India, Madras and Tranquebar

India

One billion people with many of their own culture and with yearly growth rates of 6 – 8% and thousand of new engineers leaving the technical Universities every year.

Madras

Madras in the southeast was founded by the English east Asiatic Company as a trading station and fortress, about 500 years back.

Tranquebar

The small town is about 260 km. South of Madras. It means ½ a day travel by car at crowdie Indian roads.
Tranquebar was founded by the Danish Admiral Ove Gjedde in 1620. The aim was just to establish a trading station. The goods’ interesting the Danes was textiles and spices.

Sailing to India at that time, in small wind driven boats took about 2 years.
After a leasing agreement with the local king the admiral got permission to build a fortress, which was named Dannesborg.In 1700 the city was the sixth largest in ‘Denmark’. The main street is named ‘Kongensgade’ (Kings Street), on which the warehouses are placed, the Governors residence and the Jerusalem Church from 1720.

The first printing press came to India, as the church invested in the press to print a Bible, not in Latin but in Tamil. To day we can feel proud of the Danes ability to live, trade and integrate them self in the culture where they were living. The Governors residence is to day a modern hotel.
Tranquebar to day is a ‘slow moving’ town with a good mixture of all religions.

The Danes left Tranquebar at 1845 after an agreement with the English, who on that time had a policy of more influence in India – and all the people of Tranquebar cried.