From Coffee to Tea Cultivation in Ceylon, 1880-1900: An Economic and Social History [Illustrated] 9004163611, 9789004163614

Citation preview

From Coffee to Tea Cultivation in Ceylon, 1880–1900

Brill’s Indological Library Edited by

Johannes Bronkhorst In co-operation with

Richard Gombrich • Oskar von Hinüber Katsumi Mimaki • Arvind Sharma

VOLUME 29

From Coffee to Tea Cultivation in Ceylon, 1880–1900 An Economic and Social History

By

Roland Wenzlhuemer

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2008

Cover image: “Ceylon. Tea Pickers.” Photograph from the William Henry Jackson Collection. Courtesy BYU Photo Archives, Perry Special Collections, Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, USA. This book is printed on acid-free paper. A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISSN: 0925–2916 ISBN: 978 90 04 16361 4 Copyright 2008 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Brill has made all reasonable efforts to trace all right holders to any copyrighted material used in this work. In cases where these efforts have not been successful the publisher welcomes communications from copyright holders, so that the appropriate acknowledgements can be made in future editions, and to settle other permission matters. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS

Für meine Eltern . . .

CONTENTS List of Maps ............................................................................... List of Tables ............................................................................. List of Figures ............................................................................ Acknowledgements ..................................................................... Measures ..................................................................................... Abbreviations ..............................................................................

xi xiii xv xvii xix xxi

Chapter One Introduction ...................................................... 1.1 From Coffee to Tea ............................................................ 1.2 Structure of the Book ......................................................... 1.3 State of Research ............................................................... 1.4 Period of Observation ........................................................

1 1 4 5 7

Chapter Two Geography ........................................................ 2.1 Geographical Features of Ceylon .........................................

11 11

Chapter Three History ............................................................ 3.1 Pre-History and the Aryan and Dravidian Colonisations ....... 3.2 The Anuradhapura Period .................................................. 3.3 The Pollonaruwa Period ..................................................... 3.4 The Shift of Sinhalese Capitals and the Tamil Kingdom of Jaffna ............................................................................... 3.5 The Portuguese in Ceylon ................................................... 3.6 The Dutch Period .............................................................. 3.7 The British Take-Over and the Conquest of Kandy .............. 3.8 Reforms and Economic Development ....................................

19 19 20 21 22 24 26 29 30

Chapter Four Demography ..................................................... 4.1 Colonial Population Censuses in Ceylon ............................... 4.2 The Growth of the Population, 1881–1901 ....................... 4.3 Ethnic Composition of the Population, 1881–1901 ............. 4.4 Religious Composition of the Population, 1881–1901 ..........

33 33 34 41 46

viii

contents

Chapter Five Export Economy ............................................... 5.1 The Rise of ‘King Coffee’ .................................................. 5.2 Depression and Recovery ..................................................... 5.3 Monoculture, the Coffee Leaf Disease and the Period of Transition .......................................................................... 5.4 The Depression of the Early 1880s .................................... 5.5 The Transition to Tea ........................................................ 5.6 Tea and the Sinhalese ......................................................... 5.7 The Evolution of Coconut Plantations ................................. 5.8 Diversification: The Emergence of Rubber Plantations ........... 5.9 Transition—Consolidation—Diversification ............................

53 53 59 62 69 75 90 92 96 99

Chapter Six Resources ............................................................ 6.1 The Factors of Production .................................................. 6.2 Land ................................................................................. 6.3 Labour .............................................................................. 6.4 Capital ............................................................................. 6.5 Infrastructure .....................................................................

103 103 104 111 119 125

Chapter Seven Subsistence ...................................................... 7.1 A Subsistence Economy ...................................................... 7.2 Wet Rice Cultivation .......................................................... 7.3 Wet Rice Irrigation ............................................................ 7.4 The Paddy Tax and its Impact on the Peasantry .................. 7.5 Chena Cultivation ..............................................................

135 135 137 142 151 160

Chapter Eight Administration ................................................. 8.1 Administrative Units ........................................................... 8.2 The Ceylon Civil Service .................................................... 8.3 The Governor and the Government Agents ............................ 8.4 The Legislative Council ...................................................... 8.5 The Departments ............................................................... 8.6 The Headmen System .........................................................

165 165 170 178 185 191 194

Chapter Nine Education ......................................................... 9.1 British Educational Policy, 1796–1867 .............................. 9.2 The Morgan Committee and the Department of Public Instruction ............................................................... 9.3 Education, 1880–1900 .....................................................

201 201 206 213

contents

ix

Chapter 10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5

Ten New Elites .......................................................... Elite Status and Social Stratification .................................. National Elites—The Mudaliyars ................................... National Elites—The Nouveaux Riches ........................ Local Elites—Headmen and Moneylenders ......................... Non-Elites—The Peasantry and the Labourers ...................

221 221 224 228 235 238

Chapter 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5

Eleven Immigrants .................................................... Social Background of the Immigrants ................................ Recruitment, Coast Advances, tundus and the kanganies ... En Route to the Plantations .............................................. Rice, Balance Wages and Indebtedness ............................... Medical Aid Schemes .......................................................

243 243 245 252 256 262

Chapter 12.1 12.2 12.3 12.4 12.5

Twelve Revivals ......................................................... Christian Missionary Activity and Buddhist Response .......... The Buddhist Revival: Theosophist Organisation ................ The Buddhist Revival: Central Issues ................................ The Hindu Revival .......................................................... The Muslim Revival ........................................................

271 271 278 281 288 291

Chapter 13.1 13.2 13.3 13.4 13.5 13.6

Thirteen Conclusion ................................................. Export Economy and Monoculture ..................................... The Transformation of the Factors of Production ............... Peasant Agriculture ........................................................... “Deconstructing the Dualistic Model” ................................ Administration and Education ........................................... New Elites and Immigrant Labourers ................................

297 297 302 307 310 312 315

Bibliography ................................................................................

319

Index ..........................................................................................

327

LIST OF MAPS Map Map Map Map Map

2.1: 2.2: 2.3: 4.1: 8.1:

Elevation Map of Ceylon ......................................... The Zones of Ceylon ............................................... Distribution of Annual Rainfall ............................... Population Density, 1881 .......................................... The Five Provinces of Ceylon after the Colebrooke-Cameron Reforms ................................. Map 8.2: The Nine Provinces of Ceylon after 1889 ..............

13 15 16 40 168 169

LIST OF TABLES Table 4.1: Population and Population Density, 1881 .............. Table 4.2: Population and Population Density, 1891 .............. Table 4.3: Population and Population Density, 1901 .............. Table 4.4: Population Growth, 1881–1901 .............................. Table 4.5: Distribution of Ethnic Groups, 1881 ..................... Table 4.6: Distribution of Ethnic Groups, 1891 ..................... Table 4.7: Distribution of Ethnic Groups, 1901 ..................... Table 4.8: Sinhalese Population Growth, 1881–1901 .............. Table 4.9: Tamil Population Growth, 1881–1901 ................... Table 4.10: Distribution of Religious Groups, 1881 ............... Table 4.11: Distribution of Religious Groups, 1891 ............... Table 4.12: Distribution of Religious Groups, 1901 ............... Table 5.1: The Ceylon Coffee Industry, 1834–1886 (Annual Figures and Annual Averages) ................................. Table 5.2: Ceylon Coffee Exports (Plantation and Native), 1869–1886 (in 000 cwt.) ........................................................ Table 5.3: Value of Fertiliser Imports to Ceylon, 1874–1880 (in Rs) ...................................................................................... Table 5.4: Average Price of Plantation Coffee, 1870–1886 (in s. and d.) ........................................................................... Table 5.5: Cinchona Exports, 1881–1890 ................................ Table 5.6: Cinchona: Acreage, Exports and Prices, 1870–1895 ............................................................................... Table 5.7: Acreage and Exports of Tea, 1867–1880 .............. Table 5.8: Migration: Arrivals and Departures, 1880–1886 ... Table 5.9: Tea: Acreage and Exports, 1880–1890 .................. Table 5.10: Average Tea Prices in the London Market in £ and Rs, 1884–1893 ............................................................ Table 5.11: Tea: Acreage and Exports, 1890–1900 ................ Table 5.12: Export Value of Coconut Products, 1881–1900 ............................................................................... Table 5.13: Number of Oil Mills in Ceylon, 1880–1900 ....... Table 5.14: Acreage under Rubber, 1900–1913 ...................... Table 5.15: Acreage under Cultivation of Main Crops, 1880–1900 ............................................................................... Table 5.16: Coffee, Tea, Cinchona and Coconut Exports in % of the Total Export Value, 1880–1900 ...........................

35 36 37 39 43 44 45 47 48 49 50 51 61 64 67 68 72 73 79 81 83 86 89 95 96 97 98 101

xiv

list of tables

Table 6.1: Average Ordinary Dividends Paid by Tea Companies, 1889–1900 .......................................................... Table 6.2: Mileage, Passengers, Goods Transported and Profit of the Ceylon Railways, 1867–1905 ..................................... Table 6.3: Railway Lines Constructed in Ceylon, 1863–1905 ............................................................................... Table 7.1: Acreage Under Paddy Cultivation, 1880–1900 ..... Table 7.2: Growth of the Peasant Population and Expansion of Wet Rice Land, 1871–1901 ............................................. Table 7.3: Per Capita Consumption of Rice in Selected Districts and Provinces in Selected Years, 1887–1895 ........ Table 7.4: Paddy and Rice Imported Per Capita of the Non-Peasant Population, 1881–1901 .................................... Table 7.5: Expenditure on Irrigation, 1880–1899 ................... Table 7.6: Paddy Tax Collected and Arrears Recovered in the Udukinda Division, Province of Uva, 1882–1887 ........ Table 7.7: Paddy Lands Sold for Non-Payment of the Paddy Tax, 1880–1892 ...................................................................... Table 7.8: Incidence of Taxation in Terms of a Day’s Income on Heads of Families ............................................... Table 8.1: The Classes of the Upper Division of the CCS after 1891 ................................................................................ Table 8.2: Unofficial Members of the Legislative Council, 1880–1900 ............................................................................... Table 9.1: Expenditure on Education and Total Expenditure, 1880–1900 ............................................................................... Table 9.2: Government, Grant-in-Aid and Unaided Schools, 1880–1900 ............................................................................... Table 9.3: Province-wise Distribution of Schools and Pupils, 1880–1900 ............................................................................... Table 9.4: Province-wise Percentage of Children Attending School, 1887–1900 ................................................................. Table 10.1: Principal Land Holders in the Western Province, 1829 ......................................................................................... Table 11.1: Colombo Market Price of Rice, Average Cost of Rice to Planters and Average Price Charged to Estate Labourers, 1880–1910 (in Rs per bushel) ............................ Table 11.2: Yearly Income of Plantation Labourers, 1880–1901 (in Rs) .................................................................. Table 11.3: Breaches and Prosecutions under the “Medical Wants Ordinance,” 1883–1885 .............................................

124 128 129 138 139 140 148 149 157 159 161 176 188 214 215 216 217 226 259 261 268

LIST OF FIGURES Figure 5.1: Ceylon Coffee Exports (Plantation and Native), 1850–1888 (Indexed with 1860 = 100) ................................ Figure 5.2: Volume, Value and Average Price of Exported Cinchona, 1880–1890 (Indexed with 1883 = 100) .............. Figure 5.3: Map of the Island of Ceylon Showing the Main Areas of Tea and Coconut Cultivation, 1899 ..................... Figure 5.4: Average Tea Prices in the London Market in £ and Rs, 1884–1893 (Indexed with 1884 = 100) ............. Figure 5.5: Coffee, Tea, Cinchona and Coconut Exports in Relation to the Total Export Value, 1880–1900 .................. Figure 6.1: Four Maps Showing the Expansion of the Ceylon Government Railways, 1880–1905 ........................................ Figure 6.2: View of Colombo Harbour from Titan—Looking South. H.M.S. “Bacchante” & “Ruby” at Moorings. January 1882 .......................................................................... Figure 6.3: View of Colombo Harbour from Root Work— Looking North East. H.M.S. “Bacchante”, “Ruby” & “Cleopatra” at Moorings. January 1882 ............................... Figure 7.1: Acreage under Field Paddy in Ceylon and in the Central Province (and the Province of Uva from 1886 onwards), 1880–1890 (Indexed with 1880 = 100) ............... Figure 10.1: Sale Price of Arrack Rents for Selected Farms, 1864–1900 ............................................................................... Figure 11.1: Indian Labour Immigration Routes in Nineteenth-Century Ceylon ...................................................

66 75 78 87 100 130 131 132 146 233 253

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Now, as this work is finished, it is time to express my sincerest thanks to all those people who contributed to it. My deep gratitude goes to the following: the extremely supportive staff at the Public Record Office (now the National Archives) in Kew, London; the equally helpful library staff at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, at the School of Oriental and African Studies and at the British Library in London; the very passionate and equally patient library staff at the University of Peradeniya; Kanthi Gamage, Susan Gunasekera and their colleagues at the International Centre for Ethnic Studies in Kandy for their generous help and practical advice; Kingsley M. De Silva, Executive Director of the International Centre for Ethnic Studies in Kandy for granting me access to his resources; Gamini Samaranayake at the University of Peradeniya for a warm welcome, invaluable support and a delicious dinner; N. T. S. A. Senadeera, Librarian at the University of Peradeniya, for his support and interest; all the members of ‘The Club’ for beer, omelette and an excellent discussion. Salzburg University deserves my utmost gratitude for the financial support of this study. The research trips to London and Sri Lanka would not have been possible without the generous grants from the university. I explicitly want to thank Professor Norbert Ortmayr of the History Department—the supervisor of the original version of this book—for his encouragement throughout the research and writing process. His passion for history is highly contagious and I will do my best to spread this particular infection further. I would also like to thank Russ Taylor of Lee Library at Brigham Young University for his help in providing the cover photograph which has been taken from the William Henry Jackson collection in the L. Tom Perry Special Collection of the library. Finally, my utmost gratitude goes to all the people who have contributed to, commented on or criticised what has been written in this book. The suggestions and comments of Herbert Fraungruber, Erwin Giedenbacher, Corinna Radke, Silvia Risch and of an anonymous reviewer have been extremely helpful. Thanks to their support I have been able to improve many passages and avoid a number of mistakes. It is needless to say that all remaining errors or shortcomings are entirely my own responsibility.

MEASURES 1 1 1 1 1

acre = 0.4047 hectares bushel = 36.37 litres hundredweight (cwt.) = 50.8 kilograms (kg.) pound (lb.) = 0.453 kilograms (kg.) square mile = 259 hectares

ABBREVIATIONS AAG Average Annual Growth AGA Assistant Government Agent AR or Adm. Rep. Administration Report BTS Buddhist Theosophical Society CAA Ceylon Agricultural Association CCS Ceylon Civil Service CHJ Ceylon Historical Journal CJHSS Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies CLC Ceylon Labour Commission CMS Church (of England) Missionary Society CNA Ceylon National Association CP Central Province EC Executive Council EIC East India Company EP Eastern Province GA Government Agent KZSS Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie LC Legislative Council LCDZ Low-Country Dry Zone LCIZ Low-Country Intermediate Zone LCWZ Low-Country Wet Zone LMS London Missionary Society MCIZ Mid-Country Intermediate Zone MCWZ Mid-Country Wet Zone MLC Member of Legislative Council MSL Mean Sea Level NCP North-Central Province NP Northern Province NWP North-Western Province PA Planters’ Association PCMO Principal Civil Medical Officer PWD Public Works Department RRDI Rice Research & Development Institute RYL Red Yellow Latosols

xxii SP UCHC UCIZ UCWZ VOC WP

abbreviationS Southern Province University of Ceylon History of Ceylon Up-Country Intermediate Zone Up-Country Wet Zone Vereenidge Oost-Indische Campagnie Western Province

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION 1.1

From Coffee to Tea

In the year 1972, the former British crown colony Ceylon—independent since 1948—changed its constitution and became a republic under the name of Sri Lanka. Its former name Ceylon, however, was—and is—still in wide circulation. Even official institutions, such as the Ceylon Tourist Board or the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce, refer to the old name of the island in their own identifiers. The label ‘Ceylon’ sticks. And not only at the local level, where the people had grown used to the name during 150 years of British domination. Much of the rest of the world as well still likes to think of the small island as Ceylon. This is but little surprise, as it had been under the very same name that the country had been introduced to the world (i.e. the world market) under the British. The island had been the model crown colony of the nineteenth-century British Empire with a (mostly) thriving plantation agriculture and an economy resting exclusively on cash crop exports. Ceylonese plantation products had been despatched to every corner of the so-called Western world and were the first thing that many a Briton, mainland European or American indulged in every morning. During the nineteenth century, Ceylonese agricultural products conquered Western households, particularly their breakfast tables. Ceylon became world famous for its non-alcoholic stimulants—first for its coffee, later for tea. Today, scarcely anybody thinks of Ceylon when he sips his morning cup of coffee. But to the tea aficionado, the prefix ‘Ceylon’ on the tea box is still a sign of tradition and quality. Although the island’s economy has long since been transformed and moved away from its agricultural foundations, Sri Lanka’s tea exports still produced 13.8% of the total export value in the year 2002.1 1 Department of Census and Statistics—Sri Lanka, Composition of Exports (Rs Million): 1997–2002 ([cited 12 June 2007]); available from http://www.statistics.gov. lk/trade/tab02.htm.

2

chapter one

Today it is little known that Ceylon has once been famous for the outstanding quality not of its tea leaves but of its coffee beans. Searching for a suitable export crop to grow in their newly acquired island colony, the Dutch had already experimented with coffee cultivation on plantations in the eighteenth century. But the Dutch only controlled the coastal lowlands of Ceylon and had no access to the higher elevations in the interior of the island that were much better suited to the cultivation of the coffee bush. Thus, their experiments with coffee yielded only unsatisfactory results, and until the 1820s the miniscule quantities of the crop produced on the island must be largely credited to petty coffee cultivators among the highland peasantry who supplemented the proceeds of their paddy fields with the cultivation of the crop. The British, however, conquered the interior of the island and started to develop and open up the new territories for capital investment soon after their take-over. Coffee cultivation responded favourably to the climate and soil conditions, the availability of European capital and the presence of a seemingly inexhaustible labour supply from neighbouring South India. It proved to be a high-yielding field of investment for the British government official, the proprietor-planter or—not quite so widespread—even the absentee investor from Britain. Within only a few decades, coffee cultivation had transformed Ceylon’s agricultural economy completely. By the early 1850s, a fully-fl edged plantation economy had been established on the island running on European capital, Indian labour and Ceylonese land. In fact, the coffee plantation industry, at that time, had already gone through one major crisis in the late 1840s and emerged from it refined. During the 1850s and 1860s, a genuine “coffee mania” grabbed the investors and the administration. Between 1865 and 1869, Ceylon exported an annual average of 939,000 cwt. of coffee.2 The export peak was reached in the year 1870 when 1,014,000 cwt. of coffee were transhipped from the island.3 The coffee was sold in the London market at an average price of 63 shilling and 9 pence and, thus, realised £3.23 million.4 This amounts

2 Donald R. Snodgrass, Ceylon; an Export Economy in Transition (Homewood, Ill.: R. D. Irwin, 1966), 20. 3 Patrick Peebles, Sri Lanka: A Handbook of Historical Statistics, A Reference Publication in International Historical Statistics (Boston, Mass.: G. K. Hall, 1982), 207. 4 I. H. Vanden Driesen, The Long Walk: Indian Plantation Labour in Sri Lanka in the Nineteenth Century (New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1997), 168.

introduction

3

to 85% of the total export value in that year.5 These figures illustrate that Ceylon’s export-oriented economy depended completely on the prosperity of the coffee crop. Coffee had been so successful and so attractive to the planter and the investor that a coffee monoculture had been established on the island between 1840 and 1875. Such monocultures, however, foster the emergence and the spread of pests. In a prototypical demonstration of the hazards of monoculture, one such pest—the fungus Hemileia Vastatrix—infested Ceylon’s coffee plantations and completely ruined the entire enterprise within little more than a decade. By 1886 the latest, the coffee plantation industry on the island had been wiped out. Although local Cassandras6 had pointed out the dangers involved in monoculture before, the swiftness and thoroughness of the collapse of coffee surprised almost everybody involved in the business in Ceylon. It left a completely unprepared (i.e. undiversified) export economy in utter ruin. Coffee cultivation in Ceylon never recovered. In fact, just a few years after its collapse, only the most die-hard traditionalists would still bemoan the ruin of coffee. An agricultural substitute had been discovered that proved even more suitable to Ceylon’s climate and soil conditions and soon attracted most of the planting communities’ attention and capital. Tea cultivation impressively demonstrated its economic potential and, thus, rendered any return to coffee cultivation obsolete and undesirable. Thus, the absence of Ceylon in today’s pantheon of coffee exporting countries must be attributed to both the disastrous side-effects of coffee monoculture itself and the availability of an extraordinarily suitable replacement in the form of tea. The transition from coffee to tea cultivation as the backbone of Ceylonese economy happened remarkably quick. Within less than a decade most abandoned coffee lands had been planted with the new crop. Soon, the first substantial tea despatches realised good prices in the London market, and by 1890 the tea industry was in full swing. Thus, the collapse of the sole economic pillar had been overcome in merely a couple of years. This seemingly smooth transition has been made possible by a combination of favourable circumstances: the availability of cheap land and labour, the exploitation of the

Ceylon Statistical Blue Book 1870. For instance G. H. K. Thwaites, Director of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Peradeniya. 5 6

4

chapter one

transitional cinchona plantation for capital, and the rise of company involvement in the plantation business. In 1900—the end of our period of observation—Ceylon exported around 150 million lbs. of tea with an export value of almost 54 million Rupees. This amounts to 56.6% of the total export value of that year.7 1.2

Structure of the Book

But however smooth and notable this economic transition might seem, it brought drastic changes to about every aspect of Ceylonese society. Although, initially, the same lands were planted with tea and the same labour was employed that had already been used for coffee cultivation earlier, the economies involved in tea production differed significantly from those of coffee. Economies-of-scale became relevant. Lands at new elevations suddenly proved attractive to the planting industries. Thus, the struggle for the limited land resources intensified. Moreover, tea is—in contrast to coffee—a perennial crop and needs attention and care year-round. Therefore, the migrant workforce employed on the plantations settled and became a permanent feature of Ceylonese society. At the same time, the success of the plantation complex and the creation of a new consumer market on the plantations created new business opportunities for newly emerging indigenous elites. Altogether, Ceylonese society underwent a gradual transformation during the last two decades of the nineteenth century that was closely connected with the fortunes of the plantation industry. After providing a brief introduction to the geographical, historical and demographical background of this transformation in the first chapters, the process of economic transition itself will be examined in Chapters five and six. The former will analyse the spectacular illeffects of the coffee collapse, the resorting to transitional crops (like cinchona) and the subsequent refinement of the plantation enterprise with tea cultivation. The latter chapter will take a look at the factors of production involved in the economic transition and the role that they occupied in the process. The impact that those drastic changes in the plantation sector had on the second agricultural sector of peasant subsistence will be the main subject of Chapter seven. It might well

7

Ceylon Statistical Blue Book 1900.

introduction

5

be discovered that the links between the allegedly neatly separated sectors of a ‘dual economy’ were closer than often assumed. In the following chapter, the development of the colonial administrative machinery and its interplay with the plantation sector during the period of observation will be highlighted. Similarly, Chapter nine deals with the implementation of educational policies in late nineteenth-century Ceylon. It is the purpose of both these chapters to illustrate how closely linked to the welfare of the plantation enterprise many of the adopted policies in seemingly unrelated political fields were. Chapter ten looks closer at a newly emerging stratum in local Ceylonese society—the new commercial elites. The rise to social and economic prominence of these entrepreneurs was possible thanks to the new business opportunities created by expansion of the planting industry and—as a consequence—of the money economy. The following chapter examines the social structure and living conditions of the plantation labourers and illustrates how the settlement of the labour force on the estates bound them even closer to the plantation industry. Finally, Chapter twelve briefl y touches the so-called revivals of Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam, which became the first expressions of a rising religious, national and ethnic consciousness among the indigenous groups of Ceylon. 1.3 State of Research While a few of the social changes described in this work might only have loose connections to the process of economic transition after the coffee collapse, it is the main purpose of this book to highlight how many other sectors—such as peasant subsistence, indigenous elites, the administration, or the life of the estate workforce—were thoroughly transformed by the same process. So far, little research has been done with such a perspective in mind. Although comparatively much has been published about the emergence of the plantation economy, immigrant labour, the peasant economy and the history of education and religion in nineteenth-century Ceylon, most of the published studies come with a rather narrow focus on their particular subject. Nevertheless, these studies provide us with a comprehensive and well researched background which is absolutely necessary for any further project with a wider perspective. It has been D. R. Snodgrass who realised for the first time the significance of the structural economic

6

chapter one

changes in late nineteenth-century Ceylon. His study “Ceylon. An Export Economy in Transition”8 focussed largely on the economic developments in the Crown Colony but illustrated the potential infl uence that the economy wielded over the state of the island. Although Snodgrass’ idea of a dualistic economic model (i.e. two sharply separated and independent economic sectors: the plantation sector and the peasants sector) has been heavily criticised in the nearer past (e.g. by E. Meyer),9 it has infl uenced many later economic historians and created an increased interest in the plantation and peasant economy of nineteenth-century Ceylon. In W. A. Lewis’ seminal publication “Tropical Development, 1880–1913”, J. E. Craig10 took up Snodgrass’ model and refined it. A. Bandarage11 and S. B. D. De Silva12 later put the economic development of the island in a wider context—Bandarage thereby concentrated on the political economy of the Kandyan highlands, whereas De Silva pictured the economic development of Ceylon within a global perspective. All the mentioned works (as well as many others) are highly valuable. Nevertheless there has been no comprehensive study on the interplay of economy, society and administration so far. This study does not try to fill this gap, but wants to form a first basis for further research in that direction. Still there is urgent need to analyse Ceylon’s role in the nineteenth-century world market economy or the linkages between the export and the subsistence sector on the island (which have long been denied by Snodgrass’ dualistic model). I have tried in this work to uncover new material to illustrate the transition from coffee to tea cultivation and the crucial role that cinchona played in that perspective. Furthermore, an analysis of the Sinhalese contribution to estate labour in nineteenth-century Ceylon shows that the export and subsistence sector heavily infl uenced each

Snodgrass, An Export Economy in Transition. For instance Eric Meyer, “ ‘Enclave’ Plantations, ‘Hemmed-in’ Villages and Dual-istic Representations in Colonial Ceylon,” in Plantations, Proletarians, and Peasants in Colonial Asia, ed. E. Valentine Daniel, Henry Bernstein, and Tom Brass, [Library of Peasant Studies; No. 11] (London; Portland, Or.: Frank Cass, 1992). 10 J. E. Craig, “Ceylon,” in Tropical Development, 1880–1913, ed. W. Arthur Lewis (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970). 11 Asoka Bandarage, Colonialism in Sri Lanka: The Political Economy of the Kandyan Highlands, 1833–1886, vol. 39, New Babylon, Studies in the Social Sciences (Berlin; New York: Mouton, 1983). 12 S. B. D. De Silva, The Political Economy of Underdevelopment, International Library of Sociology (London; Boston: Routledge & K. Paul, 1982). 8 9

introduction

7

other in that time and that Snodgrass’ dualistic approach cannot be upheld any longer. It lay beyond the time and resources dedicated to this study to tap original sources in all areas covered in this study. In some chapters I had to rely mainly on secondary literature as well as on the general statistics featured in the Population Censuses and the Blue Books. Nevertheless, much of the economic chapters is based on primary material and so are large parts of the other chapters. 1.4 Period of Observation In the field of social or economic history the choice of an exact and accurate observational period is a most difficult task because of the highly complex and interdependent ‘fl ow’ of historical developments. Following a river from its spring in the mountains until it drains into the sea, the gradual growth of the runnel into a brook and later into a river is clearly visible. Nevertheless, we cannot say when exactly the runnel became a brook or from which exact point on the brook has to be called a river. In that respect, history can justly be compared to a stream. The countless parallel developments in seemingly manageable spaces and periods of historical observation and the resulting complexity and multi-dimensionality of a transitional process make it difficult to choose definite chronological anchors for a historical analysis. But to the economic development of late nineteenth-century Ceylon this applies only partially as an unforeseen event cut into the historical fl ow—the emergence of the so-called Coffee Leaf Disease. Supported by the prevailing coffee monoculture in the Ceylonese highlands this plant disease practically wiped out coffee cultivation in Ceylon within a decade and pushed the British crown colony into a major economic crisis. Although coffee monoculture, unfavourable world market conditions and human mismanagement of the crisis facilitated and quickened the ruin of the coffee plantation industry—and therefore the loss of the economic backbone of the island—, the emergence of the Coffee Leaf Disease remains the ultimate reason for the collapse of ‘King Coffee’. The economic changes triggered by the ruin of the coffee industry had lasting effects on the island’s social, administrative and ethnic development. The transition from large-scale coffee cultivation to the cultivation of tea did not only involve severe economic changes—mainly in the handling of the factors of production. The

8

chapter one

extinction of one cash crop (coffee) and its substitution with another one (tea) also heavily affected the peasant population. The pressure on land started to grow and cornered the peasantry. The cultivation of tea is more labour-intensive than coffee cultivation and therefore required a bigger and—above all—resident labour force. Similarly, the production of tea is more capital-intensive than coffee production. Thus, the successful cultivation of the new crop led to drastic changes in the supply of the factors of production. By the turn of the century, Ceylon had adjusted itself to the changes brought by the rise of tea cultivation—which had become the staple export crop of the island within only a couple of years after its large-scale introduction. In the first decade of the twentieth century, rubber cultivation was successfully introduced to Ceylon and—along with the traditional cultivation of the coconut—diversified the island’s cash crop sector. The emergence and success of the rubber plantations in the early twentieth century marks the definite end of cash crop monoculture in Ceylon. Accordingly, the economic history of late nineteenth-century Ceylon offers at least two reliable anchor points to which I adjusted the observational period of this work: the economic crisis of the early 1880s and the beginning diversification of export goods around 1900. To simplify the matter further I finally fixed the start and end of this study at 1880 and 1900 respectively. These 21 years I tried to cover in whatever justifiable detail. Frequent looks back into the earlier nineteenth century are necessary to uncover the historical roots of processes or in order to present a consistent picture of historical developments. These recourses tend to be less detailed and merely serve the purpose of clarification. Although this study has a strong focus on the economic changes in late nineteenth-century Ceylon—in the foreign owned and run plantation sector as well as in local subsistence agriculture—, it is the goal of this study to highlight the (inter)dependence of the economic, social, administrative and religious developments during the period of research. At the beginning of this work stood the assumption that the ruin of the coffee industry and the requirements of the newly emerging tea plantations triggered or prevented many changes in the peasant agricultural sector, the administration, the ethnic composition, the educational system as well as in religious and national consciousness. Later I found that the changes in some of the mentioned sectors had older roots—which also lay in the economic background of the colony. The religious revivals of the late nineteenth century, for instance,

introduction

9

originated in a clash over the distribution of the educational resources between the Christian missionaries and the indigenous religions. The religious movements were largely carried by the new local economic elites that emerged due to the economic possibilities of the plantation industry. Thus, the gradual transition from a caste-based to a classbased society is a by-product of the economic development as well. Similarly, government policies and the administrative structure were heavily infl uenced by the economic demands of the colony—during the period of observation as well as earlier.

CHAPTER TWO

GEOGRAPHY 2.1

Geographical Features of Ceylon

A large part of this present work on the historical development of Ceylon in the closing decades of the nineteenth century deals with agro-economic patterns and transitions. As it was in most colonial (and tropical) dependencies, agriculture set the pace of economic development in Ceylon. Industrialisation has taken place only on a very modest level throughout the nineteenth century. The few manufactures and other industrial facilities that emerged with the expansion of the railway network and the establishment of the tea industry mostly depended directly on the welfare of the plantation agriculture. The produce of the plantations—coffee first, later tea, supplemented by coconuts and rubber—was Ceylon’s primary export commodity. The economy of the island—being an almost pure export economy with little industrial backing—depended wholly on agricultural products. Similarly, the bulk of the indigenous population made a living from subsistence agriculture—mostly wet rice cultivation, supplemented by vegetables and millets partly grown in shifting cultivation (chena). The Report on the Census of 1891 puts the percentage of the population working in the agricultural sector at 70.5%.1 Although, according to the Census of 1891, 16.2% of the total population belonged to the so-called industrial sector,2 a closer look at the professions labelled ‘industrial’ shows that these are mostly artisan occupations—with Road Labourers (14,199 in 1891) and Railway Labourers (5,431) being the only real exceptions.3 These figures illustrate that the welfare of the indigenous population as well as the prosperity of the export economy depended almost exclusively on agriculture. Therefore, this chapter shall provide a brief introduction to those geographical features of Ceylon which substantially infl uence(d) the expansion and the 1 2 3

Report on the Census of 1891, 56. Report on the Census of 1891, 56. Report on the Census of 1891, 53.

12

chapter two

productivity of subsistence and plantation agriculture on the island. The most important factors in that respect are the topographical features of the island, the climate and the distribution of water. The island of Ceylon—renamed to Sri Lanka in 1972—is located in the Indian Ocean between 5’55” and 9’51” N Latitude and 79’42” and 81’52” E Longitude. Sri Lanka covers an area of 65,610 km² with 64,740 km² of land and 740 km² of water. It has a coastline of 1,340 km. Sri Lanka’s lowest point is at Sea Level, its highest point is Mt. Pidurutalagala at 2,524 metres above Mean Sea Level (MSL). Map 2.1 illustrates that the largest part of the island is generally fl at, interrupted only by rolling plains. In the interior of the island rises the Central Massif reaching its highest elevation at Mt. Pidurutalagala. Apart from the seasonal infl uence of the monsoon, the location and height of the Central Massif is primarily responsible for the island’s regionally variable climate. The average temperature at MSL is around 27°C year-round. There are only marginal seasonal and regional variations, but the mean temperature naturally falls as elevation increases. Kandy—at 450 m above MSL—enjoys an average annual temperature of 20°C, at Nuwara Eliya—at 1,890 m above MSL—the average temperature is down to 16°C. Sri Lanka has a monsoon climate and four so-called seasons— although these seasons only vary marginally in temperature and, thus, can not be compared to the seasons of higher latitudes. From midMay to September, the island witnesses the South-West Monsoon ( yala season). After an inter-monsoon period in October and November, the North-East Monsoon period lasts from December to February (maha season). March to mid-May brings another inter-monsoon period.4 During the monsoon the Central Massif acts as a climatic barrier. Therefore, the South-West Monsoon brings rain mainly to the southern and western coastal regions and to the hill country, whereas the North-East Monsoon provides the northern and eastern regions with rain. Combined with various other factors, the climatic infl uence of the Central Massif is largely responsible for the unequal distribution of the annual rainfall. Generally, the island can be divided in a so-called Dry Zone (annual rainfall less than 1,500 mm), a Wet Zone (annual rainfall more than 2,500 mm) and an Intermediate Zone (annual

4 Manfred Domroes, Sri Lanka: Die Tropeninsel Ceylon (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1976), 73.

geography

13

Map 2.1: Elevation Map of Ceylon. Layout based on CO 700/CEYLON34. Elevation and scale added by the author.

14

chapter two

rainfall between 1,500 and 2,500 mm).5 Map 2.2 indicates the three major zones, while Map 2.3 shows the distribution of the average annual rainfall. However, it is important to note that the division in a Wet Zone, a Dry Zone and an Intermediate Zone is only a crude distinction and serves a comparative purpose. Domroes has pointed out that the statistically driest point in Ceylon (Maha Lewaya Saltern near Hambantota) gets 929 mm of average annual rainfall.6 This is not exactly ‘dry’. The division into wet, intermediate and dry must be understood in a relative sense. Apart from this distinction based on annual rainfall, Sri Lanka features three major elevation zones: the Low-Country (between 0 and 300 m above MSL), the Mid-Country (between 300 and 1,000 m above MSL) and the Up-Country (more than 1,000 m above MSL). Cross-combining the three elevation zones with the three rainfall zones, seven major agro-ecological zones can be identified:7 • • • • • • •

the the the the the the the

Low-Country Dry Zone (LCDZ) Low-Country Intermediate Zone (LCIZ) Low-Country Wet Zone (LCWZ) Mid-Country Intermediate Zone (MCIZ) Mid-Country Wet Zone (MCWZ) Up-Country Intermediate Zone (UCIZ) Up-Country Wet Zone (UCWZ)

According to the prevailing temperature, the amount of rainfall and its distribution, the soil types and the land form patterns, these seven agro-ecological zones are further subdivided into 24 agro-ecological regions. Apart from rainfall and temperature, the local soil types vary considerably. Red Yellow Latosols (RYL) are typical for the Wet Zone, whereas the Dry Zone consists mainly of different kinds of Red Earths. Along the coast, a variety of peat soils, lime soils, alluvial soils and coastal soils exists.8 A detailed description of all 24 agro-ecological regions with their geological and climatic features can be found at the website of the Rice Research & Development Institute.9

5 Rice Research & Development Institute, Agro Ecological Zones ([cited 12 June 2007]); available from http://www.rice.ac.lk/research_disciplines23.html. 6 Domroes, Die Tropeninsel Ceylon, 79. 7 Rice Research & Development Institute, Agro Ecological Zones. 8 Domroes, Die Tropeninsel Ceylon, 112–15. 9 Rice Research & Development Institute, Wet Zone ([cited 12 June 2007]); available

geography

15

Map 2.2: The Zones of Ceylon. Layout based on CO 700/CEYLON34. Zone boundaries and scale added by the author.

16

chapter two

Map 2.3: Distribution of Annual Rainfall. Layout based on CO 700/CEYLON34. Rainfall distribution and scale added by the author.

geography

17

As Map 2.2 indicates, the Wet Zone in the southwest of the island is comparatively small, but it is the only region in Ceylon that receives abundant rainfall year-round. Although most of the Dry Zone is not arid but semi-arid, the regions to the north, east and southeast of the Central Massif can rely on abundant rainfall only once a year during the North-East Monsoon. Thus, irrigation is crucial for the prosperity of agriculture in most of these regions. The ancient irrigation system of Ceylon—spreading in the Anuradhapura and Pollonaruwa regions—was a masterpiece of early engineering and its existence emphasises the importance of artificial irrigation in the Dry Zone of Sri Lanka. Partly, such irrigation works aimed at the conservation of monsoon rainwater in huge tanks, but the distribution of available water through an elaborate canal system was of equal importance. Apart from the monsoon rain, the local rivers—mostly originating in the Up-Country—fed the irrigation canals. Therefore, Dry Zone agriculture was also shaped by the river network of the island. Dependence on the water supply is especially high for the cultivation of wet rice—a crop that needs a large and steady water supply year-round to produce the maximum yield. Most of the important rivers of the island originate in the Central Massif. From there, they drain in a radial pattern into the Indian Ocean—with only one exception: Sri Lanka’s longest and biggest river, the Mahaweli Ganga.10 The rivers of the northern Dry Zone mostly do not originate in the core of the Central Massif but in its northernmost foothills. They generally carry less water and have only a limited capacity to act as feeder for the irrigation system. The bigger rivers generally feed the Wet Zone regions to the west and south of the Central Massif, only the Mahaweli Ganga, originating on the western fl ank of the massif, does not take the shortest way to the ocean but takes several bends and empties into the Bay of Bengal near Trincomalee. The Mahaweli Ganga plays a crucial role in the irrigation of this region. Most other Dry Zone areas cannot tap their rivers’ water supplies to a sufficient extent and have to rely on artificial irrigation and rainwater conservation.

from http://www.rice.ac.lk/research_disciplines23_wet_zone.html.; Rice Research & Development Institute, Dry Zone ([cited 12 June 2007]); available from http://www. rice.ac.lk/research_disciplines23_dry_zone.html.; Rice Research & Development Institute, Intermediate Zone ([cited 12 June 2007]); available from http://www.rice. ac.lk/research_disciplines23_intermediate_zone.html. 10 Domroes, Die Tropeninsel Ceylon, 61.

CHAPTER THREE

HISTORY 3.1

Pre-History and the Aryan and Dravidian Colonisations

In the Mahavamsa, the Great Chronicle, the time before the arrival of the first Aryan settlers is not described in detail. The chronicle refers to the island being inhabited by spirits and nagas—snakes or snake demons. It is assumed that this is the Aryans’ mythical conception of an indigenous population of hunters and gatherers. This indigenous population was first challenged by the arrival of the first Aryan settlers from North India. In the fifth century BC these Aryan settlers started to occupy parts of the island. They either pushed back the aboriginal inhabitants into the interior of the island or, at times, mixed with them. The Aryans were organised in clans. The Sinhalas, the most powerful clan, settled in the northern Dry Zone and introduced the cultivation of rice and the use of iron to the island. From intermarriages of the Aryans with the aboriginal people of Ceylon and with immigrants of South Indian Dravidian stock sprang the Sinhalese as an ethnic group. A regular supply of water was crucial for survival in the Dry Zone. Rainfall was not reliable and provided the settlers with only a single crop per year. Thus, the settlers started to develop considerable skills in the construction of irrigation works. At first, these works aimed at the conservation and storage of surplus water for the dry season, later the settlers also constructed works for the equal distribution of water in the region. The first large scale tank for the storage of water was constructed near the village of Anuradhagama which was later chosen as the capital of the region—under the name of Anuradhapura. It is likely that the Aryans originally brought with them some form of Brahmanism. But in the third century BC King Devanampiya Tissa converted to Buddhism inspired by the legendary Mahinda—allegedly a son (or brother) of the Mauryan Emperor Ashoka. According to the Mahavamsa—written by Buddhist monks or bikkhus—Sri Lanka has been a stronghold of Buddhism ever since. Only a few centuries after

20

chapter three

the immigration of the Aryan clans from North India, the first Tamil settlers (Dravidians from South India) arrived in Ceylon. Although it is assumed that the Aryans have maintained trade relations with the Dravidian settlements in South India since the third century BC, it has so far not been possible to fix the exact time of the Tamils’ arrival in Ceylon. However, by the second century BC, the Dravidians were infl uential enough to usurp power at Anuradhapura twice—first from 177 to 155 BC and later again under Elara from 145 to 101 BC. In his work “A History of Sri Lanka”, K. M. De Silva states that these attempts of the Tamils to control the throne in Anuradhapura were probably economically motivated and aimed at the domination of the trade relations between Ceylon and South India.1 De Silva also points out that in this early phase of Sri Lankan history ethnicity has not been a point of division in society. [. . .] Sri Lanka in the first few centuries after the Aryan settlement was a multi-ethnic society (a conception which emphasises harmony and a spirit of live and let live) rather than a plural society (in which tension between ethnic or other distinctive groups is a main feature).2

Elara’s reign at Anuradhapura ended with the conquest of Dutthagamani, king of Magama, who was not only able to regain the throne at Anuradhapura, but who eventually extended the Anuradhapura kingdom over the whole island. The unification of the island under Dutthagamani marks an important point in Ceylon’s history: the establishment of a centrally reigned and powerful state as an organisational unit. Or in De Silva’s words: “It was, in fact, the first significant success of centripetalism over centrifugalism in the island’s history.”3 3.2

The Anuradhapura Period

From Dutthagamani’s conquest to the invasion of the Cholas in the tenth century, the kings of Anuradhapura ruled Ceylon for a thousand

1 Kingsley M. De Silva, A History of Sri Lanka (London; Berkeley: C. Hurst; University of California Press, 1981), 12. 2 Ibid., 13. 3 Ibid., 16.

history

21

years. During this millennium, the kingdom was frequently haunted by political instability, and the power of the Anuradhapura kingdom did not always extend over the whole island. Only the stronger rulers managed to keep up Anuradhapuras dominance over the whole of Ceylon—and this only in times of stability. Economically, the kingdom depended on a large-scale irrigation system in its heartland. Wet rice cultivation in the Dry Zone could only provide good harvests with a steady water supply. Thus, the Sinhalese engineers of the time constructed an advanced system of tanks and canals to store and distribute water year-round. The two main reasons for the kingdom’s frequent instability were recurring confl icts about the succession to the throne on the one hand and—a little later—the threats of South Indian invasions on the other. Until the seventh century AD, the two most infl uential clans of the kingdom were fighting for dominance—the Lambakannas and the Moriyas. In the fifth century, the Moriyas were able to ascend the throne after more than five centuries of Lambakanna dominance. Two hundred years of open confl ict between the two clans followed, until the last Moriya king was overthrown in 614 and the dominance of the Lambakannas re-established. Later in that century, the reign of the Lambakannas stabilised thanks to a new law of succession to the throne which helped to monopolise the power of the Lambakannas. The proximity of Ceylon to the South Indian coast not only facilitated the immigration of the Tamil people but also posed a constant threat to the integrity of the Anuradhapura kingdom. An invasion from South India could occur at any time. In the middle of the ninth century AD, the South Indian Pandyans invaded the island and sacked Anuradhapura. The Pandyans finally withdrew, but, only a few decades later, the Cholas emerged as the ruling force in South India. They absorbed the Pandyans and the Pallavas in India and invaded Ceylon. During the eleventh century, the Cholas controlled almost the whole island, but they were not able to keep up control over the southern regions. 3.3

The Pollonaruwa Period

As the control of the southern regions of Ceylon became more difficult, the Cholas moved their capital from Anuradhapura to

22

chapter three

Pollonaruwa, which promised to be strategically better situated in order to crush the resistance movement of the Rohana region.4 Nevertheless, Vijayabahu I was able to drive the Cholas out of Ceylon and re-establish Sinhalese dominance in 1070. Vijayabahu I and his successors kept the capital at Pollonaruwa and invested considerable resources for the construction and restoration of irrigation works in the Dry Zone where much of the existing agricultural infrastructure had been neglected or destroyed during the fights of resistance. Only the kings Vijayabahu I, Parakramabahu I and Nissankamalla were able to maintain a reasonably strong hold over the entire island. After the reign of Nissankamalla—the first king descending from the Indian Kalinga dynasty—the kingdom started to crumble. The Pandyans and Cholas took advantage of the kingdom’s weakness and again frequently invaded and raided the northern parts of the island. In 1215, Magha of the Kalinga dynasty seized the throne at Pollonaruwa and “adopted a policy of blood and terror”.5 In the course of resistance to Magha’s rule many local chiefdoms and administrative units sprang up. After Magha had been driven out of Ceylon by the ruler of Dambadeniya, the capital was moved there. This marked the beginning of the continuous shift of Sinhalese capitals and the abandonment of the Dry Zone. 3.4 The Shift of Sinhalese Capitals and the Tamil Kingdom of Jaffna Due to the resistance to the reign of Magha, the Sinhalese kingdom had disintegrated more and more and had lost much of its strength. Gradually, the Sinhalese rulers started to abandon the Dry Zone and moved their capital further to the south-west. Yapahuwa served as capital from 1272 to 1293, Kurunegala from 1293 to 1341 and Gampola from 1341 to 1396. The territorial power and resources of the ruling kings in that time were limited. The hydraulic system in the Dry Zone had collapsed—due to the wars against Magha and to frequent South Indian invasions—and the newly established Tamil kingdom in 4 W. I. Siriweera, A Study of the Economic History of Pre-Modern Sri Lanka (New Delhi: Vikas Pub. House, 1994), 14–15. 5 Sinnappah Arasaratnam, Ceylon (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1964), 90.

history

23

Jaffna posed a constant threat to the Sinhalese. Thus, the Sinhalese kingdom gradually relocated itself further to the south-west.6 Meanwhile, an independent Tamil kingdom had emerged in the north of Ceylon. During the previous centuries, many Tamil immigrants had settled in the Jaffna Peninsula and in other regions of northern Ceylon due to the proximity to their homelands. While most of the Tamil immigrants in the core of the Sinhalese kingdom had mixed with the Sinhalese, the Tamils in the north soon outnumbered the few Sinhalese settlers there and maintained their distinct culture and language.7 A Tamil kingdom eventually emerged in the aftermath of another Pandyan invasion of Ceylon. The Pandyans had annexed the Tamil regions of the north and installed a subordinate ruler in Jaffna, who, later, established an independent kingdom in the peninsula. In the fourteenth century, the kingdom started to expand its territory and pushed the Sinhalese back to Gampola. Frequent wars for supremacy on the island marked the relationship between the Sinhalese and the Tamil kings. The Tamils once even expanded their infl uence as far as Chilaw, Negombo and Colombo but later limited their activities to the Jaffna Peninsula and the very north of the island. Around 1450, the Sinhalese king Parakramabahu VI was able to temporarily annex the Tamil kingdom. In 1396, the Sinhalese had shifted their capital to Kotte on the west coast. This move had given them control over the external trade of the coastal harbours and had stabilised the kingdom. Thus, Parakramabahu VI not only contained the Tamil threat, but even managed to expand his control over the whole island. Soon after his death, however, the kingdom disintegrated rapidly under fights over succession and several local uprisings. Kotte lost hold over Jaffna and the Kandyan regions again. Thus, when the Portuguese reached the shores of Ceylon in 1505, they found the island governed by three more or less independent authorities—two Sinhalese (Kotte, Kandy) and one Tamil ( Jaffna).

6 The exact reasons for the shifting of the Sinhalese capitals and the gradual abandonment of the Dry Zone are still not fully known. The collapse of the hydraulic society and the emerging Jaffna kingdom are just two factors that have contributed to the movement to the south-west. For a sample of other reasons and factors see Siriweera, A Study of the Economic History of Pre-Modern Sri Lanka, 19. 7 Arasaratnam, Ceylon, 103.

24

chapter three 3.5

The Portuguese in Ceylon

The landing of a Portuguese fl eet at Colombo in 1505 was not a deliberate attempt to establish Portuguese infl uence in Ceylon. Leaving the Indian harbour of Cochin, the fl eet under Lourenco de Almeida was driven into Colombo by adverse winds, it is said. The Europeans had an audience with the king of Kotte and soon realised the economic potential of the island. The Portuguese were particularly interested in the cinnamon and elephant trade and, with the concordance of the king of Kotte, established a trading post at Colombo. The external trade of the Kotte kingdom was largely in the hands of Muslim merchants, and soon an antagonism between the Portuguese and the Muslims developed. Religious hostility fuelled the confl ict. Thus, the Portuguese petitioned the king of Kotte to expel all Muslim traders from the ports of the kingdom. The king, however, rejected the Portuguese request.8 Although the Portuguese in 1518 built a fort at Colombo to protect their trading interests, they initially did not aim at direct territorial conquest. But soon they should be drawn very deeply into the politics of Ceylon. In 1521 a revolt in Kotte overthrew the king and the kingdom was divided in three independent units—Kotte, Sitawake and Rayigama—reigned by the king’s three sons.9 As the king of Rayigama died, the kings of Kotte and Sitawake found themselves fighting over the succession. Kotte applied for Portuguese help against the cunning ruler of Sitawake, Mayadunne. As the Portuguese saw a good opportunity to strengthen their position on the island, they backed the king of Kotte with military force. The following 70 years saw many shifting alliances between Kotte, Sitawake, the Portuguese and the kingdom of Kandy, which had been drawn into the confl ict a little later. Just as shifting as the alliances were the fortunes of the different parties.10 Intervening on the side of Kotte, the Portuguese had established an infl uential position in that kingdom. Soon they basically controlled the king. After the death of the king of Kotte, the king’s grandson Dharmapala ascended the throne. He had been educated by Franciscans and—urged by the

8 9 10

Ibid., 125. Ibid., 126. De Silva, A History of Sri Lanka, 97–112.

history

25

Portuguese—converted to Christianity. This aroused the suspicion of the people and gave the king of Sitawake the perfect opportunity to make heavy inroads into the territory of Kotte. The Kotte kingdom had not enough resources to withstand the combined force of Sitawake and their own alienated subjects. The kingdom fell to Mayadunne, and the Portuguese took Dharmapala and withdrew to the fort of Colombo which remained the only Portuguese foothold in Ceylon during that time. More than once the fort of Colombo was under heavy siege by the new rulers of Kotte, but reinforcements from India saved the day for the Portuguese. Finally, Mayadunne’s successor Rajasinha died in 1593 and the kingdom fell into disorder during the fight for succession. The Portuguese—backed with reinforcements—took advantage of the internal disorder and conquered the whole kingdom. Because Dharmapala had donated his kingdom to the king of Portugal in the case of his death, the Portuguese found themselves as legal authorities over large parts of Ceylon when Dharmapala died in 1597.11 In the early seventeenth century, the Portuguese also annexed the northern kingdom of Jaffna. They had already sent a rather unsuccessful expedition to Jaffna in 1560 and had been able to install a vassal ruler in 1591. In 1619 they finally annexed Jaffna after political instabilities in the aftermath of the vassal king’s death. Being the only remaining Sinhalese territory, the kingdom of Kandy for the first time started to play a significant role in the island’s power structure. Situated in the highlands of the interior, the Portuguese were never able to make serious inroads into Kandyan territory. Backed with their superior navy, they captured the important trading ports of Trincomalee and Batticaloa, but left the Kandyan heartlands untouched. Several attempts of the Portuguese to conquer the kingdom failed, and Kandy managed to remain independent until the British conquest in 1815. After taking over the kingdoms of Kotte and Jaffna as legal authorities in 1597 and 1619, the Portuguese concentrated on the trade potential of the island with cinnamon, elephants and areca-nuts being the most important commodities. They largely took over the traditional Sinhalese system of administration and merely installed a superior Portuguese administrative layer on top of it.

11

Arasaratnam, Ceylon, 128.

26

chapter three

The Franciscans, Jesuits, Dominicans and Augustinians were active in missionary work and produced a considerable amount of Roman Catholic converts. These orders, especially the Jesuits, also set up numerous schools all around the island and founded the longstanding tradition of missionary education in Ceylon. The religious intolerance of the new rulers combined with the aggressive proselytising of the religious orders constantly fuelled the hostility between the Portuguese and the kingdom of Kandy. Kandy had lost its most important harbours and had to face a constant threat from a territorially expansive neighbour. Thus, in their inability to drive the Portuguese out of Ceylon themselves, the Kandyans were on the lookout for help from outside. 3.6

The Dutch Period

Interestingly, Portuguese power in Asia (and Europe) had already been on the decline, when it reached its heyday in Ceylon. New players had entered the field of trade and commerce in Asia—the best equipped and most able at that time being the Dutch. And, as Arasaratnam pointed out very clearly, the Dutch were absolutely determined to bring Asian trade under their control. The Dutch Company which had come out East in the first years of the 17th Century was in the Indo-Ceylon seas with the declared aim of expelling the Portuguese out of the preserves of trade they had enjoyed for over a century.12

The Kandyan king Rajasinha II seized the opportunity and entered into negotiations with the Dutch over aid against the Portuguese in Ceylon. In 1638, Rajasinha II and Admiral Westerwold signed the so-called Westerwold Treaty. The Dutch would help to expel the Portuguese from the island. In exchange, the Kandyans agreed to trade only with the Vereenidge Oost-Indische Campagnie (VOC) and to maintain no contacts to any other European powers. Furthermore, the Kandyans were obliged to pay back the expenses for the Dutch

12 Sinnappah Arasaratnam, “Sovereignty in Ceylon: A Historical Survey of Its Problems,” in Ceylon and the Dutch, 1600–1800: External Infl uences and Internal Change in Early Modern Sri Lanka, ed. Sinnappah Arasaratnam (Brookfield, Vt.: Variorum, 1996), 105.

history

27

campaign. In the Westerwold Treaty the Dutch did not question the Kandyan claim to the whole of Ceylon. The Dutch immediately started a successful campaign against the Portuguese. They took Trincomalee and Batticaloa on the east coast and handed the two important harbours back to the king of Kandy. They also conquered Galle and Negombo—both centres of cinnamon production. This time, however, the Dutch did not hand those territories back to the Kandyans, but kept them until the king of Kandy would pay his liabilities—as they said. In Europe a truce was declared between the Portuguese and the Dutch in 1641. The truce became effective in Ceylon as late as 1644 on the agreement that each party kept the lands that it had conquered. The Dutch and the Kandyans used the time to better their relationship after some serious problems over the Dutch conquest of Galle and Negombo. In 1649, they overcame their differences and revised and confirmed the Westerwold Treaty of 1638. The ceasefire between the Dutch and the Portuguese came to an end in 1650, and the combined forces of the Kandyans and the Dutch finally drove the Portuguese out of Colombo in 1656. In 1658, the Dutch took the last foothold of the Portuguese in Jaffna. According to the treaty, the Kandyans asked for the restoration of their authority in all the Portuguese territories. Ignoring the provisions of the Westerwold Treaty, the Dutch withheld the territories that they had taken over from the Portuguese. They based their claim on the Kandyan king’s inability to pay back their campaign expenses and held the territories in pledge. Legally, this claim stood on shaky ground and remained a constant point of confl ict between Kandy and the Dutch until 1766.13 The Dutch practice of holding back the land as security until full payment of the debts did not make them the legal sovereign of the land. Instead, the king of Kandy used his formal position as the sovereign of the entire island to foster uprisings in the Dutch territories and tried to break the Dutch trade monopolies. Reacting to that, Governor Ryklof Van Goens took advantage of a rebellion against Rajasinha and occupied the east coast of Ceylon in the years 1664–70.

13 The Dutch later also tried to derive a legal title to their lands from the direct conquest of their territories from the Portuguese. For a more detailed description see ibid., 110–19.

28

chapter three

With the end of Van Goens’ Governorship in 1675 the relations between Kandy and the Dutch relaxed a little. However, the Dutch retained control over the former Portuguese territories. They encountered serious administrative problems as many Sinhalese in the Dutch territories regarded the king of Kandy as their sovereign—a fact constantly exploited by Rajasinha II and his successors. In 1762, the still unsolved situation triggered the Dutch-Kandyan War of 1762–65. In the end, the Dutch were able to extract the legal recognition of their territorial authority from the Kandyans. The provisions of the peace treaty of 1766 left the kingdom of Kandy completely landlocked.14 This remained the status quo until the arrival of the British on the island in 1796. The main aim of the Dutch in Ceylon had always been the control of the cinnamon production and trade. They established trade monopolies on cinnamon and elephants (which were primarily exported to India) and later extended these monopolies to cover other important products as well. In contrast to the Portuguese, the Dutch started to grow cinnamon in plantations and actively encouraged the cultivation of other export crops like pepper and cardamoms.15 They continued the Portuguese administrative system and just replaced the upper strata of the administration with their own officials. The Dutch approach towards religion and religious tolerance was somewhat more relaxed than the aggressive proselytising of the Portuguese. Although the practice of Buddhism and Hinduism was banned from the main cities, the Dutch did not seriously challenge the indigenous religions in the countryside. Only the Roman Catholic community—a Portuguese legacy—had to face a certain hostility of the Dutch. Many Roman Catholic converts in the higher administrative ranks had to change their faith swiftly in order to retain their position. Despite the greater tolerance of the Dutch towards the indigenous religions, they definitely did not protect or foster Buddhism or Hinduism in any way. Therefore, the politically weakened kingdom of Kandy was more and more perceived as the protector of Sinhalese Buddhism. The city of Kandy developed into the most important centre of this religion in Ceylon.

14 15

Arasaratnam, Ceylon, 140. Ibid., 142.

history 3.7

29

The British Take-Over and the Conquest of Kandy

Not long after the Dutch had legalised and strengthened their position in Ceylon, their position in Asia was challenged by other European powers. They had exhausted themselves in endless confl icts and territorial expansions. Meanwhile, the British had risen to prominence in the quest for colonial dominance in Asia, but still the French posed a formidable threat to British interests in India. Therefore, it was one of the main goals of Britain in the late eighteenth century to assume control over the Ceylonese port of Trincomalee—or at least to keep the French out of that important naval base on the east coast. Trincomalee was of enormous strategic importance for the defence of the Indian subcontinent. When the Netherlands joined the coalition against Britain in the last years of the War of American Independence, the British seized the opportunity and took Trincomalee in 1782. The French recaptured the town and handed it back to the Dutch in 1783.16 Only a few years later, a second chance for British intervention in Ceylon arose. France invaded the Netherlands in 1795 and established the Batavian Republic. The Dutch Stadholder managed to fl ee to England and there shared a common interest with the British: to prevent the Dutch colonies in the east to join the Batavian Republic and come under French infl uence—a development that would open Trincomalee to the French navy. The Stadholder provided the British with a letter that authorised them to take hold of Ceylon until peace was restored. Nevertheless, the Governor of Ceylon, Van Angelbeek, decided to resist the establishment of a British protectorate, and the British troops had to take the Dutch territories by force. Initially, the British had not come to stay. They considered their intervention in Ceylon a temporary measure to protect their interests in India. Therefore, they only replaced some of the higher Dutch officials and put Ceylon under the administrative authority of Madras. In the peace negotiations at Paris in 1796 and 1797, Britain offered the restoration of Ceylon to the Dutch as an incentive for peace. France and the Dutch both rejected the offer, and the establishment

16 Lennox Algernon Mills, Ceylon under British Rule, 1795–1932. With an Account of the East India Company’s Embassies to Kandy 1762–1795 (London: Frank Cass, 1964), 4–5.

30

chapter three

of permanent British rule in Ceylon became more likely.17 Therefore, the British installed a civil Governor, and Ceylon came under the system of Dual Control in which the Crown and the East India Company shared the administration. When Ceylon finally became a British Crown Colony in the year 1802, a restoration of the island to the Dutch was not a viable option anymore. With the former Dutch territories in permanent British possession now, the kingdom of Kandy started to be a nuisance to Governor North. Although the Kandyans kept peace with the British, Governor North felt that the mere existence of the kingdom raised British military expenses, obstructed trade and communications and was a constant factor of insecurity. Persuaded by the double-crossing Chief Minister of Kandy, North sent a military expedition to Kandy in 1803. The misguided and ill-equipped undertaking ended in a military disaster for the British. In 1815, Governor Brownrigg took advantage of internal confl icts between the Kandyan aristocracy and the king and successfully conquered the kingdom of Kandy. He also managed to quell a major rebellion in the Kandyan highlands in 1818. With the signing of the Kandyan Convention in 1815, the British became the first and only European power to control the entire island of Ceylon. 3.8

Reforms and Economic Development

In the year 1829, the Colonial Office sent a Commission to Ceylon to assess the administration of the island. The so-called ColebrookeCameron Commission propagated predominantly Utilitarist ideas in its report of 1831/32. In accordance with Cameron’s and Colebrooke’s proposals, all important spheres of administration underwent a set of reforms. The division of the island in a Low-Country Sinhalese, a Kandyan Sinhalese and a Tamil area ceased to exist. Instead, five administrative provinces were created to overcome cultural differences. The judicial system was unified and saw the gradual extension of British law to all people and legal aspects. The establishment of the Executive and Legislative Councils cut modestly into the hitherto almost unrestricted powers of the Governor of Ceylon. Certain lower spheres of the Ceylon Civil Service were (theoretically) opened to

17

Ibid., 15.

history

31

the Ceylonese and the changes in the educational system aimed at the creation of a local English-speaking elite to be employed in the administration of the colony.18 The changes in the economic sector produced the most spectacular effects in the years after the reforms. Cameron and Colebrooke advocated a laissez-faire policy, the trade and cultivation monopoly on cinnamon fell and the government encouraged free trade. The abolition of rajakariya and the generous grants and sales of Crown land aimed at the creation of a labour and a land market to encourage private enterprise on the island. The reforms of the Colebrooke-Cameron Commission soon bore fruits. In the 1820s, some experiments with the cultivation of coffee had been undertaken in Ceylon. The abundance and cheapness of suitable coffee land in the Kandyan regions and the favourable economic circumstances soon encouraged British planters to invest into coffee plantations in the highlands. The areas under coffee expanded quickly. Coffee replaced cinnamon as the major export product and provided the government with soaring revenue. After a temporary depression in 1848, coffee cultivation quickly recovered and remained the sole backbone of the economy. It was profitable enough to attract almost all of the capital invested in the island’s economy, which consequently depended exclusively on a single export crop. Such coffee monoculture eventually drew Ceylon into a deep economic depression in the late 1870s, when a fungus—the so-called Coffee Leaf Disease—drastically reduced the yield of the coffee plantations and a drop in world market coffee prices contributed further to the ruin of the coffee cultivation enterprise.

18

See Arasaratnam, Ceylon, 155–57.

CHAPTER FOUR

DEMOGRAPHY 4.1

Colonial Population Censuses in Ceylon1

The first major enumeration of the population in Ceylon took place in the year 1789 under the Dutch Governor Van der Graaf. Obviously, the Dutch only counted the population of the Maritime Provinces and gave the total population of these districts as 817,000.2 The figure appears to be slightly exaggerated and it must remain a mere estimate of the total population. The same is true for the first British attempts to take Population Censuses in the first decades of the nineteenth century. They enumerated the Maritime Provinces in 1814 (492,083—i.e. only 60% of the 1789 enumeration on approximately the same territory), the Kandyan Provinces in 1821 (256,835) and again the whole island in 1827 (Maritime Provinces: 595,105, Kandyan Provinces: 290,469).3 The discrepancy between the Dutch findings of 1789 and the British censuses of 1814 and 1827 illustrates clearly how inaccurate those early enumerations have been. The first well organised and relatively reliable Census of Ceylon has been taken in 1871. It proved a success and was found so useful that the government enacted Ordinance 9 of 1880—“The Census Ordinance, 1880”—which made provision for the taking of further censuses “from time to time”.4 Accordingly, in the year 1881 another Population Census was taken. Although the enumeration of 1871 had already been a rather complex work, only the Census of 1881 can be labelled the

1 Unless otherwise stated, all statistical material appearing in this chapter has been taken from International Population Census Publications. Series 2. Pre-1945. Sri Lanka 1881.1 thru 1931.2. [5 Microfilms]. 2 B. L. Panditaratne and S. Selvanayagam, “The Demography of Ceylon. An Introductory Survey,” in University of Ceylon History of Ceylon. From the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century to 1948, ed. Kingsley M. De Silva (Peradeniya: University of Peradeniya, 1973), 285. 3 Ibid., 286. 4 CO 56/11, Ceylon Acts 1879–1884, Ordinance 9 of 1880, “The Census Ordinance, 1880,” 24 November 1880.

34

chapter four

first Census proper of Ceylon. With the taking of the Census in the year 1881 the typical ten-year-pattern had been established and the year 1891 saw the next Census with several minor improvements. But only Ordinance 9 of 1900—“The Census Ordinance, 1900”—and its provisions regulated the taking of future Censuses in detail,5 and therefore the Population Census of 1901 made a distinction between Low-Country and Kandyan Sinhalese for the first time and provided a wider array of additional information on the population. The Censuses of 1911 and 1921 further improved the accuracy and depth of the gathered information. In 1931, financial difficulties considerably narrowed the scope of the Census and—apart from general population statistics—detailed information was only collected in Colombo. However, the Census of 1946—postponed in 1941 due to waging World War II—obtained accurate and informative data again and proved to be of great value.6 4.2

The Growth of the Population, 1881–1901

According to the Population Censuses of 1881, 1891 and 1901, the total population of Ceylon grew from 2,759,738 in 1881 to 3,007,789 in 1891 and to 3,565,954 in 1901—excluding the Military and the Shipping personnel stationed on the island. Tables 4.1, 4.2 and 4.3 give a detailed breakdown of the population’s distribution between the provinces and districts. For the sake of comparability, I have applied the administrative structure of the year 1901 on all the tables in this chapter. Thus, the tables for the year 1881 feature the Provinces of Uva (established in 1886) and Sabaragamuwa (1889), the District of Chilaw in the North-Western Province and ignore the existence of the Northern Province District of Vavuniyan-Vilaukulam. To increase the compatibility of the Census data, the figures for Uva, Sabaragamuwa, Chilaw and Mullaittivu have been derived separately from the Census statistics. The tables for 1891 only add the population of VavuniyanVilaukulam to the Mullaittivu District. Additionally, the more accurate figures on district and province size for both Census years have been taken from the 1901 Census only to produce comparable data on the population density.

5 CO 56/15, Ceylon Acts 1900–1904, Ordinance 9 of 1900, “The Census Ordinance, 1900,” 30 October 1900. 6 Panditaratne and Selvanayagam, “The Demography of Ceylon,” 286.

demography

35

Table 4.1: Population and Population Density, 1881. Province/ District Western Province* Colombo Municipality Colombo District Negombo District Kalutara District North-Western Province* Kurunegala District Puttalam District Chilaw District Central Province* Kandy District Matale District Nuwara Eliya District North-Central Province Northern Province* Jaffna District Mannar District Mullaittivu District Eastern Province Batticaloa District Trincomalee District Southern Province Galle District Matara District Hambantota District Province of Uva* Province of Sabaragamuwa* Kegalle District Ratnapura District CEYLON (excluding the Military and the Shipping)

Population

Population Density % of Total Population

Area

Density per square mile

671,500 110,502

24.3 4.0

1,433 10

468.6 11,050.2

135,511 55,331 81,062 135,301

279,286 116,691 165,021 293,327

10.1 4.2 6.0 10.6

551 248 624 2,997

506.9 470.5 264.5 97.9

114,989 14,579 28,458 268,896 162,277 48,470 58,149 35,580

100,184 11,515 23,602 204,773 126,055 38,185 40,533 30,566

215,173 26,094 52,060 473,669 288,332 86,655 98,682 66,146

7.8 0.9 1.9 17.2 10.4 3.1 3.6 2.4

1,845 890 262 2,299 911 925 463 4,002

116.6 29.3 198.7 206.0 316.5 93.7 213.1 16.5

151,565 131,966 11,767 7,832 66,577 54,598 11,979 220,885 105,808 77,516 37,561 92,627 124,078

150,935 134,394 10,403 6,138 60,978 50,760 10,218 212,635 103,872 74,407 34,356 73,065 101,751

302,500 266,360 22,170 13,970 127,555 105,358 22,197 433,520 209,680 151,923 71,917 165,692 225,829

11.0 9.7 0.8 0.5 4.6 3.8 0.8 15.7 7.6 5.5 2.6 6.0 8.2

3,363 1,265 943 1,155 4,037 2,872 1,165 2,146 652 481 1,013 3,155 1,901

90.0 210.6 23.5 12.1 31.6 36.7 19.1 202.0 321.6 315.8 71.0 43.7 118.8

64,698 55,257 119,955 59,380 46,494 105,874 1,469,553 1,290,185 2,759,738

4.3 3.8 100.0

642 1,259 25,332

186.8 84.1 108.9

Men

Women

Total

351,319 62,225

320,181 48,277

143,775 61,360 83,959 158,026

Source: International Population Census Publications. Series 2. Pre-1945. Sri Lanka 1881.1 thru 1931.2. [5 Microfilms]. * Note: For the sake of better comparability, the Ceylonese administrative structure of the year 1901 has been applied to this table. The Provinces of Uva and Sabaragamuwa did not exist in 1881. Uva was part of the Central Province, Sabaragamuwa of the Western Province. The North-Western Province had only two districts in 1881—Puttalam and Kurunegala. For Chilaw, the population data has been extracted separately. In 1881, the Northern Province had one more district—Vavuniyan-Vilaukulam. In this table its population has been added to the Mullaittivu District. Finally, the province and district areas have been calculated on 1901 data in order to obtain accurate and comparable data on population density.

36

chapter four Table 4.2: Population and Population Density, 1891. Province/ District

Western Province Colombo Municipality Colombo District Negombo District Kalutara District North-Western Province Kurunegala District Puttalam District Chilaw District Central Province Kandy District Matale District Nuwara Eliya District North-Central Province Northern Province* Jaffna District Mannar District Mullaittivu District Eastern Province Batticaloa District Trincomalee District Southern Province Galle District Matara District Hambantota District Province of Uva Province of Sabaragamuwa Kegalle District Ratnapura District CEYLON (excluding the Military and the Shipping)

Population Men

Women

Population Density Total

% of Total Population

Area

Density per square mile

398,462 71,684 163,668 69,481 93,629 174,655

364,071 55,141 155,751 63,176 90,003 145,415

762,533 126,825 319,419 132,657 183,632 320,070

25.4 4.2 10.6 4.4 6.1 10.6

1,433 10 551 248 624 2,997

532.1 12,682.5 579.7 534.9 294.3 106.8

124,673 15,323 34,659 262,651 157,588 41,359 63,704 41,345

105,514 11,329 28,572 211,836 130,765 35,155 45,916 33,988

230,187 26,652 63,231 474,487 288,353 76,514 109,620 75,333

7.7 0.9 2.1 15.8 9.6 2.5 3.6 2.5

1,845 890 262 2,299 911 925 463 4,002

124.8 29.9 241.3 206.4 316.5 82.7 236.8 18.8

160,361 137,612 14,085 8,664 77,381 63,135 14,246 248,632 110,983 91,122 46,527 88,134 141,755

158,935 141,672 10,426 6,837 71,063 59,564 11,499 241,167 111,912 86,464 42,791 71,067 116,871

319,296 279,284 24,511 15,501 148,444 122,699 25,745 489,799 222,895 177,586 89,318 159,201 258,626

10.6 9.3 0.8 0.5 4.9 4.1 0.9 16.3 7.4 5.9 3.0 5.3 8.6

3,363 1,265 943 1,155 4,037 2,872 1,165 2,146 652 481 1,013 3,155 1,901

94.9 220.8 26.0 13.4 36.8 42.7 22.1 228.2 341.9 369.2 88.2 50.5 136.0

82,117 68,510 150,627 59,638 48,361 107,999 1,593,376 1,414,413 3,007,789

5.0 3.6 100.0

642 1,259 25,332

234.6 85.8 118.9

Source: International Population Census Publications. Series 2. Pre-1945. Sri Lanka 1881.1 thru 1931.2. [5 Microfilms]. * Note: For the sake of better comparability, the Ceylonese administrative structure of the year 1901 has been applied to this table. In 1891, the Northern Province had one more district—Vavuniyan-Vilaukulam. In this table its population has been added to the Mullaittivu District. The province and district areas have been calculated on 1901 data in order to obtain accurate and comparable data on population density.

demography

37

Table 4.3: Population and Population Density, 1901. Province/ District

Population Men

Women

Population Density Total

Western Province 489,350 431,333 920,683 Colombo Municipality 91,638 63,053 154,691 Colombo District 200,574 187,312 387,886 Negombo District 77,384 70,865 148,249 Kalutara District 119,754 110,103 229,857 North-Western 195,711 157,915 353,626 Province Kurunegala District 137,564 111,865 249,429 Puttalam District 17,091 12,688 29,779 Chilaw District 41,056 33,362 74,418 Central Province 339,219 283,613 622,832 Kandy District 204,318 173,273 377,591 Matale District 50,056 42,147 92,203 Nuwara Eliya District 84,845 68,193 153,038 North-Central Prov43,273 35,837 79,110 ince Northern Province 171,724 169,212 340,936 Jaffna District 149,185 151,666 300,851 Mannar District 14,123 10,803 24,926 Mullaittivu District 8,416 6,743 15,159 Eastern Province 90,516 83,086 173,602 Batticaloa District 74,835 70,326 145,161 Trincomalee District 15,681 12,760 28,441 Southern Province 288,715 278,021 566,736 Galle District 129,869 128,247 258,116 Matara District 104,007 99,743 203,750 Hambantota District 54,839 50,031 104,870 Province of Uva 100,936 85,738 186,674 Province of 176,768 144,987 321,756 Sabaragamuwa Kegalle District 103,165 85,626 188,791 Ratnapura District 73,603 59,361 132,964 CEYLON (excluding 1,896,212 1,669,742 3,565,954 the Military and the Shipping)

% of Total Population

Area

Density per square mile

25.8 4.3 10.9 4.2 6.4 9.9

1,433 642.5 10 15,469.1 551 704.0 248 597.8 624 368.4 2,997 118.0

7.0 0.8 2.1 17.5 10.6 2.6 4.3 2.2

1,845 890 262 2,299 911 925 463 4,002

135.2 33.5 284.0 270.9 414.5 99.7 330.5 19.8

9.6 8.4 0.7 0.4 4.9 4.1 0.8 15.9 7.2 5.7 2.9 5.2 9.0

3,363 1,265 943 1,155 4,037 2,872 1,165 2,146 652 481 1,013 3,155 1,901

101.4 237.8 26.4 13.1 43.0 50.5 24.4 264.1 395.9 423.6 103.5 59.2 169.3

5.3 3.7 100.0

642 1,259 25,332

294.1 105.6 140.8

Source: International Population Census Publications. Series 2. Pre-1945. Sri Lanka 1881.1 thru 1931.2. [5 Microfilms].

38

chapter four

The Average Annual Growth (AAG) rate for the whole island is 0.864% in the period from 1881 to 1891. This relatively modest growth rate refl ects the economic crisis of the island in the first half of the 1880s. Between 1891 and 1901—the boom phase of the tea industry with an ever increasing infl ux of immigrant plantation workers—the annual growth reaches 1.717% leaving an Average Annual Growth rate of 1.290% in the twenty years between 1881 and 1901. Table 4.4 shows the growth rates for every province and district. Especially in the planting districts the coffee crisis had drastic effects. Between 1881 and 1891, the population in Matale and Badulla (Province of Uva) decreased. In Kandy, the population remained at the 1881 level. Among the major planting districts, only Nuwara Eliya shows a sustained annual population growth rate of 1.057% between 1881 and 1891. This can probably be attributed to the district’s perfect location and altitude concerning the cultivation of tea. It suffered comparatively little from the coffee crisis as the biggest part of it was at an altitude too high for the cultivation of coffee. On the other hand, tea prospered in such heights and caught on very quickly. In the second decade of observation, it is mainly the planting area that shows exorbitant population growth rates. In Kandy District, the annual growth from 1891 to 1901 lies at 2.733%, Nuwara Eliya even reaches 3.393%. Matale and Uva show sustained but more cautious growth rates at 1.883% and 1.605% annually. These regions had been ideal for coffee cultivation, but could not equal Nuwara Eliya or Kandy in the quality of their teas. As Map 4.1 illustrates, the population density in late nineteenthcentury Ceylon was highest in the districts of the Western, Southern and Central Province. In the planting districts, the higher population density resulted mostly from the large-scale immigration of Indian plantation workers, whereas the Western and Southern Provinces were climatically favoured and enjoyed distinct advantages in the cultivation of rice—especially the abundance of water. Outside that region, only the Jaffna Peninsula featured a high population density—210.6 inhabitants per square mile in 1881—being the chief settlement area of the Ceylon Tamils. On the other hand, the North-Central Province and the southern districts of the Northern Province—located in the midst of the so-called Dry Zone and heavily dependent on artificial water supplies—were only thinly populated with population densities as low as 12.1 (Mullaittivu District) and 16.5 (North-Central Province) persons per square mile in 1881. There was but little change

demography

39

Table 4.4: Population Growth, 1881–1901. Province/District

Population Population Population 1881 1891 1901

Absolute Growth 1881– 1901 (in %)

Relative Growth 1881– 1901 (in %)

AAG* 1881– 1891 (in %)

AAG* 1891– 1901 (in %)

AAG* 1881– 1901 (in %)

Western Province

671,500

762,533

920,683

249,183

37.11

1.279

1.903

1.591

Colombo (Mun.) Colombo District Negombo District Kalutara District

110,502 279,286 116,691 165,021

126,825 319,419 132,657 183,632

154,691 387,886 148,249 229,857

44,189 108,600 31,558 64,836

39.99 38.88 27.04 39.29

1.387 1.352 1.291 1.074

2.006 1.961 1.117 2.271

1.696 1.656 1.204 1.671

NWP

293,327

320,070

353,626

60,299

20.56

0.876

1.002

0.939

Kurunegala District Puttalam District Chilaw District

215,173

230,187

249,429

34,256

15.92

0.677

0.806

0.741

26,094 52,060

26,652 63,231

29,779 74,418

3,685 22,358

14.12 42.95

0.212 1.963

1.116 1.642

0.663 1.803

Central Province

473,669

474,487

622,832

149,163

31.49

0.017

2.758

1.378

Kandy District Matale District Nuwara Eliya Dist.

288,332 86,655 98,682

288,353 76,514 109,620

377,591 92,203 153,038

89,259 5,548 54,356

30.96 6.40 55.08

0.001 -1.237 1.057

2.733 1.883 3.393

1.358 0.311 2.218

NCP Northern Province Jaffna District Mannar District Mullaittivu District Eastern Province

66,146

75,333

79,110

12,964

19.60

1.309

0.490

0.899

302,500

319,296

340,936

38,436

12.71

0.542

0.658

0.600

266,360 22,170 13,970

279,284 24,511 15,501

300,851 24,926 15,159

34,491 2,756 1,189

12.95 12.43 8.51

0.475 1.009 1.045

0.747 0.168 -0.223

0.611 0.588 0.409

127,555

148,444

173,602

46,047

36.10

1.528

1.578

1.553

Batticaloa District Trincomalee District

105,358

122,699

145,161

39,803

37.78

1.535

1.695

1.615

22,197

25,745

28,441

6,244

28.13

1.494

1.001

1.247

Southern Province

433,520

489,799

566,736

133,216

30.73

1.228

1.470

1.349

Galle District Matara District Hambantota District

209,680 151,923 71,917

222,895 177,586 89,318

258,116 203,750 104,870

48,436 51,827 32,953

23.10 34.11 45.82

0.613 1.573 2.191

1.478 1.384 1.618

1.045 1.478 1.904

Province of Uva

165,692

159,201

186,674

20,982

12.66

-0.399

1.605

0.598

P. of Sabaragamuwa

225,829

258,626

321,756

95,927

42.48

1.365

2.208

1.786

Kegalle District Ratnapura District

119,955 105,874

150,627 107,999

188,791 132,964

68,836 27,090

57.38 25.59

2.303 0.199

2.284 2.101

2.294 1.146

2,759,738 3,007,789 3,565,954

806,216

29.21

0.864

1.717

1.290

CEYLON

Source: International Population Census Publications. Series 2. Pre-1945. Sri Lanka 1881.1 thru 1931.2. [5 Microfilms]. * Note: AAG = Average Annual Growth

40

chapter four

Map 4.1: Population Density, 1881.* Layout based on CO 700/CEYLON34. Population data derived from International Population Census Publications. Series 2. Pre-1945. Sri Lanka 1881.1 thru 1931.2 [5 Microfilms]. Population density and scale added by the author. * Note: Administrative Structure of 1901 has been applied.

demography

41

in the distribution of the population in the closing decades of the nineteenth century. Thus, no separate population density maps for 1891 and 1901 have been included as they would closely resemble the 1881 distribution pattern. 4.3

Ethnic Composition of the Population, 1881–1901

Just as Sri Lanka in the present, the Ceylon of the nineteenth century had a multi-ethnic society.7 In the previous chapter, short reference has been made to the immigration of the Aryans and the Dravidians to the island—the Sinhalese and the Tamils.8 These two ethnic communities remained the biggest and historically as well as socially most important groups in Ceylon, but they did not remain the only ones. The Moors constituted the third largest ethnic group. Descending from Arab traders who came to Ceylon in the tenth century,9 they had mixed with Tamils from the north and formed a distinct ethnic community. In 1881, the Sinhalese population accounted for 66.9%—i.e. for two thirds—of the total population of Ceylon. 24.9% of the population were Tamils and 6.7% Moors. In absolute numbers, there were 1,846,614 Sinhalese, 687,248 Tamils and 184,532 Moors in Ceylon in the year 1881. Various smaller communities constituted the rest of the population amounting to 41,334 persons in total. Of these smaller communities the so-called Burghers10—descendants from Portuguese and Dutch colonists intermarried with the Sinhalese and Tamil population11—formed the largest group comprising 17,886 persons or 0.6% of the population in 1881. Even in the late nineteenth century at the peak of plantation agriculture in Ceylon, the European community on the island remained small in number. Ceylon was no

7 See Kingsley M. De Silva, “Multi-Culturalism in Sri Lanka: Historical Legacy and Contemporary Political Reality,” Ethnic Studies Report 15, no. 1 (1997). 8 For information on the Tamil colonisation see Sinnappah Arasaratnam, “Sri Lanka’s Tamils: Under Colonial Rule,” in The Sri Lankan Tamils: Ethnicity and Identity, ed. Chelvadurai Manogaran and Bryan Pfaffenberger (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994), 29–33. 9 De Silva, “Multi-Culturalism in Sri Lanka,” 7. 10 Referred to in the Censuses as “Burghers and Eurasians.” 11 For more information on the Burghers see B. D. Brohier, “Who Are the Burghers?,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Sri Lanka Branch (new series) 30 (1985/86).

