I

The system for delivering packages over long distances in early modern India and the Middle East depended on individuals who performed two distinct roles: couriers, responsible for manually transporting the packages entrusted to them; and intermediaries, who generally resided at settlements of spiritual, commercial or political significance that lay at the juncture of several land- and sea-routes. Unlike couriers, intermediaries were usually associated with an array of functions. The most important, for the purposes of postal communication, was to monitor the progress of the courier and his charge. Beyond this, the intermediary bore the main responsibility for redirecting the package on to the next stage of its journey, perhaps with another courier, or for keeping it in his possession while awaiting further instructions.

Within the sphere of communication, intermediaries and couriers may be differentiated in terms of their relationship to the sender of the package.Footnote ¹² On this basis, there were two classes of intermediaries. On the one hand, there were those for whom there was no barrier in principle to achieving social or economic parity with the sender. In this case, both intermediary and sender occupied transient positions on a spectrum, enabling them to act as intermediaries for each other without any fear of compromising their social standing. On the other hand, there were permanent employees and agents whose relationship with the sender was marked by an insurmountable asymmetry in terms of authority and rank. Equitable reciprocity was not possible in this situation. Similarly, among couriers were those who could aspire to the same status as the sender, and those who were separated by an unbridgeable gap. There was, in addition, a third class of courier with no counterpart among intermediaries. These were commissionaires engaged to deliver packages in return for a payment that covered their fees and expenses. The distinctive feature of this third class was that the sender and courier were normally strangers in a non-hierarchical association, grounded in convenience, the expectation of monetary gain, and the prospect of ongoing collaboration.Footnote ¹³

It was not easy for a would-be courier acting on his own to gain a foothold in this occupation. Senders and forwarding intermediaries generally had established couriers that served them perfectly well. And in situations where a need did arise for a courier, the choice was largely determined by prior attitudes towards risk and the degree of familiarity with the service on offer. This conservatism heavily favoured incumbents. Despite this, there were entrepreneurial individuals, mostly foreigners, who persisted in trying to capture some of this business. At a time when advertising in public fora was uncommon, such entrepreneurs made themselves known to potential clients through conversations, referrals and personal letters.Footnote ¹⁴ In return for delivering the package to a destination on their proposed itinerary, they were paid a fee, which was a welcome, though relatively minor, addition to their overall income. Departing friends, family members or associates also undertook to deliver such packages.Footnote ¹⁵ As this was usually deemed a personal favour, they expected no more than the extra costs that it might entail.

Once the mode of transport had been selected, the package was handed over to the courier with any special instructions to aid its delivery. If there were instructions for the intermediary, these might be given orally to the courier to be passed on to him or put down on paper and delivered to him together with the package.Footnote ¹⁶ Muḥammad Adīb, for example, stranded in Cochin in 1748, opted to send written instructions. These were to help his correspondents in Hugli ensure that his colleague's letter—enclosed with his own—got to its intended recipient. ‘By all means [at your disposal]’, he wrote, ‘deliver the letter of the kirānī Sayyid Thanā˓ Allāh to his home (khānah). Either hand it to Shaykh Bāb Allāh or give [it] to Shaykh Dīn Muḥammad Jīyu. By all means delivery [it]. His [Sayyid Thanā˒ Allāh's] son's name is Sayyid Gharīb Allāh. [The name of the] place [where he lives] is Gharībah, next to the house (havīlī) of Ḥājī Hidāyat Allāh.’Footnote ¹⁷

Information on postage costs in eighteenth-century India and the Middle East is not easy to find.Footnote ¹⁸ Nevertheless, records show that, if their contents merited it, residents were quite willing to spend large sums on sending letters. Manakji Limji and Ramseth Ganbaseth, Gujarati merchants who freighted a ship in 1766 on a venture from Bengal to Jidda, impressed upon their supercargoes the importance of sending them as soon as possible the current local market prices for Bengal and Surat goods. Such was their need for this ‘intelligence’, they were prepared to spend anything up to Rs. 100.Footnote ¹⁹ Though Manakji and Ramseth gave their supercargoes the freedom to choose whatever route and method they considered best, their preference was for the letter to be carried by express courier to their broker Narotum in Masqat.Footnote ²⁰ In anticipation of this, they gave Narotum warning of the package's impending arrival, directing him ‘to forward it safely to us [in Bengal] with all possible speed’, by way of Sind and northern India. The supercargoes were not to worry if the expense on this latter stretch of the journey amounted to ‘twenty or thirty rupees’.Footnote ²¹

