Sadras

Sadras சதுரங்கப்பட்டினம் Sadurangapattinam; Sadraspatnam
Town
Cannon inside the Dutch fort at Sadras
Sadras Location in Tamil Nadu, India
Coordinates: 12°31′30″N 80°9′44″E
Country	India
State	Tamil Nadu
District	Chengalpattu
Established as a VOC settlement	1647
Founder	Dutch East India Company
Languages
• Official	Tamil
Time zone	UTC+5:30 (IST)
PIN	603102
Telephone code	044
Nearest city	Chengalpattu

Sadras, historically known as Sadurangapattinam, is a coastal village and historic port on India's Coromandel Coast in Chengalpattu district, Tamil Nadu, about 70 km south of Chennai. The settlement is particularly known for the surviving Dutch fort established there during the seventeenth century. The name Sadras developed from earlier forms of the settlement's name, including Sadurangapattinam.

History and etymology

An inscription of the Sambuvaraya period dated to 1353 records the port as Rajanarayananpattinam. The name has been associated with Rajanarayana Sambuvaraya, although it may alternatively preserve the earlier royal epithet Rajanarayana.

A 1374 inscription of Bukka I at Thirukazhukundram refers to the settlement as Sadiravasaganpattinam (சதிரவாசகன்பட்டினம்). Historian P. Jayakumar suggests that this name subsequently evolved into Sadurangapattinam; he also associates Sadiravasagan with a divine epithet, noting the presence of a Vishnu temple in the settlement. The name was later shortened in European usage, with Dutch records referring to the settlement as Sadraspatnam and ultimately Sadras.

Location

Sadras adjoins Kalpakkam, which contains several facilities of India's Department of Atomic Energy. These include the Madras Atomic Power Station (MAPS) and the Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research (IGCAR).

The Department of Atomic Energy township at Kalpakkam extends across the Sadras and Pudupattinam sides of the local backwater. The two sides are connected by bridges, including a newer bridge constructed after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

Dutch fort

Entrance to Sadras Fort

The Dutch East India Company (VOC) established a presence at Sadras in the early seventeenth century, and the settlement subsequently developed into one of the company's trading posts on the Coromandel Coast. A permanent Dutch factory was established by the mid-seventeenth century, trading particularly in locally produced cotton textiles. The fortified establishment later known as Sadras Fort contained warehouses and storerooms, stables and residential buildings associated with the Dutch trading settlement.

During the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War, British forces captured the Dutch establishment at Sadras in 1781. Control was subsequently restored to the Dutch, but the settlement changed hands again during the wars of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The Dutch resumed administration of Sadras in 1818, when it became the headquarters of their remaining establishments on the Coromandel Coast, before these possessions were finally transferred to the British in 1825 under the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824.

The nearby Battle of Sadras was fought offshore on 17 February 1782 between a British fleet commanded by Sir Edward Hughes and a French fleet under Pierre André de Suffren. It was the first of a series of naval engagements between the two commanders during the Anglo-French War.

The fort contains a Dutch cemetery with nineteen surviving graves dating from 1620 to 1769, several bearing carved inscriptions and coats of arms. The Archaeological Survey of India undertook conservation and archaeological work at the fort in the early 2000s.

Dutch cemetery and inscriptions

The Dutch cemetery within Sadras Fort preserves funerary monuments connected with the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century settlement of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) on the Coromandel Coast. Sadras became a Company settlement in 1647. It was occupied by the British in 1795, restored to Dutch control in 1818 and finally transferred to British possession in 1824. Julian James Cotton's revised catalogue of inscriptions, published in 1946, recorded that the cemetery remained within the fort and was maintained under the arrangements governing the former Dutch possessions in India.

The surviving inscriptions record chiefs of the Sadras factory, merchants, military officers, fiscal and warehouse officials, clerks, bookkeepers and members of their families. They also document connections between Sadras and other VOC establishments at Pulicat, Machilipatnam, Porto Novo, Nagapattinam, Ceylon and Malacca. Several monuments retain coats of arms, religious inscriptions and other heraldic decoration.

