The British conquest of the Dutch possessions in the maritime regions of Sri Lanka shifted the balance of power on the island decisively against the Kandyans, with the substitution of a very powerful neighbour for a weak one. The success of the Kandyan resistance to repeated Portuguese and Dutch encroachments and the continued survival of the Kandyan kingdom as an independent state in the face of these threats engendered among the Kandyans a feeling of self-confidence that bordered on a complacent assumption of invincibility. Yet, the survival of the Kandyan kingdom as an independent state was due much more to the inadequacy of the resources of the Portuguese and of their successors, the Dutch, for the purpose of subjugating the Kandyan kingdom than to the inherent military strength of the latter. The British were an altogether more formidable proposition. Under Wellesley, the process of expanding their power in the Indian subcontinent at the expense of all rivals, indigenous and foreign, progressed with remarkable rapidity to the point where they emerged as the dominant force in south Asia.
In the early years of their rule in Sri Lanka, the British had no real anxiety to round off total control over the island. They were not seriously alarmed even when they discovered that the Kandyans, in pursuit of their traditional policy, were giving encouragement to rebels in the lowlands during the rebellion of 1797. On the contrary, Andrews had begun a policy of relaxing the rigid curbs on the external trade of the Kandyans which the Dutch had imposed and permitted the Kandyans to develop trade contacts across the seas in the hope of thus demonstrating that British control over the island’s littoral was much less irksome to Kandyan interests than Dutch rule there had been. Moreover, so long as there was the prospect that the maritime regions of Sri Lanka might revert to the Dutch at a European peace conference, it was politic to maintain a policy of non-interference in Kandyan affairs.
But the disputed succession to the Kandyan throne which followed on the death of R•j•dhi R•jasimha in August 1798 offered opportunities for intrigue. Within three weeks of his arrival in Colombo, North turned his attention to the Kandyan problem. When Śrī Vikrama R•jasimha ascended the Kandyan throne, North sent the usual letter of greeting in the conventional terms of formal flattery. One aspect of the Kandyan policy of the British had already been determined before North’s arrival—that no encouragement would be given to the Kandyans in their attempts to reopen the question of the treaty with the British which the Kandyans had refused to ratify in 1796. There was a sense of relief that the Kandyan refusal to ratify the treaty had rendered it void; the British were thus spared the irksome disadvantages to their interests on the island which would have followed had the treaty been ratified. North needed little encouragement to stand by this decision, and all endeavours on the part of the Kandyans to reopen this question were firmly rebuffed. At the same time, the concessions on external trade which Andrews had introduced were continued by North in the hope of persuading the Kandyans that British rule in the littoral was likely to benefit the Kandyans more than Dutch rule.
When R•j•dhi R•jasimha died of fever (like his predecessor he was childless) there was no obvious successor to the throne. The most powerful person at court was the first adig•r, Pilima Talauvē, a man of supposed royal descent himself, who had signed the Preliminary Treaty of 1795 and maintained the most cordial relations with the British. He held several offices and had enjoyed enormous influence which he now used with decisive effect to install a protégé as king. This latter was a youth of eighteen, without the benefit of a formal education, a Sri Lanka-born N•yakkar named Konnas•mi, the son of a sister of one of the queens dowager. At R•j•dhi R•jasimha’s death, however, Muttus•mi, a brother-in-law (he was a brother of three of the late monarch’s queens), claimed to have been nominated by the late king as his successor. He and his sisters were promptly placed by Pilima Talauvē in confinement. However, Muttus•mi was not the only potential disputant. It has too easily been assumed that Pilima Talauvē’s aim in placing Śrī Vikrama R•jasimha on the throne was to eliminate him as soon as an opportunity offered and to re-establish a Sinhalese dynasty with himself as king. But his ambitions were more limited and realistic. He had no personal ambition to gain the throne, but merely the desire to control matters from behind the scene, to wield influence and a measure of power without personal responsibility, and without the odium which would inevitably follow upon misrule. The N•yakkar dynasty, especially under Kīrti Śrī R•jasimha and R•j•dhi R•jasimha, had identified itself with the Kandyan national interest and blended the N•yakkar personality into the Kandyan background with consummate skill. Its policy of transforming itself into an indigenous dynasty whose claims to that status were accepted by the people had proved so successful that a restoration of a Sinhalese dynasty was not a viable policy even against the background of a disputed succession such as that of 1798. Besides, even assuming that such a restoration was possible, there is little reason to believe that Pilima Talauvē was an acceptable choice. An overt attempt by him in this direction might well have set off a revolt of other potential Kandyan claimants and torn the country apart.
Pilima Talauvē soon discovered that his protégé, far from being pliant as he had seemed, was adopting an attitude of independence which the kingmaker had not anticipated. Pilima Talauvē became increasingly resentful of this and began almost at once to plot Sri Vikrama’s downfall. It is impossible to determine with any accuracy what Pilima Talauvē’s plans were when he began his intrigues with North, apart from the primary aim of eliminating Śrī Vikrama R•jasimha from the throne. That done, the next phase of the problem would emerge—who would succeed to the throne of Kandy, and on what terms? The British claimed that Pilima Talauvē’s objective was to ascend the throne himself, but there was no convincing evidence of this: he could well have been thinking of a more satisfactory and pliable protégé who would permit him to wield the power and influence he sought. This protégé too could have been a N•yakkar. But if the British were brought in to help dethrone a recalcitrant Śrī Vikrama R•jasimha, this by itself could complicate the situation and raise a number of questions for which the answer or answers would no longer be within Pilima Talauvē’s power to fashion. It would certainly involve a redefinition of the relationship between the new ruler and the British. Would their relationship reflect the new balance of forces in Sri Lanka and south Asia; that is to say, would the Kandyan kingdom be reduced to the level of a satellite state, its foreign policy controlled by the British, its defence in British hands and its independence confined to matters of social and economic policy? Pilima Talauvē would have known that British assistance would be forthcoming only on terms to be determined by them and that the compensation or advantages they sought in exchange for support in this venture would have been anything but satisfactory to the Kandyans. What is more likely is that he calculated that he could use British help for his immediate purpose, and once this had been achieved, British influence could be drastically reduced, or eliminated altogether, by the dextrous use of the traditional Kandyan policy of creating trouble for them in the form of sporadic but planned acts of harassment or through the assistance of yet another foreign power. The effectiveness of this traditional Kandyan policy in the past must have encouraged hope in its continued applicability now. Thus it seems likely that Pilima Talauvē had nothing more precise in mind beyond the elimination of Śrī Vikrama R•jasimha; beyond that he would trust to luck, and to his undoubted skill as a master manipulator of persons and forces, to devise solutions to each succeeding problem as it arose.
Like their predecessors in control of the island’s littoral, the British regarded the long and indistinctly defined frontier as an irritating and expensive item of military expenditure, while being at the same time an irksome and formidable obstacle to trade. Besides, it was impossible to develop plans for the economic regeneration of the British colony in isolation from the larger island-wide framework and the independence and aloofness of the Kandyan kingdom would impede the development of the British possessions in Sri Lanka, especially in their administration and communications. At the same time, the island was small enough for effective control without any serious drain of human and financial resources for the purpose. There was the additional advantage that the conquest of the Kandyan kingdom would eliminate a cumbrous internal frontier, leaving only the sea as a line of defence.
These, in brief, were the compelling reasons which a man on the spot would have given in justification of a policy of interference in the affairs of the Kandyan kingdom. North saw in Pilima Talauvē’s overtures an opportunity for the establishment of a controlling British interest in Kandy. Dundas himself was thinking on much the same lines but with a greater awareness of the limits to be observed in the implementation of such a policy. Nothing should be done ‘by force or concussion of any kind’. On the other hand, ‘if by conciliation and fair treaty we obtain a substantial right of interference in the Government of Candia [sic]...,’ ‘it would be important to see that [the] sword must be exclusively ours, and the civil government in all its branches must be virtually ours—but through the medium of its ancient organs’. North kept Dundas informed of a scheme for getting the Kandyan ruler to accept a treaty whereby his kingdom would become a British protectorate.2 British troops would be guaranteed a regular supply of victuals and a road connecting Colombo with Trincomalee would run through the Kandyan territory. The inspiration behind this policy was Wellesley himself and his subsidiary alliance system which had been the means of establishing British paramountcy over the whole of the subcontinent of India.
