A new map of the Jaghir Lands on the coast of Coromandel, or the territory belonging to the East India Company round Madras. From actual survey in the possession of the company. Published 12th May, 1794, by Laurie & Whittle, 53, Fleet Street, London

1794

Copper engraving on paper

Print size: 27.75 x 20 in (70.5 x 50.5 cm)
Sheet size: 28.75 x 21.5 in (73 x 54.5 cm)

Rennell’s Madras Hinterland: A Detailed 1794 Map of the Jaghir Lands by Laurie & Whittle

This finely engraved 1794 map of the Jaghir Lands surrounding Madras represents one of the most detailed late-eighteenth-century printed delineations of the East India Company’s territorial holdings on the Coromandel Coast. Centred on Madras and Fort St George, the map extends northwards to Pulicat Lake and southwards to Cheyyur, while also reaching inland along the winding course of the River Palar (also rendered as Paliar or Palaru, popularly nicknamed the “Milk River”). The sheet belongs to a series derived from the surveys of James Rennell, Surveyor General of Bengal and the leading cartographic authority of the Company in India. Rennell’s mapping established the empirical foundation for British geographical knowledge of the subcontinent, and the present sheet reflects both the precision and the administrative intent characteristic of his work.

Depicting the Madras hinterland at a moment of strategic consolidation, the map charts village networks, water tanks, rivers, and road systems with unusual granularity. Such detail was essential to company administrators in the 1790s, when the Jaghir—a region originally granted by the Nawab of Arcot—formed a crucial revenue base for the presidencies. The coastline is carefully articulated, and the parallel inland systems of tanks, streams, and agricultural landholdings reveal the environmental infrastructure that sustained the region. Seen through the lens of the late eighteenth century, this cartographic rendering marks the transition of Madras from a fortified port to the nucleus of a growing colonial territory defined by fiscal, agrarian, and military priorities.

The publishers, Robert Laurie and James Whittle, had just assumed control of Robert Sayer’s longstanding Fleet Street firm following his death earlier in 1794. They had effectively managed Sayer’s operations since 1787 and formally adopted their joint imprint upon succession. Their early years saw the continuation and expansion of Sayer’s atlas programme, including The American Atlas and The Complete East-India Pilot, and they soon became central to commercial cartographic production in London. The present map formed part of A General Atlas, originally conceived by Thomas Jefferys and later completed and revised by Sayer before passing into Laurie & Whittle’s hands. Although Thomas Kitchin died in 1784, his name remained on the title pages, and the atlas drew upon a rich array of cartographic sources, including D’Anville, Delarochette, Rennell, Rocque, Cook, Vancouver, La Pérouse, and others.

Within this lineage, the Jaghir Lands map is a historically important representation of company governance in its early, expansionary phase and a testament to London’s thriving cartographic publishing industry at the close of the eighteenth century. As both a Rennell-derived territorial record and an early Laurie & Whittle atlas plate, it stands at the intersection of imperial administration, scientific survey, and metropolitan print culture.

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