SUMMARY
In this episode, we explore the history of Kanhoji Angre and his exploits in the Arabian Sea, particularly against the British East India Company. Angre and his sons are perhaps better known to history as the fierce and dangerous “Angria pirates” who plundered and murdered poor innocents on the Indian Seas. But was Kanhoji Angre a pirate as the British said he was or was he India’s first freedom fighter? Please scroll through the script below for related images. References are provided at the end of the page. Please let us know if you have questions in the comments below!
“Mahratta pirates attacking the sloop 'Aurora', of the Bombay Marine, 1812; beginning of the action”
Thomas Butterworth, c.1816, National Maritime Museum, London
SCRIPT
Voice of British Official's Diary 00:08
“4th June.—Two gallivats returned having plundered a town in Angria's country, and brought away sixteen prisoners.
“9th June.—Returned our gallivats, having by mismanagement of the chief officer lost about fifty men and destroyed one town of Angria’s.”
--- entries from the official account of the British Attack on Gheria/Vijaydurg on the western coast of India, 1716
Deepthi Murali 00:44
King Charles II of England, married Portuguese princess Catherine of Braganza, partly to spite the Spanish monarch. England, however, lucked out because as part of the marriage treaty, Catherine brought to England, a dowry that included the seven islands of Bombay, now, Mumbai, this was the beginning of the British successes in western India. Bombay was important in its early days, not for its own sake, it was a sleepy little fishing village for the most part, but it was important due to its proximity to the Great Western Indian trading port at the time. Surat in the 17th and 18th centuries, suffered precisely because of the riches afforded by its location. It is from Surat that commerce flowed to the Arabian Peninsula and the Indian Ocean well beyond. Surat was also the preferred entrepot for pilgrims who went to Mecca during the Muslim holy month. Because of its prosperity Surat also became the focus of unwanted attention from different piratical groups. And for the British, this was an extremely difficult situation. Because even though Surat was under the Mughal dominion, as early as 1615, the British had set up a factory in Surat, so that it was the primary British port of trade. And Bombay was the port that lent the British merchants in Surat some security. So the pillaging of their ships and general lawlessness on the Arabian Sea, off the Gujarat and Bombay coast, became a very difficult economic and political situation. Because for the British piracy was a matter of not just trade losses, right to tax the merchant ships plying on the Indian seas was also important to the British interests in developing their colonial imperial system on the Indian subcontinent. Over the 18th century, it was Britain's superior naval power that finally allowed them to beat back other European powers and colonize the subcontinent. The attack on merchant ships under British protection were therefore an attack on the emerging bonds between free trade and imperialism in the subcontinent.
Map of the West Coast of India
Major ports in the eighteenth century on the southwestern coast of India from Cochin to Beyt
Deepthi Murali 03:21
The attack on British on the sea was a threat to the British domination of South Asia. In the last episode, I talked about European pirates who made it impossible for the East India Company traders to do business on land and sea in South Asia. Pirates in the Indian seas were formidable, and their large numbers disturbed trade along the western coast, and between India and the Arabian Peninsula in a big way. But it was not just European pirates who were doing all this work. In 18th century coastal India, many different groups were involved in the semi legal and outright unlawful plundering of merchant ships. Even though the British call them pirates, the fleet of Siddis of Janjira, for example, were more organized. And as we shall see through the course of this episode, they were also not really pirates. But there were other smaller plundering operations on the coast by groups such as the Malabaris, who were a mixed community of Hindus, Muslims, Christians and Jews. Then there were the Kolis of Gujarat, the Sanghanias of Beyt and the Warrals of Diu who all carried out piratic operations in their own little zones on the Indian coastline. For example, the Kolis focused on the Bombay-Gujarat shoreline on the upper southwestern coast of India, north of Goa. The Malabaris always sailed south of Goa. However, these piratical attacks were not systemic. They were rather sporadic and spread out across the Indian coastline. But what happens when it was not one pirate with his motley crew who were casually ransacking, but a well-managed and efficient fleet commanded by a charismatic leader, who led us troops in sea battles and wielded power on land as well? Of all these groups considered pirates or piratical by the British, there was one such group, efficiently managed and well-led that gave British East Indian and other European trading companies a run for their money, quite literally. They were the Angres. In English records and in pirate history books, they're called the fierce Angrias.
