In the nineteenth century, power changed hands from the private East India Company to the British monarchy-Queen Victoria became the ‘Empress of India’-and Britain continued consolidating its territory. And with the fall of Tipu in the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War at the end of the eighteenth century, the British East India Company (now the sole European power in South India) consolidated its holdings in the South. By now the European presence was growing strong and assertive. The eighteenth century saw the growth of the kingdom of Mysore, first under Haidar Ali, a military leader who had briefly served the Nawab of Arcot, and then under his son Tipu Sultan, who annexed parts of present-day Tamil Nadu and Kerala. By the seventeenth century, only the French and British remained to fight it out, in association with Indian rulers and princely states. Competition raged between these rulers and the many European trading companies. After the fall of Vijayanagara, less powerful nayakas or sultans ruled the region. When the narrative begins at the end of the sixteenth century, the Deccan sultanates of Bijapur, Ahmadnagar, Golconda and Bidar have combined to defeat the kingdom of Vijayanagara, one of the last great medieval empires of the South. At heart, the story he tells is one of four powerful cultures-Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu, as well as the cultures-Kodava, Konkani, Marathi, Oriya, Tulu and indigenous-that have influenced them. In this monumental study, the first in over fifty years, historian and biographer Rajmohan Gandhi brings us the South Indian story in modern times. At heart, the story he t The sounds and flavours of the land south of the Vindhyas-temple bells, coffee and jasmine, coconut and tamarind, delicious dosais and appams-are familiar to many, but its history is relatively unknown. The sounds and flavours of the land south of the Vindhyas-temple bells, coffee and jasmine, coconut and tamarind, delicious dosais and appams-are familiar to many, but its history is relatively unknown.
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