42

chapter four

settler colony.12 In 1881, 4,836 Europeans lived on the island—0.2% of the total population. Finally, a small Malay community (8,895 persons or 0.3% of the population), the Veddhas—the remnants of the pre-Aryan indigenous population—(2,228 persons or 0.1% of the population) and others (7,489 persons or 0.3% of the population) added to the population of the island. In the case of the three large communities—the Sinhalese, the Tamils and the Moors—further distinctions are possible. The Sinhalese are generally divided in Low-Country Sinhalese—i.e. the inhabitants of the former Maritime Provinces—and Kandyan Sinhalese. Statistically, this distinction has first been undertaken in the Population Census of 1901, but as we lack any comparable data for 1881 and 1891 the distinction has been omitted here for 1901 as well. The Tamil population of Ceylon is not homogenous either. The descendants of the Dravidian settlers are generally referred to as Ceylon Tamils. Those Tamils who came in large numbers as plantation workers in the nineteenth century are called Indian Tamils. As only the Census of 1911 introduced the separate enumeration of these groups, we do not have reliable statistical data on the size of both groups in previous decades. Nevertheless, it is reasonable to assume that most of the Tamils of the Northern and Eastern Province as well as those in Colombo were Ceylon Tamils, whereas the bulk of the Tamil population of the planting districts was of more recent Indian descent. Similar to the Tamils, the Moors of Ceylon were divided in Ceylon and Indian Moors as well—the latter being nineteenth-century immigrants from India who largely engaged in trade and business. Again, the Census of 1911 first distinguished between Ceylon and Indian Moors. Tables 4.5, 4.6 and 4.7 show the distribution of the ethnic communities in Ceylon in the years 1881, 1891 and 1901. The Western, Southern, North-Western, North-Central and Central Provinces as well as Uva and Sabaragamuwa form the traditional settlement area of the Sinhalese, whereas the Northern and Eastern Provinces boast a Tamil majority. Due to the infl ux of Tamil immigrant plantation workers, the Central Province and Uva possessed large Tamil populations as well that were composed almost exclusively of Indian Tamils. Between 1881 and 1891, the Central Province and Uva experienced

12 See S. B. D. De Silva, The Political Economy of Underdevelopment, International Library of Sociology (London; Boston: Routledge & K. Paul, 1982).

demography

43

Table 4.5: Distribution of Ethnic Groups, 1881. Province/District Western Province* Colombo (Mun.) Colombo District Negombo District Kalutara District NWP* Kurunegala District Puttalam District Chilaw District Central Province* Kandy District Matale District Nuwara Eliya Dist. NCP

Sinhalese

Tamils

Moors

Burghers**

Europeans

565,862

45,608

46,869 267,417 102,050 149,526

Malays Veddhas Others

43,229

10,198

1,402

3,207

—

1,994

25,604 6,590 11,476 1,938

23,583 4,303 2,470 12,873

8,770 472 477 479

1,186 104 38 74

2,944 124 67 72

— — — —

1,546 276 113 59

249,515

19,915

21,955

588

87

837

—

430

197,379

7,425

9,440

259

50

420

—

200

8,637 43,499

6,796 5,694

10,072 2,443

128 201

20 17

249 168

— —

192 38

243,363

190,316

29,291

2,673

2,275

2,499

2

3,250

154,916 52,845 35,602

104,012 26,960 59,344

21,940 5,925 1,426

2,213 239 221

1,263 194 818

2,087 302 110

1 1 —

1,900 189 1,161

53,406

4,664

7,412

35

30

17

425

157

1,379

289,481

10,416

814

136

92

3

179

80 142 1,157

261,902 14,415 13,164

2,648 6,635 1,133

615 122 77

122 11 3

89 — 3

— — 3

127 23 29

5,947

75,408

42,991

1,119

139

428

1,311

202

5,012 935

61,014 14,394

37,255 5,736

758 361

65 74

39 389

1,167 144

48 154

409,428

3,855

16,418

1,979

280

1,171

5

384

195,042 145,245 69,141

2,003 1,162 690

10,175 5,039 1,204

1,494 324 161

233 30 17

485 72 614

5 — —

243 51 90

Province of Uva*

113,827

43,576

6,072

272

351

414

Sabaragamuwa*

203,887

14,425

6,748

208

136

230

—

195

109,088 94,799

5,407 9,018

5,145 1,603

82 126

40 96

138 92

— —

55 140

1,846,614

687,248

184,532

17,886

4,836

8,895

66.9

24.9

6.7

0.6

0.2

0.3

Northern Province* Jaffna District Mannar District Mullaittivu District Eastern Province Batticaloa District Trincomalee District Southern Province Galle District Matara District Hambantota District

Kegalle District Ratnapura District CEYLON % of Total Pop.

482

698

2,228 7,489 0.1

0.3

Source: International Population Census Publications. Series 2. Pre-1945. Sri Lanka 1881.1 thru 1931.2. [5 Microfilms]. * Note: For the sake of better comparability, the Ceylonese administrative structure of the year 1901 has been applied to this table. The Provinces of Uva and Sabaragamuwa did not exist in 1881. Uva was part of the Central Province, Sabaragamuwa of the Western Province. The North-Western Province had only two districts in 1881—Puttalam and Kurunegala. For Chilaw, the population data has been extracted separately. In 1881, the Northern Province had one more district—Vavuniyan-Vilaukulam. In this table its population has been added to the Mullaittivu District. ** Note: Means ‘Burghers and Eurasians’.

44

chapter four Table 4.6: Distribution of Ethnic Groups, 1891.

Province/District Western Province Colombo (Mun.) Colombo District Negombo District Kalutara District NWP Kurunegala District Puttalam District Chilaw District Central Province Kandy District Matale District Nuwara Eliya Dist. NCP

Sinhalese

Tamils

Moors

647,614 48,628 45,174

Burghers** Europeans Malays Veddhas Others 12,521

1,474

3,749

—

3,373

24,428 5,101 2,746 12,899

10,674 883 465 499

1,228 139 37 70

3,437 172 75 65

— — — —

2,724 527 45 77

276,390 19,328 22,293

59,962 305,773 116,310 165,569

24,372 6,824 12,979 4,453

647

75

857

—

480

10,207 9,596 2,490

333 131 183

43 8 24

390 254 213

— — —

208 214 58

248,381 188,392 27,364

3,190

2,199

2,606

—

2,355

2,470 233 487

1,092 153 954

2,066 258 282

— — —

1,182 90 1,083

—

212,760 10,122 53,508

6,246 6,327 6,755

157,056 104,263 52,734 17,879 38,591 66,250

20,224 5,167 1,973

59,875

8,662

65

16

84

1,922 304,355 11,831

746

118

113

131 275,227 592 16,098 1,199 13,030

3,049 7,643 1,139

579 85 82

101 12 5

93 13 7

7,512 86,701 51,206

1,255

91

590

44,780 6,426

894 361

46 45

28 562

854 —

110 125

5,063 16,728

1,923

208

1,219

—

244

2,481 1,798 784

9,583 5,603 1,542

1,388 384 151

146 35 27

396 54 769

— — —

137 24 83

Province of Uva

114,040 36,807

5,848

493

314

661

374

664

P. of Sabaragamuwa

221,010 28,157

8,060

391

183

254

—

571

6,376 1,684

242 149

107 76

183 71

— —

435 136

2,041,158 723,853 197,166

21,231

4,678

10,133

1,229

8,341

0.7

0.2

0.3

0.0

0.3

Northern Province* Jaffna District Mannar District Mullaittivu District Eastern Province Batticaloa District Trincomalee District Southern Province Galle District Matara District Hambantota District

Kegalle District Ratnapura District CEYLON % of Total Pop.

6,403 1,109 464,414 208,764 169,688 85,962

122,076 98,934 67.9

6,422

69,584 17,117

21,208 6,949 24.1

6.6

209 1

210

1

104 68 38

854

235

— —

Source: International Population Census Publications. Series 2. Pre-1945. Sri Lanka 1881.1 thru 1931.2. [5 Microfilms]. * Note: For the sake of better comparability, the Ceylonese administrative structure of the year 1901 has been applied to this table. In 1891, the Northern Province had one more district—Vavuniyan-Vilaukulam. In this table its population has been added to the Mullaittivu District. ** Note: Means ‘Burghers and Eurasians’.

demography

45

Table 4.7: Distribution of Ethnic Groups, 1901. Province/District

Sinhalese*

Tamils

Moors

Burghers** Europeans

Malays

Veddhas Others

Western Province

761,550

78,282

54,117

14,130

2,446

4,823

—

5,335

Colombo (Mun.) Colombo District Negombo District Kalutara District

68,680 364,175 132,204 196,581

34,640 14,690 12,359 16,593

28,898 6,415 3,016 15,788

11,851 1,348 407 524

2,039 266 52 89

4,493 145 101 84

— — — —

4,180 847 110 198

300,954

26,705

23,738

768

112

968

54

327

226,820 11,681 62,453

10,476 7,675 8,554

11,028 9,906 2,804

373 110 285

62 8 42

481 268 219

53 1 —

136 130 61

285,526

293,623

32,695

3,519

2,617

2,792

2

2,058

183,078 57,196 45,252

161,914 28,601 103,108

24,979 5,464 2,252

2,609 317 593

1,509 162 946

2,099 328 365

2

1,403 133 522

62,114

7,397

8,841

84

35

116

402

121

Northern Province

1,555

326,379

11,862

655

123

93

125

144

Jaffna District Mannar District Mullaittivu District

226 201 1,128

296,805 16,848 12,726

3,078 7,715 1,069

476 89 90

110 11 2

60 21 12

—

8,778

96,926

62,448

1,342

130

7,575 1,203

79,857 17,069

54,190 8,258

990 352

67 63

535,177

9,301

18,697

1,816

249

240,857 193,222 101,098

4,811 3,742 748

10,480 6,247 1,970

1,193 428 195

191 43 15

Province of Uva

123,030

54,742

6,071

636

P. of Sabaragamuwa

252,123

58,385

9,565

138,735 113,388

41,407 16,978

NWP Kurunegala District Puttalam District Chilaw District Central Province Kandy District Matale District Nuwara Eliya Dist. NCP

Eastern Province Batticaloa District Trincomalee District Southern Province Galle District Matara District Hambantota District

Kegalle District Ratnapura District CEYLON % of Total Pop.

2,330,807 65.4

— —

1 124

96 40 8

913

2,859

206

61 852

2,345 514

76 130

1,185

—

311

394 52 739

— — —

190 16 105

328

669

529

669

532

260

343

—

547

7,612 1,953

283 249

153 107

265 78

— —

336 211

951,740 225,034

23,482

6,300

11,902

3,971

9,718

0.7

0.2

0.3

0.1

0.3

26.7

6.3

Source: International Population Census Publications. Series 2. Pre-1945. Sri Lanka 1881.1 thru 1931.2. [5 Microfilms]. * Note: The Census of 1901 for the first time enumerated Low-Country Sinhalese and Kandyan Sinhalese separately. Here only the total number of the Sinhalese population is given. ** Note: Means ‘Burghers and Eurasians’.

46

chapter four

a decrease in the absolute number of Tamils as the coffee crisis forced many immigrants to return to India. As mentioned earlier, the decade from 1891 to 1901 reversed this effect. The boom of the tea industry and its economic pull factors reanimated Indian labour immigration. The Tamil population in the planting districts increased quickly in that decade. Table 4.9 gives the Average Annual Growth rate of the Tamil population in the Central Province and in Uva as 4.538% and 4.049% between 1891 and 1901. Over two thirds of the population of Nuwara Eliya District were Tamils in 1901. Other than the Indian Tamil population in the Up-Country districts, the number of Ceylon Tamils in the Northern and Eastern Provinces increased at a more moderate pace. The annual growth rate of the Tamil Population in the Northern Province averaged only 0.602% between 1881 and 1901, whereas Table 4.8 reveals that the Sinhalese Population of the Southern and Western Provinces experienced AAG rates between 1.061% and 1.929% in the same period. 4.4

Religious Composition of the Population, 1881–1901

The Tables 4.10, 4.11 and 4.12 refer to the size and spatial distribution of the religious communities in Ceylon. The Sinhalese population of the island was largely Buddhist, whereas the Tamils were mainly of the Hindu faith. The Moor population was primarily Muslim in confession. The tables refl ect this connexion between ethnic and religious communities. However, Christian missionaries had made considerable inroads into the traditional religious pattern of the island by the late nineteenth century. Especially the Western and North-Western Provinces were home to a comparatively large Roman Catholic community—a heritage of Portuguese colonial rule. More recently—i.e. since the early nineteenth century—various Protestant missionary societies had come to Ceylon and started their quest for proselytes. By the middle of the century, they had established a well-managed school network that became the main vehicle of proselytising. In 1881, 61.5% of the total population were of the Buddhist faith, 21.5% were Hindus. The Muslims constituted 7.2% of all inhabitants, leaving 9.7% (or 267,977 persons) Christians. Although there is no statistical data for that period, it can safely be assumed that the bulk of the Christians in the Western and North-Western Provinces and a significant number of those in the Northern Province were Roman

demography

47

Table 4.8: Sinhalese Population Growth, 1881–1901. Province/District

Western Province

Sinhalese Population 1881

Sinhalese Population 1891

Sinhalese Population 1901*

Absolute Growth 1881– 1901 (in %)

AAG** 1891– 1901 (in %)

AAG** 1881– 1901 (in %)

565,862

647,614

34.58

1.359

1.634

1.496

Colombo (Mun.)

46,869

59,962

68,680

21,811

46.54

2.494

1.367

1.929

Colombo District

267,417

305,773

364,175

96,758

36.18

1.349

1.763

1.556

Negombo District

102,050

116,310

132,204

30,154

29.55

1.317

1.289

1.303

Kalutara District

149,526

165,569

196,581

47,055

31.47

1.024

1.732

1.377

249,515

276,390

300,954

51,439

20.62

1.028

0.855

0.942

197,379

212,760

226,820

29,441

14.92

0.753

0.642

0.698

NWP Kurunegala District Puttalam District

761,550 195,688

Relative Growth AAG** 1881– 1881– 1901 1891 (in %) (in %)

8,637

10,122

11,681

3,044

35.24

1.599

1.443

1.521

43,499

53,508

62,453

18,954

43.57

2.093

1.558

1.825

Central Province

243,363

248,381

285,526

42,163

17.33

0.204

1.403

0.802

Kandy District

154,916

157,056

183,078

28,162

18.18

0.137

1.545

0.839

Matale District

52,845

52,734

57,196

4,351

8.23

–0.021

0.816

0.396

Nuwara Eliya Dist.

35,602

38,591

45,252

9,650

27.11

0.809

1.605

1.206

53,406

59,875

62,114

8,708

16.31

1.150

0.368

0.758

1,379

1,922

1,555

176

12.76

3.376

–2.097

0.602

5.055

5.605

5.330

Chilaw District

NCP Northern Province Jaffna District

80

131

226

146

182.50

142

592

201

59

41.55

1,157

1,199

1,128

–29

–2.51

0.357

–0.609

–0.127

Eastern Province

5,947

7,512

8,778

2,831

47.60

2.364

1.570

1.966

Batticaloa District

5,012

6,403

7,575

2,563

51.14

2.480

1.695

2.087

935

1,109

1,203

268

28.66

1.721

0.817

1.268

535,177 125,749

Mannar District Mullaittivu District

Trincomalee District Southern Province

15.346 –10.239

1.753

409,428

464,414

30.71

1.268

1.428

1.348

Galle District

195,042

208,764

240,857

45,815

23.49

0.682

1.440

1.061

Matara District

145,245

169,688

193,222

47,977

33.03

1.568

1.307

1.437

69,141

85,962

101,098

31,957

46.22

2.201

1.635

1.918

Province of Uva

113,827

114,040

123,030

9,203

8.09

0.019

0.762

0.389

P. of Sabaragamuwa

203,887

221,010

252,123

48,236

23.66

0.810

1.326

1.067

Kegalle District

109,088

122,076

138,735

29,647

27.18

1.131

1.287

1.209

94,799

98,934

113,388

18,589

19.61

0.428

1.373

0.899

1,846,614 2,041,158 2,330,807 484,193

26.22

1.007

1.336

1.171

Hambantota District

Ratnapura District CEYLON

Source: International Population Microfilms]. * Note: The Census of 1901 for only the total number of the Sinhalese ** Note: AAG = Average Annual

Census Publications. Series 2. Pre-1945. Sri Lanka 1881.1 thru 1931.2. [5 the first time enumerated Low-Country Sinhalese and Kandyan Sinhalese separately. Here population is given. Growth

48

chapter four Table 4.9: Tamil Population Growth, 1881–1901.

Province/District

Tamil Tamil Tamil Absolute Population Population Population Growth 1881 1891 1901 1881– 1901 (in %)

Relative Growth 1881– 1901 (in %)

AAG* 1881– 1891 (in %)

AAG* 1891– 1901 (in %)

AAG* 1881– 1901 (in %)

4.876

2.738

Western Province

45,608

48,628

78,282

32,674

71.64

0.643

Colombo (Mun.) Colombo District Negombo District Kalutara District

25,604 6,590 11,476 1,938

24,372 6,824 12,979 4,453

34,640 14,690 12,359 16,593

9,036 8,100 883 14,655

35.29 122.91 7.69 756.19

–0.492 3.578 1.523 0.350 7.969 4.089 1.238 –0.488 0.371 8.675 14.058 11.334

19,915

19,328

26,705

6,790

34.09

–0.299

3.286

1.478

7,425 6,796 5,694

6,246 6,327 6,755

10,476 7,675 8,554

3,051 879 2,860

41.09 12.93 50.23

–1.714 –0.713 1.723

5.308 1.950 2.389

1.736 0.610 2.056

190,316

188,392

293,623

103,307

54.28

–0.102

4.538

2.192

104,012 26,960 59,344

104,263 17,879 66,250

161,914 28,601 103,108

57,902 1,641 43,764

55.67 6.09 73.75

0.024 –4.024 1.107

4.500 4.810 4.523

2.237 0.296 2.801

NWP Kurunegala District Puttalam District Chilaw District Central Province Kandy District Matale District Nuwara Eliya Dist. NCP

4,664

6,422

7,397

2,733

58.60

3.250

1.423

2.333

Northern Province

289,481

304,355

326,379

36,898

12.75

0.502

0.701

0.602

Jaffna District Mannar District Mullaittivu District

261,902 14,415 13,164

275,227 16,098 13,030

296,805 16,848 12,726

34,903 2,433 –438

13.33 16.88 –3.33

0.497 0.758 1.110 0.456 –0.102 –0.236

0.627 0.783 -0.169

75,408

86,701

96,926

21,518

28.54

1.405

1.121

1.263

61,014 14,394

69,584 17,117

79,857 17,069

18,843 2,675

30.88 18.58

1.323 1.387 1.748 –0.028

1.355 0.856

3,855

5,063

9,301

5,446

141.27

2.763

6.270

4.502

2,003 1,162 690

2,481 1,798 784

4,811 3,742 748

2,808 2,580 58

140.19 222.03 8.41

2.163 6.847 4.462 7.605 1.285 –0.469

4.479 6.022 0.404

Eastern Province Batticaloa District Trincomalee District Southern Province Galle District Matara District Hambantota District Province of Uva

43,576

36,807

54,742

11,166

25.62

–1.674

4.049

1.147

P. of Sabaragamuwa

14,425

28,157

58,385

43,960

304.75

6.917

7.565

7.241

5,407 9,018

21,208 6,949

41,407 16,978

36,000 7,960

665.80 88.27

14.645 –2.573

6.920 10.715 9.344 3.214

687,248

723,853

951,740

264,492

38.49

0.520

2.775

Kegalle District Ratnapura District CEYLON

1.641

Source: International Population Census Publications. Series 2. Pre-1945. Sri Lanka 1881.1 thru 1931.2. [5 Microfilms]. * Note: AAG = Average Annual Growth

demography

49

Table 4.10: Distribution of Religious Groups, 1881. Province/District

Buddhists

Hindus

Western Province*

451,852

23,669

Colombo Municipality Colombo District Negombo District Kalutara District North-Western Province*

28,784 216,242 68,010 138,816 222,089

15,206 4,441 2,799 1,223 13,015

Kurunegala District Puttalam District Chilaw District Central Province*

194,800 7,570 19,719 240,703

Christians

Others

47,790

147,892

297

27,709 4,499 2,586 12,996 23,059

38,575 54,069 43,280 11,968 35,100

228 35 16 18 64

6,080 2,583 4,352 174,663

9,983 10,436 2,640 33,188

4,251 5,505 25,344 24,649

59 1 4 466

153,734 52,210 34,759 53,523 1,114

93,845 24,912 55,906 4,341 250,795

25,025 6,401 1,762 7,495 10,628

15,407 3,093 6,149 567 39,944

321 39 106 220 19

65 53 996 6,028

236,312 2,957 11,526 70,669

2,821 6,658 1,149 43,583

26,369 11,678 1,897 6,836

16 2 1 439

Batticaloa District Trincomalee District Southern Province

5,144 884 407,011

57,901 12,768 2,536

37,327 6,256 17,921

4,547 2,289 5,739

439 — 313

Galle District Matara District Hambantota District Province of Uva*

193,310 144,622 69,079 113,761

1,123 800 613 41,033

10,872 5,163 1,886 7,009

4,294 1,119 326 3,564

81 219 13 325

Province of Sabaragamuwa*

201,989

12,909

7,102

3,686

143

108,095 93,894

4,664 8,245

5,334 1,768

1,756 1,930

106 37

1,698,070 61.5

593,630 21.5

197,775 7.2

267,977 9.7

2,286 0.1

Kandy District Matale District Nuwara Eliya District North-Central Province Northern Province* Jaffna District Mannar District Mullaittivu District Eastern Province

Kegalle District Ratnapura District CEYLON % of Total Population

Muslims

Source: International Population Census Publications. Series 2. Pre-1945. Sri Lanka 1881.1 thru 1931.2. [5 Microfilms]. * Note: For the sake of better comparability, the Ceylonese administrative structure of the year 1901 has been applied to this table. The Provinces of Uva and Sabaragamuwa did not exist in 1881. Uva was part of the Central Province, Sabaragamuwa of the Western Province. The North-Western Province had only two districts in 1881—Puttalam and Kurunegala. For Chilaw, the population data has been extracted separately. In 1881, the Northern Province had one more district—Vavuniyan-Vilaukulam. In this table its population has been added to the Mullaittivu District.

50

chapter four Table 4.11: Distribution of Religious Groups, 1891.

Province/District

Buddhists

Hindus

Muslims

Christians

Others

Western Province

528,806

22,233

50,841

160,490

165

Colombo Municipality Colombo District Negombo District Kalutara District North-Western Province

41,518 251,336 81,514 154,436 240,382

12,490 4,093 2,279 3,371 11,016

29,503 6,897 2,901 13,049 23,385

43,174 58,556 45,992 11,668 45,269

140 10 7 8 18

Kurunegala District Puttalam District Chilaw District Central Province

208,724 8,029 23,629 244,504

4,193 2,474 4,349 171,189

10,719 9,919 2,747 31,059

6,540 6,227 32,502 27,674

11 3 4 61

154,842 51,758 37,904 59,888 1,328

93,239 16,658 61,292 5,614 261,992

23,088 5,503 2,468 8,884 12,098

17,143 2,589 7,942 947 43,872

41 6 14

54 183 1,091

246,607 4,072 11,313

3,208 7,722 1,168

29,409 12,534 1,929

— —

7,647

80,537

51,969

8,274

17

Batticaloa District Trincomalee District Southern Province

6,624 1,023 461,869

65,744 14,793 3,939

44,902 7,067 18,168

5,412 2,862 5,812

—

Galle District Matara District Hambantota District Province of Uva Province of Sabaragamuwa

206,938 169,065 85,866 114,086 218,535

1,683 1,592 664 33,789 25,623

10,079 5,703 2,386 7,044 8,547

4,186 1,226 400 3,899 5,890

2 383 31

120,376 98,159 1,877,043 62.4

19,614 6,009 615,932 20.5

6,677 1,870 211,993 7.0

3,942 1,948 302,127 10.0

18 13 692 0.0

Kandy District Matale District Nuwara Eliya District North-Central Province Northern Province* Jaffna District Mannar District Mullaittivu District Eastern Province

Kegalle District Ratnapura District CEYLON % of Total Population

—

6 6

17 11 9 —

Source: International Population Census Publications. Series 2. Pre-1945. Sri Lanka 1881.1 thru 1931.2. [5 Microfilms]. * Note: For the sake of better comparability, the Ceylonese administrative structure of the year 1901 has been applied to this table. In 1891, the Northern Province had one more district—Vavuniyan-Vilaukulam. In this table its population has been added to the Mullaittivu District.

demography

51

Table 4.12: Distribution of Religious Groups, 1901. Province/District

Buddhists

Hindus

Muslims

Christians

Western Province

628,612

47,923

61,630

182,290

228

Colombo Municipality Colombo District Negombo District Kalutara District North-Western Province

48,412 302,589 92,719 184,892 255,960

21,293 9,982 3,023 13,625 16,742

35,412 6,775 3,391 16,052 25,543

49,352 68,536 49,115 15,287 55,318

222 4 1 1 63

Kurunegala District Puttalam District Chilaw District Central Province

220,096 7,935 27,929 281,136

8,238 3,045 5,459 269,707

11,646 10,835 3,062 36,604

9,387 7,964 37,967 35,357

180,632 56,162 44,342 61,949 1,386

146,828 26,871 96,008 6,468 281,387

27,868 5,883 2,853 9,043 12,081

22,243 3,284 9,830 1,293 46,047

107 99 1,180 8,606

265,896 4,639 10,852 91,093

3,188 7,804 1,089 63,504

31,660 12,367 2,020 9,334

17 18 1,065

Batticaloa District Trincomalee District Southern Province

7,623 983 532,140

75,799 15,294 7,832

54,313 9,191 20,169

6,364 2,970 6,571

1,062 3 24

Galle District Matara District Hambantota District Province of Uva

238,606 192,580 100,954 122,773

3,903 3,279 650 51,643

10,986 6,348 2,835 7,263

4,601 1,541 429 4,452

20 2 2 543

Province of Sabaragamuwa

248,842

54,031

10,281

8,577

24

136,385 112,457 2,141,404 60.1

38,631 15,400 826,826 23.2

8,056 2,225 246,118 6.9

5,697 2,880 349,239 9.8

22 2 2,367 0.1

Kandy District Matale District Nuwara Eliya District North-Central Province Northern Province* Jaffna District Mannar District Mullaittivu District Eastern Province

Kegalle District Ratnapura District CEYLON % of Total Population

Others

62 —

1 28 20 3 5 357 35 —

Source: International Population Census Publications. Series 2. Pre-1945. Sri Lanka 1881.1 thru 1931.2. [5 Microfilms].

52

chapter four

Catholics. This leaves only a comparatively small number of recent Protestant converts, although exact numbers cannot be given. As almost all of the immigrant plantation labourers were Tamils (and, thus, Hindus in faith), the slump of the plantation industry during the early 1880s and the take-off of tea cultivation also left their traces in the religious composition of the planting districts. The number of Hindus in the Central Province and in Uva greatly increased between 1891 and 1901, while it had remained almost stagnant in the previous decade. However, on the whole, the religious composition of Ceylon experienced little change in our period of observation.

CHAPTER FIVE

EXPORT ECONOMY 5.1 The Rise of ‘King Coffee’ The development of agricultural economy in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Ceylon has long been explained as a dualistic process, with the two participating sectors largely isolated from each other.1 On the one hand, peasant agriculture traditionally produces rice, vegetables and other typical subsistence crops. Only marginal profits can be obtained from the cultivation of such crops. On the whole, this peasant sector cannot be described as dynamic. Traditional values and cultivation methods prevailed throughout the nineteenth and the early twentieth century. A considerable part of the peasantry took part in small-scale coffee and coconut cultivation. The small profits were generally used to pay the commutation taxes. Peasant participation in the export sector—though substantial at times—did not contribute to the accumulation of capital or increased social mobility in the villages. Nevertheless, the so-called native coffee grown in the peasants’ coffee gardens contributed to the future establishment of a coffee plantation economy. We will discuss the role of peasant coffee later in this chapter. The general development of peasant subsistence agriculture as well as the accuracy or non-accuracy of the dualistic approach mentioned above will then be discussed in the following chapters. Nineteenth-century Ceylon witnessed the rapid development of a thriving export agriculture based on the cultivation of cash crops in semi-industrialised, large-scale production units—the plantations. During the eighteenth century, the Dutch established the first plantations in Ceylon for the systematic production of cinnamon. These plantations remained rather small ventures and comparatively few in number.2 Soon after the British take-over the profits from the cinnamon 1 See J. E. Craig, “Ceylon,” in Tropical Development, 1880–1913, ed. W. Arthur Lewis (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970); Donald R. Snodgrass, Ceylon. An Export Economy in Transition (Homewood, Ill.: R. D. Irwin, 1966). 2 Asoka Bandarage, Colonialism in Sri Lanka: The Political Economy of the Kandyan

54

chapter five

trade declined rapidly—especially after the abolition of the trade and production monopoly on cinnamon in the course of the ColebrookeCameron reforms.3 Ceylonese cinnamon could not compete with cheaper varieties from other colonies and especially not with cassia lignea from Java. “It was the restructuring of Ceylon’s cinnamon trade along laissez-faire principles that sealed its decline and paved the way for the rise of private coffee production.”4 The Dutch had already experimented with coffee cultivation in the eighteenth century, but their attempts to introduce large-scale coffee plantations failed because of the lack of suitable land. The Dutch did not control the highlands in the interior of Ceylon and had no access to lands in higher altitudes—a necessity for the profitable cultivation of coffee on any larger scale. Those who had access to such land—namely a portion of the Kandyan peasantry—already produced coffee on a modest scale. These peasants relied mainly on the wild growing coffee, sold the berries to Moors who in turn bartered the coffee at the ports. Most of the exported coffee up to the early 1830s—about 10.200 cwt. per year—was of peasant origin.5 The first coffee plantations under the British were established in the 1820s. Governor Edward Barnes granted land near Gampola to Colonel George Bird in 1823–24. Barnes also participated in coffee cultivation personally during the 1820s, and several government officials opened plantations as well. Michael Roberts states that most of these early ventures remained economically unsuccessful.6 The reasons for this can be found in the use of not fully suitable land in too low altitudes, the unfavourable position in the world economy with the West Indies as a formidable competitor, the lack of cultivation skills and the slowly developing infrastructure of the island.

Highlands, 1833–1886, vol. 39, New Babylon, Studies in the Social Sciences (Berlin; New York: Mouton, 1983), 67. 3 For a more detailed description of the cinnamon trade in the early nineteenth century see: V. Samaraweera, “Economic and Social Developments under the British, 1796–1832,” in University of Ceylon History of Ceylon. From the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century to 1948, ed. Kingsley M. De Silva (Peradeniya: University of Peradeniya, 1973). 4 Bandarage, Colonialism in Sri Lanka, 68. 5 Michael Roberts and L. A. Wickremeratne, “Export Agriculture in the Nineteenth Century,” in University of Ceylon History of Ceylon. From the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century to 1948, ed. Kingsley M. De Silva (Peradeniya: University of Peradeniya, 1973), 92. 6 Ibid., 94.

export economy

55

However, with the profit from the cinnamon trade declining, coffee cultivation became a venture particularly interesting to European planters. After the liberalisation of the economy, the planting of coffee in plantations underwent a rapid expansion in the 1830s and 1840s. Several factors pushed the development of a European dominated coffee plantation system. Roberts attributes the boom of coffee cultivation in the late 1830s to eight decisive factors:7 • • • • • • • •

favourable international market conditions the application of Western industrial techniques the expansion of the communication network the investment of British capital and the partial re-investment of profits the implantation of a foreign capitalist class the sparseness of population and the abundance of land in the suitable regions the existence of a cheap labour market in South India the further development of the plantation as a production unit.

All of the mentioned factors played an important role in the development of the plantation economy in Ceylon. But only a few factors really triggered the expansion of the coffee planting industry in the late 1830s and 1840s. Favourable market conditions provided the base for any further expansion of coffee cultivation. After protests from Ceylon the British government abolished the discriminatory custom duties on Ceylon coffee. The duties on Ceylonese and West Indian coffee were both fixed at 6 d. per pound.8 Combined with the everrising demand for coffee in Britain and the economic problems of the West Indian colonies due to the abolition of slavery the equalisation of custom duties made the growing of coffee in Ceylon potentially profitable for the first time. The introduction of so-called Western industrial techniques in the processing of the coffee berries affected the eventual success of the coffee plantations only on a modest scale. Although sometimes described as a complex task, the processing of the berries was not a particularly sophisticated business. The initial step of abandoning the traditional

7 8

Ibid., 92. Bandarage, Colonialism in Sri Lanka, 72.

56

chapter five

way of harvesting partially unripe berries and soaking them with water to strip the pulp from the kernel,9 was important, but not an achievement of superior Western technology. One could argue that the introduction of Western industrial techniques to the plantation sector of Ceylon took place in the late 1880s the earliest, when large- or medium-scale tea factories became necessary to process the tea leaf and to produce tea. More important for the prospects of the coffee plantations was the arrival of one R. B. Tytler in Ceylon in the late 1830s. Tytler was a tropical agriculturist, had studied the methods of coffee cultivation in Jamaica and provided the Ceylonese planters with the necessary skills to grow productive coffee bushes.10 The combination of these two factors—i.e. the improved position of Ceylon in the world market and the introduction of cultivation skills from abroad—provided the necessary incentives to attract capital investment to a new and promising venture. The liberal policy of the Ceylon government after 1833 contributed to the evolution of the island as an attractive business location. The extensive land grants of the 1830s and 1840s—all at the giveaway price of 5 shillings per acre—provided the willing investor with a source of cheap land. The sparseness of population and the resulting abundance of land in the highlands further facilitated the granting of lands, but it was not a presupposition. The other factors identified by Roberts did not set off the rapid expansion of the coffee cultivation enterprise. These developments have been consequences of the expansion. The construction of a communication network became necessary for the effective administration of the island. Naturally, the pioneer works of the 1820s facilitated and cheapened the production of export crops in the more remote regions. But further expansions, the construction of the railway network for example, were a consequence of the prior advancement of the plantations to remote regions. With the revenue totally depending on coffee production, the requests of the planting community for roads and railways could hardly be ignored.

Snodgrass, An Export Economy in Transition, 21. I. H. Vanden Driesen, “Some Trends in the Economic History of Ceylon in the ‘Modern’ Period,” Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies 3, no. 1 (1960): 4; Bandarage, Colonialism in Sri Lanka, 73. 9

10

export economy

57

Regarding the implantation of a so-called British ‘plantocracy’ equipped with British capital to be invested in the plantation sector, it should be noted that this has not by itself been a reason for the rapid expansion of the coffee plantations. Plantation agriculture was widespread in the colonial world of the nineteenth century and the preferred mode of production in many a tropical colony. Usually, the plantations were European owned—with a certain small percentage in the possession of indigenous elites. The Ceylonese pattern fits perfectly into this picture. The difference to many other colonial territories lies in the comparatively low need for capital to set up a coffee plantation in Ceylon in the early years of the nineteenth century. Land was given away at nominal prices. The clearing of the land was done by cheap Sinhalese labour or the land was leased out as chena before. The semi-permanent workforce needed to care for and finally harvest the coffee was imported from nearby South India—and proved to be even cheaper than the local Sinhalese, who had no reason the engage themselves in hard and underpaid work on the estates, whilst they made a satisfying living from their own lands. The processing of the picked berries involved no economies-of-scale. Every plantation did at least the drying on the spot. Only for further processing the berries were sometimes taken to Colombo. So the capital outlay was comparatively low in the early years of the coffee boom. This was one of the prime push factors behind the expansion of coffee cultivation. The availability of British capital facilitated the process.11 The initial situation changed rapidly after the depression of the late 1840s. Many planters with smaller holdings were ruined by the depression and lacked the financial backing to sit and wait for better times. Insolvent small estates were sold at giveaway prices and larger plantations emerged. The price of land was quadrupled in the year 1844 to prevent further speculation in land. Thus, the amount of capital needed to set up and run a plantation increased considerably. Banks and agency-houses now played an important role in the further expansion of the plantation economy as they supplied the planters with the necessary capital and derived substantial profits from their participation.

11

Snodgrass, An Export Economy in Transition, 23.

58

chapter five

The existence of a cheap labour market in nearby South India was a decisive factor in the development of the plantation economy in Ceylon. During the 1820s and 1830s, the labour demand of the newly established plantation sector did not yet reach later heights and could be satisfied by hiring local Sinhalese villagers and South Indian Tamils migrating to Ceylon in pursuit of employment. Only from 1839 onwards, the Ceylon government conducted migration statistics and monitored the infl ux of Indian labour—paying tribute to the fact that since the mid-1830s (semi)organised labour immigration from poverty-ridden South India had become the main source from which to meet the plantations’ growing labour demand. One additional factor should be named that contributed largely to the fast take-off of coffee cultivation—security. The conquest of the whole island—finished only in 1818 after the suppression of the Kandyan rebellion—for the first time provided security regarding the firm hold of the British over the whole of Ceylon. This was one of the presuppositions necessary to attract foreigner capital to a little known colony so far away from the motherland.12 The second aspect of security became eminent during the first coffee boom in the late 1830s—the need for security of one’s investments. And as those investments and the further profitability thereof depended largely on the possession of land, the availability and the security of land titles was an important issue. Local claims to valuable plots in the highlands and encroachments on these lands could—in the eyes of the planters and the authorities—lead to a shortage of suitable land for plantations. Especially after the Supreme Court’s decision in 1838 to throw the burden of proving title to ‘waste lands’ on the Crown, the fear of a land shortage reached new heights.13 To settle this problem the government introduced Ordinance 12 of 1840 known as the “Crown Lands Encroachment Ordinance.” The ultimate objective of this ordinance was “to define a set of criteria for determining Crown and private rights to ‘waste lands’ and to

12 Chandra Richard De Silva, Sri Lanka, a History, Afro-Asian Nations, History, and Culture (New Delhi: Vikas Pub. House, 1987), 160. 13 Michael Roberts, “Land Problems and Policies, C 1832 to C 1900,” in University of Ceylon History of Ceylon. From the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century to 1948, ed. Kingsley M. De Silva (Peradeniya: University of Peradeniya, 1973), 122.

export economy

59

create the machinery for ejection and/or punishment of encroachers.”14 This should provide the necessary security of title to the planters and prevent local claims to plantation lands. The provisions of Ordinance 12 of 1840 completely disregarded the existing tradition of land tenure in the Kandyan regions and aimed solely at the security of titles to lands. Clause 6 of the Crown Lands Encroachment Ordinance reads as follows: And it is further enacted that all Forest, Waste, Unoccupied and Uncultivated Lands shall be presumed to be the property of the Crown; until the contrary thereof be proved; and all chenas and other lands which can be only cultivated after intervals of several years shall, if the same be situated within the Districts formerly comprised in the Kandyan Provinces [. . .] be deemed to belong to the Crown and not to be the property of any private person claiming the same against the Crown.15

The burden of proving claims to lands under the “Crown Lands Encroachment Ordinance” rested solely on the claimant. Title deeds or other definitive proof of ownership were usually difficult to produce for the native claimants16 and, thus, large plots of land went into the hands of the Crown to be disposed of later by sale to the planting community. In his article on the evolution of Ordinance 12 of 1840, K. M. De Silva has emphasised the role of one distinctive reason for the fast implementation of the ordinance. He states that many of the government officials of that time held a considerable stake in the coffee enterprise. George Turnour, Acting Colonial Secretary in 1840 and largely responsible for the design of Ordinance 12 of 1840, was an active coffee planter17 and had a vested interest to conserve the initial prosperity of the sector. The personal involvement of such officials in the fortune of the plantation industry considerably contributed to the speedy implementation of such a piece of legislature.

Bandarage, Colonialism in Sri Lanka, 93–94. CO 56/1, Ceylon Acts 1835–1840. 16 See Bandarage, Colonialism in Sri Lanka, 95–97. 17 Kingsley M. De Silva, “Studies in British Land Policy 1,” Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies 7, no. 1 (1964): 29. 14 15

60

chapter five 5.2

Depression and Recovery

The phase of the first coffee boom covered the period from 1839 to 1847. We have already discussed the reasons that led to the rush into coffee. Table V.1 shows the rapid expansion of the area under the crop as well as of the export volume in that period. The table is taken from Snodgrass’ “An Export Economy in Transition” and is based on the statistical material from the Ceylon Blue Books. In the late 1840s the Ceylon coffee industry was hit by a severe depression of the world market. The first blow came in 1844, when Britain lifted its protectionist duty on British colonial and Javanese coffee. Due to the infl ux of the new suppliers’ products into the British market, the coffee prices started to fall. Still the margin of profit was large enough to keep the planters in Ceylon in business. But between 1847 and 1849 coffee prices dropped further due to the economic depression in Great Britain, where the demand for high quality coffee was on the decline. At the same time large areas under coffee—planted approximately three years before—started to yield fruits and contributed to a severe overproduction of coffee on the island.18 This was more than the planters in Ceylon could handle. Numerous estates had to be closed down or changed hands at giveaway prices. The economy started to recover in the early 1850s. High quality coffee found ready demand in the British market and prices started to climb again. Faith in the prosperity of coffee cultivation returned and foreign capital poured afresh into Ceylon. The depression of the late 1840s had ruined many of the less profitable estates. Only those plantations with sufficient resources and a good management survived the depression. Banks, agency-houses, and joint-stock companies began to play a role of ever-growing importance in the island’s economy. Still most of the estates—about two-thirds as late as in the 1870s19—remained under private ownership, but the availability of capital increased with the rise of companies and agency-houses as plantation owners.

18 19

Bandarage, Colonialism in Sri Lanka, 75–76. Vanden Driesen, “Some Trends in the Economic History of Ceylon,” 13.

export economy

61

Table 5.1: The Ceylon Coffee Industry, 1834–1886 (Annual Figures and Annual Averages). Year 1834 1835–39 1840–44 1845–49 1850–54 1855–59 1860–64 1865–69 1870–74 1875–79 1880–84 1885 1886

Export Volume (in 000 cwt.)

Export Unit Value (in s./cwt.)

26 46 97 260 344 537 615 939 881 795 433 316 179

30 47 49 33 40 48 51 52 66 108 89 78 89

Area Yield20 Planted (in cwt./acre) (in 000 acres) n/a n/a 23 51 59 138 199 243 276 310 259 139 110

n/a n/a 4.2 5.1 5.9 3.9 3.1 3.9 3.2 2.6 1.7 2.3 1.6

Source: Donald R. Snodgrass, Ceylon. An Export Economy in Transition (Homewood, Ill.: R. D. Irwin, 1966), 20.20

Table 5.1 clearly shows the quick recovery of the coffee plantation industry in Ceylon after the slump in 1847–49. Snodgrass gives the average yield for the period 1850–54 as 5.9 cwt per acre. He calculated the ‘average yield’ by dividing the exported quantity of coffee by the area under the crop. The high figure stems from the fact that most of the acreage under coffee did, indeed, yield berries in those years—illustrating that in the late 1840s little new land had been planted with coffee and the vast majority of coffee bushes had already started to bear fruits.21 From the period 1855–59 onwards we see a considerable drop in the ‘average yields.’ Large plots of hitherto unplanted land were planted with coffee. At the same time the export volume kept growing tremendously. The plantation economy had recovered fully and expanded further at a previously unknown pace. But as early as in 20 This is not the actual average yield per acre. Snodgrass simply divided the export volume of coffee by the total area under the crop—areas in full bearing as well as newly planted areas. 21 A coffee bush usually needs about three to four years after planting until it yields the first coffee berries.

62

chapter five

the first half of the 1870s a new enemy to the coffee industry made its first impact on the Ceylon economy. In that period the planters witnessed a severe drop in coffee exports, while the acreage under the crop expanded further. The second half of that decade shows the same pattern in an even more alarming extent. The average export volume for 1875–79 dropped sharply to 795,000 cwt., whereas the acreage under the crop reached new heights with approximately 340,000 acres under coffee in 1880 (accounting for 13.2% of the total acreage under cultivation in that year).22 The so-called Coffee Leaf Disease spread in the plantations and reduced the output of the estates drastically. However, the sharp rise in coffee prices on the one hand, combined with the improvements in the island’s infrastructure on the other, still kept the coffee industry profitable. One could argue that this rise in prices and cutting of transport costs were the main reasons for the deep economic depression that hit Ceylon in the early 1880s. With slowly but continuously declining profits the planting community may have looked for alternative fields of investment earlier. But with remunerative prices and low production costs the planters and the government stuck to the maintenance of coffee monoculture—until hit by economic disaster in the 1880s. 5.3

Monoculture, the Coffee Leaf Disease and the Period of Transition

Given plenty of land, geographical difference is necessary to escape monoculture, but it is not sufficient. For if one part of the country is specially suited to a particular crop, which happens to be very profitable, the country will tend to concentrate on developing that region. Labour and capital will fl ow there, leaving the other regions to be relatively depressed. If 1880–1913 sees the beginning of monoculture, it also sees the beginning of those great regional economic disparities which now plague so many tropical countries, with differences in rainfall so often being the crucial factor.23

Ceylon Statistical Blue Book 1880. W. Arthur Lewis, “The Export Stimulus,” in Tropical Development, 1880–1913, ed. W. Arthur Lewis (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970), 38. 22 23

export economy

63

In the first chapter of W. Arthur Lewis’ renowned publication on the development of tropical agriculture from 1880 to 1913, the editor himself discusses the evolution and the dangers of monocultures. The above quotation is not dealing specifically with the case of Ceylon, but maintains a global colonial perspective. Still Ceylon and its coffee monoculture fit into the picture almost perfectly—except the earlier appearance of monoculture on the island by the 1850s the latest. Lewis defines monoculture as the “tendency to export only one crop”, not as the exclusive cultivation of one crop only.24 This established itself in Ceylon during the recovery of the coffee industry after the slump in the late 1840s. The geographical diversity of Ceylon—which is impressing given the modest size of the island—did not suffice to encourage the cultivation of other export crops on any significant scale.25 Economic development focused on the Kandyan highlands and especially on regions apt for the cultivation of coffee. The expansion of the transportation network—reaching a temporary peak in 1867 with the opening of the Colombo-Kandy railway—strongly indicates this. The half-hearted attempts of the Governors Ward and Robinson to revive (or at least partially restore) the sophisticated irrigation system of the Dry Zone were much less the consequence of a desire to develop the ailing paddy cultivating regions than a bare necessity in order to prevent the total ruin of the local peasantry and the subsequent abandonment of an entire geographical region. The comparatively modest sum of money invested and the inefficiency of the adopted methods in the restoration of irrigation facilities are sufficient proof for the economic and financial concentration on other geographical areas suitable for coffee production. Such a disproportional focus on the development of only certain agricultural regions is probably the most dangerous attribute of an economy based on monoculture. It tends to lay the foundations for long-lasting regional disparities. Another risk is its high vulnerability regarding the effects of economic fl uctuations and the appearances of plant diseases. In the case of Ceylon, the latter triggered the collapse of the coffee industry in the late 1870s and early 1880s, while

Ibid., 37. With the establishment of coconut estates discussed later in this chapter a first diversification in the cultivation of export crops in Ceylon appeared. However, during the reign of ‘King Coffee’ the coconut plantations could not contribute to a significant reduction of the risks involved in coffee monoculture. 24

25

64

chapter five

the former—combined with other factors—contributed largely to the thoroughness and the speed of this collapse. The leaf fungus Hemileia Vastatrix was first found in Ceylon in 1869 on a coffee estate in Madulsima. The fungus—commonly referred to as the Coffee Leaf Disease—infected the coffee plants and seriously damaged their health consequently reducing the yield of the bushes. Although the impact of the Leaf Disease on the productivity of the coffee plants was considerable from the beginning, it took some time for the fungus to show its full destructive potential. The disease began to spread with alarming speed in the 1870s and had infected almost all of the coffee estates by the end of that decade. The rapidity of this spread is partially due to the high concentration of coffee estates in a comparably small area. With basically one estate next to the other, all planted with the same crop—typical features of monoculture—, little could be done to prevent the spread of the fungus.26 The reduction in the yield of the coffee bushes soon became eminent. Reaching a peak in 1870, the coffee exports declined steadily Table 5.2: Ceylon Coffee Exports (Plantation and Native), 1869–1886 (in 000 cwt.).27 Year 1869 1870 1871 1872 1873 1874 1875 1876 1877

Plantation Native 836 886 815 577 860 509 874 604 851

169 128 140 151 128 191 115 85 76

Total

Year

1005 1014 955 728 988 700 989 689 927

1878 1879 1880 1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886

Plantation Native 571 775 611 414 527 249 300 289 209

56 49 43 38 37 14 11 22 11

Total 627 824 654 452 564 263 311 311 220

Source: Patrick Peebles, Sri Lanka: A Handbook of Historical Statistics, A Reference Publication in International Historical Statistics (Boston, Mass.: G. K. Hall, 1982), 207.

26 S. Rajaratnam, “Growth of Plantation Agriculture in Ceylon, 1886–1931,” Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies 4, no. 1 (1961b): 1. 27 Peebles used other sources than the Blue Book data used by Snodgrass (and shown in Table 5.1). Therefore, Table 5.1 and 5.2 show different figures in some years.

export economy

65

from thereon. Table 5.2 reveals an interesting pattern in the decline of the plantation coffee exports. From 1872 until the end of the decade the amount of exported plantation coffee seriously dropped every second year partially recovering in the year in between. From 1879 onwards the decrease in plantation coffee exports was almost linear. And by “1886 the Ceylon coffee industry was, for all practical purposes, dead.”28 The history of peasant coffee—or native coffee—shows a slightly different picture. The systematic fall of peasant coffee exports starts four to five years later than the heavy fl uctuations in plantation crop output. In his paper on peasant coffee cultivation, A. C. L. Ameer Ali argues that the demise of native coffee began as early as in 1860 and, therefore, preceded the first signs of the collapse of plantation coffee by about ten years. The available statistical data, however, does not support this view. Ameer Ali uses highly inaccurate data to compare the volume of peasant coffee exports to that of total coffee exports.29 His comparison shows a rapid fall in the percentage of the former to the latter from about 1860 onwards. Interpreting the more reliable data given by Patrick Peebles30—that has partially been used in Table 5.2—the fall of the relative proportion of peasant coffee appears less pronounced. Although its relative contribution to total coffee exports is on the decline, native exports remain rather stable in absolute numbers until the mid-1870s. The unfavourable comparison stems from the rapid expansion of coffee plantations and output during the 1860s. Peasant coffee did not have any similar scope for expansion as plantation coffee and had apparently reached its peak in the late 1850s. Making allowances for the annual fl uctuations typical for peasant cash crop cultivation, native coffee exports remained stable until 1874. Figure 5.1 shows that the plantation crop has been a failure in every second year from 1872 onwards, until the plantation coffee exports began to decline constantly. On the other hand, peasant coffee

Snodgrass, An Export Economy in Transition, 21. A. C. L. Ameer Ali, “Peasant Coffee in Ceylon During the 19th Century,” Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies (new series) 2, no. 1 (1972): 54. 30 Patrick Peebles, Sri Lanka: A Handbook of Historical Statistics, A Reference Publication in International Historical Statistics (Boston, Mass.: G. K. Hall, 1982), 207. 28 29

66

chapter five

Coffee Exports (Index: 1860 = 100)

200 180

Plantation Coffee Peasant Coffee

160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20

1888

1886

1884

1882

1880

1878

1876

1874

1872

1870

1868

1866

1862 1864

1858 1860

1856

1854

1852

1850

0 Year

Figure 5.1: Ceylon Coffee Exports (Plantation and Native), 1850–1888 (Indexed with 1860 = 100). Compiled from data in Patrick Peebles, Sri Lanka: A Handbook of Historical Statistics, A Reference Publicationin International Historical Statistics (Boston, Mass.: G. K. Hall, 1982), 207.

has obviously been subject to massive annual fl uctuations since the 1850s. This can be attributed to the less scientific methods and the less systematic cultivation applied by the peasants. However, there might have been another infl uence that contributed to these fl uctuations. The data used for Table 5.2 and Figure 5.1 shows clearly that the severe effects of the Leaf Disease on the peasant coffee exports appeared approximately four to five years after their first impact on plantation coffee exports. One reason for this might be the fact that the peasants’ coffee gardens were usually small in extent and formed secluded ‘pockets’ of coffee cultivation surrounded by areas under different crops or under jungle. This hemmed the unchecked spread of the Coffee Leaf Disease for a certain time. But after the fungus had been carried into the peasant holdings as well, the decline of the native coffee production was one of alarming rapidity. From 1875 onwards—when the plantations were still fighting the Leaf Disease with an enormous input of labour and capital—the fall of peasant coffee exports was tremendous and beyond recovery. Plantation coffee had already felt the force of Hemileia Vastatrix in 1871/72. Until the total ruin of the coffee enterprise in Ceylon in the first half of the 1880s, the plantations invested considerable money

export economy

67

Table 5.3: Value of Fertiliser Imports to Ceylon, 1874–1880 (in Rs). Year

Value

Year

Value

1874 1875 1876 1877

612,560 871,410 1,408,090 2,610,000

1878 1879 1880

1,365,860 555,200 222,260

Source: S. Rajaratnam, “Growth of Plantation Agriculture in Ceylon, 1886–1931,” Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies 4, no. 1 (1961): 2.

and effort in the struggle against the disease. Planters tried to balance the reduction in the yields by the excessive use of chemical fertilisers (see Table 5.3) and different labour intensive cures. In their efforts to counteract the symptoms of the Leaf Disease—i.e. the reduction of yields—they were only partially successful throughout the 1870s. The above mentioned pattern of relatively successful harvests every second year and crop failures every other emerged. The reason for the appearance of this pattern is not known yet. It cannot be found in any botanical characteristic of the fungus, because the disease has not spread within a year and the subsequent time lag would have balanced these effects. Neither is it probable that favourable and unfavourable climatic conditions took yearly turns in the Ceylon of the 1870s. One possible explanation may be found in frequently revolving reactions of the soil to the excessive use of fertilisers producing a good crop every second year only. Or the two-year-pattern might be the consequence of any conscious or unconscious measures of the planters in their struggle against the Coffee Leaf Disease. Unfortunately there has been no research on this. Thus, the causes that led to the emergence of that curious pattern are not known yet. At least, Snodgrass31 and Vanden Driesen mention the development of such a pattern in their work. Vanden Driesen simply states that the “deadly effects of the leaf disease so weakened its host that no affected bush could bear heavily for two consecutive years.”32 But this is not a satisfying explanation as it is statistically impossible that all the affected coffee bushes produced heavy yields as well as low yields in the same alternating years.

Snodgrass, An Export Economy in Transition, 19. I. H. Vanden Driesen, The Long Walk: Indian Plantation Labour in Sri Lanka in the Nineteenth Century (New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1997), 168. 31 32

68

chapter five Table 5.4: Average Price of Plantation Coffee, 1870–1886 (in s. and d.). Year

Price

Year

Price

1870* 1871* 1872* 1873 1874 1875 1876 1877 1878

63.9. 64.9. 72.0. 88.0. 90.0. 100.0. 106.0. 106.0. 107.0.

1879 1880 1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886

107.0. 104.0. 100.0. 81.0. 81.0. 80.0. 80.0. 91.0.

Source: I. H. Vanden Driesen, The Long Walk: Indian Plantation Labour in Sri Lanka in the Nineteenth Century (New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1997), 168–69. * average price of all Ceylon coffee in Great Britain

Although the plantation industry managed to delay the total collapse of coffee production, it already suffered alarming declines in exports throughout the 1870s. Given the fact that the ultimate collapse took place only in the early 1880s, there would have been enough time to search for alternative products to supplement or supersede the cultivation of coffee in Ceylon. But the planters’ engagement in the cultivation of alternative plantation crops was, at best, only half-hearted. Two major changes in the economic environment made them blind to the prospects of their industry—namely the constant rise of the coffee prices in the 1870s as well as the improvements in the island’s transport network which started to yield results. Table 5.4 depicts the rise of coffee prices throughout the 1870s. The climb of prices started exactly when yields and exports of coffee began their fall. This weakened the negative short-term effects of the Leaf Disease on the profit margin of the planting community. The spectacular rise of coffee prices is generally attributed to a series of bad harvests in Java and Brazil as well as to the opening of a new market for Ceylon coffee in the United States of America. Second, the planting enterprise in the 1870s yielded the benefits of the extension and improvement of the transport network during the previous decade. From the 1860s onwards, the government had invested large sums in the construction of roads and railways. In 1867, the railway from Colombo to Kandy had been completed. Vanden Driesen

export economy

69

estimates that these investments have reduced the transport costs for the plantation products by between 60% and 75%.33 Together with the high prices realised in the overseas markets the fall in production costs kept the planting enterprise alive during the first decade after the appearance of Hemileia Vastatrix. The planting community noticed the decrease in output of its estates, but—with the profits still encouraging—the planters were confident that the threat posed by the disease would only be a temporary one. In the closing years of the 1870s, the pattern of alternating good and bad coffee harvests was eventually broken. The coffee yields started to drop constantly. Cheap Brazilian coffee fl ooded the British market almost at the same time. And a general economic depression in Britain further worsened the position of the Ceylon coffee enterprise. In short, when prices and yields started to crash at the same time (see Tables 5.2 and 5.4), it became clear to the most notorious optimists that the end of coffee cultivation in Ceylon was close at hand. 5.4 The Depression of the Early 1880s In 1880, the demise of the coffee industry already cast its shadow over the entire island. The government revenue steadily declined as it largely depended on export duties. Expenditure in a multitude of fields was severely cut down. The Indian immigrant labourers could not be absorbed by the plantation labour market anymore and started to return to South India. Local businesses dependent on the plantation industry (e.g. carters, local shopkeepers etc.) suffered considerable losses. The plantation economy crashed and the island was drawn into a full-blown economic depression. Many plantations changed hands at nominal prices and a large number of estate owners and superintendents (allegedly a quarter of the total number)34 left the island for good to engage in the plantation enterprise somewhere else. This

Vanden Driesen, “Some Trends in the Economic History of Ceylon,” 11. Denys Mostyn Forrest, A Hundred Years of Ceylon Tea, 1867–1967 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1967), 99. This seems to be a sensible estimate, although generally Forrest’s publications on the Ceylon plantation enterprise should be viewed with some scepticism as he maintained close connections with the planting community in Ceylon and tends to exaggerate the role of the planters in Ceylonese history. 33 34

70

chapter five

sheds some light on the real state of the coffee enterprise in the early 1880s. The main difference between this depression and previous ones was the apparent fact that the remedy could not be found in the further cultivation of coffee. Still, the end of coffee did not necessarily mean the end of plantation agriculture in Ceylon. The know-how and infrastructure for a revival of the plantation industry existed. However, a suitable substitute for coffee had to be found. It seems that by about 1883/84 almost all planters had finally realised that a sudden recovery of the coffee planting industry just would not happen. To some planters this had already been evident in the 1870s and—unlike the larger part of the planting body—they had been propagating the cultivation of alternative crops such as cinchona, cocoa and tea. One of these had been G. H. K. Thwaites, Director of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Peradeniya. He had foreseen the end of the coffee enterprise in the 1870s, but his warnings had remained unheard.35 But with the coffee industry finally on its knees, those planters staying on the island had to find substitutes for coffee. Pepper, nutmegs, cardamoms, cinnamon, citronella36 and—on a larger scale—cocoa were cultivated as transitional crops. Nevertheless, these crops contributed only modestly to the overcoming of the depression. Only the cultivation of cinchona was sufficiently profitable for the planters to overcome the period of depression until a suitable successor for coffee was found in tea. The role of coconut-cultivation—a largely indigenous enterprise—will be discussed separately. The produce of cinchona cultivation was the bark of the tree, which served as the raw material for the production of quinine. Quinine was mainly used for the treatment of malaria (and, less significantly, also for fl avouring), and the mid-nineteenth century saw a sharp rise in the demand for the anti-malarial drug, when European colonising efforts expanded further and further into mosquito-infested, malarial regions. The cinchona tree was native only to the forests of South America. The first consignments of young cinchona plants reached India and Ceylon only in the 1860s after an expedition under Sir

35 See Frederick Lewis, Sixty-Four Years in Ceylon: Reminiscences of Life and Adventure (Colombo: Colombo Apothecaries, 1926), 82–83. 36 L. A. Wickremeratne, “The Establishment of the Tea Industry in Ceylon. The First Phase, C 1870 to C 1900,” Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies (new series) 2, no. 2 (1972): 133.

export economy

71

Clements Markham had obtained these plants from South America.37 Thwaites realised the economic potential of the cinchona tree and started to cultivate the plants in Peradeniya and in Hakgala near Nuwara Eliya. Still in the 1860s, Thwaites had distributed substantial numbers of young cinchona plants among the planting community. This might be attributed to the shock provided to the planters by the temporary depression of the Ceylon coffee industry in 1866. The temporary slump had been caused by instabilities in the London money market and a brief lack of available capital on the island. Its long-term damage was minimal, but it might have contributed to the demand for cinchona crops as an additional financial security in times of trouble. Ameer Ali states that, between 1873 and 1876, about 3,400,000 cinchona plants have been sold to the planters (after 1872 the plants were no longer issued free of charge) and that, as early as in 1872, cinchona exports reached a value of Rs. 64,000.38 This proves that a certain section of the planting community has shown some interest in the cultivation of additional crops, when coffee was still fetching vast profits. But compared with what would have been necessary to avoid this depression and guarantee a fl uent transition to the cultivation of one or more alternative crops, little has been done. The motor behind the investments in cinchona has rarely been the awareness of the dangers of monoculture, but the inducement provided by rising prices for the commodity in the London market. Comparatively little capital was needed to cultivate cinchona. The charge for the issuance of cinchona plants—introduced in 1872—was still very low at Rs. 5 per thousand plants.39 Rarely were new lands cleared for cinchona cultivation. Instead the tree was inter-planted with coffee.40 Therefore, low investment costs and the prospect of remunerative prices induced a part of the planting community to take to cinchona cultivation in the 1870s. Only few of these pioneer planters anticipated the approaching end of the coffee industry. Much more diversification would have been needed to avert the depression of the 1880s.

37 A. C. L. Ameer Ali, “Cinchona Cultivation in Nineteenth Century Ceylon,” Modern Ceylon Studies 5, no. 1 (1974): 94. 38 Ibid.: 95. 39 Ibid. 40 Wickremeratne, “The Establishment of the Tea Industry,” 135.

72

chapter five

The cultivation of cinchona in the 1870s eventually provided the planters with alternative means of obtaining capital, when the plantation industry found itself in deep crisis. As Table 5.5 shows, the exports of cinchona rose dramatically in the first half of the 1880s. Taking into consideration that the cinchona plant needs between four and six years until its bark can be sold for the first time, the early rise of exports was only possible due to the cultivation of cinchona in the 1870s. This supports Wickremeratne’s notion that “neither the origin of the [cinchona] industry nor its early popularity had much connection with the decline of coffee”41—an assumption strongly contested by Ameer Ali.42 We cannot establish clearly to what degree the rise of cinchona cultivation was interlinked with the decline of coffee. That the tremendous rise in cinchona bark exports from about 1881 to 1886 was largely a consequence of the collapse of coffee is a well established fact. However, Table 5.6 illustrates that the socalled ‘rush’ into cinchona cultivation has taken place well before and around the year 1880. Rajaratnam has obtained his figures reproduced in Table 5.6 from Ferguson’s “Ceylon Handbook and Directory.” Thus, the figures are unofficial estimates. The data provided by the Blue Books is most unreliable when it comes to cinchona. Still, overall the Blue Book data supports Ferguson’s estimates insofar as there seems to be no extension of the acreage under cinchona after 1880. This means that the cultivation of cinchona itself was not a reaction to the coffee collapse—just as Wickremeratne has pointed it out. But the rapid increase Table 5.5: Cinchona Exports, 1881–1890. Year

Quantity (lbs)

Value (Rs)

Year

Quantity (lbs)

1881 1882 1883 1884 1885

1,314,554 4,655,944 7,489,005 11,865,280 13,736,171

1,264,615 3,849,171 4,493,403 4,151,569 3,973,879

1886 1887 1888 1889 1890

14,675,663 13,113,067 12,482,817 9,455,641 8,779,140

Value (Rs) 4,370,250 2,440,212 1,804,012 1,687,559 1,053,497

Source: Ceylon Statistical Blue Book 1890.

41

110. 42

Roberts and Wickremeratne, “Export Agriculture in the Nineteenth Century,” Ameer Ali, “Cinchona Cultivation,” 97.

export economy

73

Table 5.6: Cinchona: Acreage, Exports and Prices, 1870–1895. Year

Area (acres)

Export Quantity (lbs)

Export Value (Rs)

Price of quinine (per oz.)

1870 1875 1880 1885 1890 1895

500 5,000 45,000 39,000 30,000 —

— 19,152 1,161,989 12,325,642 8,779,140 919,820

— 17,963 1,267,141 4,128,753 1,053,497 73,586

— 12 s. 6 d. 12 s. 0 d. 4 s. 3 d. 1 s. 5 d. 1 s. 2 d.

Source: S. Rajaratnam, “Growth of Plantation Agriculture in Ceylon, 1886–1931,” Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies 4, no. 1 (1961): 3.

in cinchona exports that can be witnessed between 1880 and 1886 definitely was a consequence thereof. The skyrocketing of exports was not only due to an extension of the acreage under cinchona. As mentioned earlier, there has probably not been any significant extension of cinchona cultivation after 1880 (although the available figures leave some scope for speculation). But when the coffee crisis struck in the early 1880, the planters simply intensified the harvesting of the bark. Younger barks as well as barks of inferior quality were exported to obtain ready cash. Henry Trimen, Thwaithes’ successor as Director of the Royal Botanical Gardens, commented on this development in the Administration Report of 1882, citing Messrs. Rucker and Bencraft’s Weekly Circular from 21 December 1882: The shipments from Ceylon are very heavy, and altogether beyond what was at present expected, but they are also somewhat deceptive. A very considerable proportion of these barks are twigs, scrapings, weak branch, &c., barks, which in bales appear important and affect statistics, but from a sulphate of quinine point of view of little value. Also much young bark is being sent forward, and for these reasons we think that those who study the position of this market must be careful not to turn round now and overestimate the production in Ceylon.43

What those planters still staying in Ceylon and keeping the faith in the plantation industry needed most in the first years of the 1880s was ready capital. More and more of them saw a perspective in the

43

CO 57/86, Administration Report 1882, Royal Botanical Gardens, 9D.

74

chapter five

cultivation of tea, but—other than coffee and cinchona—tea required considerable capital input. And with coffee collapsing, the only available source of money lay in the cinchona trees planted several years ago. Henry Trimen’s statement in the Administration Report of 1891 strongly supports the opinion that the planters—from about 1881/82 onwards—did (and could) not invest any more money in the development of cinchona plantations. Instead, they exploited the existing trees, denying them any chance to regenerate and, thus, severely injuring the cinchona trees. A great drop of over 3 million lb. in our exports for 1891—to 5,679,339 lb.—shows how rapidly our trees are now being used up. Our poor barks are, however, now scarcely worth harvesting. The history of cinchona culture in Ceylon—a most interesting and instructive one—is drawing to its close.44

Cinchona cultivation in Ceylon proved to be of merely transitional character. It was a means to an end. Remunerative prices and marginal investment costs had attracted the planters, but the plant lacked the potential to take the place of coffee. This becomes very clear when we take a more general look at the development of the cinchona industry in Ceylon between 1880 and 1890. Figure 5.2 shows that as soon as cinchona exports started to rise significantly, the average price for the commodity began to fall. This is partly due to the despatching of inferior barks as mentioned above, but the main reason lies in the inelasticity of the market for cinchona. Quinine was mainly of medical use and the demand for it would not react to the usual market stimuli. With the Ceylon plantations producing as much bark as possible in the 1880s, the demand for cinchona was soon saturated and prices dropped. In absolute numbers the price of quinine fell from 12 s. 4 d. in 187845 to 4 s. 6 d. in 188446 and even further thereafter. Consequently the profits derived from cinchona production also started to drop, and the planters tried to make up for it by increasing their production and selling younger and more inferior bark. Adopting such measures they subsequently ruined their own market and the quality of their own supply. This vicious circle eventually led to the end of cinchona cultivation in the late 1880s and early 1890s. But this time the collapse of yet another 44

H13. 45 46

CO 57/115, Administration Report 1891, Royal Botanical Gardens, H12– Wickremeratne, “The Establishment of the Tea Industry,” 135. CO 57/93, Administration Report, Royal Botanical Gardens, 10D.

export economy

75

250 Volume

Value

Price

Index: 1883 = 100

200

150

100

50

0 1880 1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887

1888

1889

1890

Year

Figure 5.2: Volume, Value and Average Price of Exported Cinchona, 1880–1890 (Indexed with 1883 = 100). Source: Ceylon Statistical Blue Books 1880–1890.

major plantation sector did not have the same catastrophic effects as seen during the coffee crisis. The end was well expected, and tea filled the gap left by cinchona and coffee. Cinchona cultivation in Ceylon had only been transitional. We cannot say whether the planters of the late nineteenth century exploited and subsequently ruined their cinchona trees on purpose, knowing that this was the only way to obtain the necessary capital for the cultivation of tea. But at least these planters must have been aware of the fact, that cinchona cultivation was not a suitable agricultural alternative for the plantation districts of Ceylon—with large areas of cleared land available and waiting to be cultivated. 5.5

The Transition to Tea

Beginning in the 1870s, the interest in the cultivation of cinchona was not a direct consequence of the rapid decline of the coffee industry. The existence of reasonably large plots of lands under cinchona when coffee crashed within a few years enabled the Ceylon planters to obtain a minimum amount of capital to engage in different spheres

76

chapter five

of the plantation enterprise. Without caring about future yields or future market prospects, the planters exploited their cinchona trees and subsequently ruined their supply and their overseas market. The desperate need for capital quickened the collapse of the cinchona enterprise, and so the reason for the decline—and not the origin—of cinchona planting lies in the coffee crisis. From what has been said so far, it seems perfectly clear that cinchona could not have been an adequate substitute for coffee at any stage of its development. The characteristics of the market for quinine—i.e. infl exible demand—did not support the cultivation of cinchona on any scale comparable to coffee. But until a suitable substitute was found in the cultivation of tea, cinchona kept the planting industry going and—in a time of acute capital shortage—often provided an initial source of money to acquire tea seeds or just to financially bridge the time lag between the planting and the first harvest of tea. The first experiments with tea cultivation in Ceylon are said to predate the take-off of the coffee industry. Allegedly, the tea bush was introduced to the country as early as in 1828. Maurice Worms of Rothschild Estate was the first to put the tea bush to commercial use in Ceylon. He planted a clearing at Labookellie with Chinese tea, but the venture turned out to be a financial failure due to the high production costs and the inferior quality of the product. Early efforts of some coffee planters to inter-plant the tea bush with their coffee shared the same fate.47 Usually the credit for introducing the cultivation of tea to the island is given to James Taylor, who planted tea of the Assamese variety on Loolecondera estate in 1867—two years before the first appearance of the Coffee Leaf Disease. The expansion of tea cultivation in India had attracted the interest of the Ceylon Planters’ Association and a planter had been sent to Assam to examine the Indian tea enterprise. His report was very favourable, and consequently James Taylor and several others started to plant small plots of tea.48 The first consignment of Ceylonese tea was sent abroad in 1873.49 Nevertheless, the growth rate of this new sector remained relatively modest throughout the 1870s. Unlike cinchona the cultivation of tea could not promise 47 E. F. C. Ludowyk, The Modern History of Ceylon (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1966), 90. 48 Rajaratnam, “Growth of Plantation Agriculture,” 5. 49 S. Rajaratnam, “The Ceylon Tea Industry 1886–1931,” Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies 4, no. 2 (1961a): 169.

export economy

77

fast and high profits. For large-scale cultivation a considerable amount of capital was necessary. Thus, the basic inducements that attracted planters to cinchona did not work for tea. Table 5.7 shows the growth of the tea industry from its beginnings until 1880. Compared with the figures for cinchona (see Table 5.6) the growth of tea cultivation and tea exports was not very impressive as long as coffee still enjoyed its dominant position in the island’s economy. Only with the demise of coffee came an intensification of tea cultivation. While the coffee industry still fetched large profits in the 1860s and 1870s, several factors hampered the establishment of tea as a second plantation cash crop. First, planters were naturally reluctant to engage in the cultivation of an additional plantation crop, when the new crop required the same lands now used for coffee. True, the tea bush fl ourished on a wider range of altitudes—from almost sea level to about 6.000 ft—, but for its systematic cultivation large, cleared plots of land were necessary—land that was not freely available when coffee was still expanding. Inter-planting of coffee and tea could not be successful on any significant scale. The tea plant “required ample light and air as well as room for the roots to spread.”50 Therefore, when the tea plant was about 18 months old, neighbouring coffee bushes had to be uprooted. This became a viable option only in the 1880s—with almost all coffee estates infected by the Leaf Disease—, but was out of the question while coffee was still thriving. A second hampering factor lay in the capital-intensive nature of tea cultivation. Compared to coffee, the tea leaf required more sophisticated processing before it could be despatched to Colombo and further on from there. A five-stage process of withering, rolling, fermenting, firing and sorting the tea leaves had to be done on the spot and required suitable facilities on the estate or, at least, in a nearby tea factory. When tea production was firmly established in the island’s economy, more or less sophisticated machinery was employed to process the tea leaves. This implied a considerable outlay of capital. But in the initial phase of tea cultivation in Ceylon coolies usually processed the tea by hand. This was less capital-intensive, but—as the coolies’ capacities were limited—also less efficient in terms of output and quality of the product.51

50 51

Wickremeratne, “The Establishment of the Tea Industry,” 136. Ibid.: 137.

78

chapter five

Figure 5.3: Map of the Island of Ceylon Showing the Main Areas of Tea and Coconut Cultivation, 1899. Source: CO 700/CEYLON23a.

export economy

79

Table 5.7: Acreage and Exports of Tea, 1867–1880. Year

Acreage

Export Quantity (lbs)

Export Value (Rs)

1867 1870 1875 1876 1877 1878 1879 1880

10 250 1,080 1,750 2,720 4,700 6,500 9,274

— — 1,438 757 2,105 19,607 81,493 162,575

— — 2,402 1,907 3,457 20,900 85,229 150,641

Source: S. Rajaratnam, “Growth of Plantation Agriculture in Ceylon, 1886–1931,” Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies 4, no. 1 (1961): 5. * Acreage figures differ from the data in the Blue Books.

Large-scale tea production was even more capital-intensive in the 1880s and thereafter, when the use of machinery had become almost a must to secure a certain margin of profit. When coffee production lay ruined, the reluctance to detract money from a thriving enterprise to invest it elsewhere was substituted by the urgent search for an alternative product. The little capital left or obtained from cinchona was invested into tea. But initially resources were scarce. The coffee depression of the late 1840s had left many a planter financially dependent on the loans granted by banks and agency-houses. Coffee is not a perennial crop and can be harvested only once a year. More time passed until the produce was finally sold in the London market and the planter got his money and realised his investment. In the meantime, many planters were forced to live on loans. In such a situation, the amount of ready capital waiting to be re-invested was usually small. Another reason for the limited growth of the tea industry up to the 1880s can be found in the general market conditions for tea in Great Britain. China tea dominated the market with a small contribution made by Assamese varieties from India. Prices were not completely unprofitable, but, compared to the profit margin of the coffee industry, the incentives to plant tea were limited. Furthermore, the Ceylon planters still lacked the expertise of their Indian counterparts in the cultivation of tea. Much had to be learned as production costs were generally high and the quality of the product left much room for improvement. Yet another factor lies in the different requirements of tea concerning labour input. Tea is a perennial crop. It needs yearround attention and a permanent labour force. During the reign of

80

chapter five

‘King Coffee’ the Indian immigrant work force was generally not a resident one. The bulk of the people came to Ceylon for the harvesting season and again returned to their homes afterwards.52 Only a comparatively small labour force was necessary to run the estates during the off-season. Therefore, a rapid expansion of tea cultivation would have meant a radical change in the migration pattern of the immigrant labourers. These factors have all worked together in seriously slowing down the development of the tea industry in Ceylon—and they all share the same root: the thriving coffee industry was absorbing the capital, labour and land resources needed for the expansion of tea cultivation. With the coffee enterprise fetching good profits year after year, there was simply no place for an alternative cash crop suited only to large-scale plantation cultivation. As we have seen, the case was slightly different with cinchona, which had different requirements concerning land, labour and capital as well as better prospects for quick profits. With the sudden collapse of coffee these circumstances changed completely. The land planted with coffee did not yield enough anymore to prevent the cultivation of another crop on the same land. As mentioned earlier, tea was inter-planted with coffee on many estates. The modest produce of the coffee bushes was sold as long as possible. But when tea finally required all the available space, the coffee plants were uprooted and used as firewood. Furthermore, there were large plots of abandoned coffee land53 and lands already cleared for coffee, but still uncultivated.54 Similarly, the decline of the coffee industry brought about a surplus of labour. The coffee estates could not employ a workforce as large 52 Oddvar Hollup, Bonded Labour: Caste and Cultural Identity among Tamil Plantation Workers in Sri Lanka (New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1994), 23. The notion of the seasonality of labour immigration from India to the coffee planting districts has recently been challenged by Patrick Peebles in his work on “The Plantation Tamils of Ceylon”. Peebles attributes the “discourse about ‘seasonal labour’ ” to a certain “construction of knowledge about Plantation Tamils”. In the end, figures and tables presented by Peebles himself illustrate the partly seasonal character of labour migration during coffee times. Although he attributes the time of migration to the monsoon rather than to the coffee harvest, Peebles cannot explain the seasonal pattern of immigration and emigration he himself depicts in Figure 4.1 of his work. Altogether, the evidence presented by him to challenge the “myth of seasonal labour” is scarce and contradicts the available statistics. Patrick Peebles, The Plantation Tamils of Ceylon, New Historical Perspectives on Migration (London; New York: Leicester University Press, 2001), 81–83. 53 Wickremeratne, “The Establishment of the Tea Industry,” 135. 54 Rajaratnam, “Growth of Plantation Agriculture,” 6.

export economy

81

as in the 1870s, and between 1880 and 1886 more Indian labourers departed from Ceylon than arrived. Table 5.8 gives the figures of arrivals and departures. Table 5.8: Migration: Arrivals and Departures, 1880–1886. Arrivals Year

Men

1880 1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886

36,092 42,679 40,901 31,778 36,381 37,181 31,602

Departures

Women Children Total 6,286 7,789 7,301 4,759 6,203 6,943 5,525

3,222 3,419 2,705 2,667 3,193 3,670 2,780

45,600 53,887 50,907 39,204 45,777 47,794 39,907

Men 54,410 48,686 44,725 41,137 39,365 38,695 36,009

Women Children 12,524 9,776 8,814 8,148 7,083 6,592 6,190

6,749 4,778 4,281 3,677 3,637 3,576 3,051

Total

Difference

73,683 63,240 57,820 52,962 50,085 48,863 45,250

-28,083 -9,353 -6,913 -13,758 -4,308 -1,069 -5,343

Source: Patrick Peebles, Sri Lanka: A Handbook of Historical Statistics, A Reference Publication in International Historical Statistics (Boston, Mass.: G. K. Hall, 1982), 68.

With a surplus of Tamil labourers in Ceylon a sufficiently large supply of labour for the cultivation of tea was available. Nevertheless, Ceylon witnessed a rising percentage of Sinhalese labourers on the tea plantations in the second half of the 1880s. However, this was only partially the consequence of the re-migration of large parts of the Tamil labour force and primarily due to other factors that will be discussed in the following chapter. As land and labour were readily available, the cultivation of tea took off in the 1880s. Apart from the mere economic need for the cultivation of a new plantation crop, there were several other factors that supported the growth of the tea industry. One factor can be identified in the favourable market conditions for tea in the early 1880s. The demand for tea in the United Kingdom was steadily rising. This is generally attributed to the working classes’ rising demand for a nonalcoholic but nevertheless stimulating drink. Regarding their stimulating effects, the Indian and Ceylonese black teas had a distinct advantage over the green teas imported from China. Thus, in 1885 China still provided 62% of the tea consumed in Britain, whereas ten years later Chinese teas accounted for no more than 14%.55 Black tea has a greater stimulating effect and a lower cost per cup (while its price per pound was higher than that of green tea).56

55 56

Rajaratnam, “The Ceylon Tea Industry,” 171. Ibid.

82

chapter five

Apart from these favourable economic circumstances, the growth of tea cultivation after the coffee collapse was facilitated and enhanced by the existence of an infrastructure perfectly adapted to plantation economy. Although the cultivation of tea showed several remarkable differences to that of coffee—particularly when it came to the requirements of capital and labour—, the underlying structure of both industries remained basically the same. The tea planters initially used the same land and the same production units—i.e. estates—as they had done under coffee. The transport network that had been developed for the transportation of coffee from and supplies to the estates was equally beneficial to the tea planting community. Furthermore, the planters had already organised themselves in the Ceylon Planters’ Association in coffee times and now enjoyed—from the start—the strong backing of a highly infl uential lobby. Existing connections with banks, agency-houses, rice importers and kanganies further facilitated the establishment of the tea plantation industry. Finally, Ceylon enjoys some natural advantages concerning the suitability of the tea plant to its specific features. Climate and plantation altitudes are very favourable to the growth of tea on the island. In contrast to coffee, the tea shrub is moisture-loving and, thus, perfectly suited to the central highlands of Ceylon. Humid air and ample rainfall furthered the development of the plant and shortened the growing period, in which no tea is produced.57 Usually it takes between three and six years until the tea shrub finally becomes productive. But under favourable conditions Ceylon teas can be plucked for the first time after two (lower elevations) to five years (higher elevations).58 This gave the Ceylon tea industry a distinct advantage over the competitors in Assam and China—especially combined with the fact that in these regions the tea shrubs can be plucked only in much longer intervals than in Ceylon.59 Therefore, tea estates in Ceylon usually yielded sooner and more than their Assamese or Chinese counterparts which were the main competitors in the London tea market when the first despatches of Ceylon tea reached Mincing Lane.

57 Goutam K. Sarkar, The World Tea Economy (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1972), 1; Rajaratnam, “The Ceylon Tea Industry,” 172. 58 Rajaratnam, “The Ceylon Tea Industry,” 172. 59 Sarkar, The World Tea Economy, 1.

export economy

83

Under such favourable conditions the tea industry soon fl ourished in Ceylon. Table 5.9 shows the acreage under tea and the development of exports in the period from 1880 to 1890. Export volume and value started to climb very soon after the collapse of coffee, whereas Table 5.9 dates the beginning of the rapid expansion of the tea acreage at about 1884. One reason for this can be found in the inaccuracy of the Blue Book data, which is even more acute regarding acreage figures. But possible fl aws in the acreage data are not enough to explain the delay in the expansion of the acreage under tea compared to that of export volume and value. An increase of output per acre can be the only viable explanation for this discrepancy. According to Rajaratnam, the average yield per mature acre of tea was 158 lbs in 1880/81. By 1885/86, this has increased to 531 lbs and, by 1890/91, to 750.60 The causes for this rise in yields can partially be traced back to improved skills of the planters and of the estate labourers. Greater expertise in the planting and treatment of tea led to higher outputs and less damage in the plucking of the tea leaves. Table 5.9: Tea: Acreage and Exports, 1880–1890. Year

Acreage

Export Volume (lbs)

1880 1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 1889 1890

14,266 14,350 12,482 19,797 57,626 120,808 164,758 199,647 231,601 207,413 235,794

162,576 348,573 697,268 1,665,768 2,392,973 4,372,722 7,849,888 13,834,057 23,820,472 34,345,852 45,799,519

Export Value (Rs) 150,641 322,993 591,806 916,172 1,435,784 2,842,269 5,102,427 8,300,434 12,624,850 17,859,843 22,899,759

Source: Ceylon Statistical Blue Books 1880–1890.