Deepthi Murali 05:46
In this episode, we shall turn our attention to the so called Maratha Angre pirates who wreaked havoc for traders along the western coast of India, but especially for the British. Were they pirates or India's first freedom fighters? This is the question that we are exploring in this episode.
Deepthi Murali 06:11
This is the Masala History podcast and I am Deepthi Murali. Join me as I take you on this fun ride full of gun battles and sword fights as we discuss the history of the seafaring, Angre family. In the last episode, I described pirates as those living outside the law. But we also learned that law in an age before United Nations and legally drawn nation state boundaries is subjective. In 17th and 18th century India, boundaries are almost literally lines drawn on sand. They changed every year if not almost every other month. The waxing and waning of Indian powers with the constant battles egged on by European trading companies had created such political volatility that no sooner had a king gained territory in one part of the subcontinent that he was forced to rush to another part of his kingdom to secure it from a rival power. By late 17th century, the western coast of India from Goa, all the way to the north was contentious territory. The Deccan Sultanates of the South that had nominally controlled portions of the western coast, known today as the Konkan Coast were completely overrun by the Mughal territorial expansion into southern India under Emperor Shah Jahan. And later on the Sultanates completely lost their grip on the Konkan Coast when they were even more aggressive Mughal expansion under Emperor Aurangzeb in the late 17th and early 18th century. It is in this complex geopolitical world that the British East India Company encounters the “Angrias” as they were called. The British from the beginning think of them as lawless “Maratha pirates.” But the Angres were not pirates in the traditional sense of the world. The Angres may not have upheld the European law of free trade, but they were by design not meant to, considering that their allegiance was not to the British East India Company, but to the Maratha Empire. In 1698, Kanhoji Angre, the illustrious sailor and warrior was officially made the Sarkhel or the Admiral of the Maratha Navy. He was given the title, a fleet of ships and seven forts along the west coast from where he was tasked to carry out Maratha taxation schemes on the ships plying the Arabian Sea, schemes that were totally the opposite of the kind of schemes put together by the European trading companies. For the taxation of the ships were going directly to the Maratha Emperor and not to any of the European East Indian trading companies.
Kanhoji Angre (1669-1729)
Picture courtesy: Pratish Khedekar
Deepthi Murali 09:24
The British tried very hard right from the start to brand Kahnoji Angre as an upstart pirate. As early as 1704, Angre was being addressed in British communication as “Rebel independent of the Raja Shivaji.” After Shivaji’s death Kanhoji moved in and out of favor with the reigning Maratha ruler or his prime minister the Peshwa. Peshwas were the very powerful prime ministers of the Maratha Empire and it was a hereditary position. Successive Peshwas aided the Maratha King from the time of Shivaji in 17th century but by the mid-18th century, Peshwas had gradually become so powerful that they were the de facto rulers of the Maratha Empire until the end of the empire in 1880.
To understand why the British could easily call Kanhoji Andre and his men pirates, we need to traverse a bit into the politics of the Maratha rulership in the 18th century. When Kanhoji was made the Sarkhel or Admiral of the Maratha naval feat, the Maratha Empire was going through a period of transition and instability. After the death of the founder of the Empire, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj in 1618, his son Sambhaji had ascended the throne. Chhatrapati Samhaji carried on his father's offensive against the Mughals, for which in the ninth year of his reign, he was caught, tortured and killed by Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb. Following his death. his half-brother Rajaram came to the throne. And assisting Rajaram ably was his second wife Tarabhai. It was Rajaram at his capital at Sattara that deputed Kanhoji to commandeer the Maratha naval force. So when Rajaram died quite suddenly, two years after deputing Kanhoji, Knahoji must have felt the need to stay loyal to Rajaram’s wife Tarabai who took over the reign of the Maratha empire. She subsequently installed her young son Shivaji II as ruler and herself as Queen Regent.