Dundas’s cautious endorsement of a policy of ‘limited’ interference in Kandyan affairs, made in 1799, before his disenchantment with Wellesley’s ambitions had begun to suffuse his policy on south Asia, could not be regarded as a firm sanction of what North was attempting in regard to the Kandyan kingdom in 1800. Neither Dundas nor the East India Company gave any official approval for North to embark on negotiations with the Kandyans, although Wellesley gave the project his warm approbation. Thus North had nothing to offer Pilima Talauvē or the king. Pilima Talauvē, on the other hand, was an opportunist playing a double role with the British and his own king and hoping to extract as much benefit as he could from the resulting confusion. The king was the more difficult problem since he had no enemies (save Pilima Talauvē) from whom he needed to be protected; thus he was hardly likely to jeopardize the independence of his country by entering into a sort of treaty which a subsidiary alliance entailed. Nevertheless, he considered it politic to yield to North’s entreaties and accepted an embassy under General MacDowall which was to bring these proposals to Kandy. MacDowall’s mission had two purposes in view: it was undertaken in the hope of gathering ‘intelligence’ on the Kandyan kingdom and it sought to negotiate the terms of a treaty on the lines mentioned earlier. The latter project was turned down by the king and his ministers, but the mission was more successful in gathering ‘intelligence’. But North’s primary aim had been to obtain a treaty and the failure in this venture made him more receptive than ever before to the prospect of removing the king and his ‘perfidious ministers’ as the only means by which he could have his way.
North’s Kandyan policy had demonstrated from the beginning a cynical disregard for the niceties of diplomatic conduct. For he had begun a complex plot with the obviously disaffected chief minister of a ruler whose title he had recognized and who had given him no cause for quarrel. Nor was the use of an embassy for these purposes any less reprehensible. North realized that Pilima Talauvē’s purpose was the deposition and assassination of the king, yet he persisted in his intrigues confident that his intervention would be the means of preserving the king’s person and dignity, and believing that he could avoid the hostilities which Pilima Talauvē more than once hinted were imminent. North was supremely confident that, whatever happened, he would be in control of the situation. Like Pilima Talauvē he was playing off one antagonist (the chief minister) against the other (the king) in the hope that he would pick up the pieces. But North had underestimated the personal influence and power of the king and the degree of support which he could generate among his people. He chose to believe the stories sedulously spread by Pilima Talauvē and corroborated by the host of spies whom the British employed, about the unpopularity of the king and the widespread disaffection in the kingdom. Thus North was confident that should war break out, a short decisive campaign would ensue, and that to the chiefs and people British control would be an acceptable alternative to Śrī Vikrama R•jasimha’s rule.
Once the basic decision to engage in hostilities had been taken, it was not at all difficult to find a cause for war, especially with Pilima Talauvē more than willing to provide one. By the end of 1803, MacDowall advanced with an expeditionary force to Kandy.3 He reached the city to find it evacuated. A puppet ruler, Muttus•mi, was formally installed as king, but it was soon evident that the people held him in contempt and were in no way inclined to rally to his support. The Kandyan forces had merely withdrawn from the capital to regroup in preparation for the prolonged guerrilla campaign which was their customary tactic against invading armies. They had not been defeated. In a very short time the British forces were isolated among a sullenly hostile population and were already in difficulties about food. When the monsoon set in, the elements, combined with disease, brought about the destruction of the British forces who attempted to evacuate the capital they had occupied. MacDowall himself recommended this course of action, but his own ill health soon compelled him to retire to Colombo and the command fell to a Major Davie, an officer lacking the experience or competence for an undertaking of this magnitude and delicacy. In May, the British position was no longer tenable and Davie decided to abandon Kandy even before North’s formal order to retire was received. On 24 June 1803, the remnants of the British army and the pretender Muttus•mi were intercepted by Kandyan forces at Vatapuluva on the banks of the Mahaveli. The pretender was handed over to the Kandyan ruler and was speedily executed. As for the British officers and men, they were almost all killed in the encounter or executed subsequently. Some may even have killed themselves rather than fall into the hands of the Kandyans; even the sick left behind at the hospital in Kandy were put to death. Only Davie and three others escaped this fate.
The first Kandyan war had gone the way of earlier Portuguese and Dutch attempts to conquer Kandy. The Kandyan country, with its rugged terrain, malarial climate and lack of roads, could not be held by inadequately supplied European troops against Sinhalese guerrilla tactics. North had not devised an efficient commissariat for his Kandyan expedition. The campaign was ill-planned and the troops were ill-equipped for the rigours of a Kandyan war. Above all, the British had seriously miscalculated a matter of the utmost importance—the support of the people. They had believed that the people would cooperate against the seemingly unpopular and inexperienced ruler, but on the contrary they were confronted with a great reserve of popular support for the king. North sought to extricate himself as well as possible from the consequences of the Kandyan disaster and found a convenient scapegoat in Pilima Talauvē. But the real cause of the disaster was the inadequacy of his own planning for an expedition of this magnitude.
