Place · French colonial enclave · India
Karaikal
The former French East India Company settlement at Karaikal on the Tamil coast, 160 kilometres south of Puducherry — one of the four enclaves of French India (with Puducherry, Mahé, Yanam and Chandannagar) under French rule from 1738 to 1954. Karaikal was purchased by Governor Pierre-Christophe Le Noir from the Thanjavur Maratha king Pratap Singh in 1738 for 50,000 pagodas. The town preserves the 1899 French Church of Our Lady of the Lourdes, the Karaikal lighthouse (1884) and the French-era administrative buildings in the Avenue Bharatiyar. The 1954 Treaty of Cession transferred Karaikal to India on 1 November 1954 (ratified 1962). Modern Karaikal is a district of the Puducherry Union Territory and a thriving coastal town with the Karaikal New Port (opened 2009) and the Karaikal Refinery.
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 10.920, 79.830
Connections (2)
- Imperial administration ofPuducherry (Pondicherry)
Karaikal, Yanam and Mahé were administered from Pondicherry although they lie in three different linguistic regions hundreds of kilometres apart — Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam — which is why the union territory of Puducherry still has four non-contiguous districts and a legislature that meets in a city most of its citizens cannot reach in a day. The arrangement is a colonial accident that independence preserved intact.
- Trade routeThanjavur Maratha palace
Karaikal was purchased in 1739 from Pratap Singh, the Maratha raja of Thanjavur, who needed cash and French artillery against Arcot and the Nawab's claims. The transaction put a French customs post in the richest rice delta in the south, and it is a reminder that European enclaves were usually bought from Indian rulers rather than conquered from them.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Karaikal”. Jean Deloche, Le vieux Pondichéry; the Institut Français de Pondichéry publications; French India treaty texts.
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