R•jasimha II was something of an exception among Kandyan ulers in his commitment to a policy of resistance to the westerners in control of the littoral. No Kandyan ruler before or after him pursued such a policy so consistently. During the period reviewed in this chapter, resistance to the VOC erupted with remarkable persistence in the Sinhalese areas of the lowlands, owing little to the initiative or encouragement of the Kandyan rulers. No doubt on many occasions the rebels were aided by the Kandyan ruler, and no doubt too the rebels generally regarded themselves as his ‘subjects’ and the Kandyan kingdom itself as the last bastion of Sinhalese independence. Nevertheless, the sporadic turbulence and spirited resistance of the low country was a striking contrast to the quiescence of the Kandyan kingdom vis-à-vis the VOC during these decades.
The internal politics of the Kandyan kingdom during this period were surprisingly uneventful. This was partly because the succession to the throne was unusually orderly and peaceful—so much so that even the accession of the N•yakkar dynasty to the Kandyan throne in 1739 was accommodated with the minimum of disturbance. In that year, with the death of Narendrasimha, the last Sinhalese king of Sri Lanka, the throne passed to his chief queen’s brother, Śrī Vijaya R•jasimha, a N•yakkar. The N•yakkars belonged to the Vaduga caste, a Telegu-speaking group originally hailing from Madurai in south India. When their home territory was overrun by the Muslims they had moved to the Coromandel Coast, which formed part of the Vijayanagar empire. In the seventeenth century, they had established marriage ties with the Kandyan royal family—the wives of both Vimala Dharma Sūriya II and Narendrasimha were N•yakkars—and these links certainly improved their position in south India, where they themselves were of no great account. Their status as the ruling dynasty in the Kandyan kingdom after 1739 would, no doubt, have enhanced their standing considerably.1
The ease with which the N•yakkars established themselves on the Kandyan throne affords a sharp contrast to the earlier turbulent succession disputes in the Sinhalese kingdoms—Anuradhapura, Polonnaruva and Kotte. It is generally believed that the accession of the N•yakkars led to increasing tension between the chiefs and the Kandyan ruler, and that this represented the challenge of indigenous forces to a set of foreign kings. It is true that the Kandyan chiefs were an influential factor in the internal politics of the Kandyan kingdom under the N•yakkars, but this was not unusual and, more to the point, they seldom seemed capable of concerted joint action sustained over any great length of time. Family squabbles and factional disputes kept them deeply divided and suspicious of each other. Nor is it without significance that the one major rebellion against a Kandyan ruler of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries occurred in 1664, in the reign of R•jasimha II, long before the N•yakkar accession. Apart from an abortive rebellion against Kīrti Śrī R•jasimha, the only N•yakkar ruler to face serious opposition was the last of the dynasty, and the last king in Sri Lanka’s history, Śrī Vikrama R•jasimha, in the early nineteenth century. The fact, however, is that the N•yakkars blended with the Kandyan background with remarkable ease, and their success in this owed not a little to their calculated but enthusiastic support of Buddhism. The ‘aristocratic’ opposition to the N•yakkars was largely a matter of wishful thinking on the part of the Dutch.
By its survival in the face of heavy odds, the Kandyan kingdom provided a link, indeed a continuity, in political institutions, social structure and religion, if not in its economy, with the Sinhalese kingdoms of the past from Anuradhapura to Kotte. In the Kandyan version of a ‘feudal’ polity all political and economic rights originated, theoretically, from the king whose authority extended to religion as well. He was the ‘lay head’ of the Erastian religious system of the Sinhalese and the chief patron and economic support of the sangha. In practice, however, monarchical authority was considerably less pervasive than it appeared to be, hedged in, as it was, by safeguards and softened by sirit—tradition, custom, convention and the example of ‘good princes’. A third constraint on the operation of an efficient despotism was fear of rebellion, no minor consideration in a situation where the king had no standing army at his disposal.
Of the institutional checks on royal authority the most conspicuous was the am•tya mandalaya or the royal council, to which important matters of state were delegated from time to time. Its influence and authority depended as much on subjective factors such as the personality and prestige of the councillors as on the skill with which their advice reflected the collective wisdom of the community embodied in custom and tradition. This council consisted of the two adig•rs2 or maha nilamēs—the chief administrative authorities of the kingdom—the dis•vas, the rate-r•las and the maha mohott•la or chief secretary. It would appear that the king generally abided by the decision and advice of the council,3 especially when there was unanimity.
