Cochin & Tellicherry, through the eyes of AF Ammann
Kayalinarike…goes the old Mehaboob song written by Meppalli Balan, brought to life a decade ago by the sonorous Shahbaz Aman. The song takes you through the Kochi of the 50s and tells you about the many companies that had set up shop at the bustling Cochin (Fort Kochi) port and the travails of a jobless man. Calicut had lost its sheen as the medieval port many a decade ago, and Cochin had taken over. A new harbor had been constructed and had become home to liners, cargo ships, and other marine craft. Mehaboob goes on to mention Pierce Leslie, Aspinwall, AV Thomas.…and of course Volkart. We had discussed Perce Leslie in the past, so now it is time to study the checkered story of Volkart in Cochin, Calicut, and Tellicherry. I was a bit unsure when I started the research, wondering if it could be interesting, but trust me, it is.
Some years ago, I wrote about the French Loge in Calicut and
mentioned the workings of Volkart at Calicut, as well as the very interesting
case they were dragged into. This article will therefore concentrate on the
company set up in Cochin, and their coffee works in Tellicherry.
First, we go to Switzerland, back in time when it was neither
the neutral financial behemoth it is today, nor a home to bankers and vaults. It
was home to traders and artisans, and interestingly Swiss mercenaries were its
earliest export. Soon, entrepreneurs were starting to taste success, Swiss
cheese and milk products started to get popular. Clockmakers came out with new
designs, the wristwatch had arrived, and Patek Philippe had made a name. Industrialists
and traders set up shop the world over, and believe it or not, Malabar was a
major trading partner for some of those firms!
Herman Gundert from the Basel Evangelical Mission had told
them about life in Tellicherry and Cannanore and the mission had set up the
first small industries in Malabar, making tiles and a few other things. The
Basel Mission, exporting from Africa and South India went on to employ some 6,500
during the first two decades of the 20th century. BEM has been the
subject of some books in India and has provided us with a vast trove of
photographs of those days. By then, many individual traders were dabbling in dyes
and fabrics and Leonhard Zeigler had already started making his fortune trading
Indigo from India.
The next set of Swiss traders who headed towards Cochin and
Malabar, the home of the spices, were two brothers from Winterthur, a town in
the North of Switzerland, namely Salomon Volkart, a heavily bearded stocky man
of stern character and his dapper younger brother Johan Georg Volkart. Seeing a
demand for cotton in the Swiss textile Industry, they headed to India, and
following that got involved in the export and commodity trade of many items
such as oils, coir, dyestuffs, rubber, tea, coffee, and a variety of spices.
They also became importers of paper, soap, matches, watches, textiles, and
machinery into India.
Johan George Volkart was the first to move to Calcutta and
work for Wattenbach and Co, as its cotton purchasing agent. In 1844, Solomon,
his elder brother left for India, to check the Indian scene out, and visit his
younger brother. Solomon returned (never to visit India again) and started
working for the Rieter brothers – the fabric printers, but in 1851, decided it
was time to venture out into business as Volkart Brothers, with Johan and
gradually, they networked with many other Swiss companies entrenched in Asia
trade. Europe was clamoring for Indian cotton and spices and so Volkart
Brothers or V.B. was established in Bombay with Johan resident in Bombay and
Solomon holding the fort in Winterthur. He then went on to establish offices in
Bombay, Colombo, Cochin, and Karachi. Many other branches followed, with the
expansion of the rail network in India and the opening of the Suez Canal in
1869. Johan Georg, unfortunately, passed away unexpectedly in 1861 at Bombay,
just before his scheduled return to Switzerland, and Rudolph Ahler took over.
Volkart went on to do excellent business and in 1875, after
Ahler’s retirement, decided to re-register the company in London. Georg (Solomon’s
son) and Theodor Reinhart, his son-in-law, took over the reins. Another son-in-law
August F Ammann joined the firm in 1880 and with the alignment of the Indian
Rupee to the silver standard, Volkart’s fortunes rocketed. By the end of the
first world war, Volkart had become leading cotton exporters from India and
were particularly successful because they also handled insurance within their
establishment.
