. The British regained control in 1749 through the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle and fortified the town's fortress wall to withstand further attacks from the French and another looming threat, Hyder Ali, the Sultan of Mysore. By the late eighteenth century, the British had conquered most of the region around Tamil Nadu and the northern modern-day states of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, establishing the Madras Presidency with Madras as the capital. Under British rule, the city grew into a major urban centre and naval base.

With the advent of railways in India in the late nineteenth century, the thriving urban centre was connected to other important cities such as Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay) and Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), promoting increased communication and trade with the hinterland.
   chennai train

Chennai was the only Indian city to be attacked by the Central Powers during World War I, when an oil depot was shelled by the German light cruiser SMS Emden on September 22, 1914, as it raided shipping lanes in the Indian Ocean, causing disruption to shipping. After India gained its independence in 1947, the city became the capital of Madras State, renamed the state of Tamil Nadu in 1969. The violent agitations of 1965 against the imposition of Hindi as the national language, marked a major shift in the political dynamics of the city and the whole state.

  chennai chennai


In 2004, an Indian Ocean tsunami lashed the shores of Chennai, killing many and permanently altering the coastline.

Back