The Kandyan war dragged on for two years. North, like some latter-day de Azevedo, persisted in a policy of harassment, mounting regular forays into the border provinces with the sole purpose of destruction and pillage in an attempt to intimidate the Kandyan people. The chiefs, in the meantime, continued to intrigue with the British, while the resources of the kingdom were thus being systematically destroyed. Indeed, within a dozen years of winning a victory over an invading force from the littoral which was as notable if not as comprehensive as any of their past victories over the Portuguese and the Dutch, the Kandyan kingdom lost its independence. The fall of the last Sinhalese kingdom was a case of political suicide, and the king and the chiefs share the blame in this essay in self-destruction. Neither could see how close they had all come to disaster in 1803. On the contrary, their victory had made them—and particularly the king—dangerously complacent about their powers of survival and the continuing viability of the kingdom as an independent political entity against pressure from the coast. They were quite oblivious to the fact that the events of 1803 had not shifted the balance of power on the island in their favour.
As for the king it was natural that he should use the prestige accruing to him from the defeat inflicted on the British to make himself master of the country. Almost immediately, he set about asserting his authority within the kingdom, which in effect meant a consistent attempt to curb the chiefs and restrict their privileges. Pilima Talauvē’s career at court received a setback from the Kandyan campaign of 1803, but he contrived to salvage something from the wreck and persisted in his intrigues with the British. By 1810, the king was strong enough to move against him and deprive him of all his offices, which perhaps goaded him into the desperate course of raising a revolt against the king and plotting his murder. The plot failed and he paid the penalty for failure. He was executed and it is significant that his execution did not result in any political convulsion in the country.
Nevertheless, the impression this may have given of the king’s undisputed hold over the country was deceptive. His vigorous measures against the nobles—of which the execution of Pilima Talauvē was a very notable one—provoked a powerful aristocratic counter-offensive which, within a few years, alienated him from the majority of the chiefs who were now readier than ever before to accept British intervention. The processes of aristocratic opposition to the king were given greater momentum with the alienation of some of the more prominent bhikkhus. Whether this was due to disenchantment with the king’s religious policies or to the close kinship ties of these bhikkhus with the aristocracy cannot be determined with any certainty. The execution of Pilima Talauvē had been followed by the appointment of his nephew Ähälēpola as first adig•r. Soon Ähälēpola, like almost all Kandyan noblemen, was intriguing against the king and sounding the British about the prospects of intervention. But the British were now chary of being drawn into another Kandyan adventure on the promises of any chief.
The alienation of the Kandyan aristocracy was soon to reach the point of no return. Open hostility developed between the king and his first adig•r. Ähälēpola, deprived of his dis•vony and his honours in early 1814 because he refused to present himself at court at the king’s command, tried to raise a rebellion in Sabaragamuva and, when this failed, crossed into British territory. He left his wife and children in the king’s power to suffer the penalty meted out by Kandyan law to relatives of traitors. The precise mode of the execution of Ähälēpola’s wife and children has been transformed by legend into a story of incredible horror. The defection of Ähälēpola marked a decisive phase in the subversion of the Kandyan kingdom. The disaffection of the nobles had given momentum to forces which were clearly beyond the king’s control. Ähälēpola was followed into exile by other chiefs, all of whom offered their aid to the British for the overthrow of the king. But Governor Robert Brownrigg was wary of any impulsive bid to intervene, especially because he had received no instructions from Whitehall and because he was not yet certain of any substantial measure of Kandyan support against the king.
There had been a change in the British policy towards Kandy since the arrival in 1805 of General Sir Thomas Maitland, Brownrigg’s predecessor as governor of the British colony of Ceylon. The punitive raids on the border districts, which North had initiated after the debacle of the invasion, were abandoned since they had accomplished little more than devastation of outlying areas without in any way inflicting a mortal wound. Besides, the Kandyans were far from being defeated and Maitland realized that the financial and military resources for a conquest of the Kandyan kingdom were not yet available to him. More important, he believed that a war with Kandy was not only expensive but pointless, for the Kandyan forces were too weak to pose any serious threat to the British possessions on the island. Maitland decided to remain strictly on the defensive; but he was willing to make peace on condition that the British survivors of the Kandyan expedition of 1803 were returned and the British were allowed to retain everything they had held before the war. He would not consent, however, to involving the British government in the despatch of an embassy to Kandy and without this a formal treaty of peace (and consequently, the release of Davie) could not be secured. In any case, negotiations were unlikely to be successful. The Kandyan terms for a formal treaty included the cession of a seaport, something which the British regarded as not negotiable under any circumstances. By tacit agreement hostilities between the two parties ceased and the British for their part lost nothing from letting things remain as they were.