Yet this increase in yield per acre—a common development in newly established agricultural industries—only explains the early climb of exports when the acreage under tea was growing at a considerably

60

Rajaratnam, “The Ceylon Tea Industry,” 176.

84

chapter five

slower pace. It does not give any explanation for the delay in the expansion of the tea acreage. Two other factors contributed to this delay, namely the shortage of capital and tea seeds. The collapse of coffee had not only ruined many a planter, banks and agency-houses were severely affected by the crash as well. Ultimately, this led to the failure of the Oriental Bank Corporation in 1884. Ceylon’s economy hit rock bottom. The immediate consequence of the financial difficulties of the banks and agency-houses was the reluctance to provide any more money to planting ventures. With little or no securities saved up during the coffee heyday and with no loans available, the planters had little capital to invest in the uncertain future of a new crop. Only the cultivation of cinchona that had begun in the 1870s suddenly fetched profits and, along with the diminishing gains from the last coffee bushes, enabled the planters to slowly gather some capital and gradually engage in the cultivation of tea. Here, it came in useful that the bulk of the capital needed for the production of tea was not instantly necessary for the cultivation of the crop. The most capital-intensive phase was the processing of the tea leaf after the plucking. And, as the first harvest would take place only two to five years after the planting of the seeds, there was time left for the accumulation of further money (unless the processing of the leaves was done by hand). Nevertheless, an initial sum was needed to obtain seeds, to convert the land, to pay the labourers and to make a living in the meantime. Thus, the desperate search for capital was one determining factor in the delay of the tea acreage expansion. Second, a shortage of tea seeds significantly slowed down the expansion of the acreage under tea. The tea industry in Assam could not cope with the exploding demand for seeds in Ceylon and was not able to supply sufficient amounts. This delayed the planting of further land with tea by providing too small amounts of tea seeds at exaggerated prices. The following passage from the “Ceylon Mercantile and Planting Directory” illustrates this: Indeed one reason why cultivation did not more rapidly extend up to 1883, was the comparative scarcity and dearness of tea seed. There was then no money to spare with many of our planters to invest in maunds of tea at Rs. 50 to Rs. 80 per maund. The cost of planting up an acre for seed alone is much more for tea than for coffee or cinchona.61

61

Quoted in Rajaratnam, “Growth of Plantation Agriculture,” 6.

export economy

85

Thus, a shortage of capital coincided with an over-demand for the expensive tea seeds. This highlights the supreme priority that the planters attached to the extension of the tea cultivation. Otherwise it would have hardly been possible to create such a demand for seeds with the little capital at hand. Another interesting aspect of this shortage is the planters’ preference for Assamese seeds. L. A. Wickremeratne states that Thwaites had already complained in the early 1870s that the Ceylon planters preferred imported Assamese seeds to those produced at the Royal Botanical Gardens. According to Wickremeratne, this preference did not change in the 1880s, as Henry Trimen—Thwaites’ successor at the Botanical Gardens—constantly repeated Thwaites’ complaint.62 The reasons for the planters’ preference for Assamese seeds are not known. And in times of capital shortage it seems irrational as the locally produced seeds were much cheaper than the imported ones. However, the lack of money and seeds merely slowed down and delayed the expansion of tea cultivation. As Table 5.9 indicates, the acreage under tea constantly increased from 1884 onwards. This has to be credited to the profits obtained from the fl ourishing cinchona trade and to the increasing supplies of Assamese tea seeds that started to fl ow into Ceylon in sufficient quantities by 1883.63 In 1887, the government revenue eventually began to recuperate slowly. The economic crisis that had come in the wake of the coffee collapse was overcome. It is indeed a rarity to find any commodity increasing so rapidly in production and showing a rise in price so constant and sustained. We feel sure that these encouraging results will tend towards even more strenuous efforts on the part of planters to excel in quality the produce of other Tea growing countries, while they continue to increase the quantity of their exports.64

Until the middle of the 1880s the cultivation of tea enjoyed very favourable world market conditions with prices steadily rising. Messrs. Gow, Wilson and Stanton—London tea brokers—commented enthusiastically on the state and prospects of the tea enterprise in 1886. But in the same year this trend was reversed and prices started to decline slowly but steadily. Initially, this did not pose a threat to the newly established tea plantation industry of the island. The cultivation

62 63 64

Roberts and Wickremeratne, “Export Agriculture in the Nineteenth Century,” 111. Rajaratnam, “Growth of Plantation Agriculture,” 6. CO 54/568, 1 March 1886/Offices and Individuals. Messrs. Gow, Wilson & Stanton.

86

chapter five

of tea was highly remunerative and remained so even with tea prices slowly declining. The main reason for the continuous decline of tea prices in the London market lay in the expansion of the Indian and Ceylon tea industries itself. The growing exports to the United Kingdom market first led to a reduction of tea imports from China. Together with the constantly increasing demand for tea in Britain this weakened the negative effects on the tea prices in the first half of the 1880s. Only from about 1885/86 onwards, the demand for tea in the London market stagnated and increased only at the same pace as the population did. But tea exports from Ceylon and India kept growing and, thus, prices started to drop. With Great Britain as the single most important market,65 its saturation had a significant effect on the development of the tea price. Table 5.10 shows the decline in tea prices in the London market in absolute figures. The data indicates that the fall of the Pound price was much more pronounced than the fall of the Rupee price. The Table 5.10: Average Tea Prices in the London Market in £ and Rs, 1884–1893. Year

Price in £/lb

1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 1889 1890 1891 1892 1893

1 s. 2¾ d. 1 s. 3¼ d. 1 s. 1 d. 1 s. ¾ d. 11¼ d. 11 d. 11 d. 10 d. 9½ d. 9¾ d.

Price in Rs/lb 75 cts. 81 cts. 76 cts. 74½ cts. 68 cts. 67 cts. 60 cts. 59 cts. 62½ cts. 65 cts.

Source: S. Rajaratnam, “The Ceylon Tea Industry 1886–1931,” Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies 4, no. 2 (1961): 177.

65 The figures given by Gow, Wilson & Stanton put the annual consumption of tea in Great Britain at 178.7 million lbs in the mid-1880s. Compared with the rest of the world this accounts for 49% of world consumption. CO 54/568, 1 March 1886/Offices and Individuals. Messrs. Gow, Wilson & Stanton.

export economy

87

indexed figures in Figure 5.4 (Index: 1884 = 100) illustrate that the Rupee price reached its lowest point in 1891 at 78.67% (= 59 cents) of the 1884 value. The Pound price in the same year could only account for 67.78% of its 1884 value and reached its lowest point a year later at 9½ d. or 64.44%. Indexed data is especially useful in this case, as it highlights the gap between the fall of the Pound price and the Rupee price. The explanation for this is the constant depreciation of the Rupee against the Pound Sterling. The fall of the silver value affected currencies with a silver standard including the Indian Rupee—the then currency of Ceylon. Rajaratnam gives the exchange rate of the Rupee against the Pound Sterling at 1 s. 7¼ d. in 1884. This continuously dropped to 1 s. 3 d. in 1893.66 The exchange rate calculated by the comparison of Blue Book data in Pound Sterling and in Indian Rupees is 1 s. 10½ d. in 1884 and 1 s. 3 d. in 1893.67 The deprecation 110

108.00

105

Index: 1884 = 100

100 95

105.04

£ Rs

99.33

101.33

100.00

90.67

90 88.12

85

86.41

86.67

89.33

83.33

80 74.61

75

76.32

70

78.67

74.61 66.15

67.78

65

64.44

60 1884

1885

1886

1887

1888

1889

1890

1891

1892

1893

Year

Figure 5.4: Average Tea Prices in the London Market in £ and Rs, 1884–1893 (Indexed with 1884 = 100). Compiled from data in S. Rajaratnam, “The Ceylon Tea Industry 1886–1931,” Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies 4, no. 2 (1961): 177.

66 67

Rajaratnam, “The Ceylon Tea Industry,” 177. Ceylon Statistical Blue Books 1884, 1893.

88

chapter five

of the silver standard Rupee considerably weakened the effects of the tea price decline on the Ceylonese tea industry. Tea could be produced with all the expenses paid in Rupees and the profits made in Pound. This guaranteed a comfortable margin of profit for the planters. Only in 1893 the Indian government stopped the issuing of Rupee notes to check the further depreciation of the currency. In 1898, India fixed the exchange rate at 1 s. 4 d. to the Rupee. Both these measures were severe blows to the Ceylon planters. Mid- and low-country estates as well as less industrialised estates lost a large part of their profit margin in 1893 and some had serious financial difficulties.68 But generally, the economic climate remained favourable for the Ceylonese planters until about 1897. In addition to the advantages gained by the depreciation of the Rupee, the consistent improvement of cultivation and processing techniques lowered the costs of production. The production costs per pound of tea were reduced by about one third between the 1880s and 1897.69 The economies of scale involved in tea production became obvious. Again, this was beneficial to the planting community. Together with the depreciation of the Rupee, the falling production costs enabled the planters to further extend the acreage under tea—even with tea prices slowly declining. Table 5.11 shows the continued growth of the acreage under tea as well as the constantly rising exports. The favourable exchange rate and the lower production costs kept the tea industry remunerative. But when we take a look at the extraordinary rise of the export volume in Table 5.11 and compare it to the expansion of the acreage under tea, it becomes clear that the increasing exports could not all be due to larger acreages. With prices steadily falling, the planters made a mistake similar to the one that they had made in cinchona cultivation in the 1880s. They tried to extract the maximum profit from their tea gardens as long as prices where still remunerative. Therefore, many planters chose to have their tea plucked very coarsely. This raised the output in terms of quantity but also seriously affected the quality of the tea. As a consequence more tea of inferior quality fl ooded the British market and contributed to a faster drop of tea prices.

68 69

Rajaratnam, “The Ceylon Tea Industry,” 181. Rajaratnam, “Growth of Plantation Agriculture,” 8.

export economy

89

The report of the Director of the Royal Botanical Gardens for the Administration Report 1896 contains the following passage: The tea industry would appear to have about reached its zenith, and a more critical period in its history seems likely to commence, demanding the attention of planters to scientific questions as to manuring, coarse or fine plucking, methods of manufacture, rotation of crops, and so on. The increased production, and the fact that the competition is now less with the hand-made teas of China than with the factory teas of India, Java, &c., will gradually render haphazard cultivation and manufacture no longer profitable.70

A further drop in tea prices came with the year 1897, when the supply of tea exceeded demand by far. Coarse plucking of tea in Ceylon played a leading role among the causes for overproduction. From 1897, onwards the Ceylonese tea industry stagnated. The profit margin was minimal, if it existed at all. Only in the very last years of the century, the planters finally resorted to finer plucking again and fetched slightly higher prices for their better tea. But the general recovery of tea prices was not to come until 1907. Meanwhile, the Ceylon planting community tried to open new markets, for instance in the United States, but these efforts were little fruitful initially. The tea enterprise in Ceylon had entered a ten-year phase of stagnation. Table 5.11: Tea: Acreage and Exports, 1890–1900. Year

Acreage

Export Volume (lbs)

1890 1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900

235,794 261,179 269,854 303,886 331,466 322,810 368,824 404,574 424,856 417,448 405,405

45,799,519 67,718,371 72,279,985 82,269,353 85,376,323 98,581,061 110,095,194 114,466,318 122,395,518 129,661,908 149,264,603

Export Value (Rs) 22,899,759 30,473,267 32,525,993 40,723,330 46,103,214 49,290,530 41,836,174 46,931,190 47,734,252 51,864,763 53,735,257

Source: Ceylon Statistical Blue Books 1890–1900.

70

CO 57/131, Administration Report 1896, Royal Botanical Gardens, H11.

90

chapter five 5.6 Tea and the Sinhalese

On the preceding pages I have discussed the economic transition of the Ceylonese plantation system from coffee to tea cultivation. But the Coffee Leaf Disease, which caused the quick fall of ‘King Coffee’ and prepared the ground for alternative plantation crops, affected coffee smallholdings as well. The Leaf Disease had spread a little slower in the native coffee holdings than it had done in the plantations, but eventually the end of peasant coffee even predated the collapse of the coffee estates. The smallholders did not have the means to resist the disease any longer. The large-scale transition from coffee to tea cultivation on the estate-level was a matter of capital. With a fully developed plantation infrastructure guaranteeing the availability of land, labour, transport and government support, the transition to tea was only temporarily hampered by the lack of sufficient financial backing. When this obstacle had been overcome, the transition was comparatively fl uent. For the peasant smallholders the case was different. The bartering of their coffee berries had provided the peasants with a cash source to pay the taxes and participate in the money market on a modest scale. Thus, they needed a suitable substitute for coffee as urgently as the planters did. Consequently, a number of peasant smallholders followed the example of the plantations and started to plant their former coffee gardens with tea shrubs. However, mostly due to the economies-of-scale involved in profitable tea production, the small-scale cultivation of tea has never reached the importance of the native coffee holdings. The bulk of the smallholders later resorted to the cultivation of coconuts, rubber, spices (such as cardamom) or vegetables71 (in descending order of importance). The peasants could not afford the expensive machinery necessary to process the green tea leaf and rarely did the processing by hand. Therefore, their only option was to sell the green leaves to nearby estates. The Director of the Botanical Gardens commented on the hardships of the tea producing smallholders: It has been suggested [. . .] that the cultivation of tea by the small native landholders in the villages might well be encouraged by Government; and during the year official applications for plants and seed have been

71

Wickremeratne, “The Establishment of the Tea Industry,” 141.

export economy

91

referred to me. It is certainly very much to be desired that some cultivation could be found for the villager to take the place of his coffee now almost totally destroyed by leaf disease; a little consideration will however, I think, show that this cannot be done by tea, at least under present circumstances. What has been proposed is that the native cultivator should sell his green leaf at the factories of the neighbouring planters. He would thus be entirely at the mercy of the buyer, who, it is but reasonable to expect, would not care to pay more (it would be probably less) per pound than what it costs him on his own, perhaps large, highly-cultivated, and well-worked estate. Such a price would be a miserable return to the native grower for a crop which he has secured at the expense of, for him, much time, care, and trouble, and would be far inferior to that he could obtain by other easier cultivations. Tea is not a profitable product to grow in small quantity; and I cannot recommend that its cultivation in the villages should be encouraged, when there are many other more suitable and more profitable products available.72

Concerning number, size and productivity of tea smallholdings we do not have anything comparable to the data available on native coffee.73 But we know that—despite the economies-of-scale involved—some peasant smallholders engaged in the cultivation of tea due to the great demand for the green leaves.74 This is especially true for the mid1880s, when tea prices were highly remunerative and the demand for tea by far exceeded the supply. In his seminal article on the “Establishment of the Tea Industry”, L. A. Wickremeratne even suggests that, until 1897, it were profitable for the European planter to buy the smallholders’ green leaves for further processing.75 Unfortunately, we do not have any reliable data to support or oppose this opinion. Nevertheless, it seems reasonable to assume that, by the 1890s, the general state of the world market for tea did not offer any further inducements to the smallholder to stick to tea production. Usually, the price for the smallholder product is the first to drop, and with a more and more saturated market the demand for green leaf among the European planters decreased. But we lack the statistical data to

CO 57/95, Administration Report 1885, Royal Botanical Gardens, 9D. Snodgrass gives some figures on the tea acreage held by smallholders, but his figures are “based on an assumed constancy of their relative shares in total acreage” and probably not particularly accurate. Snodgrass, An Export Economy in Transition, 49. 74 Wickremeratne, “The Establishment of the Tea Industry,” 139. 75 Ibid. 72 73

92

chapter five

support this assumption. The few figures on peasant tea cultivation given by Wickremeratne—mostly derived from District Reports—cannot support either opinion by themselves.76 5.7

The Evolution of Coconut Plantations

The disastrous impact of the Coffee Leaf Disease on the general economic state of Ceylon has impressively shown the potential risks involved in cash crop monoculture. The transition to the cultivation of tea did not by itself change the prevalence of monoculture in Ceylon. Tea simply took the place held by coffee and absorbed land, labour and capital generated by decades of coffee cultivation. On the European-owned plantations, monoculture remained the prevailing mode of production. The first diversification in this sector came with the advent of rubber cultivation in the very last years of the nineteenth century. But outside the European-owned plantations, a certain diversification in the export sector took place much earlier—with the emergence of the coconut palm as a potential plantation crop. The cultivation of the coconut palm was nothing new to the Ceylonese. It had been planted and cultivated for ages in and around the villages. The fruits of the ‘tree of life’ were used to obtain food and drink, but a variety of other products—allegedly as many as 101— could be made from the coconuts or from other parts of the tree. Every village had at least one plot of land planted with coconuts for local use and the cultivation of coconuts was and remained a smallholder-dominated enterprise from the start. Around 1860, the acreage under coconuts started to expand considerably for the first time. Michael Roberts attributes this to the improved communications on the island,77 whereas I identify the decisive impulse in the extension of the money market to the villages. Like the coffee smallholders in higher altitudes, the Low-Country peasants needed a cash source to pay the taxes. Roberts’ improved communications definitely facilitated the participation in the export sector and offered an additional incentive. In 1870, the export of coconuts and coconut products amounted

76 77

Ibid.: 138–41. Roberts and Wickremeratne, “Export Agriculture in the Nineteenth Century,” 103.

export economy

93

to 4% of total exports78 and was increasing steadily. The Blue Books put the acreage under coconuts at 524,334 in 1880. By 1900, this figure has climbed to 846,115 acres.79 Coconuts thrive best on sandy, coastal soils and, therefore, the primary areas of cultivation were found on the Jaffna peninsula, on the east coast (especially around Batticaloa), on the south coast and—above all—in the so-called coconut triangle delimited by Colombo, Kurunegala and Chilaw (see Figure 5.3). Especially in the coconut triangle, the cultivation of coconuts became an outlet for the capital of indigenous entrepreneurs. Sinhalese and Tamil investors established the first coconut plantations (apart from a few European ventures in the early 1840s),80 and the plantation sector witnessed its first significant diversification since the early coffee boom. Snodgrass estimates that as late as in 1951 the European participation in coconut cultivation amounted to not more than 15%.81 While European capitalists played a role in the processing of coconut products and in the overseas trade, they held only a very small stake in its cultivation. There is no reliable acreage data for the plantations or for the smallholdings. The Blue Books give the total acreage under coconut, but these figures are generally suggested to be inaccurate. The Blue Book data does not even differ between the acreage planted on plantations and on smallholdings. Again, Snodgrass gives the only estimate on that topic: he says that between 20 to 25% of the coconut acreage belonged to estates in the year 1951.82 A few pages later, he gives a table on acreages cultivated by the estates or by the peasants. In this table, he puts the plantation acreage at 40% of the total coconut land—and this for the year 1871.83 The export of coconut products expanded considerably in the last twenty years of the nineteenth century. Unlike coffee or tea, the coconut palm produces the raw material for more than one export commodity.

78 79 80

103.

Rajaratnam, “Growth of Plantation Agriculture,” 9. Ceylon Statistical Blue Books, 1880, 1900. Roberts and Wickremeratne, “Export Agriculture in the Nineteenth Century,”

Snodgrass, An Export Economy in Transition, 44. Ibid. 83 Again, these figures are “based on an assumed constancy of their relative shares in total acreage” and cannot be taken as reliable. Ibid., 49. 81 82

94

chapter five

Coconut oil, copra, desiccated coconut, coir and whole coconuts were the primary export articles during our period of observation. Table 5.12 gives an overview of the development of these exports between 1881 and 1900. Table 5.12 depicts the rising value of coconut exports from Rs 3.4 million in 1881 to Rs 15.6 million in 1900. This brought an increase from 9.4% of the total exports of Ceylon in 1881 to 16.4% in 1900. Furthermore, the increase in percentage must be viewed against the background of the economic depression and the low export rate in the early 1880s. This lays additional stress on the rising importance of coconut cultivation. In the period covered by Table 5.12 the first notable diversification of the Ceylonese export sector has taken place. Contributing 16.4% of the total exports, the coconut industry had a major share in the export economy of the island. But, as mentioned above, this did not necessarily mean a diversification of the European plantation system at the same time. While indigenous—mostly LowCountry Sinhalese and some Tamil—entrepreneurs sank a considerable amount of money into the cultivation of coconuts, the European planters showed little interest in this enterprise. The reasons for this are not entirely clear, but some determining factors can be named: Firstly, coconut palms thrive best in the coastal lowlands—that means exactly in those areas, where coffee and tea yield the worst results. Therefore inter-planting coconut with tea or coffee has never been an option for the planters. Since the establishment of the coffee industry, the focal point of the European planting interest has always been in the central highlands. For the proprietor-planter of the coffee- and early tea-period it would have meant a considerable administrative effort to set up an additional venture in the lowlands. Furthermore, the European planter would have had to face the competition of the countless smallholders, who held the bulk of the coconut lands. The incentives for the native smallholder to participate in the cultivation of coconuts need no further explanation, as he has been used to the coconut palm and its produce since ancient times and saw it as a source for ready money now. And for the indigenous entrepreneurs, the coconut plantations constituted the ideal outlet for his surplus money. It required substantially less capital than any of the highland plantation ventures. As a large number of these entrepreneurs were of Low-Country Sinhalese or Tamil origin, suitable lands for the cultivation of coconut palms were conveniently located for them. Additionally, many of those indigenous plantation owners

export economy

95

(or their family members) had their primary source of income in the arrack trade. This was a further inducement to engage in the planting of coconut palms, because it led to a certain degree of vertical economic integration as the raw material for the distillation of arrack is derived from the coconut palm. Table 5.12: Export Value of Coconut Products, 1881–1900. Year

Nuts Rs (000)

Oil Rs (000)

Copra Rs (000)

1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 1889 1890 1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900

62.3 103.7 149.5 120.5 90.6 234.2 335.4 226 282.1 471.8 284.4 423.6 519.8 424.9 571.6 624.9 589.5 515.7 417.2 646.3

2,508.4 2,625.2 4,335.4 4,778.1 3,300.1 3,451 4,025.1 4,531.2 4,728.1 4,588.6 5,309.7 7,025.5 4,045 6,993.2 6,521.5 6,079.6 6,383.3 6,109.2 6,062.4 6,673.2

365.6 716.8 1,496.2 1,644.3 1,277 1,377.4 1,070.6 1,268.1 429.4 1,480.8 921.4 1,625.1 1,252.5 579.4 450.6 564.7 1,328.5 5,023.7 3,195.8 3,930.7

Coir Desiccated Rs (000) Rs (000) 464.3 549.2 756.2 757.9 746.1 688.2 682.5 747.7 909.7 855.7 1,030.8 1,089.6 1,123.6 1,199.4 1,240.2 1,118.1 1,716.7 1,892.6 1,430.7 2,066.4

— — — — — — — — — — — 369.8 597.4 1,001.2 1,658.3 2,051.1 2,152 2,331.7 2,294.7 2,237.5

Total Rs (000) 3,400.6 3,994.9 6,737.3 7,300.8 5,413.8 5,750.8 6,113.6 6,773 6,349.3 7,396.9 7,546.3 10,533.6 7,538.3 10,198.1 10,442.2 10,438.4 12,170 15,872.9 13,400.8 15,554.1

Source: Ceylon Statistical Blue Books, 1881–1900.

Although the Europeans showed little interest in the cultivation of coconuts, they played a more significant part in the processing of the nuts. The pressing of coconut oil, for instance, was normally not done on the estates or smallholdings. Oil mills—partly under European ownership—produced the oil. Especially the larger and better-equipped oil mills were often owned by the British. I do not know of any reliable statistics on the proportion of British ownership of oil mills, but the statistics on oil mills given in the Blue Books show a very pronounced increase in the number of mills from 1880 to 1900 (leaving aside the usual heavy fl uctuations, here especially

96

chapter five

for the years 1880 and 1900). The figures given in Table 5.13 also support that many villages or individuals owned small oil presses and processed the produce of the smallholdings themselves. The evolution of the coconut palm as a plantation crop started in the 1870s and gained more and more momentum in the last two decades of the nineteenth century. Since the days of cinnamon, the export sector of the island saw the first significant diversification. Still contributing only a modest percentage to the total export volume, the coconut industry could not save the day during the depression of the early 1880s. But with the ruin of peasant coffee, coconut cultivation in the villages became even more popular and useful. By 1900, coconut products contributed 16.4% of the total export value. By then, the export sector had witnessed a real diversification. Table 5.13: Number of Oil Mills in Ceylon, 1880–1900. Year

Oil Mills

Year

Oil Mills

1880 1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 1889 1890

1,703 1,433 1,616 1,969 1,922 1,807 2,141 1,942 1,831 1,822 2,012

1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900

2,150 2,533 2,711 2,656 2,746 3,293 2,792 2,216 2,461 1,863

Source: Ceylon Statistical Blue Books, 1880–1900.

5.8

Diversification: The Emergence of Rubber Plantations

The very last years of the nineteenth century finally saw the rise to importance of another cash crop—rubber. Again, several independent factors contributed to the spread of rubber cultivation. The ceara and hevea rubber varieties had been introduced to Ceylon in the 1870s. Rubber trees were planted at the Botanical Gardens, but could not satisfy the expectations of future cultivators. In 1883, only 977 acres were planted with the ceara variety and—as the cultivation did not yield profits—many of the ceara trees were replaced by tea. Although

export economy

97

the seeds of the hevea variety were distributed among the planters, by 1898 only 1,071 acres had been planted with rubber.84 The small profitability of rubber cultivation was only one reason for its hesitant spread in the late nineteenth century. Another factor that hampered the development of the rubber industry can be found in the capitalintensive transition of the highland-plantations to tea, absorbing the money as well as the uncultivated lands needed for the cultivation of rubber. Table 5.14: Acreage under Rubber, 1900–1913. Year

Acreage

Year

1900 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908

1.750 25.000 40.000 100.000 150.000 180.000

1909 1910 1911 1912 1913

Acreage 184.000 203.000 215.000 217.000 220.000

Source: S. Rajaratnam, “Growth of Plantation Agriculture in Ceylon, 1886–1931,” Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies 4, no. 1 (1961): 11.

After the transitional period, in which most planters had a very narrow focus on the large-scale cultivation of tea, remunerative tea prices further hampered early progress in rubber cultivation. However, this changed quickly in the late 1890s, when tea prices reached rock-bottom level. Additionally, other developments suddenly made investments in rubber a much safer bet. First, with the introduction of para rubber, a variety more suited to the soil and climate of Ceylon was now available for cultivation. Second, experiments of the Botanical Gardens staff increased the latex yield considerably and showed that rubber trees could be tapped at an age of six to seven years, not at ten as previously supposed.85 The most important inducement, however, was the rapid rise of rubber prices in the world market caused by an ever-growing demand of the industry—especially the automobile industry. Still, there were only 1,750 acres under rubber in the year

84 Lennox Algernon Mills, Ceylon under British Rule, 1795–1932. With an Account of the East India Company’s Embassies to Kandy 1762–1795 (London: Frank Cass, 1964), 254. 85 Ibid.

98

chapter five

1900,86 but with unprofitable tea prices and highly remunerative rubber prices, rubber cultivation finally took off around 1904. Table 5.15: Acreage under Cultivation of Main Crops, 1880–1900. Year

Paddy

Other Grain

Coffee

Tea

Cinnamon

Coconuts

Cinchona*

1880 1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 1889 1890 1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900

583,118 549,292 579,245 605,757 604,464 597,977 605,184 562,016 574,220 585,422 536,367 563,421 613,176 545,940 564,864 589,077 619,388 632,627 647,910 645,358 672,584

232,205 150,551 138,741 109,089 108,733 108,298 131,230 181,007 130,564 130,227 124,302 122,418 105,066 124,149 122,329 138,663 120,524 95,485 105,962 98,728 109,095

341,461 361,839 324,619 292,779 231,976 192,435 136,388 104,108 72,776 71,554 66,530 55,924 42,933 33,048 20,931 22,475 23,003 19,477 19,023 11,932 7,086

14,266 14,350 12,482 19,797 57,626 120,808 164,758 199,647 231,601 207,413 235,794 261,179 269,854 303,886 331,466 322,810 368,824 404,574 424,856 417,448 405,405

31,144 32,057 33,460 34,652 36,065 113,980** 39,026 36,169 46,127 37,331 40,336 40,447 40,055 39,580 39,816 40,475 40,679 42,289 46,117 37,792 39,619

524,334 525,066 555,718 556,166 577,780 550,367 606,134 628,304 643,641 656,766 649,869 759,605 766,512 776,977 854,221 862,582 871,245 878,909 864,296 895,576 846,115

n/a 32,473 n/a n/a n/a n/a 29,000 3,462 10,589 30,084 39,587 12,127 11,430 4,136 2,062 4,336 3,979 891 749 747 437

Source: Ceylon Statistical Blue Books 1880–1900. * Data on cinchona is unreliable ** Misspelling

The figures in Table 5.14 show the rapid increase in the cultivation of rubber after 1904. Exports of rubber rose. In 1911, the value of rubber exports amounted to 20% of the total export value of Ceylon.87 As mentioned above, rubber’s rise to prominence in the export sector has only begun in the first years of the twentieth century, but the foundations had been laid in the last years of the 1890s. Again, a slump in the primary industry—tea in this case—facilitated the rise of an additional crop. World market prices further induced the planters to take up cultivation. Thus, the last years of the nineteenth century eventually witnessed a diversification of the export sector that involved not only smallholders and indigenous investors (like coconut cultivation) but European plantation owners as well. The first reliable

86 87

Rajaratnam, “Growth of Plantation Agriculture,” 10. Ibid.: 11.

export economy

99

data on the distribution of the rubber acreage among smallholders, indigenous entrepreneurs and European planters is available only for the year 1934. Nevertheless, these figures shed a little more light on the nature of proprietorship of rubber holdings. In that year, 23.4% of the rubber acreage belonged to Sterling company estates, smallholders accounted for 22.5% and “other estates” (indigenous or European proprietor-planters) held 54.1%.88 Therefore, rubber cultivation was a viable option for the smallholder on the one hand, while it also attracted the professional planter. 5.9

Transition—Consolidation—Diversification

From 1880 to 1900 Ceylon saw three main phases in the development of its plantation-based export agriculture. The first half of the 1880s witnessed the collapse of the coffee industry, followed by a deep economic depression on the island. The transition of the former coffee lands to tea cultivation absorbed a huge amount of capital derived from the export of intermediary products like cinchona. From about 1886 onwards, tea had established itself firmly on the island and constituted the largest part of the export earnings. Tea prices remained remunerative throughout the 1880s and about the first half of the 1890s. During this period, the cultivation of tea expanded further and consolidated its position in the island’s economy. The first diversification of the monoculture still prevailing in the Ceylonese agricultural export sector came with the establishment of coconut estates in the 1870s. Between 1880 and 1900, the cultivation of coconut palms and the export of coconut produce steadily increased in economic importance. Nevertheless, this first diversification almost exclusively affected indigenous smallholders and investors. The European plantation sector witnessed its first notable diversification in the first years of the twentieth century with the large-scale introduction of rubber cultivation. The roots for this development can be traced back to the slump of the tea industry from 1897 to about 1907 and the remunerative prices for rubber in the world market. In the period 1880 to 1900, rubber exports had not yet reached a significant level, but in the last years of the century the foundations for the diversification

88 Percentages calculated from N. Ramachandran, Foreign Plantation Investment in Ceylon, 1889–1958 (Colombo: Central Bank of Ceylon, 1963), 2.

100

chapter five

of monoculture were laid. Table 5.15 shows the development of the total acreage under cultivation between 1880 and 1900. Table 5.16 gives an overview on the contribution of the main export crops to the total export volume in the years 1880 to 1900. Figure 5.5 converts the data from Table 5.16 into a diagram. The transition from coffee to tea as the staple cash crop is visualised here. The steady growth of the export value of coconut products is a prominent feature of these years as well. This chapter tried to give a brief introduction to the developments in the export agriculture sector of Ceylon. Periods of prosperity as well as periods of depression caused by the prevailing state of the export economy left a mark on the island’s social history. Therefore, we can say that the export economy with its ups and downs established the general pattern of the social development of Ceylon. Almost all aspects of society felt the impact of the coffee collapse, and only the take-off of the tea industry revived the paralysed colony. It will be the task of the following chapters to examine the effects of Ceylon’s economic cycles on the social history of the island. 120000 Other Exports Cinchona Coconut Products Coffee Tea

Export Value (000 Rs)

100000 80000 60000 40000 20000

Year

Figure 5.5: Coffee, Tea, Cinchona and Coconut Exports in Relation to the Total Export Value, 1880–1900. Compiled from data in the Ceylon Statistical Blue Books, 1880–1900.

1900

1899

1898

1896 1897

1895

1894

1893

1891 1892

1890

1889

1888

1887

1886

1885

1884

1883

1882

1880 1881

0

export economy

101

Table 5.16: Coffee, Tea, Cinchona and Coconut Exports in % of the Total Export Value, 1880–1900. Year

Tea

Coffee

Coconut Products

Cinchona

Other Exports

1880 1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 1889 1890 1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900

0.30 0.89 1.63 1.90 4.26 7.94 14.62 20.74 32.06 38.06 44.79 51.83 52.23 59.04 64.01 63.60 61.11 60.42 55.91 51.06 56.59

62.89 56.26 47.18 27.07 34.11 32.98 21.81 26.83 18.74 11.64 10.34 9.10 4.86 5.78 3.70 6.94 2.26 1.81 0.99 1.32 0.60

11.66 9.40 10.98 13.95 21.65 15.13 16.48 15.28 17.20 13.53 14.47 12.83 16.92 10.93 14.16 13.47 15.25 15.67 18.59 13.19 16.38

2.50 3.49 10.58 9.30 12.31 11.11 12.52 6.10 4.58 3.60 2.06 1.14 1.32 0.40 0.28 0.09 0.10 0.04 0.11 0.05 0.07

22.64 29.95 29.63 47.78 27.67 32.84 34.57 31.05 27.43 33.18 28.34 25.10 24.68 23.85 17.85 15.88 21.29 22.06 24.39 34.38 26.37

Source: Ceylon Statistical Blue Books 1880–1900.

CHAPTER SIX

RESOURCES 6.1 The Factors of Production Apart from the role played by indigenous entrepreneurs in the cultivation of coconut palms and, later, rubber trees, the plantation economy in Ceylon has been dominated by European planters and investors. The large-scale, market-oriented establishment of plantation agriculture would not have happened in the nineteenth century without the infl ux of its protagonists and the bulk of the production factors from outside. Snodgrass stated that in the plantation economy of nineteenth-century Ceylon land had been the only factor of production that could not be brought in from abroad.1 The availability of raw material is only a subordinate factor of production in an agricultural economy. The necessary supply of seeds or plants can usually be obtained from the plantations or other production units themselves, where a certain amount of land and labour is often set aside for this task. Only in the initial phase of the cultivation of a certain crop, raw material shortages can hamper the development of the new industry—as it happened during the transition from coffee to tea in Ceylon. Water can also be defined as a raw material in agricultural production. In several other tropical plantation economies the supply of water has been an important factor of production. Due to the location of most of the Ceylonese plantations in the central highlands—and therefore in the so-called wet zone—the supply of water has usually been abundant. Nevertheless, initially other difficulties arose from the plantations’ location in the interior of the island. Transport and communication were little developed in these regions. Therefore, the development of the island’s transport infrastructure became as important as the availability of land, labour and capital to the plantation economy. The fifth factor of production, control,

1 Donald R. Snodgrass, Ceylon. An Export Economy in Transition (Homewood, Ill.: R. D. Irwin, 1966), 65.

104

chapter six

in our context subsumes the infl uence wielded by the planting community in Ceylon, to secure the prevalence or creation of—to the planters—favourable conditions concerning the availability of land, labour, capital and infrastructure and the cooperation of the political authorities. The dependence of the colony on the revenue derived from sources connected with the plantation economy gave considerable powers to the planting body. The planters exerted these powers with great skills and little misgiving. 6.2

Land

Land is indeed the one factor of production that cannot be brought into a region from outside. In the last years of the nineteenth century, this fact became a more and more important point of consideration for all parties involved in the plantation industry. Capital was partially self-generating, and large investments from outside provided the bulk of the required monetary means. Labour could be obtained from the overpopulated and poverty-stricken rural regions of Tamil Nadu in South India. But suitable plantation land was gradually becoming a rare commodity in the last decades of the nineteenth century. As early as in 1880, Governor Longden—in a despatch to the Secretary of State—described the situation in the central highlands as follows: From Matale in the North to Saffragam in the South and from Dolosbage in the West to Badulla in the East almost all the Forest lands on the slopes and crests of the mountains below 5000 feet in height and much above that elevation have long since been granted or sold by the Government to Coffee Planters. So unreserved was the sale of the land throughout much of this wide district, that I could not obtain in the whole of Dimbula, Dickoya, or Maskeliya sites for Police stations or other purposes without purchasing private property. The lands still remaining to the Crown in this region comprise for the most part the summits of some of the higher mountains on which only stunted trees are found, the great grassy downs or savannahs called here “patennas” on which no trees are found, and some small reservations made of late years.2

This had not always been so. The central highlands of Ceylon, the focal point of the plantation interest, had never been a densely popu2

CO 54/528, 30 September 1880/No. 164. Longden to Kimberley.

resources

105

lated region. Suitable coffee land for the establishment of plantations had generally been abundant. The planters obtained the necessary land by grants—or later by the sale—of Crown Lands. Following the assumption that under the Kandyan kings all land had been the exclusive property of the Crown, the British colonial administration declared all uncultivated or unoccupied lands—i.e. lands that had not been granted earlier—to be Crown Lands. This assumption has already been identified as being erroneous.3 Nevertheless, it soon became the legal basis for all government policies concerning rights to land. In the previous chapter, we have already discussed the implementation of Ordinance 12 of 1840—the so-called “Crown Lands Encroachment Ordinance.” This ordinance provided the legal framework for the creation of security of titles to land. It is important to see that the “Crown Lands Encroachment Ordinance” did not aim at an expulsion of the peasantry from their paddy lands. It did not even directly aim at any alienation of peasant land. To make additional land available for sale was not necessary at that point, but the planters—and therefore the colonial government—felt the urgent need to legally secure their titles to the land they had already acquired. This was necessary, because the early coffee plantations were often established on former chena lands in order to save capital and labour otherwise required to clear the land.4 This practice frequently led to the raise of native claims to this former chena land and therefore to the questioning of the planters’ land titles. From the planters’ point of view, this potential source of insecurity to investments had to be done away with—by means of implementing the “Crown Lands Encroachment Ordinance.” By the late 1840s, the coffee planters slowly developed a taste for the virgin forest lands of higher altitudes. They had discovered that these lands were even better suited to the cultivation of the coffee bush than the former chena lands. In 1882, the report of D. A. Vincent on Forest Administration located the bulk of the coffee estates at elevations between 3.000 and 5.000 feet.5 These are considerably higher Michael Roberts, “Land Problems and Policies, C 1832 to C 1900,” in University of Ceylon History of Ceylon. From the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century to 1948, ed. Kingsley M. De Silva (Peradeniya: University of Peradeniya, 1973), 124. 4 Asoka Bandarage, Colonialism in Sri Lanka: The Political Economy of the Kandyan Highlands, 1833–1886, vol. 39, New Babylon, Studies in the Social Sciences (Berlin; New York: Mouton, 1983), 88. 5 Quoted in ibid. 3

106

chapter six

regions than those initially used for the establishment of plantations. Regarding the supply of land, the expansion of coffee cultivation in higher altitudes brought vast tracts of forest lands—largely Crown Lands—on the land market and hence relaxed the competition between planters and peasants for land in the lower elevations. The tremendous expansion of the acreage under coffee during the 1850s, 60s and 70s mainly took place in those higher elevations and in the sparsely populated regions of the ‘Peak Wilderness.’ This cushioned the negative impact of plantation growth on the village land supplies and slowed down the intensification of confl icts over land. But when such confl icts occurred, Ordinance 12 of 1840 provided the administration with the legal means necessary to settle them—more often than not to the advantage of the planters. However, with the ever-rising demand for coffee land on the one hand and expanding villages on the other, the confl ict over land gained momentum again. The peasants moved to higher elevations in their search for potential chena lands and the competition between peasant and plantation coffee cultivators became more marked.6 At the same time, the peasants’ dependence on chena cultivation as an additional source of subsistence steadily increased because of the rapid expansion of the coffee estates in the higher elevations. According to Ameer Ali,7 Sakar8 and Webb9 the coffee plantations seriously cut into the water supplies of the peasants’ lands at lower altitudes. As wet rice cultivation depends heavily on regular and adequate water supplies, the output of the village paddy fields gradually decreased. Consequently, the peasants’ need for chenas producing supplementary crops became more pronounced. Although the expansion of the coffee plantations to higher elevations initially relaxed the competition for land, later it forced many villagers to move to higher elevations in their search for suitable chena lands. Native claims to coffee plantation lands became more frequent again, and, subsequently, the government’s critical view of chena cultivation further intensified. Roberts identifies the period Ibid., 102–03. A. C. L. Ameer Ali, “Peasant Coffee in Ceylon During the 19th Century,” Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies (new series) 2, no. 1 (1972): 56. 8 N. K. Sarkar, “The Demography of Ceylon” (Unpubl. PhD Thesis, University of London, 1954), 390. 9 James L. A. Webb, Tropical Pioneers: Human Agency and Ecological Change in the Highlands of Sri Lanka, 1800–1900, Ohio University Press Series in Ecology and History (Athens, Oh.: Ohio University Press, 2002), 87–88. 6 7

resources

107

from the 1850s to the 1870s—i.e. the period of the quickest expansion of coffee cultivation—as the time, when the government significantly increased its pressure against chena cultivation.10 In the 1860s, the colonial government began to place tight restrictions on the issuing of chena licenses. Roberts further points out that these restrictions were rigorously enforced especially in the Wet Zone regions.11 Officially, the reason for this was the greater dependence of the population in the Dry Zone on the crops cultivated on chena lands, whereas chenaing in the Wet Zone, allegedly, was only wasteful to the land resources in terms of productivity. Generally, the ever-increasing dependence of the villagers in the central highlands on their chenas was neglected, and the restrictions on licenses naturally placed additional lands at the free disposal of the Crown. With the collapse of the coffee industry, the tensions over land rights significantly relaxed. Large plots of former coffee land were now planted with tea. The rapid expansion of tea cultivation primarily took place at the expense of coffee. Little virgin land was brought under cash crop cultivation, as opened-up land was readily available. And new investors could obtain ruined coffee estates at nominal prices. Therefore, the growth of the pressure on land stagnated for several years. Additionally, the planters were well aware of the fact, that tea could be grown on almost any altitude from sea level to the highest peaks of the island. This increased the availability of potential tea land and took tea cultivation not only to the highest regions but to parts of the Southern Province as well. Although the additional supply of potential lands for tea cultivation as well as the availability of already opened-up coffee land lessened the intensity of the confl ict for land for a while, this did not mean that planters and peasants did not clash over such questions anymore. In those regions where land was already in short supply, the peasants’ struggle for subsistence went on. Open confl icts were less frequent, but where they occurred, they were usually solved along the lines defined in the preceding decades: with the implementation of several notorious ordinances throughout the 1850s and the 1860s, the colonial administration had created the necessary machinery to settle almost

10 11

Roberts, “Land Problems and Policies,” 128. Ibid.

108

chapter six

any possible confl ict.12 Generally, the burden of proof fell on the peasant—a practice established with Ordinance 12 of 1840. After 1888/89, when the prospering tea industry had led Ceylon out of the depression caused by the coffee collapse, land became a rare commodity again. The progressing expansion of tea cultivation intensified the struggle for land again. As many peasants had lost their only source of cash income with the ruin of peasant coffee, their dependence on chena cultivation had increased during the 1880s. Another contributing factor to this development can be found in the rigorous enforcement of Ordinance 5 of 1866 starting during the depression of the 1880s. This ordinance provided measures for the “seizure and sale of paddy land for the default of the paddy tax”.13 During the years of depression the ordinance was implemented to the letter for the first time in order to recover at least partially the heavy losses in revenue caused by the coffee collapse.14 In the worst case, the paddy lands were seized for default of the tax and sold to recover the arrears. The sale of these lands did not directly benefit the planters looking for plantation land. The location of the paddy fields usually did not suit the requirements for the cultivation of tea. The main impact of such evictions concerning the struggle for land was—again—an increased dependence of the evicted, landless peasants on chena crops. Due to these developments, the planters’ and the peasants’ interests collided again in the late 1880s. The demand of the plantation enterprise for new lands became even greater in the 1890s. In the year 1891 lands sales and grants to Europeans in the planting regions rose considerably again. Especially in Uva and Sabaragamuwa an expansion of the tea estates took place at that time. The statistics on land sales in the Blue Books indicate an increase in the acreage sold to Europeans, while the amount of land sold to natives steadily fell.15 Later in the 1890s, the Ceylon 12 The most prominent among those ordinances are the “Private Roads Bill” (allowing the construction of private roads through village lands), the “Bill Against Coffee Stealing” (placing restrictions on the possession of coffee and therefore hampering the development of the native coffee sector), the “Land Registration Ordinance” (increasing the security of land tenure) and the “Partition Ordinance” (splitting up land under joint ownership and therefore facilitating the alienation of the land). See Bandarage, Colonialism in Sri Lanka, 239–42. 13 D. Wesumperuma, “Land Sales under the Paddy Tax in British Ceylon,” Vidyodaya Journal of Arts, Science and Letters 2, no. 1 (1969): 19. 14 Ibid., 19–20. 15 Ceylon Statistical Blue Books, 1890–1900.

resources

109

government responded to the increased demand for tea land by implementing the so-called “Waste Lands Ordinance” in 1897. This ordinance was designed to further curb the peasants’ engagement in chena cultivation and to throw additional land on the market. All forest, waste and unoccupied or uncultivated lands which can be only cultivated after intervals of several years, shall be presumed to be the property of the Crown, until the contrary thereof be proved.16

This was basically only a re-enactment of Clause 6 of the “Crown Lands Encroachment Ordinance” of 1840. However, this time the ordinance was strictly enforced and the additional legal measures incorporated in the ordinance were rigorously made use of. Bandarage points out that “the very necessity for the passage of this Ordinance suggests that the confl ict over highlands was far from resolved”17 in the late 1890s. This view is strongly supported by a contemporary article “Crown Landgrabbing in Ceylon” in “Truth”, submitted to the Colonial Office and stored in the Original Correspondence: But the Government has nevertheless continued down to the present time its policy of seizing, by force if necessary, the lands which it claims; and an amending Ordinance is now under consideration which would legalise the proceedings which the Supreme Court has pronounced to be illegal, and equip the Crown with more formidable and inequitable powers than it already possesses for appropriating the property of its subjects. The extent of the interests affected may be gauged from the fact that the notices already given under the Ordinance of 1897 affect no less than 140,000 acres of land. The vast majority of the owners or claimants of this land are not, like Mr. Le Mesurier, acquainted with the law, and competent to defend their rights, but are ignorant and helpless villagers.18

The figure given in the article illustrates the impact of the “Waste Lands Ordinance” on the central highlands of Ceylon. The article was submitted to the Colonial Office in March 1899—i.e. approximately two years after implementation of Ordinance 1 of 1897. According to “Truth”, 140,000 acres of land had already been claimed by the Crown during that time. Not all of these lands became Crown Lands. And maybe the figure given is also exaggerated for propagandist 16 CO 56/14, Ceylon Acts 1896–1899, Ordinance 1 of 1897, “An Ordinance relating to Claims to Forest, Chena, Waste and Unoccupied Lands,” 9 February 1897. 17 Bandarage, Colonialism in Sri Lanka, 122. 18 CO 54/659, 16 March 1899/Offices and Individuals. “Truth.”

110

chapter six

reasons. But considering the fact that between 1833 and 1880 the average amount of Crown Land sold per year was 25,000 acres (according to D. A. Vincent’s report),19 the importance and efficiency of the “Waste Lands Ordinance” as a landgrabbing tool becomes clear. To illustrate the determination with which the government now became engaged in the enforcement of Ordinance 1 of 1897 and, therefore, in the appropriation and subsequent disposal of Crown Land, I will briefl y refer to the case of Mr. Le Mesurier, who has already been mentioned in the quotation above. His case shows clearly that the government would not tolerate any criticism of its approach to the land question and that it would apply the powers provided by the “Waste Lands Ordinance” with full force whenever necessary. While Assistant Government Agent (AGA) of Nuwara Eliya Cecil J. R. Le Mesurier had risen to prominence in the Ceylon Civil Service due to his passionate struggle for the abolition of the Paddy Tax. Although the abolitionists finally succeeded in 1892, Le Mesurier had not made new friends in the upper strata of the Ceylon Civil Service (CCS). And when he started to critically comment on the “Waste Lands Ordinance” again in 1897, it was decided that he should feel the full force of the administrative machinery. The government applied Ordinance 1 of 1897 on land that Le Mesurier had bought from natives. The Crown claimed the land and issued a notice in the Government Gazette. The provisions of the “Waste Lands Ordinance” further read that after the issuing of that notice “it shall not be lawful for any person thereafter, without the written consent of the government agent or assistant government agent, to acquire any right in or over such land, or to enter therein or thereon”.20 Le Mesurier was later accused of having entered the lands in question as well as of having tried to murder a village headman. The already mentioned article in “Truth” defends Le Mesurier and states that some village headmen had been paid by the government to attack and rob Le Mesurier and that he had only defended himself.21 Fact and fiction appear to get mixed-up a little in the official statements on the case as well as in Le Mesurier’s own memorials. From the available sources we can not infer what really happened Quoted in Bandarage, Colonialism in Sri Lanka, 97. CO 56/14, Ceylon Acts 1896–1899, Ordinance 1 of 1897, “An Ordinance relating to Claims to Forest, Chena, Waste and Unoccupied Lands,” 9 February 1897. 21 CO 54/659, 16 March 1899/Offices and Individuals. “Truth.” 19 20

resources

111

and whether Le Mesurier or the government—or both—violated the law. But what becomes entirely clear here is the fact that the colonial administration was determined to satisfy the land hunger of the plantocracy through the strict enforcement of the “Waste Lands Ordinance.” Only the temporary slump of the tea industry in the following years and the stagnation in the demand for land cushioned the impact of the ordinance on the land ownership pattern in the central highlands to a certain extent. 6.3

Labour

The plantation economy of Ceylon during the days of coffee and later tea had immense requirements of labour. Plantation agriculture’s labour intensity was much higher than that of peasant subsistence agriculture. Therefore, the plantations depended on a steady workforce at their disposal. In the case of Ceylon a workforce large enough to fulfil the requirements of the export economy could not be obtained locally. In the very first stage of coffee cultivation in the 1820s and 1830s, Sinhalese villagers could be induced to work on the few, small estates. Only a comparatively small workforce was needed at that time, and it could easily be obtained from local villages. Apart from the still modest labour requirements, several other factors contributed to Sinhalese participation in estate work. In the first place, rajakariya had often been used to work the earliest coffee estates until its abolition in 1833—at least to clear the forest and set up the plantation.22 This had introduced estate work to some of the Sinhalese villagers and induced them to later continue with that work. Initially, the limited labour requirements of the coffee estates did not distract much labour from the village paddy lands. Furthermore, the plantation system with its strict rules, harsh living conditions and ruthless exploitation of the labourers had not been fully developed yet because the bulk of the Sinhalese labourers were not resident on the estates but lived in their villages. This partially exempted them from the total control of the planters and made plantation work easier to bear.

22 Nawaz Dawood, Tea and Poverty: Plantations and the Political Economy of Sri Lanka (Kowloon, Hong Kong: Urban Rural Mission, Christian Conference of Asia, 1980), 43.

112

chapter six

Although these early estates obtained part of their workforce locally from the Sinhalese villages, nothing like a steady Sinhalese plantation labour force developed. Both the requirements of the plantations as well as the potential supply of the villages were too small for such a development. It is often pointed out that the abolition of rajakariya in the course of the Colebrooke-Cameron reforms basically intended to create a steady wage-labour force among the Sinhalese, because it freed them from forced labour (thereby allegedly creating scope for paid labour on the estates). Considering the labour requirements in Colebrooke’s and Cameron’s time in Ceylon, the creation of a wage-labour force for the estates could not have been a major incentive for the abolition of rajakariya. The main intention behind the abolition was a weakening of the powers of the mudaliyars who controlled the rajakariya labour force and often abused this power to their own advantage.23 When coffee cultivation started to expand quickly in the late 1830s and especially in the 1840s, it became clear that the increasing labour requirements could not be met by local sources anymore. Furthermore, the plantations now slowly began to cut into traditional village territories and gradually the competition for land between the peasants and the planters commenced. This growing antagonism further cut into the supply of Sinhalese labour to the estates. A reluctance of the villagers to work on the estates developed. Nevertheless, it has to be emphasised here that this often-cited reluctance could only affect the Sinhalese labour supply because the economic circumstances of the villagers allowed it. The bulk of the Sinhalese villagers in the central highlands were living in subsistence. The produce of the paddy fields, their vegetable gardens and the chena lands provided them with sufficient means to make a living. A small surplus derived from their crops or the profit obtained from small-scale cash crop cultivation (e.g. native coffee) was used to pay their taxes. Most of the Ceylonese peasants did not depend on wage-labour for their livelihood. However, this does not mean that no Sinhalese villagers at all worked on coffee estates after the infl ux of immigrant labourers from South India had begun. The Sinhalese always constituted a portion of the plantation

23 Patrick Peebles, Social Change in Nineteenth Century Ceylon (New Delhi: Navrang in collaboration with Lake House Bookshop, Colombo, 1995), 118–19.

resources

113

workforce—though usually a small one during coffee times as their coffee gardens yielded sufficient profits, chena land was still abundant and the village paddy lands enjoyed an adequate water supply. This situation changed with the collapse of coffee and the transition to tea. The numbers of Sinhalese estate labourers increased significantly and finally constituted a substantial portion of the whole plantation labour force. We will discuss this later in this chapter. With the rapid expansion of the plantation industry in Ceylon beginning in the late 1830s, the demand for plantation workers rose swiftly. As the requirements could not be met locally, the Ceylonese planters directed their attention to South India—a densely populated region with a large portion of landless labourers and no economic opportunities to absorb the labour surplus. Due to the relative proximity of those over-populated South Indian regions to the planting districts of Ceylon, economic push and pull factors emerged and induced many Tamils from the poverty-stricken regions to come to Ceylon and work on the thriving coffee estates. This labour migration started in the 1820s at a comparatively modest scale, although Heidemann states that as early as 1827 there had allegedly been about 10,000 Indian immigrants working on coffee estates in Ceylon.24 Although statistical evidence on this matter is available only from 1839 onwards, this figure seems to be an exaggeration. The area under coffee in the late 1820s has amounted to between 4,000 and 6,000 acres as a maximum. Such an acreage could never absorb a steady workforce of 10,000 Tamils—especially not with regard to the existence of Sinhalese plantation labour in that time. Nevertheless, there has certainly been an Indian labour migration to Ceylon before 1839 as we have evidence of Governor Barnes and Colonel Bird importing Tamil labourers in the 1820s.25 Furthermore, the figures on the migration of Indian estate labourers given by Snodgrass (derived from the Ceylon Directory) put the number of immigrants between 1839 and 1842 at 5,300, whereas there were 6,900 departures from Ceylon to India in that period.26 If these figures are somewhere only

24 Frank Heidemann, Kanganies in Sri Lanka and Malaysia: Tamil Recruiter-Cum-Foreman as a Sociological Category in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century, Ganesha; 5 (Muenchen: Anacon, 1992), 11. 25 Dawood, Tea and Poverty, 62. 26 Snodgrass, An Export Economy in Transition, 26.

114

chapter six

near accuracy, Indian immigrant labour must have played a significant role in Ceylon’s plantation economy before 1839.27 The character of the early migration was largely seasonal. As the coffee estates developed their biggest demand for labour during the picking season, many immigrants came to Ceylon for the picking and returned home after the harvesting had been done.28 The migration was free—free of government restrictions as well as free of the contractual obligations of labourers under the indenture system. The Tamil labourer enjoyed “the legal right to quit his employer’s service at a month’s notice”.29 However, in many cases this right remained theoretical as the labourers usually had debts with their employers and financially depended on them. Although economic push and pull factors played an important role in the India-Ceylon migration, the final inducement for the labourers to come to Ceylon was given by the so-called kanganies. In the early stages of migration, the kanganies were labourers on the coffee estates themselves. Being back in India during the off-season, they recruited other workers from their family or vicinity. In the next season they guided the new labourers to the plantation districts of Ceylon and supervised them on the estates.30 Originally, the workforce under the kangany consisted largely of his relatives or friends, but later the kangany system developed into a network of professional labour recruiters. The planters paid their kanganies large advances (so-called coast advances) to cover their costs and sent them to South India to recruit more Tamil labourers. The kanganies passed a portion of their coast advances on to the prospective immigrants, with which those settled their debts in the villages and paid for the journey to Ceylon. As a consequence of this system, the labourers were, from the beginning, heavily indebted to the kangany (and therefore to the planters). This gave both the recruiter as well as the planter a strong hold over his workforce.

Vanden Driesen, for instance, has dated the beginning of Indian immigration to Ceylon to 1839, probably because this is the year of the first immigration statistics. See I. H. Vanden Driesen, Indian Plantation Labour in Sri Lanka: Aspects of the History of Immigration in the 19th Century (Nedlands, Australia: Centre for South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of Western Australia, 1982), 8. 28 Oddvar Hollup, Bonded Labour: Caste and Cultural Identity among Tamil Plantation Workers in Sri Lanka (New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1994), 21. 29 Dharmapriya Wesumperuma, Indian Immigrant Plantation Workers in Sri Lanka: A Historical Perspective, 1880–1910 (Nugegoda: Dharmapriya Wesumperuma, 1986), 22. 30 Heidemann, Kanganies in Sri Lanka and Malaysia, 12–13. 27

resources

115

Chapter eleven will give more details on the system of coast advances and the resulting dependency of the plantations labourers. With the rapid expansion of coffee cultivation in the 1850s, the system of professional kanganies developed and provided a constant fl ow of Indian labour to the coffee estates that could meet the everincreasing requirements of the plantation economy. With the transition from coffee to tea, the nature of the workforce witnessed a sudden change in its character. As a perennial crop, the tea plant requires a resident labour force year-round. The seasonal character of the Indian labour migration gave way to a more permanent form of immigration. The workers settled on the estates. The so-called headkangany became their direct superior in all matters of estate life. The workers’ indebtedness to—and therefore dependence on—the kanganies increased, and the planters enjoyed almost unlimited control over their workforce.31 Over the decades, a complex system of informal bondage emerged, which consequently secured the presence of a steady labour force on the plantations—regardless of payment, living conditions or social status. Table 5.8 in the previous chapter has shown that during the depression of the 1880s a re-migration of parts of the immigrant workforce took place. This was largely due to the depressed state of the plantations in the first years of the 1880s. During the peak of the crisis neither enough work nor enough money to pay the labourers was available. When the crisis had been overcome and tea had established itself firmly in the island’s economy, the demand for labour rose again. There are two distinct reasons for this unusually sharp rise. In the first place, the cultivation of tea is much more labour intensive than the cultivation of coffee. Contemporary estimates speak of a requirement of 3 to 4 labourers per acre for the cultivation of tea, while coffee cultivation required only one coolie per acre. This estimate is probably exaggerated, but a more conservative and more reliable estimate puts the requirements for tea at 2 labourers per acre and for coffee at ¾ of a labourer per acre.32 Furthermore, tea, as already mentioned, required year-round plucking and care. And as the preceding years had witnessed a re-migration of the immigrant

Ibid., 21–22. L. A. Wickremeratne, “The Establishment of the Tea Industry in Ceylon. The First Phase, C 1870 to C 1900,” Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies (new series) 2, no. 2 (1972): 142. 31 32

116

chapter six

workers to India, Ceylon experienced a labour shortage during the tea boom. This development constituted the pull factor for an increased participation of the Sinhalese villagers in the plantation sector. Between the census years 1881 and 1891, the percentage of Sinhalese resident labourers on the plantations increased from 1.54% to 5.76% of the total female estate population and from 4.07% to 8.46% of the total male estate population.33 It has been mostly ignored by historians that this means more than a doubling of the relative Sinhalese representation in the resident estate population within ten years. However, these figures only partially reveal the real extent of the Sinhalese participation in plantation labour. The data only refers to labourers resident on the estates. But the substantially larger portion of the Sinhalese plantation workforce preferred to live in the villages and only commute to the estates for work. These workers do not appear in the Census statistics. It is with unalloyed satisfaction that all who wish well to the Sinhalese must see that a real beginning has been made in inducing them to work as daily labourers on the tea-estates. Managers are gladly employing this Sinhalese labour where they can obtain it, and in some cases are paying something above the usual rate of cooly wages as an inducement; the work is light, easy, and constant throughout the year. In the general interest of the country it is greatly to be hoped that everything will be done by those who have authority over, and infl uence with, the impoverished villagers to help them to overcome their prejudices and accept this regular work now offered to them.34

Similarly, the planter Frederick Lewis in his autobiography describes his plantation work force as composed mainly of Sinhalese villagers and points out the steady increase of Sinhalese plantation labour throughout the island.35 Although statements in the Administration Report as well as the memoirs of a planter might show a distorted picture of coolie reality, these descriptions together with census figures on resident Sinhalese estate labour indicate a marked increase of the Sinhalese villagers working on the estates between 1881 and 1891. The population censuses remain silent on this issue, but the annual

Report on the Census of 1891, 41. CO 57/101, Administration Report 1887, Royal Botanical Gardens, 12D. 35 See Frederick Lewis, Sixty-Four Years in Ceylon: Reminiscences of Life and Adventure (Colombo: Colombo Apothecaries, 1926), 191–92. 33 34

resources

117

figures on plantation acreage collected in the Blue Books further support the notion that impoverished Sinhalese villagers resorted to regular estate labour in high numbers during periods of economic duress. From the data available to me at the present moment, it is not possible to furnish an accurate estimate of the number of non-resident Sinhalese employed on the plantations between 1881 and 1891. But the few figures we have at our disposal do hint at a marked infl ux of local labour to the estates as will be seen in the following paragraphs.36 As mentioned above, a relatively reliable contemporary estimate puts the requirements for tea at 2 labourers per acre and for coffee at ¾ of a labourer per acre.37 Consulting the acreage figures of the 1881 Statistical Blue Book, we learn that still about 360,000 acres were under coffee in that year.38 Making allowances for peasant coffee (approximately 15% of the acreage) and taking into account the low coffee yields (and lower labour requirements) we arrive at a total labour requirement for coffee cultivation of around 150,000 labourers. Following similar lines of thought and the acreage figures for tea (between 14,35039 and 22,00040 acres with approximately 2,720 acres in full bearing),41 cinchona and cacao (together about 50,000 acres)42 as given in the official statistics, the total labour force required on the plantations in the year 1881 accounts to about 200,000 workers.

36 The following calculation has been exercised in full detail in the paper I presented at the 17th ECMSAS, September 2002, Heidelberg. The statistical material and methods employed in the calculation have evoked discussions among colleagues ever since. Hence, I explicitly point out again that this calculation does not mean to derive exact labour requirements (which is, indeed, impossible with the data employed), but solely strives to illustrate the marked increase in Sinhalese estate labour between 1881 and 1891 by showing a trend in labour requirements. In a follow-up article, I tried to incorporate the many helpful suggestions that I received from colleagues since the delivery of my paper at Heidelberg. Roland Wenzlhuemer, “Reconsidering the Sinhalese Contribution to Estate Labour in Late 19th Century Ceylon” (paper presented at the 17th European Conference on Modern South Asian Studies, Heidelberg, 9–14 September 2002); Roland Wenzlhuemer, “The Sinhalese Contribution to Estate Labour in Ceylon, 1881–1891,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 48, no. 3 (2005). 37 Wickremeratne, “The Establishment of the Tea Industry,” 142. 38 Ceylon Statistical Blue Book 1881. 39 Ceylon Statistical Blue Book 1881. 40 Ferguson’s Ceylon Handbook and Directory, 1913–14. 41 Ferguson’s Ceylon Handbook and Directory, 1913–14. 42 Derived from S. Rajaratnam, “Growth of Plantation Agriculture in Ceylon, 1886–1931,” Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies 4, no. 1 (1961): 3–4.

118

chapter six

The census for the year 1881 puts the number of people living (and therefore working) on the Ceylonese plantations at 206,50043—including labourers as well as managing and supervising staff. Although we take into account that the labour and acreage estimates employed in this calculation were chosen from the lower side of the possible spectrum, we arrive at too low a result. Therefore, it is even more striking that the same calculation based on the respective figures for the year 1891 arrives at an estimated labour requirement of over 450,000 workers,44 while the 1891 census gives only 262,000 persons as resident on the estates.45 A province-wise look at the figures for 1891 further supports these findings. With 168,000 acres under tea and still 44,000 acres under coffee in the Central Province in that year,46 only 183,000 resident estate labourers—according to the findings of the Population Census47—seem too small a workforce. The same sources reveal similar constellation for the Provinces of Sabaragamuwa (200 acres coffee, 26,000 acres tea, 28,000 resident labourers) and Uva (21,000 acres coffee, 18,000 acres tea, 32,000 resident labourers). Although allowances have to be made for a number of distorting factors pointed out in the following paragraph, the difference between 1881 and 1891 is striking and generally supports the notion that estate employment acted as a social security valve to the local Sinhalese in times of economic hardship. That the figures produced by the above calculation cannot be viewed as accurate estimates of the number of labourers required on the Ceylonese plantations is self-evident. The statistical (acreage) data collected by the colonial administrators in the Blue Books—although comparatively reliable for the time and the circumstances—offers enough scope for misestimates and under-/over-enumerations. Also, the contemporary figures on labour requirements per acre remain what they are—mere estimates and approximations. Finally, the method of multiplying acreage and labour requirements per acre and thus arriving at the total number of workers needed is inaccurate and does not account exactly enough for crop interplanting or varying yields. But Report on the Census of 1891, 41. See Wenzlhuemer, “The Sinhalese Contribution to Estate Labour in Ceylon, 1881–1891.” 45 Report on the Census of 1891, 41. 46 Ceylon Statistical Blue Book 1891. 47 International Population Census Publications. Series 2. Pre-1945. Sri Lanka 1881.1 thru 1931.2. [5 Microfilms]. 43 44

resources

119

all of these problems apply to both the 1881 and the 1891 estimate and, thus, do not seriously weaken the comparative result. However, as pointed out by several colleagues, it has to be taken into account that the population census has generally been compiled during the slack season, when a part of the Tamil plantation population had already gone back to South India only to return for the next harvesting season. As tea cultivation required year-round attendance and picking and, thus, a more permanent workforce, this practice may have distorted the calculations’ results. Nevertheless, it seems absolutely unlikely that the striking difference between 1881 and 1891 labour requirements can totally be attributed to seasonal labour migration. Thus, the above calculation supports the qualitative evidence. Around 1881 the economic pressure on the Sinhalese highland peasantry was still comparatively low. Taxes were light and payable in kind or in cash which could sometimes be obtained from the remains of peasant coffee cultivation. The pressure on land and other ecological resources had relaxed considerably with the coffee crisis. Besides, most of the chena land was situated at locations too high for successful coffee cultivation. Naturally, clashes between the planting community and the peasantry occurred over diverse issues, but altogether the Sinhalese villagers were able to make a living from their paddy and chena lands. This changed dramatically in the course of the 1880s. Depleted state coffers and later the expanding tea industry with its hunger for more suitable land started to make a deep impact on the peasants’ living conditions. The rigorous enforcement of grain tax payment and the increasing encroachment of the planting community on chena land constitute those two developments with the most disastrous effects on the economic situation of the highlands peasantry—eventually forcing many former subsistence farmers to take up wage labour on the plantations. 6.4

Capital

Together with land and labour, the availability of capital is one of the prerequisites for the economically successful development of an industry. With labour largely obtained from South India and capital fl owing in mainly from Great Britain, the plantation industry took off in the 1840s. Before that, local government officials and military men had invested their savings in the cultivation of coffee. In those early

120

chapter six

days, the moderate means of these entrepreneurs were sufficient to put up and profitably run an estate. But by the 1840s, capital had to be supplied from abroad to acquire land and open up a coffee estate.48 Vanden Driesen states that the early coffee pioneers had proved that coffee cultivation was suited to the island and could produce large profits. This attracted small-scale capitalists from Great Britain and India, who sunk considerable amounts of money into the plantation economy of Ceylon. According to Vanden Driesen, by 1844, when the minimum price of land per acre was raised from 5 to 20 shillings, the minimum capital needed to open up a coffee plantation amounted to £ 3,000. Such a sum kept many potential small-scale investors away, while others had to rely more heavily on borrowed capital.49 Even if the individual planters had enough capital at their disposal to set up an estate, many of them had to borrow money from agency-houses and later from banks to cover the time lag between the initial planting of an estate and the realisation of the crops’ value in the London market. This time lag could be as long as several years. Furthermore, one or several bad seasons could force smaller investors to lend money from the agency-houses or banks. The agency-houses usually gave loans to planters on their forthcoming crops. Vanden Driesen describes the terms given to the planters by the agency-houses as “not particularly advantageous”:50 A stipulation was always made that the coffee should all be hypothecated to the firm that had made the advance, and whatever the crop ultimately amounted to, it had to be sent down to those agents, who sold it at what market they chose, charging a commission on selling, and repaying themselves the money advanced, with about 8% to 10% added.51

During the coffee boom of the 1840s and 1850s, several banks appeared in Ceylon to supply prospective coffee planters with the required capital. Their terms seem to have been quite similar (or a little better) than those of the agency-houses. The oldest bank on

48 I. H. Vanden Driesen, “Some Aspects of the Financing of Commercial Enterprise in 19th Century Ceylon,” Ceylon University Review 18, no. 3+4 (1960): 215; I. H. Vanden Driesen, “Some Trends in the Economic History of Ceylon in the ‘Modern’ Period,” Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies 3, no. 1 (1960): 13. 49 Vanden Driesen, “Some Aspects of the Financing of Commercial Enterprise,” 215. 50 Ibid., 217. 51 Ibid., 216.

resources

121

the island was the Bank of Ceylon, established in 1841. It made substantial advances to the planting community and subsequently collapsed during the coffee depression of the late 1840s. The Oriental Bank, established in 1843, stepped into the breach and took over the Bank of Ceylon’s liabilities. In 1851, the Oriental Bank Corporation emerged from the amalgamation of the two banks. Later it should play a significant role in the coffee crisis of the 1880s. During the reign of ‘King Coffee,’ i.e. from the 1840s to the early 1880s, small-scale proprietor-planters controlled the bulk of the coffee acreage. Most of them had at least initially been dependent on borrowed capital. With the depressions of the late 1840s and the mid1860s, many of the smaller plantations had been ruined and taken over by other, financially better equipped planters or by emerging joint-stock companies. The average holding gradually became larger in size. Companies started to appear in the island’s plantation economy, although, during the days of coffee, company-run estates never accounted for more than one third of all coffee estates.52 The little economies-of-scale involved in the production of coffee enabled many proprietor-planters to carry on cultivation on a profitable basis—even after the depressions of the 1840s and 1860s. And many of those companies that now emerged were small, private companies—sometimes only consisting of two or more former proprietor-planters. Some of those companies were almost equally dependent on borrowed capital as the individual planters. Given the success of the coffee industry from the 1830s to the 1880s, interrupted only by two depressions, the industry’s partial dependence on borrowed capital needs further explanation. At the first glance, it seems that a rather capital-extensive enterprise like the cultivation of coffee would generate its required capital by itself. From the start, the coffee estates had been highly profitable, and those profits should have soon repaid the initial loans by the agency-houses and banks—even more so, if we consider the comparatively low sum needed to set up a coffee estate. So, why has plantation capital not been self-generating? Because the bulk of the profits was not reinvested on the spot or saved up as reserve funds, but most of the surplus was transferred back to Great Britain. Only a few of the Ceylonese planters had come to

52

Vanden Driesen, “Some Trends in the Economic History of Ceylon,” 13.

122

chapter six

the island to stay. The others invested their money in coffee plantations, obtained some profit and sold the plantations again. Ferguson pointed out in 1884: In Ceylon a generation among European colonists is usually considered not to exceed ten years—not at all on account of mortality, for the hills of Ceylon have the perfection of a healthy climate, but from the constant changes in the elements of the European community—the coming and going which make such a distinct change in the broad elements of society every ten or certainly every fifteen years. The colonists who make fortunes in the island do not think of making it their permanent home. The capitalist who sends out his money for investment gets it back as soon as possible.53

Such a short-term investment policy prevented the self-generation of capital and the profits were sent back to Great Britain and not reinvested. Only the profits obtained by the British agency-houses and banks contributed to the availability of capital as they fl ew back into the industry by giving further and larger loans. But here too, a certain amount of the profits was transferred back to Europe. Furthermore, the plantation economy’s pace of growth by far exceeded any possible self-generation of capital. Therefore, the capital had constantly to be brought in from abroad. Indigenous entrepreneurs invested considerable sums in coconut plantations, but played only a subordinate role in the cultivation of coffee and tea. These two staple crops depended almost wholly on the infl ux of British capital. Only during the depression of the 1880s, the island’s plantation economy resorted to the self-generation of capital as no foreign investors dared to sink large sums of money in such an insecure field of investment. Through the capital-extensive cultivation of cinchona, the resident planters could obtain sufficient funds to gradually engage in the adaptation of their estates to tea cultivation. This was even more remarkable, as the production of tea required large initial outlays of capital, for the planting of tea as well as for the establishment of adequate processing facilities for the tea leaves. With the first successful tea estates up and running, the British investors regained their faith in the Ceylonese plantation economy and the capital began to fl ow again.

53 John C. M. G. Ferguson, Ceylon in 1884: The Leading Crown Colony of the British Empire (London: 1884), 76–77.

resources

123

From about 1884 onwards there was a steady fl ow into Ceylon planting enterprise of a new class of young men, public school and university educated, but each with a backing of only a few thousand pounds of capital. Mainly as a consequence of the limited resources of the European planting community when the tea industry was being established, the individual holdings of estates were small; and this was refl ected in the size of the companies which were formed to take over these estates.54

As the capital requirements for the production of tea were considerably higher than those for coffee and the resources of the planters were limited, the formation of companies to own and run the tea estates became a widespread practice. Many coffee planters had left Ceylon during the coffee crash and left the field to the new-comers, who had neither the capital nor the know-how to run an estate on their own. With the failure of the City of Glasgow Bank in the early 1880s and the collapse of the Oriental Bank Corporation in 1886 in the wake of the coffee crisis, the island’s planting community lost another source of capital55 and the formation of companies was the only adequate answer to the prevailing economic situation. There were two different types of tea companies in Ceylon: Sterling companies and Rupee companies. The former were registered in the United Kingdom, were subject to the income tax there, but generally enjoyed a greater scope for capital-raising in the British market. The Rupee companies were registered in Ceylon, did not pay direct taxes until 1932, but had less opportunity to attract shareholders.56 Therefore, when privately owned tea estates were converted into Rupee companies, often only a few owners of neighbouring estates banded themselves together in a company. No additional capital was raised by the issuing of shares. The bulk of the London-registered Sterling companies issued such shares either in a private or in a public circle to raise sufficient capital. Generally, the former proprietor sold his estate to the newly established company and became a member of the Board of Directors of the company. If the shares were privately issued, only the relatives, friends or other persons connected with the former proprietor

54 N. Ramachandran, Foreign Plantation Investment in Ceylon, 1889–1958 (Colombo: Central Bank of Ceylon, 1963), 5. 55 Elaine Gunewardena, External Trade and the Economic Structure of Ceylon, 1900–1955 (Colombo: Central Bank of Ceylon, 1965), 24. 56 Ramachandran, Foreign Plantation Investment, 4.

124

chapter six Table 6.1: Average Ordinary Dividends Paid by Tea Companies, 1889–1900.

Year

Dividend (%)

Year

1889 1890 1891 1892 1893 1894

4.5 15.0 18.0 12.6 14.5 12.2

1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900

Dividend (%) 12.6 7.6 6.0 5.6 6.7 6.3

Source: N. Ramachandran, Foreign Plantation Investment in Ceylon, 1889–1958 (Colombo: Central Bank of Ceylon, 1963), 42.

subscribed. Ramachandran states that such private issues usually raised about £ 30,000 to £ 40,000.57 If sums above that were required, the shares were issued publicly by advertising in a newspaper, usually in “The Times.” By the early 1890s the company-owned tea estate dominated the plantation economy of Ceylon. Sterling as well as Rupee companies held the biggest shares in the plantation industry, whereas the old proprietor-planter had become quite rare by the end of the century. Following Ramachandran again, Sterling companies held 36.4% of the total acreage under tea in Ceylon in the year 1899.58 This might partially be due to the financial advantage those companies enjoyed regarding the depreciation of the Rupee. As the Rupee was on a silver standard, the low price of silver enabled the London-based Sterling companies to buy Rupees cheaply and produce in Ceylon at comparatively low costs while selling produce in the London market at Sterling prices. Table 6.1 shows the high profitability of the tea companies. With the tea slump of the closing years of the nineteenth century, their dividends declined, but still remained remunerative. When this slump was overcome by about 1907, dividends recovered again. The formation of companies in the late 1880s provided Ceylon with the capital needed for the large-scale transition from coffee to tea cultivation. Although only little virgin land was required for this transition, the establishment of a tea estate required considerable capital outlay—at

57 58

Ibid., 7. Ibid., 41.

resources

125

least on the long run. Machinery for the processing of the green leaf and higher labour requirements both raised the capital demand. The individual planters—many ruined by the collapse of coffee—could mostly not obtain the money needed. Companies began to play the major role in the Ceylon plantation economy. 6.5

Infrastructure

Apart form the availability of land, labour and capital, the existence of a transport and communication infrastructure serving the local industry is another decisive factor for the development of the economy. In the case of nineteenth-century Ceylon, the improvement of the transportation infrastructure serving the plantations enjoyed high priority. For the expansion of the plantation economy, the construction of roads and later railways to link the plantation districts with the coastal harbours was a prerequisite. During the last quarter of the nineteenth century—with the volume of agricultural exports steadily rising—, the harbour of Colombo was adjusted to the increasing requirements of the island’s export economy. Similarly, in the 1870s, provisions had finally to be made to care for the ever-increasing number of immigrant workers and their medical needs. In the early years of the nineteenth century, road construction in Ceylon served primarily military and administrative purposes. The interior of the island had to be linked with the administrative centre on the west coast. The completion of the Colombo-Kandy road in 1820 was a widely celebrated achievement in this regard. However, with the first coffee plantations springing up in the central highlands later in the same decade (and with increased speed in the following decade), the need for an expansion of the road network became obvious. The coffee planters—at that time mostly government officials or retired military men—pressed for such an expansion. It was vital for them to despatch their produce to London as fast as possible to realise at least part of their investments quickly.59

59 L. A. Wickremeratne, “The Development of Transportation in Ceylon C 1800–1947,” in University of Ceylon History of Ceylon. From the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century to 1948, ed. Kingsley M. De Silva (Peradeniya: University of Peradeniya, 1973), 304.

126

chapter six

The colonial government reacted and began with the construction of roads to the major planting regions. Until its abolition in 1833, the system of rajakariya was extensively used for this undertaking. After 1833, further road construction was seriously hampered, because the construction costs per mile increased from £ 107 in 1832/33 to £ 921 in 1935/37.60 This was largely due to the absence of free labour provided by rajakariya and severely slowed down the expansion of the road network. By the 1840s, when most of the easily accessible land had been sold and planted with coffee and the “Crown Lands Encroachment Ordinance” placed additional land in the interior at the disposal of the government, the lack of funds for road construction became a serious problem.61 So pressing was the necessity of an expansion of the transport network that the government implemented the so-called “Road Ordinance” in 1848. By the enactment of this ordinance, every male between the age of 18 and 55 became liable to work six consecutive days per year on the construction of roads (or other means of transport). Although this tax could be commuted by the payment of 3 shillings annually, it placed a heavy burden on the indigenous population—especially because the new roads benefited primarily the planting community and not the native peasantry. Therefore, the introduction of the “Road Ordinance” was one of the determining factors for the so-called “rebellion” in the Kandyan highlands in the year 1848. Nevertheless, it was rigorously enforced well into the twentieth century. Bandarage calculated that in 1867—the year of the completion of the Colombo-Kandy railway—about 15% of the total expenditure for public works was derived from funds collected under the Road Ordinance.62 With additional funds available, road construction gained new momentum. In the following decades, the road network in the highlands was lavishly extended to provide good transport facilities (and therefore low transport costs) to the plantations. But with the plantation economy rapidly expanding, the carters could not handle the ever-increasing volume of coffee anymore that had to be taken to the coast. The mere improvement of the road network did not suffice to

60 I. Munasinghe, “The Road Ordinance of 1848 and the Kandyan Peasantry,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Sri Lanka Branch (new series) 28 (1983/84): 26. 61 Ibid. 62 Bandarage, Colonialism in Sri Lanka, 250.

resources

127

satisfy the demands of the plantations. Therefore, the construction of Ceylon’s first railway line from Colombo to Kandy commenced in 1863. The line was completed in 1867 and its success “surpassed all expectations”.63 The transport costs for plantation products declined, and the railway proved to be a financial success for the government. Extensions of the line were soon begun to be built and eventually linked the centres of the planting districts with Colombo. Table 6.2 shows the progress of the railway network from 1867 to 1905 and gives detailed information on its length, the passengers and goods transported and its profitability. The rapid expansion of the railways did not slow down or even stop the construction of further roads in the plantation districts. But the nature of such roads changed. Most of them did not serve as links between the major economic centres anymore but rather connected the more remote regions with the nearest railway station. Roads became feeders for the railway lines. For the plantations, the existence of an efficient transport system was vital for two reasons. In the first place, the plantation produce had to be despatched to Colombo as fast and as cheaply as possible. Secondly, the plantations needed large amounts of rice and other supplies (such as kerosene oil and sugar). These supplies had to be brought in from outside. The improvement of the road network had facilitated this, but with the rising output of the plantation economy, the demand for transport exceeded by far what the carters could supply. Consequently, transportation costs rose. The advent of the railway and its large capacities solved this problem. The native carters lost much of their lucrative business to the railways, although the bulk of the native products were still transported on locally owned carts.64 Table 6.3 gives more detailed information on the construction of railways between 1863 (when the Colombo-Kandy line was begun) and 1905. How those railway lines served the plantation districts can be seen in Figure 6.1. Apart from the Southern and the Northern Railway, all those lines primarily catered to the coffee (and later tea) plantations of the central highlands. The Southern Railway was

Garrett Champness Mendis, Ceylon under the British, 3d rev. ed. (Colombo: Colombo Apothecaries’ Co., 1952), 116. 64 Wickremeratne, “The Development of Transportation,” 309. 63

128

chapter six

Table 6.2: Mileage, Passengers, Goods Transported and Profit of the Ceylon Railways, 1867–1905. Year Miles

Passengers Goods Profit (000) (000 t) (000 Rs)

Year

Miles Passengers Goods Profit (000) (000 t) (000 Rs)

1867

57.5

167

55

336

1887 180.6

1,966

162

1,882

1868

74.5

197

116

850

1888 180.6

2,183

193

1,879

1869

74.5

201

134

1,085

1889 180.6

2,285

210

2,140

1870

74.5

233

156

1,331

1890 188.8

2,709

229

2,478

1871

74.5

235

149

1,253

1891 191.5

3,077

281

2,409

1872

74.5

359

138

1,129

1892 191.5

3,484

267

2,497

1873

82.0

644

171

1,495

1893 218.0

3,709

294

2,660

1874

84.8

636

168

1,539

1894 258.0

4,216

314

3,321

1875

95.0

858

212

1,913

1895 271.6

4,822

412

3,805

1876

95.0

879

259

1,982

1896 297.1

5,684

421

3,898

1877 106.2

1,562

299

2,376

1897 297.1

5,025

418

3,944

1878 117.7

2,054

283

2,096

1898 297.1

5,741

482

3,555

1879 119.9

2,231

253

1,925

1899 297.1

5,397

500

3,898

1880 126.0

2,231

264

1,645

1900 297.1

5,784

506

4,484

1881 139.2

2,167

317

1,525

1901 297.1

5,503

521

3,712

1882 139.2

2,130

293

1,272

1902 328.4

5,549

519

3,767

1883 139.2

2,191

238

1,200

1903 374.8

5,991

549

4,182

1884 167.5

2,111

187

1,185

1904 406.5

6,028

570

4,307

1885 180.2

1,846

160

1,138

1905 562.1

6,282

580

4,924

1886 180.2

1,819

156

1,236

Source: Patrick Peebles, Sri Lanka: A Handbook of Historical Statistics, A Reference Publication in International Historical Statistics (Boston, Mass.: G. K. Hall, 1982), 169.

built to link the densely populated southern coast with Colombo and to serve the coconut industry in that region. Similarly, the Northern Railway’s first extension from Polgahawela to Kurunegala cut right through the coconut triangle. With the expansion of the road and railway network, the transport of the export commodities within the island had been facilitated considerably, and consequently the overall production costs declined. But the export crops had to be despatched abroad, and the existing port facilities in Ceylon soon could not satisfy the export industry’s heavy demands anymore. In the nineteenth century, Ceylon had three main ports—Colombo, Galle and Trincomalee. Although the harbour of

resources

129

Table 6.3: Railway Lines Constructed in Ceylon, 1863–1905. Railway Line Colombo-Kandy Railway Breakwater and Wharf Branch Line Uva Railway Peradeniya to Nawalapitiya Nawalapitiya to Nanuoya Nanuoya to Haputale Haputale to Bandarawela Kandy-Matale Railway Southern Railway Colombo to Kalutara Kalutara to Bentota Bentota to Galle Galle to Matara Northern Railway Polgahawela to Kurunegala Kurunegala to Anuradhapura Kankasanturai to Anuradhapura Kelani Valley Railway Uda Pussellawa Railway

Date of Commence

Date of Completion

Length (miles/chains)

2 Feb. 1863 18 Sep. 1873

1 Aug. 1867 16 July 1874

74/40 2/53

1 July 1871 20 17 8 27

May Dec. June May

9 Aug. 15 Oct. 20 Oct. 7 Jan.

1880 1888 1892 1878

1 Dec. 20 May 19 June 3 Sep.

1874 1885 1893 1894

4 Oct. 1880

14 Feb. 1894 1 Nov. 1905 1 Aug. 1905

17/49 98/49 27/50 10/70 33/40 26/49 211/13 13/14 68/06 129/73

14 Sep. 1903 1 July 1904

47/62 19/18

1875 22 Sep. 1879 1888 31 Mar. 1890 1890 7 May 1894 1894 17 Dec. 1895

24 Oct. 1892 Apr. 1900

90/41 16/64 41/26 25/37 6/74

July 1900 22 Mar. 1900 Nov. 1900

Source: N. Munasinghe, “Railways as a Factor in Socio-Economic Change in Sri Lanka 1865–1905” (paper presented at the Multi-Disciplinary International Conference on the occasion of 50th Anniversary of Independence of Sri Lanka, 23–25 February 1998), 4.