This example allows us to place upper limits on what merchants were willing to pay for dispatching an important letter from Jidda to Bengal. In particular, it seems that the cost of shipping a letter across the Arabian Sea between southern Arabia and the western coast of India in the 1760s was a significant fraction of Rs. 20. It is possible that this was the case for much of this century. In 1777, for example, a pair of Gujarati merchant-brokers in Mocha, Yemen's chief port, advocated paying a similar amount. Wanting their French principal in western India to send them his recent news by the quickest means, they suggested that, if a French vessel was not available, he use instead one of the Malabari ships that sailed regularly between Mocha and India's west coast, even at the cost of ‘5 or 6 rupees’.Footnote ²²

These accounts suggest that, when packages were conveyed on a commission basis, the sender or intermediary who employed the courier had the main responsibility for paying him.Footnote ²³ In situations where the recipient shouldered part of this cost, the usual arrangement was for the courier to be given some of his fees by the sender, the remainder supplied by the recipient once the package was safely in his hands.Footnote ²⁴ For specialist couriers and for intermediaries in permanent employment, payment usually took the form of a wage. This was on top of any expenses incurred in making the delivery. Agents, for whom dealing with their principal's correspondence was merely one of their several duties, could also be paid wages and expenses. Alternatively, the sums due to them would be noted in their principal's current account and settled at the end of the financial cycle. As already mentioned, couriers who were close associates, personal friends or kinsmen seldom received direct payments, save perhaps expenses. The unstated rationale for this was the expectation of future reciprocity.

A courier setting off on his journey, say, from Basra to Aleppo had available to him two kinds of travel options. General modes of conveyance, commonly merchant ships and caravans, carried a wide variety of items between many different places for any client who could afford the charges. Specialised modes of conveyance, in contrast, were confined to the transport of correspondence, gems, bullion and other high-value items of low weight, normally within a specified ‘cultural domain’.Footnote ²⁵ These latter were patronised by a select clientele, who usually took care of their upkeep and costs. Until the turn of the nineteenth century and the arrival of scheduled mail services, specialised modes of conveyance did not extend across large bodies of water or continents; their scope tended to be provincial or local. Furthermore, neither of the two modes operated according to a fixed timetable with predetermined prices. As a result, the terms of most deliveries were negotiated individually.

From the technological standpoint, general modes were able to use a greater number and range of routes—the types of ship and caravan they had in service were larger and more robust and offered more security.Footnote ²⁶ When economic factors are taken into account, however, specialised modes enjoyed more flexibility in their choice of routes, albeit over shorter distances. By their very nature, general modes were constrained by the need to maintain positive cash flow and avoid a financial loss. Thus, as a route's turnover and profitability were the prime considerations, they were effectively confined to popular routes already well-established due to trade or pilgrimage. Specialised modes, which operated on more modest scales, were limited to routes on land and along the coast. The conveyances available to them were of the humbler sort: travelling alone on foot, in small convoys or on small vessels (known as ‘dhoneys’ off the coast of southern India).Footnote ²⁷ But as cost was frequently of lower priority than security and speed, specialised modes had, in practice, more latitude in selecting the route to follow. At the same time, the differences between these two modes should not be exaggerated. In both cases, the choice of the type of courier, the physical conveyance and the route was ultimately a function of the same basic factors: the mode's availability, cost and the (potential) gains from increasing returns to scale, together with the minimum levels of secrecy, reliability and speed required by the sender and recipient.

II

Whatever their mode of conveyance, there were a number of terms used to refer to couriers in the principal languages of early modern India and the Middle East. The most common appear to have been qāṣid, sā˓in, harkārah, payk and pattamar (and their cognates). These terms are rooted in one or more of the region's principal languages and, though all were in widespread use, some had greater currency in certain linguistic arenas than in others.Footnote ²⁸ Where the sources are wanting, an analysis of the vernacular repertoire tapped by those familiar with couriers can be invaluable. In particular, we stand to gain insights (that would otherwise not be possible) into general attitudes regarding couriers and their role in everyday communication.Footnote ²⁹

The term with the most expansive reach linguistically—and, thus, physically—was qāṣid. Arabic in origin,Footnote ³⁰ it formed part of the early modern Arabic, Ottoman Turkish, Persian and Hindi lexicon.Footnote ³¹ In all four languages, it meant ‘(foot-) messenger, courier, express, postman, letter-carrier’.Footnote ³² But in Arabic and Persian specifically, qāṣid had the additional meanings of ‘ambassador’, ‘delegate’ or, more broadly, ‘traveller’.Footnote ³³ Alongside qāṣid, Arabic had a second common term in sā˓in.Footnote ³⁴ This referred to a ‘messenger, courier, postman, runner’.Footnote ³⁵ Though similar in meaning to qāṣid, its use was more circumscribed, restricted largely to Arabic speakers.