The nucleus of the kingdom consisted of the Kan•a-uda-pas-rata which during much of this period was divided into nine4 administrative units or ratas all situated within the mountains and plateaux in close proximity to the capital. There were also the dis•vonys,5 more extensive in area, sloping away from the central hills and plateaux towards the Dutch border or the sea: the exceptions were Valapane and Udapalatha which lay within the mountainous core of the kingdom. The nine ratas were generally more populous and fertile than the dis•vonys, but their administrators—the rate-r•las or rate-mahatmay•s—had less power and influence than their counterparts in the dis•vonys, the dis•vas, for the simple reason that these latter were close to the capital and kings were generally very sensitive to the possibility of the power and pomp of the dis•vas encroaching on royal authority. Of these administrative units, the Four Kōralēs, the Seven Kōralēs, M•tale and Uva were the most important in terms of political status, the most lucrative to their dis•vas and the most prestigious as well.6 At the other end of the scale were the Vanni districts of the north-central and eastern parts of the dry zone generally ruled by Vanni chiefs, tributaries of the Kandyan kings. Effective authority in the Vanni districts lay with the vanniy•rs rather than the dis•vas appointed by the king.
Nuvarakalaviya, the heartland of the hydraulic civilizations of ancient Sri Lanka, was a special case. There the village communities were to all intents and purposes acephalous administrative entities. Control by the central government was minimal and the office of dis•va of Nuvarakalaviya was symbolic of rank but conferred neither real power nor any considerable revenue. The decay of the hydraulic civilization of the dry zone left some of the villagers—who remained there—in conditions of appalling poverty; they had abandoned settled cultivation, were increasingly dependent on the produce of the jungle for their sustenance and were often ignorant of the techniques of wet rice cultivation. Like Nuvarakalaviya, the remoter provinces ‘below the mountains’—Velassa, Bintenna and Tamankaduva—situated on the periphery of the Kandyan kingdom, were little subject to the control of the central government and brought no considerable revenue either to the king or to the minor dis•vas appointed over them.
In their dis•vonys, the dis•vas were virtual rulers: they were responsible for the collection of revenue, exacted the labour service due to the king, enjoyed judicial powers, communicated with the ruler through the adig•rs and, in general, saw to the good governance of the territory under their control. The method of conscription was such that military authority too was concentrated in their hands. The dis•vas could, with the help of local officials in the provinces, rally the peasants for war. No king after R•jasimha II is known to have led the troops into battle, and in the wars with the Dutch it was the adig•rs who took the leadership. In war and in ceremony the people followed the dis•va of the province. The dis•va normally resided in the capital as a pledge of the fidelity of the people under his command and visited his dis•vony only when state business so demanded. Administrative authority and the right to collect revenue were delegated to local officials, generally members of the local aristocracy of the dis•vony, selected from among the rate •tto, the equivalent of a yeomanry.
A dis•vony like a rata was divided into kōralēs (comprising a group of contiguous villages) and a kōralē into pattus. The dis•va appointed his subordinates from among the Govikula in each of these, a kōralē (an office of trust and considerable remuneration) for a pattu, a muhandiram in charge of each caste group in a specified territorial division, and under the muhandiram were the vid•nes responsible for such caste groups in a village. Since almost every inhabitant possessed some land, he had a tenurial obligation to make a contribution to the state in cash or kind and to render personal service. The link between the cultivator and the state, in the collection of these taxes and the performance of services (r•jak•riya), was the vid•ne or headman. There were also the baddas, formed on the basis of caste groups, which cut vertically across the territorial system without regard to regional boundaries and divided the population into functional groups. The authority of each badda over the caste group and its services was all-embracing. During the eighteenth century, the badda system was highly centralized and functioned under separate departmental heads. However, during the last few years of the kingdom’s existence, the baddas tended to come under the control of the dis•vas.
Concentration of authority in the hands of the dis•vas—especially those in charge of the principal dis•vonys—was always a potential danger to royal authority, and for that reason a policy of checks and balances was resorted to. There were, of course, the obvious but crude devices of setting aristocratic families against each other and seeking to win support by rewarding loyal service with gifts in the form of land grants. Great care was taken to see that the dis•vas were not appointed to their home or ancestral territories. In the remoter parts of the country where the dis•va’s authority was potentially at its greatest, the basn•yaka nilamēs of dēv•lēs (lay trustees of dēv•lē property) were a powerful countervailing force, especially because some of the more important dēv•lēs had very large extents of land in these remote regions.