Nevertheless, as the opposition of the aristocracy to Śrī Vikrama R•jasimha mounted, it became almost certain that the British would seek to exploit the situation in their own interest. By this time they had in John D’Oyly an expert on Kandyan affairs. He had built an efficient intelligence network and was in communication with the disaffected chiefs; but he nevertheless viewed coldly and dispassionately any ‘feelers’ the Kandyan nobility made with regard to British intervention in the affairs of the Kandyan kingdom. All such propositions were subjected to a searching and rigorous examination. By 1814, D’Oyly had come to the conclusion that the alienation of the Kandyan aristocracy from Śrī Vikrama R•jasimha had reached a point where the British could intervene with decisive effect. With the assistance of his spies and contacts, he was conducting negotiations with the Kandyan chiefs and by the end of 1814 all preparations for an invasion had been completed. Every chief of importance was in league with the British, and most notably Molligoda, Ähälēpola’s successor as first adig•r. All that was necessary now was some convenient pretext for the British to move in and there were many in the Kandyan kingdom who would gladly contrive to provide one. Brownrigg would have liked to use as a casus belli the punishment meted out to some traders taken in Kandyan territory under suspicion of being British spies, but Whitehall was averse to punitive action unless British territory were invaded.
Brownrigg, however, had already decided to invade Kandy himself; his plan of campaign, prepared with Ähälēpola’s assistance, was ready. The technical aspects of the invasion plan bore the stamp of an able staff officer, Major William Willerman.4 As the man on the spot the governor could determine what constituted an invasion of British territory. When the king’s troops chased a band of insurgents across the Sabaragamuva border into British territory, Brownrigg chose to treat this as an invasion. No opportunity was given to the king to apologize for the incident and this ‘violation of British territory’ was treated as a sufficient cause of war. The odds were in his favour and he moved against the king’s forces with two British and five locally recruited regiments which he commanded in person. In a proclamation dated 10 January 1815 (issued on 13 January), he announced that the war was being undertaken on behalf of the oppressed Kandyan people who were to be protected from the depredations of their ruler. This proclamation has been justly described as ‘a clever if self-righteous and magniloquent piece of propaganda’.
The second Kandyan war was over in forty days, without any notable military engagements. The most distinguished performance on the British side belonged to the military engineers for their technical skill and ingenuity in transporting artillery through the forests and mountains of the Balana Pass to Kandy. The British army marched unopposed to Kandy because the king’s forces under Molligoda (who was in communication with the British) showed little inclination to resist. A semblance of opposition was maintained till Molligoda could safely cross over to the British, which he did once his wife and family were secure from the king’s wrath. The British forces reached the city to find that the king had fled with his family, leaving the city open. With the king’s capture on 18 February 1815 formal arrangements had to be made for the administration of his kingdom.
The Kandyan chiefs, in their intrigues against the king, had failed to realize that it was almost inevitable that the British should seek complete control over the whole island, if not possession of it. With a power as strong as the British in possession of the coast, the position of the isolated Kandyan kingdom was delicate and precarious. And whatever the reluctance of Whitehall to give formal encouragement to a further augmentation of British territorial possessions in south Asia, there was bound to be ready acquiescence in the face of a fait accompli, especially where the territorial gains were made in response to local pressure. The fate of the Kandyan kingdom was a case in point. The contribution of the chiefs gave momentum to local pressure for British intervention and this was a factor of vital importance in the transfer of power to the British.