Trincomalee was “one of the finest natural harbours in the world”,65 it was mainly used as a naval base, because it was situated away form the important sea routes of the Indian Ocean. Galle primarily acted as a port of call for provisions—such as water and coal—and for repairs. Colombo handled the bulk of the export trade of the 65 K. Dharmasena, “Ceylon in the Changing Sea Routes of the Indian Ocean in the 19th Century,” KALYĀNI. Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences of the University of Kelaniya 3+4 (1984/85): 278.

130

chapter six

Figure 6.1: Four Maps Showing the Expansion of the Ceylon Government Railways, 1880–1905. Layout based on CO 700/CEYLON23a (see Figure V.3). Railways added by the author according to information provided in N. Munasinghe, “Railways as a Factor in SocioEconomic Change in Sri Lanka 1865–1905” (paper presented at the Multi-Disciplinary International Conference on the occasion of 50th Anniversary of Independence of Sri Lanka, 23–25 February 1998), 4.

island, although the harbour of Galle was by far superior regarding its situation in the sea routes as well as its capacities.66 Colombo’s importance to the export trade was based on the topography of the island. For the central highlands, which housed the biggest part of Ceylon’s plantation economy, Colombo was a much

66

Ibid.

resources

131

Figure 6.2: View of Colombo Harbour from Titan—Looking South. H.M.S. “Bacchante” & “Ruby” at Moorings. January 1882. Source: CO 54/539.

better outlet than Galle or Trincomalee. Since the completion of the road from Colombo to Kandy in 1820, the highlands had been tightly connected with the capital. The advent of the railway emphasised that link. Therefore, Colombo handled about 80% of the exports (by value) in the 1860s, 85% in the 1870s and as much as 95% in the 1890s.67 Colombo’s vital role as an economic outlet for the plantation hinterland made up for its natural disadvantages regarding its location in the international sea routes and its natural features. But until the construction of the first breakwater, mainly sailing vessels called at Colombo. Mail and other steamers usually called at Galle. With both the opening of the Suez Canal and the ever-growing volume of Ceylon’s export trade, the ports of both Galle and Colombo could not handle the increased shipping without an improvement of the ports’ facilities. Due to the limited financial resources of the colonial government, only one port could be improved. The Colonial Office was strongly in favour of Galle harbour, but the commission that studied the problem decided to extend the port of Colombo. The

67

Ibid., 279.

132

chapter six

Figure 6.3: View of Colombo Harbour from Root Work—Looking North East. H.M.S. “Bacchante”, “Ruby” & “Cleopatra” at Moorings. January 1882. Source: CO 54/539.

Planters’ Association and the Chamber of Commerce had urged for such a decision.68 Begun in 1874, the construction of the first break water was finished in 1884. Two other breakwaters were completed in 1898. These improvements made the port suitable for steamers as well as capable of handling a much larger shipping tonnage. Consequently, Galle harbour lost much of its importance. In 1883 Colombo already handled 81% of the total shipping tonnage of Ceylon, while Colombo’s share had been only 33.6% in 1869.69 Figures 6.2 and 6.3 show Colombo harbour in the year 1882, when the construction of the first breakwater was gradually nearing completion. The improvement of the island’s infrastructure—be it the extension of the road and railway network or the upgrading of Ceylon’s port facilities—was a vital prerequisite for the expansion of the plantation industry. The colonial government dedicated considerable financial

68 B. L. Panditharatna, “The Harbour and Port of Colombo. A Geographical Appraisal of Its Historical and Functional Aspects,” Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies 3, no. 2 (1960): 134–35. 69 Dharmasena, “Ceylon in the Changing Sea Routes,” 285.

resources

133

and administrative resources to this task and therefore enabled the economy to sustain its initial growth rate. The benefits to other social groups, like the peasantry, were limited, although the extension of the transport network also facilitated the marketing of native products and opened up more remote areas. But for the success of the export economy, the existence of a fully functioning communication network was a precondition like the availability of suitable land, a steady labour force and abundant capital.

CHAPTER SEVEN

SUBSISTENCE 7.1

A Subsistence Economy

In the introductory paragraph of the chapter on export agriculture, I have already briefl y referred to peasant subsistence agriculture. Modern research on nineteenth-century agricultural issues has focussed mostly on the plantation sector. This is mainly due to the abundance of sources and data on the export sector, while a comparative scarcity of reliable sources renders research in the field of peasant agriculture more difficult. A second reason for the strong emphasis on the role of plantation agriculture in Ceylon might be found in the overwhelming impact of the expansion of the plantation industry on almost all other aspects of Ceylon’s social and economic life. Peasant agriculture has felt the full force of this impact. Therefore, this chapter shall examine the state of and the changes in the traditional agricultural system of Ceylon in the late nineteenth century. According to the Census of 1891, 70,5 per cent of the population constituted the ‘agricultural class’ of whom 92 per cent were cultivators and agricultural labourers. Even if we allow for those who were “compelled to engage in other occupations than agriculture” but preferred to “call themselves cultivators”, still the percentage of actual cultivators and agricultural labourers must have been high.1

The majority of the Sinhalese and the Ceylon Tamils in nineteenthcentury Ceylon earned their living from agricultural occupations—be it as cultivators or as agricultural labourers. Paddy was the staple crop of the island’s peasants—cultivated either as field paddy on the fl ooded wet rice fields or as hill paddy on cleared hillsides.2 Additionally, many peasants resorted to the cultivation of kurakkan, other 1 A. C. L. Ameer Ali, Changing Conditions and Persisting Problems in the Peasant Sector under British Rule in the Period 1833–1893, Ceylon Studies Seminar, No. 3a, 1970/72 Series (1970/72), 17–18. 2 Wijitapure Wimalaratana, Changes in Consumption Pattern and Economic Underdevelopment in British Ceylon, Nijmegen Studies in Development and Cultural Change, 0935–7173; V. 31 (Saarbruecken: Verlag fuer Entwicklungspolitik Saarbruecken, 2000), 228.

136

chapter seven

grain and various vegetables on their chena land. The importance of those chena crops has long been underestimated. A large part of the peasantry, indeed, depended for their livelihood partially or solely on the produce of their chena land. The low productivity of field paddy cultivation was the main reason for this. As an average, rice growing peasants in the late nineteenth century realised between 30 and 40 bushels of paddy per acre.3 The rice varieties grown in Ceylon were comparatively low-yielding varieties. Several other factors—such as conservative cultivation techniques and insufficient water supply— contributed to the low per-acre yields of field paddy. According to contemporary statements, the output of a wet rice field could range from fivefold up to fifty-fold yields. However, both these cases were rather rare. It seems that the average yield in field paddy cultivation produced about fifteen times the amount of seed paddy sown.4 Compared with other rice producing countries, this is an extremely low average yield.5 Additionally, the wet rice fields alone were subject to the Paddy Tax and therefore placed a certain financial burden on the paddy cultivator. Thus, chena cultivation supplemented (or, at times, even replaced) paddy cultivation as the general means of subsistence of the native peasantry. And it was, indeed, mere subsistence that the peasants were able to extract from their paddy fields and from the chena. The occasional and small cash income from cash crops—such as coffee, coconuts and others—enabled parts of the peasantry to commute the Paddy Tax and the Road Tax. During the coffee heyday, the native coffee gardens may have brought occasional profits, but these profits were not accumulated and did not build up capital for later re-investment. Personally communicated to me by Lionel Nugaliyadde, Rice Research & Devlopment Institute, Batalagoda, Ibbagamuva. 4 Wimalaratana, Changes in Consumption Pattern, 228; L. A. Wickremeratne, “Grain Consumption and Famine Conditions in Late Nineteenth Century Ceylon,” Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies (new series) 3, no. 2 (1973): 30. Even L. T. Burgess, an irrigation officer in Ceylon in the early twentieth century, in an estimate puts the average yield in wet rice fields at fifteen-fold. L. T. Burgess, Ancient and Modern Irrigation in Ceylon. Being a Collection of Notes from Various Sources Relative to the Ancient and Modern Irrigation Works of Ceylon (Colombo: 1932), 201. 5 Francesca Bray, in her study on the “Rice Economies,” points out that even before the Green Revolution Malaysian rice cultivators achieved yield to seed ratios of around 100 : 1. Francesca Bray, The Rice Economies: Technology and Development in Asian Societies (Oxford; New York: Blackwell, 1986), 15. 3

subsistence

137

Eventually, as I have mentioned above, the Coffee Leaf Disease hit the native coffee gardens—well before the large-scale plantations were affl icted on a significant level. The disease ruined peasant coffee and deprived the peasantry of its major source of cash income. Together with the government restriction on chena cultivation, the resulting want of ready cash pushed many Sinhalese peasants into plantation wage labour—a process discussed in the previous chapter. 7.2 Wet Rice Cultivation Paddy, the staple food of the people, has always had an important place in the agricultural economy of Ceylon. Forgetting for a moment the legendary period, the recorded history shows that the country had been importing rice in large quantities from early days.6

Bansil’s statement refers to one of the most important features of Ceylonese peasant agriculture in the nineteenth century—the nonachievement of self-sufficiency in rice production. This is still somewhat surprising, because—apart from its mediocre soils—the island of Ceylon provided a comparatively good environment for the cultivation of field paddy—geographically as well as historically. In wide regions of Ceylon, predominantly in the so-called Wet Zone, rainfall was abundant and usually sufficed to raise the paddy crop without the use of an artificial irrigation system; large parts of the less humid regions in the Dry Zone had for a long time enjoyed the benefits of a sophisticated irrigation infrastructure for the supply of water; suitable land for paddy cultivation was widely available—promising preconditions for the successful and profitable cultivation of wet rice it might seem. However, Ceylon had not reached anything near selfsufficiency in rice production since ancient times. And there was little sign of change in this pattern in the late nineteenth century. Table 7.1 reproduces the acreage data on paddy cultivation as given in the Blue Books. It has often been pointed out that this data is very much inaccurate, as it was furnished by the native headmen. The heavy fl uctuations in Table 7.1 support this notion. Nevertheless, the figures indicate a gradual extension of the acreage under paddy in the last twenty years of the nineteenth century. Consulting the Blue

6

P. C. Bansil, Ceylon Agriculture: A Perspective (Delhi: Dhanpat Rai, 1971), 249.

138

chapter seven

Book figures, the average annual growth rate of the paddy acreage between 1880 and 1900 amounts to 0.72%. Although the absolute acreage under paddy has increased in that period, a comparison with the population figures shows that, relatively to the population, the paddy acreage has even declined. The annual population growth rates of Ceylon—being much higher at 0.86% from 1881 to 1891 and 1.72% from 1891 to 1901—illustrate this.7 Assuming that yields per acre remained approximately constant, this means that Ceylon was even moving further away from rice self-sufficiency as the population grew at a faster pace than the acreage under paddy. Table 7.1: Acreage Under Paddy Cultivation, 1880–1900. Year

Acres

Year

Acres

1880 1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 1889 1890

583,118 549,292 570,245 605,757 604,464 597,977 605,184 562,016 574,220 585,422 536,367

1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900

563,421 613,176 545,940 564,864 589,077 619,388 632,627 647,910 645,358 672,584

Source: Ceylon Statistical Blue Books, 1880–1900.

Yet, we have to take into consideration that a large portion of Ceylon’s population growth in these years stemmed from the immigration of Indian labourers (and others) and the rapid growth of the urban population. It is little surprising that the agricultural output could not keep pace with the population growth rate. Therefore, the relative supply of the population with locally grown paddy decreased. But did the expansion of the paddy acreage keep up with the growth

7 International Population Census Publications. Series 2. Pre-1945. Sri Lanka 1881.1 thru 1931.2. [5 Microfilms].

subsistence

139

of the peasant population? Table 7.2—composed from data given by Michael Roberts—gives more detailed information on this. Obviously, the ratio of wet rice acreage per person stagnated in the last thirty years of the nineteenth century. Assuming that the yield per acre has not changed significantly in that period, the peasantry maintained an almost constant level of output per person. The ratio could not be improved and the acreage under paddy grew only at the same rate as the number of cultivators. The average size of the individual holdings did not increase.8 Table 7.2: Growth of the Peasant Population and Expansion of Wet Rice Land, 1871–1901. Year

Peasant Population (000)

Wet Rice Land (000 acres)

Wet Rice Land per Person (acres)

1871 1881 1891 1901

1,831 1,996 2,219 2,541

502 584 574 671

0.27 0.29 0.26 0.26

Source: Michael Roberts, “Aspects of Ceylon’s Agrarian Economy in the Nineteenth Century,” in University of Ceylon History of Ceylon. From the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century to 1948, ed. Kingsley M. De Silva (Peradeniya: University of Peradeniya, 1973), 153.

Wickremeratne has searched innumerable colonial documents of the nineteenth century to compile information on the grain (and especially rice) consumption pattern of the Ceylonese. The most reasonable estimate that he quotes comes from Government Agent King who puts the amount of rice monthly required by an adult villager at ¾ of a bushel.9 Compared to the rice consumption of the Indian immigrant

8 Additionally, Table VII.2 contains another piece of information that should not be overlooked. The peasant population, as given in the Table, was growing steadily between 1871 and 1901—the annual growth rate being 1.1%. The acreage under paddy expanded accordingly and did not lag behind at all. This strongly supports the assumption that there has not been a permanent shortage of land suitable for paddy cultivation that could be asweddumised. 9 In my copy of Wickremeratne’s essay the quoted figure was probably subject to a typing error and is given as 3 ¾ of a bushel per month. However, from a following calculation it becomes clear that Wickremeratne meant ¾ of a bushel per month. Wickremeratne, “Grain Consumption and Famine Conditions,” 34.

140

chapter seven

Table 7.3: Per Capita Consumption of Rice in Selected Districts and Provinces in Selected Years, 1887–1895. Year District of Province

1887 1887 1888 1888 1889 1889 1890 1892 1894 1895

Southern Province Kegalle Walapane Kandy Kotmale Uda Hewahata Nuwarakalaviya Vavuniya Kegalle North-Western Province

Population

Yield of Rice (bushels)

Annual Per Capita Rice Consumption (bushels)

450,000 103,000 8,400 150,000 11,000 15,000 70,000 8,159 130,000 167,000

940,000 225,075 35,000 675,000 40,250 60,000 201,530 26,389 209,402 490,825

2.1 2.1 4.2 4.5 3.7 4.0 2.9 3.2 1.6 2.9

Source: L. A. Wickremeratne, “Grain Consumption and Famine Conditions in Late Nineteenth Century Ceylon,” Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies (new series) 3, no. 2 (1973): 31.

labourers, this estimate seems to be realistic. An adult male, working as a plantation coolie, received one bushel of rice per month as payment in kind. A substantial proportion of that was bartered at the local shop, leaving about ¾ of a bushel of rice for consumption. According to that estimate, an adult male consumed about 9 bushels of rice per year. This amounts to approximately 18 bushels of paddy10 a year. However, the existing data on the amount of locally grown rice available for consumption shows that the actual consumption of rice must have been much lower than 9 bushels per year. Due to the scarcity of relevant information, Table 7.3 provides data on the per capita rice consumption in Ceylon only in selected years and regions. But it shows clearly that even the highest level of per capita rice consumption—achieved 1888 in Kandy with 4.5 bushels annually—lies well under the estimate of 9 bushels a year. Naturally, allowances have to be made, because Table 7.3 uses the whole district population as a basis for the per capita average, whereas

10 Rice is obtained by removing the outer husk from the paddy. Two bushels of paddy usually give about one bushel of rice.

subsistence

141

the above estimate of 9 bushels a year is applicable only on a fullygrown male. Nevertheless it seems reasonably clear that not only the island of Ceylon (with its urban and estate population), but even the agricultural population itself was not self-sufficient in the production of rice during the late nineteenth century. The low productivity of Ceylon’s paddy fields was mainly responsible for this. As mentioned above, several factors contributed to the low average yield-to-seed ratio of about 15 : 1. The prevalence of traditional, conservative techniques of paddy cultivation, for instance, played a major role in that context. The peasants usually resorted to sowing the paddy by broadcasting the seeds. Compared with the more refined technique of raising small plants in secluded and sheltered plots and subsequently transplanting them to the paddy field, the broadcasting technique did not yield the same results. A high percentage of the seed paddy was eaten by birds and other animals. And even the most skilled paddy cultivator could not cast the seed at the optimal seed-per-area ratio and, therefore, was not able to make maximum use of his principal resources—land and seed paddy. The scarcity of cattle further contributed to the prevalence of bad cultivation techniques. Cattle played a vital role in the preparation of the paddy fields. Either several buffaloes were driven around the field and their stamping softened and muddied the soil or the buffaloes had to drag a plough.11 But many peasants did not own cattle at all. They had to hire the animals at exorbitant rates. In many cases, the peasants could not afford that and resorted to using the hoe to prepare the soil. In some districts, paddy fields even lay fallow when cattle could not be hired, because the peasants thought the use of cattle to be vital for paddy cultivation.12 The use of the hoe for the preparation of the paddy land was especially widespread in the central highlands. Combined with the wasteful broadcasting of the seeds, this seriously diminished the yields per acre. Additionally, it has to be kept in mind that the local paddy varieties were rather low yielding varieties anyway—at least compared with rice varieties used in South East Asia at the same time.

11 John D. Rogers, Crime, Justice, and Society in Colonial Sri Lanka, London Studies on South Asia, No. 5 (London: Curzon Press, 1987), 85. 12 Ibid.

142

chapter seven

The irregular and often insufficient supply of water, however, can be identified as the single most important reason for the low paddy yields. Field paddy requires a large and steady supply of water as the field has to be fl ooded during the growing period. Generally, there are three types of wet rice cultivation. The cultivation of the crop in the natural fl ood plains of a river played practically no role in nineteenth-century Ceylon. Catching the rain water by building bunds around the paddy fields was very widespread in the Wet Zone where rainfall supplied sufficient water year round. In the Dry Zone or in less well suited regions of the Wet Zone, artificial irrigation was a prerequisite for the successful cultivation of field paddy. 7.3

Wet Rice Irrigation

Until about the middle of the nineteenth century, the improvement—or construction—of irrigation facilities was largely neglected by the British. The import of rice from India seemed to be an easier cure for Ceylon’s want of food than the systematic construction and repair of an irrigation network. Only the rising revenue and the efforts of individual Governors—such as Ward, Robinson and Gregory—revived irrigation investment to a certain extent. The measures adopted in their time will not be re-narrated here in full detail, as others have already done this.13 Nevertheless, some features of that irrigation policy shall be discussed briefl y, as this may contribute to a better understanding of the limited benefits of the measures adopted. First, the irrigation scheme, since its revival in the 1850s, basically aimed at an extension of the acreage under paddy. But the main problem of Ceylon’s wet rice production was not primarily the scarcity of suitable rice land. Table 7.2 illustrates this by showing that between 1871 and 1901 the extension of land under field paddy kept pace with the growth of the peasant population. As mentioned above, the low output per acre was the main reason for the island’s inability to achieve self-sufficiency. Only little was done to raise the

13 See Michael Roberts, “The Paddy Lands Irrigation Ordinances and the Revival of Traditional Irrigation Customs, 1856–1871,” Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies 10, no. 1+2 (1967); Michael Roberts, “Irrigation Policy in British Ceylon During the 19th Century,” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, no. 2 (1972); B. Bastiampillai, “The Revival of Irrigation Enterprise in Ceylon, 1870 to 1890,” Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies 10, no. 1+2 (1967).

subsistence

143

per acre yields all over the island. Referring to the restorations of the Tissamaharama tank and the Kantalai tank, Ameer Ali points out that in the vicinity of both tanks large plots of irrigated land were available, but the peasants would not move there and start to till those lands.14 Similarly, Lieutenant-Governor Walker in 1893 reported to the Secretary of State that an attempted colonisation of irrigated lands in Lemesuriyagama had turned out to be a complete failure and that the peasants had returned to their homes. The same despatch contains an enclosure by R. W. Ievers, the then GA of the North-Central Province (NCP), in which he reports on the failure of the colonisation scheme at the Kalawewa tank. In both cases the colonists had gone back to their villages soon after they had used up the initial government supplies.15 In the proceedings of the Annual Conference of the GAs of 1890 it is stated that the capacities of the restored tanks were often overestimated.16 The failure of such large-scale colonisation schemes indicates that suitable paddy land was not so scarce a commodity, because else the peasants would have had every reason to stay and cultivate those new lands. However, it must be added that the scheme at Lemesuriyagama had been a relief scheme for such peasants who had lost their lands due to arrears of the Paddy Tax. They obviously had no access to other paddy land, but left the scheme nevertheless. When the government clearly aimed at the stabilisation and increase of outputs per acre, it often adopted an incomplete policy. For instance, between 1850 and 1901 the government restored 512 village tanks in the North-Central Province. This is an impressive figure, but during the same period, only one channel and 7 larger tanks were repaired.17 In a Dry Zone region like the NCP the restoration of village tanks did not suffice to secure a sufficient water supply. The village tanks have to be connected to the larger tanks and reservoirs by feeder channels. This has been almost completely neglected during the nineteenth century. Illustrating the deficiencies of the irrigation system, Governor Gordon himself reported the following lines to the Secretary of State in the year 1883:

14 A. C. L. Ameer Ali, “Rice and Irrigation in 19th Century Ceylon,” Ceylon Historical Journal 25, no. 1–4 (1978): 266. 15 CO 54/608, 14 May 1893/No. 192. Walker to Ripon. Enclosure. 16 CO 54/589, 7 September 1890/ No. 342. Havelock to Knutsford. Enclosure. 17 Ameer Ali, “Rice and Irrigation,” 262.

144

chapter seven In the North Central Province upwards of 200 village tanks have been repaired and made serviceable the villagers doing the earthwork necessary for the repair of the embankment, and the Government building the masonry walls and supplying the iron doors for the sluices. These tanks prove very useful in enabling the villagers to cultivate their fields and secure their rice crops in those years when there is sufficient rainfall to fill the tanks, but, as they derive their supply of water from a limited surrounding drainage area, the tanks are, in years of drought of no use at all.18

Nevertheless, the investment in irrigation projects in the Eastern Province and in the North-Central Province did improve the living conditions of the villagers there to a certain extent. F. C. Fisher, the Government Agent of the NCP, reported to Gordon in 1883 that the output per acre has risen considerably in the province. He stated that little new land had been brought under rice cultivation in the course of ongoing irrigation projects, but the production of rice in the NCP had increased from 707,061 bushels in the years 1869–1873 to 1,142,184 bushels in the years 1879–1883. For the year 1883, Fisher even puts the annual rice harvest at 345,236 bushels.19 This amounts to a supply of 5.1 bushels of rice per capita.20 Compared with the supply figure in Table VII.3, this appears to be an overestimate. Nevertheless, Lieutenant-Governor John Douglas gave a similarly sanguine view of the irrigation progress in the NCP. He paid a visit to Anuradhapura in 1882 and consequently addressed the following minute to Governor Gordon: I would premise by observing that my first visit to this neighbourhood was made in July, 1870, in company with the late Mr. Parsons, then Government Agent of the North-Western Province, whose knowledge of the people, their language, and modes of thought, enabled me to form some opinion of their condition. That condition was truely deplorable; the large irrigation works and village tanks were alike in ruins; the effects of bad food and bad water everywhere observable, parangi disease was rife;—the place, as Mr. Parsons observed to me, seemed to have been forgotten. I do not wish to be understood as casting any refl ection on the individual officers who had administered the district: they could not make bricks without

CO 54/551, 25 August 1882/Offices and Individuals. Arthur Gordon. CO 54/553, 26 April 1884/No. 154. Gordon to Derby. Enclosure. 20 International Population Census Publications. Series 2. Pre-1945. Sri Lanka 1881.1 thru 1931.2. [5 Microfilms]. Figure for 1883 calculated by way of the average annual growth rate 1881–1891. 18 19

subsistence

145

straw—that is, money,—nor were they responsible for the action of the British Government when, in abolishing rajacariya under the belief that it was slavery in another form, Government neglected to provide any organization for united action on the part of the villages in maintaining the tanks upon which they were dependent for food and drink.21

Douglas subsequently describes the different measures that had been adopted since then. The most important measure for him was the organization of the irrigation upkeep works by the implementation of the “Village Communities Ordinance.” Furthermore, he puts strong emphasis on the importance of the construction of roads and extensive irrigation works. Then he continues: The effect of all this upon the people is most striking; they are fat, well fed, and healthy looking; the hospitals are almost empty, and the disappearance of parangi is very marked. Not merely is food abundant—the price of paddy in the villages is cents 37½ per bushel—but a large quantity of surplus paddy, estimated by Mr. Fisher at 400,000 bushels, has been sold and sent to Jaffna, Kurunegala and Puttalam. I have no means of knowing whether Mr. Fisher’s estimate is over sanguine, but I know that lines of carts have been met on the North road carrying paddy from the North-Central to the Northern Province, and there is still an unusual amount of paddy unthreshed to be seen stacked in the villages.22

Both Fisher’s and Douglas’ statements on the promising progress of the irrigation enterprise in the North-Central Province seem to be “over sanguine”, to use Douglas’ words. However, the rice yields of the NCP did evidently increase thanks to the improvement of the irrigation system. According to Kingsley M. De Silva, at least the larger irrigation schemes in the Eastern and the Southern Provinces also led to “a notable increase in population and an impressive improvement in rice production.”23 But on an island-wide scale these regional improvements could do only little to increase paddy production. While the government was concerned with the improvement of artificial irrigation facilities—especially in the Dry Zone regions—, other parts of the island witnessed a considerable reduction of the paddy lands’ water supply. As mentioned in the previous chapter, in

CO 57/92, Sessional Paper XIV.–1883. CO 57/92, Sessional Paper XIV.–1883. 23 Kingsley M. De Silva, A History of Sri Lanka (London; Berkeley: C. Hurst; University of California Press, 1981), 304. 21 22

146

chapter seven Ceylon

115

CP

110 105 100 95 90 85 80 75 1900

1899

1898

1897

1896

1895

1894

1893

1892

1891

1890

1889

1888

1887

1886

1885

1884

1883

1882

1881

70 1880

Paddy Acreage (Index: 1880 = 100)

120

Year

Figure 7.1: Acreage under Field Paddy in Ceylon and in the Central Province (and the Province of Uva from 1886 onwards), 1880–1890 (Indexed with 1880 = 100). Source: Ceylon Statistical Blue Books 1880–1900.

the central highlands, the ever-expanding plantations began to cut into the water supply of the rice fields located in the valleys beneath.24 This seriously affected the productivity of the fields. Figure VII.1 shows that the acreage under paddy significantly decreased in the Central Province (including Uva from 1886 onwards), while the acreage increased in the whole of Ceylon. This illustrates the fact that the plantations had a devastating impact on the water supply.25

24 A. C. L. Ameer Ali, “Peasant Coffee in Ceylon During the 19th Century,” Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies (new series) 2, no. 1 (1972): 390. 25 James Webb states that the plantations have already started to cut into the villagers’ water supplies in the early days of coffee cultivation. The plantations polluted the rivers with hundreds of tons of coffee pulp. Additionally, deforestation changed the river pattern in the highlands. Although already known in the 1840s and 1850s, water shortages became more pressing with the continued growth of the plantation sector. James L. A. Webb, Tropical Pioneers: Human Agency and Ecological Change in the Highlands of Sri Lanka, 1800–1900, Ohio University Press Series in Ecology and History (Athens, Oh.: Ohio University Press, 2002), 87–88.

subsistence

147

While the government irrigation policy clearly benefited the povertystricken population of the Dry Zone—especially of the North-Central Province—, the production of rice stagnated in the climatically better suited regions of the central highlands. Consequently, the peasantry of the Dry Zone became gradually less dependent on chena produce, whereas the paddy cultivators of the hill-country experienced an increasing dependence on their chenas due to the insufficient water supply and the strict enforcement of the Paddy Tax. Those regions with the comparatively highest paddy yields—namely the Western, Southern and Central Provinces—were largely neglected regarding the improvement of irrigation facilities. An increase of the islandwide paddy production, however, would have called for island-wide investments and improvements of the irrigation facilities—and for the introduction of modern cultivation techniques. Interestingly, the government officials in Ceylon realised this in the late 1880s. The Governors’ Original Correspondence of the 1870s and early 1880s is—generally—full of praise for the working of the irrigation schemes. Later, reports on that subject become a little more disillusioned, as the officials realised that the island’s overall rice production had not developed very favourably. We have already seen that, from 1871 to 1901, the acreage under paddy extended at the same pace at which the peasant population grew (see Table 7.2). It is sometimes pointed out that—in the face of expanding plantations—such a sustained growth had only been possible due to the success of the government irrigation works. Irrigation might, indeed, have facilitated the extension of paddy cultivation, but the most important improvement—the increase in the per acre yields—was not achieved. As we do not have any reliable data on paddy yields in the nineteenth century (the figures in the Blue Book are even more inaccurate than the acreage data), Table 7.4 shows the amount of rice and paddy imported from 1881 to 1901 and its relation to the non-peasant population of Ceylon. The figures indicate that the amount of rice imported grew from 7.91 bushels per capita (of the non-peasant population) in 1881 to 11.25 bushels in 1901. Obviously, the wet rice cultivators have not been able to supply the non-peasant population of Ceylon with sufficient amounts of rice. Instead, rice had to be imported in rising quantities. This strongly supports the assumption that—from an island-wide perspective—the irrigation measures of the late nineteenth century did not lead to an increased per acre output of the wet rice fields.

148

chapter seven

Table 7.4: Paddy and Rice Imported Per Capita of the Non-Peasant Population, 1881–1901. Imported Rice (000 bushels)

Non-Peasant Imported Paddy Imported Rice Per Capita Per Capita Population (bushels) (bushels) (000)

Year

Imported Paddy (000 bushels)

1881

1,122

6,031

762

1.47

7.91

1891

1,244

7,162

789

1.58

9.08

1901

1,450

11,533

1,025

1.41

11.25

Source: Ceylon Statistical Blue Books 1881, 1891, 1901; International Population Census Publications. Series 2. Pre-1945. Sri Lanka 1881.1 thru 1931.2. [5 Microfilms].

The limited success of the government’s irrigation schemes did not remain unnoticed in the 1890s. In a despatch to Governor Ridgeway, the Secretary of State Chamberlain himself states that “in no case must the work of irrigation, to which I attach as much importance as to railway construction, and the progress of which has of late years been disappointing, be crippled for want of funds.”26 In 1896, Mr. Elliott of the Ceylon Civil Service submitted a statement to the Colonial Office, in which he described the present state of the irrigation works and several reasons for its limited success. The importation of foreign rice into Ceylon was in 1894 over 7½ million of Bushels. This quantity could be grown on about 150,000 acres of properly irrigated land, giving two crops a year, but practically nothing has been done towards securing this desirable object. Irrigation so far has from various causes, to some of which I will presently refer, added very moderately to the grain raised in the island, and only in one district in a favourable year is more rice grown than can be consumed locally. Under existing works there are now I find (from the returns published by the Irrigation Board), some 70,000 acres not taken up or nearly half the area required to make the colony independent of foreign supply. There is, I believe, sufficient population within the island to extend the cultivation of rice very considerably, if a proper agency or means were devised for bringing the people and the land together. The former have only the labour of their hands, and so cannot do this unaided, while where native capitalists intervene, they work on a system of shares, which leaves a very inadequate return to the actual cultivator. Thus a

26

CO 54/646, 11 June 1898/No. 191. Ridgeway to Chamberlain. Enclosure.

subsistence

149

large share varying from ¼ to ½ of the gross crop is claimed as rent for the ground; again ¼ is taken as hire of the cattle employed in ploughing and trampling, and a further share for the threshing; while 1/8 share is claimed for the water rate, though it is only a rupee an acre, which the landlord undertakes to settle. Advances made during cultivation are also charged for at exorbitant rates when being settled after the crop is reaped. On the other hand the cultivators retaliate in self-defence by cheating and stealing which lead to quarrelling and distrust. It is not to be wondered at that under such a system the extension of paddy cultivation is extremely slow.27

Apart from the urgently needed relief given to the poor peasantry of several Dry Zone districts, it becomes clear that the irrigation measures adopted by the government in the 1880s and 1890s were not successful in raising the yields and expanding the acreage under paddy—although the government spent a considerable percentage of its expenditure on irrigation works. In 1887, Governor Gordon established an Irrigation Fund and assigned a quarter of the revenue derived from the Paddy Tax to it. After 1892, Rs 200,000 from the import duty on rice were set aside for this task. Table 7.5: Expenditure on Irrigation, 1880–1899. Year

Expenditure % of Total (Rs) Expenditure

1880 1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 1889

325,072 122,181 84,179 121,783 227,664 344,553 568,764 542,166 475,305 457,656

2.28 0.9 0.67 1.00 1.85 2.73 4.37 4.07 3.25 3.07

Year

1890 1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899

Expenditure % of Total (Rs) Expenditure 547,342 512,835 436,865 429,330 365,038 219,596 221,539 233,586 241,596 271,363

Source: Ceylon Statistical Blue Books 1880–1899.

27

CO 54/634, 5 November 1896/Offices and Individuals. Sharpe.

3.57 3.12 2.46 2.35 1.79 1.05 1.04 1.08 1.06 1.09

150

chapter seven

Table 7.5 contains the annual expenditure of the Public Works Department on irrigation works from 1880 to 1899. In 1900, a separate Irrigation Department was finally established. For the years 1888 to 1891, the figures given also contain works under the Irrigation Fund. Above all, the Table clearly shows that during the economic depression of the early 1880s the funds dedicated to irrigation purposes suffered. With the revival of the economy and the establishment of the Irrigation Fund expenses on irrigation recovered. On the whole, the amount spent on irrigation appears to be substantial. Nevertheless, the percentage of the money dedicated to the irrigation against the total annual expenditure remains comparatively low throughout the period under observation. Other projects—above all the extension of the railway system—siphoned off substantial amounts of money. And the planters lobbied steadily for the swift improvement of the infrastructure and the decrease of government expenditure on irrigation. The following statement by Mr. Christie, the planting member of the Legislative Council, subsumes the planters’ main arguments against any government enforcement of the irrigation scheme. In a Legislative Council debate on irrigation Mr. Christie stated: It would at first sight seem wrong to cultivate a product which requires a large amount of water in a climate where there is very little of it. It also seems wrong to cultivate a product which is notoriously the least remunerative that any producer can enter upon. Natives simply adhere to the cultivation of paddy out of habit, and not because it is remunerative. [. . .] To any one who has seen the real rice-growing countries, the difference between those countries and Ceylon is very much marked. Ceylon is not intended by nature to be a great rice-growing country. The fact that large portions of the country are covered with irrigation works, with ellas and tanks, does not of itself imply and call upon the Government to restore them. The tanks were necessary at the time they were created because the people of the country had to produce within the country, within each district, within each village, the food that they required to maintain life. [. . .] But at the present day that state of affairs does not exist at all. There is easy communication over most parts of the island, there is daily communication with the large rice-growing districts on the Continent, and there is ample and cheap supply of imported food to be had if the native of the country is provided with any means of purchasing it. It is, therefore, not necessary that the country should grow within itself the food of the people.28

28

CO 54/579, 31 December 1888/No. 518. Gordon to Knutsford. Enclosure.

subsistence 7.4

151

The Paddy Tax and its Impact on the Peasantry

In the previous pages the impact of the Paddy Tax on the cultivation of wet rice has already been referred to briefl y. Until its abolition in the year 1892 paddy cultivators had been subject to this tax. The origins of the Paddy Tax can be traced back to the time of the Sinhalese kings. In those days holders of so-called non-service tenures—i.e. holdings which did not involve personal service to the king—had to pay a share of the produce instead. The tax was collected directly by the officials of the Crown. The Portuguese and the Dutch took over the tax and modified it. The direct collection of the tax survived, but under the Dutch a renting system was introduced and soon became the most widespread form of collecting the tax.29 Furthermore, the Dutch exempted the produce of garden land from the tax. Field paddy now was the only crop subjected to the tax. Neither in the time of the Sinhalese kings nor under any European colonial power has a direct land tax ever existed. The British inherited the Dutch system and added the choice of voluntary commutation in cash in 1831—the birth of the commutation system.30 Wet rice fields remained the only land to be taxed. The commutation system was not introduced to the whole island, as this was beyond the capacity of the British administration. Thus, the renting system prevailed in many parts of the island and enabled the renters to extract large profits from their occupation. According to Kingsley De Silva, contemporary officials estimated the government revenue from the Paddy Tax to be only half of the share actually paid to the renters by the peasant cultivators.31 Such abuse is widespread in tax renting systems that farm out the right to collect the tax to the highest bidder.32 De Silva, A History of Sri Lanka, 309; D. Wesumperuma, “Land Sales under the Paddy Tax in British Ceylon,” Vidyodaya Journal of Arts, Science and Letters 2, no. 1 (1969): 19. 30 De Silva, A History of Sri Lanka, 310; Wesumperuma, “Land Sales under the Paddy Tax,” 19. De Silva and Wesumperuma both date the introduction of the commutation system back to ‘around 1830’. According to GA Fisher, the commutation system was introduced in the Kandyan highlands in the year 1831. CO 54/590, 25 November 1890/No. 465. Havelock to Knutsford. Enclosure. 31 De Silva, A History of Sri Lanka, 310. 32 The Zamindari System of land tax collection in parts of colonial India after the Permanent Settlement is a prime example for the potentially disastrous impact of tax renting on the peasant population. 29

152

chapter seven

In other regions, such as the Kandyan highlands, the commutation system was introduced and swiftly adopted by the local peasantry. The commutation in money contributed substantially to the arrival of the money economy even in the remotest Sinhalese villages. Apart from avoiding the arbitrary nature of the renting system, one distinctive feature of the commutation system attracted the peasantry to voluntarily pay the tax in cash. In his report on the “Sale of Paddy Lands for Arrears of Tax in the Udukinda Division, Province of Uva”, Mr. Fisher, Government Agent of Uva, explained: Stress has been often laid upon the fact that the commutations in the Kandyan country were voluntary, and that the people signed them willingly; but it must be borne in mind that since 1831 the commutation registers have been regarded by the Kandyan people as the strongest evidence of title, and they would therefore prefer to sign any agreement, even if excessive, rather than run the risk of disturbance to their titles. Practically the people have had no voice in determining the rates of assessment, but have accepted, almost without question, the decisions of the officers of the Government.33

It has already been mentioned in the previous chapter that, with the plantations rapidly expanding from the 1830s and 1840s onwards, the pressure on land grew constantly in the plantation districts. The “Crown Lands Encroachment Ordinance” of 1840 was the government’s response on this growing pressure and placed the burden of proving the land title on the claimant. Thus, the commutation system was perceived as a means to acquire legal proof of title by the peasantry of the highlands. The existence of a valid title deed was the only legal protection against planters or the Crown claiming the peasants’ land. The engagement of large parts of the Kandyan peasantry in small-scale cash crop cultivation—mostly of native coffee—facilitated the adoption of the commutation system. It provided the cash necessary to commute the Paddy Tax. Therefore, Ordinance 5 of 1866, implemented to provide the government with the legal machinery to seize and sell the property of tax defaulters, “remained almost a

Roland Wenzlhuemer, “Land und Arbeitskraft in Nordindien. 200 Jahre Zamindars in Bihar” (paper presented at the Salzburger Hochschulwochen, Salzburg, 18 November 1999). 33 CO 54/590, 25 November 1890/No. 465. Havelock to Knutsford. Enclosure.

subsistence

153

dead-letter”34 as long as peasant coffee prospered in the highlands. Making some profit from the sale of coffee, most peasants registered for commutation were able to pay the Paddy Tax. Only in rare cases paddy cultivators defaulted in their payments. And if so, Ordinance 5 was usually not strictly enforced. The fl ourishing plantation economy filled the government coffers, and, thus, arrears in the payment of the Paddy Tax were generally handled rather generously. When the reign of ‘King Coffee’ drew to an end, and the treasury felt the first signs of economic depression in the late 1870s, the relaxed attitude of the government towards the tax defaulters changed quickly. To make up for the losses in revenue the accumulation of arrears was not tolerated anymore. And if the defaulter was not able to pay the Paddy Tax (and the arrears, if any), Ordinance 5 of 1866 was strictly enforced. Due to the ruin of the peasants’ coffee gardens—taking place several years before the island-wide collapse of the coffee industry—the paddy cultivators experienced serious difficulties in raising the money needed to pay the tax. Consequently, many defaulters were evicted from their lands and the government sold the land to recover the tax and the arrears. As the commutation system had been widely adopted in the central highlands and the depression hit hardest here, most of those land sales took place in the Central Province and in the Province of Uva.35 The commutation system prevailing in the highlands was still that of voluntary commutation. The revised system of compulsory commutation under Ordinance 11 of 1878 had not yet been introduced in the Kandyan regions. This revised commutation system made so-called ‘crop commutation’36 possible and exempted freshly cultivated fields as well as fields yielding less than three-fold from the tax.37 However, the inhabitants of the Kandyan highlands did not yet enjoy the small benefits brought with

34 D. Wesumperuma, “The Evictions under the Paddy Tax, and Their Impact on the Peasantry of Walapane, 1882–1885,” Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies 10, no. 1+2 (1967): 132. 35 Ibid. 36 If the peasant chose to pay his tax under the ‘crop commutation,’ he was liable to pay his tax only in years in which his fields yielded a crop. Opting for ‘annual commutation’ instead, he had to pay every year—regardless of the yield—, but the amount to be paid was reduced by 10%. See CO 56/10, Ordinance 11 of 1878. 37 CO 56/10, Ceylon Acts 1870–1878, Ordinance 11 of 1878, “An Ordinance to make better provisions for the due collection of the Tax, Duty or Share due to Government upon Grain grown in the Island,” 19 December 1878.

154

chapter seven

the revision of commutation in 1878 and paid their taxes under the harsher system of voluntary commutation. In the Walapane Division of the CP and in the Udukinda Division in Uva the remorseless enforcement of Ordinance 5 of 1866 and the subsequent evictions had the most dramatic consequences. In the Administration Report of the year 1886 the Assistant Government Agent of the Nuwara Eliya District, Cecil J. R. Le Mesurier, first referred to the wretched condition of the people of Walapane.38 But it took another three years until it became a public issue. In the Administration Report, Le Mesurier pointed out that between 1882 and 1885 2,899 paddy fields in Walapane had been sold to recover the Paddy Tax. Given a total of 18,846 fields, this amounted to 15.4% of all paddy fields. According to Le Mesurier, 989 fields went out of cultivation completely. As a consequence, 1,048 of the former owners had already died by 1886. 382 families had left the district. Le Mesurier stated that the population of the villages affected by the excessive land sales had decreased from 34,216 in 1881 to 30,693 in 1886.39 Only when the newspapers in Ceylon and in Britain took up the issue in 1889, the government of Ceylon ordered an inquiry. Government Agent Moir—who was in charge of the inquiry—traced the reasons for the distress in Walapane back to the failure of peasant coffee and the adverse effects of the plantations on the water supply of the paddy fields.40 But in a confidential despatch to the Colonial Secretary, Moir described the impact of the strict recovery of Paddy Tax arrears on the already impoverished people: The causes assigned [i.e. failure of peasant coffee, water supply] had not led to the accumulation of arrears of grain tax only, however; they had contributed to the general impoverishment of the people, so that when recovery of the arrears came to be rigidly enforced in 1882, the effect on the landowners of the alienation of their fields at once manifested itself, for in the early part of 1883 relief was applied for 373 persons in Gangapalata of Uda Hewaheta, reported to be in want of food and clothing, of whom, Mr. Le Mesurier says, most had lost their fields during the previous year for default of payment of the tax. And during 1885 and 1886 Government distributed food amongst the people of

38 39 40

Wesumperuma, “The Evictions under the Paddy Tax,” 132–33. CO 57/99, Administration Report 1886, Report on Nuwara Eliya District, 37A. CO 57/109, Sessional Paper XXIX. Report by R. W. D. Moir, 3.

subsistence

155

the division. In Walapane, likewise, in 1884, over 1,300 persons were reported to be in a starving condition; most of them, Mr. Le Mesurier states, had been deprived of their fields.41

In the end, the rigorous recovery of arrears of the Paddy Tax under J. F. Dickson (GA of the CP) in the 1880s had led to the dramatic incidents in Walapane. Dickson had been of the opinion that the “strict and stern enforcement of the payment of the tax is best for the people and the kindest course in the long run that we can pursue towards them.”42 But in following this “kindest course”, Dickson and his officials ignored the economic position of the peasantry in the Central Province generally and in the Nuwara Eliya district particularily. Over-assessment of the peasants’ fields had been the rule in the Central Province (as well as in Uva), and since the 1860s the paddy cultivators had been paying exorbitant tax rates to the treasury. But as long as the coffee bushes had been yielding sufficient produce, most of the peasants had been able to pay the Paddy Tax.43 With the coffee industry collapsing, naturally, the peasants came into arrears—and the government’s rigid enforcement of the recovery of arrears finally deprived many of the paddy cultivators not only of the land, but, at times, also of their food crops, which were sold for default.44 After the condition of the Walapane peasantry had become a public issue, the Grain Commissioners scrutinised the tax assessments and, eventually, reduced the assessments considerably. In a letter to Governor Havelock, Le Mesurier laid stress on the excessive taxation of the peasant cultivators and emphasised that the recent reduction in the tax rates only illustrated the previous over-assessment of the paddy fields. [I]n fact, Sir, it comes to this, that in the commuted districts, where only it was possible to directly increase the tax without altering the law, it has been very largely increased, and that in the rented districts, where the amount of the tax is determined by the amount of the crops and the power and rapacity of the renters, it may or may not have been so. That the tax has been reduced in some of the commuted districts during the last two or three years, is true; but this only proves that it 41 CO 882/5, No. 52, Moir to Colonial Secretary, Alleged Deaths from Starvation in the Nuwara Eliya District, 6. 42 Quoted in Wesumperuma, “The Evictions under the Paddy Tax,” 139. 43 Ibid.: 135–36. 44 Ibid.: 140.

156

chapter seven was too high before. If Mr. O’Brien’s contention is true, why did Government reduce the tax lately by 60 per cent in Walapane and why are they reassessing Uva, where the reductions, I am assured, will come to something like 50 per cent of the present tax.45

The reassessments in the Uva Province were triggered by the report of Government Agent Fisher on the “Sale of Paddy Lands for Arrears of Tax in the Udukinda Division, Province of Uva”. Mr. George Wall, a prominent Paddy Tax abolitionist backed by his daily “The Ceylon Independent” and the weekly “The Ceylon Mail,” had submitted a report to the House of Commons, referring to incidents in Uva similar to those of Walapane. Governor Havelock had asked Fisher to inquire about the matter. In his report Fisher presented alarming figures for the Udukinda Division: between 1882 and 1887 3,244 fields had been sold. 2,930 families (altogether 14,650 persons) had lost all their landed possessions. The sales extended to 1,817 acres realising a sum of 16,490.12 Rupees. Of the tax defaulters 599 (counting only the heads of families) had left their homes. 450 had died since. 2,000 were working as coolies now, whereas 127 were absolutely destitute.46 Fisher also gives a table showing the collected Paddy Tax and the recovered arrears in Udukinda between 1882 and 1887 (see Table 7.6). Taking a look at the figures given, the devastating impact on the peasantry becomes clear. In three years the government had recovered around 98,000 Rupees of tax arrears in a single division. According to Fisher, the tax in the Udukinda Division had been “increased three-fold” in the last thirty years. Therefore he insisted that “unless the tax is altogether abolished it is a matter of urgency that taxation in Uva should be at once revised and largely reduced.”47 The native headmen had played a significant role in this constant

45 CO 54/593, 5 April 1891/No. 114. Havelock to Knutsford. Enclosure. Interestingly, Mr. Meade of the Colonial Office—himself in favour of the Paddy Tax—wrote a short note on Le Mesurier’s letter before submitting it to the Secretary of State: “1. He [Le Mesurier] is in the third class of the Civil Service—not a Government Agent or a leading man in any way. Except that he is in the Nuwara Eliya district, it is not quite obvious why he should be treated as an authority on the subject.” As Le Mesurier’s letter was strongly opposed to the views of Mr. O’Brien—another staunch advocate of the Paddy Tax—and the former GA of the CP, Dickson, and criticised their behaviour in the case, Meade carried on: “2. Both in the case of Sir J. Dickson and in that of Mr. O’Brien he seems to have taken care to ‘bark’ after they had left Ceylon. Mr. O’Brien will no doubt take very good care of himself. I have sent him a spare copy.” 46 CO 54/590, 25 November 1890/No. 465. Havelock to Knutsford. Enclosure. 47 CO 54/590, 25 November 1890/No. 465. Havelock to Knutsford. Enclosure.

subsistence

157

Table 7.6: Paddy Tax Collected and Arrears Recovered in the Udukinda Division, Province of Uva, 1882–1887. Year

Current Paddy Tax (Rs)

1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887

492.13 13,981.61 26,903.58 26,270.04 25,503.64 26,564.98

Arrears Recovered (Rs)

Total Paddy Tax Recovered (Rs)

42,093.17 33,692.88 22,134.23 – – –

42,585.30 47,674.49 49,037.81 26,270.04 25,503.64 26,564.98

Source: CO 54/590, 25 November 1890/No. 465. Havelock to Knutsford. Enclosure.

over-assessment of paddy fields. “They assessed the value of the fields, determined the collection of the tax and also supplied the British officials with all the information regarding the condition of the peasants. Thus they were in a position even to manoeuvre land sales.”48 A considerable number of headmen had made use of this infl uential position to pursue their own interests. This becomes clear while taking a look at the figures on the purchasers of the defaulters’ fields. Fisher stated that 670 of the fields sold in Udukinda had been bought by Kandyan headmen.49 This accounts for 20% of the total number of fields sold. Therefore, it is likely that the personal interests of the headmen contributed substantially to the constant over-assessment of local paddy cultivators’ wet rice fields. As the defaulters’ fields changed hands at nominal rates, many headmen were able to secure considerable profits. Furthermore, the Grain Commissioner A. M. Ashmore stated that not only were the fields of the peasant cultivators often largely over-assessed, but that the “lands of chiefs and of the richest class of cultivators have been found to be greatly under-estimated in extent, and rated as too low an order of fertility.”50 The distress in Walapane and Udukinda, therefore, was the natural consequence of several developments: the collapse of peasant coffee, the negative impact of plantations and forest clearings on the water supply, the constant over-assessment of paddy fields by the government and the native headmen and, finally, the rigorous recovery of

48 49 50

Wesumperuma, “The Evictions under the Paddy Tax,” 140. CO 54/590, 25 November 1890/No. 465. Havelock to Knutsford. Enclosure. Quoted in Wesumperuma, “Land Sales under the Paddy Tax,” 22.

158

chapter seven

tax arrears and the strict enforcement of Ordinance 5 of 1866 to refill the empty treasury during the depression of the early 1880s. The Kandyan peasantry was hit hardest. Tax rates were highest here, because during coffee times ready cash had been available. The system of voluntary commutation had not yet been substituted by the revised system of 1878, and rice yields were declining due to the bad water supply. However, in other regions of Ceylon the peasantry had also accumulated certain arrears in the payment of the Paddy Tax and experienced evictions and forcible land sales—though not on such a large scale as in the highlands. Judging from the despatches in the Governor’s Correspondence and the statement in the Administration Reports, it seems that—apart from the Kandyan regions—the excessive land sales under Ordinance 5 of 1866 did not lead to conditions comparable to those in Walapane and Udukinda. Little is mentioned about distress or even starvation in the course of evictions. But a table given in Wesumperuma’s “Land Sales under the Paddy Tax in British Ceylon” (see Table 7.7) indicates that in other parts of Ceylon the sale of paddy fields for tax arrears was widespread as well. In the districts of Ratnapura and Batticaloa the number of lots sold under the Paddy Tax accounts for 25% of the total number of lots. This is twice as high as in the Nuwara Eliya district. Apart from Nuwara Eliya and Uva, the total percentage of the acreage under paddy sold under Ordinance 5 of 1866 is alarmingly high in Kalutara (7.41%), Galle (8.8%), Ratnapura (9.21%) and Batticaloa (27.38%). The peasantry of these districts has surely suffered from these land sales, but cases of starvation or conditions similar to those in Walapane and Udukinda were not reported. Although the evictions under the Paddy Tax, as mentioned above, affected the peasantry in many regions of Ceylon, only the distress in Walapane and Udukinda became a public issue after the inquiries of AGA Le Mesurier and GA Fisher. Many high ranking officials—such as Dickson, Moir, O’Brien and even Governor Gordon—defended the Grain Tax against the criticism that arose. The Colonial Office itself remained in favour of the tax for a long time as well. It was George Wall who eventually brought the issue before the House of Commons.51 In Britain the so-called Cobden Club and the “Man-

51 See CO 54/584, 22 October 1889/No. 406, 20 November 1889/No. 456; CO 54/585, 26 July 1889/HoC, 6 August 1889/HoC.

subsistence

159

Table 7.7: Paddy Lands Sold for Non-Payment of the Paddy Tax, 1880–1892. District

Colombo Kalutara Negombo Kegalle Ratnapura Galle Matara Hambantota Kandy Matale Nuwara Eliya Badulla Jaffna Batticaloa Trincomalee

Total Number of Lots under Paddy

Number of Lots sold for default

% of sold Lots

45,072 28,902 17,505 44,201 25,476 31,384 28,622 9,715 35,852 17,723 18,848 29,307 n/a 4,797 1,391

513 2,476 109 491 6,359 4,832 1,949 337 739 317 2,372 9,433 168 1,198 1

1.14 8.57 0.62 1.11 24.96 15.4 6.81 3.47 2.06 1.79 12.58 32.19 n/a 24.97 0.07

Total Acreage % of Acreage sold sold under Paddy Acreage 57,484 45,273 14,932 21,408 26,539 45,887 45,997 20,118 19,130 9,912 n/a 17,787 n/a 65,773 7,814

633 3,355 89 110 2,443 4,036 1,974 352 344 135 747 5,408 108 18,002 16

1.1 7.41 0.6 0.51 9.21 8.8 4.29 1.75 1.8 1.36 n/a 30.4 n/a 27.37 0.2

Source: D. Wesumperuma, “Land Sales under the Paddy Tax in British Ceylon,” Vidyodaya Journal of Arts, Science and Letters 2, no. 1 (1969): 35.

chester Guardian” agitated against the Paddy Tax. In the Legislative Council the Kandyan and the Tamil members, T. B. Panabokke and P. Ramanathan, spoke in favour of its abolition.52 Le Mesurier summarised the opinion of the ‘abolitionists’ in his letter to Governor Havelock: Before the introduction of the cocoanut, arecanut, coffee, tea, &c., industries, the only cultivation of any importance was paddy. Paddy land was then wealth—almost the only wealth in fact—and in taxing paddy the Government taxed wealth. As other industries succeeded and became more remunerative and more sought after, paddy took a back place, and is now the industry of the poor; and the Government by taxing it, and not the others, are now taxing poverty and leaving wealth alone.53

George Wall also submitted a letter to Havelock pleading for the abolition of the Paddy Tax. In the appendix, Wall presented a table showing the tax burden of the different classes in Ceylon—from the

52 53

De Silva, A History of Sri Lanka, 313. CO 54/593, 5 April 1891/No. 114. Havelock to Knutsford. Enclosure.

160

chapter seven

poorest to the richest. This table is depicted in Table 7.8 of this chapter. According to Wall, the two poorest classes of agriculturists (goiyas) spend 14.4%, respectively 13%, of their meagre annual income to pay their taxes, whereas the richest spend only 0.58% of their income for this purpose. Le Mesurier’s and Wall’s constant agitation—combined with pressure from other infl uential groups and public opinion—finally yielded fruits. Governor Havelock, who was personally much more sympathetic to the abolition of the Paddy Tax than his predecessor Gordon, convinced the Colonial Office and the Secretary of State Knutsford to abolish the tax without replacement. In early 1892, Havelock informed the Legislative Council about the abolition of the Paddy Tax. To make good for the estimated revenue losses of 500,000 Rs54 annually, Knutsford suggested to increase the Succession and Legacy Duty, the Import Duties and the Salt Tax. One tenth of the collected import duty on rice was dedicated to the Irrigation Fund, as it could not be filled by the Paddy Tax revenue anymore.55 Thus, in 1892 the Paddy Tax was abolished for good. 7.5

Chena Cultivation

Only the richest paddy cultivators in Ceylon managed to make a decent living from the produce of their paddy fields in the nineteenth century. The bulk of the peasantry needed an additional source of food or income. Therefore, many paddy cultivators also resorted to slash-and-burn cultivation in the vicinity of the village—chena cultivation. Taking another look at Table 7.3, the dependence of the peasants on the chena produce becomes clear. With the rice yields well below the annual requirements of an average family, chenaing often was a bare subsistence necessity. Usually, chena cultivation is said to have been of much more importance in the Dry Zone as the development of paddy production in these regions had long been hampered by insufficient irrigation facilities. But in reality the Wet

54 We do not know exactly how Havelock arrived at this estimate. In the year 1892, the collected Paddy Tax accounted for 928,309 Rs (or 5% of the total Government revenue; see Ceylon Statistical Blue Book 1892). 55 CO 54/600, 22 March 1892/No. 120, Havelock to Knutsford. Enclosure.

subsistence

161

Table 7.8: Incidence of Taxation in Terms of a Day’s Income on Heads of Families. Classes of the People One day’s income

Goiyas paid Goiyas paid in Kind in Wages

Person of Rs. 500 a year

Rs. 1.000 Rs. 5.000 Rs. 10.000 a year a year a year

Rs. 1,40

Rs. 2,80

10 cents

35 cents

Road Tax (Rs. 1,50)

6 days’ pay

4,3 days’ pay

1,07 day’s 0,53 day’s 0,1 day’s pay pay pay

Rs. 14

Rs. 28

Salt Tax (Rs. 1,58)

15 days’ pay

4,5 days’ pay

1,13 day’s 0,57 day’s 0,11 day’s 0,05 day’s pay pay pay pay

Village labour dues 12 days’ pay

12 days’ pay

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

0,05 day’s pay

Paddy tithe (at Rs. 1,50 per acre)

15 days’ pay on 8 bushels

-

-

Custom duties on rice, wheat, salt fish, and bare necessaries

2 days’ pay, on curry stuffs only

24,5 days’ pay on 24 bus. rice

7,4 days’ pay

3,7 days’ 0,74 day’s 0,37 day’s pay pay pay

Custom duties on clothing Sum expended

2,5 days’ pay Rs. 5

1,3 day’s pay Rs. 10

1,4 day’s pay Rs. 40

1,1 day’s 2,41 days’ 1,64 day’s pay pay pay Rs. 60 Rs. 500 Rs. 700

Total number of days’ income

52,5

46,6

11,0

5,9

3,36

2,11

14,4%

13%

3%

1,6%

1%

0,58%

Percentage of 365 days

Source: CO/593, 21 April 1891/No. 133, Havelock to Knutsford. Enclosure.

Zone regions—and the Kandyan highlands in particular—were deeply dependent on slash-and-burn agriculture as well. Chena cultivation first required the clearing of forest land (slashand-burn). Then the land was sown with different crops for a number of years—mostly elvi (hill paddy), kurakkan (millet), maize, other fine grains, chillies and vegetables.56 When the land could not successfully produce another crop, it was left fallow and used as pasture for the cattle.57 Chenaing not only provided subsidiary food crops to the paddy cultivators, it was also the only means of subsistence for families

Wimalaratana, Changes in Consumption Pattern, 265. Eric Meyer, “Paddy, Garden, Chena, Plantation. Was There a Peasant Strategy in the Kandyan Regions of Sri Lanka before 1840?,” in Meanings of Agriculture: Essays in South Asian History and Economics, ed. Peter Robb (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996), 189. 56 57

162

chapter seven

that had no share in the village paddy fields. When commonly held paddy fields were split up under the “Partition Ordinance” (or due to indebtedness), peasants frequently lost their stake in the village fields and had to rely exclusively on the chena crops. According to Meyer, “[c]hena was like a safety valve, which prevented a breakdown in the village socio-economic balance, and eventually allowed poor peasants to postpone the decision to migrate.”58 Wickremeratne pointed out that in large parts of Ceylon the cultivation of chena crops was “almost a substitute for rice.” Particularly in the Vanni, in parts of the North-Western Province, in certain divisions of the Southern Province and in the Lower Divisions of the Badulla district chena cultivation “was the order of the day”.59 Although the Goverment’s general policy towards slash-and-burn cultivation was based on the assumption that it was “primitive and wasteful”,60 the officials in such agriculturally backward regions usually did not enforce the government’s restrictions on chenas very strictly. When water for the cultivation of field paddy was not available or the rice crop failed for some other reason, the chena produce was the only resort for the peasants. Therefore, many local officials considered it cruel to restrict the use of forest lands as chenas in such regions.61 However, in times of drought the chena crops, kurakkan and other fine grains, often failed as well. Reports like that of AGA Templer to the GA of the NorthWestern Province were not rare in the late nineteenth century: Little more than a month ago I rode through the greater part of the Demala Hat Pattu and saw everywhere signs of distress. The country was completely burnt up, owing to failure of the monsoon rains, even then the people were beginning to abandon their villages and go off elsewhere in search of food. Many of the tanks were quite dry and others threatened to become so in a short time. The fine grain crops had failed and there seemed every prospect of a famine.62

In the Dry Zone regions, where the lack of water hampered the cultivation of wet rice, British officials were more willing to allow the clearing of Crown forest lands for chena cultivation. But in the highlands the government did everything to discourage chenaing. Sev-

58 59 60 61 62

Ibid., 191. Wickremeratne, “Grain Consumption and Famine Conditions,” 34. Wimalaratana, Changes in Consumption Pattern, 263. Wickremeratne, “Grain Consumption and Famine Conditions,” 34–35. CO 54/529, 6 December 1880/No. 244, Longden to Kimberley. Enclosure.

subsistence

163

eral developments coincided to make the situation of the peasantry worse: the collapse of native coffee, the enforcement of Ordinance 5 of 1866, the impact of the plantation expansion on the paddy water supply and the restrictions on chenas. During the severe depression of the early 1880s, the restrictions on chenas were, however, relaxed a little, as the former coffee plantations were being converted to tea estates and the pressure on land decreased for a few years. Nevertheless, the Kandyan peasantry’s dependence on chena crops had never been as pronounced as in the late nineteenth century. It is important to see that the local village headmen wielded considerable power and infl uence over the villagers, serving as middlemen between the peasantry and the colonial administration in the issuing of chena permits. Leonard Woolf, member of the Ceylon Civil Service from 1904 to 1911, illustrated the dependence of the peasants on the goodwill of the headman in his novel “The Village in the Jungle.”63 Without the consent of the headmen, no chena permit could be issued, and even if the villagers resorted to illegal chenaing, the headmen could always report them to the administration.

63 Leonard S. Woolf, The Village in the Jungle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).

CHAPTER EIGHT

ADMINISTRATION 8.1

Administrative Units

Discussing the economic development of the Crown Colony Ceylon in the previous chapters, we have already touched on the role of the British administration several times. The provision of favourable conditions for the plantation economy has evidently been one of the main concerns of the administrative body throughout the nineteenth century. With the construction of roads, bridges and railways, with the rigorous enforcement of its land policy as well as with its tax policy, the British administration supported the European planting community in many spheres. In a small and administratively manageable colony like Ceylon economy and administration were often closely interwoven. In the early days of coffee cultivation, the owners of the first plantations were mostly well-to-do Civil Servants—or Governors. Therefore, a substantial number of administrators held some personal interest in the welfare of the planting industry. With the rapid expansion of the plantation system in Ceylon, the direct participation of Civil Servants in the cultivation of cash crops was prohibited in order to prevent further misuse of administrative powers. Answering a despatch of the Secretary of State inquiring about the participation of Civil Servants in the planting industry, Governor Gordon wrote in 1884: In reply to Your Lordship’s Circular Despatch of the 24 June last, requesting to be furnished with a Return of the Estates owned and managed by Civil Officers in this Colony, I have the honour to state that the rule of long standing in this Colony is that Civil Servants are not allowed to own land or to manage Estates and that so far as I can learn this rule is not infringed.1

However, the further the plantation industry expanded, the more important it became for the financial welfare of the colony. A substan1

CO 54/554, 7 August 1884/No. 299, Gordon to Derby.

166

chapter eight

tial portion of the general revenue was derived from sources directly or indirectly related to the plantation system. Ceylon had only very little non-agricultural industry and the peasant subsistence sector could only bear so much tax burden. Thus, the financial situation of Ceylon depended almost fully on the fortunes of the planting industry—and the pursuit of planter-friendly policies concerning land, labour and taxation was a vested interest of the government. The term ‘administrative unit’ can be applied to two spheres of the administration: either to the administrative division of the colony in provinces, districts and divisions or to the internal structure of the administrative machinery. In both of these spheres substantial reforms and developments took place throughout the nineteenth century. In the course of the implementation of Cameron’s and Colebrooke’s proposals in the 1830s, Ceylon was subdivided in five administrative provinces—the Central Province, the Eastern Province, the Northern Province, the Southern Province and the Western Province. In 1845, the North-Western Province was created as an additional administrative unit. Only in 1873, the then Governor Gregory added another province—the North-Central Province. A revival of systematic irrigation policy had been initiated during Gregory’s Governorship. To facilitate the administration of the new irrigation it was decided to separate the districts of Nuvarakalaviya (NP) and Tamankaduva (EP) from their provinces and create a new province with the ancient city of Anuradhapura as its capital.2 In earlier chapters we have already mentioned that the irrigation enterprise showed its best results in the poverty-stricken regions of the North-Central Province. The creation of this separate province has been an important prerequisite for this achievement. The Province of Uva was formed by uniting the Bintanna, Viyaluva, Vellassa, Udukinda, Yatikinda (all CP), Vallavaya and Buttala divisions (all SP) in 1886. Badulla became the capital of the newly established province. The Central Province had been too large to effectively administer the rapidly expanding planting industries. At the same time, the needs and interests of the rural population had often been neglected. Crop failures were frequent due to droughts and the bad

2 Garrett Champness Mendis, Ceylon under the British, 3d rev. ed. (Colombo: Colombo Apothecaries’ Co., 1952), 122.

administration

167

state of the irrigation works. Therefore, the European planters as well as Ceylonese representatives had demanded the creation of a separate province.3 A ninth province was created in 1889. Governor Gordon detached the Kegalle and Ratnapura districts from the Western Province to form the Province of Sabaragamuwa. Like vast parts of Uva, Kegalle and Ratnapura had largely been neglected by the Government Agency.4 In a despatch to the Colonial Office, Gordon stated in 1888 that—according to the GA, Mr. Saunders—the administration of the Western Province was no longer manageable for a single Government Agent. To illustrate this, Gordon referred to the high Grain Taxes in parts of the Western Province. In 1879–80, the Grain Commissioner had found 2,074 (or 4.6%) acres of paddy land (out of a total of 44,895 acres) to be subject to a tax of one half of the produce. Another 13,965 acres (or 31.1%) had to pay one fourth of the produce. Gordon pointed out that the GA had been instructed to offer lighter taxation to the paddy cultivators, but seven years later only 635 acres had received lighter taxation. In Gordon’s opinion, the creation of a separate province, Sabaragamuwa, was the only remedy for the neglect of the remoter districts and divisions.5 Mostly owing to the expansion of the plantations, several new districts were formed as well. Already under Gregory, Assistant Government Agencies had been established at Matale, Kalutara, Negombo and Vavuniya-Vilankulam. In the year 1888, the district of Chilaw was separated from Puttalam, where prospering local coconut plantations were demanding closer administrative attention.6 Similarly, the structure of the administrative machinery in Ceylon witnessed several smaller changes and adaptations throughout the second half of the nineteenth century. Its basic structure, however, remained much the same. The Ceylon Civil Service (CCS) formed the core of Ceylon’s administration. Apart from the Governor, all higher officials belonged to the Civil Service headed by the Colonial Secretary. Only the Governor stood above the CCS and was responsible solely to the Colonial Office in London.

3 4 5 6

Ibid., 122–23. Ibid., 122. CO 54/577, 14 March 1888/No. 124, Gordon to Holland. Mendis, Ceylon under the British, 123.

168

chapter eight

Map 8.1: The Five Provinces of Ceylon after the Colebrooke-Cameron Reforms. Layout based on CO 700/CEYLON34. Provincial borders, patterns and scale added by the author.

administration

169

Map 8.2: The Nine Provinces of Ceylon after 1889. Layout based on CO 700/CEYLON34. Provincial borders, patterns and scale added by the author.

170

chapter eight

The Councils were products of the Colebrooke-Cameron reforms. The Executive Council advised the Governor “on policy in his executive capacity”7 and consisted usually of high CCS officials—although it sometimes also contained unofficial members. The Legislative Council was comprised of official as well as of unofficial representatives. Just like Executive Council suggestions, the Governor could always override its proposals. Nevertheless, membership in the Legislative Council was highly prestigious and served as an important political training-ground for the Ceylonese members. The development of the Council will be examined in detail later in this chapter. It is important to keep in mind that the Ceylon Civil Service consisted of only a small number of higher offices. The departments (even as important ones as the Public Works Department) or the clerical or judicial services and its members were not part of the CCS. At times, only the heads of particularly important departments have been Civil Servants. Similarly, the so-called Native Department—i.e. the native headmen—was not part of the CCS, although it was the single most important link between the European-dominated administration and the population. 8.2

The Ceylon Civil Service

The CCS came into being with Governor Fredrick North’s arrival in Ceylon in the year 1798. The eight officials that accompanied him are considered to have been the first members of the Ceylon Civil Service. The Civil Servants, at that time, were appointed by the Crown, but the Court of Directors of the East India Company had certain powers over them as well. This system of dualism favoured the development of confl icts of loyalty.8 However, the conversion of Ceylon into a Crown Colony in 1802 solved this problem. The recruitment of Civil Servants in those early years was entirely based on patronage—either by the Secretary of State or by the Governor. This practice did not exactly contribute to a high standard of

7 Kingsley M. De Silva, “The Legislative Council in the Nineteenth Century,” in University of Ceylon History of Ceylon. From the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century to 1948, ed. Kingsley M. De Silva (Peradeniya: University of Peradeniya, 1973), 227. 8 W. A. Wiswa Warnapala, Civil Service Administration in Ceylon. A Study in Bureaucratic Adaptation (Colombo: Department of Cultural Affairs, 1974), 33.

administration

171

the public administration in Ceylon. Officials were rarely chosen for their skills and experience but rather for their family affiliations and social status. The effects on the CCS were considerable. Governor Horton stated in 1831 that out of 36 Civil Servants in Ceylon, 11 were “decidedly incompetent”, 9 were “just within the pale of competency”, 14 were “decidedly competent” and 2 could not be judged yet.9 When Colebrooke investigated the island’s administration, he proposed a number of changes in the Ceylon Civil Service—many of which were implemented. Colebrooke was the first to advocate an opening of certain CCS ranks to the Ceylonese. His proposal was formally accepted but not realised until the mid-1840s. Colebrooke also suggested a drastic reduction of salaries and pensions of the Civil Servants—a practice that, once implemented, seriously affected the integrity of the service by favouring corruption and/or private engagements of the officials in the plantation industry. At the same time, Colebrooke’s reforms did not tackle the so-called seniority rule—i.e. the promotion of Civil Service exclusively along the lines of seniority. Therefore, Colebrooke’s attempts at reform could not consolidate the efficiency of the Ceylon Civil Service. They might even have had the reverse effect. In 1844/45, Governor Campbell and Secretary of State Lord Stanley introduced several reforms concerning the quality and efficiency of the Civil Service. Engagement of the officials in the plantation industry was strictly prohibited and, as compensation, salaries and pensions were raised. The seniority rule fell and competence now became more important for the promotion of Civil Servants. Furthermore, both Stanley and Campbell emphasised the importance of the Civil Servants’ knowledge of the vernacular.10 Stanley also introduced the Haileybury examination for British appointees to the Ceylon Civil Service cutting deeply into the system of patronage. Prospective Civil Servants had to pass the Haileybury Entrance Examination and to spend two years at the Haileybury College before they were admitted to the CCS.11 However, the Hai-

Quoted in ibid., 37. Kingsley M. De Silva, “The Development of the Administrative System, 1833 to C 1910,” in University of Ceylon History of Ceylon. From the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century to 1948, ed. Kingsley M. De Silva (Peradeniya: University of Peradeniya, 1973), 214–15. 11 Wiswa Warnapala, Civil Service Administration in Ceylon, 48. 9

10

172

chapter eight

leybury examination was not yet a competitive test and did not aim at the recruitment of university graduates. Moreover, the Governor’s local appointments were excluded from this rule. Colebrooke had already recommended to throw open the ranks of the CCS to the educated natives of Ceylon. Thus, the Governor had powers to recruit a certain number of Civil Servants locally. It had been Colebrooke’s intention to facilitate the entry of English-speaking natives into the service who could not be nominated in Britain. But initially, the Burghers—who were generally well educated and experienced in administrative matters—were the only Ceylonese who could make some headway under the new provisions.12 The main beneficiaries, however, were the few British families resident on the island, from which the Governor most frequently chose his appointees to the CCS. Therefore, the higher ranks of the Civil Service were soon under the close control of the two leading British families on the island—the Layards and the Templars. In 1845, these two families held all of the most prestigious posts in the CCS (apart from that of Colonial Secretary),13 while the Sinhalese and the Tamil aspirants had only marginally benefited from the Governor’s local recruitment powers. The first Ceylonese had been appointed to the Ceylon Civil Service in 1844—just before Stanley’s and Campbell’s reforms. Only five more Ceylonese entered the CCS between 1844 and 1846. Several others gradually followed in the following years.14 In 1856, the non-competitive Haileybury examination system was replaced by a competitive examination conducted by the Civil Service Commission—but only for candidates nominated by the Secretary of State.15 The new system of examination clearly aimed at the recruitment of university graduates.16 Initially, the Governor retained his right to appoint local candidates without examination. Only in 1863 a non-competitive examination was introduced for local appointees,

12 P. D. Kannangara, “Local Participation and Participants in British Colonial Administration. The Sri Lankan Scene: 1833–1900,” KALYĀNI. Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences of the University of Kelaniya 3+4 (1984/85): 251. 13 De Silva, “The Development of the Administrative System,” 214. 14 Charles Henry Collins, Public Administration in Ceylon (London; New York: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1951), 99. 15 P. T. M. Fernando, “The Ceylon Civil Service. A Study of Recruitment Policies, 1880–1920,” Modern Ceylon Studies 1, no. 1 (1970): 64. 16 Wiswa Warnapala, Civil Service Administration in Ceylon, 48.

administration

173

“thus introducing a very limited element of competition among aspirants drawn from a few families of high rank.”17 In the year 1870, many educated Ceylonese welcomed the expansion of competitive examination. From then on, identical examinations were to be held in London and in Colombo—i.e. for British as well as local candidates. Initially, the Ceylonese saw better chances for them to enter the CCS than under the previous system of patronage, but as the examination aimed at the recruitment of university graduates, they soon found themselves in a disadvantaged position. Ceylon had no university yet and only few Ceylonese could afford to attend a British or Indian university.18 Therefore, Ponnambalam Arunachalam, a Cambridge graduate, was the only Ceylonese to enter the CCS under this system of examination.19 Ten years later the examination in Colombo was discontinued and the only remaining possibility for local aspirants to enter the CCS was to take the examination in London. The small number of indigenous Civil Servants had been declining ever since the introduction of the competitive examination in 1870, but now the prospects of a more adequate representation of the Ceylonese in the higher bureaucracy reached an all-time low. The number of Ceylonese in the Service declined from 10 (out of a total of 84) in 1868 to 7 (out of a total of 91) in 1881.20 Taking into consideration that the introduction of the competitive principle in 1870 had originally aimed at an opening of the CCS to the Ceylonese (assuming that the native servants would work for lower salaries and that a considerable amount of money could be saved),21 it is clear that the adopted measures proved unsatisfactory for most of the parties concerned. Ponnambalam Arunachalam wrote in 1882: This is not to be wondered at in view of the organised system of preparation for examination which has grown up in England and of the disadvantages under which a Ceylon youth lies in competition held in a distant country in an acquired language.22

The so-called Retrenchment Committee—in whose report Arunachalam wrote these lines—found that the system of exclusive examination 17 18 19 20 21 22

Kannangara, “Local Participation and Participants,” 251. Wiswa Warnapala, Civil Service Administration in Ceylon, 50. Collins, Public Administration, 100. De Silva, “The Development of the Administrative System,” 222. Wiswa Warnapala, Civil Service Administration in Ceylon, 50. Quoted in Kannangara, “Local Participation and Participants,” 252.

174

chapter eight

in London as introduced in 1880 had almost completely excluded Ceylonese candidates from the competition.23 The committee proposed the facilitation of Ceylonese entry to the CCS. The educated local elites strongly supported this notion for obvious—career-related—reasons. Not only were the Ceylonese grossly underrepresented in the CSS. Of those, who had managed to join the service between 1844 and 1892, almost all held merely judicial appointments. Wisma Warnapala says that [s]ince the early period of British rule in the island, it had been their policy to encourage natives to specialize in judicial work. Therefore, many Ceylonese who obtained admission into the higher rungs of the public service were liberally allocated to judicial posts, which prevented them from getting any revenue posts. In the period around 1870 all the Ceylonese in the Civil Service were serving as judicial officers.24

The Retrenchment Committee proposed the opening of the CCS in 1883 mainly on financial grounds—i.e. the prospect of lower salaries and expenses for local recruits. The Ceylon National Association, organ of the new economic elite in Ceylon, supported the proposal—albeit from a more nationalist viewpoint. Even the colonial government in Ceylon was in favour of an opening of the service. Nevertheless, no immediate steps towards reform were taken. The Colonial Office in Whitehall—though, in principle, favouring the opening for financial considerations—delayed reforms for fears of a rising infl uence of the local educated elites through native CCS appointments. With the creation of the so-called Lower Division of the Civil Service the first modest step towards wider Ceylonese participation in the service was taken in 1891 only.25 It was later called the Local Division and was subordinate to the Upper Division of the Civil Service. The Local Division consisted of 21 positions belonging to the CCS and 45 offices of the Clerical Service.26 Of the 21 former CCS offices six were reserved for Ceylonese candidates.27 Appointments to the Local Division were usually made after an examination for which the candidates had to be nominated by the Governor. The Governor had regained the right of nomination. After 1899 no examinations 23 24 25 26 27

Ibid. Wiswa Warnapala, Civil Service Administration in Ceylon, 53. Ibid., 55. Ibid. Kannangara, “Local Participation and Participants,” 254.

administration

175

were held anymore, and appointments to the Local Division were made solely on the Governor’s nomination.28 The Local Division existed until 1920, when it was reintegrated into the CCS. While the competitive examinations for entry into the Local Division were held locally in Ceylon (until 1899), the high-standard entrance examination for the general Civil Service continued to be held in London only.29 After the reforms of 1891, the Upper Division consisted of four classes (not accommodating the Colonial Secretary who belonged to an extra class of so-called Staff appointments). Table 8.1 lists the positions of each class. According to Tambiah’s study of the ethnic representation in Ceylon’s higher administrative services between 1870 and 1946, the representation of Ceylonese in the Local Division was fairly good. By 1907—some 16 years after the introduction of the scheme—seven out of ten posts in Class IV of the Lower Division were held by Ceylonese.30 But in the Upper Division—the most important and infl uential section of the CCS—little had changed. Only two (out of a total of 67) offices in the Upper Division were occupied by Ceylonese. Altogether, out of 95 posts in the CCS only 12 were held by Ceylonese in 1907.31 Against the figures of 1881, this is a slight improvement—too slight, however, to satisfy the ambitions of educated Ceylonese. Throughout the nineteenth century the administration of Ceylon and, accordingly, the Ceylon Civil Service have been organised along provincial lines. In charge of each province was a Government Agent. For each district—apart from the GA’s home district—he employed an Assistant Government Agent, who resided directly in the particular district. The career of a Civil Servant usually started as a Cadet or Office Assistant attached to the kachcheri32 of a Government Agent. In the second volume of his autobiography, Leonard Woolf describes the organisation of a provincial kachcheri in the early twentieth century. He himself had been attached to the kachcheri of the GA of the Northern Province in Jaffna.