The story of the firm’s work in Cochin and Malabar comes to
us through the evocative and fascinating account left behind by Ammann (who
became the firm’s first manager at Volkart’s office in Tellicherry) who had
always dreamt of going to India. Cochin was the third office set up in 1859 (Colombo
in 1857) after Bombay in 1851, and just after the first telegraph wires were
laid to Cochin in 1858 (the Europe – India connections were laid in 1861, but
did not work for another 4 years). I will deliberately stay away from the cotton
business and the many discussions about it, namely the ethicality, the colonial
aspects of the enterprise, etc. For those interested in studying the business
life of the company, please refer to the many books and articles penned by the
academic Christof Dejung. I thank him for our interaction and the input he
kindly provided. Now let us see what AF Ammann had to say.
 |
| A F Ammann |
The Cochin of that time leaps out into view from Amman’s
words and pictures. The harbor in those days was not so safe – the Cochin bar (the
picture shows a scene as you would see at Kallayi - Calicut) was unreliable,
and the office building was quite big, with the yard filled with many barrels
or casks containing coconut oil for export. The lighthouse and flagstaff (read
my article - Bolgatty or Bastion )
were all there, so also (this surprised me) the Chinese fishing nets which
Amman photographed and mentioned in his account. People were transported on
rickshaws (a human pulled-pushed, four-wheel cart) termed push-push
(pousse-pousse in French) by the Europeans. Let us now get a feel of the town
from his words, and this I believe would be particularly interesting for those
who love Cochin and its lost history.
Visions of Cochin 1875 (Quoted from Amman’s
reminiscences)
As the drive led us through the European and Eurasian
town and gave me an opportunity of seeing practically all there is to be seen
in Cochin-except Jewtown, of which more anon-I may as well give my impressions
of Cochin town now and have done with it. Our road took us past the
establishments of Aspinwall & Co. and Pierce, Leslie & Co., J. Darragh
& Co., and G. Brunton to a large meidan or grass-grown open space on which
stood the flagstaff-tower, wrongly called Old Dutch Tower. It was really the
tower of the old Portuguese cathedral, the nave of which had been used by the
Dutch as a storehouse and which the British had blown up after capturing Cochin
towards the close of the l8th century. The old tower which was destroyed in
1876, i.e., soon after I had left Cochin; was certainly not a thing of beauty,
but as a relic of days long gone by, it awakened my interest. Not far from it
was the office of Captain Winckler, the master attendant, who was also a magistrate,
for I remember being Mr. Jung's witness when he was sworn in as a British
subject by him. The buildings of the old town presented a bewildering medley of
architectural styles, some few with columns or pillars making a pretense at
doubtful elegance, most being of an almost ludicrous clumsiness.
One old house, the last one of a row bordering the meidan on the south, particularly attracted my attention - It was an enormous two storied, massive building with a patch of garden enclosed in a wall, topped every now and then by huge white balls, as was also the massive but ugly gateway from which a colossal flight of steps led up to the verandah on the first floor. This monstrosity of a house, probably once the dwelling of some wealthy mijnheer, ought to be preserved by the government as a memento of a period of architectural aberration.
Opposite to it, on the shore of the backwater, I noticed
something which attracted my attention in quite a different manner - the huge
fishing nets supported by large bamboo poles and moving, seemingly
automatically, up and down. Often have I watched this, to me, novel and apparently
easy mode of fishing, the large nets frequently coming up from the water with, masses
of shiny and struggling little creatures. From this first meidan we came to a
second one, formerly the parade ground, when the British kept a garrison at
Cochin. It was a fine grass-grown square surrounded by houses of all sorts and
planted with tulip trees which, when in full bloom, presented a truly marvelous
spectacle, as, with masses of flowers, they spread an almost blinding red light
over their surroundings. Cochin had not much to boast of in the way of beauty,
but these tulip trees and the ever-fresh and green-looking lawns struck me as
truly beautiful and worthy to be remembered as the old town's pride and glory.
On that meidan stood also the protestant church, once St.
