The uncertain political future of the territories in Sri Lanka that came under the control of the English East India Company in 1795–96 was reflected in the devices adopted for their administration. Although Dundas was inclined towards permanent British control from the outset, a decision on this was postponed and in the meantime the administration was placed under the Madras government of the English East India Company, which proceeded to adopt a variety of expedients to recoup from these territories the costs of their conquest and military expenditure. The keynote was improvisation.
With the failure of the peace negotiations at Lille, the British government in November 1797 resolved to place the former Dutch possessions in Sri Lanka more emphatically under the Crown than before. Although it was at first intended that they should become a Crown Colony entirely independent of the East India Company, the court of directors, egged on by Lord Wellesley, who had succeeded Sir John Shore as Governor General, protested against it, urging the necessity for preserving a united authority in India.1 The final decision was left to Henry Dundas, President of the Board of Control for India, who settled upon a compromise under which the company shared the administration of these territories with the Crown, and was in turn guaranteed a monopoly of trade, the most coveted portion of which was the cinnamon trade of Sri Lanka, once a flourishing enterprise but now yielding merely a moderate profit. This system of dual control lasted from 12 October 1798, with the appointment of the Honourable Frederick North as governor, until 1 January 1802 when these territories became the British Crown Colony of Ceylon. During these years the most consistent advocate of the establishment of permanent British control on the island was Wellesley, under whom British power in India had emerged clearly beyond any possibility of successful challenge from the French and, after the destruction of Tipu Sultan’s power, from any combination of native states.
This transformation of the British position in India had a curious effect on Dundas, who came to believe that British power in India could rely safely on naval supremacy to meet any possible future threat from the French. The determination to keep the maritime regions of Sri Lanka as a Crown Colony weakened considerably. What Dundas wanted was consolidation, not expansion, of British power, and Wellesley’s initiatives and ambitions came to be viewed by him as an irresponsible and expensive over-extension of resources. As a result, they were now at cross-purposes, Dundas being increasingly suspicious of Wellesley’s motives.2 He found it easier to thwart Wellesley in his ambition to control the maritime regions of Sri Lanka from India, as part of the process of establishing a unity of authority in India, than over the more vital issue of securing the confirmation of Sri Lanka as a British possession at the peace conference. Over the latter, Dundas was now lukewarm, but he was not influential enough to have his views endorsed by the government.
When the English East India Company began its administration of Sri Lanka’s littoral, the continuity of British control over these territories was by no means assured. Nevertheless, not all its officials on the island (or in India for that matter) believed that British rule had necessarily to be temporary, and some very influential men worked on the assumption that it need not be so. Following the British practice in conquered territories, the laws, customs and institutions prevailing in the former Dutch ‘colony’ were allowed to continue. There was no reluctance to use the services of VOC officials who chose to remain in Sri Lanka. The only ones displaced were those who had held high office under the VOC and some native officials, especially the headmen who had formed an integral part of the Dutch administrative machinery. Some south Indian officials, who belonged to the indigenous section of the civil establishment at Fort St George, were brought in too. The major premise in all these decisions was that there was no certainty that British rule on the island’s littoral would be permanent. By their very nature, these decisions were improvisations designed for a situation in which long-term plans were impossible. But at least two of them created problems for the new regime. The introduction of the aumildars, the most important of these south Indian officials, and their subordinates aroused the resentment of their Sri Lankan counterparts and eventually provoked their undisguised opposition. As for the VOC officials who continued in service, there was always the hope—if not the expectation—of a restoration of Dutch rule at a peace settlement. As a result they demonstrated an understandable reluctance to commit themselves unreservedly to the British cause.3 In this uncertain situation the presence of these Dutch officials served to revive the flagging loyalty of headmen and schoolmasters to the VOC and to remind them that there was always the possibility of a restoration of Dutch rule.
There was, at the same time, another strand in the policies of the new regime, based on the belief that Sri Lanka’s littoral would not be returned to the Dutch. This is seen in the efforts taken to cultivate the friendship of groups in the local population whom the Dutch had treated with suspicion or hostility. The most notable among them were the Roman Catholics and the Muslims. The restrictions imposed on them by the VOC were substantially moderated if not relaxed. The concessions offered to the Roman Catholics included the right to marriage and burial services performed by their own priests and to the burial of their dead in their own churchyards, all of which had been prohibited during the Dutch regime. Muslims had been suspect to the VOC on account of their religion, while their expertise in trade and commerce had made them feared and envied as well. Thus the disabilities imposed on them covered both fields, the religious and the economic. The English East India Company relaxed the religious laws affecting the Muslims, eliminated the curbs imposed on their commercial activities and gave them entry to the lucrative rents of government revenue.4
Within a few months of the conquest, Robert Andrews, one of the senior officials in the new administration, outlined a set of far-reaching social and economic reforms which he intended to introduce. His superiors in Sri Lanka and Madras had misgivings about them, those in Sri Lanka were apprehensive that the reforms might provoke opposition among the people and those in Madras felt that reforms of this nature should not be attempted until these territories were acknowledged as British possessions in law. Neither thought it necessary to repudiate or countermand the reforms or to reprimand Andrews when he went ahead with their introduction. In initiating the reforms Andrews hoped to ensure that British rule in Sri Lanka’s littoral would not be a temporary episode between two periods of Dutch rule.5 The reforms affected all strata of society and every ethnic group in the population. They provoked immediate and widespread opposition. The native headmen were antagonized by the decision to withdraw their accomodessans. The abolition of r•jak•riya (and uliyam6 and capitation taxes7) would not by themselves have had any disturbing effects, had they not been accompanied by an ill-considered attempt to introduce some uniformity into the farrago of land taxes then in force, which in practice meant, as it often does in matters of this nature, an increase in the taxation level. To complicate and confuse matters even further, there was also a series of new and irksome levies, ranging from a vexatious one on personal ornaments to a potentially productive but no less irritating tax on coconut palms and other trees.
A radical transformation of the traditional tax structure of this nature would, at the best of times, have caused some dissatisfaction and grumbling. To attempt it at very short notice and without the support of the headmen—the intermediaries between the government and the people—made this whole sequence of operations exasperating and provocative. In December 1796, the rebellion which Colonel (later General) James Stuart, Andrews’s superior on the island, had predicted as the likely outcome of introducing the reforms, erupted and remained alive throughout 1797 although the full range of the armed forces available to the British in Sri Lanka were used to quell it. Although the epicentre of the disturbances was the Colombo dis•vony, and in particular Rayigam, Hevagam, Siyana and Salpiti kōralēs, tremors were also felt in Jaffna, Batticaloa and the Vanni. The Kandyans lent the rebels their aid and Dutch officials resident in Sri Lanka and possibly some French agents helped to fan the flames. The rebellion began to peter out in the first quarter of 1798, but only after the Madras government in desperation gave an undertaking to revoke Andrews’s reforms and to restore the old system of taxes. Only once thereafter were the British faced with a rebellion equally formidable, namely, in 1817–18. But the rebels of 1797–98, unlike those of 1817–18, achieved their aims and were not defeated.8
In the meantime, a Committee of Investigation consisting of Brigadier General de Meuron, Major Agnew and Robert Andrews himself had been appointed. It was granted extraordinary powers to investigate the causes of the rebellion, recommend measures of reform and redress grievances. The committee was given executive powers as well and entrusted with responsibility for the administration of the territories captured from the VOC. It administered these territories from June 1797 to 12 November 1798. The investigations of the committee revealed that while there had indeed been abuses and malpractices, the inevitable consequence of the precipitate introduction of a series of far-reaching reforms, the discontent that ensued was not due to any exceptional rapacity on the part of the pre-reform regime. The critical flaws lay in the novelty of the taxes introduced, the administrative devices adopted and, most important of all, the powers conferred on the south Indian officials which encroached on those of the native headmen and extended to some of the most sensitive aspects of the lives of the people, such as caste. It was easy, therefore, to misconstrue decisions taken in ignorance of custom and tradition as evidence of studied insensitivity to these, and the native headmen, chafing at the presence of the aumildars and their south Indian subordinates, were able to exploit popular opposition to the taxes to discredit the new administration among the people at large.
In these circumstances, the committee felt that it had no alternative but to recommend the restoration of the status quo, wherever that was possible, as the most logical and practical solution to the problems that confronted it. There was virtual unanimity in the committee over recommendations to restore r•jak•riya and uliyam, and to reinstate the headmen to office, such posts being restricted to men from the Goyigama and Vellala castes. In the committee’s view, a restoration of the status quo included the continued employment of Dutch officials who had served the former regime. These Dutch officials, however, could not reconcile themselves to British rule and the belief which prevailed among them that the Dutch would regain control of their possessions on the island appeared to have been strengthened by the outbreak of this rebellion. The committee had hardly begun the process of implementing its policies of reconstruction and restoration when Governor North took over the administration under the system of dual control.9 When he reached Colombo peace had been restored. He found that de Meuron’s Committee had analysed the causes of the rebellion and recommended remedial measures and it was to the latter that North turned his attention.
In the three years of his administration under the system of dual control, North was intent on ensuring that British authority over the former Dutch possessions in Sri Lanka should become permanent. On this—but on little else—he was supported by the government at Fort St George and by many of its officials in Sri Lanka. The restoration of the old order which de Meuron’s Committee had recommended was entirely in accordance with North’s own conservative instincts.