Śrī Vikrama R•jasimha himself was not without blame. Had he shown greater flexibility in the pursuit of his prime objective of keeping the chiefs under control, he might have achieved his aims without any formidable opposition. But the ruthlessness with which he pursued his enemies was his own undoing. Crucial to the king’s discomfiture, however, was his failure to retain the support of at least one of the factions of the aristocracy. The support of the people at large whom he sought to protect from the nobles was not an effective substitute for a bloc of aristocratic loyalists. By exacting r•jak•riya, without due regard to conventions and practices governing such labour, in constructing the Kandy Lake and improving the palace, he ended up alienating the people as well. Despite this erosion of support for the king among the people, it is significant that they did not rise against him in support of either Pilima Talauvē (in 1810–11) or Ähälēpola (in 1814), first adig•rs both, when they sought to raise a rebellion against the king. Both attempts failed dismally and this in a country where the record of resistance to unpopular rulers was almost as significant as the long tradition of resistance to foreign invaders. Śrī Vikrama R•jasimha’s rule was singularly and significantly free of any such demonstration of the people’s dissatisfaction. The people gave little or no support to the advancing British army in 1815 and demonstrated no enthusiasm at the cession to the British of the Kandyan kingdom. Thus the political turmoil in the kingdom in 1814–15 can by no stretch of the imagination be called a rebellion of the people. Nor can it be described as a civil war. It was a conspiracy hatched by the aristocracy against a ruler whose government was a threat to their interests as a social group; but the conspiracy achieved its purpose only because the British saw in it an opportunity to achieve their own objectives.
There was no real decline of the Kandyan kingdom in the sense of a deep-rooted crisis of society, nor an economic breakdown which affected the people, but only a running-down of the political machinery of the state in the face of a prolonged confrontation between the king and the chiefs in the ruling hierarchy. The pressures built up by this confrontation led to an irreparable breakdown in the political sphere and the Kandyan kingdom, divided against itself, became a tempting prey to the British who already had an iron grip on the coast and were not disinclined to round off total control over the island now that a suitable opportunity had presented itself. On 2 March 1815, the Kandyan kingdom was formally ceded to the British by its leaders, secular and religious. The terms of the convention signed on that date by Brownrigg on behalf of the British and by the chiefs on behalf of the Kandyans had been drafted largely by John D’Oyly. The document was read to the assembled chiefs and to the headmen of the districts gathered outside. The people took no part in the ceremony and indeed the townsfolk showed not the slightest interest in the proceedings.
The Kandyan Convention of 1815 reflected the political factors operating at that time. The concessions made to Kandyan interests on that occasion were granted because the political situation suggested these as essential to the purpose of conciliating groups that had rendered valuable assistance to the British. Thus the Kandyan Convention preserved intact the powers and privileges of the chiefs, the laws, the customs and institutions of the country and what in the eyes of the Kandyans was more important than all else—the Buddhist religion. The fifth clause of the convention, employing language described by Brownrigg as being ‘more emphatical than would have been my choice’, declared that ‘the Religion of Buddhoo, its rites, ministers and places of worship are to be maintained and protected’. When he sent a copy of the convention to the Colonial Office, Brownrigg explained that he had been obliged to consent to ‘an article of guarantee couched in the most unqualified terms’, because it was vitally important to quiet the apprehensions of the Kandyans about their religion. Only by making it clear that the fifth clause of the convention would be scrupulously observed could the British gain the adherence of the bhikkhus and chiefs. The convention was approved by the home government with some reluctance, since the guarantees on religion were considered too emphatic.
In the eyes of the Kandyans the connection between the state and Buddhism in Ceylon was hallowed by tradition and was therefore worth maintaining as an end in itself. This connection had very seldom been broken and the Kandyans in 1815 hoped that their new alien rulers would accept this responsibility as the N•yakkar dynasty had done. One other point of importance regarding the convention needs mention here—its legal status became a controversial theme, not least in the twentieth century in view of the claims made by spokesmen for Kandyan interests who came to regard it as fundamental law, immutable and almost sacrosanct. But the British took their stand on English constitutional law and treated the Convention as little more than an ordinary treaty capable of amendment by subsequent legislation.
The rebellion of 1817–18 had its roots in the fact that the Kandyans had called in British help in 1815 for the sole purpose of eliminating an unpopular ruler. They had not contemplated the prospect of the establishment and continuation of British rule and when they awoke to the reality of foreign control they found it extremely irksome and unpalatable. Although the British established a separate administrative structure for the Kandyan provinces and maintained intact most of the fundamental features of the traditional system, this did little to reconcile the Kandyans to British rule. The cession of the Kandyan kingdom to the British stemmed not from some deep-rooted crisis of confidence in the institutional and ideological structure of Kandyan society but from a political conflict which was in the main confined to the king and the aristocracy. Whatever gloss the British, or the Kandyans for that matter, placed on the undertakings given and obtained in 1815, the substitution of British control for N•yakkar rule had the effect of reinforcing and deepening the commitment to the old society and to the institutions, secular and religious, associated with it. All strata of Kandyan society were involved. Nostalgia for the traditional monarchical forms, the one element of the old system, which the British quite deliberately eliminated, affected far more than merely the aristocracy. There was little popular enthusiasm for the version of monarchy introduced by the British into the Kandyan provinces and it required the rumblings of rebellion for British officials to understand the strength of the Kandyan yearning for a monarchical restoration. Yet this was precisely the point on which the British could make no concession.
