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The Siege of Negapatam was the first major offensive military action on the Indian subcontinent following the arrival of news that war had been declared between Great Britain and the Dutch Republic, beginning the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War. A British force besieged the Dutch-controlled port of Negapatam, the capital of Dutch Coromandel, on the eastern coast of India, which capitulated after the fortification's walls were breached. The Dutch garrison consisted of 500 European troops, 5,500 local troops, and 2,000 troops of Hyder Ali, the ruler of Mysore. While many British troops were occupied with fighting Hyder Ali's armies as part of the Second Anglo-Mysore War, and General Eyre Coote was opposed to offensive actions against the Dutch, Lord Macartney, the governor of Madras, was able to raise more than 4,000 troops and secure the assistance of Admiral Sir Edward Hughes to defeat the larger Dutch and Mysorean defence force. ==Background== Following French entry into the American War of Independence in 1778, Great Britain had moved rapidly to gain control over French colonial outposts in India. Their seizure of the French port of Mahé on the west coast in 1779 prompted Hyder Ali, the de facto ruler of the Kingdom of Mysore, who claimed the port to be under his protection, to open the Second Anglo-Mysore War against British holdings in southern India.〔Cust, p. 222〕 He made strong initial gains, with his troops occasionally threatening the main British outpost of Madras on the east coast. By the start of the 1781 monsoon season, the British and Mysoreans were at an uneasy stalemate. In December 1780, Britain declared war on the Dutch Republic, citing Dutch trafficking in arms in support of the French and American rebels as one of the reasons. While this news reached some of the Dutch colonial governors in India early in 1781, this news did not reach Governor Reynier van Vlissingen at the main outpost of Negapatam until rumors of war became widespread, and Iman Willem Falck, the governor of Trincomalee, notified him in June of the war declaration.〔Lohuizen, p. 115〕 The relationship between the Dutch at Negapatam, the British, and the Mysoreans was at the time quite fluid. Hyder's forces had been raiding villages near Negapatam early in 1781, and van Vlissingen, in an attempt to collect damages from Hyder, had instead been forced to pay ransom to release the envoys he had sent to Hyder's camp at Tanjore after Hyder not only refused to release them, but also made verbal threats concerning the Dutch outposts at Pulicat and Sadras.〔Lohuizen, pp. 113-114〕 Van Vlissingen had received offers of assistance from General Eyre Coote, the British commander at Madras during these negotiations.〔Lohuizen, p. 112〕 In the summer of 1781, Lord Macartney arrived to take over as governor of Madras, and he brought news to the British outpost of the new war, and mobilised British troops to gain control over Dutch possessions in India and Ceylon.〔Cust, p. 303〕 Van Vlissingen, when he learned of the war, immediately negotiated an alliance with Hyder, which was agreed on 29 July (although it was not formally ratified until 4 September).〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Siege of Negapatam」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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