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The British East India Company’s conquest of Sri Lanka, which the British called Ceylon, occurred during the wars of the French Revolution (1792–1801). When the Netherlands came under French control, the British began to move into Sri Lanka from India. The Dutch, after a halfhearted resistance, surrendered the island in 1796. The British had thought the conquest temporary and administered the island from Madras (Chennai) in southern India. The war with France revealed Sri Lanka’s strategic value, however, and the British consequently decided to make their hold on the island permanent. In 1802 Ceylon was made a crown colony, and, by the Treaty of Amiens with France, British possession of maritime Ceylon was confirmed.
Control of Kandy
Not long after their arrival in 1796, the British established contact with the king of Kandy and contracted to replace the Dutch as protectors of the kingdom. As they began to organize the administration, the British realized that the continuing independence of Kandy posed problems: the frontier with Kandy had to be guarded at much expense; trade with the highlands was hampered by customs posts and political insecurity; and land communications between west and east would be quicker if roads could be built through the center of the island. The advantages of political unification were obvious to the British, but the Kandyans remained deeply suspicious of all foreigners.
The first attempt by the British to capture the kingdom, in 1803, ended in failure; the king was popular with the nobility, who united behind him to rout the British forces. Subsequently, though, growing dissensions within the kingdom gave the British an opportunity to interfere in Kandyan affairs. With the help of local Kandyan chiefs whose relations with the king had been deteriorating, the British succeeded in taking over the kingdom in 1815. Soon after the acquisition the British guaranteed Kandyans their privileges and rights, as well as the preservation of customary laws, institutions, and religion. Initially, Kandy was administered separately, without any abrupt change from traditional patterns. However, the trend toward reducing the status of the nobility and of the Buddhist faith was unmistakable; this led to a popular rebellion against British control in 1818. After it was suppressed, the Kandyan provinces were integrated with the rest of the country.
Social and administrative reforms
Though reluctant to upset traditional Sinhalese institutions, the British quickly began a reform process. They abolished slavery, an institution that existed primarily as a consequence of unpaid debt (although in Jaffna, it was part of the caste system), relieved native officials of judicial authority, paid salaries in cash, and relaxed the system of compulsory service tenure. Agriculture was encouraged, and production of cinnamon, pepper, sugarcane, cotton, and coffee flourished. Internal communications were extended. Restrictions on European ownership of land were lifted, and Christian missionary activity became intensive.
The early changes under British rule were systematized by a series of reforms enacted in 1833, which laid the foundation for the subsequent political and economic structure of Ceylon. Steps were taken to adopt a unitary administrative and judicial system for the whole island. The reforms reduced the autocratic powers of the governor and set up Executive and Legislative councils to share in the task of government; unofficial members (not officials of the government) were gradually appointed to the Legislative Council. English became the language of government and the medium of instruction in schools.
Emergence of capitalist agriculture
The British eliminated restrictions on Ceylon’s economy by abolishing all state monopolies and eliminating compulsory labor service. They also promoted the liberation of the economy, which led to new economic enterprises. Land belonging to the British crown was sold cheaply to cultivators to encourage plantation agriculture, and the enterprise proved lucrative. Coffee plantations were particularly profitable.
From about 1830 through the mid-19th century coffee production spearheaded Ceylon’s economic development. Acreage under coffee cultivation expanded, and roads were constructed to fulfill the needs of coffee planters. Because of a labor shortage on the plantations, indentured workers came from southern India in large numbers beginning in the 1840s. In the 1870s, however, coffee was destroyed by a leaf disease. Experiments with tea as a plantation crop in the 1880s were immediately successful, and tea spread along the upper and lower slopes of the hill country. About the same time, rubber and coconuts also were cultivated as plantation crops.
Tea and rubber attracted extensive capital investment, and the growth of large-scale industries created a demand for a permanent workforce. Steps were taken to settle Indian labor on the plantations. Ancillary services soon arose in response to these developments. Increasing export trade led to the expansion of the harbor at Colombo and to railway and road construction. Opportunities were created for Ceylonese entrepreneurs, and for the English-educated, employment was readily available.
Capitalist enterprise introduced changes in agricultural practices and horticultural techniques, but these developments were essentially restricted to the urban areas and the plantation country. The rest of the country continued with subsistence farming, using traditional methods. However, roads and railways helped to reduce the isolation of the villages, and increased trade gradually pulled the rural population into the monetary economy.
Constitutionalism and nationalism (c. 1900–48)
By the end of the 19th century a nationalist sentiment had come to permeate the social, religious, and educational fronts of Ceylonese society. Meanwhile, revivalist movements in Buddhism and Hinduism sought to modernize their institutions and to defend themselves against Christian inroads by establishing schools to impart Western education unmixed with Christianity. This agitated atmosphere set the stage for social and political changes in the first half of the 20th century.
