A seemingly unpublished manuscript by an anonymous Madras civil servant, responding to a request for a “…connected view of the measures pursued by the Company’s Servants in obtaining possession of the Northern Circars and to be informed of the present state of their Police and Revenue.”
Written in two parts, the first provides a detailed history of the years leading up to the Company’s possession of the Circars (secured by treaties in 1765, 1766 and 1768). It therefore covers the First Anglo-Mysore War (1767-69), explaining how Nizam Ali (the monarch of Hyderabad) first sided with the Company, then with their opponent, the formidable Hyder Ali (Sultan of Mysore), and then once more with the British.
The second part reports the revenues of the Rajahs’ estates in the individual Circars (c.1772-73): Mustaphanagur (Kondapalli), Ellore and Rajahmundry. Particular attention is paid to the textile products of each area.
Only one other copy of the manuscript exists, in the India Office Records at the British Library. That copy is structured differently (into seven undated anonymous letters) and is in a different contemporary hand.
Provenance: Sotheby’s, Catalogue of Voyages and Travel…, 19th & 20th May, 1969 (item 453).