In areas influenced by Indo-Persian culture, especially Iran and northern and central India, the term harkārah was commonplace. A compound term made up of two Persian words meaning ‘each, every’ (har) and ‘work, affair’ (kār), it was found in both early modern Persian and Hindi and was invoked in several different contexts.Footnote ³⁶ At its most general, it referred to a factotum, or servant, employed to carry out errands outside the home or office for his master. Particularly in India, harkārah could also be an attendant upon men of rank. In these two senses, there is no obvious bound upon the kind of work expected of such individuals. The harkārah's function is more clearly elaborated in its other senses. The most common of these were a ‘running footman’, ‘messenger’, ‘courier’, or ‘peon’, which overlapped with its more specialised meanings of a ‘spy’ or ‘emissary’.

Another widespread Indo-Persian term was payk. With variants found in Sanskrit, Persian and Hindi, it occupied two distinct semantic ranges.Footnote ³⁷ In one, it had the meanings of a ‘footman’, ‘foot-soldier’, ‘armed attendant’, ‘inferior police’ or ‘revenue officer’, ‘guard’, ‘watchman’. This stresses the payk's role as a guardian of, or enforcer for, a sovereign body. The other range of meanings included a ‘messenger’, ‘carrier’, ‘harbinger’. Here, the focus is on the payk's role in communication and transport.

The last in this list of terms is ‘pattamar’.Footnote ³⁸ Though its etymological origins are obscure, it appears to be a composite of words from one or more Indic languages. In the early modern period, it was frequently invoked in two different senses. Especially in southern and western India, a pattamar meant a ‘foot-messenger, running footman’ or, more generally, a ‘courier’. In its other sense, it originally referred to an ‘Indian dispatch boat’. With the passage of time, however, the word ended up denoting a fast-sailing, lateen-rigged vessel with up to three masts. This change paralleled the increasing popularity of such vessels in the coastal trade of western India from the eighteenth century.

This sketch of the etymology of the words commonly used to refer to couriers by the residents of early modern India and the Middle East raises several interesting points. While their meanings are wide in scope, the terms all embody, albeit in differing proportions, three main ideas: mobility, information-gathering and menial service. These basic associations suggest that those for whom such terms were part of their daily lexicon did not think of couriers solely as servants, employed merely to undertake the physical transport of their packages. They also understood couriers as figures central to the provision of intelligence and mediation in the mercantile and political spheres. It appears that popular views on circulation and exchange were intimately tied to popular views on knowledge and diplomacy. This vernacular mindset coincided with realities on the ground, which lie at the focus of the following account of a group of specialist couriers.

III

In this section, the world of couriers and intermediaries is thrown into sharp relief by studying in detail a particular branch of the Aiyangar community of southern India. By examining how this branch—known colloquially as ‘pattamars’—organised, managed and executed the delivery of small packages in the middle decades of the eighteenth century, light is shed on the dynamic links between major elements of southern India's informational fabric. The documents on which this case-study is based give details on the pattamars’ activities and views, and provide insights into the structure of the larger community of which they were a part. We learn about the social and material infrastructure that made it possible to deliver mail at the time. But this is not all. We also learn about a host of complementary informational services that the community's headmen provided for their employers and clients. These facets of communication in southern India will be considered towards the end of this case-study.

It was common practice for merchant houses, state institutions and wealthy individuals based in southern India to employ or commission specialised couriers. These pattamars were used mainly for delivering their correspondence within this area. Many (if not most) of these pattamars were Aiyangars, a community whose roots lie in Tamil Nadu.Footnote ³⁹ They journeyed frequently between the towns and ports of the peninsula, from Valapattanam on the Malabar to Chennai on the Coromandel.Footnote ⁴⁰ They constituted a major channel of communication between many of the leading figures in the kingdoms and petty states of the time, which included Nair officials and the kings of Cochin and Coimbatore. Despite its politically fragmented nature, the pattamars treated southern India as a single cultural domain. This was an area of which they had intimate experience and personalised knowledge. And within this area, the existing infrastructure and prior arrangements with the relevant ‘big men’ and power-brokers allowed them to travel quickly and in security. Pattamars were essential for those who had a large network of correspondents and placed a premium on reliable and swift communication, but who did not want, or were unable, to operate their own stable of couriers. They were, however, of little use for delivering packages to places outside their cultural domain. Those needing such a service were forced to look to other types of courier and means of conveyance, which tended to be less institutionalised and more dependent upon affective ties.