Ibid.: 254–55. Collins, Public Administration, 100–01. 30 S. J. Tambiah, “Ethnic Representation in Ceylon’s Higher Administrative Services, 1870–1946,” University of Ceylon Review 13, no. 2+3 (1955): 117. 31 Ibid. 32 The offices of the provincial and district administrators were (and are) called kachcheris. 28 29

176

chapter eight

Table 8.1: The Classes of the Upper Division of the CCS after 1891. Class I Auditor General Treasurer 6 GAs Collector of Customs Post Master General 2 District Judges Assistant Colonial Secretary

Class II

Class III

3 GAs (NCP, Uva, 9 AGAs Sab) 5 District 3 AGAs Judges 4 District Judges 2 Police Registrar General Magistrates Director of Public Instruction Inspector General of Police Inspector General of Prisons Post Master Colombo

Class IV 5 Office Assistants 8 Police Magistrates 2 “others”

Source: W. A. Wiswa Warnapala, Civil Service Administration in Ceylon. A Study in Bureaucratic Adaptation (Colombo: Department of Cultural Affairs, 1974), 55.

It was in the post of O.A. [Office Assistant] and Cadet that the young civil servant learnt his job of imperialist administrator and to a great extent determined his future career. For your performance in the role of Office Assistant and your G.A.’s opinion of you had a considerable effect upon your career, for it infl uenced the minds of the great men far off in the Secretariat in Colombo, the Second Assistant Colonial Secretary, the Principal Assistant Colonial Secretary, and the Colonial Secretary himself, in whose hands rested your fate as regards promotion and appointments. Posts were either administrative, i.e. you were an Office Assistant, an Assistant Government Agent, or a Government Agent, or purely judicial, i.e. you were a Police Magistrate or a District Judge. Generally the administrative posts were considered to be a good deal more desirable than the judicial, and it was the young man who made his mark as O.A. who got rapid promotion to A.G.A. whereas the not so successful would probably find that he got a succession of judicial appointments.33

The creation of the Local Division had not altered the frequent practice to promote Civil Servants of Ceylonese descent mostly to the judicial appointments. Only few Ceylonese got more senior administrative or revenue appointments in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In his memoirs, T. W. Roberts writes about his time in the CCS:

33 Leonard S. Woolf, Growing. An Autobiography of the Years 1904–1911 (San Diego; New York; London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, 1975), 35–36.

administration

177

[C]ivil servants of brown complexion were not appointed to substantive administrative posts: Government cherished a belief that pure Britishers had more talent in that sphere. In respect of judicial jobs, there was a fair field and no favour.34

Although Samaraweera states that “there was an interchangeability of judicial and revenue offices, with the positions being filled by men drawn from a common pool (the Civil Service)”,35 this was usually only true for British Civil Servants. Most of the Ceylonese members of the CCS remained confined to judicial posts. Therefore, the Civil Service reforms of the nineteenth century did not substantially improve Ceylonese participation in the higher echelons of colonial administration. The Ceylonese ambitions in that sphere remained largely unsatisfied well into the twentieth century. Where Ceylonese officials were appointed, they usually managed to make a comparatively good living from their salaries despite their lower pay. The unofficial Tamil member of the Legislative Council, Ponnambalam Ramanathan, pointed out that CCS salaries were adequate for the Ceylonese members due to the lower costs of living in Ceylon, whereas the British officers—with the prospect of returning to Britain—would not earn enough to cover their present and future expenses.36 In a confidential despatch Governor Gordon informed the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Knutsford, in 1889 that a considerable number of Civil Servants were apparently heavily indebted and owed large sums either to local moneylenders or to other Europeans. Gordon stated that he had been informed about a member of the Public Works Department giving loans on an interest rate of 17 to 18%.37 It is difficult to say what ill effects the indebtedness of many a Civil Servant might have had on the integrity of the British administration. The issue at hand needs much further investigation, before any definite conclusions can be drawn. However, it seems reasonably clear that monetary want on the side of the Civil Servants must have,

34 T. W. Roberts, “Memoirs,” in Interview Transcripts and Answers to Questionaires on Colonial Administration in Ceylon 1965–66, ed. Michael Roberts (Unpubl. Collection, 1965/66), 1. 35 V. Samaraweera, “British Justice and the “Oriental Peasantry”. The Working of the Colonial Legal System in Nineteenth Century Sri Lanka,” in British Imperial Policy in India and Sri Lanka, 1858–1912: A Reassessment, ed. Robert I. Crane and N. Gerald Barrier (New Delhi: Heritage Publishers, 1981), 108. 36 Kannangara, “Local Participation and Participants,” 253. 37 CO 54/583, 4 May 1889/Conf., Gordon to Knutsford.

178

chapter eight

at least, increased the informal infl uence of the creditors. This view is strongly supported by several of Gordon’s despatches regarding the case of the Crown Counsel Richard Morgan, who was accused of corruption in the handling of the Kotahena Riots case. The case of Morgan himself is not entirely clear and we cannot say if the allegations against him were of any substance. Nevertheless, in the spring of 1885 Gordon stated that frequent accusations of corruption had been made against various officials in the last months. Gordon himself believed that corruption might have been rather widespread at least in the lower ranks of the service.38 However, without further research into that matter, we cannot say to what extent administrative decisions in late nineteenth-century Ceylon might have been infl uenced by the pecuniary interests of the Civil Servants. What we can say is that even such highly esteemed administrative institutions as the Ceylon Civil Service (or, for that matter, the Indian Civil Service) have had their share of corruption as well. 8.3

The Governor and the Government Agents

The Governor of a late nineteenth century British Crown Colony had lost much of the independence that his predecessors had. On the one hand, reforms and improved communication had made the Colonial Office a much more effective institution. On the other, he was often at the mercy of an entrenched Civil Service and a vocal British community. At times, however, a forceful Governor could assert his authority in ways that left a permanent mark on a colony.39

With these lines Patrick Peebles begins his essay on Governor Arthur Gordon’s administration in Ceylon—the last sentence of the quotation naturally referring to Gordon as well. Although Peebles is right when he says that the Governor was not completely independent in his administration, one should not forget that in the nineteenth century the Governor of a Crown Colony exercised “all the constitutional functions of the Crown”40 and was responsible solely to CO 54/558, 25 April 1885/No. 186, Gordon to Derby. Patrick Peebles, “Governor Arthur Gordon and the Administration of Sri Lanka 1883–1890,” in British Imperial Policy in India and Sri Lanka, 1858–1912: A Reassessment, ed. Robert I. Crane and N. Gerald Barrier (New Delhi: Heritage Publishers, 1981), 84. 40 Charles Jeffries, The Colonial Office (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1956), 35–36. 38 39

administration

179

the Secretary of State for the Colonies at the Colonial Office. The Governor enjoyed full legislative and executive authority at the same time. Even the councils, the Legislative and the Executive Council, could not effectively control the Governor’s actions. The Executive Council was a mere advisory institution to support the Governor in his decisions. Usually it consisted only of official members (i.e. subordinates of the Governor). Only occasionally the Executive Council also had unofficial members. The Governor consulted the council to advise him on the use of his executive powers, but he could always override the council’s proposals.41 The Legislative Council of Ceylon was established in the course of the Colebrooke-Cameron reforms. It consisted of official as well as of unofficial members and granted first symbolic representation to the indigenous groups. But again, the Governor did not depend on the council’s consent. And the official members of the Legislative Council—comprising the majority—were usually compelled to vote with the Governor anyway. Therefore, it was not the main task of the Legislative Council to act as a political counterweight to the Governor, but to provide the Colonial Office with an additional source of information on the state of the colony. De Silva points out that before the creation of the Legislative Council, the Governor’s responsibility to the Secretary of State was to some extent ineffective because he was almost the only reliable source of information which the Colonial Office possessed as to the nature of the problems for which it was his duty to supply the solutions.42

So, the main purpose of the Legislative Council—apart naturally from its valuable and certainly infl uential advisory function—was the tightening of the link between the Colonial Office and the colonial government. But although the Governor was nominally responsible and subordinate to the Secretary of State, the Colonial Office could wield only limited control over a determined Governor. Peebles traced the occasional helplessness of the Colonial Office back to “its low priority in the British government and [. . .] the conservatism of its staff ” combined with its chronically difficult financial situation.43 As a consequence, the Governor of Ceylon enjoyed great competences and considerable leeway in the everyday politics of the colony. 41 42 43

De Silva, “The Legislative Council,” 227. Ibid., 228. Peebles, “Governor Arthur Gordon,” 86.

180

chapter eight

The only controlling institution was situated at the other side of the globe and lacked the resources to efficiently supervise the colonial government. Nevertheless, many Governors did not make full use of their seemingly unlimited legislative and executive powers and heeded the advice of the local administrative institutions—the councils, the higher ranks of the CCS and the Colonial Secretary. These often had in-depth knowledge of the administration of the island drawn from years of service and their advice was invaluable for many a newly arrived Governor. Thus, the Colonial Secretary—as the chief executive of the Governor’s policy—and the provincial Government Agents mostly enjoyed considerable elbowroom in the implementation of the government policies. The Colonial Secretary headed the Civil Service and also formed the prime link between the governed and the government. He was responsible for the proper working of the administrative machinery, and therefore exerted considerable infl uence in all spheres of public administration. The Government Agent—another creation of the Colebrooke-Cameron reforms—represented the government in the provinces and was vested with the executive power in his province. Due to the remoteness of certain districts from the administrative centre in Colombo and owing to the state of communication on the island, the Government Agents often acted almost independently. Two prime examples for the executive leeway enjoyed by the Government Agents can be found in the especially remote Northern Province: the administration of GA Dyke and later GA Twynam. During the second half of the nineteenth century, Dyke and his successor Twynam had—more or less—established their private kingdom in the Northern Province. Himself once stationed at the Jaffna kachcheri (although not under Twynam anymore), Leonard Woolf described Dyke’s and Twynam’s paternalism: At this time the Government Agent at Jaffna was P. A. Dyke, known as the Rajah of the North, for he ruled his province as a paternal despot. It was said that he was over 40 years G. A. in Jaffna, so that the Northern Province had only two G. A.’s in 80 years.44

44

Woolf, Growing, 104.

administration

181

Ludowyk describes Dyke as follows: He was universally feared, the local population edging itself off the road and into the drain when he appeared in his carriage, fl icking with his whip at those not nimble enough to get out of the way. [. . .] Dyke [. . .] enjoyed Jaffna as its remoteness at that time from Colombo gave his powers additional scope.45

Dyke offered the young Twynam a Civil Service position in the Northern Province and trained him as his successor. Consequently, Twynam followed Dyke as GA and held this post for another 40 years. Interestingly, during Arthur Havelock’s Governorship, a petition reached the Governor, in which the authors complained about the hardships imposed on them by GA Twynam. Havelock informed the Secretary of State about the petition and the petitioners’ request to install a different GA. When Knutsford asked Havelock for his opinion in that case, the Governor gave an answer that does not only illustrate the prevalence of race prejudice, but also sheds some light on the nature of Dyke’s and Twynam’s administration and on the independence that they enjoyed. Havelock wrote: I am disposed to believe that the system of administration which has so long prevailed under Mr. Dyke and under Mr. Twynam in the Northern Province, which has, as Your Lordship says, been practically in the nature of a benevolent despotism, is admirably well suited to the Tamils of the Northern Province. I believe also that the system as administered by the present Government Agent and his predecessor, is popular among the Natives. I believe that the firmness, shrewdness, and fearlessness which distinguish Mr. Twynam’s mode of administration, are appreciated by the Natives. Jaffna Tamils are a scheming, intriguing race prompt to take advantage of weakness or vacillation, much given to slander and chicane, and suspicion of one another. They naturally respect a ruler who is not easy to deceive, to cajole, or to frighten; and tough a few might find the administration of such a man detrimental to their designs, and therefore distasteful, the vast majority would understand and value the security which they enjoy under it. [. . .] I think I have heard it said that a good despotism is the best form of Government. I take it that the administration of the Northern Province has, under Mr. Dyke and Mr. Twynam, been a good despotism.46

The above references to the administration of Dyke and Twynam illustrate the freedom that many GAs enjoyed in their everyday 45 E. F. C. Ludowyk, The Modern History of Ceylon (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1966), 106–07. 46 CO 54/599, 30 January 1892/Conf., Havelock to Knutsford.

182

chapter eight

administrative business. Woolf even stated that, at times, the Assistant Government Agents in their district kachcheris made very much their own decisions.47 However, a strong and determined colonial Governor could still impose his policy on his provincial representatives. In order to improve the control that the colonial government in Colombo had over the Government Agents, Governor Gregory introduced the so-called durbar in 1873. At this annual meeting of the Government Agents in Colombo, the agents had to report about required works and tasks in their provinces and to annually justify their administration. De Silva stated that the introduction of the annual durbar “marked the beginning of the decline of the Government Agents’ powers visà-vis the Secretariat in Colombo.”48 The annual meeting in Colombo definitely contributed to a gradual unification of colonial policy. This was especially important for such tasks as the improvement of irrigation (as supported by Gregory) that depended on the cooperation and motivation of the local administrators. During this study’s main period of observation Ceylon saw four Governors—Longden, Gordon, Havelock and Ridgeway. All four of them faced different problems and tasks—and tackled them in their distinct ways. Governor James Robert Longden (1877–1883) governed Ceylon during the peak of the coffee crisis. He is often accused of a lack of initiative and foresight, but in reality the economic depression left little scope for development and innovations. Nevertheless, he managed to finance the most pressing improvements of the infrastructure and to administer the colony stably. Although the planting industry experienced the most severe crisis in its history, Longden carried on with the extension of the railway network. His Governorship saw the commencement of the railway from Nawalapitiya to Nanu Oya, the opening of the extension of the seaside line to Kalutara and the railway extension to Hatton.49 Remarkable is the way, in which Longden dealt with the Bishop of the Church of England during the visit of Prince Albert Victor and Prince George to Ceylon. Bishop Copleston had complained that the Princes would visit the Temple

Woolf, Growing, 34. Kingsley M. De Silva, A History of Sri Lanka (London; Berkeley: C. Hurst; University of California Press, 1981), 318. 49 H. A. J. Hulugalle, British Governors of Ceylon (Colombo: Associated Newspapers of Ceylon, 1963), 123. 47

48

administration

183

of the Tooth in Kandy, that this would be an encouragement for the Buddhist religion and that the visit should be cancelled.50 Longden firmly refused to cancel the visit and in his despatch to the Secretary of State he found clearer words than most of his successors would have dared to use: I cannot share the intolerance, as I think it, which shines through every page of his [Copleston’s] letter, nor can I voluntarily consent to pass a gratuitous insult on the Kandyan Chiefs and people, nor will I presume to censure all those who have preceded me in the Office I hold and all who have visited the Dalada Shrine.51

Governor Arthur Hamilton Gordon (1883–1890) is probably the best known Governor of Ceylon in the late nineteenth century. But, as Peebles already pointed out, this does not mean that he has also been the best Governor of the island.52 Gordon was a controversial character. He was acting very independently from the Colonial Office and often exceeded his authority. The best example for this is his reaction to the collapse of the Oriental Bank. The failure of the bank had caused a panic among the investors. Gordon stepped in and guaranteed the Oriental Bank’s notes. It has to be admitted that this action has probably facilitated the revival of the planting industry and the transition to tea cultivation. Nevertheless, Gordon had acted far beyond his competence.53 During Gordon’s Governorship Ceylon recovered from the coffee crisis and the tea industry took off. Thus, Gordon had more money to spend on irrigation and on infrastructure than his predecessor. Therefore, Gordon’s period of office is often associated with the regaining of economic prosperity. But in another sphere Arthur Gordon’s policy has hampered the development of Ceylon. When the Retrenchment Committee proposed a further opening of the CCS to natives of the island in 1883, Gordon did not oppose this explicitly. But until the end of his term in office, he did not show the slightest ambition to implement the proposal.54 He, thus, torpedoed any efforts toward an opening of the CCS to Ceylonese aspirants. Moreover, Gordon

50 51 52 53 54

CO 54/537, 22 January 1882/No. 32, Longden to Kimberley. Enclosure. CO 54/537, 22 January 1882/No. 32, Longden to Kimberley. Peebles, “Governor Arthur Gordon,” 84. Ibid., 86. Ibid., 97–98.

184

chapter eight

clearly favoured the so-called first-class goyigamas—the members of the highest Sinhalese caste. Gordon especially patronised the family of the Maha Mudaliyar and filled most of the important indigenous positions with members of that family.55 In a despatch to Knutsford, Gordon officially rejected accusations against him concerning the favouring of goyigamas in appointments of teachers or other important posts. Gordon wrote that the high number of goyigamas in such sought-after appointments only refl ected their greater number in the population.56 This is definitely wrong, as the goyigamas formed approximately 50% of the population, but filled almost all of the infl uential posts that were not occupied by Britons. Patrick Peebles quotes from “The Examiner,” a local newspaper: [W]e can testify to the widespread discontent felt by Natives, not merely on the so-called lower castes, but by Bellalles (goyigamas) and even those of the same set as the MAHA MUDALIYAR with the infl uence said to be exercised by that official over the GOVERNOR in the disposal of Native appointments and honorary rank . . . the GOVERNOR is said to have avowed to the MAHA MUDALIYAR his intention to be guided by his opinion.57

Governor Arthur Havelock (1890–1895) followed Gordon when the plantation industry had already fully recovered and filled the government coffers. This naturally facilitated the administration of the colony. Havelock played a leading role in the abolition of the Paddy Tax in 1892—something that Gordon had always refused to do. This secured him “popular esteem”.58 Like his predecessor, Havelock strongly favoured the first-class goyigamas as regards appointments to administrative posts. He strongly supported the Dias-Bandaranaikes and appointed Solomon Dias Bandaranaike as Maha Mudaliyar.59 Nevertheless, the proposed CCS reforms, which had never been carried out under Gordon, were introduced in 1891 under Havelock’s Governorship—although Havelock was not completely happy with the creation of a Lower Division and remarked: “I have little faith that

55 56 57 58 59

Ibid., 98–99. CO 54/583, 3 August 1889/No. 312, Gordon to Knutsford. Quoted in Peebles, “Governor Arthur Gordon,” 99. Hulugalle, British Governors of Ceylon, 135. Ibid., 136.

administration

185

the scheme will for any length of time continue to fulfil one of its objects, namely, to satisfy the aspiration of the Ceylonese.”60 Governor Joseph West Ridgeway (1895–1903) took up his office under similarly favourable financial and economic circumstances as his predecessor had done. Although the tea industry experienced a certain slump after 1897, the revenue of the colony was satisfying and enabled Ridgeway to further improve the railway network and carry on with the improvement of the irrigation system. In 1899, he established the Irrigation Department. However, he also played a leading role in the implementation of one of the most unpopular ordinances of the late nineteenth century—the “Waste Lands Ordinance” of 1897. 8.4

The Legislative Council

On previous pages I have already briefl y referred to the role of the Legislative Council in the administration of Ceylon. Although its powers were limited and its envisaged function as a counterweight to the Governor’s powers was far beyond its actual capabilities, the Legislative Council was a formidable political training ground for the Ceylonese. As mentioned above, the Legislative Council emerged from the Colebrooke-Cameron reforms and was established in 1833. Initially, it consisted of 15 members—9 officials (i.e. members of the higher ranks of the CCS) and 6 unofficial members. Of the latter, three represented the European community, one the Burghers, one the Sinhalese and one the Tamils. The Governor also attended the Legislative Council’s meetings. Therefore, some writers speak of 16 members of the Legislative Council.61 The Colonial Office saw the Legislative Council as an alternative source of information about the state of Ceylon. Whitehall was perfectly aware of the limited powers of the Council—just as Colebrooke had been. The majority of the official members practically always voted with the Governor and, therefore, rendered any alternative notion of

60 61

Quoted in Wiswa Warnapala, Civil Service Administration in Ceylon, 55. For instance, see De Silva, “The Legislative Council,” 228.

186

chapter eight

the unofficial minority futile. Thus, the Legislative Council was no check to the Governor’s omnipotence. Nevertheless, an appointment to the Legislative Council carried even more prestige than an office in the CCS.62 The scope for participation in political decision making was limited, but the social status attached to a Member of the Legislative Council (MLC) was considerable. Furthermore, the Ceylonese MLCs acquired firsthand experience of the administrative processes involved in the governing of the colony. And there was always the possibility that a notion brought up in the council might find the favour of the other members and of the Governor. Eventually, membership of the LC was of a highly symbolic character for the unofficial Ceylonese members as they represented their ethnic group or subgroup on an island-wide level. Therefore, a fierce competition for the appointment to the Legislative Council arose in the late nineteenth century—especially for the Sinhalese seat. Since the establishment of the Legislative Council, the Sinhalese MLC had always been a member of the goyigama caste—actually, apart from one occasion, the MLC had always been a member of the same ‘family-compact.’ The Dias-Bandaranaike-Obeyesekeres filled the post of Sinhalese MLC except between 1865 and 1875, when E. H. Dehigama, a Kandyan lawyer, was appointed to the Legislative Council. L. W. De Saram, a member of the “family-compact”, wrote in a letter: The Sinhala seat in Council had, in fact, become a kind of fixture in our family [. . .] and then they appointed an outsider, Dehigama a lawyer from Kandy [. . .] Couldn’t speak a word of English. And when he said as much to the Governor, hoping to be excused from the appointment—for he was a modest man, if uneducated—His Excellency clapped him on the back and said, “My dear Dehigama, you are exactly the kind of man we need in Council!” [. . .] But we soon had the Sinhalese seat back—James D’Alwis [. . .] followed by J. P. Obeyesekere [. . .] and then Albert D’Alwis, another relation.63

The traditional appointment of the Sinhalese MLC from one kinship group resembled closely the prevailing practice in CCS appointments.

62 Patrick Peebles, Social Change in Nineteenth Century Ceylon (New Delhi: Navrang in collaboration with Lake House Bookshop, Colombo, 1995), 236. 63 Quoted in Kumari Jayawardena, Nobodies to Somebodies: The Rise of the Colonial Bourgeoisie in Sri Lanka (Colombo: Social Scientists’ Association and Sanjiva Books, 2000), 316.

administration

187

Not only did most Governors favour goyigamas over non-goyigamas, they also preferred first-class goyigamas to normal goyigamas—and, eventually, Dias-Bandaranaike-Obeyesekeres to other first-class goyigamas. Kannangara pointed out that in the appointment of MLCs “what mattered to [the Governors] more was a family tradition of loyal service.”64 The first real challenge to the Dias-Bandaranaike-Obeyesekeres’ supremacy came in 1878 with William Goonetilaka’s campaign for the Sinhalese seat. With the death of James De Alwis the seat had fallen vacant and Goonetilaka campaigned against J. P. Obeyesekere by means of petitions, public meetings and press reports. 65 But Goonetilaka was not even a first-class goyigama, and subsequently Obeyesekere was appointed Sinhalese MLC. Only three years later the vacancy of the Sinhalese seat led to a cooperation of the three most important non-goyigama castes of the Low Country—the karavas, the durawas and the salagamas. Candidates of all three caste groups campaigned for the Sinhalese seat, but the rising karava community posed the most formidable threat to the first-class goyigama interests. The karavas launched a campaign called the kara-goi contest to gain the seat.66 Nonetheless, A. L. De Alwis—a member of the ‘familycompact’—was appointed MLC for the Sinhalese. But as a direct result of the karavas’ kara-goi contest and the cooperation of the non-goyigamas the Ceylon Agricultural Association (CAA) was formed in 1882. The CAA mainly advocated the wealthy karavas’ planting interests but also pressed for the appointment of non-goyigama candidates (preferably karavas) to the Legislative Council. In 1888, the CAA was converted into the Ceylon National Association (CNA) and concerned itself more intensively with the political representation of the non-goyigama castes.67 Possibly the CNA wanted to resemble the role that the Planters’ Association and the Chamber of Commerce played in the nominations to the Legislative Councils. Both organisations proposed one of the unofficial European MLCs, who was then nominated to the council by the Governor.68 This practice was, however, based on tradition only. Although the CNA fought fierce campaigns for its candidates in the closing years of the

64 65 66 67 68

Kannangara, “Local Participation and Participants,” 246. Ibid. De Silva, “The Legislative Council,” 243. Ibid. Kannangara, “Local Participation and Participants,” 247.

188

chapter eight

nineteenth century and in the early twentieth century, it could not fill the Sinhalese seat once. Among other reasons, Governor Gordon’s resistance to the karavas’ aspirations was one determining factor in the failure of the CNA’s campaigns. As mentioned above, Gordon openly patronised the Dias-Bandaranaike-Obeyesekeres and was not willing to concede the Sinhalese seat to anybody else. Furthermore, Gordon—like many of his predecessors and successors—believed in the importance of the goyigama elite for the smooth and economical working of the so-called Native Department. The goyigamas filled most of the chief and minor headmen positions and, thus, their loyalty to the colonial government secured the efficiency of the local administration.

Table 8.2: Unofficial Members of the Legislative Council, 1880–1900. Year

European MLCs Burgher MLC

Sinhalese MLC

Tamil MLC

Kandyan MLC

Muslim MLC

1880 R. B. Downall J. J. P. P. Ramanathan H. Bois VanLangenberg Obeyesekere F. M. Mackwood

—

—

1881 Mackwood W. W. Mitchell J. L. Shand 1882 Mackwood Mitchell E. L. Young (act.) 1883 Mackwood Shand G. B. Leechman 1884 Mackwood R. A. Bosanquet R. B. Downall 1885 Mackwood Bosanquet Downall 1886 Mackwood Downall H. Bois 1887 Downall R. A. Bosanquet W. W. Mitchell 1888 Mitchell T. N. Christie J. J. Grinlinton (act.) 1889 Mitchell Christie Grinlinton

VanLangenberg A. L. De Alwis Ramanathan

—

—

VanLangenberg De Alwis

Ramanathan

—

—

VanLangenberg De Alwis

Ramanathan

—

—

VanLangenberg De Alwis

Ramanathan

—

—

VanLangenberg De Alwis

Ramanathan

—

—

P. D. Anthonisz De Alwis

Ramanathan

—

—

Anthonisz

De Alwis

Ramanathan

—

—

Anthonisz

A. De Alwis Seneviratne

Ramanathan

—

—

Anthonisz

De Alwis Seneviratne

Ramanathan

T. C. M. C. Abdul Panabokke Rahiman

administration

189

Table 8.2 (cont.) Year

European MLCs Burgher MLC

1890 Mitchell Christie Grinlinton 1891 Mitchell Grinlinton L. H. R. Kelly 1892 Mitchell Grinlinton Kelly 1893 Mitchell Grinlinton Kelly 1894 Mitchell Grinlinton G. F. Walker 1895 Mitchell Grinlinton Walker 1896 Mitchell Grinlinton T. N. Christie 1897 Mitchell Grinlinton J. N. Campbell 1898 Mitchell Campbell G. F. Walker 1899 Mitchell Campbell Walker 1900 Campbell Walker W. H. Figg

Sinhalese MLC

Tamil MLC

Kandyan MLC

Muslim MLC

Anthonisz

De Alwis Seneviratne

Ramanathan

Panabokke

Abdul Rahiman

Anthonisz

De Alwis Seneviratne

Ramanathan

Panabokke

Abdul Rahiman

Anthonisz

De Alwis Seneviratne

vacant

Panabokke

Abdul Rahiman

Anthonisz

De Alwis Seneviratne

P. Panabokke Coomaraswamy

Abdul Rahiman

Anthonisz

De Alwis Seneviratne

Coomaraswamy Panabokke

Abdul Rahiman

H. L. Wendt

De Alwis Seneviratne

Coomaraswamy W. Ellawala Abdul Ekanayake Rahiman

Wendt

De Alwis Seneviratne

Coomaraswamy Ellawala Ekanayake

Abdul Rahiman

Wendt

De Alwis Seneviratne

Coomaraswamy Ellawala Ekanayake

Abdul Rahiman

Wendt

De Alwis Seneviratne

W. G. Rockwood Ellawala Ekanayake

Abdul Rahiman

Wendt

De Alwis Seneviratne

Rockwood

F. C. Loos

S. C. Rockwood Obeyesekere

A. d. L. Mohamado Sheriff W. M. Abdul Rahiman

Ellawala Ekanayake S. N. W. Hulugalla

Source: Ceylon Statistical Blue Books, 1880–1900.

When the CNA’s pressure for representation grew, Gordon “outmanoeuvred them by creating two additional unofficial seats in the Legislative Council”69 and, thus, increasing the number of unofficial seats in the LC from six to eight. But the new seats did not give representation to the non-goyigamas of the Low Country. Instead, one Muslim and one Kandyan MLC joined the council. At the same time the MLCs’ lifetime appointments were converted to five-year terms of office.

69

De Silva, “The Legislative Council,” 243.

190

chapter eight

Gordon’s manoeuvre remained the only change in the composition of the Legislative Council during the nineteenth century.70 With the extension of the LC by one Muslim and one Kandyan member Gordon ignored the CNA’s quest for non-goyigama representation. De Silva points out that the nomination of a Kandyan member was designed to benefit the Buddhist interests.71 The government saw no threat in the recent revival of Buddhism as long as it did not forward political attitudes. On the contrary, Gordon made no secret of the fact that he hoped thereby to channel the Buddhist revival into a conservative mould, and thus make it a force that would help revitalise the traditional society; an important aspect of this process as he viewed it was the need to support the traditional elite, and to protect them against any prospect of displacement as communicators between the administrators and the people.72

Long before the Muslim member was nominated to the Legislative Council, the Tamil MLC Ponnambalam Ramanathan had started to defend the representation of the Muslim minority by the Tamil MLC on the narrow grounds of ethnic unity. Ramanathan argued that the Ceylon Moors were Tamils of origin and had merely been converted to Islam. Therefore, they would not need a separate Muslim representative in the LC. Ramanathan’s arguments were heavily criticised and yielded no success.73 Gordon’s nomination of a Muslim member curtailed the position of the infl uential Tamil representative and gave a voice to a hitherto silent and unrepresented community. Like the Sinhalese member, the Tamil MLC was normally recruited from one infl uential family of the vellala caste—the Tamil equivalent to the Sinhalese goyigamas. Only Governor Ridgeway ended this tradition with the nomination of W. G. Rockwood to the Tamil seat. The first-class goyigama dominance of the Sinhalese seat came to an end as late as in 1912.

Kannangara, “Local Participation and Participants,” 247. De Silva, “The Legislative Council,” 244. 72 Ibid. 73 V. Samaraweera, “Aspects of Muslim Revivalist Movement in the Late Nineteenth Century,” in Muslims of Sri Lanka: Avenues to Antiquity, ed. M. A. M. Shukri (Beruwela, Sri Lanka: Jamiah Naleemia Inst., 1986), 374. 70 71

administration 8.5

191

The Departments

Many of the preferences and goals of an administration are refl ected by the number and nature of its departments. In the nineteenth century, the most important departments in Ceylon were the Survey Department, the Public Works Department (PWD), the Department of the Royal Botanical Gardens and the Land Registry Department (alongside the Medical, Police, Customs and Postal Departments common to most administrations). The Survey Department and the PWD were concerned with the improvement of the infrastructure. The Department of the Royal Botanical Gardens (together with Kew Gardens) provided botanical know-how and support to the plantation enterprise. The Land Registry Department occupied itself with the creation of clear titles to land—a crucial position in a plantationbased economy. The last decades of the nineteenth century saw a certain diversification of administrative interests and, thus, a reorganisation of the departments. The first measure in that respect was the reorganisation of the Police Department in 1865. Hitherto, the Government Agents had been in charge of the police in their province with only a small force of policemen at their direct disposal and relying on the native headmen for much of the work. With overworked GAs and a rising crime rate, this system was not efficient anymore: Consequently, after 1865 police forces were, step by step, stationed in the entire island. The Government Agents still had a small force of policemen at their headquarters, but were relieved of the responsibility for their whole province.74 The Inspector-General of Police, a member of the CCS, now was in charge of the whole police force. The Department of Public Instruction was founded in the year 1868. As the next chapter thoroughly deals with the development of education and educational policy, reference to the creation of the Department of Public Instruction will be made there. The government’s renewed interest in irrigation did not immediately lead to the establishment of an Irrigation Department. But in 1887 an Irrigation Board was created on the basis of the “Irrigation Ordinance.” It consisted of a Central Irrigation Board and of Provincial Irrigation Boards headed by the Government Agents. These boards

74

Collins, Public Administration, 96–97.

192

chapter eight

initiated and coordinated all necessary irrigation works and instructed the Survey Department and the PWD to eventually carry out the work.75 However, the scheme, developed under Governor Gordon, proved to be inefficient for several reasons. In the first place, the Provincial Boards consisted of the GA, the Chief Surveyor and the Provincial Engineer. As there were frequent changes of the personnel, the boards found it difficult to implement a continuous irrigation policy.76 Moreover, the Survey and Public Works Departments did not have the resources to carry out all the requested irrigation works immediately and in satisfying quality. Finally, the Central as well as the Provincial Boards lacked the expert knowledge needed for the proper implementation of efficient irrigation measures.77 Consequently, Governor Ridgeway reorganised irrigation in 1898 as a branch of the Public Works Department. But this proved as unsatisfactory as the former organisation and therefore a separate Irrigation Department was established in 1899. The department shared its competences with the Provincial Boards until these were abolished in 1901. With the abolition of the Central Board in 1906,78 the Director of Irrigation was solely responsible for the colony’s irrigation policy. The creation of a separate Forest Department in 1889 was the consequence of a more pronounced interest in the safeguarding of the last remaining forest reserves. Under Governor Longden the establishment of a Central Forest Department had already been discussed and an Indian Forest Officer had investigated the matter. But Longden had found it impossible to create such a department on financial grounds. Hitherto, most of the existing forest reserves had been supervised by unpaid local headmen. Longden stated that the creation of a Forest Department would eat up almost all the revenue of the Crown Forests.79 With an increased government revenue in the late 1880s, Gordon finally managed to establish the Forest Department. Initially, the Government Agents and the department shared the responsibility for the forest reserves and the administration of the reserves did not improve significantly. Therefore, the department was made the sole institution in charge of the forest administration in 1899.

75 76 77 78 79

Ibid., 94. Mendis, Ceylon under the British, 139. Ibid., 140. Collins, Public Administration, 95. CO 54/531, 19 February 1881/No. 83, Longden to Kimberley.

administration

193

The last establishment of a new department in our observation period took place under Ridgeway’s Governorship—the Land Settlement Department. Similarly unpopular as the “Waste Lands Ordinance” itself, it was the main task of the Land Settlement Department to settle claims and disputes over lands between the Crown and other claimants.80 The department basically implemented the provisions of the “Waste Lands Ordinance.” Collins pointed out that the last quarter of the nineteenth century saw a great deal of specialisation in the sphere of colonial administration in general and in the restructuring of the departments in particular.81 The creation of separate departments like the Irrigation, the Forest, the Public Instruction or the Land Settlement Department is one consequence of this specialisation. But at least equally important are the internal changes in several departments. The Public Works Department witnessed a tremendous improvement of its capabilities under Governor Gregory, who fostered the recruitment of qualified engineers instead of locally trained men.82 With the establishment of a separate Irrigation Department, the implementation of irrigation measures was carried out by irrigation experts for the first time. The Department of the Royal Botanical Gardens also started to widen its scope in the last years of the century. Hitherto, it had been invaluable for the prosperity of the plantation industry but had offered little help to the local peasantry. Now, the department employed additional scientific staff and started research on the characteristics of tropical subsistence agriculture. Consequently, the department was converted into the Department of Agriculture in 1912.83 Generally, the departments existed outside the Ceylon Civil Service. Only the heads of the more important departments were members of the higher CCS—the Surveyor-General, the Registrar-General, the Civil Engineer, the Postmaster-General or the Principal Collector of Customs, for instance. The staff of the departments only partly belonged to the Civil Service. In highly specialised departments, such as the Irrigation or the Public Works Department, preference was given to specially qualified men over the very broadly educated Civil Servants. 80 81 82 83

Collins, Public Administration, 98. Ibid., 98–99. Ibid., 96. Mendis, Ceylon under the British, 142.

194

chapter eight 8.6

The Headmen System

Taking a look at the administrative structure as discussed so far, that crucial link between the government and the governed is still missing. Not even the lowest Civil Servants in the provincial kachcheris usually maintained links to the population (apart from receiving petitions and petitioners). And only the most motivated Assistant Government Agents in their district kachcheris came into direct contact with the people they governed without an intermediary in between. In short, the colonial administration needed an intermediary administrative layer between its British apex and the population—the so-called native headmen or mudaliyars. The origins of this system reach back into the time of Portuguese occupation, when the colonial power had relied mainly on local ‘collaborators’ to administer its territories. The Dutch had perpetuated the system and had later altered it to cut the growing powers of the native middlemen. With the arrival of the British in Ceylon, the prevailing system was discontinued and East India Company servants from Madras took over the administration. The presence of an outside administration led to serious friction and the Madras officials were eventually replaced by Ceylon’s own Civil Service in 1798. As the officials from Madras had brought their own subordinate middlemen from India, the amildars,84 the British had to find adequate substitutes to successfully implement their policy and fell back on the intermediaries of Dutch times. The so-called headmen or mudaliyar system came back into being. The intermediary layer of native headmen had its own hierarchy and was based on Portuguese and Dutch tradition. It is important to see that the mudaliyars had not been members of the aristocracy before the advent of the colonial powers. On the contrary, they often originated from poor families that had risen to prominence under Portuguese or Dutch patronage.85 The European powers had therefore created their own colonial elite and the British continued this system.86 The preeminence of the goyigama caste in the mudaliyar headmen system

Peebles, Social Change in Nineteenth Century Ceylon, 59. Patrick Peebles, “The Transformation of a Colonial Elite. The Mudaliyars of Nineteenth Century Ceylon” (Unpubl. PhD Thesis, University of Chicago, 1973), 59. 86 Jayawardena, Nobodies to Somebodies, 22. 84 85

administration

195

could be said to have emerged by accident, because in Dutch times the appointments as headmen had not yet been monopolised by a certain caste or kinship group. But with the advent of the British, the new rulers basically regarded the mudaliyars in power as the local aristocracy or elite. And these last Dutch mudaliyars happened to be largely of the goyigama caste. Peebles sums up the early policy of the British towards the headmen: In the course of their first quarter of a century, they decided that the goyigama mudaliyars who descended from mudaliyars of the Dutch period were a feudal aristocracy and that British advantage lay in winning their loyalty with honors, appointments, land grants, and elaborate gestures of respect.87

The most prestigious position within the mudaliyar system was the post of Maha Mudaliyar. Along with the so-called Gate or Guard Mudaliyars, he was directly attached to the Governor. The atapattu mudaliyars served at the kachcheris and were of importance for the provincial agent and staff.88 Subordinate to these mudaliyars there was a hierarchical structure of so-called chief, superior and minor headmen, who administered territories of varying size down to the village level. In the currently available literature on the mudaliyar or headmen system no unified terminology has been applied so far. The terms mudaliyar, chief headman, superior headman and minor or village headman are used in varying and sometimes confusing ways. The British administrators themselves had not always been using exact terms in that respect. The prevailing confusion originates from the complexity of the system’s structure. First, since the early decades of the nineteenth century many mudaliyars carried only a honorary title and had no distinct function anymore. This is especially true for the apex of the mudaliyar system, e.g. for Gate and Guard Mudaliyarships. Furthermore, as the origins of the system lay in the administration of the Portuguese and Dutch territories, the initially Low-Country mudaliyar system experienced a certain diversification after the conquest of the Kandyan kingdom. The loyal Kandyan chiefs filled the mudaliyar posts in the Kandyan regions—but literally they were not mudaliyars.

87 88

Peebles, Social Change in Nineteenth Century Ceylon, 57. Ibid.

196

chapter eight

Generally, only the members of the apex of the headmen system are referred to as mudaliyars. In our case, this includes the appointments attached to the Governor, the atapattu mudaliyars at the provincial kachcheris, the dissawas and the korale mudaliyars. Considerable confusion prevails in the use of the terms chief, superior and minor headmen. No common terminology has been found yet in the existing historical works. Therefore, I will use the following definitions in the present work: the chief headmen are the so-called dissawa mudaliyars or dissa mahatmayas. They were in charge of the largest territorial headmen unit—the dissawa. Subordinate to them were the superior headmen or korale mudaliyars/mahatmayas, each in charge of a korale. At the bottom of the hierarchical structure stood the minor or village headmen called the vidanes or arachchis. The village headmen were usually not referred to as mudaliyars. Apart from acting as translators in the early stages of British rule, the main tasks of the headmen were the collection of taxes, the enforcement of rajakariya and the maintenance of law and order on a local level.89 Therefore, the headmen wielded considerable power over the population and became an infl uential group in the administration of the colony. The Colebrooke-Cameron reforms seriously narrowed the competences of the mudaliyars. Rajakariya was abolished and, consequently, the headmen only supervised the commutable compulsory labour under the “Road Ordinance.” Furthermore, after 1833 the collection of the Paddy Tax was farmed out and the headmen merely served as intermediaries between the government and the tax renters—not as direct collectors anymore.90 Moreover, the practice of making land grants to the mudaliyars came to an end in 1833.91 Nevertheless, the native headmen retained an infl uential position over the population throughout the nineteenth century as they still served as the link between the Western administration and the people. They occupied crucial positions regarding land sales and chena cultivation. T. W. Roberts writes in his memoirs that the control of the headmen was the first duty of a Civil Servant.92 In many spheres of everyday life the villagers completely depended on the goodwill of

89 90 91 92

Ibid., 68–69. Ibid., 121. Jayawardena, Nobodies to Somebodies, 23. Roberts, “Memoirs,” 2.

administration

197

the village headman and his superiors and had to award him with a gift for his help. Roberts writes: The village headman was the centre of villagers’ lives at all points of the compass. If a man was the victim of a crime, he must get the headman at once (i) to arrest the criminal if it was a cognizable offence, and (ii) to examine the witnesses, record their statements and issue a report to Court. Practically no one went to Court without getting such a report, and few got such reports without paying a fee. [. . .] The headmen was also a sine qua non in most branches of agriculture. Paddy cannot be grown unless the fields are first fenced to keep cattle out. No one fences his own field only. They have to avoid that expense by fencing the whole tract, often fifty or two hundred acres in extent. To fence one section is pointless. All the owners must be got together and fences raised in synchrony. That was arranged by the headmen. The good headman did all this cheap, in return for simple gifts. The bad headman would insist on black market exactions first—e.g. for granting a report: if his demand was rejected, he would issue a report discrediting the complaint.93

In his novel “The Village in the Jungle,” Leonard Woolf refers to additional powers of the headman over the villagers. He mentions the collection of taxes94 and, especially, the issuing of chena permits. The following passage illustrates the hold that the village headman—called Babehami in the novel—enjoyed over the villagers: The power which they felt hanging over them was by no means imaginary; it could make the life of the man who offended the headman extremely unpleasant. It was not only by his loans that Babehami had his hand upon the villagers; their daily life could be made smooth or difficult by him at every turn. The life of the village and of every man in it depended upon the cultivation of chenas. A chena is merely a piece of jungle, which every ten years is cleared of trees and undergrowth and sown with grain broadcast and with vegetables. The villagers owned no jungle themselves; it belonged to the Crown, and no one might fell a tree or clear a chena in it without a permit from the Government. It was through these permits that the headman had his hold upon the villagers. Application for one had to be made through him; it was he who reported if

Ibid. Leonard S. Woolf, The Village in the Jungle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 26. 93

94

198

chapter eight a clearing had been made without one, or if a man, having been given one, cleared more jungle than it allowed him to clear.95

The headman’s tight hold over the villagers even increased with the enactment of the “Irrigation Ordinance” of 1856. The ordinance revived the pre-colonial gamsabhawas, the Village Councils, and gave them powers to control all matters of irrigation and water use in the village96—including the right to call out communal labour for the upkeep of irrigation works.97 Originally, the Government Agent or an Assistant Government Agent presided over the Village Councils, but it soon turned out to be unworkable in practice and, thus, the korale mudaliyars took over the presidency of the councils.98 With the implementation of Ordinance 26 of 1871—the so-called “Village Communities Ordinance”—the Village Councils were converted into Village Committees, their powers were widened and additional Village Tribunals were established. A tribunal consisted of a President, who was appointed by the Governor, and five Councillors selected from the villagers by lot. It was empowered to adjudicate minor civil offences as well as minor criminal offences such as theft, cattle trespass or malicious injury to property.99 Kannangara points out that the working of the Village Tribunals had generally been satisfactory to the contemporary observers.100 However,—as most Governors appointed only headmen as Presidents of the Village Tribunals—the tribunals soon became an additional source of infl uence and power for that particular group. In the case of the Village Councils and later Committees the original intention behind the creation of such institutions was a revival of local administrative bodies with a limited range of competences in order to make decisions on the spot and implement such decisions quickly. This was especially important in the field of irrigation upkeep works and matters of cultivation. But in the course of time, the headmen assumed control over the Councils and Committees. Not only were the Committees presided over by a korale mudaliyar, but most of the members were headmen or similarly infl uential persons as well. As

95 96 97 98 99 100

Ibid., 21. De Silva, “The Development of the Administrative System,” 220. Collins, Public Administration, 86. Kannangara, “Local Participation and Participants,” 271. Ibid.: 273. Ibid.: 274.

administration

199

they usually held land, they were simply elected to the Councils and exerted considerable power from these positions.101 The policy of Governors like Arthur Gordon further contributed to the accumulation of infl uential posts and positions in the hands of a few headmen and their families, who consequently wielded almost absolute power over the villagers. Kingsley De Silva summarises Gordon’s policy on appointments to the headmen system and illustrates the long-term consequences: Gordon pursued with indefatigable enthusiasm the attempt to revive the traditional society, and to bolster the claims of the chiefs to infl uence and power. Where Gregory was driven by sentiment and impulse, Gordon was purposeful in his policy of an aristocratic revival. He disregarded the demands and claims of better educated men of other social groups, and the emerging castes to equality of opportunity. By the end of the century not only were all posts of President of Village Tribunals in the hands of the Kandyan chiefs or the mudaliyars in the low country, but all six Sinhalese Police Magistrates in 1901 were members of the same aristocratic groups.102

101 102

Ibid.: 271. De Silva, “The Development of the Administrative System,” 221.

CHAPTER NINE

EDUCATION 9.1 British Educational Policy, 1796–1867 The history of education in nineteenth century Ceylon is closely linked with several other aspects of British policy in the island. In the first place, the state of the government revenue—that itself depended heavily on the fortunes of the plantation industry—set up the financial framework, within which colonial educational policy could be realised. As the propagation of education has never been a preference of the British administration throughout the nineteenth century, expenditure on educational facilities has often been the first to suffer during times of financial difficulties. Second, the British approach to the education of the Crown’s ‘native subjects’ was only partly based on humanitarian thoughts. Practical considerations constantly infl uenced education policies. The want of English-speaking clerks for the lower ranks of the administration, for instance, led to an emphasis on English education in the wake of the Colebrooke-Cameron report. Later, the policy was reversed. The administrative machinery could not absorb the newly created English-educated class anymore. Third, the competition of the various religious bodies and groups in Ceylon played a significant role in the development of education in Ceylon. At first, the struggle for predominance in the field of education was mainly a struggle between different Christian missionary societies. Later—in the course of the so-called ‘religious revivals’ that will be discussed in detail in a later chapter—the representatives of the indigenous religious faiths joined the competition as well. Until the implementation of the Colebrooke-Cameron reforms in the early 1830s, the propagation of education was largely neglected by the colonial government. When the British took over the Dutch possessions on the island, two separate school system existed. The Dutch had established a network of Christian parish schools that had been under central government control. Outside this system there existed a fairly large number of traditional Buddhist schools. These pansala schools were attached to Buddhist monasteries and managed

202

chapter nine

by the clergy.1 Most of the pansalas were located in the Kandyan highlands (and, therefore, came under British authority only in 1815). The pansala network was less tight in the Maritime Provinces. During the administration of the East India Company from 1796 to 1798, education was not considered particularly important and the Dutch parish schools fell into complete neglect. Only with the arrival of Governor Frederick North in 1798 these schools were revived again and soon stood at the centre of the government’s education policy. North—who is said to have been infl uenced by religious motives more than by educational ones—appointed the Colonial Chaplain Rev. James A. Cordiner as Principal of Schools. North and Cordiner showed a keen interest in the establishment of a network of vernacular schools, but in 1803 their ambitions were put to a stop by the Colonial Office’s retrenchment policy. The parish schools were abolished on financial grounds and only the English Academy—established by North as the first English school in Ceylon in 1800—survived the cutting back of funds.2 North’s successors, Thomas Maitland and Robert Brownrigg, did not revive the parish schools. While Maitland showed no interest in the propagation of education at all, Brownrigg’s Governorship saw the arrival of four important missionary societies on the island. In 1812, the Baptist Missionary Society came to Ceylon and started to set up missionary schools. The Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society followed in 1814, the American Mission in 1816 and the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in 1818.3 The Wesleyans, the CMS and—on a smaller scale—the Baptists immediately started to establish schools in the centres of the maritime regions—preferably in and around Colombo.4 Due to political reasons, the American Mission was not allowed into Colombo and, thus, concentrated solely on missionary activity in the Jaffna peninsula.

1 K. H. M. Sumathipala and Christopher W. W. Kannangara, History of Education in Ceylon, 1796–1965. With Special Reference to the Contribution Made by C. W. W. Kannangara to the Educational Development of Ceylon, Etc, (Ceylon Historical Journal. Vol. 13.) (Dehiwala: Tisara Prakasakayo, 1968), 1. 2 S. Jayaweera, “Language and Colonial Educational Policy in Ceylon in the Nineteenth Century,” Modern Ceylon Studies 2, no. 2 (1971): 154. 3 Ibid. 4 L. A. Wickremeratne, “Education and Social Change, 1832 to C 1900,” in University of Ceylon History of Ceylon. From the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century to 1948, ed. Kingsley M. De Silva (Peradeniya: University of Peradeniya, 1973), 174.

education

203

The missionary societies regarded education as the principal vehicle of conversion and mainly established vernacular schools to reach the mass of the ‘heathens.’ In these schools the local languages—i.e. Sinhala or Tamil—were used for the instruction of the pupils.5 Under Brownrigg, the colonial government’s education policy confined itself to supporting the activities of the missionary bodies. In 1817, an Archdeaconry (subordinate to Calcutta) was established in Ceylon and the Church of England became the official church of the state. The remaining government schools came under the supervision of the Church of England and its Ecclesiastical Establishment.6 The missionaries were admitted to the Kandyan regions in 1820. After the conquest of Kandy in 1815, the Kandyan Convention had assured British protection to Buddhism, but with the suppression of the Kandyan Rebellion in 1818 a new proclamation was issued that limited government support to Buddhism. Moreover, Brownrigg officially extended government protection to all religions and, therefore, found it possible to open the Kandyan regions to the missionary bodies.7 Thanks to Brownrigg’s support, the missionary societies soon occupied a more important position than the government in the spread of education. Under Brownrigg’s successor Edward Barnes, the role of the missionaries became even more pronounced as Barnes showed interest only in the economic progress of the island. He did not actively support the missionary societies, but, due to government neglect, he left educational matters almost completely to the churches. Jayaweera states that Barnes “discouraged educational enterprise, state or private, and all but killed state schools; the latter were reduced to four English and ninety parish schools by 1830.”8 When Colebrooke arrived in Ceylon in 1829, the missionary bodies practically controlled the educational system of the island—partly due to the active support of Brownrigg, partly due to Barnes’ indifference. As he did on most matters of colonial administration, Colebrooke also commented on the prevalent system of education. Sumathipala points out that, when Colebrooke investigated educational matters on the island, only about 800 pupils (out of a total of 26,970) received an English education. About half of those attended the five existing 5 6 7 8

Jayaweera, “Language and Colonial Educational Policy,” 154. Sumathipala and Kannangara, History of Education in Ceylon, 3. Ibid. Jayaweera, “Language and Colonial Educational Policy,” 155.

204

chapter nine

government English schools.9 As Colebrooke occupied a more practical viewpoint concerning the future of education in Ceylon,10 he recommended to discontinue any government activity in the spheres of vernacular education and laid additional emphasis on the importance of English education on the island. In his opinion, the intended opening of the lower ranks of the CCS to the Ceylonese required English-educated personnel. The spread of Western—i.e. British—ideas and values would unify the island and foster local participation in the administration and judicature.11 Consequently, Governor Horton—whose task it was to implement most of Colebrooke’s recommendations—closed all government vernacular schools. Furthermore, government English schools were closed in many locations where missionary schools already taught English. Thus, the missionaries were given an additional inducement to engage in English education,12 as Colebrooke objected to the missionaries’ preference for vernacular education.13 The Archdeacon of the Church of England became the head of the first School Commission in 1834. This commission implemented Colebrooke’s recommendations almost to the letter and concentrated entirely on the establishment of English schools.14 The missionary societies soon followed the government policy and laid their emphasis on the foundation of English schools as well.15 The School Commission managed to expand educational facilities (primarily for the teaching of English) in the next years. However, the government schools constantly lost more ground to the rapidly spreading missionary schools. The School Commission and its policy exclusively represented the Church of England—the Anglicans. No members of other religious bodies were appointed to the commission and Anglican religious instruction was made a compulsory subject in government schools. Only in 1841 Governor Stewart Mackenzie reorganised the comSumathipala and Kannangara, History of Education in Ceylon, 4. Wickremeratne, “Education and Social Change,” 174. 11 J. C. A. Corea, “One Hundred Years of Education in Ceylon,” Modern Asian Studies 3, no. 2 (1969): 155. 12 Wickremeratne, “Education and Social Change,” 175. 13 Only the American Mission had set up English schools in Jaffna right from its arrival in the island. Later, this gave the Jaffna Tamils a headstart in the fierce competition for Government posts between the ethnic groups. 14 S. Jayaweera, “British Educational Policy in Ceylon in the Nineteenth Century,” Paedagogica Historica 9, no. 1 (1969): 80. 15 Corea, “One Hundred Years of Education,” 155. 9

10

education

205

mission and created the Central School Commission. In the new commission Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, Wesleyans and Anglicans were all given a voice—but none of the indigenous religious faiths was represented.16 The creation of the Central School Commission triggered several changes in the educational policy of Ceylon. From 1841 on, government schools were open to children of all Christian denominations. Furthermore, the first grant-in-aid system for nongovernment English schools was introduced and enabled missionary English schools to receive a government grant (provided that they allowed inspection and examination by the commission). As they had a long tradition of English teaching, schools in Jaffna made particular use of the grant-in-aid system and, consequently, several government schools in the peninsula were closed down.17 The Wesleyan Rev. William Gogerly presided the commission from 1843 onwards and implemented a comparatively progressive policy. Together with Governor Colin Campbell he introduced several new schemes. In 1843, the Central School Commission made provisions for vernacular education in elementary schools. In 1845, a Native Normal School for the training of teachers in vernacular education was established. Two years later, 30 vernacular schools were opened.18 As a consequence, government expenditure on education rose from £2,999 in the year 1841 to £11,415 in 184719 (i.e. from 0.8% to 2.2% of the total expenditure).20 In the course of the first serious coffee crisis in 1848 and the following financial depression, government expenditure on education was drastically reduced. Vernacular education suffered hardest. Although most government vernacular schools continued to exist, the introduction of fees and the closing down of the Native Normal School prevented further progress in vernacular education.21 The neglect of education policy continued when the depression had been overcome and the coffee mania of the 1850s had set in. Economic advance and the improvement of the infrastructure were the sole interest of the administration during that time. Without government guidance

16 17 18 19 20 21

Sumathipala and Kannangara, History of Education in Ceylon, 12–13. Ibid., 13. Jayaweera, “Language and Colonial Educational Policy,” 158. Corea, “One Hundred Years of Education,” 155. Ceylon Statistical Blue Books 1841, 1847. Sumathipala and Kannangara, History of Education in Ceylon, 15.

206

chapter nine

the policy of the Central School Commission changed almost every year during the 1850s—laying emphasis on English education in one year and promoting vernacular instruction in the next.22 Education, therefore, remained largely the domain of the missionary bodies. The Christian supremacy in the field was underlined by the Central School Commission’s policy to give grants exclusively to schools run by Christian institutions.23 No pansala or other non-Christian school had ever received a grant so far. In the 1860s, the Roman Catholic community—led by the Archbishop of Colombo Christopher Bonjean—put up first resistance to the prevailing system. When the Tamil MLC Muttu Coomaraswamy (backed by the Burgher MLC Martenz) requested the creation of a special committee to investigate the matter, a Subcommittee of the Legislative Council was eventually appointed to conduct inquires about the state of education in Ceylon.24 In 1865, the Morgan Committee—named after its president, Queen’s Advocate Richard F. Morgan—took up its work. 9.2

The Morgan Committee and the Department of Public Instruction

The Morgan Committee presented its final report in 1867. The implementation of its proposals not only placed the administration of education on a sound institutional footing but also led to a reversal of government educational policy on the island. Of the various changes advocated by the Committee only three major points shall be discussed here: the establishment of the Department of Public Instruction, the emphasis on vernacular education and the introduction of the so-called Denominational System based on a revised grant-in-aid system. Governor Hercules Robinson said in an address to the Legislative Council in 1870: I have to announce to you the adoptions of a distinct policy the tendency of which will be to extend the operations of government in the direction of establishing village schools as yet unprovided with the means of instruction, but gradually to contract its operations in respect of English schools in the town districts where an effective system of 22 23 24

Jayaweera, “Language and Colonial Educational Policy,” 159. Sumathipala and Kannangara, History of Education in Ceylon, 15. Ibid., 16.

education

207

grant-in-aid will enable the government to employ its funds to much greater advantage than in maintaining schools of its own.25

From 1869/70 onwards, the Committee’s proposals were gradually realised. The Morgan Report expressed the opinion that the government had an obligation to spread (vernacular) education in the entire island. It has been said that the Committee’s views had not so much been shaped by the needs of the population but “by the current trends in England and India which favoured some form of state responsibility for education.”26 Accordingly, vernacular education gained new momentum with the implementation of the Report’s proposals. The number of government vernacular schools increased from 64 in 1869 to 347 in 1881.27 The report also proposed the abolition of government English elementary schools on the assumption that superior (i.e. English) education was only required by a small minority of the population. Superior Central schools—already existent in some of the population centres—and Anglo-vernacular schools28 should provide the necessary facilities for those who could afford an English education. All school fees for vernacular education were abolished, whereas superior English education was only available against the payment of substantial fees.29 Wickremeratne even holds that it was one of the main goals of the colonial government’s educational policy after 1867 to retain the growing educational gap.30 The inefficiency of the Central School Commission was demonstrated by its last report of the year 1867. The report showed that since 1840 only 86 new schools had been established.31 The Morgan Committee decided to do away with the Commission and create the Department of Public Instruction. The Governor, the Executive Council and the School Commission suggested the additional creation of an advisory board—consisting of representatives of all races and denominations—to control and assist the Director of Public Instructions. But Morgan

Quoted in Jayaweera, “British Educational Policy,” 82. Jayaweera, “Language and Colonial Educational Policy,” 160–61. 27 Ibid.: 163. 28 In Anglo-vernacular schools English was not the medium of instruction, but merely a subject. The pupils learned English with explanations and instructions given in the vernacular. 29 L. A. Wickremeratne, “1865 and the Changes in Education Policies,” Modern Ceylon Studies 1, no. 1 (1970): 88. 30 Ibid.: 88–89. 31 Ibid.: 85–86. 25 26

208

chapter nine

opposed this view, and, on his advice, the Legislative Council voted against the establishment of such a board.32 Consequently, the Director of Public Instruction was directly and solely responsible for the implementation of the government’s educational policy. After 1867 the management of many government English schools was handed over to the missionary societies. Other schools were simply closed when missionary English schools existed in the vicinity. The government followed this policy without consideration of the religious feelings of the population.33 The measures of the Morgan Report provided no conscience clause that could exempt Buddhist or Tamil pupils from the compulsory attendance of religious instruction. Due to the government’s gradual retreat from English education and the promotion of missionary English schools, everybody with a desire to learn English was exposed to the proselytising ambitions of the missionaries. Sumathipala quotes Ponnambalam Ramanathan who in 1884 presented a memorial of several Jaffna Hindus to the Legislative Council, in which the petitioners complained about the religious intolerance in the missionary schools: [C]hildren who are obliged to go to these missionary schools are forced by the missionaries, under pain of fines and expulsion, to read the Bible whether they liked it or not [. . .] Hindu boys who, for want of their own English schools, resort to the missionary schools, have learnt to make mental reservations and are getting skilled in the art of dodging. The holy ashes put on at home during worship are carefully rubbed off as they approach the Christian school and they affect the methods of Christian boys while at school. [. . .] There is a great deal too much of hypocrisy in Jaffna in the matter of religion, owing to the fact that the love of the missionaries for proselytes is as boundless as the love of the Jaffnese to obtain some knowledge of English at any cost. [. . .] If there is no conscience clause in the grant-in-aid code, I think the sooner a clause of that kind is introduced the better it will be for religious freedom in Ceylon.34

Ibid.: 86–87. J. E. Jayasuriya, Educational Policies and Progress During British Rule in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), 1796–1948 (Colombo: Associated Educational Publishers, 1977), 249. 34 Quoted in Sumathipala and Kannangara, History of Education in Ceylon, 30–31. 32 33

education

209

While religious instruction was not a subject in government schools anymore,35 the private grant-receiving schools were free to teach the subject. Almost all of the grant-aided schools were under Christian management and, thus, held compulsory religious instruction lessons (mostly held in the first school hour). Throughout the nineteenth century, the pupils were compelled to attend these lessons. No conscience clause existed.36 The government’s gradual retreat from English education gained momentum, when the plantation economy experienced first signs of the coffee crisis in the late 1870s. Government coffers suffered from a lack of funds. Thus, the Legislative Council’s Retrenchment Committee proposed in 1883 to hand over local Anglo-vernacular and English schools to the Municipal and Local Boards. Ordinance 33 of 1883 was passed and made provisions for the transfer of English and mixed schools located within the limits of municipalities to the local authorities. But only in Puttalam such a transfer was successful. Most other Municipal and Local Boards lacked the financial means to assume control over the government schools. The missionaries stepped in and took over the management of the schools. Therefore, 21 government English schools were either handed over to the missionary bodies or closed until the end of 1884.37 The Colombo Academy (renamed the Royal College in 1881) remained the only government English school within the boundaries of a municipality.38 The government’s vernacular education policy was more successful. Between 1873 and 1900, the number of government vernacular schools increased from 241 to 484. Still, the government was outperformed by the missionaries who increased the number of their schools from 237 to 1,186.39 Jayasuriya states that on several recorded occasions government vernacular schools were also handed over to the missionaries or closed, if a missionary school of the same type was near.40 The government relied heavily on the grant-in-aid system introduced by the Morgan Report and considered it a practicable way to outsource educational responsibility to the missionaries. The allocation of such Charles Henry Collins, Public Administration in Ceylon (London; New York: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1951), 90. 36 Jayasuriya, Educational Policies and Progress, 251. 37 Sumathipala and Kannangara, History of Education in Ceylon, 34. 38 Jayasuriya, Educational Policies and Progress, 283. 39 Jayaweera, “British Educational Policy,” 84. 40 Jayasuriya, Educational Policies and Progress, 252. 35

210

chapter nine

grants was based on the principal of payment by results. Officials of the Department of Public Instruction conducted examinations in the schools. The results of these examinations decided whether a school was eligible for a grant and, if so, for what grant category. The grantin-aid system did not place any restriction on religious instruction in the grant-aided schools—although examinations were conducted in secular subjects only. Grants were given in the categories A, B and (since 1872) C—in descending order of the allocated sum. Grants for C schools were small and awarded only for three years. During that time the C school had to qualify for an A or B grant. The distinction in A, B and C schools was applied to every type of school. Among those types English schools received the highest grants, followed by Anglo-vernacular and, finally, vernacular schools.41 The working of the grant-in-aid system was tightly connected with the financial state of the colony. Initially comparatively generous grants were made. The coffee plantations’ prosperity had reached new heights and the government coffers were filled up to the rim. The missionary societies seized the opportunity and most missionary schools applied for a grant. In 1870, the first year of the new scheme, 223 schools received a grant. Six year later the number of eligible schools had increased to 697.42 The government and the Department for Public Instruction were both pleased with the working of the grant-in-aid system from its very inception. More and more educational responsibility was passed to the private missionary bodies that competed fiercely for grants and constantly established more schools. The missionaries were the main beneficiaries of the system—even though, in theory, all private schools (i.e. not just missionary schools) could apply for a government grant since the revisions of the Morgan Committee. Although the indigenous religious groups quickly realised the potential of the grantin-aid system, they could not make full use of the scheme due to several hindrances. Unlike their Christian counterparts, the Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims had not participated in the field of education prior to the 1870s on any significant scale. The considerable number of Buddhist pansala schools had existed outside the official educational system of the island since the arrival of the British. The pansalas

41 42

Ibid., 256–57. Ibid., 258.

education

211

contributed to the spread of literacy in the vernacular and were very valuable for the villagers, but they worked on different principles than government or missionary schools. Therefore, they could not serve as a training ground in (Western) educational management. Apart from the Buddhist pansalas, the indigenous communities had little experience in the management of schools, although every now and then a local school was set up and run on private funds. The indigenous religion groups’ ambitions to secure government grants did not only suffer from their lack of experience in schools management. The often also lacked the money to set up schools in the first place. And when they managed to do so, they faced the fierce opposition of the missionary bodies, the partiality of the British officials and—the most formidably—provisions of the so-called Distance Rule as introduced in 1874. Thus, only four Buddhist and one Hindu school were registered for a grant in the year 1880 (ten years after the introduction of the revised scheme)—as against a total of 833 grant-aided schools in that year.43 The missionary societies with their headquarters in Europe or America had much larger financial resources at their disposal than the local Buddhist or Hindu communities. This gave the missionaries a distinct advantage over their native competitors, as the initial investment to set up and run a school was considerable and grants were only given to schools already up an running. Furthermore, the opposition of the missionaries and their infl uence on the European officials often delayed or prevented the registration of Buddhist and Hindu schools for a grant. Jayasuriya gives several examples for this practice and both Jayasuriya and Sumathipala quote the Director of Public Instruction on one particular case in the Northern Province: During the last two years some applications were considered for the registration of schools under Sivite [Hindu] managers. They were large schools, had existed for many years, and fulfilled every condition required by the existing regulations. The case of one of the schools was submitted to my particular attention by the Tamil members of the Legislative Council. The protests of one of the Managers against the registration of such schools has been of a very determined kind, and he directly claims for the Society he represents the ‘exclusive possession’ of the district in which his schools are situated. Indeed with reference to a school which had been in existence for nearly twenty years, he says,

43

CO 54/539, 4 May 1882/No. 194, Longden to Kimberley. Enclosure.

212

chapter nine ‘If it can be made plain that the school is really needed, the teacher should be required to accept Mission management as the sole condition to receiving government aid.’44

Only rarely did such cases reach the Director of Public Instruction—and even then it seems that little has been done to keep the Christian missionaries from interfering. The school in the referred case did not receive the grant.45 Christian lobbying slowed down the development of native schools and, above all, increased the lead of the missionary societies in the educational field. And with the introduction of the Distance Rule in 1874 an additional and crucial advantage in the competition for grants was given to those bodies with a large number of already registered schools—i.e. the Christian missionary societies. The new rule made provisions for the refusal of grants for schools established within three miles of an existing government or grant-in-aid school of the same type—except in special circumstances.46 Taking into account that the missionary schools had right from the introduction of the grant-in-aid scheme seized the opportunity and established numerous schools, it becomes clear that such a rule prevented the registration of new schools in many localities. The existence of a government or missionary grant-aided school in a village (or in the vicinity thereof) made the allocation of a grant for another school in that area impossible. This served a severe blow to the Buddhist and Hindu schools that explicitly aimed at providing indigenous educational facilities as alternative to the already established missionary institutions. With 595 grant-in-aid schools in 187447 (and the number rapidly increasing) it was hard enough to find a suitable place for a school with no other grant-in-aid school already existent. In the important population centres, where numerous missionary schools competed for pupils, the registration of a grant-aided school was almost impossible. The working of the Distance Rule satisfied both the secular authorities (for financial considerations) and the Protestant missionaries (whose educational supremacy it safeguarded). The Distance Rule was, therefore, included in Bruce’s Revised Code of 1880. And in 1891, the even more restrictive quarter-mile rule was introduced. 44 Quoted in Jayasuriya, Educational Policies and Progress, 271; Sumathipala and Kannangara, History of Education in Ceylon, 30. 45 Jayasuriya, Educational Policies and Progress, 271. 46 Ibid., 261. 47 Administration Report 1874.

education 9.3

213

Education, 1880–1900

Since the mid-1870s, the government and its Department of Public Instruction tried to keep expenditure on education outside the grant-in-aid system as low as possible. Even within the grant-in-aid system steps were taken to check the expansions of the scheme and to prevent the allocation of government funds to non-Christian bodies. The Distance Rule of 1874 is the best example for that policy. However, the adopted measures did not immediately lead to a reduction of expenditure in education. But during the peak of the coffee crisis in the early years of the 1880s, severe cutbacks in government expenditure had to be made and the education funds were chosen as one field of reduction. When the government instructed Charles Bruce, the Director of Public Instruction, to compile a thoroughly revised code for schools in 1879, the upcoming financial crisis provided a good part of the motivation behind that undertaking.48 But the short-term financial relief of the government’s funds was limited as the expenditure on education started to drop only in 1885 (see Table 9.1)49—when Bruce’s revisions had been enacted as the Revised Code for Schools in 1880. At least, the provisions of the Revised Code checked the rapid and hitherto almost uncontrolled multiplication of missionary grant-in-aid schools to a certain extent. One of the most important measures of the code was the introduction of higher average attendance requirements for A, B and C schools in order to receive a grant. Furthermore, schools that did not fulfil the requirements could now be removed from the grants list altogether.50 The Distance Rule of 1874 was confirmed and its three-mile clause substituted by a two-mile equivalent. These measures brought the expansion of grant-in-aid schools to a temporary halt between 1880 and 1886 (see Table 9.2), but would not lead to a substantial decrease of education expenditure. When expenditure did start to drop in the year 1885, it was not a direct consequence of the Revised Code for Schools implemented five years earlier. Rather, the government’s retreat from English education and the closing (or transfer) of government schools in municipalities caused the drop.

48 49 50

Jayasuriya, Educational Policies and Progress, 240. Wickremeratne, “1865 and the Changes in Education Policies,” 91. Jayasuriya, Educational Policies and Progress, 241–42.

214

chapter nine

Moreover, the new Director of Public Instruction H. W. Green had reduced the grants assigned to English schools to the same rate payable to Anglo-vernacular or vernacular schools in the new Revised Code for Aided Schools in 1885.51 Table 9.1: Expenditure on Education and Total Expenditure, 1880–1900. Year

(1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

1880 1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 1889 1890 1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900

223,951 230,522 237,420 235,356 237,153 197,653 198,546 205,751 208,649 213,989 214,190 215,023 n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a

286,505 273,779 272,515 255,875 263,356 237,338 248,770 255,022 259,696 272,521 271,127 302,628 n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a

510,456 504,301 509,935 491,231 500,509 434,991 447,316 460,773 468,345 486,510 485,317 517,651 546,295 600,837 597,388 636,270 668,274 716,767 738,122 778,134 820,134

14,264,490 13,533,259 12,494,664 12,222,234 12,318,218 12,611,207 13,013,067 13,313,039 14,630,121 14,906,281 15,316,224 16,435,079 17,762,466 18,276,108 20,342,899 20,899,714 21,237,860 21,634,378 22,843,852 24,950,940 25,321,988

3.58 3.73 4.08 4.02 4.06 3.45 3.44 3.46 3.2 3.26 3.17 3.15 3.08 3.29 2.94 3.04 3.15 3.31 3.23 3.12 3.24

Source: Ceylon Statistical Blue Books, 1880–1900. (1) Expenditure on the Department of Public Instruction (Rs) (2) Expenditure on Educational Services (Rs) (3) Total Expenditure on Education (Rs) (4) Total Expenditure of the Colony (Rs) (5) % of (3) of (4)

During the 1870s the competition for government grants between the different Christian denominations had not only led to the uncontrolled multiplication of missionary schools in Ceylon, the establishment of numerous schools with unqualified staff and insufficient equipment

51

Jayaweera, “Language and Colonial Educational Policy,” 166.

education

215

had also been a side-effect of this rush into education. If such schools were located in the right places and run by the right management, they received a grant even if they could not live up to the general educational standards. The main reason for the establishment of ill-equipped schools was the fact that the government grants of the prosperous 1870s had often sufficed to cover the total costs of a school.52 The management had to contribute only marginal sums out of its own pocket. Table 9.2: Government, Grant-in-Aid and Unaided Schools, 1880–1900. Year 1880 1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 1889 1890 1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900

Government Schools Grant-in-Aid Schools Unaided Schools* Schools Pupils Schools Pupils Schools* Pupils* 369 398 421 437 431 417 425 440 438 440 436 436 453 456 468 477 474 474 479 489 500

21,294 23,626 26,597 27,656 27,677 26,624 29,653 32,565 35,948 39,026 40,290 41,746 42,190 41,680 44,366 44,252 44,538 45,113 46,279 47,482 48,642

833 839 832 836 814 819 849 899 919 938 984 971 1,024 1,005 1,042 1,096 1,130 1,172 1,220 1,263 1,328

59,820 61,131 62,842 61,374 59,776 57,320 57,955 62,995 66,400 69,483 73,698 74,855 82,637 81,598 86,968 90,229 94,400 102,485 103,951 111,145 120,751

585 645 n/a 652 560 2,134 2,126 2,292 2,427 2,590 2,617 2,645 2,395 2,415 2,408 2,242 2,268 2,331 2,330 1,887 2,089

7,236 8,874 n/a 12,291 13,265 20,062 22,956 24,994 28,823 29,785 32,464 37,242 33,631 33,969 32,576 35,353 36,720 36,908 34,805 34,841 38,881

Source: Administration Reports 1880–1900. * Pansala schools included from 1885 onwards

It was the main goal of the Revised Code for Schools of 1880 to prevent the further multiplication of such inefficient schools. Judging from the statistics the code was at least partially successful in that

52

Jayasuriya, Educational Policies and Progress, 307.

216

chapter nine

regard. Another problem of the educational system in Ceylon lay in the uneven distribution of educational facilities on the island. Most government and missionary schools were concentrated in the Western and Northern Province.53 The spread of education in the poverty-stricken North-Central Province was totally neglected until 1887. In that year, only 31 schools with 643 pupils existed in the whole province, while the Western Province had 1,077 schools and 54,207 pupils (these figures include government, grant-in-aid and unaided schools).54 Table 9.3 and Table 9.4 show the province-wise distribution of schools and pupils and the percentage of all children attending school in each province. Table 9.3: Province-wise Distribution of Schools and Pupils, 1880–1900.

1880 Schools Pupils 1881 Schools Pupils 1882 Schools Pupils 1883 Schools Pupils 1884 Schools Pupils 1885 Schools Pupils 1886 Schools Pupils 1887 Schools Pupils 1888 Schools Pupils 1889 Schools Pupils 1890 Schools Pupils 1891 Schools Pupils 1892 Schools Pupils 1893 Schools Pupils 1894 Schools Pupils

53 54

WP

Sab.

SP

NP

EP

538 38,445 549 39,272 552 41,905 551 41,741 665 46,260 1,043 49,333 957 50,414 1,077 54,207 1,109 59,030 926 56,298 938 60,912 898 62,875 911 66,000 797 62,687 861 65,983

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – 224 6,118 301 7,069 269 6,536 144 6,320 138 6,335 106 6,832

116 7,301 129 8,474 139 9,506 150 9,682 335 11,976 530 12,440 575 38,911 669 17,406 564 16,311 573 17,298 614 19,263 639 20,363 607 22,155 614 22,988 644 24,744

283 20,086 287 20,888 297 21,172 302 20,742 407 24,095 398 22,674 413 22,982 357 22,340 413 24,599 437 25,182 446 24,848 455 26,195 452 25,759 466 27,349 481 26,515

94 5,792 107 6,367 106 6,503 103 6,073 146 7,316 112 5,654 177 7,429 192 7,663 215 8,693 181 8,484 181 8,320 194 8,467 183 7,827 197 8,179 207 7,876

CP 99 5,165 94 5,537 89 5,652 98 6,092 189 7,071 585 8,041 451 8,847 474 9,764 401 11,137 557 13,352 451 13,826 552 16,148 538 16,378 503 15,758 535 17,531

Uva – – – – – – – – – – – – 186 1,447 151 1,711 201 2,163 194 2,077 194 2,120 209 3,020 194 2,843 204 2,970 218 3,402

NWP NCP 60 4,002 59 3,843 59 4,404 61 4,430 68 4,478 738 7,111 665 6,947 680 6,820 723 7,781 723 8,013 746 8,458 694 8,609 685 9,611 797 9,376 695 8,990

Wickremeratne, “1865 and the Changes in Education Policies,” 91–92. Administration Report 1887.

12 323 12 376 11 297 8 270 10 359 11 351 31 452 31 643 158 1,457 153 1,478 166 1,636 162 1,630 158 1,565 160 1,613 171 2,037

education

217

Table 9.3 (cont.) 1895 Schools Pupils 1896 Schools Pupils 1897 Schools Pupils 1898 Schools Pupils 1899 Schools Pupils 1900 Schools Pupils

WP

Sab.

SP

808 65,341 832 67,881 926 73,013 887 72,652 835 77,779 961 86,987

103 7,238 119 7,854 127 7,808 108 7,729 139 8,543 128 8,566

618 27,837 646 29,229 578 27,469 661 30,764 439 31,440 622 32,721

NP

EP

476 202 26,694 8,113 462 209 26,591 8,569 545 202 29,221 8,726 459 126 29,201 9,650 443 243 30,230 9,999 447 238 30,472 10,505

CP

Uva

567 18,892 530 18,902 491 18,592 651 17,505 455 17,953 413 19,440

232 3,743 192 3,015 223 3,217 215 2,958 230 3,090 247 3,562

NWP NCP 711 10,010 712 12,572 697 13,776 646 12,239 666 11,620 666 12,706

98 1,966 170 2,045 188 2,684 176 2,337 189 2,814 195 3,315

Source: Administration Reports 1880–1900.

Table 9.4: Province-wise Percentage of Children Attending School, 1887–1900. Year

WP

1887 1888 1889 1890 1891 1892 1893 1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900

6.3 6.7 9.1 9.1 10 8.3 8.3 8.3 9.1 9.1 10 10 10 9.1

Sab. – – 2.8 3.1 2.6 2.4 2.4 2.6 2.9 3 3 3 3.3 2.4

SP 4.2 4.3 4 4.5 4.2 4.5 4.8 5 5.9 6.3 5.9 8.3 6.3 5.9

NP 7.7 7.7 8.3 8.3 8.3 8.3 8.3 7.7 9.1 8.3 10 10 9.1 9.1

EP 6.3 7.1 6.7 6.7 5.9 5.6 5.6 5.3 5.6 5.9 5.9 6.7 6.7 5.9

CP 2.1 2.4 2.9 2.9 3.4 3.4 3.3 3.6 4 4 4 3.7 3.8 3.1

Uva 1 1.3 1.3 1.3 1.9 1.8 1.9 2.1 2.2 1.9 2 1.9 2 1.9

NWP

NCP

2.3 2.7 2.8 2.9 2.7 3 2.9 2.8 3.2 4 4.3 3.8 3.6 3.6

1 2.2 2.3 2.5 2.2 2.1 2.1 2.7 2.6 2.8 3.6 3.1 3.7 4.2

Adapted from Reports on the Blue Book 1887–1900.

The implementation of the Distance Rule and its confirmation in 1880 do not seem to have contributed substantially to a more even spread of education over the whole island. Only in 1888, the number of schools in the NCP started to increase, but the number of pupils per schools averaged only ten to fifteen between 1888 and 1900.55 Charles Bruce believed that only additional government resources

55

Administration Reports 1888–1900.

218

chapter nine

and an annual education expenditure of 5% of the total government revenue could remedy the uneven distribution of educational facilities. Unsurprisingly, his proposals were not implemented.56 The missionary monopoly on government grants slowly started to break up in the 1890s, but the missionary societies still enjoyed a greatly privileged position within the grant-in-aid system. In 1900, Protestant missionary societies controlled 58.8% of all grant-aided schools (attended by 52.4% of all pupils of grant-in-aid schools). The Roman Catholics managed 25.3% of the aided schools with 27.8% of the pupils. By that time, however, the efforts of the indigenous communities had at least borne some fruits. The Buddhists now ran 10.7% of the aided schools and taught 15% of the pupils. Hindu schools accounted for 4.9% of all grant-in-aid schools with 5.9% of the pupils. The Muslims had been only marginally successful. In 1900 the managed 4 (0.3%) grant-aided schools with 199 (0.3%) pupils.57 The struggle of the Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims for adequate representation in the field of education will be discussed in detail in the chapter on “The Religious Revivals.” But it must be noted here that the partial success of these communities’ ambitions by the year 1900 is even more noteworthy if we recapitulate the provisions of the Distance Rules. In 1880, the so-called two-mile rule had been introduced to substitute the three-mile rule of 1874. Jayasuriya quotes the provisions of the two-mile rule: As a general rule, no application will be entertained for aid to a boys’ school when there already exists a fl ourishing boys’ school of the same class within two miles of the proposed site, without some intervening obstacle, unless the average daily attendance for six months prior to the date of the application exceeds 60. An Anglo-vernacular school will be considered as of the same class as a vernacular school.58

The narrowing of the three-mile radius to only two miles did not have much practical effect, because the network of existing government or grant-in-aid schools covered the more interesting locations in the towns tightly enough to prevent the establishment of new schools under the provisions of 1880 as well. But the introduction Wickremeratne, “1865 and the Changes in Education Policies,” 92. Administration Report 1900. The figures given on the percentage of pupils refer to the average attendance of these schools, not to the nominal attendance. 58 Quoted in Jayasuriya, Educational Policies and Progress, 262. 56 57

education

219

of the average attendance requirements for six months prior to the application made an exception to the rule—as provided for under exceptional circumstances in the circular of 1874—even harder. The two-mile rule of 1880, therefore, further hampered the progress of indigenous schools. But the most serious setback to the ambitions of the Buddhists and Hindus came in 1891 with the amendment of the two-mile rule. The required average attendance of 60 pupils for boys’ schools and 40 for girls’ schools was extended from six to twelve months prior to the application. Furthermore, the so-called quarter-mile rule was introduced, and no grant-aided school could be established within a quarter of a mile of another school of the same class—under no circumstances whatsoever. The amendment was a serious blow to the Buddhists and Hindus for two reasons: first, in more densely populated areas the native religious groups had frequently succeeded in maintaining the required average attendance for the registration of a grant. This became more difficult now with the extension of the period to twelve months. And if the new school was situated within a quarter of a mile of another school, the registration for a grant was impossible now. In smaller towns and villages with already established schools, this rule often prevented the allocation of new grants completely.59 These provisions were detrimental enough to Buddhist and Hindu ambitions in the field, but the real harm was done by the retrospective application of the amended rule. Already existing and registered schools that fell under the provisions of the quarter-mile rule lost their grant and many had to be closed down.60 Under these adverse circumstances the number of grant-aided Buddhist and Hindu schools in the year 1900 (as shown above) appears to be even more noteworthy. The existence of these schools clearly indicates the momentum that the indigenous religious revivals had gained by the late 1880s and 1890s.

59 60

Ibid., 263–64. Ibid., 264.

CHAPTER TEN

NEW ELITES 10.1

Elite Status and Social Stratification1

The social stratification of the indigenous Ceylonese society in the nineteenth century has hitherto been analysed mostly along the lines of elite concepts. Patrick Peebles and Michael Roberts describe an elite as “a social formation which commands most of what others in a particular society want and maintains an infl uential position that enables it to provide leadership.”2 This is an extremely broad definition of the term elite and has the advantage of being applicable to every single group at the social apex. Nevertheless, it has proved useful in the description of the most infl uential social groups of nineteenth-century Ceylon. Roberts identifies two dimensions of elite status—the ritual dimension and the power-economic dimension.3 Like Roberts, we will leave the ritual (or religious) dimension of elite status aside4 and concentrate mainly on the power-economic dimension. Roberts names certain attributes of elite status—attributes of power (wealth, political power, office holding) and attributes of status (lifestyle, high social esteem, access to intellectual and cultural activities).