Now here's where things get even more complicated. In 1707, Emperor Aurangzeb died and upon his death Shahu the young son of slain Maratha ruler Sambhaji who had been taken prisoner by the Mughals, was released. Upon Shahu’s return two Maratha factions emerged, one in support of Shahu, and the other in support of Tarabai. Kanhoji belonged to the latter faction that chose to maintain their allegiance to Tarabai. So when Tarabai was eventually ousted Kanhoji appears to have taken the fleet and left the dominion of the Marathas, establishing himself somewhat independently on what is now the Konkan Coast in southwestern India. Kanhoji Angre made the fort of Gheria or Vijaydurg his capital on the Konkan Coast. After he had established himself, he also nominally pledged his allegiance to Tarabai who by that time had installed her son in a rival Maratha thrown in Kolhapur. This was the beginning of a long protracted civil war between the Maratha factions one supporting Tarabai and her son, the other supporting Shahu, the son of slain ruler Sambhaji, which ended somewhat in the defeat of the Tarabai faction. Tarabai, by the way, continued to play an important role in Maratha politics until her death in 1761. It was Shahu’s new illustrious commander or Senkarata, Peshwa Balaji Vishwanath that successfully convinced Kanhoji to switch sides. After their treaty of 1714, Kanhoji declared Shahu as his Chattrapathi (Emperor) and was anointed the Admiral of Maratha Navy. Like in the reign of Rajaram the First, Kanhoji’s seals after 1714 read “Shri Kanhoji Angre, son of Tukoji, is forever eager at the feet of Shahu.”
Deepthi Murali 14:09
This brief deviation however, of Kanhoji’s allegiance from the main center of Maratha power, is perhaps why the British decided to treat him as an independent rebel pirate. It is clear from Kanhoji’s seals, however, that he considered himself allied and under the service of successive Maratha rulers. So it is safe to say that Kanhoji Angre was not a pirate. The British desperately wanted him to be one and considered himself so for the express purpose of waging sea battles against his fleet without having to involve the powerful Maratha rulers in these affairs. One Shahu assumed the throne stability returned to the Maratha Empire. The death of Aurangzeb and his constant warfare in the south had depleted Mughal resources. So the main enemy or focus of Kanhoji came to be the rich European ships plying on the Indian coastline. By the 1710s Kanhoji had become practically unstoppable in the Arabian Sea. As early as 1711, the directors of the British East India Company listened in horror, as they were informed that the Angre could and did take any vessel from Gujarat up to Dabul, except the largest of European ships. When British governor Boone wrote a threatening letter to Kanhoji in 1720, Kanhoji replied in a tone that one can assume was laden with derision.
Scroll painting of a Maratha fleet of ships from the collection of Bharat Itihas Samshodhak Mandal, Pune, date unknown
In response to the letter, Kanhoji wrote a scathing letter to the British that basically insulted them by calling them mere merchants.
Voice of Kanhoji Angre in his letter: 15:55
“I do not find the merchants exempt from this sort of ambition for this is the way of the rule for God gives nothing immediately from himself, but takes from one to give to another. Whether this is right or no who's able to determine. It literally behooves merchants to say that our government is supported by violence, insults, and piracies.
The Maharaja Shivaji made war with four kings and founded and established his power. This was our beginning. Whether by these means this government has proved your boob, Your Excellency well knows. So likewise, did your predecessors whether it is durable or no, I would have Your Excellency consider it is certain nothing in this world is your bitch if your excellency does consider the way of this world is well known.”