Each major settlement in southern India was home to a group or community that exercised a monopoly over the overland and coastal transport of small packages within its cultural domain. These specialist couriers were usually members of the same caste or extended family and, even if much of their lives were spent elsewhere due to the dictates of their work, they were always considered residents of their country of origin and subjects of its ruler. In southern India in the eighteenth century, the Aiyangars, a community of Tamil Brahmins, were well-known as a source of pattamars.Footnote ⁴¹ Communities of this type seem to have been defined primarily by jāti and residence, and only their members had ready access to work as pattamars.Footnote ⁴²

While there is insufficient evidence to specify precisely how each community sustained its local monopoly, we know in broad terms the strategies used to deter outsiders from becoming pattamars, which, in turn, helped preserve the community's inner cohesion. The world-view that framed early modern Indian society sanctioned the dominance of particular occupations by named and endogamous social groups. Usually called jātis within the Hindu tradition, these groups embraced a characteristic style of life within a ritualised and hierarchical system. Though this social cosmology was never static, its internal boundaries were well entrenched, publicly demarcated and actively policed. Blurring or transcending these boundaries was a slow, charged and uncertain process. Thus, an outsider attempting to gain employment as a pattamar would ordinarily have been viewed a deviant and very likely ostracised by his kinsmen and local society.

Such cultural and social barriers were reinforced by strict controls on access to the specialist knowledge, facilities and personal ties that enabled pattamars to deliver packages to their destination efficiently, safely and without being compromised. By denying would-be interlopers access to this social and physical capital, incumbents enjoyed an overwhelming advantage over others who might wish to offer a comparable service. They also benefited from the structural uncertainties of pre-modern times, which encouraged a conservative outlook. Actively seeking to manage and, if possible, lower risks, those who needed specialist couriers naturally favoured pattamars belonging to communities with recognised expertise in the field.

Each group of pattamars was organised hierarchically. At the top were ‘chefs’ (or headmen),Footnote ⁴³ who belonged to the same close-knit group as the pattamars. These headmen conducted their affairs either from their permanent residence, usually in their community's home settlement, or on the move, often while accompanying their pattamars doing their rounds. Thus, Venkatachalam and Tirumalai, the headmen of the pattamars employed by the French authorities in Pondicherry in the 1770s, organised affairs so that one would remain in Pondicherry and the other would travel with his pattamars ‘when necessary’ (au besoin).Footnote ⁴⁴ In terms of age, social rank and function, headmen were quite distinct from pattamars. They tended to be relatively advanced in years. Venkatachalam is a case in point. Though he began his working life as a pattamar in the 1720s, it was not until many years later that he became a headman, most probably in his forties or fifties.Footnote ⁴⁵ This promotion would have been marked by a drastic change in his rights, duties and privileges. Whereas pattamars had the immediate responsibility for ensuring the package actually reached its destination, it was the headmen who dealt with the logistics, making arrangements for their pick-up, transport and delivery. But the headmen's work did not stop there. Many also undertook for their principals a wide range of additional services relating to intelligence, diplomacy and commerce.Footnote ⁴⁶

Pattamars were either permanently attached to a single individual or organisation, or engaged on the basis of short-term commissions.Footnote ⁴⁷ This is exemplified by the French authorities in India, who, in constant need of secure and reliable channels of communicating for official business, maintained a retinue of pattamars. Twenty-six of them were dedicated to carrying ‘correspondence between Pondicherry and Mahe’ until the mid-1770s, when an official audit concluded that this number was ‘far too many and [that they were too] expensive [to maintain] given the circumstances’. As a result, they were reduced to twelve, with ‘four for Pondicherry and eight for Mahe’.Footnote ⁴⁸ Pattamars in such circumstances could remain in the service of a single employer for many years, even decades. Venkatachalam was one of the Compagnie des Indes’ most loyal employees. He started working for it in the 1720s as an ordinary pattamar. By the late 1760s, having transported for his employer ‘ten to twenty thousand letters by land’, he had become a headman of the Pondicherry pattamars and even counted several French officials among his friends.Footnote ⁴⁹

