This book probes into the administration of law and justice in the Portuguese and Dutch settlements on the Tamil coast. It attempts into the estab­lishment and functioning of the Mayor’s Court in the English settlement at Madras in 1688, its reformulation in 1726, the panchayat courts of rural areas, the kachcheri court in the city of Madras (1734-1835), the Recorders’ Court, the Supreme Court and the Military Court in Madras (1797-1857). It also situates the Court of Wards set up by the British for controlling the activities of Zamindars in Tamil country (1804-1857). The author highlights how the European judges came into contact and conflict with Tamil legal principles which upheld customary laws and caste. The study reveals how colonial courts remained unsympathetic to Eurasians like taupases, mesticos, the Indo-Britons communities of rootless and racially mixed on the Tamil coast which came to face legal dilemmas about their identity since they had not been subjected to any existing laws different from those governing native Tamils and Europeans. The volume widens the canvas of the native Choultry Court that functioned in the French colony of Pondicherry (1687-1793) besides the Black Court and the judicial system under the Danes in colonial Tranquebar (1744-1845). The study depicts how the colonial powers under their rubric developed the quest to enact a universal body of law chiefly promoting their own selfish and vested interests and the judiciary failed to act according to justice, equity and good conscience. About the Author S. Jeyaseela Stephen is former directeur, Institut pour études Indo-Européennes (2013-23). He was Professor of Maritime History (2001-13) at Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan. He has authored numerous books on the maritime history of early modern India including The Coromandel Coast and its Hinterland: Economy, Society and Political System, 1500-1600 (1997); Expanding Portuguese Empire and the Tamil Economy, Sixteenth-Eighteenth Centuries (2009); Oceanscapes: Tamil Textiles in the Early Modern World (2014); A Meeting of the Minds: European and Tamil Encounters in Modern Sciences, 1507-1857 (2016); Tranquebar in Global History, 1620-1801: The Coromandel Coast and Europe in a World Network System (2020); From European Dwelling Settlements to Global Cities: Ports of the Tamil Coast and the Colonial Modernity (2021), History of the Climate Change on the Coromandel Coast, Ninth-Nineteenth Centuries (2023) and Slaves from the Tamil Coast and European Trade around the World, 1547-1792 (2024). He is the recipient of the best book prize of 1999 from the Government of Tamil Nadu and Thiru Vi Ka award of 2023 of the Government of Tamil Nadu.