In this chapter, the term ‘elite’ refers exclusively to the indigenous (i.e. Ceylonese) elites. So-called Western elites are not explicitly covered. 2 Michael Roberts, “Elite Formation and Elites, 1832–1931,” in University of Ceylon History of Ceylon. From the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century to 1948, ed. Kingsley M. De Silva (Peradeniya: University of Peradeniya, 1973), 263. 3 Michael Roberts, “Elite Formation and Elites, 1832–1931,” in Sri Lanka: Collective Identities Revisited, ed. Michael Roberts and Marga Institute (Colombo: Marga Institute, 1997), 193–94. 4 In individual cases the religious dimension of elite status may have enhanced the infl uence of the so-called ‘secular’ elites. Mudaliyars were sometimes occupied with the administration of temples. And many leading individuals of the karava caste supported the Buddhist revivalist movement. This study, however, is primarily concerned with highlighting the connection between the economic and administrative transformation of Ceylon and the rise of new elites. In that respect, the ritual or religious dimension played a rather insignificant role. 1

222

chapter ten

According to him, it is not necessary to have all these attributes to gain elite status.5 The indigenous elites of nineteenth-century Ceylon were no homogenous group. They differed significantly in their spheres of infl uence, in the wealth they controlled, in their social status, in their occupations and—sometimes most importantly—in their origins and self-perception. In other words, every single elite group showed a distinct combination of Roberts’ elite attributes. For the purpose of this work, I adapted and simplified Roberts’ model by combining attributes and dimensions. Leaving the ritual dimension aside, it seems practicable to subdivide the power-economic dimension in three further spheres: the economic dimension, the political dimension and the status dimension. Although most infl uential groups derive their elite status from more than one of these dimensions, usually one particular dimension remained more important than the others and formed the powerbase of the elite. The revised elite model—although very similar to Roberts’ attributes-model—puts more emphasis on such differences in occupation, origin and self-perception. Accommodating all indigenous elite groups of nineteenth-century Ceylon in a single power-economic dimension would simply neglect the different social backgrounds and aspirations of the elite groups. I also follow Roberts in his classification of elite groups in national (macro or central elites) and local elites (sub-elites, subordinate or intermediate elites).6 Regardless of its particular dimensions, every elite group had certain spatial spheres of infl uence. Some only wielded very limited local power (like minor headmen or kanganies), others enjoyed an island-wide infl uence (like the highest mudaliyars or the apex of the karava elite). In the political dimension, the classification into national and local elites depends on the territorial reach of a social group’s political power. Here, only a few well-established mudaliyar families achieved national elite status. The bulk of the headmen only wielded local infl uence. Similarly, only a few families of the rising economic groups—whose economic transactions and infl uence soon spanned the better part of Ceylon—attained national elite status. Most of the new entrepreneurs acted merely on a regional level.

5 6

Roberts, “Elite Formation and Elites (Collective Identities),” 194. Ibid., 193–94.

new elites

223

Even taken together, national and local elites comprised only a very small minority of the Ceylonese population. Minority status is another attribute of almost every elite group. The mass of the people had no access to wealth, infl uence or social status on any significant scale. Most peasant smallholders, the indigenous or immigrant agricultural labourers and the emerging industrial workers formed the bottom of the social pyramid. Only very few small-scale land owners, artisans or craftsmen managed to adjust to the economic changes of the nineteenth century well enough to climb up the social ladder. Those who did formed what Kumari Jayawardena has called the petty bourgeoisie of the island—together with a new urban group of clerks, shopkeepers and teachers.7 Unlike Roberts, Jayawardena does not follow the elite model and classifies Ceylonese society along Marxist class lines. Jayawardena’s model sees the bourgeoisie at the apex of society—consisting of the traditional Sinhala and Tamil goyigama and vellala elites (the mudaliyars) and the new rising class of “merchants, speculators, plantation owners and professionals of all communities and castes mainly from the non-agricultural coastal areas.”8 The petty bourgeoisie forms the second layer and, as mentioned above, consists of small-scale land owners, artisans, small traders, petty producers and of the new urban class of clerks, shopkeepers and teachers. The third and bottommost layer is composed of immigrant plantation labourers, subsistence peasants and landless agricultural labourers. Surprisingly, Jayawardena does not mention the developing industrial working class in the urban areas that belongs to the bottom layer as well.9 The main drawback of Jayawardena’s class model is its overemphasis of the economic dimension. The political and status dimensions are not considered separately and are regarded as mostly dependent on the economic dimension. In the case of nineteenth-century Ceylonese elite groups such a view is not sufficiently diversified. The mudaliyars, for instance, derived their elite status mainly from the status and the political dimensions and only secondarily from private wealth.

Kumari Jayawardena, “Some Aspects of Class & Ethnic Consciousness in Sri Lanka in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries,” in Ethnicity and Social Change in Sri Lanka: Papers Presented at a Seminar Organised by the Social Scientists Association, December 1979, ed. Social Scientists Association of Sri Lanka (Colombo: Social Scientists Association, 1984), 77. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid., 78. 7

224

chapter ten 10.2

National Elites—The Mudaliyars

Chapter eight on colonial administration has already briefl y outlined the origins of the mudaliyar class. When the British took over the former Dutch territories in 1796, their financial and administrative resources were limited. Due to its nature as a commercial company, the East India Company showed little interest in investing significant sums into the development and administration of the maritime regions. From their Portuguese and Dutch predecessors the new rulers inherited the practice of using indigenous intermediaries as a link between the administration and the administered. On their arrival, the British perceived the mudaliyars as the local aristocracy and realised the importance of securing their loyalty. Therefore, they continued the inherited intermediary system and, thus, governed with only small administrative staff and at low costs. The indigenous middlemen did not receive fixed salaries, but were rewarded with land grants—socalled accomodessans. Such service tenures had already been granted in the Kotte Kingdom. The Portuguese had later continued the practice to pay their supporters. The Dutch had significantly reduced the size of such land grants, but had continued the practice itself. Eventually, they had made the accomodessans de facto hereditary by granting the same lands to the heirs of the original holder.10 The Portuguese and the Dutch recruited their mudaliyars almost exclusively from the Sinhalese goyigama and the Tamil vellala caste. When the British took over, both the Sinhalese and the Tamil communities had, thus, developed their own ‘traditional’ elites based on land grants and office holding under colonial patronage. The British made use of these established elite groups and perpetuated the practice of appointing goyigamas or vellalas as mudaliyars. Thus, the low-country Sinhalese and the Tamil elites managed to maintain and even improve their social status. In the Kandyan regions several elite families were displaced after the rebellion of 1817/18 and only the loyal aristocracy was rewarded with mudaliyarships.11 The most important duties of the mudaliyars were the collection of taxes, the maintenance of local order and the enforcement of raja-

10 Patrick Peebles, Social Change in Nineteenth Century Ceylon (New Delhi: Navrang in collaboration with Lake House Bookshop, Colombo, 1995), 41. 11 Roberts, “Elite Formation and Elites (Collective Identities),” 226.

new elites

225

kariya. In the absence of any measurable government control these duties gave the mudaliyars a strong hold over the population. Several headmen had already acquired considerable wealth in Dutch times by illegally employing rajakariya labourers on their accomodessans for paddy or small-scale cash crop cultivation.12 During the first decades of British rule the well established mudaliyar families fortified their pre-eminent positions within Ceylonese society. Their high social status—derived from office holding, the imitation of a Western life-style and from landownership—contributed more to the mudaliyars’ elite status than material wealth. Although the holding of accomodessans, the abuse of rajakariya and several other administrative advantages secured a certain income and life-style for the mudaliyars, only a few families were able to amass real riches in the early nineteenth century. The goyigamas and vellalas—due to their caste background and tradition—showed a distinct preference for investments in land and attached high social value to landownership. They were not entrepreneurs like the karavas, durawas and salagamas in later years. In the first decade of the nineteenth century, the prosperous plantation economy and the land market had not yet developed. Therefore, opportunities to make quick fortunes in agriculture were still limited—even with a cheap labour force at one’s disposal. Hence, at least until the Colebrooke-Cameron reforms, the mudaliyars derived their elite status mainly from their social status and—to a limited extent—from the political dimension. Only a few families—mostly low-country Sinhalese mudaliyars—managed to accumulate large land holdings and considerable wealth in those early days. Table 10.1, taken from Patrick Peebles, gives the names and acreage of the principal Ceylonese landowners in the Western Province in the year 1829. According to Peebles, outside the Western Province there were only three more Ceylonese landowners of significance.13 As Table 10.1 and further evidence collected by the ColebrookeCameron commission14 show, the chief and superior headmen of the early nineteenth century were the principal Ceylonese landowners of that time. The provisions of the Colebrooke-Cameron reforms tried to curtail the rising infl uence of the upper crust of the mudaliyar class.

12 13 14

Ibid., 196. Peebles, Social Change in Nineteenth Century Ceylon, 108. Roberts, “Elite Formation and Elites (Collective Identities),” 226.

226

chapter ten

Table 10.1: Principal Land Holders in the Western Province, 1829. Name Solomon Dias Bandaranaike Carolis de Livera Johannes Paulus Perera John Louis Perera Simon Barend de Silva Abraham de Saram Christoffel de Saram Johan Gerard Philipsz Panditaratne

Highland (acres)

Lowland (acres)

Total (acres)

1,050 1,050 1,050 1,050 1,050 900 900 300

150 120 120 120 120 150 150 90

1,200 1,170 1,170 1,170 1,170 1,050 1,050 390

Source: Patrick Peebles, Social Change in Nineteenth Century Ceylon (New Delhi: Navrang in collaboration with Lake House Bookshop, Colombo, 1995), 108.

Rajakariya was abolished and many titular mudaliyarships discontinued. These measures reduced the number of available posts and put an end to the frequent abuses of forced labour for the cultivation of private lands. In general, the changes initiated by the Colebrooke-Cameron reforms and the gradual development of a dynamic economy required the colonial government to employ more skilled and specialised staff. The British severely cut into the competences of the mudaliyars. Peebles points out: The role of the mudaliyar contracted as the attentions of the superior officials and the functions of the subordinate one expanded. Rather than serving as intermediaries for the entire administration the mudaliyars became one of several specialized officials.15

Although this specialisation eroded the mudaliyar monopoly on Ceylonese participation in the administration and created a demand for skilled personnel from outside the mudaliyar families, the headmen retained several infl uential and powerful posts. The korale mudaliyars became land revenue agents. They commanded the compulsory labour under the “Road Ordinance” and dealt with the Paddy Tax renters.16 The control of the minor headmen remained largely in their hands throughout the nineteenth century, as the colonial government could not manage to supervise the large number of unpaid village vidanes and arachchis without the help of the mudaliyars. 15 16

Peebles, Social Change in Nineteenth Century Ceylon, 120. Ibid., 121.

new elites

227

After 1833 the mudaliyars lost part of their tight hold over the indigenous population. The abolition of rajakariya, the gradual introduction of tax commutation and the appointment of specialised officers cut into the mudaliyars’ administrative competences. The political dimension of their elite status suffered, although they retained several spheres of infl uence and manned the low-country Sinhalese seat in the newly created Legislative Council. But the economic provisions of the Colebrooke-Cameron reforms and the take-off of the plantation industry soon compensated the mudaliyar class for the loss of some competences. With the success of the first coffee plantations and the subsequent rush into coffee cultivation, the demand for suitable plantation land rose swiftly and fostered the development of a land market. Land speculation became a lucrative occupation. European officials and foreign investors secured the lion’s share of the available land and also engaged in profitable land speculations. To support the growth of the plantation sectors, the government granted large plots of land at minimal prices and thus even facilitated speculations. The korale and atapattu mudaliyars played an important role in these land sales. Therefore, some families managed to accumulate landholdings of considerable size and started to participate actively in the prospering plantation economy. The mudaliyars normally did not compete for coffee land with the European investors, but acquired large plots of land in their low-country districts, sometimes planted with coconuts or jackfruits. 68% of all lots bought by prominent Sinhalese between 1860 and 1889 were located in regions of coconut cultivation. Only 14% of all lots were potential coffee or tea lands.17 The ownership of coconut plantations, the (albeit small-scale) participation in the cultivation of coffee and the acquisition of urban property in Colombo remained the only investments of most mudaliyar families. Although the profit derived from these investments was substantial at times, contemporary karava entrepreneurs usually outperformed the mudaliyars as regards income and wealth. Like most traditional elites—based on social status and a certain political infl uence—the mudaliyars preferred secure investments in urban property or landholdings over high-risk engagements in business and trade.18 Many mudaliyars did not even plant their land with cash crops, but rather acquired large amounts

17 18

Ibid., 219. Jayawardena, “Some Aspects of Class & Ethnic Consciousness,” 77.

228

chapter ten

of village lands with the villagers as their tenants.19 This underlines the importance that these first-class goyigamas attached to the status dimension of their elite status and to the direct and indirect control that they exerted over the peasantry. In the course of the nineteenth century, several mudaliyar families did accumulate very large landholdings and an impressive volume of urban property—despite their mostly rather conservative investment methods. However, such families were only few. Patrick Peebles identifies seven infl uential mudaliyars who were large-scale landowners and had amassed immense wealth in the late nineteenth century: Don Christoffel Henricus Dias Bandaranaike, Solomon Dias Bandaranaike, Solomon Christoffel Obeyesekere, Harry Dias, J. P. Obeyesekere, James Alwis and John Abraham Perera.20 Extremely affl uent nongoyigama entrepreneurs soon outnumbered these few wealthy families, but could not attain the social status of the office and land holding mudaliyars. Parts of the rural population depended directly on the mudaliyar landlord, petitions were usually directed to the mudaliyar. He controlled the village headmen. His elite status did not depend solely on material wealth. 10.3

National Elites—The Nouveaux Riches

Although the mudaliyars’ elite status was a product of colonial interference, they felt and behaved like true aristocrats. The profits derived from their conservative investments sufficed to support their aristocratic life-style, but only a few mudaliyar families accumulated great riches. The reluctance to make use of new, riskier economic opportunities is typical for well-established, traditional elite groups. The primary goal of such a social group at the very apex of society was the maintenance and fortification of its elite status. The possession of land and the role as plantation owners and landlords secured and enhanced the social status of the elite group. Other social and caste groups, however, were quick to take advantage of the developing market economy of the nineteenth century. Mostly members of the low-country karava, durawa and salagama castes seized

19 20

Peebles, Social Change in Nineteenth Century Ceylon, 226. Ibid., 226–27.

new elites

229

the opportunities created by the growth of the plantation industry. Some goyigamas from the lower sub-grades of the caste also started to participate in business and trade to make up for their lower social status with economic success and wealth. These entrepreneurs provided transport facilities for the plantations, acted as Paddy Tax, Fish Tax and toll renters and operated ferries. Many of them, eventually, made a fortune as arrack renters. The karavas as well as the durawas and salagamas were comparatively late Indian immigrants to Ceylon. They came to the island at various times between the thirteenth and the eighteenth century and therefore “it is unlikely that they were completely enmeshed in the traditional system and its associated behavioural pattern at the time when Western infl uence began to penetrate the maritime localities.”21 It has been suggested that this might have enhanced the three caste groups’ chances for upward mobility. Under Dutch occupation some durawas held economically important positions in the Elephant Department and emancipated themselves to a certain degree against the leading goyigama elite. The Dutch installed a separate durawa muhandiram as caste headman and thereby acknowledged the special status of the durawa caste.22 The salagama caste—the cinnamon peelers—also distinguished itself under Dutch rule and played a crucial role in the organisation of the Cinnamon Department and the production of cinnamon for export. Some salagamas were even rewarded with mudaliyarships and accumulated some wealth.23 With the decline of the cinnamon export the salagamas’ importance faded, but they had acquired some capital and knowledge of labour organisation and market mechanisms. Although both the salagamas and the durawas used their social and financial capital to grasp the economic opportunities of the nineteenth century, members of the karava caste constituted the most important part of the rising new elites. Roberts traces the reasons for the karavas’ particular economic success back to their numerical superiority over the salagamas and the durawas. He speaks of ‘a critical mass’ that the karavas had reached in the early nineteenth century, constituting 17% of the total population of the maritime districts, whereas the

Roberts, “Elite Formation and Elites (Collective Identities),” 232. D. A. Kotelawela, “Nineteenth Century Elites and Their Antecedents. Some Comments on ‘Facets of Modern Ceylon History’,” Ceylon Historical Journal 25, no. 1–4 (1978): 209. 23 Ibid.: 208. 21 22

230

chapter ten

salagamas and durawas accounted for only 8.1% and 6% respectively.24 This made the karavas the second largest caste group in Sinhalese society after the goyigamas. The karavas’ traditional caste occupation was fishery. Roberts states that their involvement in the fishing industry had acquainted them with the logic of market operations at a very early stage.25 But probably of more importance were the karavas’ skills in boat building and repair. Therefore, the Dutch employed members of the karava caste to repair the Vereenidge Oost-Indische Campagnie’s small trading vessels or to work as carpenters.26 Such carpentry works were supervised by a European master craftsman who instructed the carpenters and provided them with skills that “were relatively new in the island and stood [the karavas] in good stead in the nineteenth century.”27 When the growth of the coffee plantations increased the demand for transport facilities, the karavas, skilled in cart and boat building, enjoyed a considerable advantage over other competitors. During Dutch rule and in the first decades of British hegemony members of the karava, durawa and salagama castes—along with lower goyigamas, some Moors and Chettiars—started to participate in intraCeylonese trade,28 transport29 and the supply of goods and services to the state.30 With the modest capital accumulated from these occupations, some Ceylonese entrepreneurs managed to become Paddy Tax or Fish Tax renters. Although Paddy Tax collection was traditionally dominated by the mudaliyars and lower headmen, the karavas, lower goyigamas and Muslims soon held a certain share in it31 and gathered further capital for reinvestment. Peebles is of the opinion “that many twentieth-century Sinhalese élites began their rise to prominence as renters of the paddy tax.”32 In collecting the Fish Tax—a tax existing until the early 1830s33—the established karavas enjoyed a natural advantage over other competitors as the tax was primarily levied from Roberts, “Elite Formation and Elites (Collective Identities),” 232–33. Ibid., 233. 26 Kotelawela, “Nineteenth Century Elites and Their Antecedents,” 210. 27 Ibid. 28 Kumari Jayawardena, Nobodies to Somebodies: The Rise of the Colonial Bourgeoisie in Sri Lanka (Colombo: Social Scientists’ Association and Sanjiva Books, 2000), 13–15. 29 Ibid., 16–19. 30 Ibid., 19–21. 31 Ibid., 27. 32 Peebles, Social Change in Nineteenth Century Ceylon, 148. 33 Jayawardena, Nobodies to Somebodies, 28. 24 25

new elites

231

fishermen of the karava caste. Only few entrepreneurs grew rich as contractors or tax renters in these early years, but some others accumulated enough capital and market experience to be among the first to profit from the expansion of the plantation industry beginning in the 1830s. The karavas became the main toll renters of roads, ferry crossings, canals and bridges. As traffic and transport increased rapidly with the growing demands of the plantations, the value of such rents increased swiftly and became the foundation stone of many a renter’s future wealth.34 However, toll rents also involved some financial risks and several investors were ruined in the course of the early nineteenth century.35 Arrack renting was an even riskier business than toll renting, but the profit potential of the arrack farms induced many enterprising karavas and members of other castes to participate in the arrack industry. Arrack is the liquor distilled from the sap of the coconut fl ower. With 45% alcohol content as an average,36 arrack is a highly intoxicating drink. It enjoyed—and still enjoys—a great popularity among the working population of Ceylon. Therefore, taxation of the sale of arrack has been a major source of income for the state under the Dutch and, eventually, the British. In the early nineteenth century, the colonial government started to revise the Dutch practice of tax farming and—on the basis of the existing state monopoly on the distribution of arrack—farmed out the right to retail the liquor to the highest bidder.37 Until the 1830s, such rights were farmed out separately for every licensed tavern. Thus, comparatively little capital was needed to participate in the public auction of the arrack farms, and the potential profits for the renters were limited. Nonetheless, competition among local investors was high and members of the lower goyigama caste sub-grades—often serving as vidanes or arachchis—were already active in the field together with karavas and others.38 In those early days of the arrack industry, the profits were distributed among a large number of renters and therefore remained Ibid., 29. Michael Roberts, Caste Confl ict and Elite Formation: The Rise of a Karava Elite in Sri Lanka, 1500–1931, Cambridge South Asian Studies; 24 (Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 108. 36 Patrick Peebles, “Profits from Arrack Renting in Nineteenth Century Sri Lanka,” Modern Sri Lanka Studies 1, no. 1 (1986): 67. 37 Ibid. 38 Jayawardena, Nobodies to Somebodies, 51–53. 34 35

232

chapter ten

comparatively low for the individual participants. But the year 1832 brought two important changes in the system of arrack renting. First, the system of farming out each tavern separately was discontinued. Instead, one arrack farm now comprised the exclusive retail right for a whole administrative division.39 This measure considerably narrowed the circle of possible renters, as capital needs rose and the number of available rents fell. At the same time, the potential profit for the individual renters multiplied. Second, in the same year the Commissioner of Revenue issued a circular that prohibited any participation of local vidanes in the retail of arrack, because their private interests as arrack renters would else come into confl ict with their official duties. Therefore, the following years saw a drop of the number of lower goyigama renters involved in the arrack business.40 First-class goyigamas had never participated in the arrack trade on any significant scale due to the social stigma attached to that occupation. Only years after these measures had been implemented, the take-off of the plantation industry provided the arrack renters with a new and rapidly expanding market for their product. The immigrant plantation labourers, road and railway construction workers, the growing urban proletariat in Colombo and the peasantry were the main consumers of arrack. Increasing labour immigration from South India, the improvement of the island’s infrastructure and the gradual industrialisation created a prosperous market for arrack. Figure 10.1 shows how the value of particular farms depended on the state of the island’s economy and especially of the plantation industry. When the plantations fl ourished, the rents increased—despite the renters combined efforts to keep the rents low. Similarly, both the depression of the late 1860s and the coffee crisis of the 1880s left their traces in the arrack business. The expanding plantation economy supported the arrack renters, many of whom accumulated fortunes hitherto unheard of in Ceylon. Figure 10.1 shows that only the Western Province rents remained mostly unaffected by economic cycles. The main arrack consumers in the WP and in Colombo were soldiers and the developing urban proletariat. Therefore, the Western Province rents do not refl ect the state of the plantation economy in the same way as the Central Province and Uva rents do.

39 40

Ibid., 53. Ibid.

new elites

233

Badulla/Uva

CP

800

WP

700 600 500 400 300 200

1900

1898

1896

1894

1892

1890

1888

1886

1884

1882

1880

1878

1876

1870

1868

1866

1864

0

1874

100 1872

Value of Arrack Farm (Index: 1864 = 100)

900

Figure 10.1: Sale Price of Arrack Rents for Selected Farms, 1864–1900. Compiled from data in Patrick Peebles, “Profits from Arrack Renting in Nineteenth Century Sri Lanka,” Modern Sri Lanka Studies 1, no. 1 (1986): 76–77.

Occupations such as boat building, the transport of goods and tax and toll renting provided the low-country entrepreneurs with modest financial means (i.e. with capital) and the necessary economic experience needed for later ventures, but the real fortunes were made in the field of arrack renting. The karavas dominated this business. Many of the particularly successful renters came from the karava community of Moratuwa. The karavas’ particular success has often been attributed to their economic headstart. The Moratuwa karava community, however, had enjoyed one more distinct advantage: its proximity to Colombo. “Within [Colombo] District, the Moratuwa locality had ready access to the entrepot of Colombo and its burgeoning stimuli [. . .]—while the caste cluster to the north had more restricted access because of the barrier posed by the Kelani Ganga.”41 Peebles estimates that, between 1860 and 1900, profits of 50 to 60 million Rupees had been made by the arrack renters.42 The karava renters pocketed the better part of that sum, but the salagamas, the durawas and some goyigamas also skimmed a substantial share of those

41 42

Roberts, “Elite Formation and Elites (Collective Identities),” 233. Peebles, “Profits from Arrack Renting,” 81.

234

chapter ten

profits. These renters formed the core of the so-called nouveaux riches. They reinvested their profits, bought large tracts of land, opened plantations and engaged in graphite mining.43 Thus, they minimised the risk involved in arrack renting (by diversifying the nature of their investments) and attempted to enhance their social status, get rid of the social stigma associated with the arrack trade and be regarded as respectable landowners. But although these new elites acquired large landholdings and became planters and landlords, they never enjoyed the same social status or political infl uence as the mudaliyars did. Their elite status depended on their material wealth. Education, favourable marriages, professional careers and Western life-style44 bettered their social status, but still they were of ‘low birth.’ In the sphere of political and administrative participation, the karava elite had made some advances in the middle of the nineteenth century. The lower ranks of the administration had gradually been opened to educated non-goyigamas. Peebles states that “[w]hen the leading entrepreneurs of the second half of the century proved to be from other castes, the British muted caste rhetoric”.45 But the political aspirations of karavas, salagamas and durawas were far from satisfied. Apart from petty participation in the lower administration and some honorary mudaliyarships, they did not achieve political representation throughout the nineteenth century. The kara-goi contest for karava representation in the Legislative Council and the foundation of the Ceylon Agricultural Association in 1882 illustrate their struggle for political infl uence. However, in the improvement of both their social status as well as their political representation, they made but little headway. And with the Governorship of Arthur Gordon and his pronounced first-class goyigama favouritism all their political aspiration were put to a halt for the rest of the century. 10.4

Local Elites—Headmen and Moneylenders

Only a few mudaliyar families and, later, some karava entrepreneurs held national elite status in the nineteenth century. More numerous were

43 44 45

Peebles, Social Change in Nineteenth Century Ceylon, 161. Ibid., 162. Ibid., 166.

new elites

235

the members of so-called local elites—elite groups with local infl uence of varying extent and character. Most of the mudaliyars as well as of the economic elite groups commanded only local infl uence and resources—with the term ‘local’ referring to anything from a village to a district or, at times, the better part of a province. The development and organisation of such elite groups are usually very similar to those of the national elites. The main difference lies in the varying economic success and political infl uence of the protagonists. More interesting are the village level elites and their changing spheres of infl uence in the nineteenth century. Like the national elite groups, the village level elites can be divided in traditional elites and new elites, with the headmen and the vederalas46 constituting the former and the merchant moneylenders forming the latter. The strong hold of the arachchis over the villages has already been mentioned in a previous chapter. The village headman occupied an intermediary position between the administration and the administered in almost every aspect of village life. The issuing of chena permits depended on the cooperation of the headman.47 He played an important role in the collection of the taxes,48 organised village labour (which was crucial for the successful cultivation of paddy)49 and often lent paddy or kurakkan to the villagers. Apart from his intermediary functions, the headman’s role as creditor supported his local elite status. Leonard Woolf wrote that in a Sinhalese village “[t]he villagers lived upon debt, and their debts were the main topic of their conversations.”50 The growing cycle of paddy and millet and the frequently occurring seasonal harvest fl uctuations caused the villagers’ dependence on debts.51 In times of food scarcity, the villagers had to borrow food, which they would

46 A vederala is a native medicine man. Besides the vederalas’ medical knowledge, their alleged acquaintance with all sorts of charms and spells secured an infl uential and powerful position for them in every native village. 47 Leonard S. Woolf, The Village in the Jungle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 21. 48 Ibid., 26. 49 T. W. Roberts, “Memoirs,” in Interview Transcripts and Answers to Questionaires on Colonial Administration in Ceylon 1965–66, ed. Michael Roberts (Unpubl. Collection, 1965/66), 2. 50 Woolf, The Village in the Jungle, 19. 51 Eric Meyer, “From Internal to External Debt. Observations on Changes in Credit Practices in Sri Lanka in Colonial Times,” in Debts and Debtors, ed. Charles Malamoud (New Delhi: Vikas Pub. House, 1983), 164–65.

236

chapter ten

(partially) repay after the next good harvest. This was the traditional pattern of village indebtedness in Ceylon before the money economy reached the villages. As long as the debtor had not repaid his debts, the creditor enjoyed something like a traditional hold over him. The debtor would work in the creditor’s fields or supply other services. Often a full repayment of the debts was neither in the debtor’s nor in the creditor’s interest. Meyer describes this as follows: If the debtor was unable to fulfil his obligations, the creditor always granted extensions for repayment and this was what the community expected of him. Hence, a longlasting relation of structural indebtedness began which served the creditor’s best interests: he improved his reputation of being a generous man, won merit (in Buddhist terms) for himself, and put himself in a position to receive the services of his debtors at all times. He would be sure to make repeated public attempts to recover his money from the debtor [. . .], in order to make a show of the relationship of dependence and to foster it. However, a final settlement of the debt would have meant the breaking off of the social relationship between the two parties involved and hence was in no way the aim of the creditor. In this society where land was abundant but manpower scarce, what interested him was to increase the number of people depending in him rather than the number of acres of his estate.52

Meyer calls such debts internal debts or peasant credit.53 The system was organised within the boundaries of the village and the social structures and traditions of village life secured its proper working. Indebtedness remained a constant feature of village life throughout the nineteenth century but underwent significant changes with the arrival of the money economy in the Ceylonese villages. The expanding plantation economy and general population growth increased the pressure on the land and “brought about a rise in the value of land and a decrease in the value of man.”54 Therefore, the creditor’s interest to recover the debts gradually increased and the conditions for the debtor became harsher. The monetisation of the peasantry through the expansion of the plantation economy, the peasants’ participation in the export sector, the compulsory commutation of taxes and the arrival of the money market in village Ceylon significantly increased the peasantry’s need 52 53 54

Ibid., 168. Ibid. Ibid., 169.

new elites

237

for ready money. Some villagers enjoyed a cash income from their coffee gardens. Others depended on professional moneylenders to obtain money. After the coffee crash, the former peasant coffee cultivators found themselves at the mercy of moneylenders or merchants as well. Typically, the moneylender came from outside the village and was not obliged to village traditions. He charged interest rates of 50 to 100% and was rigorous in the recovery of the debts.55 Often even the village headman had debts with the moneylender.56 Especially after the enactment of the Partition Ordinance indebted peasants were often forced to split up the communal village land and sell their part in order to settle their debts with the moneylenders. This practice has contributed substantially to the increase of landlessness among the Ceylonese peasantry. The increasing importance of external moneylenders, who provided entire villages with credits, marks the transition from internal village debt to external debt. While the local merchants and moneylenders rapidly became local commercial elites, the headmen remained the traditional elite group in the villages. Similar to the rise of karava entrepreneurs to national elite status, the monetisation of the peasantry and the expansion of the plantation industry with all its consequences had initiated the ascent of local moneylenders and merchants. Their power and, therefore, their elite status rested on the economic dependence of their debtors, while the headman’s hold over the villagers originated from a variety of reasons: his social status (status dimension), his intermediary functions (political dimension) and his role as internal creditor (economic and status dimension). Outside the Ceylonese villages—namely on the plantations and in the towns—other local elites developed during the nineteenth century. To the immigrant plantation workers, the kanganies were the inevitable local elite. The kanganies recruited and commanded the immigrant labour force. Similar to the village headmen, they played an intermediary role between the authorities—i.e. the planters—and the labourers. Although they were usually indebted with the planters, the kanganies were the direct creditors of the immigrant plantation workers. Thus, the kanganies emerged as a local elite on the plantations during the nineteenth century. In the towns and especially in Colombo, the

55 56

Ibid. Woolf, The Village in the Jungle, 20.

238

chapter ten

centre of the export trade, the expansion of the plantation economy fostered the growth of another local elite group—namely the Englisheducated government clerks and minor Civil Servants. Due to their easier access to English education, the Burghers and Tamils enjoyed a certain headstart in that sphere and manned a good part of the clerical posts. 10.5 Non-Elites—The Peasantry and the Labourers In nineteenth-century Ceylon three major non-elite groups can be identified. Reference has already been made to the history and the condition of the Ceylonese peasantry. The colonial government—while fostering the plantation economy—attached but little importance to the development of the native agricultural sector in general and of paddy cultivation in particular. The creation of a land market and the increasing demand of the plantations for up-country land brought parts of the peasantry into direct confl ict with the European investors and, thus, with the colonial government. For the first time in the history of the island, restrictive land laws and the rigorous collection of the Paddy Tax created a significantly large class of landless peasants. The British had created artificial pressure on land—a condition hitherto not known in Ceylon. The cases of starvation among the peasantry of Nuwara Eliya (as highlighted by AGA Le Mesurier) illustrate the depressed state of the Ceylonese peasantry in the late nineteenth century. The member of the second non-elite group, the Indian immigrant plantation labourers, have sometimes been described as semi-slaves, bound to the estates and to their foremen—the kanganies—by heavy debts. Living in a plantation enclave in a foreign country, ignorant of the local language, they depended economically and also socially on the guidance of the kanganies, many of whom exploited their labourers ruthlessly. The labourers were not only indebted to the kangany, they also received their wages—in kind as well as in cash—through their foreman. The kangany occupied a crucial intermediary role between the labourers and the planters and this often worked to the disadvantage of the labourers. The kangany system and the state of the immigrant plantation labourers will be discussed in detail in the following chapter.

new elites

239

The third major non-elite group was the urban working class that started to develop in the last decades of the nineteenth century. This group has as yet not received much attention by historians and only little has been published on its emergence and development. Although a little more has been written on the labour movements of the 1910s and 1920s and on the appearance of the Trade Unions in the 1930s, the history of the emergence of the urban proletariat in colonial Ceylon remains to a large extent unexplored. It is evidently far beyond the scope of this work to alter this condition, but at least brief reference shall be made to the emergence of the urban working class in Colombo. Galle and Matara also housed a small class of urban wage labourers, but the great majority worked in the capital. In her study of the history of the labour movement in Ceylon, Kumari Jayawardena has also briefl y mentioned the emergence of the urban working class in Colombo. Although Jayawardena closely examines the Colombo working class and its development from the 1890s onwards, she does not highlight the social and economic push and pull factors that led to the emergence of the urban proletariat. She only says: “The economic changes of the 19th century created activity ancillary to plantations, which included urban economic development and the growth of transport facilities linking the plantation areas to Colombo.”57 Indeed, it was the development of the plantation industry and the instalment of a money economy that fostered—or better demanded—the emergence of an urban wage labour class. But beneath lies an interplay of push and pull factors that has not yet been comprehensively analysed. First, many members of the urban working class—especially of the unskilled labourers—were immigrants from South India, just like the bulk of the plantation workers. For those, the economic push factors at work were the same as those experienced by the immigrant plantation labourers and analysed in an earlier chapter. The Sinhalese villagers experienced different push factors mainly created by the expansion of the plantation industry: increasing pressure on land; the implementation of the “Land Partition Ordinance” and other restrictive land laws; increasing indebtedness and a change from internal to external debts; compulsory commutation and the rigorous collection of the Paddy 57 Kumari Jayawardena, The Rise of the Labor Movement in Ceylon (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1972), 4–5.

240

chapter ten

Tax; the government’s neglect of paddy cultivation and ecological damage done by the estates. Although such detrimental side effects of the plantation expansion can be traced back to the very beginnings of plantation agriculture in Ceylon, the collapse of the coffee industry considerably worsened the peasants’ situation. The later expansion of the tea estates further increased the pressure on land. In the late 1880s many landless Sinhalese peasants were pushed into plantation work. A portion of these landless labourers migrated to Colombo as well, together with artisans and village craftsmen who could not make a living in the villages anymore. These craftsmen constituted a large part of the skilled labourers in Colombo working as carpenters, blacksmiths or masons. The existence of economic pull factors cannot be denied, although the prospects for urban wage labourers were often not particularly bright. The plantation industry and its rising demand for transport and processing facilities definitely created a demand for workers, especially in Colombo. But despite the high demand for skilled and unskilled urban wage labourers, the wages remained low throughout the late nineteenth and the early twentieth century. In 1882, a carpenter earned Rs 1.17 a day, a fitter got Rs 1.30. These wages even tended to fall in the following decades, while the costs of living increased. An unskilled labourer working on the railways earned only between 16 and 50 cents a day in the year 1897.58 The extension of the railway network, the improvement of Colombo harbour (with the construction of the breakwaters and of the Colombo Ironworks), the increasing demand for tea processing facilities and the establishment of several British-owned engineering firms59 increased the demand for skilled and unskilled labourers in Colombo during the last two decades of the nineteenth century. Sinhalese villagers and Tamil immigrants followed the push and pull factors and migrated to Colombo during the 1880s and 1890s. Therefore, the population of the Colombo Municipality grew from 110,502 in the year 1881 to 154,691 in 1901.60 This accounts for a growth of 40%, while the total population of Ceylon grew only by 29.21% in the same period—despite the massive plantation labour immigration. Ibid., 9. Ibid., 7. 60 International Population Census Publications. Series 2. Pre-1945. Sri Lanka 1881.1 thru 1931.2. [5 Microfilms]. 58 59

new elites

241

In 1911, 211,274 people lived in the Colombo Municipality.61 Thus, the average annual growth rate of the population of the Colombo Municipality in the 30 years from 1881 to 1911 has been 2.18%. The population of the entire island grew only by 1.33% annually during the same period. In the year 1881—in the midst of the coffee crisis—there were 1,303 carpenters in the Municipality of Colombo along with 744 masons, 335 blacksmiths and 24,084 so-called ‘general labourers’.62 The Colombo of 1911 housed 2,800 carpenters, 1,800 masons and 2,300 blacksmiths.63 The Census of 1911 distinguished between ‘general’ and ‘industrial labourers.’ Taken together, there were approximately 36,000 ‘general and industrial labourers’ in Colombo in 1911.64 The 1880s and 1890s saw the growth of an industrial, urban proletariat in Colombo. Skilled and unskilled labourers alike worked in the harbour facilities, on the railways, in the processing of export goods and in the developing light industry. Independent workers such as domestic servants, rickshaw pullers, carters and tailors supplied the ever growing population with their services.65 Until the twentieth century, the urban labourers were a generally unorganised group of people. Only as late as in 1935 the “Trade Unions Ordinance” provided the legal background for the official establishment of trade unions.66 Nevertheless, the last decades of the nineteenth century saw a few attempts to unite and organise the urban labour force in Colombo. Although there were a number of literate and educated people among the printers, railway workers and hiring car drivers,67 such attempts at organisation came from outside the labour force, namely from the bourgeoisie. The Burgher Alfred Edward Buultjens and the Goan Doctor P. M. Lisboa Pinto—both Western-educated—spearheaded the campaign for trade unionism and emancipation of the urban working class in the late nineteenth 61 International Population Census Publications. Series 2. Pre-1945. Sri Lanka 1881.1 thru 1931.2. [5 Microfilms]. 62 International Population Census Publications. Series 2. Pre-1945. Sri Lanka 1881.1 thru 1931.2. [5 Microfilms]. 63 Jayawardena, The Rise of the Labor Movement, 7. 64 Ibid., 5. 65 Ibid., 7. 66 N. Kuruppu, “A History of the Working-Class Movement in Ceylon. 1. Labour and the Rise of Capitalism,” Ceylon Historical Journal 1, no. 2 (1951): 145. 67 Michael Roberts, “Labour and the Politics of Labour in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” Modern Ceylon Studies 5, no. 2 (1974): 186.

242

chapter ten

century.68 The first strike of urban workers in Colombo—the printers’ strike of 1893, when 60 printers at H. W. Cave & Co. stopped working for six days—was the result of Buultjens’ and Lisboa’s constant propaganda.69 However, the outcome of the strike did not satisfy the organisers and no concessions were made to the labourers. Communalism within the urban working class70 and the lack of legal backing prevented any significant improvement of the urban workers’ living and working conditions in the nineteenth century. Due to the strong economic push factors in South India and in the rural areas of Ceylon labour supply generally exceeded demand. This weakened the stance of the workers as competition among them eliminated any chance of organisation. Only the late 1920s and 1930s saw the first real progress in that matter.

Jayawardena, The Rise of the Labor Movement, 80–86. Ibid., 93–94. 70 N. Kuruppu, “Communalism and the Labour Movement in Sri Lanka,” in Ethnicity and Social Change in Sri Lanka: Papers Presented at a Seminar Organised by the Social Scientists Association, December 1979, ed. Social Scientists Association of Sri Lanka (Colombo: Social Scientists Association, 1984). 68 69

CHAPTER ELEVEN

IMMIGRANTS 11.1

Social Background of the Immigrants

In Chapter six reference has already been made to the immigration of Indian labourers to the planting districts of Ceylon. The so-called kangany system and the evolving system of indebtedness and informal bondage between the immigrant labourers and their kanganies—and, indirectly, the planters—have been outlined shortly. This chapter now tries to highlight the general living and working conditions of these Indian immigrants—from the recruitment in India to the life in the ‘cooly lines’ of Ceylon. Due to the geographical proximity, labour migration from South India to Ceylon builds on a longstanding history. Presumably, Indian immigrants were already employed in pre-colonial Ceylon. Reliable material on such migratory processes, however, remains scarce well into the 1830s. What we know is that Governor Frederick North—in the very first years of the nineteenth century—employed a pioneer corps of Indian immigrants. And during the Kandyan rebellion of 1818 Governor Brownrigg relied on 5,000 Indian workers to make up for the local labour shortage in the wake of the rebellion. Brownrigg’s successor, Barnes, employed Indian labour (together with rajakariya labour) in the construction and upkeep of public works—mostly roads.1 In these very early days of coffee cultivation in Ceylon, most plantations belonged to British government officials. Thus, it is little surprising that the Indian labourers were also employed on many coffee estates in the 1820s.2 By the 1830s, the immigration of plantation workers had become economically important for the planters. And Colvin R. De Silva, Ceylon under the British Occupation, 1795–1833 (Colombo: Colombo Apothecaries, 1953), 405; N. Kuruppu, “A History of the Working-Class Movement in Ceylon. 1. Labour and the Rise of Capitalism,” Ceylon Historical Journal 1, no. 2 (1951): 134. 2 Nawaz Dawood, Tea and Poverty: Plantations and the Political Economy of Sri Lanka (Kowloon, Hong Kong: Urban Rural Mission, Christian Conference of Asia, 1980), 62. 1

244

chapter eleven

in the 1840s and 1850s, the thriving plantation economy developed a labour demand that eventually needed large-scale labour immigration from India in order to be satisfied. In the early years of labour immigration, natural push and pull factors sufficed to induce South Indian Tamil villagers to undertake the long journey by foot and boat and come to the Kandyan highlands as plantation workers. In the overpopulated regions of the Madras Presidency landlessness was widespread and droughts and famines occurred frequently.3 Satyanarayana shows that labour emigration from South India responded regionally as well as chronologically to crop failures, bad seasons, famines or other environmental calamities.4 The number of landless agricultural labourers in the South Indian districts—already about 10 to 15% of the total population at the beginning of the nineteenth century—further increased throughout the century.5 This was partly due to the “disintegration of the Indian village handicraft industries consequent on the fl ooding of the Indian market with cheaper Britishmanufactured articles.”6 Many village artisans could not compete with the British producers and had to make a living as agricultural labourers. Furthermore, the ongoing monetisation of village life and the introduction of the cash nexus to the traditional Indian villages drove many small peasant proprietors into indebtedness and, as a consequence, into landlessness, as many debtors were dispossessed of their holdings.7 This further increased the number of landless agricultural labourers in search for employment as well as created a demand for ready cash at a very early date. Taking into account the agricultural non-development of the region on that period due to the heavy tax burden under the zamindari and raiyatwari systems and the adverse climate conditions, Wesumperuma concludes the analysis of economic push factors fostering South Indian immigration to Ceylon as follows:

3 Oddvar Hollup, Bonded Labour: Caste and Cultural Identity among Tamil Plantation Workers in Sri Lanka (New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1994), 26. 4 Adapa Satyanarayana, Birds of Passage. Migration of South Indian Labour Communities to South-East Asia, 19–20th Centuries, A.D., Clara Working Paper 11 (Amsterdam: 2001), 13. 5 Dharmapriya Wesumperuma, Indian Immigrant Plantation Workers in Sri Lanka: A Historical Perspective, 1880–1910 (Nugegoda: Dharmapriya Wesumperuma, 1986), 15. 6 Ibid., 16. 7 Ibid.

immigrants

245

The growth of agricultural labour population outstripping that of agricultural productivity reacted in depressing agricultural wages. At best, wages fl uctuated around subsistence level, falling especially in times of famine. Conversely, prices of food-grains assumed an upward trend partly owing to relatively slow progress in agriculture and partly owing to exports.8

During the 1820s and 1830s—when the plantation system in Ceylon was still in its infancy—it seems reasonable to attribute more significance to these push factors in South India than to the pull factors in Ceylon. Although this changed rapidly with the coffee boom of the 1840s and the emergence of the professional kangany system, the caste and occupational origin of the Indian immigrants lays additional stress on the importance of the push factors. About half of all immigrant labourers belonged to the lowest class of landless agricultural workers, especially to the low paraiyan caste. The other half consisted of small landowners and tenants, landless labourers of agricultural or shepherd castes and some members of the artisan castes.9 The social and caste background of the immigrants indicates that those travelling to the Kandyan highlands for estate employment usually belonged to the poorest of the poor in South India. Many had no other choice but to leave their homes and find work elsewhere in order to make a living. The living conditions in their villages had often left their traces in the physical constitution of the labourers. Many were in a state of bad health or semi-starvation when they left for Ceylon. Some carried epidemic diseases with them. Together with the exhaustion caused by the demanding journey the bad constitution of many immigrants caused an alarmingly high death rate among them—especially during the journey from South India to the Ceylonese hill country. The high mortality rate and the measures adopted to counteract it will be discussed later in this chapter. 11.2

Recruitment, Coast Advances, tundus and the kanganies

Indian labour migration to Ceylon—in sharp contrast to the system of indentured labour migration devised in India in the 1830s10—was 8 9 10

Ibid., 18. Hollup, Bonded Labour, 25. By the 1830s, labour emigration from India had increased to such an extent

246

chapter eleven

‘free.’ That means it was not subject to any government emigration or immigration restrictions. The labourers themselves were nominally free and could quit an employment at comparatively short notice. Unlike their indentured counterparts, they were not bound to their employers for years by contract. In the course of this chapter, we will see that the highly organised and exploitive Indenture System and the so-called free labour migration from India to Ceylon differed in many ways—but they were not as different as one might suspect due to the existence of a functional equivalent to the harsh contracts of the indentured labourers. However, during the 1820s and a good part of the 1830s, migration between India and Ceylon was, indeed, free—i.e. the economic push and pull factors alone induced the Tamil agricultural labourers to make the demanding journey to the plantation districts. A professional kangany system had not yet developed. Most of the time, a labour gang was guided to the plantations by another labourer who had worked there in the previous year. Heidemann calls these more experienced labourers early kanganies,11 but, in fact, they only took people from their own family or, at times, from their village with them to Ceylon. These early kanganies did not materially benefit from their role as guides of the labour gang. Although they often negotiated for the wages of the whole gang and formed the link between the labourers and the planters, they did this on the grounds of their greater experience. They were not labour supervisors but ordinary plantation workers themselves.12 This unorganised that the Government of India enacted the “Indian Emigration Ordinance” regulating the terms of Indian labour migration. Employer and employee entered into a three or five year contract that fixed mutual rights and duties. Labour recruiters in India had to obtain a license from the government and recruitment as well as the conditions of the labourers in the country of destination became—theoretically—observed by the Indian and the ‘host’ government. Recruitment, transhipment and plantation work were rigidly organised and partially subsidised by the government both to secure a steady supply of labour to the overseas plantations and to guarantee the welfare of the labourers. The thus enacted system of labour recruitment and migration became known as the indenture system. Lax government controls and the pronounced economic interest of the ‘hosts’ led to frequent abuses of the system. Indentured migration soon became known as ‘unfree’ labour migration. The indentured labour system controlled the labour migration between India and the West Indies, Mauritius, East and South Africa and Fiji, while migration between India and Burma, Malaysia and Ceylon was ‘free.’ 11 Frank Heidemann, Kanganies in Sri Lanka and Malaysia: Tamil Recruiter-Cum-Foreman as a Sociological Category in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century, Ganesha; 5 (Muenchen: Anacon, 1992), 12. 12 Ibid., 12–13.

immigrants

247

form of labour recruitment and migration did not lead the Tamil immigrants into indebtedness from the start—as it would be the case in later years. The journey from their home districts to the plantations was still cheap. The labourers usually crossed the sea on small sailing vessels and walked the rest of the distance to the estates. Some of them did owe money to their kangany as they had to settle their village debts and buy provisions for the journey, but these sums were comparatively small. Furthermore, most of the labourers maintained close kinship ties with the kangany anyway. But the free and unorganised migration of the 1820s and the 1830s soon did not suffice to satisfy the growing labour demand of the coffee plantations anymore. Therefore, the coffee planters made first attempts at organising labour migration in the 1840s.13 In that time, practically all the coffee estates belonged to individual proprietorplanters, who supervised their labourers personally and maintained a relatively close relationship to their estate workforce. When the planters needed more labourers, they identified reliable kanganies or experienced workers and sent them to South India to recruit more labourers. The demand for immigrant labour rose so quickly that the planters started to give so-called coast advances to the kanganies—advances to finance the recruiter’s journey to India and the return trip of the future labourers. Additionally, the kanganies received a premium for every recruited labourer. Therefore, the late 1840s and 1850s saw the emergence of the professional kanganies, who did not make a living as estate labourers anymore but earned their money as professional labour recruiters and supervisors. Vanden Driesen once called the system of coast advances “the villain of the piece”.14 Although other factors also contributed to the worsening of the immigrant labourers’ situation, the introduction of the coast advances and the subsequent emergence of professional kanganies played a major part in this development. The planters sent their recruiters to the “coast”—i.e. to South India—and gave them a cash advance to finance the future labourers’ journey to the estates. Each labourer’s share of the coast advance was deducted from his wages in rates. Therefore, the immigrant plantation workers were Ibid., 16. I. H. Vanden Driesen, Indian Plantation Labour in Sri Lanka: Aspects of the History of Immigration in the 19th Century (Nedlands, Australia: Centre for South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of Western Australia, 1982), 117. 13 14

248

chapter eleven

indebted from the very start of their estate employment. Unfortunately, the labourers often owed sums to the planter that they had not even received, as the kanganies often tried to keep travel and food costs at a minimum and pocketed the excess money.15 This practice also contributed heavily to the high death rates during the immigrants’ journey to the estates. Contemporaries estimated that the kanganies did not spend even a third of the coast advance and that therefore hundreds of immigrants died of starvation—their bodies been thrown into the sea or left behind on the roadside.16 The labourer himself was not directly indebted to the planter. The kanganies occupied an intermediary role in the relation between the planters and the labourers. They owed the total sum of the coast advance to the planter. And the Tamil labourers owed their shares to the kangany. This gave the latter a strong hold over the individual labourer, who had already borrowed money to settle his debts in his home village and for the journey before he had even started to work. Furthermore, the payment of the wages and the issuing of the rice rations were conducted via the kanganies, who—by and by—became labour supervisors more than workers. Practically, the kangany emerged as the sole link between the planter and his workforce. As the kanganies received a premium for every recruited labourer (and later so-called “head money” for each of their labourers who turned up for work each day),17 they were interested in recruiting as many new workers as possible. Therefore, “[t]he group became more heterogeneous, often the labourers hailed from various villages, and in many cases the members had no personal contact before the departure.”18 This weakened the infl uence of kinship or other social ties among the labourers and the kanganies, and further enhanced the dependence of the recruited on the recruiter. Briefl y, the fact that the professional kanganies’ income depended on the number of recruited labourers and on their performance on the estate, can be identified as the real “villain of the piece.” Recruitment methods became harsher (sometimes even culminating in the kidnapping of villagers or even minors by the kanganies)19 to maximise the number of immigrants and

15 16 17 18 19

Wesumperuma, Indian Heidemann, Kanganies Wesumperuma, Indian Heidemann, Kanganies Ibid., 22.

Immigrant Plantation Workers, 62. in Sri Lanka and Malaysia, 18. Immigrant Plantation Workers, 62. in Sri Lanka and Malaysia, 17.

immigrants

249

the labourers were ruthlessly exploited during the journey and their stay at the estate. The kanganies’ hold over the labourers’ wages and rice rations further aggravated the situation. Heavily indebted to the kangany, without any social security and receiving money and food only through the kangany’s hands, the term ‘free labour migration’ loses much of its accuracy. Although every plantation worker was theoretically entitled to quit his employer’s service at one month’s notice,20 the informal bondage between the worker and his kangany usually prevented any such move. Unlike the contract labourers under the indentured system, the immigrant plantation workers in Ceylon were not bound to the planters directly but through the kanganies. Thus, the planters themselves also depended on the cooperation of the kanganies—especially in times of labour shortage. According to the laws of supply and demand, the kanganies extracted higher coast advances in times of labour shortage. But as the costs for the journey did not rise, they widened their margin of profit, while the labourers’ indebtedness increased. At the same time, the kanganies learned to make use of the tundu system that had originally been introduced to transfer labour gangs from estates with excess labour to others lacking a sufficient workforce. To facilitate such transfers, tundus were issued to the kangany stating his total debt to the planter. Based on the tundu, the future employer had to give an advance to the kangany to settle his old debt, before entering in the new service. Therefore, the tundu system helped to keep the regional balance between areas with a surplus of labour and others short of it. But in times of an island-wide labour shortage—not infrequent during the coffee mania—the tundu system enabled the kanganies to extract advances considerably higher than the tundu debt, and often the labour gangs where transferred from estate to estate.21 Therefore, the kanganies were the sole beneficiaries of labour shortages. The workers’ wages did not increase during such times. Under the tundu system the labour gang leader was free to transfer his labourers—who were bonded to him by indebtedness—to the highest bidder. The individual worker did not profit at all, but had to bear the additional burden of frequent transfers all over the planting districts.

20 21

Wesumperuma, Indian Immigrant Plantation Workers, 22. Ibid., 109.

250

chapter eleven

Due to the prosperity of the coffee plantation and the soaring demand for immigrant labour, the services of the professional kanganies became indispensable for the smooth working of the coffee estates. By the time, some families monopolised the post of kangany in particular estates. A hierarchical structure evolved among the kanganies, and in the end the so-called head kangany system emerged. The head kanganies commanded several sub-kanganies who recruited and supervised the labourers.22 The head kangany himself formed the only link between the planter and the labourers. In short, an additional layer had been inserted into the fl ow of advances, wages and also of complaints and reclamations. The head and sub-kanganies controlled the communication between employer and employees. The head kangany system slowly emerged during the peak of the coffee mania in the 1870s. During the coffee crisis—with its shortage of capital and surplus of labour—the infl uence of the kanganies decreased, but the revival of the plantation industry and the take-off of tea cultivation soon restored their power. In fact, the transition from coffee to tea cultivation further strengthened the position of the kanganies and firmly established the head kangany system due to several reasons. First, the cultivation of tea required a permanent labour force and the labourers became resident on the island. Heidemann has pointed out that such a permanent employment did not require the repayment of a labourer’s debts within a season anymore. Therefore, higher advances were given to the kanganies, pocketed by them and consequently charged to the workers. Heidemann goes on: The impact on the recruiting system was that higher advances now attracted persons who were unwilling to migrate in the past. Some were sent by their families, and the advances paid to the migrant were used to repay his debts in the village or were kept by his family. Other labourers were sent by their landlords, who used the advances from the kangany to make his indebted pannaiyal repay his debts. Also more cases of abuse and kidnapping were reported.23

Second, the permanent settlement of the labour force in the plantation districts strengthened the social ties within it and weakened the links to the labourers’ home villages. This enhanced the labourers’

22 23

Heidemann, Kanganies in Sri Lanka and Malaysia, 21. Ibid., 22.

immigrants

251

dependence on the head kangany. Finally, the emergence of companyowned estates and the disappearance of proprietor-planters further increased the importance of the kanganies. Unlike the proprietor-planters, many of the estate superintendents—often transferred from estate to estate—did not have a close relationship with the kangany. Nor were they as acquainted with the estate as the kangany.24 The development of the highly hierarchical and infl uential head kangany system was facilitated by these circumstances. The number of sub-kanganies and labourers under a head kangany varied considerably. In a sample taken by Wesumperuma, the number of sub-kanganies varies from 2 to 14 and the total number of workers from 37 to 476 under one head kangany.25 Usually, the sub-kangany worked on the estate just like the ordinary labourers and only received “pence money” for each of his labourers who turned up for work. The head kangany supervised the work and was paid a monthly wage for this. Additionally, he received the ‘head money.’26 It is important to note that the evils of the kangany system were associated more with the head kanganies than the sub-kanganies, the latter being heads of several related family units. The head kangany, on the other hand, was less a paternal head and more a labour contractor. In fact, the sub-kanganies themselves were exploited by the head kanganies.27

Throughout our period of observation the head kangany system prevailed in the plantation districts, and only in the early twentieth century the planters and the government tried to check the power of the head kanganies. With the introduction of the so-called Tin Ticket the colonial government assumed responsibility for the transportation and accommodation of immigrant labourers on their way to Ceylon. The planters issued Tin Tickets—metal discs with the number of the estate on it—to the kanganies. With these tickets the kangany and the recruited labourers were entitled to transport in government vessels and the railway and to the stay in the migration camps. Later, the government recovered the costs from the planters, who in turn passed them on to the workers. The Tin Tickets enabled the labourers to travel

24 25 26 27

Wesumperuma, Indian Immigrant Plantation Workers, 65–66. Ibid., 63. Ibid., 64. Ibid.

252

chapter eleven

safely to the estates—but the kangany could not pocket the advance as no cash was issued anymore. The Tin Ticket system proved an immediate success and by 1903 about 70% of all immigrants arrived in Ceylon under this scheme.28 Moreover, the Ceylon Labour Commission (CLC) was established in 1904 and opened several offices in South India. The CLC officers controlled the recruitment activities of the kanganies. Together with the Tin Ticket system, the establishment of the CLC seriously narrowed the powers of the kanganies. 11.3

En Route to the Plantations

In the early phase of labour migration from South India to the planting districts of Ceylon, the immigrants and the kanganies usually reached the island in small, privately owned sailing vessels. Most of them arrived in Mannar and continued their journey to the estates by foot travelling between seven and nine days from the Ceylonese coast to the highlands. But with the rising labour demand and the corresponding increase in labour immigration the Ceylon Government Immigration Service had to set up a ferry service between Paumben in India and Mannar. By 1880, state-operated ferries were in operation on that route and the Passengers’ Act of 1865 had put a halt to immigration on small sailing vessels. However, the immigrants still had to cover the distance between Mannar and Matale (the first railway station on the way) by foot. After these 150 miles through arid and unhealthy terrain, some of the labourers took the train up to the planting districts. The others—mostly the poorest of the poor—preferred to walk the rest of the distance as well in order to save the money for the train ticket.29 This immigration route—i.e. the road from Mannar to the Kandyan highlands—was commonly known as the North Road (see Figure 11.1). The second immigration route—the Tuticorin-Colombo route—took the immigrants directly to Colombo (see Figure 11.1). Steamers owned by the British India Steam Navigation Company and by the Asiatic Steam Navigation Company operated at least once a week between Tuticorin in India and Ceylon’s capital. Similar to those immigrating via the North Road,

28 29

Heidemann, Kanganies in Sri Lanka and Malaysia, 26. Wesumperuma, Indian Immigrant Plantation Workers, 42–43.

immigrants

253

Figure 11.1: Indian Labour Immigration Routes in Nineteenth-Century Ceylon. Adapted from Dharmapriya Wesumperuma, Indian Immigrant Plantation Workers in Sri Lanka: A Historical Perspective, 1880–1910 (Nugegoda: Dharmapriya Wesumperuma, 1986), 76. Tuticorin-Colombo route added by the author.

254

chapter eleven

some labourers took the train in Colombo, others decided to undertake the strenuous walk uphill to save the ticket money.30 According to the findings of the Immigration Commission of 1878, all but 8% of the immigrants decided to walk from Colombo to Kandy, thus saving the 75 cents for the 75 miles train journey. Deducting the expenses during the walk the total amount saved by walking was estimated to have been around 11 cents—apparently a sum large enough to induce most of the immigrants to walk uphill for days.31 Although the climb from Colombo to Kandy was not easy and definitely demanding, the Tuticorin-Colombo route was much more convenient than the North Road. The road from Colombo to Kandy was in good repair, led mostly through densely populated areas and was only half as long as the North Road. Food and shelter could be obtained at regular intervals. Nevertheless, only 13% of the immigrants used this route in 1889, while all others came via Mannar and the North Road.32 This stems from the higher costs of the Tuticorin-Colombo route. The steamer passage cost three Rupees per person, while the government vessels operating between Paumben and Mannar charged only 25 cents.33 It is extremely unlikely that most of the recruited labourers chose their immigration route on their own. The kanganies had to pay for the passage out of the received coast advances and, thus, were interested in keeping the costs at a minimum. Due to such financial considerations (and tradition) the North Road remained the most important immigration route until the mid-1890s. And it also remained the physically most demanding route with an exorbitantly high death rate among the immigrants. It was, thus, sometimes referred to as the Death March.34 Unlike Tuticorin, Paumben was not directly connected to the railway network of South India. Therefore, the journey via the North Road involved a walk from the immigrants’ home villages to Paumben. In Mannar, the immigrants usually stayed at the camp at Arippu, where sanitary conditions were disastrous.35 The journey from Mannar to the highlands mostly led through sparsely populated, arid and partially malaria-infested terrain. Ibid., 43. I. H. Vanden Driesen, The Long Walk: Indian Plantation Labour in Sri Lanka in the Nineteenth Century (New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1997), 176–77. 32 Wesumperuma, Indian Immigrant Plantation Workers, 54. 33 Ibid., 43. 34 Dawood, Tea and Poverty, 63. 35 Ibid. 30 31

immigrants

255

Taking into consideration that many poor immigrants had already left their villages in a bad state of health, the high mortality among the North Road immigrants is little surprising. Cholera, small-pox and plague occurred frequently in the poverty-stricken regions of South India and were often carried to Ceylon by the Indian immigrants.36 As late as in 1890, some government officials were still of the opinion that the long march along the North Road was the best means of quarantine available to check the spread of epidemic diseases in Ceylon. No measures were taken to either close the route or to establish a quarantine camp at Mannar.37 Thus, diseases spread to the native villages along the North Road and among the immigrants themselves. Instead of establishing a camp, the government had decided in the 1850s to improve medical and sanitary facilities along the North Road. In the following decades, six immigration hospitals were founded, along with several dispensaries38 and 19 so-called cooly bungalows.39 These measures helped to lower the death rate among the coolies and among the villagers. Nevertheless, the import and spread of epidemic diseases was not brought to an end until the closure of the North Road in 1899. Only once before, the North Road had been temporarily closed due to an outbreak of cholera in South India in the early 1890s. Government rules were much stricter for the immigration via the Tuticorin-Colombo route. While the areas traversed by the North Road were only sparsely populated and not of high economic value, the spread of an epidemic disease in the hub of Ceylon’s economic network would have had disastrous effects. Up to 1890, quarantine was done on board of the plying ships. Vessels coming from cholera-free regions were put under quarantine for 24 hours, while ships from infested regions were observed for six full days.40 In 1891, this system of quarantine was discontinued. First, many immigrants had evaded the quarantine measures and had moved freely in Colombo. And second, the planters and the shipping companies agitated against the expensive quarantine on board of the ships and demanded the establishment of a quarantine camp. Thus, a camp was set up at

36 37 38 39 40

CO 54/525, 4 March 1880/No. 99, Longden to Hicks-Beach. Wesumperuma, Indian Immigrant Plantation Workers, 45. Ibid., 44–45. Vanden Driesen, The Long Walk, 176. Wesumperuma, Indian Immigrant Plantation Workers, 50.

256

chapter eleven

Maligawatte. When the bubonic plague spread dangerously in South India in 1896/97, the government finally established the quarantine camp at Ragama that was much better suited to the accommodation of the rising numbers of immigrants.41 In fact, the India-Colombo route had steadily attracted a bigger share of the immigrant labourers and grew more important than the North Road in the mid-1890s. New steamer lines now linked not only Tuticorin but also Paumben, Tondi and Ammapattinam directly with Colombo. Therefore, immigrants from the corresponding regions could also take the Colombo route now. Even more important was the fact that during the tea boom many new plantations were established in the low-country regions west of the highlands. These districts were much easier to reach from Colombo. And third,—initialised by the planters—the first system of through-booking was introduced in 1892. Many planters now issued tickets to their kanganies (partially replacing the coast advances) that covered the cooly’s journey by train in India, the passage to Colombo and the train ride to Kandy.42 This measure—basically an early Tin Ticket system—promoted the use of the India-Colombo route and forced many kanganies to abandon the cheap North Road that was eventually closed for immigrants in 1899. 11.4

Rice, Balance Wages and Indebtedness

When the immigrant labourers arrived at the estate after a long and strenuous journey, they were usually already heavily indebted to the kangany giving the latter a strong hold over the labourers. His infl uential position was further strengthened by his intermediary role in the distribution of rice and balance wages. When the balance wages were paid to the labourers, the kangany deducted part of the debts and passed on only the small rest. Cheating was frequent here, because the mostly illiterate labourers had no means to control the distribution of their wages and the deduction of their debts. Even the distribution of the labourers’ weekly rice rations went through the hands of the kangany. It has been reported that quite frequently too little rice was issued and that the margin was pocketed by the kangany.43

41 42 43

Ibid., 52. Ibid., 54–55. Ibid., 184–85.

immigrants

257

Since the days of the coffee mania and the large-scale employment of Indian immigrant labourers, it had become the usual practice on the estates to pay a good part of the labourers’ wages in kind—i.e. in rice. The planters organised themselves and bought rice from Chettiar merchants at comparatively advantageous whole sale rates.44 Every week the labourers received their rice ration. Although the planting community did not always pay attention to prompt and fair payment of the balance—i.e. cash—wages, the correct issuing of the rice ration was in their interest as it kept the labourers in good health and thus able to work. Apart from that, the planters used the issuing of rice as a means of pressure to induce the labourers to show up for work every day. The cooly received his full weekly ration only if he had worked a certain minimum number of days in that week. As their immediate food supply depended on it, the workers showed some interest in working frequently. An additional reason for the prevalence of the part-payment of wages in kind on the estates was the margin of profit pocketed by the planters under this system. The planters issued rice to the workers at a fixed rate regardless of the market price of rice. The planters’ argument was that they, thus, guaranteed a favourable rice price that was not infl uenced by adverse market developments—i.e. increasing rice prices. But Wesumperuma’s investigations have shown that in the period from 1880 to 1910 this policy of the planters was beneficial to the immigrant workers only in six years. In the other 25 years, the fixed rice rate was well above the cost price of rice to the estates.45 Therefore, the planters profited considerably from the practice of part-payment in kind. Table 11.1 illustrates the high margin of profit for the planters. During the early 1880s, there were even times when the fixed rice rate at low or medium elevation estates was higher than the market retails price of rice. Thus, the immigrant plantation workers, at times, paid more for their staple food than it cost at the village shop. However, by the late

The Chettiars are a mercantile caste from Tamil Nadu. During the nineteenth century they were active in money-lending and trade. The Chettiars imported rice from India (especially from Bengal) to Ceylon on a large scale. The Indian labourers apparently preferred Indian par-boiled rice for reasons of tradition and practicability. Thus, the planting community relied mainly on Indian rice imported by the Chettiars and sold whole sale to the planters. 45 Wesumperuma, Indian Immigrant Plantation Workers, 170. 44

258

chapter eleven

1880s rising rice prices in the Ceylonese market and comparatively stable estate rice rates had put an end to that discrepancy.46 Usually a male labourer received a bushel of rice per month. Women were entitled to three quarters of a bushel per month and working children to half a bushel. This was more than the monthly rice requirements of the plantation workers. Thus, it became common practice to barter a good part of the received rice at the local shop for supplementary food stuffs. Taking into account that the balance wages—i.e. that part of the wages that was paid in cash—were paid every three months only throughout the 1880s (and every two months in the 1890s), the bartering of rice was the only way for the labourers to raise money in the meantime. The local shopkeepers often paid low prices for bartered rice as the labourers were in a bad bargaining position. Roberts reports that some estates circumvented this by issuing only three quarters of a bushel of rice per month together with one Rupee in cash for curry stuffs.47 But this practice was not very widespread. As mentioned above, balance wages were paid out every three months only during the 1880s. The planters resorted to such a mode of payment in order to retain a strong hold over the labour force. Moreover, in times of capital shortage the quarterly payment of the cash wages was advantageous to the planters. Only the emergence of company-owned estates during the tea boom and the increasing availability of capital led to a bi-monthly issuing of the balance wages in the 1890s.48 Frequently facing labour shortages a more regular mode of payment helped to attach the kanganies and their workers permanently to the estate. During the prosperous 1870s, a plantation worker received between 28 and 37 cents for the work of a day49—with the average working day lasting from 6 am to 4 pm. Usually, the wage was nearer to the top margin at that time. But during the coffee crisis of the early 1880s the wage rates for plantation labourers were fixed by the plant-

Ibid., 184. Michael Roberts, “Indian Estate Labour in Ceylon During the Coffee Period, (1830–1880). Part 2,” Indian Economic and Social History Review 3, no. 2 (1966): 118. 48 Wesumperuma, Indian Immigrant Plantation Workers, 206. 49 Roberts, “Indian Estate Labour in Ceylon,” 121. 46 47

immigrants

259

Table 11.1: Colombo Market Price of Rice, Average Cost of Rice to Planters and Average Price Charged to Estate Labourers, 1880–1910 (in Rs per bushel). Low Elevation Profit or Loss to the Estates

Profit

Loss

Profit

Loss

Mid Elevation

High Elevation

Colombo Cost Price Price to Cost Price Price to Cost Price Price to Year Market Price to Estates Labourers to Estates Labourers to Estates Labourers 1880 1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 1889 1890 1891

2.85 2.85 2.55 2.45 2.70 3.15 2.75 2.80 2.75 3.15 3.30 3.15

3.10 3.10 2.80 2.70 2.90 3.40 3.00 3.05 3.00 3.40 3.55 3.40

3.60 3.60 3.60 3.60 3.60 3.60 3.60 3.60 3.60 3.60 3.60 3.60

3.35 3.35 3.05 2.95 3.20 3.65 3.25 3.30 3.25 3.65 3.80 3.65

4.00 4.00 4.00 4.00 4.00 4.00 4.00 4.00 4.00 4.00 4.00 4.00

3.75 3.75 3.45 3.35 3.60 4.05 3.65 3.70 3.65 4.05 4.20 4.05

4.50 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.50

1892 1893

3.45 3.95

3.70 4.20

3.60 3.60

3.95 4.45

4.00 4.00

4.35 4.85

4.50 4.50

1894 1895 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900 1901 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906

3.30 3.15 3.10 3.95 3.90 3.60 3.90 3.90 3.60 3.40 3.40 3.40 3.70

3.55 3.40 3.35 4.20 4.15 3.85 4.15 4.15 3.85 3.65 3.65 3.65 3.95

3.60 3.60 3.60 4.20 4.15 4.00 4.15 4.15 4.00 4.00 4.00 4.00 4.00

3.80 3.65 3.60 4.45 4.40 4.10 4.40 4.40 4.10 3.90 3.90 3.90 4.20

4.00 4.00 4.00 4.45 4.40 4.10 4.40 4.40 4.10 4.00 4.00 4.00 4.20

4.20 4.05 4.10 4.85 4.50 4.50 4.80 4.80 4.50 4.30 4.30 4.30 4.60

4.50 4.50 4.50 4.85 4.90 4.50 4.80 4.80 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.50 4.60

1907 1908 1909 1910

4.40 4.65 4.65 4.10

4.65 4.90 4.90 4.35

4.55 4.55 4.55 4.35

4.90 5.15 5.15 4.60

4.80 4.80 4.80 4.80

5.30 5.55 5.55 5.00

5.10 5.10 5.10 5.00

Source: Dharmapriya Wesumperuma, Indian Immigrant Plantation Workers in Sri Lanka: A Historical Perspective, 1880–1910 (Nugegoda: Dharmapriya Wesumperuma, 1986), 170.

ers and did not change for the rest of the century. A male labourer now received 33 cents a day, females 25 cents and children about 20 cents. Although the costs of living increased during the 1880s and 1890s, wages were not adapted. The labourers had to balance this by working more days per month. Unfortunately, this was not always possible as seasonal requirements and economic developments—e.g. the first tea slump beginning in 1897—sometimes limited the available work. Although tea is a perennial crop, it yields highest in the three

260

chapter eleven

spring months of the year. The plantation workers mostly managed to earn some extra money in that time. During the rest of the year they had to live on their daily wage rates.50 The demand for estate labour—and therefore the opportunity to better the income by additional work—was comparatively low during the coffee crisis. This changed to the opposite during the tea boom. Only with the first slump of the tea industry the labour demand of the estates gradually decreased again. Based on Wesumperuma’s findings, Table 11.2 shows the average yearly income of male and female plantation workers during these three phases. As wage levels and living costs increased with the remoteness of the region, the Table gives separate figures for Low-Country, Mid-Country and UpCountry plantations. Table 11.2 illustrates that, especially in times of economic difficulties, the plantation workers often received little more than their rice rations. During the coffee crisis sometimes even the rice quota was not fully issued. In better times the balance wages of a male worker amounted to between 21 and 46 Rupees per year. The annual costs of living for an estate worker in the years from 1886 to 1893 lay between 12 and 18.5 Rupees.51 This left a margin of 2.5 to 36 Rupees annually out of which the labourer had to repay the debts (with an average coast advance ranging from 10 to 20 Rs). In these figures no allowance has been made for any cheating or levying of interest rate on the side of the kanganies. Therefore, only a few estate labourers managed to return to their home villages with some money saved—and those who did could do so only in times of a prospering plantation industry. Apart from the low wage rates, the high price of rice and the debts recovered by the kanganies, there was one more thing that had a detrimental impact on the labourers’ savings: the local arrack tavern. Drinking was widespread among the estate labourers and many workers spent the money received for the bartered rice at the arrack tavern. Not only that the local shopkeeper usually paid a bad price for the rice, the plantation workers often bought their arrack at exorbitant rates as well. The proprietor-planter G. M. De Silva heavily criticised the established practice of overcharging and wrote to the Planters’ Association in 1895:

50 51

Wesumperuma, Indian Immigrant Plantation Workers, 158–59. Ibid., 211.

immigrants

261

Table 11.2: Yearly Income of Plantation Labourers, 1880–1901 (in Rs). Up-Country Districts

Mid-Country Districts

Low-Country Districts

Period

Wage

Men

Women

Men

Women

Men

Women

1880–1885 Coffee Crisis

Total

50–67

36–48

47–63

36–48

43–63

29–48

Rice 12–16 work days available per Balance month

54

41

48

36

43

32

max. 13

max. 7

max. 15

max. 12

max. 20

max. 16

1886–1897 Tea Boom

81–100

62–78

81–89

62–68

79–95

53–72

Rice 9 months: 22–24 work days per Balance month 3 months: 16–18 work days

54

41

48

36

43

32

27–46

21–37

33–41

26–32

36–52

21–40

1898–1901 Tea Slump

53–70

41–59

53–73

41–51

49–66

32–51

57

43

52

39

49

37

max. 13

max. 16

1–21

2–12

max. 17

max. 14

Total

Total

Rice 9 months: 12–16 work days per month Balance 3 months: 18–20 work days

Source: Dharmapriya Wesumperuma, Indian Immigrant Plantation Workers in Sri Lanka: A Historical Perspective, 1880–1910 (Nugegoda: Dharmapriya Wesumperuma, 1986), 162–170.

Drinking, to a moderate scale, has become a necessity amongst the rich as well as the poor, and the hardworking labourer should not be despised if he loves his glass occasionally after work. [. . .] The poor cooly has to pay double the statuable charges for his drinks. The [arrack] farmer charges Rs. 9, pay Rs. 4.48 to Government less his profits, and pockets the bulk (Rs. 4.52) as his extra profit, the result of his heinous swindling. Gentlemen, consider who this poor cooly is. He leaves his home to come and work on a distant dreary estate for a miserable pittance. He gets an advance of a bushel of rice a month. The contractor charges him Rs. 4.50 odd for the same, which means about 14 cents per measure [1 bushel = 32 measures]. For the sake of his drink the cooly sells 8 measures to the town boutique-man at 9 or 10 cents a measure, and with the proceeds goes to the tavern for his drink. At the tavern his is served with adulterated stuff of the real (legal) value of 36 cents or 32 cents, and he is charged therefore 72 cents or 64 cents, being double the proper value; so for 8 measures of rice, which cost him Rs. 1.12 at the contractor’s he gets only 36 cents’ worth of arrack at the tavern.

262

chapter eleven The cooly starves himself for his drink. He has only ¾ bushel to live on during the month, and this is hardly enough for two meals [a day]. He leaves his lines starving in the morning, and the consequence is he cannot render to his master the proper quantity of labour within his means.52

11.5

Medical Aid Schemes

The immigrant labourers’ life on the coffee and tea plantations of Ceylon consisted mainly of work. An average workday lasted from 6 am in the morning until 4 pm in the afternoon. When they were not working, the immigrants lived in the so-called cooly lines—basically barracks to house the labourers. The sanitary conditions in these barracks were mostly appalling. Furthermore, the diet of most workers relied on imported rice supplemented only occasionally with vegetables or other curry stuffs. Thus, the workers usually did not enjoy a balanced diet. Many immigrants had left their home villages already undernourished or generally in a bad state of health. And the strenuous journey to the estates did definitely not contribute to their physical wellbeing. Illness was widespread among the immigrant estate population. Although the government had introduced quarantine measures and provided basic medical facilities on the main immigration routes, little had been done until the 1870s to secure adequate medical care for the immigrants already living at the estates. Until first steps in that direction were taken in 1872, the planter commonly treated sick labourers himself. Only in severe cases ill workers were taken to the nearest government civil hospital. These hospitals were often miles and miles away from the estates. And the distinction between severe and less severe cases was solely at the discretion of the medically unskilled planter. In his autobiography, the planter Frederick Lewis briefl y refers to his duties as a doctor on the estate: There was a good deal of sickness all round me, due mainly to the fact, that my predecessor did not bother to see if the estate lines were kept in sanitary order, or to try and cure anybody who might by ill. One of my first acts was to have the ‘lines’ cleaned up, and I set apart a fairly large piece of ground for the coolies to make vegetable

52 CO 57/138, Legislative Council Papers, XI.—1899. System of Farming Arrack Rents.

immigrants

263

gardens. I also got together some simple but useful medicines, dressings, etc., and I insisted if a cooly was reported ill, that I should see him, or her, at once. I was rather successful as a doctor, and my fame in this capacity quickly spread to my Sinhalese neighbours, so that a good deal of my time was taken up doing what I could for these poor simple folk.53

Lewis romanticised the actual situation on the estates, when he reports on his success as a doctor. Most planters seem to have had more in common with Lewis’ predecessor who has not cared about sanitary matters or medical treatment. Doctors in the government civil hospitals complained bitterly that in many cases sick immigrants were taken to the hospitals much too late and often little could be done for them anymore.54 The planters excused such incidents by referring to the Tamil immigrants’ alleged reluctance to hospital treatment. But the fact that the planters were supposed to pay for treatment at the government hospital contributed just as significantly to the late hospitalisation of sick immigrants. Due to the poor sanitary conditions on the estates and the late hospitalisations, the mortality rate among the labourers was alarmingly high. Therefore, the colonial government decided to devise a new system of health care for the estate population in 1872. Ordinance 14 of 1872 divided the planting area into districts of manageable size, each with a district hospital under a European medical officer. A District Committee manned by the planters was responsible for the working of the scheme in the district. The costs of this scheme were to be covered by an acreage tax on the estates—the first direct land tax existing in Ceylon.55 With the enactment of Ordinance 14 the colonial government placed the responsibility for the new medical facilities on the planting community. The planters resented such direct responsibility and especially despised the acreage tax. Eventually, the reluctance of the planters to support the new scheme was one reason for its failure. Another one was the enormous infl ux of Indian immigrants during the years of famine in South India from

53 Frederick Lewis, Sixty-Four Years in Ceylon: Reminiscences of Life and Adventure (Colombo: Colombo Apothecaries, 1926), 98. 54 Roberts, “Indian Estate Labour in Ceylon,” 101. 55 Wesumperuma, Indian Immigrant Plantation Workers, 243.

264

chapter eleven

1876 to 1878. The additional increase in immigration was beyond the capabilities of the scheme.56 Altogether, the 1872 arrangements did not contribute to the improvement of the medical facilities for the estate population. The district hospitals were too small for the immigrants and the mortality rates had shown no significant decrease. Therefore, the government itself took over the responsibility to provide adequate medical facilities to the immigrants. Ordinance 17 of 1880 was enacted. Under the so-called “Medical Wants Ordinance” the government assumed full responsibility for the immigrant hospitals and the medical staff. Again, the planting area was divided into districts, each with a district hospital and one or more outdoor dispensaries. Every employer was obliged by law to send a sick labourer to the hospital or—for a fee of Rs 2.5—to ask the local medical officer to visit the estate and treat the patient on the spot. The ordinance required every kangany to immediately report cases of sickness to his employer. Furthermore, Superintending Medical Officers were appointed to inspect the sanitary conditions on the estates every six months. Provisions were made for the registration of births and deaths among the immigrant labourers. And the employer was obliged to supply food and lodging to mothers for a fortnight after the birth of her child.57 To finance the new scheme, the ordinance imposed an export tax not exceeding 20 cents per hundredweight on coffee, cacao and tea and a tax not exceeding 40 cents per hundredweight on cinchona. The income from the tax went into the Medical Aid Fund.58 The planting community vigorously opposed the implementation of the “Medical Wants Ordinance.” The planters loathed the introduction of an export duty on plantation crops, as they were of the opinion that the government should finance the Medical Aid scheme out of the general revenue. And if it should be found that a new tax was necessary for the financial realisation of the scheme, the planters pointed out, the import duty on rice should be increased.59 In that case, the planters would have been able to pass the burden of the increased duty on to their labourers.

56 57 58 59

Roberts, “Indian Estate Labour in Ceylon,” 103–04. Wesumperuma, Indian Immigrant Plantation Workers, 253. CO 56/11, Ceylon Acts 1879–1884. Roberts, “Indian Estate Labour in Ceylon,” 106.

immigrants

265

The Planters’ Association petitioned hard against the confirmation of Ordinance 17 of 188060—and soon found an ally in the Colonial Office. Whitehall opposed an export duty on plantation crops and proposed a capitation tax on the number of employed immigrant labourers at each estate. The provisions of the “Medical Wants Ordinance” regarding the medical facilities were not altered, but, according to the wishes of the Colonial Office, Ordinance 18 of 1881 was passed to amend the “Medical Wants Ordinance” and introduce an annual tax on the number of immigrant employees instead of the export duty.61 The implementation of a capitation tax was considerably more complicated than the levying of an export duty. Although the planters had furnished quarterly reports on the number of immigrant labourers employed ever since 1862, the returns were highly inaccurate. Samples taken by the government showed that the figures given by the planters amounted to only 50 to 75% of the figures given in the census.62 Furthermore, the levying of such a capitation tax needed additional administrative machinery that had to be created first. And the opposition of the planting community against any financial contribution to the Medical Aid scheme was as determined as ever. Eventually, the colonial government found that the capitation tax was impracticable under the persisting circumstances and the amending Ordinance of 1881 was repealed. Ordinance 9 of 1882 abolished the capitation tax and reinstated the export duty on plantation crops to finance the scheme. However, the government did pay tribute to the constant complaints of the planters and lowered the duty to a maximum of 10 cents per hundredweight on tea, coffee and cacao and a maximum of 20 cents on cinchona.63 Therefore, the government paid approximately three-fourths of the total cost of the scheme, while the planters contributed a mere quarter. In his first report on the working of the new “Medical Wants Ordinance,” the Principal Civil Medical Officer (PCMO) Kynsey briefl y explained the main provisions of the ordinance: The Ordinance came into force on the 1st of January 1883, and in accordance with the clause 6 of the Principal Ordinance the Coffee Estates were grouped into fifteen Districts having 15 hospitals and 60 61 62 63

CO CO CO CO

54/532, 5 March 1881/No. 12, Douglas to Kimberley. Enclosure. 56/11, Ceylon Acts 1879–1884. 54/533, 8 July 1881/No. 174, Douglas to Kimberley. Enclosure. 56/11, Ceylon Acts 1879–1884.

