Untitled [Eleven military plans of Southern India]

[mid-18th century, c. 1750s–1760s]

Etching on paper (each)

9.5 x 11.75 in (23.9 x 29.8 cm) (each approx.)

A suite of eleven plates comprising 13 large-scale military plans of Southern India, by John Call, chief engineer to the East India Company, depicting the Anglo–French Wars on the Coromandel Coast

Engraved plans (some on large/double-page format), comprising fortified towns, siegeworks, and topography, several with compass roses, scales, and keyed references; a number bearing the credit line “John Call, Chief Engineer fecit” (as printed on the plates).

1. PONDICHERRY / 2. ARCOT FORT (upper plan on the shared sheet) / 3. CHILLAMBARUM (lower plan on the shared sheet) / 4. CARANGOLY / 5. CHITTAPET / 6. MASULIPATAMVALDORE / 7. (upper plan on the shared sheet) / 8. VANDIWASH (lower plan on the shared sheet) / 9. MADRASS, Part of the BLACK TOWN, and the adjacent ground to the S. and W. with the FRENCH ATTACK from Dec. 13 1758, to Feb. 17 1759 (large folding plan) / 10. PALAM-COTAH, near TINIVELLY / 11. TANJORE reduced from an exact Survey/ 12. THIAGUR / 13. TRINOMALE.

This cohesive group of large-scale engraved military plans documents the strategic landscape of Southern India during the decisive mid-eighteenth-century wars that reshaped the Coromandel Coast—conflicts in which fortified towns, engineered approaches, and siegecraft became the primary instruments through which political authority was contested and territorial power reconfigured. Rendered with the disciplined graphic language of professional military engineering, the plans focus on bastioned enceinte, outworks, batteries, lines of communication, approaches, and the relationship between defensive geometry and surrounding terrain—features intended for operational comprehension rather than decorative display.

The suite centres on several of the most consequential nodes in the Carnatic and Coromandel theatres: Pondicherry, the principal French stronghold; Madras, here mapped with exceptional specificity during the French attack of 1758–1759; Masulipatam, a key coastal fortification and maritime gateway; and a sequence of inland fortified sites—Arcot Fort, Vandiwash, Chittapet, Chillambarum, Valdore, and Carangoly—which collectively represent the spatial grammar of Company-era warfare: towns measured by their curtain walls and angles of fire, fields reduced to lines of movement, and rivers, tanks, and relief rendered for their tactical implications.

Several sheets carry the imprint “John Call, Chief Engineer fecit,” identifying the suite with the cartographic output of the East India Company’s engineering establishment. Call’s plans are distinguished by their clarity of fortification outlines, calibrated scales, and the controlled use of shading to articulate parapets, glacis, and elevation—most strikingly on the more topographically expressive plates such as THIAGUR and TRINOMALE, where rugged relief is integrated with built defences to convey the physical difficulty of assault and the military logic of position. The large folding plan of “MADRASS, Part of the BLACK TOWN…” is particularly notable as an urban-military document: its attention to settlement fabric, waterways, and the spatial relationship between fort and town offers a rare contemporary view of how colonial Madras was understood in wartime—both as a place of habitation and as a field of attack.

Equally significant is the inclusion of TANJORE (“reduced from an exact Survey”) and PALAM-COTAH near TINIVELLY, which extend the suite beyond the immediate coastal belt into the broader territorial arena of the company’s expanding campaigns and alliances. Taken together, the group functions as a compact “campaign archive”: a suite not merely of individual fortress plans, but of interrelated documents that reveal how Southern India was surveyed, conceptualised, and acted upon through military cartography at a pivotal moment in the consolidation of colonial power.

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