Malabar District

Malabar District, also known as British Malabar or simply Malabar was an administrative district on the southwestern Malabar Coast of Bombay Presidency (1792–1800), Madras Presidency (1800–1950) and finally, Madras State (1950–1956) in India. It was the most populous and the third-largest district in the erstwhile Madras State. The historic town of Kozhikode was the administrative headquarters of this district.

The district included the present-day districts of Kannur, Kozhikode, Wayanad, Malappuram, Palakkad (excluding Chittur taluk), Chavakad Taluk and parts of Kodungallur Taluk of Thrissur district (former part of Ponnani Taluk), and Fort Kochi area of Ernakulam district in the northern and central parts of present Kerala state, the Lakshadweep Islands, and a major portion of the Nilgiris district in modern-day Tamil Nadu. The detached settlements of Tangasseri and Anchuthengu, which were British colonies within the kingdom of Travancore in southern Kerala, also formed part of Malabar District until 1927.

Malayalam was the administrative as well as the most spoken lingua franca of Malabar district. Jeseri, a distinct dialect of Malayalam, was spoken in the Laccadive Islands. Malabar District merged with the erstwhile state of Travancore-Cochin (1950–1956) to form Kerala according to the States Reorganisation Act, 1956. On the same day, the present Kasaragod district of South Canara District was also attached to Malabar, and the Laccadive and Minicoy Islands of Malabar were reorganised to form a new Union Territory. Malabar was trifurcated to form the districts of Kannur, Kozhikode, and Palakkad, on 1 January 1957.

The city of Kozhikode was the capital of Malabar. Malabar was divided into North Malabar and South Malabar in 1793 for administrative convenience, with their regional headquarters at Thalassery and Cherpulassery (Later changed to Ottapalam) respectively. During the British rule, Malabar's chief importance lay in its production of Malabar pepper, coconut, and tiles. In the old administrative records of the Madras Presidency, it is recorded that the most remarkable plantation owned by Government in the erstwhile Madras Presidency was the Teak plantation at Nilambur planted in 1844. The District of Malabar and the ports at Beypore and Fort Kochi had some sort of importance in the erstwhile Madras Presidency as it was one of the two districts of the Presidency that lies on the Western Malabar Coast, thus accessing the marine route through Arabian Sea. The first railway line of Kerala from Tirur to Beypore in 1861 was laid for it. The work Malabar Manual (1887) authored by William Logan in two volumes explains the characteristics of Malabar.

The district lay between the Arabian Sea on the west, South Canara District on the north, the Western Ghats (the princely states of Coorg and Mysore, and Nilgiris and Coimbatore districts) to the east, and the princely state of Cochin to the south. The district covered an area of 15,027 square kilometres (5,802 sq mi), and extended 233 km (145 mi) along the coast and 40–120 kilometers (25–75 miles) inland. The name Mala-bar means the "hillside slopes".

All the major pre-independence political parties of Kerala such as the INC and CPI started their functioning in Kerala at Malabar District as a part of the freedom struggle. KPCC was formed in 1921 at Ottapalam, on the bank of river Bharathappuzha. In July 1937, a clandestine meeting of the CSP, which was the political party formed by socialists of Congress, was held at Calicut. The CPI in Kerala was formed on 31 December 1939 with the Pinarayi Conference, held near Thalassery. It was the erstwhile leaders of Congress Socialist Party, such as P. Krishna Pillai, K. Damodaran, E. M. S. Namboodiripad, who formed the CPI branch in Kerala. The Indian Union Muslim League was also formed in the 1930s, on a meeting held at Thalassery.