A largely untold story of an Indian King who beat a great European Power in 1741

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History is said to be a great teacher. However, what all we are taught in History is important, as well as at times, what we do not know, or what is not covered is equally so. In 1741, King Anizham Thirunal Marthanda Varma, who had ascended the throne of the kingdom of Travancore(in current day Southern Indian state of Kerala) in 1729 had built a large army of 50,000 soldiers and embarked on imperial expansion, beat a Dutch naval force of big ships with huge firepower and skill. He did face an initial setback but came back and fought and won. The setback was very big for VOC or the Dutch East India Company, and thus in a way it helped the British East India Company and later the British Empire to take control of the Indian subcontinent. This defeat rankled the Dutch East India Company's worldwide initiatives too. Yet, I did not get to learn this in my History classes. And I wonder even if College History students would get to know this. Somehow, much of what we learn in History has a bias of our erstwhile colonial rulers- The British Empire. Later on, the ruling parties as well as Intellectuals- many of them with Marxist leanings did not include many of the historical Indian empires and kings who defeated the invaders or colonists. I even got to saw a video shared on WhatsApp on this. Some similar things might have been propogated in other colonies of the imperialists powers in Asia, Africa and probably Latin America. Perhaps it is a time when people learnt more about their own country; in my case India and the past bias and theories favouring one group over another or the imperialist powers need to go away. Comments invited- positive as well as negative(but not venomous please!) Source: