The lure of cinnamon brought the VOC to Sri Lanka and throughout the period of its rule in the island’s maritime regions, the protection of the cinnamon monopoly was its great passion. Occasionally, it showed some interest in other cash crops—coffee, pepper and cardamoms, for instance—but this, as we shall see, was only for brief periods when the supply from the traditional sources of these commodities within the far-flung eastern possessions of the VOC was inadequate to meet the demand for them in the markets of Europe and Asia. In the wider perspective of the VOC’s international trade, Sri Lanka’s role was that of its main producer of cinnamon.
Cinnamon
As the sole suppliers of cinnamon in the European and Asian markets, the Dutch were in a position to dictate the price at which it was sold. This was a freedom the Dutch seldom had with regard to other commodities. This was reflected in the extraordinary increase in the price of cinnamon in Europe as well as in the East from the 1660s, when the VOC established its control over Sri Lanka’s littoral and its cinnamon trade. From an average of 1.50 guilders a pound in 1660, the price moved up to 3 guilders over the rest of the seventeenth century. In the mid-eighteenth century, the price reached 6 guilders and stood at a quite exceptional 8 or 9 guilders a pound in the 1780s before returning to an average of 6 or 7 guilders in the 1790s, the last years of Dutch rule on the island. Sri Lanka’s cinnamon was superior to that of its overseas competitors, but only three or four out of about ten types of the island’s cinnamon were of fine quality, and sufficient quantities of the finest cinnamon required for the European market could never be found. What was most remarkable was that Sri Lanka did not benefit from the consistently high prices which its most valued export commodity commanded in the markets of the world, nor for that matter did the VOC administration on the island, for the profits from cinnamon did not appear in its accounts.1 The profits from sales in Europe went directly to the Netherlands chamber of the company, and those at Asian ports remained there. The result was that neither the regions in Sri Lanka which produced the spice nor the people engaged in its production derived any substantial advantage from this trade.2 The VOC monopolized both the trade and the profits from it.
The history of Sri Lanka’s cinnamon trade during the period of the VOC’s rule of the island’s maritime belt has three distinct phases, with the administrations of Governor van Imhoff and Governor Falck serving as convenient dividing lines. Some aspects of this first phase have been reviewed in earlier chapters and therefore will not be dealt with at any great length here. Common to all these phases are some distinctive features. First, because the Sal•gamas were under a service obligation to deliver fixed quantities of cinnamon gratis and were paid a bare pittance for that which was supplied in excess of this quota, the company’s production cost was next to nothing. The cinnamon department—the mahabadda under a Dutch official (the captain of the mahabadda)—was entrusted with the administration of the very rigorous plakaats designed to preserve cinnamon as a Dutch monopoly.3 The main function of the department was mobilization of all able-bodied Sal•gamas to peel the cinnamon and make it ready for export. The mahabadda maintained lists of Sal•gamas, which were regularly scrutinized and revised to check absenteeism and avoidance of this service obligation.4 The peeling of cinnamon in the forests was inordinately rigorous and unpleasant, and quite understandably the Sal•gamas resorted to all manner of ruses to avoid the service. Pressures, relentlessly maintained, on the Sal•gamas to bring in ever-increasing quantities of cinnamon—to exceed their quotas and not merely meet them—imposed on them a crushing burden of tenurial obligations.
Second, despite their control of the major cinnamon-producing areas of the south-west, the Dutch could never do without supplies obtained from the Kandyan kingdom as well. In combination with the influence the Kandyan ruler had with the Sal•gamas, this dependence on the Kandyan kingdom for supplies of cinnamon underlined the vulnerability of the VOC to diplomatic and political pressure from the Kandyans. There was, third, the central feature of Dutch land policy in the littoral under their control: the protection of the cinnamon producing forests—they were content to leave potentially productive land lie idle rather than allow it to be cultivated if there was the slightest chance of harm to the cinnamon plants that grew so luxuriantly in the forests. This singularly restrictive land policy left extensive tracts of cultivable land beyond the reach of the people. The VOC justified these restraints by the arguments that slash and burn agriculture would lead to soil exhaustion; that the clearing of land for chēnas would inevitably result in the destruction of cinnamon plants; and indeed that cinnamon seeds scattered by the wind and birds would not take root in chēna lands cleared of their forest cover. In the nineteenth century, the British, who succeeded the Dutch in control of the island, would be just as rigid in their opposition to chēna cultivation, although the rationale in that instance was composed of a different set of arguments, with the charge of soil exhaustion serving as the single common factor. But this is to anticipate events.
