This book explores the remarkable everyday life-worlds of the common people in Tamil country and examines the struggles of the agricultural workers, non-agricultural labour, fishermen and the slaves. It provides a realistic combination of individual human beings and groups hitherto considered too low for elite treatment in Tamil history. The author skillfully traces the social connections and networks, and how the subaltern groups lived in the age of expanding European commercial activities on the Tamil coast and hinterland by deciphering the connections from the medieval period to the birth of colonial modernity.