Though the primary loyalty of pattamars in salaried service was to their employer, there were slack periods during which there was insufficient work to go around. At such times, they often sought one-off clients, with or without their employer's consent. This, however, brought them into direct competition with other pattamars who earned their living principally by serving customers on demand. It appears to have been normal to find constellations of such ‘free’ pattamars in each settlement of any consequence. This allowed organisations which depended upon specialist couriers and yet, like the French,Footnote ⁵⁰ were mindful of their cost, to be strategic in their use of pattamars. As a general rule, they employed a sufficient number of pattamars to meet their average requirements; at times of exceptional need, this number would be augmented by drawing on the available pool of unattached pattamars. Based on this reasoning, French officials in Mahe in the mid-1770s were told by their superiors that, if they required ‘for urgent dispatches’ (pour quelques expéditions pressantes) more than the eight pattamars which had been assigned to them, they were to let them know and appropriate steps would be taken to ease their situation.Footnote ⁵¹ Organisations thus made efficient use of their serving pattamars and kept their labour costs down to manageable levels. At the same time, this policy did entail additional costs. There was a heightened risk that the package would be compromised by pattamars with whom the employer was unfamiliar. This concern was partially assuaged by their headmen, who acted as their bondsmen. Furthermore, this strategy was predicated on a buyer's labour market. But such a market could not be guaranteed. There were occasions, especially at times of high general demand, when there were too few dependable pattamars available for short-term hire. The potential costs, be it the surcharge or those due to disruption to communication, could be very high indeed. Many organisations, however, judged that these were sufficiently rare to be acceptable; for them, the higher associated potential costs were more than adequately compensated by the long-term gains promised by their employment policy.

Both for single commissions and permanent service, pattamars were not engaged directly but through their headmen. Thus, a French official in Mahe, in sudden need of pattamars, turned to one of their headmen to help him out, requesting that he ‘send me half dozen of them, all faithful people’.Footnote ⁵² This highlights the role of headmen as labour brokers for their community. But this was merely one of several roles that they performed in this arena. In their other roles, they acted as their pattamars’ foremen, as their advocates when accused of a misdemeanour, and as mediators between them and their employers and clients. At other times, the behaviour of headmen was similar to entrepreneurial chief executives of a corporation whose stakeholders—especially its shareholders and workers—were predominantly members of their own community. There will always be uncertainty over how best to designate headmen because of gaps in our knowledge regarding their community and the specifics of the relationship between them and their pattamars. Nevertheless, even at this stage of research, we can be in no doubt that headmen were the central linchpin in the arena of postal communication within their cultural domain.

Once the decision had been taken to deliver the package using a pattamar, the sender and the headman would negotiate the terms of the agreement. The sender would then notify the recipient, provide details such as the pattamar's name, the route he was to follow and his expected date of arrival, to help identify and authenticate the pattamar on arrival.Footnote ⁵³ The packages he was to carry would typically be made up of letters,Footnote ⁵⁴ medicine,Footnote ⁵⁵ moneyFootnote ⁵⁶ or seasonal fruits.Footnote ⁵⁷ His headmen determined the route he would follow and the physical means of conveyance (essentially a choice between walking on roads or sailing on the dhoneysFootnote ⁵⁸ or corvettesFootnote ⁵⁹ that hugged the coastline). The headman was also responsible for arranging provisions and accommodation for the pattamar during his journey. The specifics of all this depended, of course, on the best available news about security in the territories through which the pattamar would be travelling. It appears that the sender (whose personal knowledge of the pattamars’ cultural domain was often threadbare) had no influence over such matters, save in negotiating and agreeing to the overall cost of the venture, the bulk of which went towards paying the pattamars. Those in permanent service received income from two sources: wages and the expenses incurred in making the delivery. Pattamars who worked the Pondicherry-Mahe route in the 1770s, for example, could expect in the region of Rs. 5 for their expenses per single trip.Footnote ⁶⁰ This was paid either when picking up the package or on its successful delivery. Similarly, payment to pattamars, hired for a single commission which included fees and expenses, was made either before they set offFootnote ⁶¹ or at the end of their journey.Footnote ⁶² Unfortunately, the documents do not tell us how this income was distributed among the pattamars, their headmen and other members of their community.