Kandyan ‘feudalism’ was an association of land tenure with a system of endogamous occupational castes, which enabled a complex system of labour specialization to operate without the use of money. Through the baddas caste services were channelled to the benefit of the state. Each caste was economically privileged in the sense that it alone had the right to supply a particular kind of labour. Every separate craft had its own headmen and all the craftsmen held land in return for the services they rendered so that the craftsmen, like everyone else, were cultivators but provided the specialized service demanded of their caste.
Three points about the caste system of the Kandyan kingdom need special emphasis. First, it was a more rigid, or rather, less flexible system than that of the Sinhalese areas of the littoral. But this was not always so. Early in the seventeenth century, Antonio Barretto (Kuruvita R•la), a Kar•va, was made dis•va of Uva. The eighteenth century provides no such example of a non-Goyigama in so exalted a position. Similarly, in later times there is greater strictness in regard to concubinage of women of lower castes. The evidence then is of increasing stratification of Kandyan society in the eighteenth century, in contrast to the greater mobility and social change within the caste system in the Sinhalese areas, apparent under Dutch rule.
Second, as in the caste system of the littoral region the dominant element was the Govikula or Goyigama (which formed almost half the population). Since the entire population lived in part by farming, and everyone had a share of land, it was the Goyigama exemption from ‘professional’ services as craftsmen or artisans that set them off from other castes. Besides, the Goyigamas in the higher administrative services did not till the soil at all, but derived their income from the land by employing others.
The Govikula, like other castes, was divided into sub-castes. The sub-caste was strictly endogamous, the organized unit with which individuals were mainly identified. Not all subdivisions within the Govikula could strictly be called sub-castes, however, and there was considerable social mobility within the lower ranks of the Govikula. The Radala and the Mudali were the highest of the sub-castes of the Govikula. They were strictly endogamous and formed the real aristocracy of the Kandyan kingdom, although the rest of the Goyigamas were also considered honourable. The Radala preserved its status by frequent intermarriage within its own ranks. Secondary wives of the kings were always selected from the nobility and collateral members of the royal family found spouses from among the nobles. Political power tended to concentrate in their hands since they controlled the key posts in the administration, manned the court and had considerable social control, epitomized in the personal retinue which formed part of their privileges. Besides, they had much land which gave them substantial wealth. This landed wealth conferred not only economic security in the sense of its continuity from generation to generation, but also enormous prestige. Some of the posts in the administrative hierarchy were hereditary for almost 150 years: thus the Ähälēpola family were high in the king’s service from the time of R•jasimha II, if not earlier. Among the other families of similar hereditary influence were the Pilima Talavēs, Leukēs, M•mpitiyas and Galagodas.
The selection of all administrative officers and the whole economic structure had caste as its foundation. While the Radala and Mudali formed the apex of the administration, other subdivisions of the Govikula had distinctive official positions within the bureaucracy. All official posts within the central government or in the provinces depended on the rank of the officer within the Govikula. All other castes were regarded as hīna j•ti. While the position of the Govikula at the top of the caste hierarchy was never in doubt, there was no fixed order of precedence among the non-Goyigama castes of the Kandyan kingdom. Their rank and status may have changed in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but the process could not be compared with the corresponding one in the maritime regions.
All social relationships between the various castes and overt caste symbols were fixed by custom (it was in regard to marriage that caste rules were most rigidly observed). A person’s caste was something quite unalterable. His social life, his conduct and his position in society, as well as his legal rights and liabilities (including the taxes he paid and the services he performed), were all determined by caste. Inveterate custom, rather than religious sanctions, held the caste system together. And here we come to the third point: the ultimate controlling authority of the caste system was secular and it continued as a vigorous force in a Buddhist society because state power was vitally involved in maintaining it.7 The sangha too was not averse to upholding the caste system in its sphere of activity, thus helping in its own way to legitimize the social order.
The economic basis of the Kandyan kingdom was subsistence agriculture in which paddy cultivation was the central feature. Paddy cultivation was at all times an enormously disciplined culture but more so in hilly terrain where terraces had to be constructed. It was also generally a communal activity around which the social and economic life of the village revolved—the preparation of the fields for sowing and the harvesting and thrashing of the crop all required the active support of the cultivator’s neighbours in the village. A prime requirement was a plentiful and well-regulated supply of water, which was provided by the heavy monsoonal and convectional rains of the wet zone in which much of the Kandyan kingdom lay. In the drier areas, the water supply was supplemented by village tanks. Shifting agriculture—chēna8 cultivation—was an integral part of the village economy, its role being especially important in the dry zone. The unique feature of chēna cultivation in Sri Lanka was that it was practised by a peasantry who were also engaged, simultaneously or otherwise, in settled forms of cultivation. Because of the abundance of forest land—the greater part of the Kandyan kingdom was covered with forests—and low population density, chēna cultivation, far from being a wasteful form of agriculture9 as the Dutch and later the British regarded it, was, in fact, ‘an economically justifiable form of land usage’.10 All paddy lands in the kingdom were subject to both compulsory services11 (these services were attached to the land and not the individual so that whoever enjoyed the use of a plot of paddy land had to supply the labour due from it or provide a substitute for that purpose) and taxes paid in kind (kada r•jak•riya), while some of them had in addition the obligation of specialized services. These latter were generally professional services organized under the baddas and performed by non-Goyigama castes specially in various crafts: potters, carpenters, goldsmiths, painters, wood and ivory carvers and weavers.12 Lands held by the Govikula were not subject to services of this nature. There was also an annual rate, which varied with the size of the holding, paid in grain at harvest time. The basis of all these imposts and services was the mada bim, the paddy field proper; neither the cultivator’s goda bim (garden) nor his hēna (chēna) were liable to any taxes. The mar•la or death duty13 was paid in kind, generally in grain, but in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries more often in cattle. And the king had the exclusive rights to precious stones.
The king obtained the services and ensured the loyalty of the higher officers in his administration by generous grants of rights over land. The dis•vas were granted what were known as saram•ru nindagam lands, which they held during office. But such lands were not heritable. When the king gave a gabad•gama or royal village to a chief, it became a nindagama, and the produce of the muttettu or the proprietor’s share went to the gambadda or grantee. The rest of the village was divided into pangus or shares and the shareholders now performed services or paid dues to the grantee instead of to the king. Thus as long as he held office, the grantee of a saram•ru nindagama had the usufruct of the muttettu and rights to enjoy services of its tenants and certain dues from them, to fine or eject them for non-performance of services and finally to settle disputes among them. Nindagam, given to dis•vas in paraveni on the basis of a royal sannas, conferred the highest rights in land, amounting in effect to hereditary estates, which in certain special cases were declared free of all services to the Crown. These paraveni nindagam, as they were called, gave a family a sense of identity from generation to generation and greatly enhanced its prestige.
The king’s cash income was very limited. Indeed, specie was scarce in the Kandyan kingdom and paddy was frequently resorted to as a medium of exchange, while many economic transactions were on the basis of barter. This was partly because considerations of security—the threat of invasion from the littoral—hampered the development of trade; since the kingdom’s security depended on its inaccessibility, the construction of roads and bridges was deliberately discouraged. Communications within the kingdom were at all times very difficult on account of the forests, the mountainous terrain and the heavy rains. Thus districts and, for that matter, villages developed as distinct economic entities with little surplus production and no means of disposing of any surplus—in brief, as congeries of local economies rather than as a truly cohesive ‘national’ economy.
The VOC’s economic activities contributed greatly to this contraction of the Kandyan economy. For a long time there had been considerable trading activity between the Kandyan kingdom and Madurai-Tanjore in south India. This trade, a vitally important one for the Kandyan economy, was disrupted from around 1665–70 when the Dutch annexed a number of Kandyan ports and established a trade monopoly. As we have seen, Kandyan products had to be exported through the VOC or its agents at prices fixed by them well below their real market value. The Kandyan villager suffered a heavy economic loss, for the VOC paid him a paltry sum for his areca which would have fetched considerably higher prices if direct sales had been permitted. Again, once the VOC became the sole importer of cloth the Kandyans were the losers. Thus, throughout the greater part of the eighteenth century the external trade of the Kandyan kingdom was crippled, resulting inevitably in the shrinking of the Kandyan economy during this period.
The VOC’s relations with the Kandyan kingdom in these decades are reviewed here in terms of three themes: Dutch anxiety to gain recognition of their sovereignty over the regions they controlled, which the Kandyans steadfastly refused to concede but which they were compelled to do by the treaty of 1766; Kandyan opposition to the trade monopoly imposed by the Dutch; and, over most of this period, the recognition by both the Kandyans and the Dutch of the limits of their power and, stemming from this, the acceptance of their interdependence in regard to certain key areas of activity.