These three factors, each in its own way, and in combination, kept the Sinhalese areas of the littoral in a state of incipient tension during much of the eighteenth century. In terms of its relative importance in provoking opposition to the VOC, the third was the most significant. The more perceptive of the Dutch officials were aware of this, but till van Imhoff appeared on the scene nobody of any importance was willing to disturb this holy cow—the cardinal principle of Dutch land policy of leaving large areas of land unproductive in order to protect the cinnamon that grew there—much less to slaughter it. Van Imhoff could see neither logic nor equity in this and persuaded the company directors that some of this land could be put to better use, for example, for the cultivation of coconut, which held out the prospect that arrack—a product of the coconut palm—could become a major source of income for the VOC. He took the initiative in granting land for other ‘secondary’ crops as well, coffee among them, a line of policy which his successor van Gollenesse was inclined—initially, at least—to continue and expand by including pepper in the category of crops for which such lands were available. Later van Gollenesse began to have reservations about this policy because the VOC suffered a loss of revenue when high land was converted to gardens; however, he did not stop these land grants altogether, but made sure that full rights of alienation would be given only after the company’s share of revenue had been paid.5
In 1746 came a more notable departure from established practice when van Gollenesse decided to permit Muslims and Chetties to own and cultivate land. Hitherto aliens living in Dutch territory—Muslims and Chetties were so regarded—had been prohibited from land ownership. They appear to have been engaged in occupations other than agriculture and were obliged to work for the company at its various establishments for three months of the year (uliyam service), an obligation which they could commute for a fixed sum of money each year if they wished. This liberalization proved to be short-lived; it did not survive the sudden and prodigious increase in the price of cinnamon in the mid-eighteenth century—from 3 guilders to more than 6 guilders a pound—a doubling in price stimulated by the upsurge in the demand for cinnamon in Europe. There was now, naturally, tremendous pressure, to step up cinnamon production, and in its wake came a sharp and deliberate reversal of the trends initiated by van Imhoff and van Gollenesse and a return under Loten and Schreuder to the conventional policy of rigorous restraints on the use of unproductive lands for agriculture in order to protect the cinnamon plants that lay scattered in them.6
Loten reimposed the VOC’s policy of restraining the extension of traditional subsistence agriculture into forests and wastelands which had potential for the extraction of cinnamon bark.7 Schreuder refined these restraints through a series of aggressively stringent measures into a harsh, even iron-handed, regime which heeded neither equity nor custom; he ordered the destruction of peasant holdings—gardens, in particular—if the cultivator could produce no legal title;8 not even service tenure lands which people had held without disturbance for generations were exempted, while long-established villages were relocated in areas deemed unsuitable for cinnamon if the original site contained cinnamon in commercially exploitable quantities.
In the context of growing population pressure9 on existing agricultural lands, the effects of Schreuder’s measures were disastrously explosive. Agrarian discontent was normally synonymous with Sal•gama restiveness at their service obligations which kept them for up to eight months of the year in the forests peeling cinnamon. Now exasperation and restlessness had a much wider base, although the Sal•gamas reacted most violently of all because they confronted burgeoning pressures in the form of increasingly burdensome quotas and harsh punitive measures if these were not met. They responded as they usually did where pressures became intolerably severe, by deserting in large numbers to the Kandyan kingdom. But this traditional escape valve could no longer cope with the hostility generated by Schreuder’s harsh measures. The entire south-west of the island erupted in rebellion in 1757 and this was not put down entirely till the early 1760s.
