Urban xenocracy as interactive statebuilding: Madras 1639-1746

With Fort St. George/Madraspatnam (today: Chennai), the subproject will examine an urban structure as a local space of xenocracy in the 17th and early 18th centuries. At first glance, Madras appears to be a prime example of a colonial xenocracy under conditions of cultural distance: in 1639, English factors of the East India Company (EIC) built the fortress-like Fort St. George next to the fishing village of Madraspatnam on the south-eastern coast of India, which grew into a large city that formed one of the pillars of the British Empire in India from the middle of the 18th century, an undoubtedly "increasingly racialized state“ (Balachandran 2008b).

Forms of 'othering' date back to the 17th century. A particularly clear expression of this was the division of the city into an English White Town and a Tamil-dominated Black Town around 1700. However, this is connected to more recent research that emphasizes transcultural dimensions and the agency of local actors for the early period of Madras (1639-1746), as well as problematizing the pre-dating of racist categories and instead pointing to a "multiplicity of early modern concepts of human difference“ (Nightingale 2008: 51). 

The subproject therefore aims to identify specific early modern categories of difference in the administrative language of Fort St. George and to examine these in terms of their changes and practical consequences. Xenocracy is understood as a reciprocal learning process: The non-English urban population learned to use the institutions and procedures of English factorial administration for their own purposes. They brought their various inheritance, debt, business and ritual conflicts to court and formulated their concerns in petitions: Alms could be requested using these media, as could the construction of new districts for certain castes or groups of craftsmen. The English factor administration (Presidency) in turn learned to understand and behave as a city-wide authority in the face of the factual and explicit demands of government, also in a public-symbolic manner.

The aim is to examine how these learning processes were linked to forms of reciprocal, xenotyping othering, in which contexts these forms were mobilized or did not play a role, which distinctions were invoked, solidified or liquefied again in this way. An integrative approach will be pursued by understanding Madras as a premodern urban space of communication and resonance.