Deepthi Murali 16:53
By this time Kanhoji had in charge 26 forts, and a large number of villages associated with these forts, including Kanheri and Colaba, close to the British harbor of Bombay. He ruled these lands and the sea bordering them from his capital fortress of Gheria (Vijaydurg) about 300 miles south of Bombay. His impregnable fortresses lined across the shoreline from Vengurla in the south, to Bombay in the north, spanning an area close to 400 miles. Kanhoji also employed all kinds of people: his best commanders on the sea were Dutch sailors. He even had in his employ pirates like John Plantain, who had turned servicemen.
Kanhoji turned out to be indestructible for the British from 1715 until his death in 1729. Kanhoji forts were attacked a total of six times by the British, with absolutely no amount of success. It started with the arrival of the new Governor of Bombay, Charles Boone, who was from the start affronted that his company ships were being ransacked by an Indian pirate. Boone immediately went to work fortifying the town of Bombay, and ordered three battleships to be built. In a few months, Britannia with 18 guns, Fame and the Revenge, each with 16 guns, and Victory with 24 guns were all seaworthy. In two years, Boone had built an admirable fleet with 19 frigates, grabs, ketches, gallivats, and galleys, all different kinds of boats and ships. Altogether, they were capable of carrying 220 guns, in addition to a bomb vessel, and a fire ship.
This was… all this… all these boats, all these guns, were expressly to take on the Angre.
Except not once did poor Boone win a gun battle at sea, or land.
For nearly 15 years, Charles Boone did his best to get the best of Angre. Boone's first attack on the Angre was aimed at his stronghold in Vengurla. He sent Fame, Britannia and Revenge along with about 10 galbats, boats that were called gallivats by the English. After spending many days trying to find a safe landing spot, the British bombarded the fortress, but it hardly caused a dent. Eventually two of Boone’s officers in charge started fighting with each other from sheer exhaustion, and the fleet returned to Bombay with nothing to show for their efforts.
Exactly how much did Angre get from looting merchant ships that caused Boone to get so angry? Well, just in 1716, Angre’s fleet had captured one East India Company shipped from near the harbor, four private ships valued at 30,000 xeraphims, a Bombay currency of the time, and one large East Indiaman named Success on its way from Surat. The private ships had refused to pay dues to the Angre’s men, and that's why they had been captured. And when the company sent Abgre an angry letter, he responded by capturing Otter, a ship from Bengal! In consternation, Boone planned another attack this time on Angre’s capital fortress of Gheria. This is how an English official recorded this expedition.
Voice of British Officer Gideon: 20:39
“We proceeded down the coast for Gerey, which is not above twelve hours' sail from Bombay, where we with all our navy soon arrived, and run boldly into the harbour, Captain Berlew Commodore, and ranged a line from the eastermost part of the fortifications to the outer part of the harbour. Keeping all our small galleys and galleywats on the off-side under shelter. But they had strong fortifications on both sides; so that we left our strongest ships in the harbour, to make a breach in the walls, in order to storm the castle. The rocks were very high, and so slippery that one could hardly stand without a staff, and consequently not a place convenient to draw men up in any posture of defence. We endeavoured to get the fireship in, but could not; for on the east part of the fort they had a cove or creek, where they had laid up a great part of their fleet, and had got a strong boom across the same; so that we could not annoy them any otherwise than by throwing our bombs and coehorns very thick into the garrison, which we did for a considerable time, and were in hopes after the first and second day's siege, that we should have drove them out of that strong castle, but we soon found that the place was impregnable. For as we kept throwing our shells as fast as we could in regular time, cooling our chambers before we loaded again; after we had beat over two or three houses in the castle, the shells fell on the rocks in the inside the castle, and their weight and force of falling would break them without so much as their blowing up. . . . As to storming the walls, they were so high that our scaling ladders would not near reach the top of them. . . .”
