History · Kerala beyond Idukki · Long read · 20 min read

Fort Kochi: Five Centuries of Kings, Traders and Empires on One Small Peninsula

The first European fort in India, the church where Vasco da Gama was buried, a Dutch book that put Kerala's plants before the scientists of Europe, a palace of murals, and fishing nets whose origin nobody can prove. A history of Fort Kochi from the documents, old maps and prints, with our own reading of the evidence.

By GK Global, Adimali, Munnar · Trails & Tales by GK

At the northern tip of a narrow peninsula, where the backwaters of Kerala meet the Arabian Sea, lies Fort Kochi. In a walk of two or three kilometres you pass a Portuguese church, a Dutch cemetery, British bungalows, a Jewish street, a palace given to a Hindu king by Catholic adventurers, mosques, warehouses full of pepper and ginger, and the great cantilevered fishing nets silhouetted against the sunset. Few places in India hold so many layers of history in so small a space.

This article follows that history through the documents and images that survive, and at several points we give our own assessment where the evidence is uncertain or the popular story does not quite fit the facts. These assessments are clearly marked and are our interpretation, not established fact.

A harbour made by a flood

Before the 14th century, the great port of this coast was Kodungallur (Cranganore, ancient Muziris), some 30 km to the north. Tradition holds that a great flood of the Periyar in 1341 silted up Kodungallur's harbour and broke open a new channel to the sea at Kochi, creating a deep, sheltered harbour where there had been only a fishing coast. (Read about the old capital in Keezhthali, the thali temple of the Chera capital.) Within a century, Chinese, Arab and Italian travellers were describing Kochi as a busy port. The kings of Kochi (Perumpadappu Swaroopam), formerly overshadowed by the Zamorin of Calicut, grew rich on its trade.

The Portuguese: the first European fort in India

When Vasco da Gama reached Calicut in 1498, the Zamorin received him coolly. The Portuguese soon found a more willing ally in the Raja of Kochi, the Zamorin's rival. Pedro Álvares Cabral traded at Kochi in December 1500, and in 1503, with the Raja's permission, Afonso de Albuquerque built a fort at the tip of the peninsula, named Fort Manuel after King Manuel I of Portugal. It was the first European fort in India, and it gave Fort Kochi its name. For the next century and a half, Kochi was the Portuguese headquarters in India until Goa took that place, and a walled Portuguese city grew up within the fortifications.

St Francis Church and the grave of Vasco da Gama

Inside the fort the Portuguese friars built a church, first of wood and then, by about 1516, of stone: the church now known as St Francis Church, one of the oldest European churches in India. Vasco da Gama returned to India in 1524 as Viceroy, fell ill and died at Kochi on 24 December 1524. He was buried in this church. In 1539 his remains were taken back to Portugal; they now lie in the Jerónimos Monastery in Lisbon. His original gravestone inside the church is still pointed out to visitors.

The church changed hands with the empires: the Dutch made it a Protestant church after 1663, the British an Anglican one after 1795, and since 1947 it has belonged to the Church of South India. Look up at the long cloth punkhas (swinging fans) once pulled by servants, and at the Dutch and British memorials on the walls.

The Dutch conquest, 1663

In the 17th century, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) set out to take over the Portuguese spice trade. Allied with the Zamorin and with a faction of the Kochi royal family and the Paliath Achan, the Dutch besieged Kochi and took it in early January 1663. They expelled the Portuguese, demolished most of the Catholic churches and convents, and rebuilt the town on a smaller scale, which they called "Nieuw Cochin". The Dutch period left Fort Kochi its Dutch houses, its cemetery (dated 1724) and its connections with the scholarship of Europe.

Hortus Malabaricus: Kerala's plants for the world

The most remarkable Dutch legacy is a book. Hendrik Adriaan van Rheede tot Drakenstein, the VOC governor of Malabar in the 1670s, organised a great survey of the plants of Kerala. Local physicians and scholars, among them the Ezhava physician Itty Achuden and the Konkani Brahmin physicians Ranga Bhat, Vinayaka Bhat and Appu Bhat, identified the plants and their medicinal uses; artists drew them; and the work was published in Amsterdam in 12 volumes between 1678 and 1693 as Hortus Malabaricus ("The Garden of Malabar"). It describes some 740 plants, with names in Latin, Malayalam (in the old script), Konkani and Arabic. It was the first major printed work on the plants of Asia, and Linnaeus later drew on it. The first plate of the first volume shows the coconut palm, tenga in Malayalam.

Mattancherry Palace

About 2 km away, in Mattancherry, stands the palace the Portuguese built for the Raja of Kochi around 1555, reportedly as a gift to win his favour after they had plundered a nearby temple. The Dutch renovated it after 1663, which is why it is often called the Dutch Palace, though it was always the Raja's palace and the coronation place of the Kochi kings. Its plain exterior hides some of the finest mural paintings in Kerala: scenes from the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and the Puranas in rich ochres, reds, greens and black, painted in the 16th and 17th centuries. Today it is a museum under the Archaeological Survey of India.

Santa Cruz: a cathedral destroyed and rebuilt

The Portuguese built a church of the Holy Cross (Santa Cruz) in the early 16th century; it became a cathedral in 1558. The Dutch spared it as a warehouse, but the British demolished it after 1795. The present Gothic-style building was consecrated in 1905 and became a basilica in 1984.

The British: a fort blown up, a port built

In 1795, during the wars with revolutionary France, the British took Kochi from the Dutch. Around 1806 they destroyed most of the old fortifications, and the walled town became an open, quiet place of merchants' houses and warehouses. Kochi's great growth as a modern port came in the 1920s and 1930s, when the engineer Robert Bristow dredged the harbour and created Willingdon Island from the spoil. The city of Kochi grew around the new port, and Fort Kochi became the old quarter it is today. Since 2012 it has also hosted the Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India's largest contemporary art exhibition.

The "Chinese" fishing nets: an unsolved puzzle

The cantilevered fishing nets along the waterfront, called cheena vala ("Chinese nets") in Malayalam, are the symbol of Fort Kochi. Each is a huge square net hung from a frame of teak and bamboo poles, balanced by large stones on ropes. A team of four to six men walks along the main beam to lower the net into the water, and then pulls on the ropes to lift it with the catch. Only a few dozen nets remain, and many are in poor repair.

Their origin is a favourite question of guides and historians, and there are two main theories:

• The Chinese theory: the nets were introduced by Chinese traders, perhaps in the time of Kublai Khan (13th century) or during the voyages of Admiral Zheng He (1405–1433), whose fleets visited Kochi.
• The Portuguese theory: the nets were brought by the Portuguese, perhaps from Macau (a Portuguese base from 1557) or from their other Asian settlements, in the 16th or 17th century. Its supporters point out that the fishermen of Kochi use Portuguese words for parts of the net, such as rede (net), argola (ring), corda (rope) and pedra (stone).

Visiting Fort Kochi today

• Walk or cycle: everything in Fort Kochi is within a short distance. Start early at the fishing nets, when the crews are working.
• St Francis Church and Santa Cruz Basilica are open to respectful visitors outside service times.
• Mattancherry Palace is closed on Fridays; the Paradesi synagogue is closed on Fridays, Saturdays and Jewish holidays.
• Ferries link Fort Kochi with Ernakulam, Vypeen and Willingdon Island, and the Water Metro now connects many islands.
• Read more about Kochi's communities: The Jews of Kerala, Sarah Cohen of Jew Town, The synagogues of Kerala and Black pepper, the spice that brought the Europeans.

Read also: Padmanabhaswamy Temple and Thiruvananthapuram