FROM MADRAS TO MENLO PARK

The East India Company's trading triumphs paved the way for the British empire. Today, Big Tech is carving the world into digital colonies for the US and China. Can India break free?

- NIRMAL JOVIAL

In the late 1630s, a young Englishman named Francis Day sailed along India's Coromandel Coast. Born into a noble family and educated at Eton, Day sought to make a fortune overseas.

Global trade was expanding, fuelled by Europe's hunger for silk, spices and other exotic goods. Like many of his peers, Day had joined the fledgling East India Company in search of new markets. His mission: find a strategic site near the region's famed weaving centres-somewhere ships could anchor, a fort could be built, and commerce could flourish.

He settled on a strip of land near a quiet fishing village called Madraspatnam, ruled by a chieftain of the Vijayanagara empire. The location was suitable, but not ideal. The anchorage was good enough, but docking was difficult in rough weather. Still, Day chose the site. Legend has it that, strategic reasons aside, there were matters of the heart: he had fallen for a village beauty.

Day secured a land grant from the chieftain. In return for tribute, the East India Company was granted the right to build a fortified settlement-exempt from local taxes and governed autonomously.

Over the next decade, Fort St George rose-brick by brick, bastion by bastion. Around it, Madras began to take shape. Two parallel settlements emerged: "White Town", home to European traders and administrators, and "Black Town", where Indian merchants and artisans were given tax exemptions. Business boomed, company coffers swelled, and a portion of the trade revenue-some minted into coins by the company itself-flowed back to the local rulers.