Deepthi Murali 22:25
From the entries of the siege in British Officer Gideon’s diary, it becomes really clear that the British had no clue that they were being trapped. They did not know the land and Angre knew this. So he drew them into the only real approach to the fort by firing only a few shots just to make the British believe the Marathas were putting up a fight.
Voice of British Officer Gideon: 22:48
After the second day we landed all our forces, taking the opportunity of the tide. . . . We got them all on shore, and marched up the country, without molestation; only now and then the castle would let fly a shot or two, which did us small damage.
Deepthi Murali 23:08
Angre knew that the British were going to get stuck in the swamp and that the British would be sitting ducks while on their retreat.
Voice of British Officer Gideon: 23:17
We attempted to march the army down to their shipping, and to set them on fire; but when we came within a mile of the place the land was all swampy, and so very muddy by the spring tides flowing over that we could not proceed. On our retreat they galled us very much by firing from the castle, we, being obliged to come near the castle walls to take our forces off again. Here the gallant Captain Gordon was slightly wounded again. . . . I question whether there were a hundred men in the castle during the time of the siege. . . . “We drew off our forces on the 18th April, and went up to Bombay to repair our frigates and take care of our wounded men, of whom we had a considerable number.”
Deepthi Murali 24:00
This British description of the failed attack makes it clear that Angre was no pirate. He was a naval leader for sure, but he definitely had training to defend land settlements as well.
We must admire Governor Boone's tenacity here. His army had been repulsed twice in a short period by Kanhoji Angre’s men, but no sooner had the war frigates full of wounded soldiers from Gheria landed in Bombay that Boone was preparing for his next attack. This time he chose close to home at Angre stronghold at Kanheri on Shashti or Salsette Island just north of Bombay. Kanheri was a recent acquisition by Angre. He had in 1710 confiscated the islet from the Siddis of Janjira and fortified it. It must have been quite well-fortified or Boone was nervous of another failed attack, for the fleet that made its way up the Bombay harbor to Kanheri was perhaps the largest fleet of warships used on the Indian coast up till that point.
Deepthi Murali 25:10
Aside from for massive East Indiamen warships, there were two ghurabs or grabs as the English called it. One frigate, one galley, one ketch two bomb ketches, and 48 galbats. It took them about six days to assemble and anchor all these vessels in a suitable formation. The show of force and the force of bombardment seemed to have helped somewhat. British officers and soldiers were able to land even though they were constantly being fired upon. Somehow, two captains managed to get their troops up to the gateway of the fortress, and began to work in dismantling it.
Now, this is where things started going south once again. The courage of one of the captains finally failed, and he made a run for it, and with him, his troop of British soldiers. The other brave Captain walked up to the gate and fired his pistol at close range, which was a mistake. Because the bullet rebounded of the gate and struck him right on his nose, and he could do nothing but retire hurt. And he too, ordered a retreat. Once again, Boone was left with nothing to show for all the effort that he had put into his planning.
One reason Boone was so tremendously unsuccessful was because the East India Company and its officers in South Asia were really traders and not army men. The landed elites of the British society mostly went to the Americas in this period looking for more fortune, the crown only too happy to confer them with estates and islands in the West Indies. Those that came to India were mostly working class. The 17th and early-18th century British company servants were men from humble backgrounds. In India, there was no hope at this time to receive land options, and profits by trade were largely monopolized to the benefit of the shareholders back in London. The company pay was also not much to write home about. The married ones received a lodging allowance, the unmarried ones were put up by the company and their living conditions were also not that great. The retention rate for the company's employees in the early part of the 18th century was not high at all, and it is no surprise that they could be bought or would switch sides if they found that to be a more lucrative option. The British soldiers were in the words of one observer, “badly armed, badly fed, and badly paid.”
