The Story of Madras

Streets, churches and old fortifications give Glyn Barlow a way to tell how Madras grew from a coastal village into a city. Writing in 1921, he arranges his account as a series of vignettes, each centred on a building or an aspect of local life. The opening looks back to the Coromandel Coast in 1639, where fishing communities, temples and the Portuguese settlement at Mylapore stood near the site chosen for a new English trading station.

Barlow connects the city's development with the business of the East India Company and the rival interests of European traders. His chapters cover Fort St. George, Chepauk Palace, schools and the city's relationship with the sea. A discussion of Mylapore brings together church history, local traditions about St. Thomas and Tamil religious writers. Readers interested in urban history can use these short accounts to see how a place's buildings preserve different layers of its past, while also encountering the outlook of an early twentieth-century writer.