1791 Faden Wall Map of Southern India

An extremely rare 1781 map of Southern India by William Faden. The map covers from Mangalore and Madras, south to Cape Comorin (Kanyakumari) and includes the northern half of Sri Lanka or Ceylon. Map with relief is shown by hachures and bathymetric soundings. It was drawn by William Faden based upon original military surveys completed by Col. Kelly, Capt. Wersebe, and others, under the orders of Colonels William Fullarton and Thomas Humberston Mackenzie.

This map is intended to trace the movements of Fullarton and Humberston in the Second Anglo–Mysore War (1780–1784), a conflict between between the Kingdom of Mysore and the British East India Company. Fullarton and Humberston commanded a regiment of Scottish regulars which they trained and equipped at their own expenses at their estates in Scotland. The Fullerton/Humberston regiment was originally intended for Mexico, but was reassigned to India to take part in the war against Haidar Ali of Mysore.

The regiments then went on to India, to take their part in the Second Anglo-Mysore War against Haidar Ali. Humberston 's regiment disembarked at Calicut, to make a diversion by invading Mysore from the Malabar coast, while Fullarton's went round to Madras. He remained in the neighborhood of the capital of the presidency until after the Battle of Porto Novo, when he was sent south in command of the king's troops, in order if possible to attract the Mysore troops away from the Carnatic. In June 1782 Fullarton was gazetted a colonel in the army for the East Indies, with Sir Robert Barker, Norman Macleod, John Floyd, and many others, in order to put an end to the perpetual disputes between the king's and the company's officers, and he co-operated in the winter campaign of 1782–3 in the suppression of the Kollars, the fighting tribes of Madura, and in the capture of Karur and Dindigal. Fullarton led the Madras Army against the rebel Kattaboman, a palaiyakarar of Panchalum Kurucchi, a fortress town in present day Tinnevelly District of Tamil Nadu. Fullarton's name is associated with the destruction of the fort of the rebel chieftain at Nettkelcheval, again in Tinnevelly District. In May 1783 he succeeded to the general command of all the troops south of the Coleroon, and on 2 June he took Dharapuram. He then advanced towards General James Stuart, who was besieging Cuddalore.

On the news of the fall of that city, he determined to attack Pálghát, which had resisted all the efforts of Humberston in the previous year. He had to make his way through a dense forest. When he got through it, he had to storm the city. There, he heard that Tippoo Sultan, who had succeeded Haidar Ali on the throne, was not fulfilling the terms agreed to at the surrender of Mangalore, and Fullarton accordingly followed up his success by the capture of the fortress of Coimbatore. At this time, he was imperatively ordered to cease all hostilities by the government of Madras, and a sort of peace was patched up between the company and Tippoo Sultan.

This map is extremely rare. The OCLC cites only five examples in institutional collections. It appears to have been first issued in 1788, the present example being a slightly later edition dating to 1791. If anything, this second edition is much rarer than the first, with only 1 known example retained in the archives of the British Library.