ABSTRACT
The composition of the elite in early nineteenth-century Tranquebar tends to confirm the view that the Tanjore area was, to a greater extent than further west and north, dominated by the right hand division. The localized perspective on caste disputes was more in keeping with the pre-colonial order in South India, in which the privileges of right and left hand castes constituted patterns of rank and precedence that were essentially local. Basically, the dispute was an encounter between a colonial power unwilling to intervene in internal indigenous disputes and an indigenous society expecting the local authority to act as a little king. The shrinking Danish administration did not develop the more bureaucratic forms that characterized contemporary British colonialism. The report to Copenhagen was, of course, a long apologia for the conduct of the government, and its representation of Indian society was a Danish monologue in which Indian voices were only indirectly present.
