Skip to content
ಮThe Complete History of Mysore

Chapter 9 · 1750 – 1799

Tipu Sultan

The 'Tiger of Mysore': innovator in rocketry and revenue, diplomat to France and the Ottomans, and the last ruler to fight the Company on equal terms.

9.1Reign and reforms

Tipu Sultan (1751–1799) succeeded Hyder Ali in 1782. He restructured the revenue and coinage systems, promoted state trading houses, introduced or expanded sericulture in Mysore — an industry that survives as a mainstay of the regional economy — and corresponded with France, the Ottoman Empire, Persia and Afghanistan in search of allies against the British.[1]

He developed the iron-cased Mysorean rockets into a mass battlefield weapon; captured specimens taken to Britain influenced William Congreve's rocket designs.[2]

9.2The Third and Fourth Anglo-Mysore Wars

The Third Anglo-Mysore War (1790–1792) ended with the Treaty of Seringapatam, under which Tipu ceded about half his territory and surrendered two sons as hostages.[1] In 1799 Governor-General Richard Wellesley launched the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War; Srirangapatna was stormed on 4 May 1799 and Tipu was killed defending the breach.

The kingdom was partitioned between the Company, the Nizam and the Marathas; a reduced Mysore was restored to the Wadiyars under a subsidiary alliance.[3]

9.3Contested memory

Tipu remains one of the most debated figures in Indian history. He is remembered as an early and effective opponent of colonial expansion and as a patron of temples such as Sringeri and Srirangapatna's Ranganathaswamy; he is also criticised for coercive campaigns and conversions in Coorg, Malabar and Mangalore, documented in both colonial and Indian sources.[1][4]

Historians caution that much of the surviving evidence is British war propaganda or later polemic, and that the reign must be read against the fiscal and military pressures of the period.[5]

References and footnotes

  1. [1]"Tipu Sultan", Wikipedia. Link
  2. [2]"Mysorean rockets", Wikipedia. Link
  3. [3]"Siege of Seringapatam (1799)", Wikipedia. Link
  4. [4]Kate Brittlebank, Tipu Sultan's Search for Legitimacy: Islam and Kingship in a Hindu Domain, Oxford University Press, 1997.
  5. [5]Irfan Habib (ed.), Confronting Colonialism: Resistance and Modernization under Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan, Tulika, 1999.