Fort Vijf Sinnen

Fort Vijf Sinnen
Part of Dutch Coromandel
18th-c. map of the fort
Location
Fort Vijf Sinnen
Coordinates	10°45′00″N79°50′00″E / 10.750066°N 79.833439°E / 10.750066; 79.833439
Site history
Built	1690 (1690)
Built by	Dutch East India Company
Demolished	Yes

Fort Vijf Sinnen (also Vyf Sinnen, Dutch for "the five senses") was a fortification made by the Dutch East India Company in Nagapattinam, then part of Dutch Coromandel (1610-1798), now Tamil Nadu. The fortification, also described as a castle, was built to protect the interests of the trading company, which shifted the capital of the Coromandel operation from Pulicat to Nagapattinam in 1690, three years after work began on the fort. ^[1]

The heavily armed fort in the end proved useless in the 1781 Siege of Negapatam, in which the British took the fort. In the Treaty of Paris of 1784 which ended the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War of which this siege was part, Nagapattinam was not restored to Dutch rule, but remained British. The headquarters of the colony shifted back to Pulicat. ^[2]

History

The Dutch commenced construction of Fort Vijf Sinnen in 1687. It was completed by 1690 and the head quarters of Coromandel was changed here from Fort Geldria at Pulicat. ^[3] The Portuguese had established a trading post at Nagapatnam in 1554, which they ceded to the VOC under a 1676 treaty with the Thanjavur kingdom. ^[4]

In November 1780, soon afterward, during the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War, Vice‑Admiral Sir Edward Hughes imposed a naval blockade on Nagapatnam to cut off the VOC’s Coromandel outposts. ^[5] By January 1781, General Sir Eyre Coote had disembarked some 4,000 troops from Madras and entrenched siege lines around Fort Vijf Sinnen, deploying 12‑ and 18‑pounder artillery against its brick‑and‑earth ramparts. ^[6] The fort’s defences, originally intended for trade protection rather than sustained bombardment, rapidly crumbled under heavy fire, and by 11 February the walls had been breached in multiple sectors. ^[7] That evening Governor Reynier van Vlissingen surrendered with 88 guns and approximately 300 soldiers, marking the collapse of Dutch military power on India’s southeast coast until the 1784 peace settlement. ^[8] Under the 1784 Treaty of Paris, Nagapatnam remained in British hands and the VOC’s Coromandel capital reverted to Pulicat. ^[2]

References

1. "The Dutch on the Coromandel". The Hindu. 19 January 2015. Retrieved 15 September 2016.
2. Kavan Ratnatunga (2006). "Paliakate - VOC Kas Copper Dumps, 1646 - 1794 - Dutch India]". Dutch India coins - Pulicat. lakdiva.org. Archived from the original on 8 December 2008. Retrieved 2 December 2008.
3. "The Indian Heritage of Jakarta…Origins from the Coast of Coromandel". observerid.com. Retrieved 2 July 2025.
4. Gommans, Jos J.L.; Emmer, Pieter C., eds. (2020), "The Indian Ocean", The Dutch Overseas Empire, 1600–1800, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 311–352, ISBN   978-1-108-42837-8 , retrieved 2 July 2025
5. Jan Lohuizen, The Dutch East India Company and Mysore, 1762–1790 (Leiden: Brill, 1967), pp. 145–147.
6. P. J. Marshall, East India Fortunes: The British in Bengal, 1757–1827 (London: Allen Lane, 1976), pp. 454–455.
7. E. O. Cust, Annals of the Wars of the Eighteenth Century, vol. II (London: Longmans, 1862), pp. 312–314.
8. D. A. Geyl, The Fall of the Dutch Republic (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932), pp. 189–190.

External links

• Coromandel on De VOC site
• Profiles of the fort walls