Inside and Outside View of Encounters around Early Madras
Present-day Chennai, the state capital of Tamil Nadu, is one of the largest cities in India with huge population. The origin of the modern city can be traced back to 1639, when the English East India Company was granted a strip of sandy land at Madraspatnam (later contracted to Madras) for a factory. Soon afterwards, along with constructing a fort, the Company started to build up a new town by accepting people with various backgrounds. In this seminar, I will focus on encounters in a cosmopolitan society of early Madras, especially on marriage or male-female relationship, which is often considered as a typical cross-cultural experience. Here I will reconsider this widely accepted view from a new perspective.