Constitutional reforms
Nationalist consciousness gradually spread to the political arena in the early 1900s. Regional and communal associations were founded within formally educated communities, and they began to voice proposals for reform. They asked for Ceylonese participation in the executive branch, a wider territorial representation in the legislature, and the adoption of the elective principle in place of nomination. These demands showed a common ideology and approach and revealed a desire to advance within the framework of the colonial constitution.
Because demands were neither coordinated nor vociferous, the imperial government generally ignored them, and constitutional reforms passed in 1910 retained the old structure, with an appointed executive and a legislature with an appointed majority. There was, however, a limited recognition of the elective principle; an “educated Ceylonese” electorate was established to elect one member to the Legislative Council. Other Ceylonese members were to be nominated on a communal basis.
Growth of nationalist power
During World War I (1914–18) the forces of nationalism in Ceylon gathered momentum, propelled largely by civil disturbances in 1915 and subsequent political repercussions. British arrests of prominent Sinhalese leaders during what was at first a minor communal riot provoked widespread opposition. Leaders of all communities, feeling the need for a common platform from which to voice a nationalist viewpoint, came together in 1919 to form the Ceylon National Congress, which united Sinhalese and Tamil organizations. In a series of proposals for constitutional reforms, the Congress called for an elected majority in the legislature, control of the budget, and partial control of the executive branch.
A new constitution was promulgated in 1920 under the governor Sir William Manning, and in 1924 it was modified to satisfy nationalist demands. The revised document provided for an elected majority in the legislature, an increase in the number of territorially elected members, and the election of communal representatives. Ceylon thus attained representative government. A finance committee of the legislature, consisting of three unofficial and three official members, also was formed; the committee had the authority to examine the budget. However, no major concessions were made in the executive branch, which remained under the British governor and the official Executive Council.
The allowance of greater power to the nationalists produced the first fissures among them. While Sinhalese leaders wanted to do away with communal representation and make territorial representation universal, minorities aimed to retain it to secure power for their own communities. Minorities broke away from the Congress to form their own organizations.
A new constitution, framed in 1931 on the recommendations of a commission appointed to examine constitutional reform, gave Ceylonese leaders opportunities to exercise political power and to gain governmental experience with a view toward eventual self-government. It provided for a State Council with both legislative and executive functions. In addition to being a legislative council with an overwhelming majority of territorially elected members, the State Council was divided for executive work into seven committees, each of which elected its own chairman. These chairmen, or ministers, formed a board of ministers to coordinate the activities of the council and to present an annual budget. The constitution, which remained in effect for more than 15 years, also granted universal suffrage, thus bringing all Ceylonese into the democratic political process.
Social and cultural changes
Economic development and the spread of education brought about changes in society, including changes in the relationships between social groups. Upper elements of the dominant castes solidified their positions by taking advantage of new developments. Castes traditionally of lower status also made use of these opportunities to move upward, creating tensions within the caste system. A community of capitalist entrepreneurs and professionals who were proficient in English emerged as a new class that transcended caste boundaries. Generally referred to as the “middle class,” this group produced the leaders of many political and social movements in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Social change since 1915 also included the intensification of interethnic rivalries. Although clashes in the early 20th century involved relatively small groups of people, these conflicts marked the beginning of a trend that was to grow progressively in scale and momentum. The growing distrust and mutual antipathy between ethnic groups was reflected in (and exacerbated by) the formation in 1936 of a board of ministers composed entirely of Sinhalese members of the State Council.
Dominion status
In response to Ceylonese nationalist leaders—who exerted pressure behind the scenes while cooperating with British efforts during World War II (1939–45)—the British in 1944 appointed the Soulbury Commission to develop a new constitution for Ceylon. The Soulbury constitution gave the colony internal self-government but retained some imperial safeguards in defense and external affairs. In 1947 the Ceylon Independence Act conferred dominion status on the colony, whereby Ceylon was recognized as an autonomous entity with allegiance to the British crown.
Ceylon held elections for the parliament outlined in its new constitution in August 1947, shortly after its acquisition of dominion status. The United National Party (UNP), a coalition of a number of nationalist and communal parties, won the majority; it chose Don Stephen Senanayake as prime minister and advocated orderly and conservative progress. The UNP was dominated by the English-educated leaders of the colonial era, who were familiar with the British type of parliamentary democracy that had been established on the island, and it included people from all the ethnolinguistic groups of Ceylon. Its members were bound by the common ideals of Ceylonese nationalism, parliamentary democracy, and gradual economic progress through free enterprise.