Selected people recorded in the Dutch cemetery at Sadras

Name	Year	Position or status	Key historical context
Ammarentia Blockhovius	1670	Wife of Lambert Hemsinck, junior merchant and chief of the Sadras factory	Born at Hoorn in 1644. Her monument, which also commemorated a stillborn child, bears a coat of arms incorporating fish and an eagle.
Barent Clebout	1679	Captain and major of the Ceylon militia in VOC service	His inscription connects Sadras with the Company's military establishment in Ceylon. His coat of arms incorporated three spears and a sword.
Pieter Hemsinck	1682	Member of a VOC family resident at Sadras	Born at Sadras in 1665, his inscription provides evidence for locally born members of families associated with the Dutch settlement.
Maarten van den Briel	1687	Fiscal and warehouse master	Served in administrative and commercial offices at Sadras and was commemorated together with his sons Marcus and Joannes van den Briel.
Marcus van den Briel	1687	First clerk	Served at Sadras alongside other members of the Van den Briel family, whose monument records several levels of VOC administration.
Abraham Witmont	1695	Chief (opperhoofd) of the Sadras factory	A family monument identifies him as chief of the Company's establishment at Sadras and commemorates members of his household.
Joannes van den Briel	1705	Merchant and second-ranking official of Northern Coromandel	His inscription records a senior position extending beyond Sadras into the wider VOC administration of northern Coromandel.
Cornelis van Outvelt	1723	Junior merchant and chief of the Sadras factory	Born at Middelburg in Zeeland, he died while serving as chief at Sadras. His inscription includes a passage from Revelation 14:13.
Reinier Jacob Devos	1726	Bookkeeper in VOC service	His family monument records his service at Sadras together with his wife and children.
Gustavus Gouds	1737	Bookkeeper and second-ranking official at Sadras	Born in Sweden, his inscription illustrates the multinational character of personnel serving the Dutch East India Company.
Petrus Matthaeus	1747	Junior merchant and chief of the VOC establishment at Porto Novo	Although serving as chief at Porto Novo, he died at Sadras and was buried there, reflecting links between Company settlements along the Coromandel Coast.
Elizabetha Florendina, Baroness van Maneil	1752	Traveller between Malacca and the Coromandel Coast	She died aboard the ship Slooten while travelling from Malacca to the Coromandel Coast and was brought ashore for burial at Sadras.
Jacobus Leonardus Topander	1767	VOC merchant and chief of the Sadras factory	Born in Amsterdam in 1715, he died while serving as chief at Sadras. His large monument carries an eagle crest and elaborate floral, fruit and cherubic decoration.

Notable people

• Jacob Haafner (1754–1809), German-Dutch travel writer and former Dutch East India Company employee, served as a bookkeeper at the VOC factory at Sadras from about 1779. He later described his life at Sadras and the British capture of the settlement during the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War in his travel writings.

Transport and connectivity

Sadras is connected by road with Chengalpattu, Thirukazhukundram, Mamallapuram and Chennai. State Highway 58 begins at Sadras and runs westwards through Chengalpattu towards Kanchipuram and Arakkonam, while the East Coast Road (SH 49) passes through the adjoining Kalpakkam area and provides the principal coastal connection towards Mamallapuram and Chennai to the north and Puducherry to the south.

The nearest major railway connection is at Chengalpattu Junction, approximately 30 km inland. Local and regional buses connect the Sadras–Kalpakkam area with Chengalpattu, Thirukazhukundram and Chennai.

Gallery

• 
  Dutch cemetery within Sadras Fort
• 
  Carved coat of arms on a tomb
• 
  Heraldic carving in the cemetery
• 
  Coat of arms on a Dutch tomb
• 
  Decorated grave monument
• 
  Carved funerary monument
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  Tombs in the Dutch cemetery
• 
  Chambers within the fort complex
• 
  View of the Dutch cemetery
• 
  Passage adjoining the cemetery

External links

• About sadras
• The Hindu report on Sadras Excavation
• A Travelogue with photos