After the death of R•jasimha II, the aim of Dutch policy was to revise the treaty of 1638 and to negotiate a new one which would reflect more accurately the political situation that existed, and above all, which would recognize Dutch sovereignty over the coast and seas of the island. They were especially anxious to obtain secure title to their possessions in order to guard against foreign intrusions. Protracted negotiations with Kandyan officials over the period 1688 to 1697 brought no results and this cooled the enthusiasm of the Dutch for a new treaty.14 For forty years thereafter they were less concerned about securing recognition from the kings of Kandy of their possession of the maritime lands. Instead, the Dutch were content to base their claims on a right of conquest from the Portuguese and the fact of effective possession since then. This, the Kandyan rulers refused to accept. Specific issues of conflicting interest arose and developed around this question of legal title, the most potent of these being with regard to Kandyan external trade in the context of Dutch insistence on monopoly rights.
Although most of the commodities of trade which came within the trade monopoly claimed by the Dutch originated in the coastal areas, the Kandyan region was the source of areca, pepper and cardamoms—which grew abundantly there, and formed important items in the once flourishing trade between the Kandyan kingdom and the Indian coast. Similarly, textiles and salt were essential items of import for the Kandyans. Once the Dutch established their monopoly in trade, all transactions in these commodities had to be conducted through the company or its approved ‘agents’ and at prices fixed by the Dutch authorities, generally disadvantageous to the Kandyan producer and consumer. The monopoly resulted in a considerable loss of revenue to the court as well as to the chiefs.15
Under Vimala Dharma Sūriya II, the successor of R•jasimha II, both the court and the chiefs urged the Dutch to relax the rigours of their monopoly by opening some of the ports to Kandyan trade. Although at first the Dutch were inclined to be conciliatory and to grant these requests, the realization that it would be detrimental to the economic interests of the company compelled them to stand firm against any relaxation. The chiefs had tried unsuccessfully to send boats on their behalf through Puttalam. Vimala Dharma Sūriya II, a diffident and altogether pacific character felt obliged to demonstrate his displeasure at the commercial policy of the Dutch by ordering the closure of the lines of communication between his kingdom and the Dutch territories. The Dutch retaliated by tightening their monopoly after 1703. Although the Kandyan kings did not follow a consistent policy of hostility to the Dutch, nevertheless, the closure of the ‘roads’ was one option that was available to them and which was used to considerable effect. It was not a positive act of aggression and the Dutch could hardly regard it as such, but it did have an impact on them since it often resulted in an inconvenient dislocation of the island’s trade. This pattern of an onerous monopoly provoking the closure of the ‘roads’ in retaliation was to be repeated throughout much of the eighteenth century.
Narendrasimha, Vimala Dharma Sūriya II’s son and successor, was confronted with these problems almost from the time of his accession in 1707. There was a considerable loss of revenue in areca and a shortage of textiles on account of the Dutch trade monopoly. In retaliation the ‘roads’ from Kandy were closed in 1716 and this caused a noticeable shortage of areca in the Dutch ports as well as a reduction in the sale of cloth. The Dutch, however, were not to be deflected from their policies. They would not consider any possibility of opening the ports. In 1720, the frontier gates were opened once more and the trade between the Kandyan kingdom and the lowlands was resumed. But the pressure for a relaxation of the monopoly and the opening of the ports continued. Those most restive on this issue were the Kandyan chiefs in their anxiety to get a better price for the areca and pepper bought by the Dutch in Kandy. They took up the position that there was no justification for the closure of the ports when there was no threat of a foreign attack. In 1732, the pathways of the kingdom were closed again and this continued for two years, much longer than on previous occasions. It caused a dearth of areca and cardamoms. Nevertheless, the Dutch decided to put an end to any expectation of free trade and the Batavian Council instructed Governor Pielat (1732–34) to send a letter to the court, declaring firmly and pointedly that the ports would not be reopened for Kandyan trade in breach of the Dutch monopoly under any circumstances.
Governor van Imhoff was sent to the island in July 1736 to rebuild, if possible, good relations with Kandy. He began on a conciliatory note. There was a refreshing tone of moderation and realism in his analysis of the situation of the island. The keynote was his emphasis on the interdependence of the Kandyans and Dutch, and the need to share the country’s trade on a more equitable basis: the major share would continue to remain with the Dutch, but he was willing to give up the trade monopoly at least to the extent of granting the Kandyans some limited benefits in trade on their own. In 1736, he attempted to secure a peace treaty with the Kandyan kingdom, recognizing the legality of Dutch sovereignty over the lowlands in return for some limited trading concessions—the Kandyans were to be offered the right to send three vessels from Puttalam for purposes of trade (in goods that were not monopolized by the Dutch) to the Indian coast. He regarded such concessions as a means of binding the Kandyan rulers to the Dutch in perpetual friendship. When this compromise was rejected by both the Kandyans and the Batavian government, van Imhoff’s thoughts quickly turned to a more rigorous and hostile line of action—a swift expedition to Kandy, a seizure of the king and enforcement of a peace treaty incorporating the terms desired by the Dutch. Narendrasimha was ailing and not expected to live long. Since he had no male heir the Dutch rightly anticipated a disputed succession and political instability on his death, conditions which could be exploited to their advantage. But Batavia recognized these recommendations for what they were—a revision to van Goens’s policies—and strongly opposed them. There was no objection to appeasement of the Kandyans provided van Imhoff could do it within the framework of existing policy and with the expedients available to him. Pressure on the Dutch eased substantially with the breakdown in the king’s health in 1737 and his death in 1739.