His first act was to restore the headmen to office. In so doing he implemented one of the committee’s principal recommendations, on which they had deferred a decision when they learnt of the new arrangements for the administration of the maritime regions of Sri Lanka. The re-establishment of r•jak•riya and uliyam was decisive in the restoration of the old order; but this was complicated now by the fact that after two years of freedom from them the people were reluctant to see them resumed, and once the restoration of r•jak•riya was attempted there was widespread evasion of such services. North sought to resolve this by trying to make r•jak•riya acceptable, and this proved to be more difficult than a straightforward abolition. He began with an attempt to get all those holding land under r•jak•riya to register themselves, with the family as the unit for registration. When this failed to yield the results he anticipated, he responded by embarking on an even more ambitious project—registering title to holdings on the basis of single ownership. This more sophisticated venture in registration began on 20 February 1800, and a special administrative structure was created for this purpose with an improvised survey department as its core. Two advantages were anticipated from this radical departure from the traditional system: obscurity of title to land would be eliminated and single ownership would be an incentive to more efficient production in agriculture. Registration on a single-owner basis became one of North’s most cherished projects, but it made little or no headway in the face of people’s reluctance to embark on so radical a departure from custom and tradition.
There were, however, aspects of r•jak•riya which were more amenable to control. Under a proclamation of 3 September 1801, all r•jak•riya lands were made liable to taxes of one-fifth of the produce on lowland and one-tenth on highland. This was in conformity with existing practice. But there was also a new tax of one-tenth of the produce on dry grain, in place of a medley of land taxes which had not brought in much revenue and which generally varied from region to region. It did not take North long to realize that the restoration of the old order and old institutions which he was attempting benefited the headmen more than the people or the government. He moved now to reduce their powers. By the proclamation of 3 September 1801, they were deprived of their accomodessans and were to receive salaries instead. A fresh limitation of the scope of headmen’s duties was introduced by deliberately excluding them from the registration of holdings under r•jak•riya. North realized that r•jak•riya had to be enforced on the basis of caste and that the headmen had made themselves dispensable in this because of the information and local knowledge which they had accumulated. A solution to this problem was sought in a codification of caste law, which, however, was easier suggested than done; in fact, it was never done. North hoped that once a code of caste law was compiled, the landraads would adjudicate in caste disputes.
North’s reforms in these spheres were less visionary and revolutionary than those attempted by Andrews; besides, they were, to a greater extent than Andrews’s, a continuation of trends initiated in the last years of Dutch rule. Indeed, most of the changes North attempted to bring about in the Sinhalese areas had been in operation there already; and they were not applicable in Jaffnapatam where the headmen received one-tenth of the paddy collection as their remuneration instead of accomodessans, and where, moreover, the uliyam obligation had already been dissociated from the land. North’s conservatism was best demonstrated in his policy on caste. He was in total agreement with the de Meuron Committee and the Madras government on the necessity of upholding the caste system as it existed. The codification of caste law which he envisaged was designed with this end in view. As part of his commitment to this same objective, he took the unusual—and illogical—step of declaring himself head of the Sal•gama caste and making Robert Arbuthnot, a senior civil servant, head of the Karava caste. Very soon, under North’s instructions, government institutions—including schools and hospitals—began to pay fastidious attention to the caste sensibilities of the people who came within their purview. Similarly, within the administrative hierarchy persons of inferior caste were prevented from assuming authority over persons of ‘high’ caste, which meant in effect the restriction of the most influential posts within the reach of native officials to the Goyigama and Vellala castes. The privileges conferred upon the Sal•gama caste by the Dutch at the very end of their rule in Sri Lanka were rescinded. This meticulous sensitivity to the caste system and the attempt to bolster it by administrative and legal means were clearly intended to win the support of the people at large for the new regime.
At the same time, under North, conciliation of sections of the population with a grievance against the Dutch was pursued with even greater vigour than in the past. Once again the main beneficiaries of this policy were the Muslims. The number of Muslim renters increased substantially due partly to the growth in the renting process, but also partly to North’s high regard for their enterprise in trade which was believed to have augmented government revenues. He refused to reimpose the uliyam tax on them and evidence of its previous payment was treated as a complete commutation of service obligations. This exemption from all such burdens was an advantage and a privilege denied to others. The favours shown to the Muslims extended to other areas of activity as well. Thus the men appointed to recruit soldiers for the new native regiments raised by North were Muslims, as were all the subidars and janidars (the only commissioned grades to which the indigenous population were eligible). Also, North was anxious to set up a special school for Muslim children in recognition of the fact that they regarded attendance at existing schools with distaste.10
The generosity shown to the Muslims was in sharp contrast to the treatment meted out to other religious groups, including the Roman Catholics. Although the latter were now in a much more advantageous position than they had been under the Dutch and the policy of tolerance of Roman Catholicism was continued under North, not all the obnoxious regulations imposed on them by the Dutch were abolished. The Buddhists and Hindus were not so fortunate. Their requests for licences to erect temples and places of worship were not granted as of right and they certainly do not seem to have been granted licences to establish schools, for North was anxious that their children should attend government schools. The rationale behind this and behind North’s religious policy was the belief that the great majority of the people of the maritime regions were Protestant Christians. This was based on a ridiculously uncritical acceptance of the opinions of Dutch officials resident in Sri Lanka and of the native headmen and schoolmasters. In the government schools established by the VOC the curriculum was fundamentally religious in orientation, and Sinhalese and Tamil were the media of instruction. These were given a new lease of life. North was keenly interested in the spread of Christianity and he treated the Dutch Reformed Church and the Church of England as belonging alike to the government’s religious establishment. State funds were used for the repair of dilapidated churches and the construction of new ones. Clergymen were encouraged to tour the country to minister to the spiritual needs of their adherents and to propagate the faith among the people at large. The requirement imposed by the Dutch that headmen in the government service should be Protestant Christians was strictly enforced.
