Fort Vijf Sinnen (also Vyf Sinnen, Dutch for "the five senses") was a fortification made by the Dutch

East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Southea ...

Nagapattinam Nagapattinam (''nākappaṭṭinam'', previously spelt Nagapatnam or Negapatam) is a town in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and the administrative headquarters of Nagapattinam District. The town came to prominence during the period of Medieval ...

, then part of

Dutch Coromandel Coromandel was a governorate of the Dutch East India Company on the coasts of the Coromandel region from 1610, until the company's liquidation in 1798. Dutch presence in the region began with the capture of Pulicat from the Portuguese in Goa and ...

(1610-1798), now

Tamil Nadu Tamil Nadu (; , TN) is a States and union territories of India, state in southern India. It is the List of states and union territories of India by area, tenth largest Indian state by area and the List of states and union territories of India ...

. 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 Pulicat or Pazhaverkadu is a historic seashore town in Chennai Metropolitan Area at Thiruvallur District, of Tamil Nadu state, India. It is about north of Chennai and from Elavur, on the southern periphery of the Pulicat Lake. Pulicat lake i ...

to Nagapattinam in 1690, three years after work began on the fort. The heavily armed fort in the end proved useless in the 1781

Siege of Negapatam The siege of Negapatam was the first major offensive military action on the Indian subcontinent following the arrival of news that war had been declared between Great Britain and the Dutch Republic, beginning the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War. A Brit ...

, in which the British took the fort. In the Treaty of Paris of 1784 which ended the

Fourth Anglo-Dutch War The Fourth Anglo-Dutch War ( nl, Vierde Engels-Nederlandse Oorlog; 1780–1784) was a conflict between the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Dutch Republic. The war, contemporary with the War of American Independence (1775-1783), broke out over ...

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.

References

External links

{{commons category
Coromandel
on ''De VOC site''
Profiles
of the fort walls Archaeological monuments in Tamil Nadu Vijf Sinnen Buildings and structures in Nagapattinam district Dutch Coromandel