Chapter four
A short campaign in April 1834 ended two centuries of Haleri rule. Company columns entered from several directions, resistance collapsed within weeks, and Chikka Vira Rajendra was deposed and exiled.
The campaign
Four columns converged on Madikeri. There was fighting at the stockades and passes, but the kingdom's defence depended on levies that did not hold once the capital was threatened.
The Company's stated grounds were the raja's misrule and his refusal to surrender a relative who had taken refuge in British territory. Both appear in the official record; both were also convenient. Annexation completed British control of the passes between the Mysore plateau and the Malabar coast.
After the surrender the raja was removed with his household to Benares. Coorg was administered as a small non-regulation province, initially under a Commissioner answering to the Madras and later the Mysore establishment.
A common error
Chronology
1837
DocumentedAn armed uprising across Kodagu, Sullia and Dakshina Kannada — Arebhashe, Kodava and Tulu participants together — twenty years before 1857.
Resentment at the 1834 deposition and at new revenue demands drove the revolt. Regional historiography treats it as an early anti-colonial rising; recent academic surveys review the competing readings.