The Sal•gamas figured prominently in sustaining the rebellions, but there were other factors at work too. The Kandyans moved in to aid the rebels and set about doing it without the restraints they had observed in the 1730s. For Governor Schreuder the villains of the piece were the headmen between whose economic interests and those of the VOC there were now unmistakable signs of conflict. Their resentment at the reduction of their accomodessans was aggravated by the losses, actual and potential, they sustained because of the land policies of Loten and Schreuder. Cinnamon grew best on land that was also suitable for coconut cultivation in which the headmen and others had an increasingly important stake. But neither their grievances nor their machinations in inciting the peasants to rebel were responsible for the outbreak of rebellion on this occasion. Schreuder believed, or chose to believe, that the peasants had been goaded to rebellion by the misdeeds of the headmen rather than the policies of the VOC. While there were indeed some complaints against the headmen on this score during the Galle and Matara uprisings of 1757–60, these were a peripheral rather than a fundamental issue and to focus attention on them as Schreuder contrived to do was an exercise in explaining away rather than explaining the causes of these upheavals. Schreuder’s successor, van Eck (1762–65), took a more realistic attitude in 1762 by relaxing some of the harsher aspects of the land policies which had provoked resistance, and he did so because they could not be implemented without serious opposition from the people. No alternative policy was immediately forthcoming. Indeed, one did not appear till 1767 in the aftermath of the wars with Kandy in the 1760s and the treaty of 1766.
Surprisingly, the last decades of the VOC’s administration were full of new, one might even say radical, innovations in the organization of export agriculture, and in new initiatives with regard to traditional agriculture. All this is hardly consistent with the reality of an organization facing a bleak and uncertain future in an international situation which threatened its very existence, and confronting an acute economic crisis, at a time when retrenchment and paralysis in administration would have seemed more natural than innovative departures from established patterns. Two of these latter concern us here, and both came with Governor Falck (1765–85).
The first of these was the experiment begun in 1769 of cinnamon cultivation on a plantation basis. As late as 1768, Falck himself had gone on record as sharing the conventional belief that cinnamon could not be cultivated in plantations and that it thrived only in the jungles. The first experimental plantation was begun at Maradana near Colombo. By 1771, there was positive evidence of its economic viability, with the result that within a short time cinnamon plantations were established in other parts of the south-west littoral as well. Besides, the principle of plantation production was extended to other crops, to coffee for instance, and during the administration of de Graaf (1785–94) the company turned to cotton and indigo plantations when it became difficult to obtain cloth from the Coromandel Coast, the traditional source of import to the island.10
Once Falck was firmly convinced that cinnamon could be promoted as a successful plantation crop throughout the south and south-west, the full rigour of Dutch land policy was at last relaxed. The decision taken to grant thunhavul lands to the inhabitants on the understanding that one-third of it should be planted with cinnamon and the rest with any crops they wished was significant both because it was a positive attempt to meet the needs of the people on their own terms by a liberalization of land policy, as well as marking a real breakthrough in cinnamon exhumation. The most liberal extension of thunhavul lands occurred during the early years of de Graaf’s term of office, and the unbroken coconut belt from Matara to Chilaw is evidence of its remarkable success on a long-term basis. Second, Falck was responsible for a reversal of the traditional attitude of exploiting the labour of the Sal•gamas without commensurate compensation in kind or cash. This departure by Falck from Dutch practice was continued by de Graaf throughout the last years of Dutch rule, and it survived well into the early years of British control in the nineteenth century.11
Falck gave Sal•gamas a wide range of concessions, most of which were not available to other castes: special consideration in the grant of lands, exemptions from land dues and tolls at ferries; the right of plying vessels without paying anchorage dues; free collection of salt and the right to trade in it and, even more important, exemption from the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts. As a result of these privileges, the last quarter of the eighteenth century marked the rise of the Sal•gamas as a caste group—these concessions were available to all Sal•gamas and not merely to their caste headmen—in social and economic status to the point where non-Sal•gamas were anxious to get their children, and themselves if possible, registered as Sal•gamas to enjoy these benefits. The privileges conceded to the Sal•gamas provoked the envy of other castes, but from the point of view of the Dutch the new policy paid rich dividends. There was now hardly any disruption to the peeling of cinnamon. The Sal•gamas became so attached to the company that they reported on the felling of jungle for chēna cultivation, served on the commissions that reported on the suitability of lands which could be converted into chēnas and supervised the destruction of garden crops found in cinnamon lands.
Ironically, while these changes were to have far-reaching consequences, the Dutch found that they made no impact on the main question that concerned them—that of increased production of quality cinnamon. Between 1764 and 1792 there was actually a fall in the quantity obtained. In fact, annual collections of cinnamon hardly reached former levels and it was with great difficulty that sufficient quantities to meet the requirements of the directors were found. Nor did these two innovations confer any special immunity against agrarian unrest and rebellion in the Sinhalese areas of the littoral.