After the pattamar had set off on his journey, a prime duty of the headman was to keep the sender informed about the pattamar's current location and the state of the package in his care. This was a relatively simple task if, like Venkatachalam in the 1760s,Footnote ⁶³ the headman accompanied his pattamars on their journey. Otherwise, he kept abreast of their progress through regular messages sent by the pattamars themselves, his agents who met them en route, or his fellow headmen travelling in their company.Footnote ⁶⁴ Thus, Venkatachalam acquitted himself of this duty in 1766 by telling the sender that ‘the pattamars who left Mahe with me were dispatched to Pondicherry the same day . . . we reached Calicut. As soon as I arrived at this place, I delivered a letter to the king of Coimbatore’.Footnote ⁶⁵ This shows that, in the absence of unexpected difficulties, the updates provided by the headman typically commented on the whereabouts of the pattamar and his package. These were occasionally supplemented by brief remarks on the journey to date and plans for its next stage. Upon delivery of the package, the sender generally received written confirmation which named the recipient and stated the delivery date.

This was the case in an ideal scenario. But life was seldom so predictable and unforeseen developments often disrupted the delivery of packages. On being informed of a delay, the headmen would generally relay the news to the sender. But this was not always done at once. In 1777, the headman Lakshman learnt that several of his pattamars had had the packages in their care plundered while on their way from Pondicherry to Mahe. Not wanting their recipients to find out about this loss, the pattamars, on reaching Mahe, chose not to tell them that they were coming from Pondicherry. They evidently believed that they would be held responsible for this and consequently punished. As Lakshman explained afterwards to their employers, it had been ‘fear which prevented them from admitting this’.Footnote ⁶⁶

This example shows that theft was a major reason for packages failing to reach their destination. Losses also resulted from carelessness on the part of the pattamars. But a more common problem faced by pattamars was for their packages to be seized and opened by local officials, sometimes for reasons of personal gain, sometimes at the behest of their superiors. If this threat was recognised early enough, the approved course of action was for the pattamars to hide the packages in a secure place, to be retrieved at a later date when it was safe to do so.Footnote ⁶⁷ Packages were lost on occasion because the pattamar died while en route. This could happen because of natural causes. But fatal accidents or even murder were not unknown. Indeed, this was the tragic fate of a small group of pattamars who left Pondicherry for Mahe in 1767. Four months after their departure, one of their headman wrote to the governor of Mahe: ‘We have learnt that they have still not arrived at your place; [nor] have those people yet returned here. If they had been able, they would not have failed to appear at your place or here.’Footnote ⁶⁸ So much time had elapsed since they had last heard from them that they now believed ‘they are dead.’Footnote ⁶⁹ The consensus was that they had been killed in the Malabar area by Ḥaydar ˓Alī Khān, ‘one year after the outbreak of war’.Footnote ⁷⁰ He noted that, when the headmen used to make this journey themselves ‘a long time ago, no such bad luck [ever] happened to us’.Footnote ⁷¹ Since then, however, the ‘ongoing wars’ had increased the dangers.Footnote ⁷² ‘It is with great difficulty that, in these times of conflict, pattamars travel to you. This is why I ask you to show them compassion’.Footnote ⁷³

In the event of such unexpected difficulties, it was in the employer's own interest to help the headmen overcome them if he was in a position to do so. Of course, the more valuable the package, the more likely it was that assistance would be forthcoming. Bernard Picot de la Motte, the official French representative on the Malabar coast, had considerable experience in handling such matters. On 15 April 1777, two pattamars, on the way to Pondicherry from Mahim, were detained at a place called Anjallão and the letters they were carrying for the French authorities were confiscated on the orders of the local Nair officials. When news of this reached the French agent at Calicut, he issued an appeal for help to Picot de la Motte. Stressing the ‘great friendship that the nawab [Ḥaydar ˓Alī Khān] has with our king [Louis XVI]’ (grande amizade que o Snör Nababo tem com nosso Rei), the agent urged him to use his influence to recover the letters. These, so he claimed, ‘are of importance’ to the French ‘nation’. He suggested that Picot de la Motte might help by nominating ‘a trustworthy person’ (hua pessoa de confiança) to accompany the two Brahmin mediators that had already been dispatched to parley with the Nairs on their behalf.Footnote ⁷⁴

