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Kozhikode history
The city of Kozhikode was founded on a marshy tract along the Arabian coast in 1034 A.D. Following the collapse of the powerful Chera Kingdom, several of its chieftains proclaimed independence. One of the more powerful of these chieftains was the Eradis of Nediyirippu. The city was established by the Eradis after a prolonged battle with the Porlathiris of Polanad. Access to the sea helped the Eradi chief, who was by now called the Saamoothiri (Zamorin), develop the city into one of the major trading centres of the Eastern world abounding in a wide variety of goods like pepper, textiles, lac, ginger, cinnamon, myrobalans, and zedoary. Vessels of various sizes from around the world, like the junk, arrived on the shores of Calicut. About two centuries later, a Portuguese naval fleet arrived in Calicut in May 1498 led by Vasco da Gama, no different from the thousands that had arrrived before. The Portuguese failed to secure any valuable treaty with the Zamorin and came into direct conflict with the Arab merchants and the Zamorin himself. A Dutch fleet led by Steven van der Hagen arrived in Calicut in November 1604 and marked the beginning of the Dutch presence on the Indian coast. The Dutch had a more favourable relation with the Calicut and were provided greater participation in the ongoing trade. The British reached Calicut in 1615, led by Captain William Keeling.
By 1663, the power of the Portuguese dwindled, shifting their interests to thriving Goa. The Dutch saw their final days in 1795 when the British forces attacked the Dutch at Cochin as part of the larger Napoleonic wars. A brief period of attacks emerged from the Mysore state under Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan from February 1766 as they desperately sought to capture the flourishing trading ports of Malabar for strategic interests. The Mysorean interlude ended in 1792 following their defeat by British forces. Kozhikode remained the headquarters of the Malabar district under Madras state. After Indian Independence in 1947, Madras Presidency became the Madras State. In 1956 when the Indian states were reorganized along linguistic lines, Malabar District was combined with the state of Travancore-Cochin to form the new state of Kerala on 1 November 1956. Malabar District was split into the districts of Kannur, Kozhikode, and Palakkad on 1 January 1957.