The keynotes of North’s internal policy were stabilization, pacification and reconstruction after the turmoil of the first two years of British rule. He realized that the re-establishment of peace and order could not, by itself, convince the government in Britain that these territories were worth keeping as a British possession. North sent glowing accounts of the island’s potential in trade and commerce in order to remove any fears about the likelihood of its becoming a drain on British resources. When the decision was taken to convert the former VOC possessions in Sri Lanka into a British Crown Colony, North’s sanguine reports on its economic prospects carried much less weight than a careful assessment of its strategic importance to the British empire.
In October 1798, when the system of dual control was established, Dundas still had doubts about the severance of the link between the English East India Company and the administration of Sri Lanka’s maritime regions. Within a year these doubts had disappeared and he was inclined to see the former Dutch territories on the island as a distinct political entity, independent of India. In reaching this decision he was guided as much by a resolution to curb Wellesley’s ambitions as by more mundane considerations—a desire to obtain another outlet for patronage. It was also guided by North’s difficulties with the English East India Company’s civil servants. North and Wellesley were agreed on the retention of the maritime regions of Sri Lanka as a British possession. Despite North’s great admiration for Wellesley and the latter’s influence over him, the course of events in Sri Lanka drove him irrevocably to policies which amounted to an advocacy of its separation from India. The crux of the problem lay in his relations with his civil servants.
The Madras Presidency of the English East India Company resented the loss of patronage which it suffered by the introduction of the system of dual control. North, for his part, obliged by order of the directors of the East India Company to fill most of the vacancies in the island’s administration with civil servants of Madras, protested vigorously against this but to no avail. From the moment of his arrival on the island he faced the unconcealed hostility of the Madras civil servants and these strained relations continued throughout the period of dual control, although there was some improvement when North’s own men (who had come with him from Britain) were found to be just as prone to corruption and inefficiency as the men from Madras. Salaries and prospects of promotion in Sri Lanka were so inferior to those in Madras that no civil servant of ability or ambition sent to the island from that Presidency was willing to remain there for long. Moreover, the languages and customs of the people of Sri Lanka’s littoral were so totally different from those of Madras that service in the one was almost useless as preparation for the other. North strongly urged that the only solution to this problem was the creation of a separate civil service for Sri Lanka, but this was impossible for as long as the system of dual control was in operation. Nor was he any more successful in the measures of administrative reform which he initiated in this phase; the Madras civil servants gave him little support.
In late 1800, Dundas informed Wellesley: ‘have wrote [sic] a private letter to Mr North to inform him of what is nearly decided in my mind. I mean to take the government of Ceylon again [sic] into the King’s hands, and separate it from the government of the Company. The junction has done no good, and a good deal of mischiefī.’11 Wellesley was adamantly opposed to it but his protests were in vain, although the same communication would have given him the satisfaction of learning that Ceylon becoming a Crown Colony was now almost certainly a reality.
The former Dutch possessions in Sri Lanka were finally ceded to the British at the Peace of Amiens in March 1802. The Amiens settlement merely ratified the preliminary peace concluded in London on 1 October 1801. Dundas opposed the treaty and resigned office; thus the retention of British control over the maritime regions of Sri Lanka at the Peace of Amiens owed more to Pitt and Lord Grenville, the foreign secretary, than to him.12 A British Crown Colony was established in Sri Lanka, largely, if not entirely, for reasons of imperial strategy.
From the brief but unfortunate association with Madras and the East India Company, Sri Lanka gained one inestimable benefit. In later years, whenever it was suggested on the island, in India or in Whitehall that for the sake of economy or administrative convenience the colony of Sri Lanka should be treated as an integral part of the Indian empire, the memory of these unhappy years served as a reminder of the attendant perils.