Francis', which is said to be the oldest European church in all India and to
have given shelter to the remains of Vasco da Gama. That is what every newcomer
is told by the Cochinites, so I looked with feelings of awe at the old church,
whenever I passed by it. But as a matter of fact, of all this talk only one
thing is certain; namely that that great man died at Cochin on Christmas Eve
1524; all the rest, the church which gave temporary shelter to his remains
before their conveyance to Portugal, the time which elapsed before they were
thus conveyed-varying, according to the reports of the chroniclers, from a few
days to thirteen years! -is pure fantasy. Not far from the church, on the
eastern side of the square, was the branch office of the Bank of Madras, the
manager of which, Mr. Noble, a fine-looking, intelligent, and amiable
Scotchman, is the only Britisher of Cochin whom I remember, not only
distinctly, but with almost affectionate feelings, because of his fine
character. Mr, Jung and I saw a good deal of him, and in moon-lit nights-and
what beautiful nights they were, almost like daylight - we often foregathered
near the lighthouse for a friendly palaver, with that glorious constellation,
the Southern Cross, looking down upon us. Our push-push drive was now nearing
its end. It took us through what I remember as a narrow lane of houses painted
in various colors in one of which, painted blue and yellow, the Cochin Club,
founded, I believe, in 1876, took up its quarters; then emerging from it-the
last house on our left, all columns and windows, we used to call the Crystal
palace-we reached another grass-grown open space with a Roman Catholic church
on one side and the lighthouse on the other, and then, gliding down gently to
the sea-road, came to the bungalow which was to be my home for the next
eighteen months or so.
It was a little stone-built and tile-roofed house with just three rooms surrounded by a verandah, the center one being the dining room, the side ones the bedrooms, each with a tiny bathroom, the porch doing duty as living room. The house stood in the midst of a sort of garden, though it would be more correct to call it a jungle, with some fine shady trees. It faced the road and the sea beyond and thus had the advantage of being fully exposed to the sea breeze. The road, which led nowhere, unless to the graveyard, was the one and only sea promenade or parade in the place, and although a fine road shaded by splendid casuarina trees, its eternal sameness soon palled on me, so that after a while l gave up my rides and sold my pony. The bungalow was one of three standing in a line facing the road, one of them being occupied by the Doyles, of whom more anon. Our servants were all Native Christians of sorts-which is all that need be said about them except the butler or khansamah who was an elderly Musselman and one of the best sorts too, but afflicted the "Cochin leg", that dire disease of which one meets, or at any rate met in my time, so many sad, yea terrible, sometimes even unmentionable examples: - elephantiasis.
The operations at Cochin
Besides the office building there was only one other pukka
built edifice in my days: -the Coir press house, the rest being wooden, Cadjan-covered
sheds. After the fire of 1889 the ground which, including the buildings, was until
then held under a lease by V. B., was purchased by them, and a number of new
buildings, including a fire- and burglar-proof vault, also a bungalow-which
after the second fire was rebuilt on the water-side, i. e. facing the
backwater, the old house being turned into a cask shed-were erected, giving the
whole factory a different and altogether more orderly and imposing appearance.
The office was run in a typical European fashion, and a
monthly arrival of a Lloyd steamer brought in cheese and beer. Looking out, one
could see Mattanchery and the mosque. Two other Swiss staff and an English boy
completed the European staff while several Eurasians worked on various duties.
The great fire of 1889
The building was rebuilt exactly as it was before (all the
silver in the office safe melted to form one big lump) and escaped a second
fire in 1894 which was a suspicious event, not natural. The story of that fire
is narrated at this site
Polikal-agatte Marakar
Almost all procurement was done through the P Marakkar,
their broker, a smart gentleman from an affluent Moplah family. Per the system existent
in the whole of Malabar, the firm offered Marakkar cash advances against supply
contracts covering a large area between Mangalore and Alleppey. He was well
accepted and was even known to the HQ staff in Switzerland. Interestingly,
marakkar like other merchants, spoke Hindustani to the Europeans in the office,
none spoke Malayalam. While this arrangement worked most of the time, there was
a sudden spike in domestic demand for coffee, and Marakkar could not deliver
coffee to Volkart, thus getting indebted to the tune of many lakhs. The
security he had previously offered was a coconut farm of his, which did not
have many yielding palms. So, it became a big royal mess and Volkart sued
Marakkar. It was all amicable, and the suave Marakkar continued to come and go
to the Volkart office. The case was shifted to Calicut, then to Madras, and
finally to London, and Marakkar lost each time. Not much is known about what
happened afterward, but I won’t be surprised if his activities with the firm
continued, but under stricter terms. The case itself is well documented and one
can peruse it through various stages in law books.
Social life in Cochin, caste issues, meeting the king
Amman quickly tired of Cochin, for social life seemed
nonexistent to the ten or so Europeans living there. There was just one
European woman, a sick, tired, and old lady and so these forced bachelors had a
dull life. All they could do was sail out into the backwaters or listen to
extended conversations between Jung & Marakkar. The company cabin boat (with
rowers and their ailasa chants) was used to take them around - to Trichur,
Alwaye, and Alleppey.
