Cite
MLA
“First Pazhassi revolt.” Hindu History, 2026, https://www.hinduhistory.in/battles/first-pazhassi-revolt-1793/. Accessed .
APA
Hindu History. (2026). First Pazhassi revolt. Retrieved , from https://www.hinduhistory.in/battles/first-pazhassi-revolt-1793/
After the Kottayam fighters destroyed a Company column at the Periya pass in March 1797, the Company made a truce that restored the Raja’s position for a time.
01Malabar after Tipu
Kerala Varma of the western branch of the Kottayam royal house had fought Mysore through the 1780s, often alongside the Company. When Tipu gave up Malabar in 1792, the Company did not hand Kottayam back to its own princes as he had hoped. It farmed the revenue to his uncle, the Kurumbranad Raja, and pressed for heavy collections. From 1793 Pazhassi Raja stopped the collections in Kottayam, and his nobles Kaitheri Ambu and Kannavath Sankaran gathered fighting men.
02The forest war
The Raja’s men fought from the hill forests of Aralam and Wayanad, where Company columns marched in single file through thick jungle. Attempts to arrest him in 1796 failed. In January 1797 his fighters ambushed a supply convoy bound for Major Anderson’s post in Wayanad. In March 1797 a column under Major Cameron was destroyed in the Periya pass. The Bombay government sent Jonathan Duncan to make terms, and a settlement left the Raja at peace until Wayanad was in dispute again in 1800.
It made Pazhassi Raja the Company’s most stubborn enemy in Kerala; the second revolt from 1800 ended only with his death in 1805.