Kanhoji became even more emboldened after the third failed attack at Kanheri. He started raiding ships, Indian, British Portuguese, whatever came his way that were not carrying Dastaks, the licenses issued by the Angre on behalf of the Maratha rulers. Angre’s fleet lay so close to the Bombay harbor that Morris, an East Indiaman, which had taken part in the Kanheri attack had to try three times before it could leave the port for its return journey to England. Boone pleaded with the Directors to send him a guard ship, which they did, except the officers on board the 60-gun warship, St. George, got to Bombay and then accidentally wrecked the ship by bringing it to close to shore!
But none of this… none of this stopped Boone from trying again and again and again.
The next three attacks at Gheria, Deogarh and Colaba that Boone planned also ended in failure. Captains aboard the British vessels got drunk, got into fistfights, ran away, or were bought by the Angres.
The attack on Colaba was the final piece of straw for Charles Boone. This was a joint attack on Kanhoji Angre. The British would attack from sea and the Portuguese would attack Angre’s property from land. Upon their success, Colaba would be given to Portugal and England would take Angre’s capital fort at Gheria.
Well, it was a heavy defeat… for the Europeans.
It was so humiliating that the commander on the British side, a short-tempered man not well liked even by his peers, Thomas Matthews, not only got his thigh pierced with the lance of a lowly Maratha horseman, but upon their defeat, got so incensed that he thrust his cane down the mouth of the Portuguese general.
Following this, Charles Boone returned to England in 1721 without even one win against the Angre, but he tried. He tried very hard.
Deepthi Murali 30:12
What made Kanhoji Angre so indestructible? I hope by now it's obvious that he had the backing of the powerful Maratha army on land, and many of the attacks he repulsed was because of the support of the land forces as well. He must have been a quiet a charismatic leader too considering he even got hardened European pirates like John Plantain to work for him and stay in his service for years on end. He was most definitely a fierce warrior, but he seems to also have been an exceptionally able administrator and strategizer.
While we don't know a lot about his lineage, his father was likely a freed African slave who married and settled near the Koli Region on the western coast of India. As a lifelong navigator, who started working on ships as a young boy, likely with his father, who was also a sailor, Kanhoji knew the Arabian Sea like the back of his hand. He was trained by pirates, but also by sailors.
What Kanhoji realized from his training is that Indian sailors relied on more local types of sailing vessels that could navigate closer to the coastline, as well as the narrow mouths of rivers that allowed them to sail further inland if needed for protection. He was well aware that these different types of vessels were actually more useful than the larger oceanic sailing vessels and battleships that Europeans typically used on the Indian coastline. For example, Kanhoji made use of what is called the ghurabs or grabs in English: a two or three masted boat that drew very little water and was designed to give speed in the light winds that usually prevailed on India's West Coast.
Now, if you really want to see what a ghurab looks like, head over to our website or our Instagram account at @masalahistorypodcast, where you can find a painting of the attack of Marathas on a British vessel in 1812. In the painting, the boat leading the attack on the British vessel is the ghurab. And in the foreground of this big vessel, you'll see a smaller vessel with two lateen sails or triangular sails, that is called the galbats (galbads) or the galivats in English. These vessels were made for shallow seas, and they largely plied along the coastline. But they were also made light so that they could be faster and therefore better equipped to attack and then flee. The galbats also carried additional crew for support and to carry away plunder.
Maratha Attack on British Sloop Aurora in 1812
Painting by Thomas Butterworth, c.1816, National Maritime Museum, London
Kanhoji also use the techniques frequently used by Indian pirates that were quite simple, but inventive and effective. For example, he would move two or three ghurabs close to the target vessel. When they were sufficiently close, Kanhoji’s fleet would attack with swords from the prow of their vessels. They also cast stink pots, which were earthen vessels filled with gunpowder and Sulphur from the top of their masts to the deck of the ship being attacked, so that it created these fumes that would force the crew to flee the main deck, making it easier for Kanhoji’s fleet to board that attacked vessel. Kanhoji’s Navy also used cannonade, small shot, sling stones, and long lances to attack the enemy vessel. It was a very effective strategy, and if it did not work, the smaller ghurabs and galbats made it easy for the crew to get away quickly and hide in the shallow bays, groves and rivers that dotted the Indian coastline where the big ships could not reach.
