BACSA member Andrew Whitehead, writer and broadcaster, recently visited Pulicat (‘Palaverkadu’) Cemetery, virtually the only visible remnant of Fort Geldria, the 17th century Dutch fort near Chennai. While researching its history, Andrew discovered the pivotal role the settlement played in the development of the slave trade between the Coromandel coast and Java.
This is an abridged version of Andrew’s personal blog article. Click here to read his full account.
‘This is the stunning Dutch cemetery at Pulicat in the north-east corner of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. It’s just about all that’s left of Fort Geldria, the first Dutch settlement – and the only Dutch fort – in India.
It’s also all that remains of a much more sinister enterprise. Fort Geldria was for several decades the centre of the Dutch slave trade on India’s Coromandel coast.
Pulicat is now a fishing village on the south side of the vast Pulicat lake. In the medieval period it was a substantial coastal trading centre, particularly during the powerful and prosperous Tamil Chola dynasty. Middle Eastern merchants were present here from the 7th century. The Portuguese arrived at the start of the 16th century.
Around 1613 the Dutch started work on Fort Geldria, and later ousted the Portuguese from this corner of South India. For the best part of a century, this was the centre of governance of the Dutch in India. The Dutch East India Company, the VOC (‘Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie’), was a powerful commercial force in Asia through the 17th and 18th centuries. The Dutch bought textiles produced in South India to trade with the Moluccas for their spices.
Under the Dutch, Pulicat also became a centre of the slave trade in India. Labourers were forced onto ships and sent to work on plantations in what is now Indonesia. So the wealth and confidence so clearly expressed in these graves and monuments rested on the pernicious trade in human beings.
Research by Wil O Dijk in the National Archives of the Netherlands has indicated that about 30,000 Indian slaves were transported by the Dutch to Java. The factors who captured and sold the slaves were in Chennai (then Madras) and that’s where they were shipped from – but Fort Geldria was the nerve centre of this trade, and the location of the money and power which underpinned this grotesque form of commerce.
The arch above the gate, crowned by a skull, bears the date ‘Anno1656’. The Biblical inscriptions incised on the left in Latin (‘Beati qui in domino moriuntur quiescunt a labore suo’) and on the right in 17thc Dutch (‘Salich Synse die In Den Here sterven sy Rusten van Haren Arbeyt Open) are the same quotation from Revelations (‘Apocalyps’) Chap 14, v13 ‘Blessed are those who die in the Lord, that they may rest from their labours’ (R Magowan)
The Dutch cemetery is now under the care of the Archaeological Survey of India (Chennai Circle, Ref ASI N-TN-C195). The gates have macabre ‘memento mori’ symbols – visual reminders that we all will die – which were common to both Catholic and Protestant religious iconography at the time.
East India Company yacht ‘De
Saphier’; died 9 Feb 1658, aged 51.
AW, 2026
There is nothing at all to indicate any connection with slavery. Indeed the slave trade on the Coromandel coast is one of the darker recesses of the Netherlands’ – and India’s – past, not erased, but not much talked about.
Most of the graves are from the 17th century, with inscriptions in Dutch. The adjoining fort was demolished by the British about 200 years ago, and the remnants are shielded under dense scrub.
AW, 2026
The cemetery is broadly in good condition. The grounds are well kept and not at all overgrown. That’s probably thanks to the local goats which are sufficiently agile to leap over the wall into the burial ground even when the gates are closed. They seem to have taken it upon themselves to keep the grass cropped.
There are a small number of much later British graves in the cemetery, again in generally good condition. Some of the obelisks and mausoleums and a few of the graves could do with restoration before they suffer further erosion.
I went to Pulicat completely unaware of this magnificent cemetery and I was pleased to have the chance to look around – and then disturbed to discover the chilling link with the slave trade while researching this blog’.
Andrew Whitehead
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