There was always the possibility of a flourishing trade in coffee had the VOC not stifled its growth in its territories in Sri Lanka. The company decided to introduce coffee as a garden crop in its possessions in 1722, but coffee culture did not catch on for some time and its production was quite negligible till the 1730s, when Amsterdam instructed the Sri Lankan administration to collect as much coffee as possible on the island. By the end of the decade, substantial quantities were gathered for export, and this trade became part of the company’s general trade monopoly. Coffee from Sri Lanka was shipped to Indian and Persian ports where it competed successfully with Arabian coffee. But soon Javanese coffee production increased enormously and the Dutch were oversupplied, and from 1738 onwards the company instructed its officials in Sri Lanka to discourage its production. These instructions were adhered to over the next two decades.
The same kind of outlook and policies governed the Dutch attitudes towards pepper and cardamom. In regard to both these products, however, there was a complicating factor: the main centre of production was the Kandyan kingdom, and there were attempts, therefore, to encourage cultivation of these crops in the Dutch territories in order to be independent of Kandyan supplies. This was most evident with regard to pepper, one of the island’s traditional minor crops. Even though the Dutch did not regard the island as a major producer of this commodity, they were nevertheless able to collect relatively large quantities of it. While there were some doubts expressed about the desirability of promoting its cultivation in the island, the official policy of the company during much of the eighteenth century was in favour of encouraging the expansion of pepper culture, within the Dutch territories, as a garden crop. During the early part of the eighteenth century there was a steady increase in the demand for Sri Lanka cardamoms in Europe. It would appear that the company collected cardamoms for its Asian trade as well. Most were obtained from the Kandyan kingdom, but some also grew in the company’s lands in the Matara dis•vony. Traders from the low-country travelled to the Kandyan kingdom to collect the produce sold to the company.
In the second half of the eighteenth century, with its pepper trade in Malabar and cardamom trade in the Indonesian Archipelago facing difficult times, the company showed much greater interest in obtaining supplies of these from Sri Lanka. But it continued to blow hot and cold: thus in 1765 Dutch officials on the island received instructions to promote the cultivation of coffee (in 1760 under Schreuder the VOC had declared itself ready to buy as much coffee as was available), pepper and cardamoms, but in the very next year they were ordered to restrain coffee production and to accept only the coffee actually delivered to them. Dutch officials on the island were hopeful that after the treaty of 1766 there would be an abundant supply of cardamoms from the Kandyan kingdom, thus obviating the need to stimulate its cultivation in the company’s territories, but characteristically, the prices offered by the VOC were niggardly, and as a result the Kandyans were not interested. Rather than offer a higher price, the company preferred to incur the expense of promoting its cultivation in its own territories on the littoral. As for pepper, the decision was taken in 1770 to bring all lands alienated for pepper cultivation under cinnamon cultivation.
By the 1780s, however, the Dutch had lost their hold on their once flourishing Malabar trade, and with alternative sources of supply of pepper and coffee urgently called for, the VOC looked once more to Sri Lanka. Its officials on the island were urged to give vigorous support to the production of coffee (the directors hoped to obtain about 453,597 kg to 680,396 kg), pepper (production was to be stepped up until the quantity obtained from Sri Lankan sources could replace that normally obtained from Malabar) and cardamom. De Graaf enthusiastically supported this policy, but the drive to boost production of these commodities proved to be too vigorous. It provoked a major rebellion in 1789–90 in the areas in which the efforts were concentrated. From Matara the rebellion spread to other parts of the littoral (especially Chilaw and Puttalam) and to the Hapitigam and Alutkuru Kōralēs. A chastened Batavian government soon urged de Graaf to halt his energetic bid to stimulate production of coffee, pepper and cardamom, and to return to the more conventional priorities of Dutch agricultural policy in which cinnamon took pride of place.
One important point about these subsidiary crops needs special emphasis: coffee, pepper and cardamom were an important source of money income for the people of the littoral. Sinhalese officials in the provincial administration and headmen of various castes often derived considerable cash incomes from their lands as well as from trade in subsidiary crops such as cardamom. (Sinhalese headmen of the border districts and Muslim traders served as agents of the VOC for the purchase of cardamom from the Kandyan kingdom.) As a result, not only was the monetization of the economy accelerated but also the greater familiarity of the Sinhalese with cash transactions—in combination with the capital that had accumulated in the hands of some of their number in the littoral under Dutch rule—gave them a decided advantage in exploiting the opportunities in trade and plantation agriculture that came their way in the early nineteenth century under British rule.