For most of the period covered by this chapter the two parties—the Kandyans and the Dutch—preferred a policy of coexistence to one of prolonged tension. Neither was strong enough to gain a decisive advantage over the other, while each in its own way needed the other’s support in some matters of vital importance. Thus the Kandyans, while fully aware of their own influence among the Sinhalese under the rule of the VOC, seldom resorted to incitement of them against the Dutch, and even when they did so there was a very noticeable element of cautious restraint in such activities. The Dutch, for their part, despite provocations, were circumspect in dealing with the court. They took care not to offend it in any way. There was, in fact, a scrupulous and consistent adherence to formalities and civilities and a remarkable tolerance of court etiquette even when it was tediously exhausting if not positively degrading. Above all, both parties were keenly aware of their mutual dependence.
Dutch assistance in the form of boats and ships was required by the Kandyans in regard to two issues principally, and regularly, and since neither of these had to do with trade or politics, the Dutch were willing to help. The Kandyan royal family, as the only ruling house in the island, had to look to south India for its spouses. The Dutch readily accommodated requests for aid in sending missions to south India for this purpose, as well as in bringing the bridal party to the island. The Kandyan monarchs, Narendrasimha, Śrī Vijaya R•jasimha and Kīrti Śrī R•jasimha were afforded this facility in 1710, 1739 and 1751 respectively. Again, Dutch aid in the form of ships was vital, if not indispensable, in helping Kandyan rulers to maintain contact with the Buddhist states of south-east Asia—Burma and Thailand principally—to revitalize Sinhalese Buddhism, and to re-establish the upasampad• and the purity and strength of the sangha in Sri Lanka.16 Indeed because of the distances to be covered and the hazards of the long voyages, these missions could never have been undertaken without the active help of the Dutch. Three such missions were sent. The first two in 1741 and 1747 both failed, though not for the same reasons; while the third, which left in August 1750 and returned to the island in the middle of 1753, was a pronounced success and a landmark in the history of Buddhism in Sri Lanka.17
The Dutch, for their part, were equally dependent on Kandyan goodwill in matters of vital importance to them—the successful collection of cinnamon for export and the transport of elephants to Jaffna. The first of these was by far the more important and as regards this the king’s permission was required for peeling cinnamon within Kandyan territories. His influence was not confined to these regions. He could, if he wished, impede the smooth functioning of the Dutch machinery for cinnamon production in the lowlands under the control of the VOC by virtue of his leverage with the Sal•gamas. Generally, the peeling of cinnamon in the Kandyan kingdom as well as the transport of elephants to Jaffna was permitted, except on occasions when relations between the two parties were more than ordinarily strained. At least up to the end of the 1720s the Kandyan king did not as a rule seek to subvert the loyalty of the sal•gamas and thus disorganize the peeling of cinnamon in the regions under Dutch control. Even during the administration of Petrus Vuyst (1726–29), when the Dutch were under severe stress on account of internal problems in the lowlands, Kandyans did not seek to turn these to their advantage. But this reluctance disappeared over the next decade.
In the early 1730s, the efforts of the VOC administration to extract a larger portion of the agricultural production of the peasants for its coffers led to widespread discontent in the low country.18 The discontent ripened into unrest and the Kandyans smarting under the restraints of the Dutch trade monopoly were afforded an opportunity for embarrassing the Dutch by inciting the people of the low country to resistance. The chiefs took the initiative in this. The Kandyan kingdom served as a refuge for malcontents facing punishment and as a bridgehead from which they would sustain their opposition to the Dutch. As we have seen, the ‘roads’ linking the low country with the Kandyan kingdom were closed on the king’s instructions in 1732. In 1733, the peeling of cinnamon in the Seven Kōralēs was forbidden on the king’s orders, as was the transport of elephants through the kingdom. The situation in the low country deteriorated further under Governor Domburg (1734–36). The VOC’s demands on the service castes—especially the Sal•gamas—kept increasing and the Kandyans gave the latter secret encouragement in their opposition to the Dutch when not openly inciting them to rebellion. Disaffected elements in the low country used the king’s name to rally support for themselves against the Dutch. The king’s influence was very vividly demonstrated, and in a manner most damaging to the Dutch, when the sal•gamas were persuaded to desert or to slacken the pace of collection of cinnamon.
