Armagaon or Armagon was the second colony of the

English 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 South ...

Southern India South India, also known as Dakshina Bharata or Peninsular India, consists of the peninsular southern part of India. It encompasses the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Telangana, as well as the union territ ...

. Its original name was Durgarazpatnam (''Dugarazpatam'') or Duraspatam. It was chiefly inhabited by

salt Salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl), a chemical compound belonging to the larger class of salts; salt in the form of a natural crystalline mineral is known as rock salt or halite. Salt is present in vast quant ...

manufacturers. A small port 36 miles North of

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 ...

it was the first place occupied by the British who erected a factory here in February 1626. It was hastily abandoned in 1641 in favour of Fort St. George. East India Company pioneer Streynsham Master (1640–1724) described the

factory A factory, manufacturing plant or a production plant is an industrial facility, often a complex consisting of several buildings filled with machinery, where workers manufacture items or operate machines which process each item into another. ...

house as having "walls two Storeys high of one part of it, and a round Bulwart built single by itself".

History

In the time of Gurava Naidu, the great great grandfather of Raja Gopal Naidu, some Englishmen came to the port and sent for the chief men of the place, Gurava Naidu and the accountant, Patnaswamula Armogam Mudaliar, and said they wished to build a fort there. They landed a cannon and fired a shot in a westerly direction and asked for as much as land the shot had traversed. The land belonged to Venkatagiri Raja, who was induced by Gurava Naidu and Armogam to allow the strangers to occupy the spot called ''Chenva Kuppam''. Accordingly, they built a fort there and called the place in the honour of Armogam Mudaliar.

References

{{reflist History of Andhra Pradesh British East India Company 17th century in India