Dictionary of Indian Biography/Brown, Murdoch
BROWN, MURDOCH (1750–1828)
Born at Edinburgh, 1750, left Scotland for Lisbon merely for the voyage, but never returned: found work at Lisbon, made his way through Europe: in 1775 went out as Consul to Calicut for the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria: engaged in trade, of which Jonathan Duncan, Governor of Bombay, wrote, 1792, as the most considerable of any British subject on that side of India: he lost eleven ships. East Indiamen, of 1,000 tons or more in the war with France: in 1798 he took over from Government as a plantation "Five Tarras of Randaterra" (The Anjrakandy estate) in Malabar: was granted, in 1802, a 99 years' lease, being the earliest English landholder in India: the natives regarded him as their Raja: none but the lowest caste would work on the estate, which was wasted by war: he educated his tenants and Christianized them by native catechists and German missionaries, raising them in the scale of civilization: he spoke seven European and five or six Oriental languages: died at Tellicherry, 1828.