If the Kandyans anticipated that a policy of fanning the flames of discontent in the low country would yield the result they most desired—a relaxation of the trade monopoly and the opening of the ports—their hopes were quickly and resolutely dispelled by the Dutch. As we have seen, neither in Sri Lanka nor in Batavia would the VOC make any concession on this. True, this continued manipulation of agrarian discontent in the lowlands to the discomfiture of the VOC largely explains the initiatives attempted by van Imhoff which were discussed earlier in this chapter. But while Batavia would countenance appeasement and conciliation, it continued to insist on a maintenance of the trade monopoly.
The pressure on the Dutch eased considerably in the early 1740s. This is explained to some extent by the internal politics of the Kandyan kingdom—the accession, in 1739, of the N•yakkar dynasty to the Kandyan throne.19 While their kinship ties with south Indian states were to pose considerable dangers to the Dutch in later years because of the potential these held of political links with their European rivals and competitors in south India, the establishment of the N•yakkar dynasty caused no immediate change in Kandyan-Dutch relations. The ‘roads’ were opened once again and internal trade between the two regions was resumed. This respite did not last long. By the time van Gollenesse took over as governor in 1743, the Kandyans began stepping up their pressure on the Dutch in the low country. The Sal•gamas, still very loyal to the Kandyan ruler, often took their complaints to him, and time and again van Gollenesse had to appeal to the Kandyan chiefs to use their influence with the sal•gamas to persuade them to fulfil their tenurial obligations to the VOC. With the accession of the N•yakkar dynasty to the Kandyan throne, the chiefs began to play a greater role in policy making.
Much more serious and ominous for the future were the incursions being made regularly into Dutch territory by the Kandyans. In 1743, for instance, there was a raid into Siyanē Kōralē, as well as sudden attacks on Dutch outposts in the Trincomalee district. Although a show of firmness by van Gollenesse sufficed to repulse most of these, it was not possible to guard against all such forays. Van Gollenesse had a shrewd grasp of the intricacies of the political and power structure of the Kandyan kingdom and sought to exploit the divisions and factions within the court by a mixture of flattery and bribery—the disbursement of gifts to some of the factions—to the advantage of the Dutch. But he was in no position to sustain this initiative because of a succession of natural disasters—floods, crop failures and epidemics of smallpox and ‘pestilential fevers’ (probably malaria) in 1747–48. The advantage was now once more with the Kandyans and van Gollenesse found that their pressure for free trade continued unabated and was, in fact, intensified with the settlement of increasing numbers of N•yakkar relatives of the king in the Kandyan court.20 Some of the Kandyan chiefs entered into partnerships with south Indian Muslim merchants in a potentially profitable smuggling trade through the Kandyan ports. It would appear that the N•yakkar kinsfolk of the king, with their south Indian connections, took the initiative in this. Van Gollenesse had to take rigorous measures to curb this smuggling trade. But the pressure for free trade continued.
Kandyan incursions into Dutch-controlled territory in the lowlands continued during the administrations of van Gollenesse’s successors, Loten (1752–57) and Schreuder (1757–62). And since Dutch land policies, especially under Schreuder, became even more rigorous in their impact than those of the 1730s, in a single-minded effort to extract an ever-increasing share of the produce of the land from the peasants, opportunities for the Kandyans to meddle in the affairs of the lowlands kept proliferating and were eagerly exploited. It became increasingly difficult to maintain the restraints observed by both parties in this war of nerves and two decades of intermittent tensions, pressures and irritations led directly to open warfare in the early 1760s during van Eck’s administration (1762–65) for the first time in more than a century.21
It was in 1762 that the Madras establishment of the English East India Company sent its first diplomatic mission to Sri Lanka under John Pybus. The English had long hesitated in seeking to develop contacts with the Kandyan kingdom for fear of offending the Dutch, whose neutrality in the Seven Years War, which was then raging, was advantageous to them. But the initiative on this occasion had come from the Kandyan ruler who was desperately seeking the friendship of other European powers as a counterpoise to the Dutch. Although the English were conscious of the island’s strategic value in the Anglo-French struggle for supremacy in India, they had no definite plans with regard to Sri Lanka and no policy to apply. Thus the Pybus mission was basically an intelligence project to gain an understanding of the political situation on the island, and to assess the military and problems that confronted the Kandyan rulers. The British diplomats had no intention of being drawn into a commitment to the Kandyans which could in any way be interpreted as a formal offer of assistance against the Dutch.
