01Venad becomes Travancore
When he came to the throne in 1729, the king of Venad was hemmed in by his own nobles, the Ettuveettil Pillamar, and by the Madampis who had plotted against him as a prince. He broke their power, and then turned on the neighbouring chiefdoms one after another: Attingal, Kollam, Kayamkulam, and in time the country up to the borders of Kochi. Each was absorbed into one kingdom with one army, trained in the European style.
02Kolachel, 1741
The Dutch East India Company, which controlled the pepper trade of Malabar from Kochi, landed troops at Kolachel on the coast south of Padmanabhapuram. On 10 August 1741 Marthanda Varma’s army defeated them and took two dozen of their men prisoner. One of them, the Flemish officer Eustachius De Lannoy, entered his service and spent the rest of his life training the Travancore army and building forts such as Udayagiri. A painting at Padmanabhapuram palace shows the Dutch surrender. The Dutch signed the Treaty of Mavelikkara with him in 1753.
03Padmanabhadasa
He rebuilt the Sri Padmanabhaswamy temple at Thiruvananthapuram from the 1730s into much of the form it has today. In January 1750, in the ceremony called Thrippadidanam, he laid his sword on the steps before the reclining Bhagwan and gave him the kingdom. From then on the kings of Travancore ruled as Padmanabhadasa, servants of Sri Padmanabha, and the temple stood at the centre of the state until 1949. He died on 7 July 1758.
