Place · Ostend Company factory & port · India
Covelong (Cabelon)
Also known as Cabelon, Kovalam, Covelong, Kobbelong
The Coromandel port south of Madras that the Ostend Company held from 1722 to about 1727 as Cabelon, its southern counterpart to Banquibazar. After the Austrians left it passed to the Nawab of the Carnatic, who fortified it, then to the French, and was stormed by Clive in 1752.
- Date
- 1722–1727
- Function
- Trade & production
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 12.791, 80.250
Worth knowing
The same three miles of beach carried an Austrian factory, a Nawabi fort, a French garrison, a British prize and — after the harbour silted — a fishing village, before the fort site became a hotel. Almost nothing of the European works survives above ground.
Connections (1)
- CampaignFort St George, Chennai
Cabelon lay twenty miles down the coast from Fort St George, close enough that the English presidency treated it as an intrusion from the day it opened. After the Austrians withdrew it became a Carnatic and then a French fort, and Clive took it in 1752 during the war for Arcot. One small roadstead changed European hands four times in thirty years.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Kovalam, Chennai”. Jan Parmentier, De holle compagnie: smokkel en legale handel onder Zuidnederlandse vlag in Bengalen (1992); Robert Orme, A History of the Military Transactions of the British Nation in Indostan (1763–78).
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