Part of the problem for poor Governor Boone during his time in Bombay was also that the company was not getting any military support from the Royal Navy. And this was of course because England at the time, was dealing with multiple crises closer home. Not only were they besieged by the unrest that culminated in the first Jacobite uprising in Scotland in 1715, England allied with Spain and other European powers were, at the time, fighting France in the War of the Spanish Succession, which lasted from 1701 to 1714. But when it finally ended with the Treaty of Utrecht in 1715, England wants once again free to send its naval force to the Indian Ocean.
So in the 1720s, soon after poor Boone’s return to England, things started to look up for the British in India. In 1723 a 16-gun Angre vessel was taken by the British after a battle which killed the Dutch commander of the Angre vessel. The same week saw three more Angre vessels captured.
Deepthi Murali 35:14
The Directors also now sent three galleys from London with a crew that was trained for combat, making it even more difficult for the Maratha Admiral and his naval crew to get any successes on the Indian seas. These military strategic advances of the British East India Company all but eliminated most of the smaller piratic groups from the Arabian Sea by the 1730s. Kanhoji, however, remained undefeated, even though his attacks became less successful. When he died in 1729, he had not lost any of the forts that were under his command. He had also successfully helped Marathas annexe a number of smaller chiefdoms along the Konkan Coast. After his death, Kanhoji’s sons carried on the Angre rule and naval warfare on the western coast of India. But internecine rivalry weakened the Angres over the next couple of decades, until the forts were split up amongst two rivaling Angre brothers. The British pitted one angry brother against the other and eventually got the best of both factions.
Deepthi Murali 36:25
The last angry stronghold was Colaba near Bombay, which was annexed to British India in 1843.
Deepthi Murali 36:39
[END CREDITS]
Masala history is produced by Deepthi Murali and co-hosted by Deepthi Murali and Manamee Guha. Many thanks to our voice actors, one who shall remain nameless, and the other Ram Surendran (@cheesecakephallusy) for voicing Kanhoji Angre. The transcript for this episode along with related images, readings, and other information is available on our website, www.masalahistory.com.
A special note before I say goodbye: we are introducing a new format in the next episode to include more historians to bring their research to us. If you want exciting snippets from the upcoming episodes do follow us on Instagram at @masalahistorypodcast because that's where we post all our little snippets. See you in the next episode.
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Downing, Clement. 1737. A compendious history of the Indian wars: with an account of the rise, progress, strength, and forces of Angria the pyrate. London: Printed for T. Cooper. Harvard (18th ed.)
Elliott, Derek L. 2010. Pirates, polities and companies: global politics on the Konkan littoral, c.1690 - 1756. London: London School of Economics, Dept. of Economic History. http://www2.lse.ac.uk/economicHistory/workingPapers/2010/WP136.pdf.
Risso, Patricia. "Cross-Cultural Perceptions of Piracy: Maritime Violence in the Western Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf Region during a Long Eighteenth Century." Journal of World History 12, no. 2 (2001): 293-319. Accessed April 13, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20078911.
Sen, Surendra Nath. n.d. The military system of the Marathas. [Place of publication not identified]: [publisher not identified]. (On Archive.org)
Shostak, Elizabeth, and Sonia Benson. 2011. Pirates through the ages. Detroit: Gale, Cengage Learning.
The Arabian pirate or authentic history and fighting adventures of Tulagee Angria. With An Account of his Predecessors, the Angrias, who carried on their depredations in the East Indies for upwards of Forty Years. Also An Account of the Siege and taking of his Town and Fortress, and the destruction of his whole naval Force, by Admiral Watson and Colonel Clive. 1795. Newcastle: Printed by G. Angus, in the Side.