The passion for monarchical restoration rekindled the old Kandyan tradition of resistance to the foreigner and the sense of loss felt by the Kandyans at the removal of the indigenous monarchy became—shortly after the establishment of British rule—a powerful and combustible political force which needed only a spark or two to be ignited. British administrators in the Kandyan provinces, though not deliberately insensitive to Kandyan feelings, nevertheless gave adequate cause for dissatisfaction by not paying sufficient attention to tradition and custom in the processes of administration. That the bhikkhus were among the first to be alienated is not surprising, because the categorical undertaking given by the British to maintain and protect Buddhism was difficult to implement given even the best of intentions. It required an extraordinary sensitivity to the nuances of tradition and custom, and with regard to these a British Resident was clearly no substitute for a Kandyan ruler in fostering and protecting the national religion. At the same time, a mood of disenchantment with British rule affected a substantial number of the most influential nobles. By the beginning of 1817 there was unmistakable evidence of popular discontent and the prospect of a rebellion. At the centre of the gathering storm were Uva and Vellassa, sparsely populated and the most isolated of the Kandyan provinces. Under Kandyan rule, their remoteness and the difficulty of communications had ensured them a substantial measure of independence from the control of the king’s government. Although the British in 1815 had met with little or no resistance in this region, they had never properly subdued it and the people remained aloof from and hostile to the new rulers. They found little reason subsequently to reconcile themselves to the British, whose soldiers and administrators were especially heedless of their sensitivities. Loyalty to the old regime was strongest here.
It was in this region that a pretender appeared in the middle of 1817, in the guise of a N•yakkar prince. This was Vilbävē, an ex-bhikkhu posing as Dorais•mi, a member of the deposed royal family. That the pretender claimed to be a N•yakkar prince is a point worth noting, both as evidence of the N•yakkar dynasty’s continuing popularity among the Kandyans and as an acknowledgement of their status as indigenous rulers. Vilbävē had made his entry at the shrine of Kataragama in July 1817 soon after the annual festival there had been brought to a close. He made a declaration that he had been chosen by the god of Kataragama to be king of Sri Lanka. A population discontented with British rule was immediately receptive to his appeal. The rebellion which broke out in Uva in September 1817 took the British by surprise. It erupted at a time when their forces in Sri Lanka were depleted and when there was in addition a shortage of native auxiliaries. Besides, this was the rainy season in Uva and communications were hampered by swollen rivers, while the interception of the mail service by the rebels made coordinated action by the British forces even more difficult. At the outset, the British took energetic measures to localize the rebellion and confine it to Uva.
If the outbreak of rebellion took the British by surprise, the chiefs too were caught unawares, but they soon seized the opportunity it provided for a concerted attempt to drive the British out. The first influential chief to defect was Käppitipola, dis•va of Uva, who went over to the rebels in November 1817. He was Ähälēpola’s brother-in-law and his family was connected with most of the important chiefs. His defection was ominous in two ways: it marked the beginning of an aristocratic commitment to the cause of the rebels, giving it a leadership and a more precisely defined sense of purpose; and it was a sign that the rebellion could not be contained within the confines of Uva. Käppitipola soon assumed the leadership of the rebellion. He came to know the deception practised by the pretender in claiming N•yakkar connections and princely status, but he nevertheless chose to conceal this both from his fellow aristocratic conspirators and from the people. His intention was to use the pretender as a puppet, perhaps to be subsequently discarded when he had served his purpose. The solemn ceremony of initiation of the pretender which took place in May 1818 at Vellavaya was under Käppitipola’s auspices.