As early as 1656, the Dutch in Batavia had issued a set of instructions—the first of their kind—to the VOC in Sri Lanka in which great emphasis was placed on the promotion of subsistence agriculture and rice cultivation. The aim avowedly was the attainment of self-sufficiency in food on the littoral. In the first few decades of Dutch rule, disturbed political conditions and particularly the prolonged tension on the border with the Kandyan kingdom were hardly conducive to the attainment of this objective. One problem was the depopulation of large tracts of territory, especially on the disputed borders. The Dutch encouraged people to return to these regions in the knowledge that this would certainly help increase productivity in traditional agriculture within the Dutch territories. This was in any case a long-term perspective dependent on political conditions beyond the control of the VOC. The first governor, van Goens, had resorted to a more unorthodox solution: he imported slaves from south India and settled them on the south-west littoral. This experiment did not increase the production of rice in the Dutch territories; the focus of attention was and continued to be cinnamon almost to the exclusion of all else, and encouragement of traditional agriculture was sporadic, inadequate and unsystematic.
In the drier parts of the littoral under the company’s control—in the Batticaloa and Matara districts, for instance—the expansion of rice cultivation depended on the restoration of the irrigation works there. The compulsory services available to the Company were seldom used for this purpose, or for the maintenance of village tanks, dams and sluices; in short they were rarely directed to work to the benefit of subsistence agriculture. Their one notable achievement in irrigation was the construction of the Urubokka Dam in the south. It was the first new irrigation project on the island since the days of the Polonnaruva kings. The Urubokka Dam was an impressive engineering feat which successfully surmounted the disadvantages of a climatic barrier which left one side of a mountain range plentifully supplied with rain and the other side subject to long periods of drought. A reliable supply of water was provided for several thousands of hectares of paddy lands as far as Ranna in the parched Giruve-pattu Plains. Apart from this one successful project in Rohana, the Dutch did more to restore irrigation works at Akkarai-pattu on the east coast than elsewhere in their territories. There were plans for the restoration of the Yodaveva at Mannar and the Kantalai Tank, as well as irrigation works on the Pattipola Aar (Gal Oya) in the east, but nothing came of these.
In fact, the very substantial achievement of the Dutch in canal building completely overshadowed their work in irrigation. These canals were among their most notable contributions to the island’s economic development. We digress, at this point, for a brief look at this canal system. The first canal was the one from the Kelani River just north of the fort of Colombo through the Muturajavala Swamp to Pamunugama. By the eighteenth century, this had been extended by way of lagoons, backwaters and rivers to the Maha Oya on to Puttalam and 24 km across the Puttalam Lake to Kalpitiya. The development of inland river and canal communications over the low country south of the Kelani River was stepped up during the administration of van Imhoff.12 A canal connecting Nedimala and Kotte provided a continuous waterway from the Kelani River to the Kalu River, while the latter was linked southwards to the Bentota River by a canal joining the Moran Ela and the Kaluvamodera Ela. Alternative inland communication between the Kalu and Bentota Rivers was provided a link between the Galvaka Ela and the Palawatta River. The suburbs of Galle and Matara were also canalized to facilitate transport of agricultural produce and for floating timber down from the forests of the hinterland. Further south, a canal system of about 48 km was based on the Polvatta River at Veligama and the Nilvala River which flows past the Matara Fort. The Colombo rendezvous of all canal traffic was Grandpass, the old ferry on the bend of the Kelani north of Colombo. The most valuable of these canals commercially was the San Sebastian from Grandpass through Bloemendhal by the base of Hulftsdorp Hill to the Beira Lake and thence to Colombo’s waterfront.
The Dutch also developed a canal system north and south of Batticaloa in the east, a region which afforded an excellent combination of advantages for water navigation. There was a 50-km stretch from Batticaloa to Samanthurai in the south, while in the north a canal linked Batticaloa with Vanderloos Bay, 42 km away, thus making possible a continuous line of inland water transport extending to 92 km. Parts of these canal systems served also as flood protection schemes: on the east coast between Batticaloa and Kalmunai, the Nilvala River in Matara and the northern suburbs of Colombo. The Mulleriyava Tank in the lower reaches of the Kelani River was an example of a combined flood protection and irrigation scheme. These canals were not without some benefit to indigenous agriculture: the Mulleriyava Tank, for instance, was in part at least an irrigation project; and most of the others provided easier facilities for the transport of rice from areas which had a surplus to regions in need of it.