Such aid was only possible in territories where the pattamar's employer or client exercised a measure of authority. Elsewhere, the headman alone was responsible for the secure and timely delivery of the packages entrusted to his pattamars. If there were unanticipated delays, he was the one expected to take the necessary steps to mitigate them. In cases of packages being seized or concealed, the headman would use his experience and personal ties to those wielding influence locally in order to retrieve them swiftly and then either get them delivered to their intended recipients or have them returned safely to their senders. When the French governor of Mahe learnt in October 1767 that the pattamar he was awaiting from Pondicherry ‘had failed in [his] duty and hidden the letters’ in his charge, he ordered their headman ‘to recover the stray packets . . . and inform me about the fate of these letters’.Footnote ⁷⁵ The headman, who had already received news of this mishap, replied that the pattamar in question ‘had taken care to hide [the packets] under a rock when, along the way, he fell into the hands of the Nairs.’ By taking this action, the pattamar ‘had thus saved these two packets’. The headman assured his employer that ‘he will not fail to return these packets to you’.Footnote ⁷⁶ As there is no further mention of this affair in succeeding letters, it may be surmised that the headman was indeed able to keep his word. Much the same situation arose a decade later about which we have more details. The headman Lakshman, on a mission to Alanghat in 1777 to find several packages that had been stolen while in transit the previous year, visited Cavalpai Nair, an influential landlord and local official. After having ‘told him the story of the theft of the packet of letters that took place in his country’, Cavalpai agreed to help. He drew up an order which authorised his agent to arrest and interrogate ‘two or three people whom we suspected’ were responsible for this crime.Footnote ⁷⁷ Despite carrying out detailed investigations over the weeks that followed, progress towards recovering the packet proved glacial. In his final letter on the subject, though still hoping for ‘some clarifications (éclaircissements) within three or four days’, the headman consoled himself by the thought that, if success did ultimately elude them, it would not have been through ‘lack of diligence and in order to save our pains’.Footnote ⁷⁸

The last of the common reasons given for packages getting waylaid was that the route to be followed by the pattamars had been rendered impassable due to insecurity. Efforts would initially be directed towards finding an alternative. Where this was not feasible, headmen would then seek to negotiate a safe passage with local rulers or employ sipāhs, or guards, to accompany their pattamars and protect them. After Lakshman had met Cavalpai Nair in 1777 to discuss the theft of his pattamars’ packages and the security situation in his territories, he informed his principal: ‘it appears to me that when our people come here, they will let them pass without any encumbrance’.Footnote ⁷⁹ This, however, had no bearing on the state of the roads elsewhere. In fact, due to the ‘many obstacles’ remaining on the main road from Alanghat to Mahe, he had recently stopped two of his pattamars from continuing with their journey until a secure convoy could be arranged for them.Footnote ⁸⁰

From the employer's perspective, once the package was safely in the pattamar's hands, the main concerns were that the information relayed by the headman be accurate and relevant, and that the package be delivered on time without being compromised.Footnote ⁸¹ Enforcing this was a tricky balancing act because the employers knew that they were ultimately dependent on the goodwill of the headmen and their community. In other words, they were not fungible. Employers, who tended to view the claims of the headmen with a degree of scepticism that sometimes bordered on paranoia,Footnote ⁸² possessed several powerful inducements in their armoury. If they were sensible and judicious in their use, they were usually able to rely on their pattamars. The most obvious—and bluntest—penalty that they could impose was to withhold payment for services rendered. This might be coupled to threats of collective dismissal from the organisation's service or a refusal to use or recommend them in future.Footnote ⁸³ Such threats were taken seriously by pattamars and headmen because theirs was a lucrative occupation that they were loath to endanger. Hence, it was common for a headman to profess his loyalty to his employers, assuring him he ‘may be convinced that I will never fail in my duty’.Footnote ⁸⁴ Employers, in turn, were quick to capitalise on this, reminding headmen that ‘it is in your interest to show your attachment to the service of the Compagnie [des Indes]’.Footnote ⁸⁵ Indeed, at times, employers treated their headmen and pattamars as if they were on indefinite probation, each new commission being another test of their loyalty.Footnote ⁸⁶ These penalties, threats and warnings were complemented and buttressed by contingent promises of future rewards. For as long as headmen remained faithful, a principal was happy to avow he would ‘do everything in order to favour’ themFootnote ⁸⁷: he might provide assurances of continuing employment, ‘protection’Footnote ⁸⁸ and ‘support’;Footnote ⁸⁹ he might undertake to give his superiors a glowing account of their services; and he might offer to refer them to his personal friends and associates, dangling before them the prospect of extra income. Finally, wherever possible employers tapped alternative sources of information to double-check the veracity of what they were being told by the headmen. These were commonly friends, agents or partners who happened to be present at settlements through which the pattamar was passing. The information they provided was usually in the form of a brief statement, often nestling inside a letter dealing principally with other subjects, giving the date of the pattamar's arrival or departure, to which were sometimes added remarks on the items in his possession and his itinerary.