Vegetables were scarce, except for ladies’ fingers and a rare
cabbage, meat was difficult to source, and getting beef was close to impossible,
but fish and prawns were aplenty. Ghee was used for most cooking, and wild
ducks were occasionally caught and cooked. Ice was a luxury but water remained
cold when stored in chatties.
Transport, animals, and crocodiles
Ammann explains - In my days one had to travel by cabin boat to Trichur and thence by bullock bandy (Pothu or kala vandi) to Shoranur along a beautiful road shaded by magnificent banyan trees on which numerous monkeys disported themselves, in order to, reach the nearest railway station. All letters and parcels were carried from Shoranur down and from Beypor, then the Coast terminus of the Madras railway up the Coast by tappal runners, who went along at a slow, but steady trot day and night, holding in one of their hands a little wand with a bell, to attract the attention of wayfarers and carts and warn them to keep the road clear for H. M.'s mail, also to frighten off snakes and other dangerous animals. They did their duty right well, those runners, for the mails generally arrived punctually at their destination. To Calicut, I usually traveled by the rowing boat, along the seashore and at night time, when our lantern would attract numbers of young sharks who followed us all the way.
Crocodiles were seen all around and were frequently hunted. Sometimes, the sahibs went to the jungles to hunt and Ammann once came across a Nair who wanted to see his gun, but would not touch the sahib, so he had to toss the gun so that the Nair could catch it!! Bolgatty Island and the mansion on it existed, and Ammann met HH Rama Varma too. The White Jews he came across were mainly money lenders and bookbinders, while the black Jews dealt in cowhides.
He mentions Spitteler’s Island (after a VB manager in 1873) where
date palms grew by chance and that it was quite a sight in the middle of the
backwaters. Mystified, for I had never heard of it, I spent a while looking for
details, but could not find any.
Volkart in Tellicherry
Tiyyas of Malabar
Amman writes quite a bit about the many Tiyati’s and Tiyans
he employed, their incessant chatter, chewing of betel leaves, as well as the
many educated among them, including a sub judge, a vakil named Kannan. He adds
- The Tiyans struck me as a gentle and intelligent people, no match,
however, for the Moplahs in business. I had several Tiyans in the office,
amongst them a particularly nice and clever young man by the name of Cannan.
All my servants were Tiyans, from old habit I keep saying Tiyans although the
plural of Tiyan or Tivan=islander, is Tiyar or Tivar; they are supposed to have
come from Ceylon, and very good and faithful servants they were too. While he
agrees that his Moplah friend sent him the best chicken biryanis - the
conversations with this Moplah were not, nearly as interesting as those with my
Tiyan friend Cannan, as he had not the latter's philosophic mind, being
materialist in his views, like most of his creed.
Social life in Tellicherry,
He narrates many amusing stories, one of which deals with a
dhobi who had lent his suit to another, on the side. His trips to Coorg and Mysore
are detailed, and the leisure time in Tellicherry - there were many good and
refined ladies, it was a large happy family and every evening they met at the
club overlooking the meidan, with the sea in the background. Dances were
not common, but when they danced, they waxed their shoes. Ammann rode a decani Arab
horse for transport and loved the old-fashioned life there, with bullock bandies,
and picturesque roads and though hot and damp, he considered it the ideal place
to live. At last, he had found the place of his dreams, but later on in these
accounts did remark that while Sindhi brokers in Karachi were trustworthy,
those in Malabar and Cochin were not.
Moracoon (Morakunuu) – the Tellicherry office
The Volkart Brothers office was opened in 1875, with Mangalore
and Calicut as satellite agencies. Five years later, the area witnessed the
gold boom (see author’s article – Wynad gold rush).
In 1866, a processing plant was opened. The Moracoon Coffee Curing Works,
Tellicherry was initially set up in rented premises and this was purchased by
Volkart in 1931. Some years later they became owners of the Karadibetta Estate
in Mysore, which was taken over in 1936 to clear debts. Arabidacool at Mysore and
Sidapur and Teneerhulla at Coorg were acquired in 1952-54-time frame.