In striking contrast, the Kandyans, faced with the prospect of war with the Dutch, expressed a positive desire for British assistance and they hoped that the Pybus mission would treat this as the central point of the negotiations it was to conduct in Kandy. But Pybus had no authority to make such an offer, and keeping to his instructions he was deliberately vague and hesitant whenever this theme emerged in the course of his discussions with the Kandyans. He did produce the articles of a draft treaty for discussion, but these were more in the nature of a manoeuvre designed to extract information on what potential benefits the Kandyans were inclined to offer to the British than a serious attempt at negotiating an agreement conferring benefits on both parties. Thus Pybus’s request for a territorial foothold for the English East India Company on the king’s territory on the coast, in return for which nothing substantial was on offer, was far from being an optimistic attempt to get something for nothing. The offer was a cynical device to test the Kandyan reaction to the prospect of a British bridgehead on the island. It is important at this point to emphasize that Pybus, in his request for a territorial foothold on the coast, was not thinking exclusively of the port of Trincomalee and that it was not the primary aim of his mission to ask for British control of that port. The British had a working arrangement with the Dutch which allowed them to use the harbour as a refitting port for the British Eastern fleet whenever necessary.
The discovery that the Pybus mission was in Sri Lanka and negotiating with the Kandyans came as a great surprise to the Dutch. But by the time the discovery was made they were already at war with Kandy. The news of the Pybus mission served to harden the Dutch attitude towards the Kandyan kingdom and to spur them on to a total reversal of their tactics and policies with regard to their position in Sri Lanka. The legal fiction that they administered the territories they controlled as servants of the Kandyan king had been maintained for too long partly because the expenses of a protracted war against the Kandyans, which was the only means of converting this fictitious position into the hard reality of effective sovereignty, acted as a deterrent to the Dutch. In 1762, reluctance to embark on a war, even a long one, against the Kandyans melted away and an expedition was despatched to the Kandyan Hills to bring the Kandyan kingdom to heel. It was routed as comprehensively as the Portuguese invading forces had been in the past. But the Dutch were too perturbed by the Pybus mission and its implications to let this defeat deter them from renewing the effort to compel the Kandyans to accept the fact of Dutch sovereignty over the island’s maritime regions. A second expedition despatched in 1765 was successful because it was better planned, and the Dutch were able to extract from the Kandyans a settlement and a treaty which gave them all they desired.
The clauses of the treaty of 176622 spelled out the realization of what had lately become the major objectives of Dutch power in Sri Lanka. The Dutch were now the paramount power in Sri Lanka and the Kandyan kingdom was reduced to the position of a landlocked state dependent on the Dutch for supplies of some essential items of food (such as salt and dry fish), with its external trade under Dutch control and with severe limitations on the conduct of its foreign relations. Very few concessions were made to Kandyan sensibilities despite the fact that the Dutch success on the battlefield was more apparent than real and that the treaty had been extracted by the use of prolonged diplomatic pressure and threats of a renewal of war. In reality, the treaty was a hollow triumph for it did not represent an accurate expression of the real balance of political forces in Sri Lanka. The Kandyans were too resentful and humiliated to reconcile themselves to the new situation and the Dutch lacked the power to compel the Kandyans to a strict adherence to the essential features of the treaty if they were recalcitrant. The rigorous terms imposed on the Kandyans by the treaty of 1766 spurred them on to a feverish search for foreign assistance in expelling the Dutch from Sri Lanka.
The Kandyans’ passionate pursuit of a policy of revenge against the Dutch coincided with the eruption of the penultimate phase of the Anglo-French conflict for the control of India. The British were anxious to prevent the French from filling the power vacuum caused by the waning of Dutch power in Asia. As a result, the Dutch were soon embroiled in the Anglo-French struggle for the control of south India. From this emerged the threat to the Dutch in the maritime regions of Sri Lanka and British interest in the island. Since many of the south Indian rulers were connected by kinship and marriage ties to the N•yakkars, they could easily act as brokers in a Kandyan-English East India Company alliance and thus link Sri Lanka with the politics of the Madras region. The link was attempted during the Seven Years War. If the role of the south Indian states in this was much less than decisive, it was because—as we shall see—the operation of more powerful forces, which pulled Sri Lanka into the power struggle in south India, had made their mediatory role superfluous.