To return to the theme of traditional agriculture, the Dutch territories on the island, taken as a whole, needed to import rice. They grew ever more dependent on external sources of supply for much of their requirements of rice, a pattern of reliance on imports which continued throughout the period of Dutch rule and beyond it into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The only way of expanding rice production to the point of eliminating the need for imports from India would have been by liberalizing the VOC’s land policy, but as we have seen, during the first hundred years of their control over the island’s littoral there was, except for a brief period under van Imhoff and van Gollenesse, a reluctance to make any concessions in regard to land for peasant agriculture. On the contrary, there was an obsessive interest in protecting land suitable for cultivation from encroachment by the peasants, for fear of harm to cinnamon plants growing on such lands.
With the treaty of 1766, the area under Dutch rule was substantially expanded. The new territories acquired—Puttalam and Chilaw in the north-west, Magam-pattu in the south and nearly 5,000 sq. km from the Kumbukkan Oya in the south-east to the Mahaveli in the east—were potentially rich rice-producing areas. Falck himself realized that the development of these regions could help cut imports of rice and grasped that an essential preliminary to their development was the restoration of the irrigation works there. Had his energies not been concentrated so intensely upon an attempt to drain the Muturajavala Swamp close to Colombo, he might have achieved a significant breakthrough in the littoral of irrigation in the parts of the dry zone under Dutch control. But the draining of this swamp was beyond the technological capacity of the day and the financial resources of the VOC. Lack of success in this venture doomed other, and possibly more viable, projects in which Falck was interested—such as the restoration of the Yodaveva in Mannar—to failure as well,13 for neither capital nor administrative energies were available for them on a scale which would have ensured success.
In the 1780s, the need to make the Dutch territories on the island self-sufficient in rice was more urgent than ever before; the price of rice from the Coromandel rose sharply on account of disturbed political conditions there. From 1780, the company found increasing difficulty in providing the foreign exchange to finance imports of rice, and by 1785 other factors—a shortage of sailors to man the ships required to import rice and the higher priority given to rice imports to Surat and Malabar—made it even more difficult to obtain rice from abroad. Within the Dutch territories on the island, the need for the import of rice was greater because of recent decisions to expand the cultivation of cinnamon and to revitalize the production of coffee, pepper and cardamom. Surprisingly, Batavia, far from encouraging the VOC establishment on the island to pay greater attention to rice cultivation, was inclined to regard capital expenditure—especially on irrigation works—for this purpose as a luxury beyond the capacity of the VOC in its parlous financial position. Its emphasis was on retrenchment and reduction of expenditure.
Despite the obvious lack of encouragement from Batavia, Falck’s successor, de Graaf, persisted in attempts to expand rice production in the Dutch territories. One reason for his decision to impose the direct rule of the VOC on the Vanni territories14 was the belief that this would permit the company to exploit the agricultural resources of this region more efficiently. Although Batavia approved this move, it did so, significantly, because of the political advantages anticipated from this, rather than in the hope of potential economic benefits. There was no support from Batavia for a more interesting proposal to import Chinese agriculturalists to help improve techniques of rice cultivation and productivity by training the local peasants in the art of transplanting rice. The VOC argued, not without justification, that this was too radical a departure from the traditional agricultural practices of the people and was likely to be a disturbing influence, if not provocative in its impact, rather than beneficial in terms of improved output. Above all, de Graaf was anxious to expand the irrigation facilities of the Giruve-pattu—the one success story in the Dutch attempts to revitalize the disused and neglected irrigation works of Rohana—and began work there without Batavia’s prior permission. But when Batavia learned of these initiatives, it was severely critical and ordered de Graaf to stop work. Similarly, they rejected his proposals for the restoration of the Yodaveva in Mannar and the Kantalai Tank in the north-east of the island. And finally, there were his attempts to induce people from Matara to colonize the deserted lands of the Magam-pattu further south. What the people wanted was land in the vicinity of their homes, not in Magam-pattu, and they reacted to this attempt to shift them there with a violence that surprised de Graaf. A fierce outburst of peasant rebellion engulfed the Matara dis•vony in the years 1783–90, and spread to other parts of the Dutch territories on the island. It was indicative of the persistence of agrarian discontent, despite the liberalization of land policy initiated by Falck.