Volkart in Calicut
At Calicut, Ammann established an agency, chiefly for
ginger. He says - The agency's shed was on French ground, i.e., on an enclave
surrounded by British territory and absolutely useless to France, called the French
une loge, but about which my friend, the chief at Mahd, felt very sore
because French sovereignty over it was treated by the British as a quantite,
negligeable. He always wanted a bicolore to be hoisted over the
place but I made him see that the tiny piece of ground was not worth making a
fuss about. For more details of what transpired there, read this article, which I had written some years ago…
Voltas and air conditioning
Volkart was the main agent for Carrier US AC systems in
India. Eventually, this was sold off to Tatas to create Voltas who then made
air conditioners for the Indian market. An excellent paper by Priya Jain takes
you through the entire history. Voltas was Incorporated on 6th September 1954 in
Mumbai, promoted by Volkart Brothers and Tata Sons Pvt. Ltd., to take over the
Engineering & Import Division of M/s. Volkart Brothers in India. The
engineering unit also dealt with many international companies such as Brown
Boveri, International Harvester, etc.
With this most of Volkart’s activities in India ceased, a
partnership with Patel Cotton remained until 1968, and in 1983, VB India was
formally liquidated and its books closed.
Company Culture
Volkart VB maintained that - the ‘goodwill and loyalty [of
Indian merchants] to the firm can only be earned and sustained by friendly and
polite treatment and will be spoiled by acting in a contrary manner. An example
of such high regard for members of the Indian mercantile elite can be found in
the reminiscences of Ammann. Volkart’s European employees in the 20th
century had to complete an intensive ‘study of the indigenous languages’ to
allow them to ‘express themselves fluently in overseas countries without the
aid of an interpreter. When employees passed the tests that certified their
basic level of proficiency in Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, Singhalese, or Canarese,
they received a bonus and were urged to take additional courses. A photograph
of the Cochin staff in 1890 shows the Burra sahebs in suits, and several Tamil
brahmins, Jews, Seths/Konkanies, and bearded Moplahs among others.
Back to Winterthur - Chalet Moracoune, writing of the
booklet
Amman went on to travel through the North of India to live
in Karachi and tend to the office there. We do not know much of his later life,
but he returned to Winterthur in 1880 on board the ship Travancore, five
years after he set out to Bombay, and he penned his memories aged 71, after
retirement, the very document which I perused, to write out this precis.
He came from a wealthy family, for his father owned the
Seeburg castle. August Ammann, our man, designed the Seeburg Park between 1894
and 1895. Georg Gottfried Volkart-Ammann (1850-1928), who was Theodor
Reinhart's brother-in-law, acquired the castle from his brother-in-law (his
wife Molly was Amman’s sister) August Ferdinand Ammann in 1907.
Amman ends his accounts thus - Have I been too prolix? It
may well be so, for I am an old man-to-day being my 71st birthday, I may well
consider myself so, and old people are apt to be more verbose than younger
generations like. But then the reader has only to skip such passages as do not
interest him, as we all do occasionally when reading old-fashioned books or
even certain modern ones…
Amman retired to Chalet Moracoune, Château d'Oex. These
Chalets were and are seen in many Indian Bollywood films, and well, you only
need to think a little further to imagine how the construction and naming of
Chalet Moracoune get connected to Tellicherry, for it is named after the place
Morakunnu in Tellicherry where the Volkart office existed and where he lived. Amman
passed away in 1924. I don’t think Chalet Moracoune exists anymore, it could
very well have been renamed and may have been one of those chalets where Shah
Rukh Khan and Kajol cavorted in of those movies you enjoyed.
Small world, right, who knew these Swiss connections? You
may have realized by now that it goes far beyond the Swiss watch on your
friend’s wrist, way beyond the Lindt or Toblerone chocolates that a visitor ‘going
foreign’ brings back, or for that matter, the cuckoo clock in an affluent Malayali
NRI’s home…
Reminiscences of an old V.B. Partner – A F Ammann
Volkart – the history of a world trading company
Indienness - Material for a thousand stories – AM Verlag
Swiss Made -James Brieding
Commodity Trading, Globalization and the Colonial World - Spinning the Web of the Global Market -
Christof Dejung, Translated by Paul Cohen
L’Inde retrouvée: loss and sovereignty in French Calicut, 1867-68 - Akhila Yechury
Clean, Cool Air: Health and Air-Conditioning in India (1920s–1960s) - Priya Jain
Selling Comfort: Volkart Brothers and Origins of Air Conditioning in India (1923–1954) - Priya Jain
Cosmopolitan Capitalists and Colonial Rule. The business structure and corporate culture of the Swiss merchant house Volkart Bros., 1850-1960s - Christof Dejung
Bridges to the East: European Merchants and Business Practices in India and China – Christof Dejung
Pictures courtesy – Ammann’s reminiscences, Volkart foundation, acknowledged with thanks
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