Another of the headmen's key responsibilities was to keep their pattamars in order. If the employer or client demanded punishment because of an alleged misdemeanour, it would be the headmen who meted it out on his behalf. But this required their acquiescence. In response to complaints that his pattamars had failed to deliver the packages entrusted to them by the promised date, Venkatachalam told his French employers in 1767 that, having ‘assembled all the Brahmin pattamars of the Compagnie [des Indes] . . ., we rebuked some of them and dismissed some from the service. . . . If from now on the pattamars do not obey you, we will discipline them as soon as you inform me of it by writing’.Footnote ⁹⁰ This is not to suggest, however, headmen were merely unquestioning subalterns; if they felt circumstances warranted it, they would put up a spirited defence of their pattamars in the face of the accusations levelled against them. On another occasion in 1767, Venkatachalam rebutted his French employer's criticism by explaining that the pattamar had been forced to hide his packets en route in order to prevent them being seized by the Nair officials, an outcome that would have been far worse for the French.Footnote ⁹¹ For this reason, he urged him ‘to have the goodness to forgive [the pattamar] this mistake’.Footnote ⁹² This was the headman playing the role of advocate.

Backed up by their store of knowledge and experience, and the many ties cultivated during long years of working as pattamars in their youth, headmen undertook a suite of related services for their principals beyond postal communication. These bolstered their position as influential power-brokers and valued intermediaries within their cultural domain. Venkatachalam, for example, in addition to his duties towards his pattamars, acted variously as his principals’ emissary, spy and mediator in the courts and estates of the fragmented polities of eighteenth-century southern India. He ranged across this shifting conjuncture of roles with practised ease. Venkatachalam knew this part of the world intimately, having criss-crossed it for decades in his youth as a pattamar. Over time, he had developed friendships and strategic relationships with many of its officials, landlords, merchants, bankers and rulers. These headmen were rightly viewed as experts on this arena—their cultural domain—enjoying direct access to the men of rank and means who could get things done within it. This made headmen especially attractive to arriviste merchant-officials who sought to gain commercial and political influence.

The relation of the Compagnie des Indes to its headmen in southern India exemplifies many of these points. Venkatachalam, for example, a long-serving employee, agent and roving ambassador for the Compagnie, played an important role in arranging credit and loans for it, and in mediating between it and its principal suppliers. Indeed, he claimed to have ‘suffered’ personally in order to advance the Compagnie's financial and trading interests.Footnote ⁹³ Consider the situation in the mid-1760s. At the time, he was heavily involved in organising the official French trade in pepper in the Malabar area. Acting on behalf of the Compagnie, he negotiated an agreement for the purchase of Rs. 10,000 worth of pepper from the king of Coimbatore.Footnote ⁹⁴ In keeping with this, the king sent the French governor in Mahe a bill of exchange for Rs. 10,000 with his agent, Chandra Chetty. On receipt of this bill, its face-value was to be handed over to him. Once the money was safely in the king's treasury, the pepper would then be shipped to Mahe in two instalments, with Chandra Chetty to receive a commission of Rs. 2 for each candy, a standard weight, successfully delivered.Footnote ⁹⁵ The Compagnie also valued Venkatachalam's advice on the commercial or political strategy it ought to pursue. This is why in 1766, in light of the fact that ‘the English have advanced Rs. 50,000 for the trade in rice and coconuts’, he could tell his French principals quite openly that ‘if we are [only] prepared to give Rs. 10,000, [then] there is no advantage for us to act in this way.’Footnote ⁹⁶ Finally, in situations where information was deemed too sensitive to be written down or where a grandee had to be given special treatment, officials of the Compagnie would employ trusted headmen as their personal emissaries and charge them to transmit their message orally. Lakshman was on occasion engaged in this role. He gestured to this when he confirmed to his employer in 1777 that, after having delivered the letter to the king of Cochin, ‘I . . . told him all that it was necessary to tell him’.Footnote ⁹⁷