There were a number of factors which precipitated this outbreak of violence against the company. One has been referred to earlier in this chapter, namely, that the peasantry were disturbed by the unusually aggressive measures taken by de Graaf to boost the production of coffee, pepper and cardamom in the Dutch territories. The second has to do with one of the unforeseen consequences of the successful completion by Falck of the cadastral survey of the Dutch territories. When population expanded beyond the capacity of a village to cope with it, the traditional remedies were the expansion of the village or the establishment of a new one in its vicinity. The thōmbos defined the boundaries of village holdings with a precision to which the local population was not accustomed and the opening of new holdings in the village or the establishment of new villages became much more difficult as a result.15 Third, the speed with which de Graaf moved in seeking to implement this colonization project appears to have upset the potential beneficiaries of the scheme. Fourth, the Kandyans, smarting under the humiliation of the treaty of 1766, were more than ordinarily diligent in inciting the peasants to rebellion and in their assistance to the rebels once the rebellion broke out. The border was so porous that rebels and Kandyan agents moved in and out with the utmost ease.
The rebellion of 1789–90 had one significant consequence for de Graaf. It discredited him in the eyes of his superiors in Batavia who had a plausible excuse and good reason thereafter to distrust his judgement in matters relating to agriculture and the peasantry. Thus his initiatives in traditional agriculture were thwarted as much by his own impulsiveness as by Batavia’s opposition and excessive caution.16
The Dutch brought the whole island—not merely the territories under their control—within the wider network of international trade conducted by the VOC’s eastern trading enterprises.17 Under the VOC, the island’s trade had a monopolistic sector and a competitive sector, distinct from each other and without many mutual links. The monopoly sector, which was dominated by the Dutch, embraced all the island’s valuable cash crops and the VOC enjoyed the lion’s share of the profits from these. Sri Lanka became a unit in the well-knit trade system of the VOC’s eastern enterprises. Nevertheless, the traditional trade of the island showed remarkable resilience and power of survival for two main reasons: first, the island’s geographical position and second, the complementary nature of the economy of the whole Indo-Sri Lanka region. The island produced goods, which were in great demand in the Indian mainland and the most desirable imports could easily be secured from there.
At the time of the Dutch conquest of the Portuguese possessions on the island, Sri Lanka had well-established trade links with three Indian regions: the trade of the Bay of Bengal, of which Sri Lanka’s was a unit, the west coast of India and the south (the entire coast of the southernmost parts of India from Travancore through Madras to Fort St George). This pattern of trade persisted throughout the seventeenth and much of the eighteenth century. Sri Lanka, and particularly the regions under Dutch control, imported rice from all these regions, but especially from Bengal and Coromandel since it was cheaper there than elsewhere. The Bengali traders also brought in textiles (silks and muslins), butter, sugar, vegetable oils and a few other commodities, and in return they took in a wide assortment of the island’s produce. During the seventeenth century and the early eighteenth century, this included a considerable number of elephants. There was a brisk demand for those animals in that part of India. The sale of elephants, in fact, provided much of the foreign exchange necessary for the purchase of rice, leaving the trade with a balance in Sri Lanka’s favour. The other commodities bought by these traders were areca, chanks, cowries, pearls and spices in controlled quantities. Rice was one of the major items of import from the west coast of India, and the main exports to it included areca, coir and ropes. The southern trade was perhaps the most important of all, being the lifeline to the peasant economy of the Kandyan kingdom. The major article of import from this region was textiles, particularly the coarser varieties within the reach of the peasant consumer, as well as rice, salt and salted fish which were sent to those parts of the island which lacked them. In exchange, these traders took mainly areca, a commodity in great demand in the whole of south India. The regular trade between Sri Lanka and the Maldive Islands continued without interruption throughout the whole period of Dutch rule in the maritime regions of the island. The Maldives supplied Sri Lanka with kumbelamas and cowries (these were used in its trade with India and also exported to Europe), and took back in return spices, areca and some rice. In recognition of a traditional obligation, the sultan of the Maldives sent the Dutch, as sovereigns of coastal Sri Lanka, a tribute of cowries. One other aspect of the traditional trade of India needs mention—that between Jaffna and Travancore in which a principal item was the tobacco grown in Jaffna for which the raja of Travancore held a monopoly.18
The trade with India was in the hands, largely, of foreigners—some Tamils, Malabari Muslims and Chetties. The Chetties and other Hindus were, perhaps, the largest group numerically. Many of them had long been settled in the ports of Colombo, Galle and Jaffna, and were an important link with the Indian traders. Tamil Hindus in Jaffna also functioned as brokers and agents. The Malabari Muslim traders had blood relations living in Mannar, Galle and Batticaloa, while some of them had a dual domicile.
