ABSTRACT
Hindu Indian influences had been important from early times, while the Muslim merchants of the Tamil and Keralan coasts maintained trading contacts with Sumatra into the eighteenth century. The expansion of Muslim state-building in India towards the Deccan and the south put pressure on the indigenous kingdoms of coastal south India, notably Tanjore and Travancore, and also on the European trading empires of the Dutch, French and British on the southern coast. The increasing commercial and ideological scale of the Muslim empires had itself created the scene for more violent conflict between centre and periphery, between sect and sect. The Marathas and in the south the Muslim sultans of Mysore attempted to build up more compact, European-style armies with which to fight off the Company and its demands.