266

chapter eleven Dispensaries attached, in charge of Medical Officers, and 12 out-door Dispensaries in charge of Medical Assistance. 3. The Districts were grouped into three Divisions, Kandy, Dickoya and Badulla with a Superintending Medical Officer in charge of each.64

As Gordon pointed out to the Secretary of State for the Colonies, it was too early to judge the new Medical Aid scheme after Kynsey’s first report in 1884. Nevertheless, the figures for the year 1883 showed no decrease in the mortality rate of the immigrant labourers. Gordon wrote to the Earl of Derby: Your Lordship’s attention will doubtless be at once attracted by the two salient features of this review of the year’s operations—the high death rate in the district hospitals, and the enormous cost of the Medical Aid rendered. [. . .] [T]ough the Tamil Cooly is making more use of our hospitals than heretofore he has still a strong disinclination to go to hospital especially in serious cases until it is often too late for medical treatment to be of any avail.65

The first report on the working of the scheme gives detailed figures on the cost of the Medical Aid system. The total expenditure amounted to Rs 134,032.05 in 1883. Of that sum Rs 30,021.33 were recovered from the planters under the provisions of the “Medical Wants Ordinance,” thus leaving a sum of Rs 104,010.72 to be paid by the government.66 The unchanged death rate and the great expenditure involved were the main drawbacks of the new scheme in the eyes of the government. The remaining high death rate was still attributed to the alleged reluctance of the immigrant labourers to attend European hospitals. In the district hospitals, the death rate amounted to 19.84% of all hospitalised persons.67 The report on the working of the “Medical Wants Ordinance” during 1884 showed no improvements. The death rate was even higher than in the previous year. And apparently there were certain deficiencies in the implementation of the provisions for maternal care on the estates, as the death rate among immigrant children was extremely high during 1884.68 Only the scheme’s cost to the general revenue

64 65 66 67 68

CO CO CO CO CO

54/554, 54/554, 54/554, 54/554, 54/560,

9 9 9 9 4

July 1884/No. 259, Gordon to Derby. Enclosure. July 1884/No. 259, Gordon to Derby. July 1884/No. 259, Gordon to Derby. July 1884/No. 259, Gordon to Derby. Enclosure. September 1885/No. 90, McLeod to Derby.

immigrants

267

has been lowered during the year 1884, because the export duties on tea, coffee, cinchona and cacao had been raised to the maximum rates fixed in the ordinance. In 1884, Rs 42,078 had been charged to the general revenue.69 Throughout the 1880s, neither the death rate among the coolies nor the general sanitary state of the estates did improve on any significant scale. Although the available medical facilities had been multiplied and hospitals and dispensaries had been erected, the main problem prevailed: the late hospitalisation of the sick labourers. Reference has already been made to the alleged reluctance of the labourers to go to hospital. It was the prevailing contemporary opinion that the sick cooly himself delayed his hospitalisation as long as possible in order to stay with his family and friends. Contemporary remarks on the subject—even from critical men like PCMO Kynsey—mostly neglect the determining infl uence of the employer and the kangany on the labourer. Not only depended the kangany’s ‘head money’ on the number of labourers turning up for work each day, it was also feared that the sick labourers could run away when they were not under the kangany’s direct control.70 Therefore, many kanganies did not report cases of sickness among the labourers and delayed treatment or hospitalisation. The planter himself—if the kangany informed him about cases of sickness—was similarly reluctant to treat the cooly, as this would infl ict additional costs on the estate. During times of labour surplus such behaviour on the side of the planter was more frequent than in times of labour shortage, when the existence of medical facilities became an advantage in the competition for immigrant labour. Considering the vested interests of the kanganies and the planters, it seems little surprising that the Superintending Medical Officers found frequent breaches of the “Medical Wants Ordinance” on the estates. Table 11.3 lists the breaches reported between 1883 and 1885 in detail and gives the number of prosecuted cases as well. Such prosecutions occurred only from time to time in cases personally selected by the PCMO.71 Although the Superintending Medical Officers, especially Mr. Griffin and Mr. Thornhill, inspected the estates critically and

69 70 71

CO 54/563, 6 February 1886/No. 47, Gordon to Stanley. Wesumperuma, Indian Immigrant Plantation Workers, 257. Ibid., 263.

268

chapter eleven Table 11.3: Breaches and Prosecutions under the “Medical Wants Ordinance,” 1883–1885.

1883 1884 1885 Clause of Ordinance Breaches Prosecutions Breaches Prosecutions Breaches Prosecutions Clause 20. Planter’s failure to (a) maintain sanitary conditions of lines . . . (b) inform himself of illness and take relief measures . . . (c) send sick labourers to hospital when required by Medical Officer . . . (d) call Medical Officer in serious cases . . . (e) inform Medical Officer about births and deaths . . . (f ) keep a register of labourers employed and of births and deaths . . . (g) supply postnatal food and lodging . . . Clause 21. Kanganies’ failure to report cases of sickness in the gang . . . Total . . .

1,120

1

2,209

—

1,272

—

424

2

200

—

151

—

49

—

1

—

—

—

1,624

10

74

—

151

—

971

1

115

6

165

—

7,936

—

158

2

552

—

—

41

3

—

—

—

661

41

274

6

701

27

13,889

55

3,074

14

2,992

27

Source: Dharmapriya Wesumperuma, Indian Immigrant Plantation Workers in Sri Lanka: A Historical Perspective, 1880 –1910 (Nugegoda: Dharmapriya Wesumperuma, 1986), 261.

reported thousands of breaches of the law, the PCMO had not the means to prosecute more than a few of the reported cases. The kanganies’ and the planters’ reluctance to report cases of sickness and to hospitalise sick coolies prevailed even under the eyes of the Superintending Medical Officers. PCMO Kynsey realised soon that the system of estate inspections did not work and offered little

immigrants

269

resistance, when the Planters’ Association demanded the abolition of the Superintending Medical Officers in 1887. Mr. Griffin had accused the superintendent of Abbotsford Estate of neglecting the medical needs of a sick female labourer who had later died. Unfortunately, the highly infl uential A. M. Ferguson was the owner of the estate and mobilised the press and the Planters’ Association against Griffin and the entire system of estate inspections. Consequently, the Planters’ Association submitted a resolution asking for the abolition of the system: That, as there appears to be no disposition on the part of Inspecting Officers Griffin and Thornhill to make amends for their unwarrantable charges against the planters, this Association can see little or no prospect of effectual co-operation on the part of the planters with these inspecting Officers in carrying out the purposes of this Medical Ordinance. That in the opinion of this Association the duties of the three inspecting Officers may be easily performed by the District Medical Officers in the pursuance of their present duties, and that accordingly the District Medical Officers be required by Government to undertake these duties for the sake of greater convenience and economy in working the Ordinance.72

Governor Gordon and Principal Civil Medical Officer Kynsey offered almost no resistance. They had realised the futility of estate inspections under the prevailing system (i.e. with no legal machinery to prosecute the breaches), and saw a distinct advantage in the lowering of costs. Accordingly, the positions of Superintending Medical Officer were abolished in 1887. Unsurprisingly, the health condition of the immigrant labourers showed no improvement in the years to come, when kanganies as well as planters still neglected their duties and delayed treatment or hospitalisation in cases of sickness. Only in 1893, Governor Havelock appointed a Commission to investigate the deficiencies of the prevailing Medical Aid system and to suggest possible remedies. Havelock submitted the Commission’s report to the Secretary of State and added: [T]he Commissioners express their conviction that the death-rate among Immigrant labourers in Hospitals, which, during the nine years from 1883 to 1891, has averaged 20.89 per cent or double the usual death-rate in Hospitals in general, has been unduly high. It is stated, in paragraph 6, that the witnesses examined were unanimous in the opinion that coolies 72

CO 54/572, 6 September 1887/No. 375, Gordon to Holland. Enclosure.

270

chapter eleven are sent to Hospital at a much later period in the course of their illness than they should be, and that the high rate of mortality is due to the advanced stage of the disease prior to admission.73

The Commission’s main proposal was the creation of estate dispensaries to facilitate the medical treatment of sick labourers. The planting community first resisted this proposal, but later agreed to it and cooperated in the establishment of the dispensaries. The new prosperity of tea cultivation and the rising demand for labour infl uenced the planters in that decision. By 1900, 103 estate dispensaries had been created.74 Although the Commission’s assumption that “[i]t is the interest of the Employers to keep their labourers in good health”75 proved to be correct during times of labour shortage, the cooperation of the kanganies did not improve. The estate dispensaries were frequently used, but in the district hospitals the death rate among the immigrants remained at the same high level.76

73 74 75 76

CO 54/610, 5 November 1893/No. 378, Havelock to Ripon. Wesumperuma, Indian Immigrant Plantation Workers, 275. CO 54/610, 5 November 1893/No. 378, Havelock to Ripon. Wesumperuma, Indian Immigrant Plantation Workers, 273.

CHAPTER TWELVE

REVIVALS 12.1

Christian Missionary Activity and Buddhist Response

In the last decades of the nineteenth century, all the widespread indigenous faiths in Ceylon—i.e. Buddhism, Hinduism and the Islam—went through so-called religious revivals. The usage of the term ‘revival’ in that respect refl ects the opinion of many of the contemporary Christian missionaries on the island: that the indigenous religions were, for all practical purposes, ‘dead.’ Therefore, the emergence of Buddhist, Hindu and Moslem activism to defend their faiths against Christian proselytising efforts has been characterised as a revival. For the sake of comprehension (and because it has become so well-established a term among historians) the term ‘religious revival’ is used in this work as well—notwithstanding the fact that the indigenous religions in Ceylon have not been unimportant prior to their revival. Even Governor Longden pointed out that “[i]f ever any religion was alive and has been kept alive in face of much to kill it, it is the Buddhism of Ceylon.”1 The same can certainly be said about Hinduism and Islam on the island. The Christian missionaries’ belief that Buddhism in Ceylon was practically dead stemmed mainly from their misinterpretation of Buddhist tolerance. Soon after the arrival of the five important missionary societies on the island, all of them started to engage in proselytising. The London Missionary Society (LMS) came to Ceylon with four missionaries in 1805, but did not expand its missionary activities in the following decades. The American Mission, arriving in 1816, was only admitted to the Jaffna peninsula for political reasons. It established a large network of schools in that region during the following decades. Due to its geographical location, the American Mission hardly came in touch with Buddhism. The Baptists, Wesleyan Methodists and

1

CO 54/537, 22 January 1882/No. 32. Longden to Kimberley.

272

chapter twelve

the Church (of England) Missionary Society (CMS)—i.e. the Anglicans—arrived in 1812, 1814 and 1818 respectively and established their headquarters in the Western and Southern Provinces. These missionary societies, thus, became the main opponents of the Buddhists.2 Although the Baptists, Wesleyans and Church missionaries alike immediately started to propagate Christianity and to discredit Buddhism, there was little Buddhist response in the beginning. The Buddhist behaviour towards the Christian religion and its propagators “seems to have been nonantagonistic.”3 Malalgoda gives several examples for the Buddhist monks’ tolerance towards the Christians. He names two bikkhus who assisted the Auxiliary Bible Society in Colombo to translate the Bible into the vernacular. Furthermore, at several occasions Buddhist monks helped in the preparation of places of Christian worship or placed the preaching-halls of their temples at the disposal of the missionaries.4 “The missionaries who took to itinerant preaching often spent the nights at Buddhist monasteries where they were received by the resident monks with the sort of hospitality with which they greeted their own brethren.”5 It is not surprising that most missionaries did not understand the kindness and hospitality of the bikkhus. When a monk of the Kotte temple told the CMS missionary Rev. Selkirk “that the English people worshipped Jesus Christ, and that the Singhalese people worshipped Buddha, that they were both good religions”,6 he expressed the Buddhists’ attitude of peaceful religious coexistence. The Christians, however, mistook such manifestations of religious tolerance for apathy and indifference on the side of the sangha and became even more vigorous in their attacks against Buddhism. The missionaries were especially active in the field of education. With the support of the colonial government, they de facto monopolised education and used this monopoly to teach religious instruction in their schools. The missionaries attached great importance to the expansion of their school network. The factionalism between the different

Kitsiri Malalgoda, “The Buddhist-Christian Confrontation in Sri Lanka, 1800– 1880,” Studies in Society and Culture: Sri Lanka Past and Present (1994): 3. 3 K. N. O. Dharmadasa, Language, Religion, and Ethnic Assertiveness: The Growth of Sinhalese Nationalism in Sri Lanka (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992), 91. 4 Malalgoda, “The Buddhist-Christian Confrontation,” 15. 5 Ibid. 6 Ibid.: 23. 2

revivals

273

Christian denominations7 and the competition for primacy in the field of education throughout the nineteenth century illustrates this. But although the Christian missions attached such a high importance to education and to conversion through religious instruction in the schools, they—after a couple of years—also discovered the disadvantages of such a narrow focus on education. The missionaries found that they often only made nominal converts. Many pupils would behave like Christians in school, but practiced Buddhism or Hinduism at home. Therefore, the missionaries started to extend their proselytising activities beyond the field of education and engaged in preaching and the production of printed pamphlets and tracts. Although preaching was the traditional and most honourable way to spread the gospel, the missionaries experienced considerable difficulties in that field in Ceylon. First of all, the itinerant life of a preacher was not at all as convenient as that of a school master or teacher. And the reaction of the villagers to their sermons was often not what the preachers expected. The practice of preaching was wellestablished in Buddhism as well and the villagers were used to listening to preachers. But, as Malalgoda points out, the villagers “had rather fixed notions about the “proper” time, place and manner of preaching. The missionaries ignored those to their own cost.”8 Additionally, only few Christian missionaries had enough knowledge of Sinhala to deliver stirring sermons. Therefore, many Sinhalese did not take the Christian preachers too seriously and tried to avoid their sermons whenever possible. Nevertheless, the missionaries strongly believed in the importance of itinerant preaching and carried on with it. In the 1840s, they also started to entangle Buddhist monks in public debates with the intention to publicly prove the superiority of the Christian faith. But the bikkhus—still nonantagonistic—avoided such confrontations whenever possible throughout the 1840s and 1850s.9 While the missionaries’ success as preachers remained limited, they wielded more infl uence through the distribution of religious pamphlets and tracts. The Wesleyans acquired a printing press in 1815 and were

7 Kingsley M. De Silva, “Government and Religion. Problems and Policies, C 1832 to C 1910,” in University of Ceylon History of Ceylon. From the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century to 1948, ed. Kingsley M. De Silva (Peradeniya: University of Peradeniya, 1973), 193. 8 Malalgoda, “The Buddhist-Christian Confrontation,” 8. 9 De Silva, “Government and Religion,” 198–99.

274

chapter twelve

followed by the CMS in 1823 and the Baptists in 1841. These presses were not only used to print translations of the Bible, Catechisms or Prayer Books, but to produce periodicals and pamphlets as well.10 The Christian tracts were issued in fairly large numbers and enjoyed a comparatively wide circulation. According to the managers of the printing presses, 1,500,000 copies had been circulated between 1849 and 1861.11 These pamphlets were of rather limited use in the making of converts. But this was not the direct goal of the missionaries anymore. The Christian missions had realised that their proselytising efforts would not show any effect as long as the Buddhist community did not react in some way. Therefore, the religious tracts primarily aimed at the provocation of the Buddhist leaders. They should induce the bikkhus to accept the Christian challenge and openly confront the missionaries. With the publication of a treatise called “Kristiyani Prajnapti” (“The Evidences and Doctrines of the Christian Religion”) by the Wesleyan Rev. D. J. Gogerly in 1849 the missionaries finally achieved their goal. The treatise was reprinted in 1853 and 1856 and enlarged in 1861.12 Unlike previous Christian pamphlets “Kristiyani Prajnapti” did not so much rely on religious polemics but tried to give evidences and proofs for the superiority of Christianity. The treatise repeatedly challenged the Buddhist community to disprove its theses.13 The Christians finally got the Buddhist response that they had been waiting for so long. Surprisingly to the missionaries, the Buddhist did not merely respond by attending public debates. Buddhist reaction came in all three spheres of missionary activity: the acquisition of a printing press and the publication of Buddhist tracts was the first adopted measure. In the 1860s and 1870s, eloquent bikkhus successfully challenged missionary preachers in public debates. And in the 1870s and more significantly in the 1880s and 1890s the Buddhist community—with outside help—managed to expand their educational activities considerably. Therefore, the so-called revival of Buddhism was not caused by “the vigorous effort which is being made to revive Buddhism in Ceylon, upon the foundation of European interest and

10 11 12 13

Malalgoda, “The Buddhist-Christian Confrontation,” 10. Ibid. Dharmadasa, Language, Religion, and Ethnic Assertiveness, 96. Ibid.

revivals

275

encouragement”14—an explanation frequently offered by the missionaries—, but by the missionaries’ “vigorous effort” to provoke a Buddhist reaction to their frequent offences. In 1855, the Church missionaries sold their Kotte printing press, because other presses had been established and the old press had become obsolete for the mission. Through various middlemen the Buddhists managed to acquire that press and started to issue Buddhist pamphlets on the same press that had been used against them for such a long time. Mohottivatte Gunananda founded the Sarvajna Sasanabhivrddhidayaka Dharma Samagama (the Society for the Propagation of Buddhism) in 1862 and used the press to issue replies to Gogerly’s “Kristiyani Prajnapti.” In the same year, a second press was established at Galle called the Lamkopokara Press. Hikkaduve Sumangala was responsible for most of the Lamkopokara publications.15 For several years, the Buddhist-Christian confrontation remained mainly confined to religious publications. In 1865, however, Bulathgama Sumana proved his organisational talent when he accepted the Christian debating challenge and led the Buddhists into the first public controversy with the Christian missionaries at Baddegama near Galle. The Buddhists vastly outnumbered the Christians at the encounter16 and their debaters could easily match with the missionaries. But most important, the Baddegama controversy was a demonstration of power on the side of the Buddhists—addressed to the Christians as well as to the Sinhalese population.17 Although the Baddegama Buddhist-Christian encounter was not so much a debate as an exchange of written questions and answers, it deeply impressed the audience. Rev. George Parsons’ report on the Baddegama meeting has often been cited: The spirit of controversy broke out in November last [i.e. November 1864], and though I was partly prepared for it, I was slow to believe it would become such a serious matter until urged by our people to prepare for a fierce contest. The result fully justified their anxieties, for never before in Ceylon was there such a marshalling of the enemy against Christianity. The one aim of the fifty priests and their two CO 54/537, 22 January 1882/No. 32. Longden to Kimberley. Enclosure. Malalgoda, “The Buddhist-Christian Confrontation,” 20–21. 16 About 50 Buddhist monks attended the Baddegama controversy accompanied by over 2,000 laymen. The Christian missionaries and their lay supporters numbered only between 60 and 70. 17 Dharmadasa, Language, Religion, and Ethnic Assertiveness, 100–01. 14 15

276

chapter twelve thousand followers who assembled here on February 8 [1865], was not to defend Buddhism but to overthrow Christianity.18

The public controversy at Baddegama was swiftly followed by another meeting in Varagoda in August 1865. Again, only written statements were exchanged. One year later, however, the first public BuddhistChristian debate took place at Udanvita. A second debate was held at Gampola in 1871.19 But it was the Panadura debate of 1873 that really boosted Buddhist self-confidence. The two-day event at Panadura on 26 and 27 August attracted about 5,000 listeners on the first day and, allegedly, more than 10,000 on the second.20 Speaking for the Buddhist sangha, Mohottivatte Gunananda clearly outperformed the Christian debaters David de Silva and F. S. Sirimanne. The Buddhists impressively demonstrated their mass mobilisation skills and the “potential that lay dormant.”21 Although the Christians would never admit a ‘defeat’ in the Panadura debate, the Buddhists had no doubts about who had been ‘victorious’ in the public controversy and drew considerable strength and self-confidence from their performance at the debate.22 Bond even says that these public debates—and specifically the Panadura debate—and their publication by the Buddhist printing presses “marked the beginning of the lay Buddhist revival and reformation. When Gunananda defeated the Christians in debate at Panadura, lay Buddhists began to realize anew the potential of their own tradition.”23 And the Panadura debate had other lasting effects as well: firstly, Mohottivatte’s impressive achievements as public orator and defender of Buddhism made him a symbolic figure for the revival of Sinhalese Buddhism. And eventually, one copy of J. B. Peebles’ American edition of John Capper’s “A Full Account of the Buddhist Controversy held at Pantura”24 fell into the hands of one Quoted in Malalgoda, “The Buddhist-Christian Confrontation,” 25. De Silva, “Government and Religion,” 199. 20 Malalgoda, “The Buddhist-Christian Confrontation,” 26. 21 Dharmadasa, Language, Religion, and Ethnic Assertiveness, 101. 22 Malalgoda, “The Buddhist-Christian Confrontation,” 26. 23 George D. Bond, The Buddhist Revival in Sri Lanka: Religious Tradition, Reinterpretation, and Response, 1st ed. (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1988), 48. 24 John Capper, David De Silva, and F. S. Sirimanne, A Full Account of the Buddhist Controversy Held at Pantura, in August 1873 [between a Buddhist Priest, Gunananda Mohattivatte, and Two Ministers of the Protestant Religion, the Rev. D. De Silva and the Rev. F. S. Sirimanne] . . . With the Addresses Revised and Amplified by the Speakers (Colombo: 1873). 18 19

revivals

277

Colonel Henry Steel Olcott, who will reappear later in this chapter, and aroused his interest in Ceylonese Buddhism. The Panadura debate of 1873 was the last public controversy between Christians and Buddhists in Ceylon. By that time, the Buddhist sangha—together with a number of laymen—had responded to Christian agitation by means of the press and by attending public debates. Apparently, the Buddhists had drawn enough self-confidence from both these activities to enter the third and most important domain of Christian proselytising efforts: the 1870s saw the first Buddhist attempts to participate in the field of education. But progress in that sphere was slow and suffered many setbacks. Although Buddhist pansala schools and a number of monastic colleges (pirivenas) enjoyed a longstanding tradition in Ceylon and contributed significantly to the spread of literacy in the vernacular, it was far beyond their scope to make inroads into Christian controlled secular education. The bikkhu teachers in the pansalas and pirivenas neither had the skills nor the will to offer their pupils the secular education that they received in missionary schools and that prepared them for secular careers. Even when the Department of Public Instruction under the Directorship of H. W. Green (1883–89) began to show some interest in the improvement and extension of the pansala schools, the Buddhist monks did not seize the opportunity and preferred to carry on with their traditional ways of instruction.25 Accordingly, Vidyodaya Pirivena under its principal Hikkaduve Sumangala was the only monastic educational institution registered for a government grant in the 1870s and 1880s.26 It became clear that the Buddhist sangha had neither the experience and skills nor the financial means to compete with the Christian missions in the field of education. Buddhist progress in education, therefore, depended largely on the participation of the Buddhist laity. With the help of Buddhist laymen, the first non-monastic Buddhist school was opened at Dodanduva in 1869 and registered for a government grant in 1872. But altogether only four Buddhist schools received a grant in 1880.27

Kitsiri Malalgoda, Buddhism in Sinhalese Society, 1750–1900: A Study of Religious Revival and Change (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 235–36. 26 Ibid., 236–37. 27 Ibid., 234–35. 25

278

chapter twelve 12.2

The Buddhist Revival: Theosophist Organisation

The early Buddhist attempts to participate in the government’s grant-in-aid school scheme failed thoroughly and could not penetrate Christian predominance in that field. The Buddhist sangha lacked the financial and organisational means to set up schools that could fulfil the grant-in-aid eligibility criteria. These deficits stemmed mainly from the non-existence of a broad lay basis and support from that direction. Thus, the Buddhist community depended on an external stimulus to generate more financial and organisational momentum. This stimulus arrived in Ceylon in the year 1880 in the person of Colonel Henry Steel Olcott.28 Being a man with broad philosophical interests and considerable organisational skills, Olcott had founded the Theosophical Society together with Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky29 and William Quan Judge in 1875. The society was “dedicated to the uplifting of humanity through a better understanding of the oneness of life and the practical application of this principle.”30 At about that time, a copy of Capper’s account of the Panadura debate had fallen in Olcott’s hands back in America and had got him interested in the Ceylonese Buddhists’ struggle against Christian proselytising. Thus, Olcott and Blavatsky—after having sailed to India in 1878 to establish the Theosophical Society’s new headquarters there—visited the island in 1880. Olcott had been in touch with Hikkaduve Sumangala and Mohottivatte Gunananda before his arrival and word had spread that a Western supporter of Buddhism was on the way to Ceylon. Accordingly, Olcott and Blavatsky were awaited, welcomed

28 Olcott’s life has been the subject of detailed study in several biographies. See, for instance, Stephen R. Prothero, The White Buddhist: The Asian Odyssey of Henry Steel Olcott, Religion in North America (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996); G. Obeyesekere, “Review: The White Buddhist: The Asian Odyssey of Henry Steel Olcott,” review of Reviewed Item, Journal of Buddhist Ethics (Online Journal), (1997), http://jbe.la.psu.edu/4/obey1.html. J. N. Kinnard, “Review: The White Buddhist: The Asian Odyssey of Henry Steel Olcott “Journal of Religion 77, no. 4 (1997); Howard Murphet, Hammer on the Mountain: Life of Henry Steel Olcott (1832–1907) (Wheaton, Ill.: Theosophical Pub. House, 1972); Howard Murphet, Yankee Beacon of Buddhist Light: Life of Col. Henry S. Olcott: Formerly Published as Hammer on the Mountain, 1st Quest ed. (Wheaton, Ill.: Theosophical Pub. House, 1988). 29 W. W. Quinn, “Henry Steel Olcott. Impact and Infl uence on the Buddhism of Ceylon,” Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies (new series) 8, no. 1 (1978): 18. 30 Theosophical Society, History of the Theosophical Society ([cited 7 October 2001]); available from http://home.aol.com/tstec/hmpage/tshist.htm.

revivals

279

and, indeed, celebrated by a huge crowd of Buddhists when they landed at Galle. A few days after their arrival, Olcott and Blavatsky publicly converted to Buddhism. Only later they stated that they had already embraced Buddhism back in New York and that their public conversion had merely been a confirmation thereof.31 Notwithstanding Olcott’s almost triumphal reception in Ceylon, the sangha and part of the Buddhist population were initially suspicious of his intentions. In fact, the ideas of Theosophy—and, therefore, of the Theosophical Society—and of Buddhism were not compatible. Theosophy neglects the primacy of one religion over the others. Strictly speaking, it neglects the relevance of sectarianism in religion. Many Buddhists were well aware of the contradiction in Olcott’s conversion to Buddhism and his claim of being a Theosophist.32 But they were also ready to appreciate the potential benefits of Olcott’s involvement: first, Olcott and the Theosophists were antagonistic to Christian proselytising and, thus, opposed the Christian missionaries’ activities in Ceylon; second, the conversion of a Western sahib to Buddhism strongly supported any Buddhist claims to the superiority of their religion;33 and third, the leaders of the movement were well aware of Olcott’s organisational skills. Prior to Olcott’s arrival in Ceylon, the participation of laymen in the Buddhist movement has been marginal. In the 1870s, some laymen had actively supported the erection of Buddhist run schools, but such help had been scarce and funds were constantly running low. Lay participation on a much broader basis was necessary if the Buddhists wanted to set up and run schools on their own. The Buddhist sangha had a lot of experience in preaching and the many inner-Buddhist sectarian controversies of earlier days had improved their debating skill. But neither could the sangha itself raise sufficient money nor were the monks skilled in secular teaching or the administration of schools. Low-Country businessmen, however, did have access to financial resources and had already acquired administrative experience in their various business operations. The new and growing

31 L. A. Wickremeratne, “Religion, Nationalism, and Social Change in Ceylon, 1865–1885,” Studies in Society and Culture: Sri Lanka Past and Present (1993): 2. 32 Ibid.: 3. 33 Jakob Rösel, Die Gestalt und Entstehung des Singhalesischen Nationalismus, Ordo Politicus, Bd. 29 (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1996), 255.

280

chapter twelve

class of educated Sinhalese had both an understanding of administration and some idea of teaching. The creation and expansion of a Buddhist school network, thus, depended on the contributions and the dedication of these affl uent groups of lay Buddhists. In some projects, Sinhalese laymen had already participated before Olcott’s arrival in Ceylon. The Vidyodaya Oriental College, for instance, owed its existence and its successful running largely to the efforts and the financial support of its Committee of Managers that consisted mainly of Low-Country businessmen such as Don Philip de Silva Äpa Appuhami, Don Velon Vikramatilaka Appuhami, Hewavitharanage Don Carolis, Lansage Don Andris Perera and Wettasinghage Don Cornelis de Silva.34 From the establishment of the Vidyodaya Pirivena in the year 1873 until its registration for a government grant in 1877 the Committee carried most of the financial burden.35 This illustrates the importance of lay participation in the establishment of a Buddhist school network. Olcott instantly realised the potential of the Buddhist laity and also saw that a common organisational structure had to be created in order to overcome internal differences along caste and class lines. To provide the much needed organisational background, he founded the Buddhist branch of the Theosophical Society in 1880. In fact, Olcott founded two independent branches of the Theosophical Society in Ceylon: a Buddhist branch and a non-Buddhist branch. The latter went by the name of Lanka Theosophical Society. Its secular approach to ‘occult research’ did not attract many members and it did not play a significant role in the revitalisation of Buddhist movement.36 The Buddhist branch soon became known as the Buddhist Theosophical Society (BTS) and emerged as the main organisation for the propagation of Buddhist interests in Ceylon. Olcott had established two separate divisions in the BTS, one lay and one clerical. Sumangala was the chairman of the clerical division that consisted of leading bikkhus of all different nikayas.37 Olcott attached

Malalgoda, Buddhism in Sinhalese Society, 239–41. Ibid., 240. 36 Ibid., 246. 37 The Buddhist sangha has never been a homogenous body. Three main sects— nikayas—existed in Ceylon and competed for primacy. The Siam Nikaya represented only the goyigamas and goyigama interests. The Ramanya and Amarapura Nikayas were themselves subdivided along caste lines. Internal and external competition in and between these nikayas had made unity against Christian proselytising difficult. For additional information on the social structure of Sinhalese Buddhism see Hans-Dieter 34 35

revivals

281

great importance to the integration and representation of the different nikayas in the clerical division of the BTS, but the innovative potential of the BTS was clearly concentrated in the lay division: The real significance of the BTS [. . .] lay in its providing an organization for the laity, who until that time had been divided by their loyalties to individual temples and branches of the Sangha. [. . .] The lay organization of the BTS not only gave the laymen a new sense of unity in opposing the Christians, but it also gave them independence from the monks to participate in the reform of Buddhism. [. . .] The new elite laity, with their activist inclinations, supported by this new freedom and intellectual encouragement, grew in the BTS and laid the foundations for reform.38

Branches of the Buddhist Theosophical Society were founded at Galle, Matara, Bentota, Welitara and Kandy. The headquarters were in Colombo. The lay division immediately attracted infl uential Sinhalese of “different caste and localities”39 and channelled their contributions and activities into one common path of action. This marked a new phase of Buddhist agitation and provided the Buddhist movement with hitherto unseen financial and administrative means. Nevertheless it has to be remarked that it was mainly Olcott’s personal presence and infl uence that held the BTS together and in working condition. Olcott frequently left Ceylon to engage in other activities. During his absence the enthusiasm of parts of the laity and of the sangha seemed to fade somewhat. The financial devotion of the laymen to the Buddhist cause ebbed during these times of absence and especially Olcott’s Buddhist Education Fund proved to be a limited success for similar reasons.40 12.3

The Buddhist Revival: Central Issues

The common goal of the Buddhist Theosophical Society and the Buddhist sangha was the propagation of Buddhism and the resistance

Evers, “Die Soziale Organisation der Singhalesischen Religion,” Koelner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 16, no. 2 (1964). 38 Bond, The Buddhist Revival, 49. 39 Malalgoda, Buddhism in Sinhalese Society, 248. 40 Wickremeratne, “Religion, Nationalism, and Social Change,” 7–8.

282

chapter twelve

against Christian proselytising efforts. Olcott himself attached prime importance to the progress of Buddhist educational institutions and, when he arranged a national Buddhist convention shortly before his first departure from Ceylon, the main topics discussed were the improvement of Buddhist educational facilities and the question of Buddhist temporalities.41 Returning to Ceylon in 1881, Olcott founded the Buddhist Education Fund and started touring the whole island to collect donations for the fund. However, apart from some notable contributions from affl uent members of the new economic elite public generosity was very limited. By October 1884 the collections in the Western Province had only raised the modest sum of Rs 4,085.22.42 In the Southern Province the collected sum amounted to Rs 6,906.43 in February 1885.43 As it had been decided that the donated sums were loaned on interest and only the interest would be spent, the available funds were meagre. Furthermore, only half of the proceeds were allocated to the establishment and upkeep of Buddhist schools. Therefore, the total sum available for the support of schools in the Southern Province in the year 1885 merely amounted to 235 Rupees and 41.4 Cents. This sum was unequally distributed to four schools in the Southern Province.44 Unsurprisingly, Olcott was not pleased with the working of the Buddhist Education Fund. Notwithstanding the limited financial benefits accumulated through the Buddhist Education Fund, Buddhist participation in grant-in-aid education gradually grew during the 1880s and even gained some additional momentum in the 1890s. While there were only four Buddhist schools (all of these only offering vernacular education) registered for a government grant in 1880,45 the year 1900 saw already 142 grant-aided schools under Buddhist management.46 The Buddhists ran 10.7% of all grant-aided schools in 1900—as against only 0.5% in 1880. Although the available figures—albeit incomplete—suggest that a good part of that progress has been made in the 1890s, the modest proceeds of the Buddhist Education Fund—together with other

Ibid.: 6. Ibid.: 7. 43 Ananda Wickremeratne, The Roots of Nationalism: Sri Lanka (Colombo: Karunaratne, 1995), 299. 44 Ibid. 45 CO 54/539, 4 May 1882/No. 194. Longden to Kimberley. Enclosure. 46 Administration Report 1900. 41 42

revivals

283

contributions—facilitated the initial setting up of schools and financed their maintenance until they could register for a government grant. The registration for such a grant was the prime goal of every school management. Although the grants were not particularly generous, they sufficed to keep a school up and running. Prior to the Theosophists’ organisational input, most Buddhist bikkhus or laymen had neither the experience nor the organisational backing to set up a school that could fulfil the high government eligibility criteria. In those few cases in which a grant was awarded, the management faced the difficult task of maintaining the standard of the school, as grants were given on a yearly basis. The school at Dodanduva, for instance, had been the first Buddhist school in Ceylon to be registered for a government grant in 1872. But only two years later, the school lost the grant, because the inexperienced management had not been able to maintain the quality of the teaching and to achieve the necessary attendance quotas. Several other grant-aided Buddhist schools also lost their grants again due to very similar reasons.47 Therefore, the increase in the number and the quality of Buddhist schools during the 1880s and 1890s must largely be attributed to the organisational improvements in the Buddhist movement. The clerical division of the BTS played only a supporting role in that sphere. It was the growing involvement of Western-educated laymen in the Buddhist Theosophical Society and the contribution made by American and English Theosophists that enabled the Buddhist movement to provide high-standard secular education (partly in English) to a growing number of pupils.48 Although most activities of Olcott and the Buddhist Theosophical Society aimed at the expansion of Buddhist educational facilities, there were other issues as well that demanded the attention of the Buddhist revivalist movement. The unsolved Temple Lands Question,49 Malalgoda, Buddhism in Sinhalese Society, 241. Ibid., 250. 49 Since their arrival in Ceylon, the British had tried to settle the so-called Temple Lands or Buddhist Temporalities Question. Most of the Buddhist temples traditionally owned substantial plots of land adjacent to the temples. This land was usually exempted from tax. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the British struggled to find a proper way to administrate this land, but failed to do so due to the diverging interests of the Colonial Government, the Colonial Office, the Christian pressure groups and the Buddhist community. For more information on the Buddhist Temporalities Question see K. D. G. Wimalaratne, “The Impact of British Policy on the Buddhist Temporalities of Sri Lanka” (paper presented at the Multi-Disciplinary 47 48

284

chapter twelve

for instance, had been the second important topic at the Buddhist convention summoned by Olcott during his first stay in Ceylon. Little headway was made in that respect and the Buddhist Temporalities Question remained unsolved. However, the discussion of that problem further unified the Buddhist movement in its opposition to the Christian missionaries and the government—a development that the Colonial Office had feared for a long time.50 In the year 1883, Colonel Olcott founded the so-called Buddhist Defence Committee as a further step toward the unification of the Buddhist movement. The foundation of the committee was a reaction to the Kotahena Riots of the same year and, particularly, to the government reaction to these riots. On Easter Day 1883 a Buddhist procession passing by a Roman Catholic church at Kotahena was violently attacked by a Catholic mob who apparently felt offended by the lively procession. The police was not able to control the situation. About 30 persons were injured in the confl ict and one Buddhist was lethally wounded.51 The socalled Riots Commission was appointed to investigate the incident. The report of the commission gives an elaborate description of the violent Buddhist-Christian encounter: In the meantime matters were becoming serious at Kotahena. The Roman Catholic services in the morning had been concluded, and the congregation had dispersed, and all was apparently quiet. A little before one o’clock the neighbourhood was alarmed by the sudden and violent ringing of the cathedral bell, followed at once by the ringing of the bells in all the Catholic churches in the neighbourhood, and without delay, as if at a preconcerted signal, large bodies of men ready armed with clubs, and marked on the forehead and back with white crosses, began to assemble at St. Lucia’s corner. [. . .] Meantime, as the [Buddhist] procession advanced, reports were brought from the front that a crowd was gathering at Kotahena; and [. . .] rumours reached them that disturbances had begun, and that a Buddhist priest had been assaulted. The procession, which up to this time was unarmed and unprotected, naturally became excited, and the male portion rushed into a timber yard close by and took possession of whatever sticks and weapons they could find. [The processions finally reached St. Lucia’s corner] International Conference on the occasion of 50th Anniversary of Independence of Sri Lanka, 23–25 February 1998); Hans-Dieter Evers, Buddhism and British Colonial Policy in Ceylon, 1815–1875 (Quezon City: University of the Philippines, Institute of Asian Studies, 1964). 50 Wimalaratne, “The Impact of British Policy on the Buddhist Temporalities”, 4. 51 CO 54/547, 26 June 1883/No. 306. Longden to Kimberley. Enclosure.

revivals

285

The front ranks of each party, which were now close upon each other, broke through the line of police and commenced a hand-to-hand fight. The Buddhists, in order to force a passage, attempted to drive their carts through the Catholic mob, but the latter seized and killed the bullocks, broke up the carts, and burned them and their contents on the public highway. During a lull in the fight, Assistant Superintendent Holland succeeded in persuading a body of Catholics to follow him to the cathedral, where one of the Roman Catholic Fathers addressed them, and the crowd began to separate. A heavy shower of rain, and the appearance of a mounted military officer assisted in dispersing the men, and by the time a detachment of the Royal Dublin Fusiliers arrived all actual fighting had ceased [. . .] During the riot many persons received severe injuries, one Buddhist being mortally wounded, and thirty persons, including twelve constables, so seriously hurt as to necessitate their being admitted to hospital: this number was probably only a small proportion of the total number injured.52

Although several Catholic offenders were arrested, the Acting Queen’s Advocate Charles Ferdinands released them as there was no reliable evidence for a conviction. This infuriated the Buddhist community. And the findings of the Riots Commission—originally instated to respond to Buddhist demands for thorough investigation—did little to moderate Buddhist public opinion as well.53 The Commission gave the following reasons for the violent outbreaks of 25 March 1883: 1. The proximity of the Buddhist temple and the Roman Catholic cathedral at Kotahena. 2. The gradual revival of Buddhism and the controversies consequent thereon. 3. The protracted nature of the Buddhist festival, and the grand scale in which it was carried out by so bitter an opponent of the Christian religion as Migettuwatte Unnanse. 4. The continuance of the Buddhist festival through Holy Week. 5. The spreading of false reports regarding insults to Christian religion, which were believed by the Roman Catholics, and greatly exasperated them. 6. The apparent inability of the Roman Catholic authorities to control the more ignorant of their fl ock.

52 53

CO 54/547, 26 June 1883/No. 306. Longden to Kimberley. Enclosure. Wickremeratne, “Religion, Nationalism, and Social Change,” 27.

286

chapter twelve

7. The indiscretion and indecision displayed by the police in granting, withholding, and cancelling [procession] licenses. 8. The insufficiency of the information possessed by the police, and defective arrangements made by them, as well as their neglect to properly vindicate the law on the first appearance of disorder; and their failing to realize, till too late, the magnitude of the disturbance on Easter-day.54 Disappointed by the release of the Catholic suspects and by the appeasing report of the Riots Commission, the Buddhists contacted Olcott who arrived in Ceylon in January 1884. The Buddhist Defence Committee was founded and Olcott was appointed a “special delegate, to represent the Buddhists and their cause, i.e., to seek redress for grievances in addition to other rights and privileges”.55 Thus, Colonel Olcott eventually became the official spokesman of the Sinhalese Buddhist community in that matter. He visited Governor Gordon, who had recently taken over the Governorship from Longden, and brought forward the Buddhist complaints against Ferdinands and the Riots Commission. Olcott not only sought a just investigation of the Kotahena riots, but pressed for a formal declaration of the government’s religious neutrality, the appointment of Buddhist registrars, the settlement of the Buddhist Temporalities Question and the recognition of Vesak56 as a public holiday. Olcott also directly intervened with the Colonial Office and the Secretary of State for the Colonies Lord Derby. Although Derby was generally sympathetic to Olcott and his request, the Colonial Office left the final decision to Governor Gordon.57 In his despatch of 18 February 1884, Gordon informed Derby about his meeting with Olcott and that the latter planned to travel to London and bring the matter directly before the Secretary of State. Gordon stated that Olcott obviously occupied an infl uential position in the Buddhist community—although Olcott himself might have overestimated his importance according to Gordon.58 Probably as a tribute to Olcott’s

54 55 56 57 58

CO 54/547, 26 June 1883/No. 306. Longden to Kimberley. Enclosure. Quinn, “Henry Steel Olcott,” 28. Vesak is the Buddhist festival on which Buddha’s birthday is celebrated. Wickremeratne, “Religion, Nationalism, and Social Change,” 28. CO 54/552, 18 February 1884/No. 51. Gordon to Derby.

revivals

287

infl uence, Gordon gave in to some of the Buddhists’ minor demands. He made Vesak a public holiday and followed Olcott’s suggestion to reconsider the Temple Lands problem. On the other hand, Gordon refused to appoint Buddhist registrars or to officially declare the government’s neutrality in religious affairs.59 Thus, the politically more important demands of the Buddhists were declined. Moreover, the ordinance to improve the management of temple lands introduced by Gordon in 1889 quickly proved to be unsuccessful.60 However, Gordon’s modest and mostly symbolic concessions further enhanced his public image as a “friend of the natives”. Olcott as well profited from the concessions and fortified his position within the Buddhist revivalist movement in Ceylon.61 The Buddhist Defence Committee and its work as a pressure group was one of the first cases of open political agitation on the Buddhist side. The immediate benefits were limited, but by the time the Buddhist community became more vociferous. The firm Buddhist resistance to the highly oppressive quarter-mile rule of 1891 illustrates this. Although Buddhist agitation could not prevent the retrospective implementation of the quarter-mile rule, the improved organisational backing of the Buddhists enabled them to circumvent the ordinance’s provisions and further expand their school network in the 1890s.62 But it was not only the enhanced organisation of the Buddhist movement that gave additional momentum to Buddhist demands. During the so-called Kalutara Bo tree affair63 Buddhists laymen held the first anti-government mass demonstration [on 26 November 1896] concerning religion in the south western coastal area, the centre of the Buddhist revival. It came after a full century of British rule and foreshadowed both the more widely supported agitation over sacred sites at Anuradhapura in the first decade of the twentieth century and the explicit use of state power after 1956 to extend Buddhist sacred space.64

Without the encouragement of the BTS or any other Buddhist organisation, a petty dispute between the British authorities and the Wickremeratne, “Religion, Nationalism, and Social Change,” 28–29. Wimalaratne, “The Impact of British Policy on the Buddhist Temporalities”, 7. 61 Wickremeratne, “Religion, Nationalism, and Social Change,” 29. 62 Quinn, “Henry Steel Olcott,” 30. 63 See John D. Rogers, “The Kalutara Bo Tree Affair, 1891–1897,” in Sri Lanka: Collective Identities Revisited, ed. Michael Roberts and Marga Institute (Colombo: Marga Institute, 1997). 64 Ibid., 331. 59 60

288

chapter twelve

local Buddhists over a Bo tree and a Buddhist shrine led to a mass assembly of Buddhist laymen and an explicitly anti-government demonstration. This highlights the changing quality of Buddhist resistance and agitation during the 1890s and the importance of the lay element in the movement. Therefore, Olcott’s main impact on the Buddhist revivalist movement was the provision of an organisational background to increase and strengthen the participation of the Buddhist laity. The new economic elites played a crucial role in the expansion of Buddhist educational facilities, in the provision of funding and in the organisation of the movement. In their identification with the Buddhist cause they saw a means to enhance their social status and to challenge the primacy of the traditional elites.65 During the closing years of the nineteenth century, Buddhist consciousness and resistance spread among the lower social ranks as well—as it can be seen in the Kalutara demonstration of 1896. It was in those years that the religious nationalism of the Buddhist movement gradually acquired political nationalist qualities.66 Although Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism became an eminent political force only in the twentieth century—for the first time in the Temperance Movement67—its roots reach back to the Buddhist revivalist movement of the 1880s and 1890s. The growth of political nationalism on the soil of religious ideas must mainly be attributed to the infl uence of the economic elites who tried to use the movement as a public base to support their own claims to political representation and social elite status. 12.4

The Hindu Revival

The emergence of political nationalist overtones in the Buddhist revivalist movement during the 1890s also had an impact on Buddhist-Hindu relations. Years before Buddhism started to defend itself against Christian inroads, the Tamil Hindus of northern Ceylon had Wickremeratne, “Religion, Nationalism, and Social Change,” 13. Kingsley M. De Silva, “Nineteenth Century Origins of Nationalism in Ceylon,” in University of Ceylon History of Ceylon. From the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century to 1948, ed. Kingsley M. De Silva (Peradeniya: University of Peradeniya, 1973), 258–59. 67 See John D. Rogers, “Cultural Nationalism and Social Reform. The 1904 Temperance Movement in Sri Lanka,” Studies in Society and Culture: Sri Lanka Past and Present (1994). 65 66

revivals

289

already witnessed a gradual revival of their religion. The economic situation in the Jaffna Peninsula, the greater importance attached to education, the backing by South Indian Hindus and the individual contribution of Arumugam Navalar are some of the more often cited causes for the comparatively early take-off of Hindu religious revivalism. When the Buddhists eventually followed the Hindu example, relations between Hindu and Buddhist revivalists were usually amicable.68 Hindu and Buddhist interests were welded together by the existence of a common foe—Christianity. On the Hindu side the brothers Ponnambalam Ramanathan and Ponnambalam Arunachalam even actively supported the Buddhist movement. Ramanathan—in his role as Tamil MLC—supported the recognition of Vesak as a public holiday, suggested to found a National Buddhist Hindu College and donated Rs 25.000 to that cause. However, he later withdrew this donation, when the Buddhist-Hindu joint-venture failed due to a confl ict over the management of the college.69 The Hindu revival was mostly free of political nationalist aspirations. In the first place, the vellala caste was the motor behind Hindu revivalism. Being the Tamil counterpart to the Sinhalese goyigamas, the vellalas occupied the top position in the Tamil caste system. Accordingly, the main social and political aim of the vellala Hindu revivalists lay rather in the preservation of their superior position. Openly nationalist or anti-colonial agitation would not have been very helpful in that respect. Similarly, the comparatively tight educational network—both missionary and indigenous—that had been established in the Jaffna Peninsula and the high importance attached to education by the Tamils had secured them an infl uential position in the colonial administration by the second half of the nineteenth century—at least in comparison to Sinhalese or Muslim representation in that sphere. Therefore, social and political emancipation through the proclamation of nationalist ideas and notions was neither necessary nor helpful for the Hindu revivalists. The rigid Tamil caste system and the resulting social stratification practically excluded lower castes 68 R. Bastin, “The Authentic Inner Life. Complicity and Resistance in the Tamil Hindu Revival,” in Sri Lanka: Collective Identities Revisited, ed. Michael Roberts and Marga Institute (Colombo: Marga Institute, 1997), 391. 69 S. K. Sitrampalam, “Hindu Revivalism in Northern Sri Lanka During the 19th Century. A Historical Perspective,” Journal of the Institute of Asian Studies 11, no. 2 (1994): 13.

290

chapter twelve

from participating in the revivalist movement. The movement did not aim at social reform—a fact frequently pointed out by De Silva70—, nor did it propagate nationalist ideas. Thus, Hindu revivalism can be characterised as a cultural and religious revivalism aiming at the maintenance of the social and political status quo. The leading figure in early Hindu revivalism was Arumugam Navalar (1822–1879). Educated at a Wesleyan Methodist school, Navalar started teaching at the Methodist Central School in Jaffna after his graduation and helped to translate the Bible into Tamil. In 1848, he quitted his post and founded his first Saivite school.71 The foundation of Hindu schools as an alternative to the Christian missionary schools remained an important issue throughout Navalar’s life, but his contribution to the preservation of orthodox Saivism72 was even more significant. In that context, Navalar was active in the restoration and renovation of many Hindu temples in the Jaffna Peninsula. He publicised an impressive number of Saivite religious texts, thus “preserving the heritage of the Hindus in Sri Lanka”.73 He used his education and the organisational skills acquired at the Wesleyan school in favour of the Hindu cause. Like many other Ceylon Tamils, Navalar had received and benefited from a Christian education, but had never converted to Christianity. Attending Christian schools—even if it was necessary to impersonate a good Christian while at school—was widespread among the wellto-do Tamils due to the boundless “love of the Jaffnese to obtain some knowledge of English at any cost.”74 The importance that the Tamils attached to education in general (and to English education in

70 Kingsley M. De Silva, Managing Ethnic Tensions in Multi-Ethnic Societies: Sri Lanka, 1880–1985 (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1986), 38–39; Kingsley M. De Silva, A History of Sri Lanka (London; Berkeley: C. Hurst; University of California Press, 1981). 71 Bastin, “The Authentic Inner Life,” 407. 72 “Hindu revivalism was more precisely the revival of Saivism—the Hindu worship centring on the cult of Siva. The particular form of Saivism celebrated was the Saiva Siddhanta (“Established Truth”) philosophy which had become a largely Tamil and literate discourse after the twelfth century in south India, with the principal texts being the agamas. [. . .] In essence, Siddhanta outlines a doctrine of existence as consisting of manifestations of the supreme godhead, Siva, as well as a scheme for the maintenance of life and the acquisition of knowledge leading to release (moksa).” Ibid., 394. 73 De Silva, Managing Ethnic Tensions, 38. 74 Quoted in K. H. M. Sumathipala and Christopher W. W. Kannangara, History of Education in Ceylon, 1796–1965. With Special Reference to the Contribution Made by

revivals

291

particular) stemmed from the limited economic opportunities of the Jaffna Peninsula. Extraordinarily high population density, increasing pressure on land and the lack of urbanisation and industrialisation severely affected the economic prosperity of the peninsula.75 Therefore, “[t]he acquisition of education, specifically English education, became the substitute for industrialization and economic growth in the peninsula. It helped to mop up excess manpower from the land and the Tamils of Jaffna were well poised to take advantage of the new opportunities.”76 The existence of a tight-knit network of Wesleyan and American missionary schools in the densely populated northern areas facilitated the acquisition of vernacular and English education. At the same time, the importance attached to education by the Tamils accelerated the establishment of indigenous educational facilities. Although the missionary societies fought bitterly against the foundation of Tamil schools, there were as many as 65 Saivite and private schools on the island with an average attendance of 4,289 pupils in the year 1900.77 12.5

The Muslim Revival

The so-called revival of Islam, which started in the mid-1880s when the Buddhist and Hindu revivals were already in progress, was rather a modernisation movement than a revival in the sense of the word. Unlike the Buddhists or the Hindus, the small and compact Ceylonese Muslim community had not been a major target of Christian proselytising activities. Only few very wealthy families had hitherto taken advantage of the Christian missionary schools and sent their children to acquire an English education there. The conservatism and the religious convictions of the Muslim community mostly prevented the enrolment of Muslim children in missionary schools. Thus, the Moors of nineteenth-century Ceylon seriously lagged behind in the

C. W. W. Kannangara to the Educational Development of Ceylon, Etc, (Ceylon Historical Journal. Vol. 13.) (Dehiwala: Tisara Prakasakayo, 1968), 31. 75 Sinnappah Arasaratnam, “Sri Lanka’s Tamils: Under Colonial Rule,” in The Sri Lankan Tamils: Ethnicity and Identity, ed. Chelvadurai Manogaran and Bryan Pfaffenberger (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994), 45–46. 76 Ibid., 47. 77 Administration Report 1900.

292

chapter twelve

field of education—most notably in the acquisition of English language skills. Apart from the religious conservatism and the fear of Christian proselytising in missionary schools, the Muslim notion of social upward mobility through the accumulation of wealth hampered the progress of education in the community.78 Trade was the traditional occupation of the Moors and the general means of wealth accumulation. In the eyes of many Muslims, a profound educational background was not necessary to be successful as a merchant. The Muslim community did not experience economic pressure to invest in education like the Jaffna Tamils did. Accordingly, traditional Muslim ideas of education revolved mainly around the teaching of Arabic and of the Koran that was done in madrasas (mosque schools).79 Although there had been some isolated efforts within the Muslim community to improve Muslim educational facilities and to promote English education before, the arrival of Arabi Pasha in Ceylon in the year 1883 marks the beginning of reformist activity. Similar to the Buddhist revival, it was an outside catalyst that provided the decisive impetus to the Muslim modernisation movement. The Egyptian Arabi Pasha came to Ceylon as an exile. He had led Egyptian nationalists against the British authority.80 For the Muslim community on the island,

78 K. D. G. Wimalaratne, “Muslims under British Rule in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) 1796–1948,” in Muslims of Sri Lanka: Avenues to Antiquity, ed. M. A. M. Shukri (Beruwela, Sri Lanka: Jamiah Naleemia Inst., 1986), 426. 79 V. Samaraweera, “The Muslim Revivalist Movement, 1880–1915,” in Sri Lanka: Collective Identities Revisited, ed. Michael Roberts and Marga Institute (Colombo: Marga Institute, 1997), 300. 80 “The growth of the middle-class in Egypt had brought about deep political consciousness, one result of which was the formation of the Liberal Nationlist Party in 1878. It was led by Muhamed Abduh, the celebrated disciple of an even more celebrated master Jamaludin-al-Afghani. Under Abduh the party might have been a party of ideas in as much as it acquired courtiers like Abdullah-al-Nadim; but it also attracted soldiers like Sami-al-Barudi and Arabi Pasha. The grant of a liberal constitution and the inauguration of a parliamentary regime were some of the proposals put forward by this party. Arabi Pasha and Sami-ai-Barudi wanted quicker progress on these aims, which invited opposition from the ruler of Egypt, Khedive Tewfik, as well as from the land-owing aristocracy. Anti-British feeling fl ared up severely, and the British, true to their philosophy, found it necessary and opportune to suppress the nationalists led by Arabi Pasha at Tel-al-Kabir in 1882. Eventually, this led to the trial for treason of Arabi and his followers and the subsequent exile to Sri Lanka.” M. M. M. Mahroof, “British Rule and the Muslims (1800–1900),” in An Ethnological Survey of the Muslims of Sri Lanka: From Earliest Times to Independence, ed. M. M. M. Mahroof and Sir Razik Fareed Foundation (Sri Lanka) (Colombo: Sir Razik Fareed Foundation, 1986), 82.

revivals

293

who had followed his trial and banishment in the media, Arabi Pasha soon became a symbolic figure. The police in Ceylon kept a close eye on him and his infl uence on the Muslim (and even Sinhalese) revivalist aspirations. Although Arabi Pasha is sometimes—falsely—described as the driving force behind the Muslim modernisation movement,81 he did not actively participate in any revivalist activities. In his first press conference in Ceylon, Arabi Pasha publicly announced that he would send his son to a Christian school. He explicitly emphasised the importance of education—also the education of Muslim girls—for the Muslim community.82 While Arabi Pasha, thus, became a symbolic and integrative identification figure in the Muslim modernisation process, Mohamed Cassim Siddi Lebbe was the real agent of Muslim educational progress.83 Siddi Lebbe was one of the few English-educated Moors. He was a proctor admitted to the Supreme Court and ran a practice at Kandy.84 Even before Arabi Pasha’s arrival on the island, Siddi Lebbe had propagated the improvement of Muslim educational facilities—albeit with little success. In 1882, he founded a Muslim newspaper—the “Muslim Naisan”—to promote his ideas and to gather supporters. It took two more years until his efforts first bore fruits in the establishment of the Al Madurasathul Khairiyyatul Islamiah—the first Anglo-Muslim school in Ceylon—at Maradana in 1884. The financial support of A. M. Wapche Marikkar had been crucial for the opening of the school.85 In 1891, Siddi Lebbe established three Muslim girls’ schools at Kandy, Kurunegala and Gampola. But, like the school at Maradana, these schools deteriorated quickly when the initial enthusiasm of the supporters had worn off. In 1892, however, the newly founded Colombo Muslim Educational Society established the Al Madurasathuz Zahira at the site of the former Al Madurasathul. The Zahira College was modelled after the successful Christian missionary schools. It was well-managed and even registered for a government grant in 1894 as the Maradana Muhammedan Boy’s School.86 The Zahira College enjoyed a high reputation in the Muslim community. An increasing awareness of See, for instance, M. N. M. Kamil Asad, The Muslims of Sri Lanka under the British Rule (New Delhi: Navrang, 1993), 49–53. 82 Samaraweera, “The Muslim Revivalist Movement,” 299. 83 Mahroof, “British Rule and the Muslims,” 85. 84 Samaraweera, “The Muslim Revivalist Movement,” 299. 85 Ibid., 299–300. 86 Ibid., 300. 81

294

chapter twelve

the importance and benefits of English education during those closing years of the nineteenth century contributed to the success of the college. Proficiency in English became more and more important in the business world—and, therefore, for the Muslim traders and merchants.87 Accordingly, the Muslims’ attitude towards secular education had started to change gradually. Although progress was slow, Muslim educational facilities expanded. By 1900, there were four Muslim schools in Ceylon registered for a government grant.88 The propagation of education and the establishment of Muslim schools was the main issue of Muslim modernisation in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. But the promotion of education was only one aspect of a development that has been labelled as the “arabisation of moors”89 in Ceylon. Arabi Pasha’s symbolic importance mainly drew from his role as an integrating figure for the Ceylonese Muslim community. Unlike the Sinhalese and the Tamils, the Muslims of nineteenth-century Ceylon had no religious or political leaders at the national level.90 The small and segregated Muslim communities were largely self-focussed. Although Arabi Pasha did not actively provide leadership to the Muslims, his presence in Ceylon had a certain unifying impact on the Muslim community of the island. And when Ponnambalam Ramanathan incited a debate about the ethnic origin of the Ceylon Moors, the “arabisation” of the Muslim community gained additional momentum as a reaction to Ramanathan’s claims. To outmanoeuvre the non-goyigama Sinhalese ambitions for political representation in the Legislative Council, Governor Gordon enlarged the council in 1889 by admitting a Kandyan Sinhalese and a Muslim MLC. When Gordon’s intentions had become public, Ponnambalam Ramanathan—the Tamil MLC—had started a public debate about the origin of the Ceylon Moors. He had stated that the Moors were of Dravidian origin and, thus, basically Tamils

Ibid., 304. Administration Report 1900. 89 F. Zackariya and N. Shanmugaratnam, “Communalisation of Muslims in Sri Lanka. An Historical Perspective,” in Alternative Perspectives: A Collection of Essays on Contemporary Muslim Society, ed. Muslim Women’s Research and Action Forum (Colombo: 1999). 90 V. Samaraweera, “Aspects of Muslim Revivalist Movement in the Late Nineteenth Century,” in Muslims of Sri Lanka: Avenues to Antiquity, ed. M. A. M. Shukri (Beruwela, Sri Lanka: Jamiah Naleemia Inst., 1986), 367. 87 88

revivals

295

converted to Islam. On the side of the Muslims, I. L. M. Abdul Azeez took up the issue and vehemently attacked Ramanathan and his views. He once said: It was thought, nay believed, that [Ramanathan’s] object in calling Moors Tamils in race was to dissuade the Government from appointing a Moorish member in the Council, it having leaked out then that the Government were contemplating to appoint such a one, and to make them understand that there was no such necessity for taking such a step, as the Moors did not form a distinct race.91

It seems rather unlikely that even Ramanathan himself really believed in his assumption of the Dravidian origin of the Moors. He simply wanted to safeguard the political representation of the Moors for the Tamil MLC. However, Gordon’s determination to outwit the non-goyigama Sinhalese eventually led to the appointment of the first Muslim MLC in 1889—M. C. Abdul Rahiman. The debate over the ethnic origin of the Moors had caused a strengthening of the Muslim collective identity and a re-emphasis of the Moors’ Arab roots. The expansion of Muslim educational facilities and the publication of Muslim newspapers (in Tamil as well as in English) further nurtured the rise of a Muslim identity and promoted the opening of the Muslim community toward the Arab world.

91

Quoted in ibid., 374.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CONCLUSION 13.1

Export Economy and Monoculture

The aim of this book has been twofold. On the one hand, most obviously, the economic and social history of the British crown colony Ceylon in the last twenty years of the nineteenth century stood at the core of this study. Many times I felt it was necessary to go further back in history to uncover the roots of certain processes or to highlight continuities or disruptions in the island’s development. The focus of the work, however, clearly rested on the two closing decades of the century. Much has happened in these twenty years. An economic crisis of hitherto unknown gravity hit the island. The well-established agricultural export economy was completely uprooted within only a few years, when several unfavourable factors (such as the spread of a plant disease, crop monoculture and unrewarding world market prices) combined and brought coffee cultivation to a swift and rarely foreseen end in the early 1880s. After a deep economic depression, the advent of tea cultivation completely transformed the plantation sector and all of the involved factors of production. Subsistence agriculture came under mounting government pressure, and many peasants saw themselves pushed into wage labour—an effect which has often been overlooked by labour historians. The money economy started to transform village life in Ceylon. In the administrational sphere, the lower ranks of the Ceylon Civil Service were thrown open to indigenous aspirants and a revised grant-in-aid system hampered the extension of the school network. Ceylonese society itself further diversified during these decades. The new commercial elite that had emerged in the preceding decades firmly established itself and challenged the primacy of the traditional elites for the first time. And the immigrant estate labour force mostly settled on the estates and became a permanent feature of Ceylonese society. Finally, the so-called religious revivals gained momentum during the 1880s and 1890s. The indigenous religious communities received outside impulses and support and developed aspirations to participate in Ceylon’s educational

298

chapter thirteen

system. All these incidents and processes have taken place in the last twenty years of the nineteenth century and render the study of this period an extremely enlightening and rewarding endeavour for every social historian. Therefore, it has been one aim of this work to present the reader with a concise social and economic history of the island of Ceylon in this period. Building on the high historical significance of this relatively short period of observation, this book also tried to tackle another task. As has been pointed out already, the collapse of the coffee enterprise in Ceylon was unusually quick and thorough. And, most importantly, it directly impacted on the general state of the colony and was not cushioned by other branches of the plantation economy or other economic sectors. Ceylon at that time featured an almost undiluted agricultural economy with an export sector organised around the monoculture of coffee. The crisis and eventual collapse of this single enterprise marks a clear cut in Ceylon’s economic history and has served in this book as an opportunity to study the interconnectedness of all the different economic, social and cultural developments mentioned above. I have tried to show how the collapse of coffee cultivation and the economic depression that followed in its wake have severely curtailed the government’s room for manoeuvre in a variety of important fields. State funds were depleted and highest priority was attached to the reanimation of the plantation enterprise. This attitude informed much of the government’s policy during the crisis. Both the administrative and the educational history of late nineteenth-century Ceylon are characterised by retrenchment measures combined with an unwillingness for real reform. On the other hand, the revived plantation industry furthered the social ascent of the new economic elites and brought about the permanent settlement of the plantation labour force in Ceylon. The fate of the indigenous peasantry was even more closely linked to the plantation sector. The peasants carried much of the financial (i.e. tax) burden, when coffee cultivation collapsed, and later experienced mounting pressure on land and water exerted by an ever-expanding estate system. In short, the thorough transformation of the agricultural export sector in the last two decades of the nineteenth century had significant repercussions in many other economic, social and cultural contexts. It has been the second central aim of this book to highlight these repercussions and to reveal the causalities and interrelations on which they rest.

conclusion

299

The export of cash crops has been a prime source of state revenue in Ceylon since the days of Dutch occupation, when the export of cinnamon had been highly remunerative thus being one of the main reasons behind the Dutch interest in the island. Cinnamon was almost exclusively produced for the export market and its large-scale cultivation brought the global and the local Ceylonese economy in contact for the first time on any significant scale. The British continued the Dutch state monopoly on cinnamon, but unfavourable world market conditions soon rendered the cinnamon export less profitable. In the wake of the liberalist Colebrooke-Cameron reforms, the cinnamon monopoly was abolished in the 1830s, but this would not lead to a revival of the industry. Instead, the first large-scale coffee plantations sprang up in the Kandyan highlands and soon proved to be a financial success. Although coffee cultivation relied on immigrant labour from South India from very early on, most of the other factors of production were locally owned. Suitable land was abundant after the conquest of the Kandyan highlands. The capital mostly came from locally resident government officials. While the export side of the business naturally depended on world market demand and prices, the factors of production—with the possible exception of immigrant labour—were largely free of world economic infl uence. This quickly changed in the 1840s—the first boom period of coffee cultivation. Favourable world market prospects and easy access to other production factors such as land, labour and infrastructure induced European entrepreneurs to invest in large-scale coffee cultivation in Ceylon. The colonial government and the Colonial Office supported the planting enterprise enthusiastically, as they saw Colebrooke’s vision of the establishment of a liberal market economy on the island come true. The agricultural export sector became more and more integrated into the world market. By the mid-1840s, the expanding plantation industry had become the backbone of Ceylon’s economy and received the exclusive attention of the state. The government revenue began to depend heavily on the export duties on plantation produce. Accordingly, a good part of government expenditure fl owed directly into the improvement of the island’s infrastructure and other undertakings that facilitated the expansion of the plantation industry. The development of indigenous agriculture—the economic basis of the majority of the indigenous population—on the other hand was largely neglected. The financial

300

chapter thirteen

means of the colonial government were mainly pumped into the development of plantation agriculture. At the same time, the economic success of large-scale coffee cultivation slowly created a distinct agricultural pattern in the Kandyan highlands—coffee monoculture. And so the exclusive focus of the economic and political authorities of the island on the welfare of the plantation venture not only led to an almost total economic dependence on the plantation industry, but to an almost exclusive dependence on the cultivation of one crop—coffee. The potential economic risks involved in monoculture and the reliance on a single crop first came into the limelight in the late 1840s, when falling coffee prices in the world market drew the Ceylonese economy into a temporary depression. Although the plantation industry recovered quickly with the soaring coffee prices of the 1850s, this first coffee crisis is particularly important, because it demonstrated the potential dangers of monoculture at a very early stage. When coffee prices fell, many plantations became unprofitable and exports decreased. Depending largely on the export duties, the state revenue suffered severely from the crisis and the colonial government levied additional taxes on the rural population. In combination with other factors, this led to an upheaval of parts of the Kandyan population that was quenched by British troops in 1848. Such desperate measures adopted by the government to re-fill the state coffers illustrate how directly the fortunes of the plantation economy impacted on policies and reactions in other economic, social or cultural spheres. Although the events of the late 1840s show that such interrelations must have already been well-established in that early phase of the plantation enterprise in Ceylon, later events indicate that the interdependence of plantation economy and state revenue grew steadily in the course of the nineteenth century. Nineteenth-century Ceylon was—almost exclusively—an agricultural export economy. There was almost no industry on the island apart from a few small-scale ventures in the vicinity of Colombo. The indigenous people lived largely of subsistence agriculture—mostly wet rice cultivation or shifting cultivation. In the Kandyan highlands, native coffee gardens were quite widespread, provided the local peasantry with a modest cash income and quickened the monetisation of these rural regions. In the Low-Country, coconut smallholdings were common among the villagers. However, the plantation enterprise remained the sole pillar of Ceylon’s export economy. It is, thus, even more

conclusion

301

surprising that the plantation sector experienced almost no diversification until the 1870s. The depressions of the late 1840s and 1860s had demonstrated the vulnerability of coffee monoculture. But these signs remained unheeded by large parts of the planting community. Even the appearance of a mysterious disease that infected coffee plants and seriously diminished their yield in the late 1860s did not lessen the planters’ belief in the bright future of coffee cultivation as long as soaring coffee prices and falling production costs kept the plantations highly remunerative. Favourable world market conditions and a seemingly unlimited access to local land and labour resources attracted capital from abroad even at times of declining per-acre yields. However, the disease responsible for such decreasing yields spread quickly and had soon infected coffee plants on almost all estates on the island. The dense planting of one single crop in large, adjacent spaces considerably facilitated the wildfire spread of the Coffee Leaf Disease. When world market prices for coffee finally crashed due to the infl ux of Brazilian produce into the British market and the general economic depression in Great Britain, the coffee industry collapsed completely and somewhat suddenly in the early 1880s. The hazards of monoculture had manifested themselves unmistakably: a plant disease had severely diminished production and world market fl uctuations had destroyed the overseas market for the only export crop. Only the more cautious and sensible planters had invested modest sums in the cultivation of cinchona in the late 1870s. Only with the capital derived from the export of cinchona bark, the plantation industry managed to survive the years of depression in the early 1880s. Cinchona was a typical transitional crop in Ceylon. World market demand for the anti-malarial drug produced from cinchona bark had significantly increased due to the growing European colonial interest in Africa. World market prices were favourable in the early 1880s. Yet, the infl exibility of the market for medical products and the disadvantageous position of Ceylon against other Asian competitors in cinchona production had made it clear from the beginning that the plant presented no feasible alternative to large-scale coffee cultivation. Therefore, engagement in cinchona cultivation was neither sustainable nor long-lived. The planters squeezed the last out of their holdings, exported inferior bark and over-saturated the infl exible market for cinchona. Nevertheless, they gathered enough capital to gradually convert their ruined coffee plantations to tea estates. The climate and topographical features of Ceylon soon proved to be ideally suited

302

chapter thirteen

for tea cultivation. And the new crop—much like coffee had done before—responded very favourably to the fl exible demands of the British consumer society whose model had spread to other European and American countries already. When the first tea plantations were a financial success, foreign capital started to pour into the island again. The tea industry expanded at a hitherto unseen pace. It was only in 1897 that the tea industry of Ceylon experienced its first major slump due to adverse world market conditions and overproduction on the island. The industry recovered in 1907, but the depression had not been nearly as serious as the coffee crisis of the 1880s. The planting community learned from its mistakes. First, after years of coarse tea plucking and overproduction, the planters eventually resorted to finer plucking, produced less but better tea and restored their own market, while, in earlier years, overproduction of inferior produce had enhanced the collapse of coffee and later led to the ruin of the cinchona market. The dominance of joint-stock companies in the Ceylon tea industry and their better coordination and understanding of market operations now contributed to a reorientation. Second, the slump of 1897–1907 induced the planting community to finally move towards product diversification. The closing years of the nineteenth century saw the promising beginnings of rubber cultivation in Ceylon and, thus, the first real diversification of the European plantation sector on the island. 13.2

The Transformation of the Factors of Production

During the transitional period of the mid-1880s, the planters used the existing resources of the now defunct coffee plantations—land, labour and infrastructure—to set up and run tea estates. However, the cultivation of tea proved to be far more capital intensive than coffee cultivation had ever been. The tea leaves had to be processed after plucking and required either a large labour force or sophisticated machinery. Moreover, the bushes needed year-round attendance and, therefore, a resident workforce. Such capital requirements led to a growing importance of joint-stock tea companies, whereas the proprietor-planter of the coffee days became a rare institution. The tea industry fl ourished throughout the late 1880s and 1890s and provided the colonial government with record revenues, most of which were re-invested in the improvement of the infrastructure. But not only

conclusion

303

in the sphere of capital provision and organisation did the transition to tea cultivation usher in major qualitative changes. Both land and labour requirements of the tea plantations were substantially different from the pattern established during coffee times. As has been seen, the transformations in these two spheres had crucial consequences for the local peasantry and their land titles as well as for the permanent ethnic composition of the Kandyan highlands. By South Asian standards the island of Ceylon had—at least until the late nineteenth century—never been densely populated. Most of the population centres had developed along the south-western coastline which enjoyed a number of geographical and climatic advantages and had therefore been at the core of early European colonial domination. More remote regions like the northern Dry Zone or the central highlands remained sparsely populated in comparison. After the British conquest of the Kandyan kingdom, the establishment of the first Up-Country coffee plantations in the 1820s, 1830s and early 1840s was facilitated by the low population density and the absence of any significant pressure on land. The colonial government declared all uncultivated and unoccupied lands property of the Crown and granted or sold vast tracts of land at giveaway prices. With the rapid extension of the plantation acreage and the planters’ well-developed taste for chena lands, the first confl icts between the peasantry and the planters arose in the 1840s. The “Crown Lands Encroachment Ordinance” of 1840 secured the planters’ titles to the newly acquired lands and put an end to native claims to the former chena lands. Due to the land hunger of the plantation enterprise the confl ict over chena lands intensified in the following decades. The colonial government supported the claims of the planting community and placed severe restrictions on chena cultivation in the central highlands. These measures dealt a blow to the interests of the Kandyan peasantry. But the villagers did not exclusively depend on the chenas. The village paddy lands remained largely untouched by the expansion of the plantations and the confl ict over the chenas did not render the peasantry landless (until the forcible sale of paddy land for the default of the Paddy Tax in the 1880s). During the coffee crisis and the transitional phase of the 1880s, the pressure on chena land stagnated as the plantation acreage did not expand during that time. However, the confl ict over land reached new heights with the explosion of tea cultivation in the 1890s. The implementation of the “Waste Lands Ordinance” of 1897—often called a landgrabbing tool—marks the peak both of the

304

chapter thirteen

confl ict as well as of state intervention on behalf of the planters. The provisions of the ordinance were vigorously carried out and by the year 1899 allegedly 140,000 acres of land1 had been claimed by the Crown under the “Waste Lands Ordinance.” The transition from coffee to tea cultivation had, thus, dramatically intensified the struggle for arable land in Ceylon. Governmental support of the planting interest placed the local peasantry at an extremely disadvantageous position in this struggle and substantially contributed to the further deterioration of subsistence agriculture in the island. As regards the provision of ever more labour to the estates, the colonial government had only taken to active support in the very early stages of the plantation economy. Several of the first estates—mostly belonging to government officials or military men—had been worked by rajakariya. Later, a secondary aim of the abolition of rajakariya was the creation of a Sinhalese plantation workforce to foster the development of a plantation economy on the island. The immediate benefits were limited. Although Sinhalese villagers worked on the early coffee estates of the 1820s and 1830s, their number could not satisfy the demands of the expanding plantations. The high demand for labour along with pressing economic push factors in South India induced the immigration of South Indian Tamils. Since the 1840s the Indian immigrant labourers have constituted the majority of the plantation workers in Ceylon. Although labour migration from India to Ceylon was not subjected to any legal restrictions, the planters soon tried to organise the infl ux of plantation labourers to guarantee a stable and fl exible labour supply to their plantations. The kangany system emerged and became the synonym for a tight network of informal bondage between the labourers, the kanganies and the planters which gave the latter two a strong hold over the immigrant workers. Contrary to that of coffee, the cultivation of tea requires a permanent workforce resident on or at least near the plantations. This particular requirement brought the established seasonal migration pattern of the biggest part of the foreign plantation labourers to a halt. By far the biggest part of the Tamil labourers settled in the Ceylonese highlands and introduced a new permanent element to the ethnic composition of the region—the so-called Indian Tamils. In the ethnic confl ict, that has been haunting Sri Lanka for almost

1

CO 54/659, 16 March 1899/Offices and Individuals.

conclusion

305

25 years now, the plantation Tamils play little active role. They have, however, suffered significantly under the ethnic strife between the majority Sinhalese and the so-called Sri Lankan Tamils in the northern and eastern parts of the country. Although the Indian and the Sri Lankan Tamils have distinctly different historical and cultural backgrounds and usually maintain only few social ties with each other, the two groups have repeatedly been lumped together in public perception. Significantly, it has been the Indian Tamils who have been hit hardest by the anti-Tamil politics of the Sri Lankan government in the 1940s and 1950s, while the perceived Sinhala-Tamil rivalry over issues of education, language or career opportunities mainly concerned the Sinhalese and the Sri Lankan Tamils. Since the outbreak of open hostilities in 1983, the situation and public standing of the Indian Tamil minority in Sri Lanka has all but improved. While the majority of the plantation workforce has been of Indian Tamil origin throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Sinhalese participation in estate labour especially in the late nineteenth century should not be underestimated. It has been recognised in contemporary resources as well as in the secondary literature that Sinhalese villagers have at all times taken part in estate wage-labour. However, their share has generally been considered close to insignificant and the Sinhalese were described as ‘reluctant’ to work on the plantations. As long as the Sinhalese villagers were able to make a reasonable living from subsistence agriculture, they did, indeed, not feel the economic need to partake in plantation work. At such times, the share of non-resident Sinhalese plantation labourers has certainly never exceeded 10% of the total plantation workforce. However, economic need pushed a good part of the Sinhalese villagers into estate wage-labour in the late 1880s and early 1890s. The natural growth of the population, the government restrictions on chenaing, the collapse of peasant coffee and, finally, the forcible sale of village paddy lands for tax defaults created a class of landless peasants who were forced to take up labour on the plantations. I estimate that the share of non-resident Sinhalese estate labour amounted to around 40% of the total workforce in the year 1891.2 Although my calculations—as

2 See Roland Wenzlhuemer, “The Sinhalese Contribution to Estate Labour in Ceylon, 1881–1891,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 48, no. 3 (2005).