The political disturbances of the early and mid-seventeenth century had not caused any interruptions of this trade; indeed it had adjusted to these conditions by avoiding the larger ports which were also the centres of military and naval activity, and moving into smaller ports. There was also a definite shift of operations to the relatively peaceful east coast—the ports of Kottiyar and Batticaloa—where, moreover, there was the advantage of easy communication with the Kandyan kingdom. From the 1650s, the VOC had control of the major ports of Colombo, Jaffna and Galle, and in the period 1659–70 they extended their authority to the ports in other parts of the island as well, thus effectively reducing the Kandyan kingdom to the position of a landlocked state. In 1670, the decision to monopolize the predominant part of the island’s trade was taken. Cinnamon was from the outset a Dutch monopoly, but now all the important items, with the significant exception of the import of rice, became company monopolies. The three items which it sought to dominate were the import of textiles and the export of areca and elephants, the first two of which directly affected the Kandyan kingdom and the third indirectly.19
The adverse effects of the trade monopoly introduced by the VOC in the 1670s were seen within a decade, with a decline in trade and a general shortage of food and clothing in the community at large. Rising prices encouraged the development of a flourishing smuggling trade in textiles and areca. To combat this smuggling trade an expensive cruising operation with armed sloops had to be mounted, which went on well into the eighteenth century. From the point of view of the Dutch, the interruption of the large-scale traffic from Bengal and north Coromandel—these traders ceased to come as regularly and in as large numbers since their operations were hampered by the monopoly—had more drastic consequences in the form of a shortage of rice, to relieve which the Dutch were compelled to transport rice in their own vessels. A relaxation of some of the restrictions in 1694 marked the beginning of a partial liberalization. Most important of all, the Bengal shippers were encouraged to resume sailing to Jaffna and Galle, given greater freedom to deal with indigenous private traders and were granted permission to bring in certain types of textiles. The requirement that these traders sailed only to the major ports was set aside and, as a result, trade at the smaller ports was reactivated once again. These reforms had the desired effect: the Bengal traffic was resumed and the Coromandel and Madura boatmen came back in larger numbers, although their freedom was still restricted. Rice and textiles were more freely available than before.
From the experience gained in these years the Dutch adopted a policy of selective restrictions and incentives affecting the Indian traders. While the Bengal, Surat and north Malabar traders were offered incentives as an encouragement to trade with the island, restraints—though not as severe as those of 1670—were imposed on the south Coromandel traders. The VOC regarded the boat traffic with south India as being especially harmful to its interests and was, therefore, intent on keeping it under control. These boatmen had an expert knowledge of the coast of the island and the Dutch cruisers had virtually no success in hampering them in their efforts to beat the restrictions. Above all, they resorted to bribery, corruption being endemic among Dutch officials. The collusion between them and the traders enabled the latter to escape the full rigour of the company’s trade monopoly, to say nothing of the duties due on their goods. Governor Becker found that the senior officials of the company at Galle had formed a partnership to engage in illegal private trade in cloth. Such corruption was the chief reason why the smuggling of cloth continued until the end of the eighteenth century. Thus the company’s profits from textiles never matched their true potential, and their profits from areca too kept declining.
The policy of liberalization was given greater emphasis under Governor van Imhoff in an attempt to encourage Indian traders and even other European competitors of the Dutch. This trend was continued by van Gollenesse and led to some recovery of trade in Sri Lanka. The liberalization which van Imhoff introduced was indeed minute in comparison with what he had proposed—the transformation of the Dutch possessions on the island into a major emporium of trade in south Asia. He wanted freedom to sell a wide variety of merchandise in the ports of Sri Lanka so that traders from all over the subcontinent might be attracted there. The island would thus become a centre for the exchange of goods from many regions of Asia. Van Imhoff even envisaged a reduction of the company’s expensive establishments on the Indian mainland and in Persia, since their functions could well be performed from Sri Lanka. But these proposals were too far-reaching in that they implied a comprehensive restructuring of the VOC’s Asian commercial policy, which the directors scarcely considered, much less endorsed.