306

chapter thirteen

carried out in Chapter six—are open to critique, the increase of the relative portion of resident Sinhalese estate labour from 2.98% of the total workforce in 1881 to 7.48% in 18913 strongly supports this estimate. The increasing economic pressure on the peasantry and the continuing lack of government support pushed many Sinhalese villagers into plantation labour in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, the fl ow of local villagers into plantation wage-labour was a comparatively late phenomenon and even in the 1880s and 1890s the plantation economy depended on an outside supply of labour. The internal labour resources of the island were not large enough to support the expanding plantation economy. Therefore, the planters tapped external sources. Similarly, capital for the establishment of plantations had to be brought in from abroad. Although coffee cultivation has not been a particularly capital-intensive venture, it has been estimated that the minimum capital needed to open up a coffee plantation in 1844 amounted to £ 3,000.4 Such initial money requirements excluded the majority of local entrepreneurs from participation in coffee cultivation. Thus, the young industry depended on European capital and attracted mainly investors from Great Britain. Many of these proprietor-planters had to take up loans from agency-houses or banks to bridge the time lag between the planting of the estate and the sale of the produce in the London market. These agency-houses and banks occupied a crucial position in the plantation economy and had a strong hold over many planters. The dependence on foreign capital and borrowed money prevailed throughout the coffee period and well into the tea era, because the Ceylonese plantation industry lacked the benefits of self-generating capital. The majority of the planters did not make Ceylon their permanent home and transferred most of their profits to their home country. Similarly, the wages of the plantation labourers only partially remained on the island. Little was re-invested in the economy as the planters lacked a long-term perspective. Only once in the nineteenth century did self-generated capital play a significant role in the development of the economy: when the planting community financed the capital-intensive transition from coffee to tea with the proceeds from their cinchona trees. The

Report on the Census of 1891, 41. I. H. Vanden Driesen, “Some Aspects of the Financing of Commercial Enterprise in 19th Century Ceylon,” Ceylon University Review 18, no. 3+4 (1960): 215. 3 4

conclusion

307

infl ux of foreign capital had come to a halt during the coffee crisis and continued only after tea cultivation had proved its profitability. The higher capital requirements of tea cultivation substantially changed the prevailing investment pattern. Joint-stock companies became more and more important as few proprietor-planters could raise the monetary means to participate successfully in tea cultivation. The economiesof-scale involved in the cultivation of tea fostered the emergence of tea companies. 13.3

Peasant Agriculture

At least since the middle of the nineteenth century, the general economic state of the crown colony Ceylon has been intimately connected to the fortune of the agricultural export sector. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that—especially in times of economic difficulties and agricultural transition—the attention of the colonial government rested mainly on the welfare of the plantation sector. While the provision of key factors of production to the plantation enterprise was a high governmental priority, the state of the indigenous peasantry was of less immediate concern to the administrators. Issues like the improvement of the water supply were simply tackled too late without a concise action plan or sufficient funding. In other spheres, however, especially where the interests of the export and the subsistence sectors confl icted, the government even adopted an explicitly pro-planter position. The government’s land ownership and use policies serve as prime examples here. More than two thirds of the island’s population made a modest living from subsistence agriculture with rice as their principal staple crop. However, only in a few geographically favoured regions the produce from the paddy fields sufficed to feed the local population. In most Dry Zone areas as well as in the central highlands the bulk of the peasantry depended on the village vegetable gardens or on chena cultivation. Although wet rice cultivation was the traditional occupation of the Ceylonese peasantry, the island had not been selfsufficient in its rice production since ancient times. The low output of rice per cultivated acre is primarily responsible for this situation. As an island-wide average, paddy cultivators reached a yield-to-seed ratio of only 15:1 in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Apart from the use of low-yielding paddy varieties, the prevalence

308

chapter thirteen

of traditional cultivation techniques—i.e. the broadcasting of paddy seeds instead of transplanting them—contributed mainly to the low output. Moreover, the scarcity of cattle, which played an important role in the preparation of the paddy fields, had a detrimental effect on the paddy yield. Above all, the irregular supply of water affected the output of the paddy fields. Wet rice cultivation demands a steady water supply. Only the wettest regions of southern and western Ceylon were able to satisfy this demand without the help of artificial irrigation. Most other regions had to rely on irrigation facilities of some form. In those regions with abundant seasonal rainfall, the efficient storage of rainwater sufficed to irrigate the paddy crop during the dry season. In large parts of the Dry Zone, however, a more sophisticated system of irrigation was needed to provide an ample water supply year-round. Only in the 1850s, the colonial government started to pay some attention to the improvement of the irrigational infrastructure of the island. But it adopted an inefficient irrigation policy that aimed primarily at the extension of the available irrigated land and not on the provision of a more reliable water supply in the already cultivated regions. It largely neglected the costly restoration of large tanks and feeder channels and concentrated on the cheaper repair of village tanks—many of which had fallen into decay after the abolition of rajakariya. Thus, the irrigation efforts of the government did not substantially increase the rice output of the island throughout the nineteenth century. Although they brought relief to some of the most poverty-stricken regions of the Dry Zone and gradually increased the rice yields in parts of the North-Central and the Eastern Province, the seed-to-yield ratio and the average acreage under wet rice per person (of the peasant population) remained stagnant on an islandwide scale. In parts of the Kandyan highlands, the water supply of the village paddy fields even declined, when the plantations expanded into the higher elevations and thereby cut into the water supply of the lower-situated villages. Consequently, the acreage under paddy decreased in the Central Province between 1880 and 1900. During the 1880s and early 1890s, the forcible sale of Paddy Tax defaulters’ paddy lands added further to the wretched state of the Ceylonese peasantry. The collapse of coffee had left the state coffers empty and the colonial government now resorted to the rigorous collection of the Paddy Tax and arrears thereof. In the highlands, the system of so-called voluntary commutation prevailed in the 1880s.

conclusion

309

This meant that everybody who had once registered for the commutation of the tax—a practice widespread during the heyday of peasant coffee—was now liable to pay the tax in cash. The ruin of the peasants’ coffee gardens in the 1870s had deprived most villagers of the financial means to commute the Paddy Tax. The colonial government, however, strictly enforced Ordinance 5 of 1866 and forcibly sold the lands of many tax defaulters. In some highland regions—e.g. in Walapane and Udukinda—these sales led to starvation in the villages. Although the AGA of the Nuwara Eliya District, Le Mesurier, reported the downtrodden state of the rural population as early as 1886, the forcible land sales and the Paddy Tax itself only became a public issue three years later. After a long campaign for its abolition, the Paddy Tax was finally done away with in 1892. Just as the planting community had resorted to the short-term, non-sustainable exploitation of its cinchona holdings in order to survive the transitional period in the mid-1880s, the colonial government sought financial refuge in the strict enforcement of tax collection from the local peasantry in order to make it through the depression. Chena cultivation was another sphere where local peasant traditions, planting interests and governmental priorities collided. Due to the low rice yields the majority of the peasantry supplemented the produce of the village paddy fields with grain and other crops grown in shifting cultivation—chena. For some years, the villagers planted mainly hill paddy, kurakkan and vegetables on a tract of cleared forest land. When the land was exhausted, it was used as pasture for the cattle and another tract of forest was cleared. In many regions of Ceylon, chena cultivation had become as important as wet rice cultivation—in some arid areas the peasantry even depended fully on it. The British authorities, however, did generally not approve of slash-and-burn cultivation and regarded chenaing as “primitive and wasteful”—especially as the pressure on land in the Kandyan regions dramatically increased with the expansion of the coffee plantations, and the chenas became valuable land resources. Accordingly, the colonial government placed severe restrictions on chena cultivation in potential plantation areas. After the collapse of native coffee, this deprived many peasants of their sole supplementary income to paddy cultivation. And at the same time, the expanding plantations cut more and more into the village water supplies. Only during the coffee crisis of the 1880s—when the government vigorously enforced the payment of the Paddy Tax—the pressure on the chenas relaxed a little, as the

310

chapter thirteen

transition from coffee to tea required almost no new lands. Pressure mounted again in the 1890s, when the expansion of the tea industry gathered considerable pace and penetrated regions hitherto untouched by plantation agriculture. 13.4

“Deconstructing the Dualistic Model”5

In the analysis of the agricultural economy of nineteenth-century Ceylon, it has long become an established tradition to describe the economy of the island as strongly ‘dualistic.’ Although the 1980s and 1990s saw a partial revision of this approach, this dualistic model generally dominates the views of many economists and historians concerning the relation of Ceylon’s plantation industry and peasant subsistence agriculture. In his renowned study of Ceylon’s export economy, Donald Snodgrass laid considerable stress on the separateness of the European-dominated, allegedly modern plantation sector and the traditional subsistence agriculture of the Ceylonese peasantry. He co-founded the longstanding notion of dualism in Ceylon’s agricultural economy by saying: Both the strengths and the weaknesses of Ceylon’s colonial economy grew out of its basic structure and dynamics. In structure, the economy was a veritable model of what might be called a dualistic export economy. There are two identifying features of this kind of economy: (1) close dependence of national income on foreign trade and (2) a split of the economy into two sectors, one modern in organizational structure and technology, producing for the world market, and the other traditional in both these regards, producing for the immediate village market. Dualism can be and had been defined in many different terms: capitalistic versus subsistence, monetized versus nonmonetized, export versus domestic, and a positive versus a zero marginal product of labor. [. . .] The modern sector can be said to have consisted of the estates, the financial and commercial establishments of Colombo and a few smaller cities, and the central government. The traditional sector was made up of the villages and depended preeminently upon agriculture, with a sprinkling

5 The term “Deconstructing the Dualistic Model” has been borrowed from Eric Meyer. Eric Meyer, “ ‘Enclave’ Plantations, ‘Hemmed-in’ Villages and Dualistic Representations in Colonial Ceylon,” in Plantations, Proletarians, and Peasants in Colonial Asia, ed. E. Valentine Daniel, Henry Bernstein, and Tom Brass, [Library of Peasant Studies; No. 11] (London; Portland, Or.: Frank Cass, 1992), 200.

conclusion

311

of native crafts and traditional service occupations. The classic purity of the Ceylonese case is illustrated by the clarity of this two sector division and the near absence of any in-between or third case. [. . .] The dualism of the economy was very nearly perfect. The estate and peasant economies touched at relatively few points.6

On the previous pages of this work reference has often been made to the financial dependence of the colonial government on the prosperity of the plantation industry. The coffee crisis of the early 1880s had detrimental effects on the state coffers and, therefore, on all spheres depending on government sponsorship. More clearly than any other economic depression in the nineteenth century, the ruin of coffee and the following transition to tea cultivation demonstrated the dependence of the colony on the export sector. The colonial government, however, passed the financial pressure on to others—especially to the peasantry. The development of irrigation facilities came to an abrupt halt and the rigorous collection of the Paddy Tax and arrears thereof drove many peasants into ruin and starvation. In times of economic depression there was rarely a direct economic connection between the plantation sector and the subsistence peasantry. During the coffee crisis, the pressure on land decreased and so did the demand for labour. Similarly, the plantations’ demand for village produce fell. Thus, the direct connections between village and plantation lost much of its importance during times of crisis. But through the indirect link of the colonial government, the fate of the peasantry was still closely connected with the fate of the plantation industry. In times of a fl ourishing plantation industry, the plantation and the village sector were linked up even closer. Gamini Corea identified four primary spheres in which the plantations significantly infl uenced the peasant sector.7 First, the expansion of coffee cultivation and, later, of tea drastically increased the pressure on land in the Kandyan highlands. Several notorious ordinances aimed at the gradual expropriation of the peasantry, and the colonial government laid severe restrictions on chena cultivation. Second, a good part of the Kandyan peasantry participated actively in the cultivation of coffee (much less of tea) and derived some additional income from it. More and more

6 Donald R. Snodgrass, Ceylon. An Export Economy in Transition (Homewood, Ill.: R. D. Irwin, 1966), 56–57. 7 Gamini Corea, The Instability of an Export Economy (Colombo: Marga Institute, 1975), 67–68.

312

chapter thirteen

highland villages got involved in market operations and experienced a certain degree of monetisation. Third, a significant number of Sinhalese villagers worked on the plantations or in road and railway construction. In the late 1880s and early 1890s, a large number of Sinhalese villagers also took to regular work on the tea plantations. Fourth, the improvement of the island’s infrastructure—set off by the demands of the export agriculture—gradually linked up many of the more remote regions with the large towns of Colombo, Kandy and Galle. The rural villages were connected to the money economy and had a market for their produce. Eric Meyer names at least one more linkage between the plantations and the villages. Fifth, the estates became a market for village produce and, at the same time, the villages—with their permanent paddy shortages—became a market for the excess rice of the coolies.8 And finally, the environmental effects of the expansion of the plantation industry must be viewed as an additional linkage between the two sectors. Many villages experienced severe water shortages, when plantations were established in their vicinity. Considering these connections between the plantation industry and the peasant subsistence sector, it becomes clear that a dualistic model cannot be applied here. The two sectors were too closely interwoven. However, throughout the nineteenth century the plantation sector has acted as the pacemaker of economic development. Excessive state support made sure that the plantation industry lacked nothing that was needed for further expansion and development, while peasant agriculture and its needs were often overlooked by the colonial government. 13.5

Administration and Education

The requirements of the plantation industry also left their marks on the structural development of colonial administration in nineteenthcentury Ceylon. After the Colebrooke-Cameron reforms, the island had been subdivided in five separate administrative provinces. By 1873, two more provinces had been created thereby increasing the number of provinces to seven. The expanding plantation economy, however, made the establishment of two additional units necessary

8

Meyer, “ ‘Enclave’ Plantations, ‘Hemmed-in’ Villages,” 206.

conclusion

313

in the 1880s as the Central Province occupied too large an area to guarantee the satisfactory administration of the plantation heartland: Governor Gordon founded the Province of Uva in 1886; three years later, the Province of Sabaragamuwa was formed as the ninth province to facilitate the growth of the plantation industry and the taxation of the peasantry. The departmental structure also sheds some light on the high priority attached to the welfare of the plantation complex. The departments were the chief executive organs of the colonial administration. Apart from the common Medical, Police, Customs and Postal Departments, the most important departments in late nineteenth-century Ceylon were the Survey Department, the Public Works Department (PWD), the Department of the Royal Botanical Gardens and the Land Registry Department. All of the latter served primarily the plantation interest. The Survey Department and, later, the Land Registry Department secured titles to land, the PWD constructed roads, railways and irrigation facilities and the Royal Botanical Gardens offered agricultural assistance to the plantation economy. A separate Irrigation Department was established only in 1899, and the Department of Agriculture emerged from the Department of the Royal Botanical Gardens as late as 1912. The Ceylon Civil Service as the apex of the island’s administration also saw a restructuring during our main period of observation. When the coffee crisis started to unfold its true extent, the so-called Retrenchment Committee proposed a wider opening of the CCS to the Ceylonese on financial grounds in the year 1883. In theory, the service had been opened to Ceylonese applicants in the 1830s already, but the practical circumstances of appointment had made Ceylonese participation very rare. Only 7 out of 91 Civil Servants were of Ceylonese origin in 18819—and those held mainly judicial positions. The creation of the Local Division of the CCS eight years after the Committee’s proposal marked the first decisive step towards Ceylonese representation in the higher administration. Six posts of the Local Division were explicitly reserved for Ceylonese candidates. The Upper Division, however, remained the exclusive domain of the 9 Kingsley M. De Silva, “The Development of the Administrative System, 1833 to C 1910,” in University of Ceylon History of Ceylon. From the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century to 1948, ed. Kingsley M. De Silva (Peradeniya: University of Peradeniya, 1973), 222.

314

chapter thirteen

Europeans. Moreover, most of the posts assigned to the Ceylonese were, again, judicial positions without executive competencies. The overall representation of the local people and interests in the administration remained marginal throughout the nineteenth century. Government policy in the field of education also closely refl ected the economic situation of the colony during most of the nineteenth century. It is safe to say that the colonial government had never attached prime importance to the spread of education and literacy on the island. This field had mostly been left to the missionary societies from very early on. In the course of the nineteenth century, the government retreated further and further from the field of education. In the 1830s and 1840s it closed down most of its vernacular schools. In 1841, Governor Mackenzie reorganised the administration of the school system and introduced the first grant-in-aid system, which was revised and extended in the final report of the so-called Morgan Committee in 1867. The new grant-in-aid system made provisions for the distribution of government grants to all types of private schools based on the principal of payment on results. In the early years of the system, many schools were registered for generous grants. The indigenous religious communities welcomed the introduction of the revised grant-in-aid system. No native school had ever received a grant under the Central School Commission. Now well-managed native schools were entitled to a grant as well. In practice, however, grant-registration proved difficult for the native communities due to the lack of financial backing and managerial experience. The introduction of the so-called Distance Rule—prohibiting the registration of a school within three miles of a grant-aided school—further hampered the registration of Buddhist, Hindu or Muslim schools for a government grant. Thus, in the year 1880—ten years after the introduction of the scheme—out of a total of 833 grant-aided schools only four Buddhist and one Hindu school received a grant.10 The Revised Code for Schools of 1880 confirmed the Distance Rule and made grantregistration even more difficult. The measures of the Revised Code brought the expansion of grant-in-aid schools to a temporary halt during the first half of the 1880s—the period of the economic depression. The financial crisis severely hampered the development of the educational system in

10

CO 54/539, 4 May 1882/No. 194, Longden to Kimberley. Enclosure.

conclusion

315

Ceylon and played into the hands of the Christian missionary bodies, which took over many remaining government schools in that time. It is interesting to see that the depletion of state funds during the coffee crisis effected the emancipation of the local Ceylonese communities in very different ways. While the creation of the Local Division of the CSS opened at least the lower strata of the service to the Ceylonese, retrenchment in the educational sector had quite a different effect and largely excluded local religious communities to partake in the establishment and maintenance of state-supported schools. 13.6

New Elites and Immigrant Labourers

The expansion and later the qualitative transformation of the plantation sector in Ceylon also introduced new elements and stratifications to the island’s social structure. On the one hand, a fl ourishing plantation economy attracted British planters and investors and added to the British presence in Ceylon. The transition to tea cultivation and the structural changes in plantation ownership and management occurring in its wake certainly altered the composition of the British community. But the economic opportunities and requirements of the plantation industry also led to the rise of two entirely new social groups in Ceylon. Within traditional Ceylonese society, several middle class groups managed to seize new economic opportunities and to climb up the social ladder thanks to their economic prowess. And the changing labour requirements of large-scale tea cultivation permanently bound a hitherto seasonal workforce to the plantation and thereby introduced a new element to the local social structure. Just like their Portuguese and Dutch predecessors, the British had used local ‘collaborators,’ the mudaliyars, to administer their newly acquired colonial territories in Ceylon cheaply and efficiently. The mudaliyars enjoyed a high social status among the population and exerted wide powers over them. In the early nineteenth century, they commanded the rajakariya labour force, acted as tax collectors and received land grants as rewards. Many mudaliyars also grew relatively rich in their occupations. Nevertheless, their elite status originated not in their wealth, but in their social and political status. Most mudaliyars were landholders—either of Low-Country plantation land or of village lands—and were held in high social esteem due to their traditional occupation as landowners and their political infl uence. Although the British administration had curbed the powers of the mudaliyars during

316

chapter thirteen

the nineteenth century, they managed to retain several spheres of infl uence—e.g. in land sales—and remained crucial for the efficient administration of the island. Most important Ceylonese posts in the administration and the Sinhalese seat in the Legislative Council, therefore, went to the mudaliyars. Interestingly, these ‘traditional’ elites made little use of the economic opportunities of the expanding plantation industry. As members of a well-established elite, the mudaliyars invested their accumulated capital in secure and prestigious landholdings rather than in riskier economic ventures. The so-called ‘modern’ elites, on the other hand, saw their chance for social advancement in the economic opportunities of the nineteenth century. Members of the karava, salagama and durawa castes of the Sinhalese Low-Country acted as tax and toll renters and profited from the increasing transport of plantation produce. Later, especially the karavas entered the risky business of arrack renting. They began to derive huge profits from the thirst of the plantation workers, the road construction gangs and the urban proletariat. Some karava, durawa, salagama and lower goyigama renters amassed considerable wealth during the nineteenth century and advanced to economic elite status. Although some members of the new elite later left the disreputable arrack business and engaged in more prestigious ventures, their elite status was always based on their wealth. The nouveaux riches never reached the social prestige or the political infl uence of the ‘traditional’ elite. They never held the position of Sinhalese MLC in the nineteenth century, were disadvantaged in the appointment to government posts and were not held in the same public esteem as the mudaliyars. Even in the early days of coffee cultivation in Ceylon the labour requirements of the plantations could not be fully satisfied locally. Tamil labourers from South India worked on Ceylonese plantations seasonally, but returned to India during the off-season. With an expanding acreage under cultivation and rising labour demands, a stable supply of Indian workers became a prime concern of the planters in Ceylon. The kangany system emerged as a powerful way to control and organise the supply of Tamil labourers and soon became a functional equivalent to the practically non-existent government involvement in questions of labour immigration or control.11 With the transition from

11 See Roland Wenzlhuemer, “Indian Labour Immigration and British Labour Policy in Nineteenth-Century Ceylon,” Modern Asian Studies 41, no. 3 (2007).

conclusion

317

coffee to tea cultivation in Ceylon, the immigrant labour force changed in its nature. Work on the coffee estates had been seasonal. Now tea required a permanently resident labour force. The settlement of the Indian immigrants on the estates strengthened the social ties within the plantation and enhanced the infl uential position of the kanganies. Social contacts between the plantation workforce and the indigenous village communities were rare and usually confined to commercial relations. This largely isolated and self-organized group constituted a distinctly new element in the social structure of the island of Ceylon—one that owed its existence primarily to the particular needs of the plantation sector. Chapter twelve of this book has also briefl y touched the history of the religious revivals that have taken place within the three biggest religious communities of Ceylon—mainly as a response to the vigorous proselytising efforts of the Christian missionary societies. I have tried to show how these revivals depended both on outside ideas (infused, for instance, by the Theosophists) as well as on inside support from the new economic elites. While the agendas of these revivals were certainly infl uenced by contemporary developments in the fields of administration and education and while they owed much to the support of the rising modern elites, it would probably go too far to construct a direct link between the economic state of the crown colony Ceylon in the late nineteenth century and the course and scope of these religious revivals. There were some indirect touching points especially when the fortunes of the export sector impacted on the interest of the local communities and, thus, co-shaped the agendas of indigenous movements. However, while I have tried to demonstrate in this book how closely most developments and transformations in late nineteenth-century Ceylon have been entangled with the economic prospects of the island, it seems that the religious revivals taking place at that time were only loosely connected with the welfare of the export sector. I believe that Ceylon in the 1880s and 1890s provides an excellent example for a study like the present one due to the swiftness and the thoroughness of the economic transformation that the island went through. I hope that future studies might find this approach useful and will try to extend the original scope of this work by applying its methods in further case studies. Only such continued investigation will eventually show whether the Ceylonese example of an economic transition constitutes the exception or the rule.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources International Population Census Publications. Series 2. Pre-1945. Sri Lanka 1881.1 thru 1931.2. [5 Microfilms]. Public Record Office: CO 54, Original Correspondence. Vol. CO 54/524–CO 54/668. Public Record Office: CO 56, Ceylon Acts. Vol. CO 56/10–CO 56/15. Public Record Office: CO 57, Sessional Papers. Vol. CO 57/80–CO 57/145. Public Record Office: CO 59, Statistical Blue Books. 1880–1900. Public Record Office: Administration Reports. 1880–1900. Secondary Sources Ameer Ali, A. C. L. Changing Conditions and Persisting Problems in the Peasant Sector under British Rule in the Period 1833–1893, Ceylon Studies Seminar, No. 3a, 1970/72 Series, 1970/72. ——. “Cinchona Cultivation in Nineteenth Century Ceylon.” Modern Ceylon Studies 5, no. 1 (1974): 93–106. ——. “Peasant Coffee in Ceylon During the 19th Century.” Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies (new series) 2, no. 1 (1972): 50–59. ——. “Rice and Irrigation in 19th Century Ceylon.” Ceylon Historical Journal 25, no. 1–4 (1978): 250–74. Arasaratnam, Sinnappah. Ceylon. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1964. ——. “Sovereignty in Ceylon: A Historical Survey of Its Problems.” In Ceylon and the Dutch, 1600–1800: External Infl uences and Internal Change in Early Modern Sri Lanka, edited by Sinnappah Arasaratnam, II 105–21. Brookfield, Vt.: Variorum, 1996. ——. “Sri Lanka’s Tamils: Under Colonial Rule.” In The Sri Lankan Tamils: Ethnicity and Identity, edited by Chelvadurai Manogaran and Bryan Pfaffenberger, 29–33. Boulder: Westview Press, 1994. Asad, M. N. M. Kamil. The Muslims of Sri Lanka under the British Rule. New Delhi: Navrang, 1993. Bandarage, Asoka. Colonialism in Sri Lanka: The Political Economy of the Kandyan Highlands, 1833–1886. Vol. 39, New Babylon, Studies in the Social Sciences. Berlin; New York: Mouton, 1983. Bansil, P. C. Ceylon Agriculture: A Perspective. Delhi: Dhanpat Rai, 1971. Bastiampillai, B. “The Revival of Irrigation Enterprise in Ceylon, 1870 to 1890.” Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies 10, no. 1+2 (1967): 1–26. Bastin, R. “The Authentic Inner Life. Complicity and Resistance in the Tamil Hindu Revival.” In Sri Lanka: Collective Identities Revisited, edited by Michael Roberts and Marga Institute, 385–438. Colombo: Marga Institute, 1997. Bond, George D. The Buddhist Revival in Sri Lanka: Religious Tradition, Reinterpretation, and Response. 1st ed. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1988. Bray, Francesca. The Rice Economies: Technology and Development in Asian Societies. Oxford; New York: Blackwell, 1986. Brohier, B. D. “Who Are the Burghers?” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Sri Lanka Branch (new series) 30 (1985/86): 101–19.

320

bibliography

Burgess, L. T. Ancient and Modern Irrigation in Ceylon. Being a Collection of Notes from Various Sources Relative to the Ancient and Modern Irrigation Works of Ceylon. Colombo, 1932. Capper, John, David De Silva, and F. S. Sirimanne. A Full Account of the Buddhist Controversy Held at Pantura, in August 1873 [between a Buddhist Priest, Gunananda Mohattivatte, and Two Ministers of the Protestant Religion, the Rev. D. De Silva and the Rev. F. S. Sirimanne] . . . With the Addresses Revised and Amplified by the Speakers. Colombo, 1873. Collins, Charles Henry. Public Administration in Ceylon. London; New York: Royal Institute of International Affairs, 1951. Corea, Gamini. The Instability of an Export Economy. Colombo: Marga Institute, 1975. Corea, J. C. A. “One Hundred Years of Education in Ceylon.” Modern Asian Studies 3, no. 2 (1969): 151–75. Craig, J. E. “Ceylon.” In Tropical Development, 1880–1913, edited by W. Arthur Lewis, 221–49. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970. Dawood, Nawaz. Tea and Poverty: Plantations and the Political Economy of Sri Lanka. Kowloon, Hong Kong: Urban Rural Mission, Christian Conference of Asia, 1980. De Silva, Chandra Richard. Sri Lanka, a History, Afro-Asian Nations, History, and Culture. New Delhi: Vikas Pub. House, 1987. De Silva, Colvin R. Ceylon under the British Occupation, 1795–1833. Colombo: Colombo Apothecaries, 1953. De Silva, Kingsley M. “The Development of the Administrative System, 1833 to C 1910.” In University of Ceylon History of Ceylon. From the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century to 1948, edited by Kingsley M. De Silva, 213–25. Peradeniya: University of Peradeniya, 1973. ——. “Government and Religion. Problems and Policies, C 1832 to C 1910.” In University of Ceylon History of Ceylon. From the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century to 1948, edited by Kingsley M. De Silva, 187–212. Peradeniya: University of Peradeniya, 1973. ——. A History of Sri Lanka. London; Berkeley: C. Hurst; University of California Press, 1981. ——. “The Legislative Council in the Nineteenth Century.” In University of Ceylon History of Ceylon. From the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century to 1948, edited by Kingsley M. De Silva, 226–46. Peradeniya: University of Peradeniya, 1973. ——. Managing Ethnic Tensions in Multi-Ethnic Societies: Sri Lanka, 1880–1985. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1986. ——. “Multi-Culturalism in Sri Lanka: Historical Legacy and Contemporary Political Reality.” Ethnic Studies Report 15, no. 1 (1997): 1–44. ——. “Nineteenth Century Origins of Nationalism in Ceylon.” In University of Ceylon History of Ceylon. From the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century to 1948, edited by Kingsley M. De Silva, 249–61. Peradeniya: University of Peradeniya, 1973. ——. “Studies in British Land Policy 1.” Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies 7, no. 1 (1964): 28–42. De Silva, S. B. D. The Political Economy of Underdevelopment, International Library of Sociology. London; Boston: Routledge & K. Paul, 1982. Department of Census and Statistics—Sri Lanka. Composition of Exports (Rs Million): 1997–2002. In, http://www.statistics.gov.lk/trade/tab02.htm. (accessed 12 June, 2007). Dharmadasa, K. N. O. Language, Religion, and Ethnic Assertiveness: The Growth of Sinhalese Nationalism in Sri Lanka. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992. Dharmasena, K. “Ceylon in the Changing Sea Routes of the Indian Ocean in the 19th Century.” KALYĀNI. Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences of the University of Kelaniya 3+4 (1984/85): 277–87. Domroes, Manfred. Sri Lanka: Die Tropeninsel Ceylon. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1976.

bibliography

321

Evers, Hans-Dieter. Buddhism and British Colonial Policy in Ceylon, 1815–1875. Quezon City: University of the Philippines, Institute of Asian Studies, 1964. ——. “Die Soziale Organisation der Singhalesischen Religion.” Koelner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 16, no. 2 (1964): 314–26. Ferguson, John C. M. G. Ceylon in 1884: The Leading Crown Colony of the British Empire. London, 1884. Fernando, P. T. M. “The Ceylon Civil Service. A Study of Recruitment Policies, 1880–1920.” Modern Ceylon Studies 1, no. 1 (1970): 64–83. Forrest, Denys Mostyn. A Hundred Years of Ceylon Tea, 1867–1967. London: Chatto & Windus, 1967. Gunewardena, Elaine. External Trade and the Economic Structure of Ceylon, 1900–1955. Colombo: Central Bank of Ceylon, 1965. Heidemann, Frank. Kanganies in Sri Lanka and Malaysia: Tamil Recruiter-Cum-Foreman as a Sociological Category in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century, Ganesha; 5. Muenchen: Anacon, 1992. Hollup, Oddvar. Bonded Labour: Caste and Cultural Identity among Tamil Plantation Workers in Sri Lanka. New Delhi: Sterling Publishers, 1994. Hulugalle, H. A. J. British Governors of Ceylon. Colombo: Associated Newspapers of Ceylon, 1963. Jayasuriya, J. E. Educational Policies and Progress During British Rule in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), 1796–1948. Colombo: Associated Educational Publishers, 1977. Jayawardena, Kumari. Nobodies to Somebodies: The Rise of the Colonial Bourgeoisie in Sri Lanka. Colombo: Social Scientists’ Association and Sanjiva Books, 2000. ——. The Rise of the Labor Movement in Ceylon. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1972. ——. “Some Aspects of Class & Ethnic Consciousness in Sri Lanka in the Late 19th and Early 20th Centuries.” In Ethnicity and Social Change in Sri Lanka: Papers Presented at a Seminar Organised by the Social Scientists Association, December 1979, edited by Social Scientists Association of Sri Lanka, 74–92. Colombo: Social Scientists Association, 1984. Jayaweera, S. “British Educational Policy in Ceylon in the Nineteenth Century.” Paedagogica Historica 9, no. 1 (1969): 68–90. ——. “Language and Colonial Educational Policy in Ceylon in the Nineteenth Century.” Modern Ceylon Studies 2, no. 2 (1971): 151–69. Jeffries, Charles. The Colonial Office. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1956. Kannangara, P. D. “Local Participation and Participants in British Colonial Administration. The Sri Lankan Scene: 1833–1900.” KALYĀNI. Journal of Humanities & Social Sciences of the University of Kelaniya 3+4 (1984/85): 241–76. Kinnard, J. N. “Review: The White Buddhist: The Asian Odyssey of Henry Steel Olcott” Journal of Religion 77, no. 4 (1997): 669–79. Kotelawela, D. A. “Nineteenth Century Elites and Their Antecedents. Some Comments on ‘Facets of Modern Ceylon History’.” Ceylon Historical Journal 25, no. 1–4 (1978): 204–12. Kuruppu, N. “Communalism and the Labour Movement in Sri Lanka.” In Ethnicity and Social Change in Sri Lanka: Papers Presented at a Seminar Organised by the Social Scientists Association, December 1979, edited by Social Scientists Association of Sri Lanka, 93–107. Colombo: Social Scientists Association, 1984. ——. “A History of the Working-Class Movement in Ceylon. 1. Labour and the Rise of Capitalism.” Ceylon Historical Journal 1, no. 2 (1951): 129–46. Lewis, Frederick. Sixty-Four Years in Ceylon: Reminiscences of Life and Adventure. Colombo: Colombo Apothecaries, 1926. Lewis, W. Arthur. “The Export Stimulus.” In Tropical Development, 1880–1913, edited by W. Arthur Lewis, 13–45. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1970. Ludowyk, E. F. C. The Modern History of Ceylon. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1966.

322

bibliography

Mahroof, M. M. M. “British Rule and the Muslims (1800–1900).” In An Ethnological Survey of the Muslims of Sri Lanka: From Earliest Times to Independence, edited by M. M. M. Mahroof and Sir Razik Fareed Foundation (Sri Lanka), 61–95. Colombo: Sir Razik Fareed Foundation, 1986. Malalgoda, Kitsiri. Buddhism in Sinhalese Society, 1750–1900: A Study of Religious Revival and Change. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. ——. “The Buddhist-Christian Confrontation in Sri Lanka, 1800–1880.” Studies in Society and Culture: Sri Lanka Past and Present (1994): 1–32. Mendis, Garrett Champness. Ceylon under the British. 3d rev. ed. Colombo: Colombo Apothecaries’ Co., 1952. Meyer, Eric. “ ‘Enclave’ Plantations, ‘Hemmed-in’ Villages and Dualistic Representations in Colonial Ceylon.” In Plantations, Proletarians, and Peasants in Colonial Asia, edited by E. Valentine Daniel, Henry Bernstein and Tom Brass, 199–228. London; Portland, Or.: Frank Cass, 1992. ——. “From Internal to External Debt. Observations on Changes in Credit Practices in Sri Lanka in Colonial Times.” In Debts and Debtors, edited by Charles Malamoud. New Delhi: Vikas Pub. House, 1983. ——. “Paddy, Garden, Chena, Plantation. Was There a Peasant Strategy in the Kandyan Regions of Sri Lanka before 1840?” In Meanings of Agriculture: Essays in South Asian History and Economics, edited by Peter Robb, 182–227. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996. Mills, Lennox Algernon. Ceylon under British Rule, 1795–1932. With an Account of the East India Company’s Embassies to Kandy 1762–1795. London: Frank Cass, 1964. Munasinghe, I. “The Road Ordinance of 1848 and the Kandyan Peasantry.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Sri Lanka Branch (new series) 28 (1983/84): 25–44. Munasinghe, N. “Railways as a Factor in Socio-Economic Change in Sri Lanka 1865–1905.” Paper presented at the Multi-Disciplinary International Conference on the occasion of 50th Anniversary of Independence of Sri Lanka, 23–25 February 1998. Murphet, Howard. Hammer on the Mountain: Life of Henry Steel Olcott (1832–1907). Wheaton, Ill.: Theosophical Pub. House, 1972. ——. Yankee Beacon of Buddhist Light: Life of Col. Henry S. Olcott: Formerly Published as Hammer on the Mountain. 1st Quest ed. Wheaton, Ill.: Theosophical Pub. House, 1988. Obeyesekere, G. “Review: The White Buddhist: The Asian Odyssey of Henry Steel Olcott.” Review of Reviewed Item. Journal of Buddhist Ethics (Online Journal), no. (1997), http://jbe.la.psu.edu/4/obey1.html. Panditaratne, B. L., and S. Selvanayagam. “The Demography of Ceylon. An Introductory Survey.” In University of Ceylon History of Ceylon. From the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century to 1948, edited by Kingsley M. De Silva, 285–302. Peradeniya: University of Peradeniya, 1973. Panditharatna, B. L. “The Harbour and Port of Colombo. A Geographical Appraisal of Its Historical and Functional Aspects.” Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies 3, no. 2 (1960): 128–43. Peebles, Patrick. “Governor Arthur Gordon and the Administration of Sri Lanka 1883–1890.” In British Imperial Policy in India and Sri Lanka, 1858–1912: A Reassessment, edited by Robert I. Crane and N. Gerald Barrier, 84–106. New Delhi: Heritage Publishers, 1981. ——. The Plantation Tamils of Ceylon, New Historical Perspectives on Migration. London; New York: Leicester University Press, 2001. ——. “Profits from Arrack Renting in Nineteenth Century Sri Lanka.” Modern Sri Lanka Studies 1, no. 1 (1986): 65–83. ——. Social Change in Nineteenth Century Ceylon. New Delhi: Navrang in collaboration with Lake House Bookshop, Colombo, 1995.

bibliography

323

——. Sri Lanka: A Handbook of Historical Statistics, A Reference Publication in International Historical Statistics. Boston, Mass.: G. K. Hall, 1982. ——. “The Transformation of a Colonial Elite. The Mudaliyars of Nineteenth Century Ceylon.” Unpubl. PhD Thesis, University of Chicago, 1973. Prothero, Stephen R. The White Buddhist: The Asian Odyssey of Henry Steel Olcott, Religion in North America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996. Quinn, W. W. “Henry Steel Olcott. Impact and Infl uence on the Buddhism of Ceylon.” Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies (new series) 8, no. 1 (1978): 17–37. Rajaratnam, S. “The Ceylon Tea Industry 1886–1931.” Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies 4, no. 2 (1961): 169–202. ——. “Growth of Plantation Agriculture in Ceylon, 1886–1931.” Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies 4, no. 1 (1961): 1–20. Ramachandran, N. Foreign Plantation Investment in Ceylon, 1889–1958. Colombo: Central Bank of Ceylon, 1963. Rice Research & Development Institute. Agro Ecological Zones. In, http://www.rice. ac.lk/research_disciplines23.html. (accessed 12 June, 2007). ——. Dry Zone. In, http://www.rice.ac.lk/research_disciplines23_dry_zone.html. (accessed 12 June, 2007). ——. Intermediate Zone. In, http://www.rice.ac.lk/research_disciplines23_intermediate_zone.html. (accessed 12 June, 2007). ——. Wet Zone. In, http://www.rice.ac.lk/research_disciplines23_wet_zone.html. (accessed 12 June, 2007). Roberts, Michael. “Aspects of Ceylon’s Agrarian Economy in the Nineteenth Century.” In University of Ceylon History of Ceylon. From the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century to 1948, edited by Kingsley M. De Silva, 146–64. Peradeniya: University of Peradeniya, 1973. ——. Caste Confl ict and Elite Formation: The Rise of a Karava Elite in Sri Lanka, 1500–1931, Cambridge South Asian Studies; 24. Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982. ——. “Elite Formation and Elites, 1832–1931.” In University of Ceylon History of Ceylon. From the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century to 1948, edited by Kingsley M. De Silva, 263–84. Peradeniya: University of Peradeniya, 1973. ——. “Elite Formation and Elites, 1832–1931.” In Sri Lanka: Collective Identities Revisited, edited by Michael Roberts and Marga Institute, 191–266. Colombo: Marga Institute, 1997. ——. “Indian Estate Labour in Ceylon During the Coffee Period, (1830–1880). Part 2.” Indian Economic and Social History Review 3, no. 2 (1966): 101–36. ——. “Irrigation Policy in British Ceylon During the 19th Century.” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, no. 2 (1972): 47–63. ——. “Labour and the Politics of Labour in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries.” Modern Ceylon Studies 5, no. 2 (1974): 179–208. ——. “Land Problems and Policies, C 1832 to C 1900.” In University of Ceylon History of Ceylon. From the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century to 1948, edited by Kingsley M. De Silva, 119–45. Peradeniya: University of Peradeniya, 1973. ——. “The Paddy Lands Irrigation Ordinances and the Revival of Traditional Irrigation Customs, 1856–1871.” Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies 10, no. 1+2 (1967): 114–32. Roberts, Michael, and L. A. Wickremeratne. “Export Agriculture in the Nineteenth Century.” In University of Ceylon History of Ceylon. From the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century to 1948, edited by Kingsley M. De Silva, 89–118. Peradeniya: University of Peradeniya, 1973. Roberts, T. W. “Memoirs.” In Interview Transcripts and Answers to Questionaires on Colonial Administration in Ceylon 1965–66, edited by Michael Roberts: Unpubl. Collection, 1965/66.

324

bibliography

Rogers, John D. Crime, Justice, and Society in Colonial Sri Lanka, London Studies on South Asia, No. 5. London: Curzon Press, 1987. ——. “Cultural Nationalism and Social Reform. The 1904 Temperance Movement in Sri Lanka.” Studies in Society and Culture: Sri Lanka Past and Present (1994): 1–23. ——. “The Kalutara Bo Tree Affair, 1891–1897.” In Sri Lanka: Collective Identities Revisited, edited by Michael Roberts and Marga Institute, 323–33. Colombo: Marga Institute, 1997. Rösel, Jakob. Die Gestalt und Entstehung des Singhalesischen Nationalismus, Ordo Politicus, Bd. 29. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1996. Samaraweera, V. “Aspects of Muslim Revivalist Movement in the Late Nineteenth Century.” In Muslims of Sri Lanka: Avenues to Antiquity, edited by M. A. M. Shukri, 363–84. Beruwela, Sri Lanka: Jamiah Naleemia Inst., 1986. ——. “British Justice and the “Oriental Peasantry”. The Working of the Colonial Legal System in Nineteenth Century Sri Lanka.” In British Imperial Policy in India and Sri Lanka, 1858–1912: A Reassessment, edited by Robert I. Crane and N. Gerald Barrier, 107–41. New Delhi: Heritage Publishers, 1981. ——. “Economic and Social Developments under the British, 1796–1832.” In University of Ceylon History of Ceylon. From the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century to 1948, edited by Kingsley M. De Silva, 48–65. Peradeniya: University of Peradeniya, 1973. ——. “The Muslim Revivalist Movement, 1880–1915.” In Sri Lanka: Collective Identities Revisited, edited by Michael Roberts and Marga Institute, 293–321. Colombo: Marga Institute, 1997. Sarkar, Goutam K. The World Tea Economy. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1972. Sarkar, N. K. “The Demography of Ceylon.” Unpubl. PhD Thesis, University of London, 1954. Satyanarayana, Adapa. Birds of Passage. Migration of South Indian Labour Communities to South-East Asia, 19–20th Centuries, A.D., Clara Working Paper 11. Amsterdam, 2001. Siriweera, W. I. A Study of the Economic History of Pre-Modern Sri Lanka. New Delhi: Vikas Pub. House, 1994. Sitrampalam, S. K. “Hindu Revivalism in Northern Sri Lanka During the 19th Century. A Historical Perspective.” Journal of the Institute of Asian Studies 11, no. 2 (1994): 1–19. Snodgrass, Donald R. Ceylon. An Export Economy in Transition. Homewood, Ill.: R. D. Irwin, 1966. Sumathipala, K. H. M., and Christopher W. W. Kannangara. History of Education in Ceylon, 1796–1965. With Special Reference to the Contribution Made by C. W. W. Kannangara to the Educational Development of Ceylon, Etc, (Ceylon Historical Journal. Vol. 13.). Dehiwala: Tisara Prakasakayo, 1968. Tambiah, S. J. “Ethnic Representation in Ceylon’s Higher Administrative Services, 1870–1946.” University of Ceylon Review 13, no. 2+3 (1955): 113–34. Theosophical Society. History of the Theosophical Society. In, http://home.aol. com/tstec/hmpage/tshist.htm. (accessed 7 October, 2001). Vanden Driesen, I. H. Indian Plantation Labour in Sri Lanka: Aspects of the History of Immigration in the 19th Century. Nedlands, Australia: Centre for South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of Western Australia, 1982. ——. The Long Walk: Indian Plantation Labour in Sri Lanka in the Nineteenth Century. New Delhi: Prestige Books, 1997. ——. “Some Aspects of the Financing of Commercial Enterprise in 19th Century Ceylon.” Ceylon University Review 18, no. 3+4 (1960): 213–21. ——. “Some Trends in the Economic History of Ceylon in the ‘Modern’ Period.” Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies 3, no. 1 (1960): 1–17. Webb, James L. A. Tropical Pioneers: Human Agency and Ecological Change in the Highlands of Sri Lanka, 1800–1900, Ohio University Press Series in Ecology and History. Athens, Oh.: Ohio University Press, 2002.

bibliography

325

Wenzlhuemer, Roland. “Indian Labour Immigration and British Labour Policy in Nineteenth-Century Ceylon.” Modern Asian Studies 41, no. 3 (2007): 575–602. ——. “Land und Arbeitskraft in Nordindien. 200 Jahre Zamindars in Bihar.” Paper presented at the Salzburger Hochschulwochen, Salzburg, 18 November 1999. ——. “Reconsidering the Sinhalese Contribution to Estate Labour in Late 19th Century Ceylon.” Paper presented at the 17th European Conference on Modern South Asian Studies, Heidelberg, 9–14 September 2002. ——. “The Sinhalese Contribution to Estate Labour in Ceylon, 1881–1891.” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 48, no. 3 (2005): 442–58. Wesumperuma, D. “The Evictions under the Paddy Tax, and Their Impact on the Peasantry of Walapane, 1882–1885.” Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies 10, no. 1+2 (1967): 131–48. ——. “Land Sales under the Paddy Tax in British Ceylon.” Vidyodaya Journal of Arts, Science and Letters 2, no. 1 (1969): 19–35. Wesumperuma, Dharmapriya. Indian Immigrant Plantation Workers in Sri Lanka: A Historical Perspective, 1880–1910. Nugegoda: Dharmapriya Wesumperuma, 1986. Wickremeratne, Ananda. The Roots of Nationalism: Sri Lanka. Colombo: Karunaratne, 1995. Wickremeratne, L. A. “1865 and the Changes in Education Policies.” Modern Ceylon Studies 1, no. 1 (1970): 84–93. ——. “The Development of Transportation in Ceylon C 1800–1947.” In University of Ceylon History of Ceylon. From the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century to 1948, edited by Kingsley M. De Silva, 303–16. Peradeniya: University of Peradeniya, 1973. ——. “Education and Social Change, 1832 to C 1900.” In University of Ceylon History of Ceylon. From the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century to 1948, edited by Kingsley M. De Silva, 165–86. Peradeniya: University of Peradeniya, 1973. ——. “The Establishment of the Tea Industry in Ceylon. The First Phase, C 1870 to C 1900.” Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies (new series) 2, no. 2 (1972): 131–55. ——. “Grain Consumption and Famine Conditions in Late Nineteenth Century Ceylon.” Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies (new series) 3, no. 2 (1973): 28–53. ——. “Religion, Nationalism, and Social Change in Ceylon, 1865–1885.” Studies in Society and Culture: Sri Lanka Past and Present (1993): 1–35. Wimalaratana, Wijitapure. Changes in Consumption Pattern and Economic Underdevelopment in British Ceylon, Nijmegen Studies in Development and Cultural Change, 0935–7173; V. 31. Saarbruecken: Verlag fuer Entwicklungspolitik Saarbruecken, 2000. Wimalaratne, K. D. G. “The Impact of British Policy on the Buddhist Temporalities of Sri Lanka.” Paper presented at the Multi-Disciplinary International Conference on the occasion of 50th Anniversary of Independence of Sri Lanka, 23–25 February 1998. ——. “Muslims under British Rule in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) 1796–1948.” In Muslims of Sri Lanka: Avenues to Antiquity, edited by M. A. M. Shukri, 415–42. Beruwela, Sri Lanka: Jamiah Naleemia Inst., 1986. Wiswa Warnapala, W. A. Civil Service Administration in Ceylon. A Study in Bureaucratic Adaptation. Colombo: Department of Cultural Affairs, 1974. Woolf, Leonard S. Growing. An Autobiography of the Years 1904–1911. San Diego; New York; London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Publishers, 1975. ——. The Village in the Jungle. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Zackariya, F., and N. Shanmugaratnam. “Communalisation of Muslims in Sri Lanka. An Historical Perspective.” In Alternative Perspectives: A Collection of Essays on Contemporary Muslim Society, edited by Muslim Women’s Research and Action Forum. Colombo, 1999.

INDEX

Abbotsford estate 69 Abdul Azeez, I. L. M. 295 Abdul Rahiman, M. C. 295 Accomodessans 224–5 Administration 5, 6, 28, 30–1, 106–7, 163, 165–7, 171–3, 175, 177–8, 180–2, 191–6, 198–9, 201–4, 224, 312–4, 316–7 Administration Report 73–4, 89, 116, 154, 158 Administrative Units 165–6 Agency-houses 57, 60, 79, 82, 84, 120 –1, 306 American Mission 202, 204, 271 Ammapattinam 256 Anglicans, see Church of England Anuradhapura 19–21, 144, 166, 287 kingdom of 20–1 Arabi Pasha 292–4 Arrack 95, 231–2, 260–1 farms 231–3 renting 229, 231–4, 316 Arrears, tax, see tax arrears Arunachalam, Ponnambalam 173–4, 289 Aryan settlers 19, 20, 41 first arrival of 19 Assistant Government Agent (AGA) 110, 154, 158, 162, 175–6, 182, 198, 238, 309 Average Annual Growth (AAG) 38–9, 46–8 Badulla 38, 104, 166, 266 Balance wages 256, 258, 260 Bank of Ceylon 121 Banks 57, 60, 79, 82, 84, 120–2, 183, 306 Baptists 202, 271–2, 274 Barnes, Edward 54, 113, 203, 243 Batticaloa district of 35–7, 39, 43–5, 47–51, 158–9 town of 25, 27, 93 Bikkhus, see Buddhist monks Bill Against Coffee Stealing 108 Blacksmiths 240–1

Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna 278–9 Breakwaters 129, 131–2, 240 Brownrigg, Robert 30, 202–3, 243 Buddhism 5, 19, 28, 190, 203, 271–81, 283–5, 288 revival of 190, 274, 278–88 Buddhism, Sinhalese 28, 276, 281 Buddhist agitation 281, 287 monks 19, 272–5, 277, 279–81 movement 279–81, 283–4, 287–9 sangha 272, 276–81 schools 201, 210, 277, 282–3 temples 283, 285 Buddhist-Christian Confrontation 272–6 Buddhist Defence Committee 284, 286–7 Buddhist Education Fund 281–2 Buddhist Temporalities Question 283–4, 286–7 Buddhist Theosophical Society (BTS) 278–81, 283, 287 Buddhists 19, 46, 49–51, 183, 190, 201, 208, 210–2, 218–9, 221, 236, 271–89, 291–2, 314 Burghers 41, 43–5, 172, 185, 238 Cacao 117, 264–5, 267 Cameron, Charles Hay 30, 112, 166 Capital (financial) 3, 4, 31, 53, 57, 62, 66, 71, 75–7, 79, 80, 84–5, 92–4, 103–5, 119–20, 122–5, 229–33, 301–2 borrowed 120–1 British 55, 57, 122 foreign 60, 302, 306–7 self-generation of 122 shortage of 84–5, 250, 258 Carpenters 230, 240–1 Caste 9, 80, 114, 184, 186–7, 190, 194–5, 199, 221, 223–5, 228–31, 233–4, 244–5, 257, 280–1, 289 durawa, see durawas goyigama, see goyigamas karava, see karavas

328

index

salagama, see salagamas vellala, see vellalas Catholic 26, 28, 46, 52, 205–6, 218, 284–6 Cattle 141, 149, 161, 197–8, 308–9 Census 1, 7, 11, 33–7, 39–45, 47–51, 116–9, 135, 138, 144, 148, 240–1, 265, 306 Census Ordinance 33–4 Central Board of Irrigation, see Irrigation, Central Board of Central Massif 12, 17 Central Province (CP), see Province, Central Central School Commission 205–7, 314 Ceylon Agricultural Association (CAA) 187, 234 Ceylon Civil Service (CCS) 30, 110, 148, 156, 163, 165, 167, 170–8, 180, 183–6, 191, 193–4, 196, 204, 297, 313 Ceylon Civil Service, Local Division of the, see Local Division of the Ceylon Civil Service Ceylon Civil Service, Upper Division of the, see Upper Division of the Ceylon Civil Service Ceylon Government Immigration Service 252 Ceylon Government Railways 130 Ceylon Handbook and Directory 72, 117 Ceylon National Association (CNA) 174, 187–90 Ceylon Planters’ Association 76, 82, 131, 187, 260, 265, 269 Ceylon Statistical Blue Books 75, 83, 93, 95–6, 98, 100–1, 108, 117, 138, 146, 149, 189, 215 Chamber of Commerce 1, 131, 187 Chena 11, 57, 59, 105–10, 112–3, 119, 136–7, 147, 160–3, 196–7, 235, 303, 305, 307, 309, 311 cultivation 106–9, 136–7, 160–3, 196–7, 303, 305, 307, 309, 311 lands 105–7, 112–3, 119, 136, 303 Chettiars 230, 257 Chilaw, district of 23, 34–7, 39, 43–5, 47–51, 93, 167 China 79, 81–2, 86, 89 Cholas 20–2 Christian

missionary societies 46, 201–4, 208–12, 218, 271–5, 289, 291, 314, 317 first arrival of 202, 271 proselytising 271, 277–80, 282, 291–2 Christians 25, 46, 210, 272–7, 281, 289–90 Christie, T. N. 150, 188–9 Church of England 183, 203–5, 272 Church Missionary Society (CMS) 202, 271, 274 Cinchona 4, 6, 70–7, 79, 80, 84–5, 88, 98–101, 117, 122, 264–5, 267, 301–2, 306, 309 average price of 74–5 cultivation 70–6, 84, 88, 301 exports 71–4 Cinnamon 24–5, 28, 31, 53–4, 70, 96, 229, 299 abolition of trade monopoly in 54 Civil Service, see Ceylon Civil Service (CCS) Coast advance 114–5, 245, 247–9, 254, 256, 260 Coconut 8, 11, 53, 63, 70, 78, 90, 92–6, 98–101, 103, 122, 128, 136, 167, 227, 231 cultivation 53, 78, 90, 92–6, 98, 227 exports 94, 100–1 palms 92–6, 99, 103 plantations 63, 92–4, 122, 227 products 92–3, 95–6, 100 smallholders 90–1, 93–6, 98–9 triangle 93, 128 Coffee 1–8, 31, 38, 54–72, 74–7, 79, 80, 82–5, 90–4, 99–101, 105–8, 111–3, 115, 117–27, 297–302, 306, 310–1 berries 54–5, 57, 61, 90 crisis 38, 46, 75–6, 79, 119, 121, 123, 182–3, 205, 209, 213, 232, 241, 260–1, 302–3, 311 cultivation, expansion of 55, 57, 106, 311 exports 62, 64–6, 68 industry 7, 8, 56, 60–3, 65, 68–71, 75–7, 79, 80, 94, 99, 107, 121, 153, 155, 240, 301 mania 2, 57–9, 84, 120, 136, 205, 245, 249–50, 257 monoculture 3, 7, 31, 62–3, 298, 300–1

index peasant 53, 65–6, 90–1, 96, 106, 108, 112, 117, 119, 136–7, 146, 152–4, 157, 163, 300, 309 plantations 3, 31, 53–7, 64–5, 70, 77, 80, 90, 105–6, 111–5, 120–2, 125, 146, 247, 250, 301–2 planters 76, 104–5, 120, 123, 125, 247 prices 2, 60, 62, 68, 300–1 smallholders 90–6, 98–9 Coffee, King, see King Coffee Coffee land 3, 31, 53, 66, 80, 90, 99, 105–7, 113, 153, 227, 237, 309 Coffee Leaf Disease 3, 7, 31, 62, 64, 66–9, 76–7, 90–2, 137, 301 Colebrooke-Cameron Commission 30–1, 225 Colebrooke-Cameron reforms 54, 112, 170, 179–80, 185, 196, 201, 225–7, 312 Colebrooke-Cameron Report 201 Colebrooke, William Macbean George 30–1, 54, 112, 166, 168, 170–2, 179–80, 185, 196, 201, 203–4, 225, 227, 299, 312 Colombo district of 35–7, 39, 43–5, 47–51 fort of 25 Colombo Harbour 131–2, 240 Colombo Municipality 35–7, 49–51, 240–1 Colombo, town of 23–4, 42–5, 47–8, 123–5, 127–32, 173, 176, 180–2, 186, 202, 223–4, 226–7, 232–3, 238–43, 254–6, 310–2 Colonial Office 30, 109, 131, 148, 156, 158, 160, 167, 174, 178–9, 183, 185, 202, 265, 283–4, 286 Colonial Secretary 59, 154–5, 167, 172, 175–6, 180 Commutation 53, 151–4, 158, 227, 237, 240, 308–9 Companies, Rupee, see Rupee companies Companies, Sterling, see Sterling companies Conscience clause 208–9 Coolies 77, 115–6, 156, 243, 255–7, 261–3, 266–9, 312 Cordiner, James A. 202 Corruption 171, 178 Council, Executive, see Executive Council Council, Legislative, see Legislative Council

329

Council, Village, see Village Council Crown colony 1, 6, 7, 30, 122, 165, 170, 178–9, 297, 307, 317 land 31, 58–9, 105–6, 109–10, 126, 152, 303 Crown Lands Encroachment Ordinance 58–9, 105, 109, 126, 152, 303 De Alwis family 186–8 Death rate 245, 248, 254–5, 266–7, 270 Dehigama, E. H. 186 Department of Public Instruction, see Public Instruction, Department of Depression, economic 31, 57, 59, 60, 62, 69–71, 94, 96, 99, 100, 108, 115, 121–2, 150, 153, 297–8, 301–2, 311 Dharmapala 24–5 Dias-Bandaranaike-Obeyesekere family 186–8 Dickoya 104, 266 Dickson, J. F. 155–6, 158 Dimbula 104 Director of Public Instruction 176, 208, 211–3 Distance Rule 211–3, 217–8, 314 District hospitals 263–4, 266, 270 District Judge 176 District Medical Officer 269 Dolosbage 104 Douglas, John 144–5, 265 Dry Zone 12, 14, 17, 19, 21–3, 38, 63, 107, 137, 142–3, 145, 147, 149, 160, 162, 307–8 Dualistic model 6, 7, 53, 170, 310–2 Durawas 187, 225, 228–30, 234, 316 Dutch 2, 26–30, 33, 41, 53–4, 151, 194–5, 201–2, 224–5, 229–31, 299, 315 Duties 55, 153, 161, 179, 196, 224–5, 246, 262, 265, 269 Dyke, P. A. 180–2 East India Company 29, 30, 97, 170, 194, 202, 224 Eastern Province (EP), see Province, Eastern Economic transition 4, 5, 90, 317 Economies-of-scale 4, 57, 90–1, 121, 307 Economy 1–6, 53–63, 77, 81–5, 93–5,

330

index

99–101, 103–5, 114–5, 120–2, 124–7, 225–8, 232–3, 236–9, 297–300, 306, 310–3 peasant 5, 6, 311 plantation, see plantation economy Economy, Ceylonese 3, 62, 84, 114, 130, 165, 299, 300, 310 Education 191, 201–10, 212–8, 234, 272–3, 277, 289–94, 305, 312, 314, 317 policy 191, 201, 205–8, 213, 216, 218 and social change 202, 204 vernacular 204–7, 282 Education, English 201, 204, 206–9, 213, 238, 291–2, 294 Educational facilities 201, 204, 212, 282–3, 288, 291–5 Elite 4, 5, 9, 31, 57, 174, 188, 190, 194–5, 221–5, 227–31, 233–5, 237–9, 281–2, 288, 297–8, 315–7 colonial 194 economic 5, 9, 174, 235, 282, 288, 297–8, 316–7 goyigama 188, 229 indigenous 4, 5, 57, 222 karava 222, 234 local 174, 222–3, 235, 237–8 national 224, 228, 235, 237 new 221, 223, 225, 227, 229, 231, 233–5, 237, 239, 241, 316–7 traditional 190, 224, 227–8, 235, 237, 288, 297, 316 Estate dispensaries 270 inspections 268–9 labour 5, 6, 83, 111, 113, 116–8, 247, 258–60, 263–4, 297, 305–6 population 116, 141, 262–4 Executive Council 170, 179, 207 Export duties 69, 264–5, 267, 299, 300 economy 2, 3, 6, 11, 53, 55–7, 59–61, 63, 65, 67, 69, 91, 93–5, 99–101, 297, 300, 310–1 sector 53, 92, 96, 98, 135, 237, 298, 311, 317 volume 60–2, 83, 88–9, 96, 100 Exports 1, 6, 61, 68, 72–4, 79, 83, 85, 88–9, 92–4, 99–101, 130, 229, 245, 299–301, 307 cinchona, see cinchona exports coffee, see coffee exports total 93–4 value of 1, 3, 4, 96, 98, 100–1

Factors of production, see production factors Famine 136, 139–40, 162, 244–5, 263 Ferguson, A. M. 269 Fish Tax 229–31 Fisher, F. C. 144–5, 151–2, 156–8, 230–1 Forest lands 104–6, 161–2 reserves 192 Forest Department 192 Fungus, see Coffee Leaf Disease Galle 128–31, 158, 239, 275, 279, 281, 312 district of 35–7, 39, 43–5, 47–51 harbour of 130–2 General revenue 166, 264, 266–7 Goiyas 160–1 Gordon, Arthur 143–4, 149–50, 158, 165, 167, 177–8, 180, 182–4, 188–90, 192, 199, 234, 266–7, 269, 286–7, 294–5 Government 31, 105–7, 109–11, 126–7, 149–50, 152–7, 179–82, 203–4, 206–13, 226–7, 246, 251, 261–6, 299, 300, 302–4, 307–12 expenditure 150, 205, 213, 299 grants 205, 210–1, 214, 218, 227, 277, 280, 282–3, 293–4, 314 officials 54, 59, 125, 147, 255, 304 revenue 69, 85, 151, 160, 192, 201, 218, 299, 300, 308, 311 schools 203–5, 209, 213, 215, 315 vernacular 204–5, 207, 209 vessels 251, 254 Government Agent (GA) 110, 143–4, 151, 155–6, 158, 162, 167, 175–6, 178, 180–2, 191–2, 198 Government, British 2, 55, 145, 180, 243 Governor 29, 30, 142, 165, 167, 170, 172, 175, 178–87, 195–6, 198–9, 207 Governor Brownrigg, see Brownrigg, Robert Governor Gordon, see Gordon, Arthur Governor Havelock, see Havelock, Arthur Governor Longden, see Longden, James Robert Governor Maitland, see Maitland, Thomas

index Governor North, see North, Frederick Governor Ridgeway, see Ridgeway, Joseph West Gow, Wilson and Stanton 85–6 Goyigamas 184, 187–90, 224–5, 228– 30, 232, 234, 280, 289 first-class 184, 187, 228, 232 Grant-in-aid schools 209–12, 214, 218–9, 282, 314 system 205, 209–10, 213, 218, 297, 314 Griffin, Mr. 267, 269 Gunananda, Mohottivatte 275–6, 278 Hambantota, district of 35–7, 39, 43–5, 48–51 Harbour, see ports Havelock, Arthur 143, 151–2, 155–7, 159–61, 181–2, 184, 269–70 Headmen 137, 156–7, 163, 170, 191, 194–9, 222, 225–6, 235, 237 system 194–6, 199 village 110, 195–7, 228, 235, 237 Hemileia Vastatrix, see Coffee Leaf Disease Hindu schools 211–2, 218–9, 290, 314 Hinduism 5, 28, 271, 273 revival of 288–91 Hindus 46, 49–52, 208, 210–1, 218–9, 288–91, 314 Hospitals 145, 255, 262–70, 285 district, see district hospitals Immigrant labour 2, 5, 67–9, 80, 112–6, 125, 138, 237, 243–5, 247–52, 254–70, 299, 304, 315, 317 Immigration 19–21, 38, 41, 46, 58, 80, 113–5, 138, 223, 232, 239, 243–8, 252–6, 262, 264, 316 route 252–4, 262 India 2, 19–22, 28–30, 42, 46, 55, 57–8, 67–70, 79–81, 86–9, 112–6, 242–9, 251–61, 263–4, 304–5, 316–7 India-Colombo route 256 Indian government 88 immigrant labour 38, 58, 69, 81, 113–5, 138–9, 238, 243, 245–6, 255, 257, 263, 304, 316–7 Indian Ocean 12, 17, 129 Indian Tamils, see Tamils, Indian Infrastructure 22, 54, 62, 70, 82, 90,

331

103–4, 125, 132, 137, 150, 182–3, 232, 299, 302, 312 Intermediate Zone 12, 14, 17 Irrigation 17, 63, 142–3, 147–50, 166, 182–3, 191–3, 198, 308, 311, 313 tanks 17, 21, 143–5, 150, 162 works 17, 19, 22, 136, 144–5, 147–50, 167, 191–2, 198 Irrigation, Central Board of 192 Irrigation Fund 149–50, 160 Irrigation Ordinance 142, 191, 198 Islam, revival of 291–5 Jaffna 23, 25, 27, 145, 159, 180–1, 205, 208 district of 35–7, 39, 43–5, 47–51 Jaffna Peninsula 23, 38, 289–91 Kachcheri 175–6, 180, 182, 194–6 Kalutara, district of 35–7, 39, 43–5, 47–51 Kandy 12, 23–30, 38, 68, 127, 130, 140, 183, 186, 203, 254, 256, 266, 281, 293, 312 district of 35–9, 43–5, 47–51 Kandyan highlands 6, 30, 63, 126, 151–3, 161, 202, 244–5, 252, 299, 300, 303, 308, 311 Kandyans 26–8, 30, 53, 152, 159 Kangany 82, 113–5, 222, 237–8, 243, 245–52, 254, 256–8, 260, 264, 267–70, 304, 316–7 head 250–1 professional 115, 245–8, 250 sub- 250–1 system 114, 238, 243, 245–6, 250–1, 304, 316 Karavas 187–8, 221, 225, 229–34, 316 Kegalle, district of 35–7, 39, 43–5, 47–51 King Coffee 7, 53, 63, 80, 90, 121, 153 Kotahena riot 178, 284–6 Kotahena Riots Commission, see Riots Commission Kotte, kingdom of 23–5 Kristiyani Prajnapti 274–5 Kurunegala, district of 35–7, 43–5, 48–51 Kynsey, Mr. 265–9 Labour agricultural 5, 6, 8, 19, 20, 80, 111–3, 115–6, 135, 148, 191–2,

332

index

222–3, 239, 244–6, 248, 251, 257–62, 267–8 gangs 246, 249 immigrant, see immigrant labour immigration 46, 58, 80, 232, 241, 244, 252–3, 316 movements 239 plantation, see plantation labour recruitment 111–2, 117–9, 125, 246–7, 303, 316 resident on estates 8, 115–6, 118, 317 shortages 116, 249, 258, 267, 270 unskilled 239–41 Labourers, sick 262, 264, 267–70 Lambakannas 21 Lamkopokara Press 275 Land abundance of 55–6 availability of 90, 103–4, 125 grants 56, 195–6, 224, 315 hunger 111, 303 irrigated 143, 148, 308 law 238–9 market 31, 80, 106–7, 225, 227, 238, 309 plantation 59, 104, 108, 227 see plantation land sales 108, 151, 153–4, 157–9, 196, 227, 309, 316 speculation 227 temple, see temple land tenure 59, 108 titles 58, 105, 152, 303 uncultivated 59, 61, 97, 109 village, see village land waste, see waste lands Land Registration Ordinance 108 Land Registry Department 191, 313 Land Settlement Department 193 Landgrabbing 109–10, 303 tool 110, 303 Landless labourers 113, 240, 245 peasants 108, 238, 305 Landlessness 223, 237, 244–5 Landlord 149, 228, 234, 250 Landowner 154, 225, 228, 234, 245, 315 Laymen 275, 277, 279–81, 283, 287–8 Le Mesurier, Cecil J. R. 109–11, 154–6, 158–60, 238, 309

Leaf Disease, see Coffee Leaf Disease Legislative Council (LC) 14, 30, 150, 159–60, 170, 177, 179, 185–90, 206, 208, 211, 234, 294, 316 Legislative Council, Member of the (MLC) 150, 177, 186–90, 206, 289, 294–5, 316 Lemesuriyagama 143 Lewis, Frederick 70, 116, 262–3 Lieutenant-Governor 143–4 Local Division of the Ceylon Civil Service 174–6, 313, 315 London 2, 3, 6, 20, 29, 42, 69, 71, 76, 79, 80, 82, 85–7, 97, 122–5, 141, 172–6, 181–2 market 2, 3, 71, 79, 86–7, 120, 124, 306 Longden, James Robert 104, 162, 182–3, 192, 211, 255, 271, 275, 282, 284–6, 314 Maha Mudaliyar 184, 195 Mahaweli Ganga 17 Maitland, Thomas 202 Mannar 252, 254–5 district of 35–7, 39, 43–5, 47–51 Maritime Provinces 33, 42, 202 Maskeliya 104 Masons 240–1 Matale 38, 104, 167, 252 district of 35–7, 39, 43–5, 47–51 Matara 35–7, 39, 43–5, 47–51, 129, 159, 239, 281 district of 35–7, 39, 43–5, 47–51 Medical Aid Fund 264 Medical Aid system 262, 264–6, 269 Medical facilities 262–5, 267 Medical Officers 264, 266–9 Medical Wants Ordinance 264–8 Missionaries, see Christian missionary societies Moir, R. W. D. 154, 158 Money economy 5, 152, 236, 239, 297, 312 Moneylender 235, 237 Monks, see Buddhist monks Monoculture 3, 7, 8, 31, 62–4, 71, 92, 99, 100, 297–8, 300–1 hazards of 3, 301 Moors 41–5, 54, 190, 230, 291–5 Moors, Ceylon 42, 190, 294 Morgan Committee 206–7, 210, 314 Moriyas 21

index Mudaliyar 112, 184, 194–6, 198–9, 221–30, 234–5, 315–6 atapattu 195–6, 227 korale 196, 198, 226 system 194–5 Mullaittivu, district of 34–9, 43–5, 47–51 Muslim community 291–5 Muslim MLC 188–9, 294–5 Muslims 24, 46, 189–90, 210, 218, 230, 292–5 Native coffee, see coffee, peasant Navalar, Arumugam 289–90 Negombo 23, 27, 167 district of 35–7, 39, 43–5, 47–51 Nikaya 280–1 North-Central Province (NCP), see Province, North-Central North, Frederick 30, 170, 202, 243 North India 19, 20 North Road 145, 252, 254–6 North Western Province (NWP), see Province, North Western Northern Province (NP), see Province, Northern Nuwara Eliya 12, 38, 155–6, 158–9, 238 district of 35–7, 39, 43–51, 154–5, 309 Obeyesekere, J. P. 186–7, 228 O’Brien, Mr. 156, 158 Office Assistant 175–6 Oil mill 95–6 Olcott, Henry Steel 277–84, 286–8 Overproduction of coffee 60, 302 of tea 89, 302 Paddy 98, 119, 135–42, 145–7, 149–50, 158–9, 161, 197, 225, 235, 308 cultivation 136–9, 141, 147, 150–1, 153, 155, 160–1, 167, 235, 238, 240, 307, 309 lands 2, 105, 108, 112, 136, 141–3, 145, 152, 154–60, 162, 167, 303, 307–8 seeds 84–5, 97, 103, 141, 308 Paddy Tax 108, 110, 136, 143, 147, 149, 151–60, 184, 196, 226, 229–30, 238, 240, 303, 308–9, 311

333

abolition of 110, 151, 159–60, 184, 309 arrears in the payment of 108, 143, 153–5, 158, 308, 311 Panabokke, T. B. 159 Panadura debate 276–8 Pandyans 21–3 Pansalas 201–2, 206, 210–1, 215, 277 Partition Ordinance 108, 162, 237, 239 Paumben 252, 254, 256 Peasant agriculture 4, 5, 53, 135, 137, 151, 155, 157, 307, 312 coffee, see coffee, peasant smallholders 90–1, 223 Peasants 8, 53–4, 66, 90, 105–9, 119, 136–7, 141, 143, 151–3, 155–8, 160, 162–3, 237–8, 309, 311 Plantation coffee 65–6, 68, 106 districts 125, 127, 152, 246, 250–1 economy 4–6, 55–8, 103–4, 111, 115–6, 120–2, 124–7, 165–6, 227, 232–3, 236–8, 244–5, 297–8, 300–1, 306–7, 311–3 labour 2, 5, 52, 67–9, 111–4, 116, 223, 232, 237–41, 243–4, 246–7, 249, 258, 260–1, 304–6, 316–7 Sinhalese 112–3, 116, 304–5 Tamil 80–1, 114, 244, 248, 304, 316 land 59, 104, 106, 108, 227, 315 Plantations 4, 6, 53, 55–8, 66, 69, 92–3, 111–2, 115–9, 125–7, 146, 237–9, 299–301, 303–6, 310–3, 315–7 coconut, see coconut plantations coffee, see coffee plantations Tamil 305 Plantations, Ceylonese 1, 90, 103, 118, 122, 306, 310, 316 Planters 57–60, 67–71, 73–7, 79, 82–5, 88–90, 97–8, 104–8, 114–6, 120–1, 237–8, 246–51, 255–8, 262– 70, 301–4, 306 Planters’ Association, see Ceylon Planters’ Association Planters, Ceylonese 56, 88, 113, 122 Planters, coffee, see coffee planters Plants 64, 70–1, 74, 76, 80, 82, 90, 103, 141, 227, 301 Pollonaruwa 17, 21–2

334

index

Ports 24–5, 54, 128–9, 131–2 Portuguese 23–8, 41, 46, 151, 194–5, 224, 315 Preachers 273–4 Preaching 272–3, 279 Press 187, 269, 273–7, 293 Prices 3, 57, 60, 62, 68–9, 71, 73–4, 79, 81, 85–6, 88–9, 91, 145, 245, 259, 299 coffee, see coffee prices Principal Civil Medical Officer (PCMO) 265, 267–9 Printers’ strike 242 Private Roads Bill 108 Processing of coconuts 93, 95 of coffee berries 55, 57 of export goods 241 of tea leaves 77, 84, 90–1, 125 Procession 284, 286 Production factors 4, 7, 8, 103, 297, 299, 302, 307 Profit margin 60, 68, 79, 88–9, 249, 257 Proprietor-planter 2, 94, 99, 121, 124, 247, 251, 260, 302, 306–7 Province, Central 35–9, 42–52, 118, 143–7, 153–6, 166, 216–7, 233, 308, 313 Province, Eastern 35–7, 39, 42–51, 144, 166, 216–7, 308 Province, North-Central 35–9, 43–5, 47–51, 143–5, 147, 166, 176, 216–7 Province, North Western 34–7, 39, 42–51, 140, 144, 162, 166, 216–7 Province, Northern 34–9, 43–51, 145, 166, 176, 180–2, 211, 216–7 Province of Sabaragamuwa 34–7, 39, 42–5, 47–51, 108, 118, 167, 313 Province, Southern 35–9, 43–5, 47–51, 107, 140, 145, 162, 166, 216–7, 272, 282 Province of Uva 34–9, 42–52, 108, 118, 129, 146, 152–8, 166–7, 176, 216–7, 233, 313 Province, Western 34–7, 39, 43–51, 140, 144, 162, 166–7, 216–7, 225–6, 232–3, 282 Provincial Board 192 Public Instruction 191, 193, 206–8, 210–5, 277 Public Instruction, Department of 191, 206–7, 210, 213, 215, 277

Public Works Department (PWD) 150, 170, 177, 191–3, 313 Puttalam 35, 43, 49, 145, 167, 209 district of 35–7, 39, 43–5, 47–51 Quarantine camp 255–6 Quinine 70, 73–4, 76 Railways 56, 68, 125, 127–30, 165, 182, 240–1, 251, 313 Rainfall 12, 14, 16–7, 19, 62, 82, 137, 142, 144 Rajah of the North, see Dyke, P. A. Rajakariya 31, 111–2, 126, 145, 196, 225–7, 243, 304, 308, 315 abolition of 111, 126 Rajasinha II, King of Kandy 26–8 Ramanathan, Ponnambalam 159, 190, 289, 295 Ratnapura 158, 167 district of 35–7, 39, 43–5, 47–51, 167 Raw material 70, 93, 95, 103 Rayigama 24 Reforms, Ceylon Civil Service 30, 171–2, 174–5, 177, 184 Reforms, Colebrooke-Cameron, see Colebrooke-Cameron reforms Registration of schools, see schools, registration of Religion 5, 9, 28, 183, 203, 208, 211, 271–6, 278–9, 281, 285–9 Religious revivals 8, 201, 218–9, 271–95, 297, 317 Renting system 151–2 Revenue 31, 56, 69, 85, 104, 108, 142, 149, 151, 153, 160, 166, 177, 192, 266–7, 299, 300 general, see general revenue government, see government revenue Revised Code for Schools 212–5, 314 Rice 11, 14, 17, 19, 21, 38, 53, 82, 106, 127, 135–51, 157–8, 160–2, 248–9, 256–62, 307–9 bartered 258, 260 consumption 139–40 fields, wet, see wet rice fields imported 148, 257, 262 production 144–5, 147 self-sufficiency in 137, 141, 307 rations 248–9, 256–7, 260 varieties 136, 141 Ridgeway, Joseph West 148, 182, 185, 190, 192–3

index Riots Commission 284–6 Road construction 68, 125–7, 145, 165, 243, 312 network 125–7 expansion of 128, 132 Road Ordinance 126, 196, 226 Roads as feeders for railway lines 127 toll renters of 231 Roberts, T. W. 177, 196–7, 235 Royal Botanical Gardens 3, 70, 73–4, 85, 89, 91, 116, 191, 193, 313 Rubber 8, 11, 90, 92, 96–9, 103, 302 ceara 96 cultivation 8, 92, 96–9, 302 exports 98–9 hevea 96–7 seeds 84–5, 97, 103, 141 smallholders 90–1, 93–6, 98–9 Rule, Three-Mile, see Three-Mile Rule Rule, Two-Mile, see Two-Mile Rule Rupee companies 123–4 Sabaragamuwa, see Province of Sabaragamuwa Saffragam 104 Salagamas 187, 225, 228–30, 234, 316 Sangha, see Buddhist sangha School Commission 204 School Commission, Central, see Central School Commission School, Native Normal 205 Schools 26, 202–3, 205–19, 271–3, 278–9, 282–3, 290, 293, 314 anglo-vernacular 207, 209, 218 grant-in-aid, see grant-in-aid schools management of 211 pansala, see pansalas parish 202–3 registration of 211–2, 219, 264, 280, 283, 314 unaided 215–6 vernacular 202–5, 207, 209–10, 214, 218, 314 Schools, English 202, 204–5, 207–10, 214 Schools, Revised Code for, see Revised Code for Schools Secretary of State for the Colonies 104, 143, 148, 156, 160, 165,

335

170–2, 177, 179, 181, 183, 266, 269, 286 Seeds 103 paddy 141 rubber 97 tea 84–5 Sickness, see labourers, sick Siddi Lebbe, Mohamed Cassim 293 Silver standard 87–8, 124 Sinhalese 19, 22–3, 28, 41–2, 45–7, 90, 112, 116, 135, 172, 185, 187, 224, 227, 293–4, 305 Buddhism, see Buddhism, Sinhalese Member of the Legislative Council 186–90, 316 plantation labour, see plantation labour, Sinhalese Sirimanne, F. S. 276 Sitawake 24–5 Slavery, abolition of 55 Smallholders coconut, see coconut smallholders coffee, see coffee smallholders rubber, see rubber smallholders tea, see tea smallholders Social status 115, 171, 186, 222–5, 227–9, 234, 237, 288, 315 South India 20–1, 55, 57–8, 69, 104, 112–4, 119, 232, 239, 242, 244–5, 247, 252, 254–6, 263, 299 Southern Province (SP), see Province, Southern Sri Lankan Tamils, see Tamils, Sri Lankan Sterling companies 123–4 Strike, printers’, see printers’ strike Sub-kangany, see kangany, subSubsistence 4–6, 8, 11–2, 53, 106–7, 111–2, 119, 135–7, 139, 141, 143, 145, 159–61, 304–5, 307, 310–2 agriculture 8, 11, 53, 111, 135, 193, 297, 300, 304–5, 307, 310 Sumangala, Hikkaduve 275, 277–8, 280 Superintending Medical Officers 264, 266–9 abolition of 269 Survey Department 191–2, 313 System grant-in-aid, see grant-in-aid system headmen, see headmen system kangany, see kangany system mudaliyar, see mudaliyar system renting, see renting system

336

index

System, Medical Aid, see Medical Aid system System, Tundu, see Tundu system Tamil kingdom 22–3 Tamil Member of the Legislative Council 190, 289, 294–5 Tamil plantation labour, see plantation labour, Tamil Tamils 20–1, 23, 41–2, 46, 48, 52, 94, 113, 181, 185, 190, 203, 238, 246, 289–91, 294–5 Tamils, Ceylon 38, 42, 46, 135, 290 Tamils, first arrival of 20 Tamils, Indian 42, 58, 304–5 Tamils, Sri Lankan 41, 291, 305 Tanks, irrigation, see irrigation tanks Tax 90, 92, 108, 112, 119, 126, 151–8, 160, 167, 231, 233, 235, 237, 264, 283, 309 arrears 108, 143, 152–8, 308, 311 capitation 265 direct land 151, 263 Tea 1–4, 7, 8, 38, 70, 74–86, 88–94, 96–101, 107–8, 111, 113, 115, 117–8, 122–4, 264–5, 302, 310–1 boom 116, 256, 258, 260–1 bush 76–7, 82, 90 companies 123–4, 302, 307 estates 8, 81–2, 108, 122–4, 163, 240, 262, 301–3, 312 industry, Ceylonese 76, 82, 86–9, 302 lands 107, 109, 227 plucking 83–4, 89, 302 prices 86–9, 91, 97–9 seeds 76, 84–5, 97, 103, 141 smallholders 90–1, 93–6, 98–9 Temple land 283, 287 Temple Lands Question 283 Theosophical Society, see Buddhist Theosophical Society (BTS) Thornhill, Mr. 267, 269 Three-Mile Rule 213, 218 Thwaites, G. H. K. 3, 70–1, 85 Tondi 256 Trimen, Henry 73–4, 85 Trincomalee 25, 27, 29, 39, 128–30, 159 district of 35–7, 43–5, 47–51 Truth, journal 109–10 Tundu system 245, 249 Tuticorin 252, 254–6 Tuticorin-Colombo route 252, 254–5

Two-Mile Rule 218–9 Twynam, Mr. 180–2 Udukinda 152, 156–8, 166, 309 Upper Division of the Ceylon Civil Service 174–6, 313 Urban population 141 proletariat 232–3, 239, 241, 316 property 227–8 working class 239, 242 Uva, see Province of Uva Vellalas 190, 223–5, 289 Vidyodaya Oriental College 280 Vidyodaya Pirivena 277, 280 Village headmen, see headmen, village land 106, 108, 228, 237, 315 life 235–6, 244, 297 paddy fields 106, 111, 113, 162, 303, 305, 308–9 tanks 143–4, 308 Village Committee 198 Village Council 198 Village Tribunals 198–9 Wage-labour force 112, 305–6 Wages 116, 161, 238, 240, 245–50, 256–60, 306 balance, see balance wages Walapane 140, 153–8, 309 Walker, G. F. 143 Waste lands 58, 109–11, 185, 193, 303–4 Waste Lands Ordinance 109–11, 185, 193, 303–4 Water supply 17, 21, 106, 113, 143, 145–6, 154, 157, 307–8 Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society 202, 205, 273, 291 Western Province (WP), see Province, Western Westerwold Treaty 26 Wet rice 17, 137, 151, 162, 308 cultivation 11, 17, 21, 106, 137, 142, 151, 162, 300, 307, 309 fields 135–6, 139, 147, 151, 157 Wet Zone 12, 14, 17, 103, 107, 137, 142 Woolf, Leonard S. 163, 175–6, 180–2, 197, 235, 237 Work, see labour

BIL-serie.qxp

21-11-2007

11:06

Page 1

BRILL’S INDOLOGICAL LIBRARY ISSN 0925-2916

1. Sharma, A. (ed.). Essays on the Mah§bh§rata. 1991. ISBN 90 04 09211 0 2. Aguilar i Matas, E. R.gvedic Society. 1991. ISBN 90 04 09352 4 3. Fuss, M. Buddhavacana and Dei Verbum. A Phenomenological and Theological Comparison of Scriptural Inspiration in the SaddharmapuÖ·arÊka Såtra and in the Christian Tradition. 1991. ISBN 90 04 08991 8 4. Sil, N.P. R§makr.ßÖa Paramaham.sa. A Psychological Profile. 1991. ISBN 90 04 09478 4 5. Nijenhuis, E. te (ed. & tr.). SaØgÊtaáiromaÖi. A Medieval Handbook of Indian Music. 1992. ISBN 90 04 09498 9 6. Harris, I.C. The Continuity of Madhyamaka and Yog§c§ra in Indian Mah§y§na Buddhism. 1991. ISBN 90 04 09448 2 7. Gethin, R.M.L. The Buddhist Path to Awakening. A Study of the Bodhi-Pakkhiy§ Dhamm§. 1992. ISBN 90 04 09442 3 8. Gommans, J.J.L. The Rise of the Indo-Afghan Empire, c. 1710-1780. 1995. ISBN 90 04 10109 8 9. Takahashi, T. Tamil Love Poetry and Poetics. 1996. ISBN 90 04 10042 3 10. Chatterjee, K. Merchants, Politics and Society in Early Modern India. Bihar: 1733-1820. 1996. ISBN 90 04 10303 1 11. Bentor, Y. Consecration of Images and Stûpas in Indo-Tibetan Tantric Buddhism. 1996. ISBN 90 04 10541 7 12. Guenther, H. The Teachings of Padmasambhava. 1996. ISBN 90 04 10542 5 13. Houben, J.E.M. (ed.). Ideology and Status of Sanskrit. Contributions to the History of the Sanskrit Language. 1996. ISBN 90 04 10613 8 14. Donkin, R.A. Dragon’s Brain Perfume. An Historical Geography of Camphor. 1999. ISBN 90 04 10983 8 15. McLeod, J. Sovereignty, Power, Control. Politics in the States of Western India, 1916-1947. 1999. ISBN 90 04 11343 6 16. Houben, J.E.M. & Van Kooij, K.R. (eds.). Violence Denied. 1999. ISBN 90 04 11344 4 17. Palsetia, J.S. The Parsis of India. Preservation of Identity in Bombay City. 2001. ISBN 90 04 121145 18. Bühnemann, G. et al. MaÖ·alas and Yantras in the Hindu Traditions. 2003. ISBN 90 04 12902 2 19. Gommans, J. & Prakash, O. (eds.). Circumambulations in South Asian History. Essays in Honour of Dirk H.A. Kolff. 2003. ISBN 90 04 13155 8

BIL-serie.qxp

21-11-2007

11:06

Page 2

20. McGrath, K. The Sanskrit Hero. KarÖa in Epic Mah§bh§rata. 2004. ISBN 90 04 13729 7 21. Nayar, K.E. HayagrÊva in South India. Complexity and Selectivity of a Pan-Indian Hindu Deity. 2004. ISBN 90 04 13730 0 22. Patel, A. Building Communities in Gujar§t. Architecture and Society during the Twelfth through Fourteenth Centuries. 2004. ISBN 90 04 13890 0 23. Berkwitz, S.C. Buddhist History in the Vernacular. The Power of the Past in Late Medieval Sri Lanka. 2004. ISBN 90 04 13910 9 24. Sharma, A. (ed.) Goddesses and Women in the Indic Religious Tradition. 2005. ISBN 90 04 12466 7 25. Clark, M.J. The Daáan§mÊ-SaÒny§sÊs. The Integration of Ascetic Lineages into an Order. 2006. ISBN-13 978 90 04 15211 3, ISBN-10 90 04 15211 3 26. “laP czka, A.A. Temple Consecration Rituals in Ancient India. Text and Archaeology. 2007. ISBN 978 90 04 15843 6 27. Ludvik, C. SarasvatÊ: Riverine Goddess of Knowledge. From the Manuscript-carrying VÊÖ§-player to the Weapon-wielding Defender of the Dharma. 2007. ISBN 978 90 04 15814 6 28. Bowles, A. Dharma, Disorder and the Political in Ancient India. The $paddharmaparvan of the Mah§bh§rata. 2007. ISBN 978 90 04 15815 3 29. Wenzlhuemer, R. From Coffee to Tea Cultivation in Ceylon, 1880-1900. An Economic and Social History. 2008. ISBN 978 90 04 16361 4