The British efforts to confine the rebellion to its original centre in Uva and Vellassa succeeded up to the end of January 1818. But thereafter it spread to the provinces in the vicinity of Kandy. Dumbara rose under its dis•va, Madugalle (who became one of the principal rebel leaders); Hevaheta followed suit and in the same month the rebels reached Sabaragamuva, in some parts of which they received enthusiastic support. The Seven Kōr•les were next to go over to the rebels and soon almost all the Kandyan provinces, with the exception of lower Sabaragamuva, the Three and Four Kōralēs, Udunuvara and Yatinuvara, had joined the resistance movement. By April-May 1818, British power in the Kandyan provinces was so gravely imperilled that withdrawal from the interior, with the exception of the few loyal western provinces was contemplated. In Uva and Vellassa, all posts, save those required to preserve communication between Badulla and Batticaloa, were abandoned. Every chief of any importance except Molligoda had either joined the rebellion or was in custody. Ähälēpola was seized on 2 March 1818 and sent down to Colombo where he was kept in custody. There were no charges against him, no accusation even of disloyal conduct and it was not intended to charge him as rebel. Nevertheless, the British regarded him as a potential convert to the rebels and someone whose defection would be especially damaging to their interests. Molligoda’s loyalty was of crucial importance to the British because his influence kept the Four Kōralēs loyal and it was through this district that the vital communications between Colombo and Kandy passed.
The rebellion assumed the proportions of a truly ‘national’ uprising; the threat posed to the British by this traditional ‘nationalism’ in the Kandyan areas sprang from the tremendous reserve of spontaneous support it evoked from all strata of the Kandyan people. In the Kandyan provinces only the Moors, a small minority group, remained staunchly loyal to the British. The rebellion was spasmodic, irregular and local, and the scanty British forces were spread too thin to cope with it successfully. The only answer to the guerrilla tactics adopted so skilfully by the Kandyans was to starve into submission those villages which harboured guerrilla bands and to terrorize the population in the hope of cutting off support for the guerrillas. These tactics were resorted to in the beginning not so much for strategic reasons as because it seemed the only possible retaliatory measure the British could take, given the scanty human resources at their disposal. But even after reinforcements reached the island from India, these scorched-earth tactics were continued and their scope widened. These ‘search and destroy’ missions caused dire privation among the people and their effect eventually was to sap their morale. Had the Kandyans been able to inflict any telling losses on the British, any military defeats of note, there might have been a means of sustaining their hopes. But there were no such military victories and the sheer superiority of British firepower and military resources began to tell. The tide had turned against the Kandyans by mid-1818 and with each successive reverse the morale of the guerrilla bands cracked beyond the hope of repair. By September, Uva and Vellassa were subdued and the revolt was confined to M•tale, Dumbara and Nuvarakalaviya. The arrival of a full complement of reinforcements from India enabled the British to penetrate these provinces as well.
The rapid collapse of the rebellion which then set in was due as much to shortcomings in the rebel leadership as to British tactics and policies. The rebel leaders could never quite submerge their personal differences and rivalries for the common cause. An influential section of the Kandyan aristocracy remained faithful to the British and their loyalty was rewarded by the grant of very substantial material benefits. The British were able to expose Vilbävē for the impostor he was and this had disastrous effects, not least because some of the rebel leaders resented Käppitipola’s influence over Vilbävē and his connivance in the imposture. But the demoralization caused by the revelation that Vilbävē was an impostor was nothing in comparison to the effect of the recapture of the tooth relic by the British—it had been spirited away from the Dalad• M•lig•va by certain bhikkhus at an early stage of the revolt. Brownrigg reported that its recovery was regarded by Kandyans of all classes as ‘a sign of the destiny of the British people to rule the Kandyans’. Molligoda is reported to have said that ‘...in his opinion, and in that of the people in general, the taking of the relic was of infinitely more moment’ than the capture of Käppitipola and Madugalle.
The great rebellion of 1817–18 was the most formidable insurrection during the whole period of British rule in Sri Lanka. When, after a long and ruthless campaign, the resistance of the Kandyans was broken, the British were masters of the whole of Sri Lanka at last. For the first time in several centuries—since the days of Par•kramab•hu I and Vijayab•hu I in the eleventh century—the island was under the control of a single power. From then until 1818 only Par•kramab•hu VI of Kotte (1411–66) laid claim to a similar all-island control. Between 1815 and 1818, the British achieved that in which Kotte, the Portuguese and the Dutch had so signally failed—the conquest of the Kandyan kingdom. Thus the year 1818 marks a real turning point in the history of Sri Lanka. It took the British two decades or more from 1818 to accomplish the absorption of the old Kandyan kingdom into the Crown Colony of Ceylon. Although the proclamation of 21 November 1818 greatly reduced the privileges of the chiefs and slightly changed the guarantees on religion given in 1815, the unification attempted in 1818 was merely political. The British did not set up a unified administrative system for the whole island till 1832 and two administrative systems were maintained, one for the maritime regions which had been subjected to the influence of western rule since the sixteenth century, and another for the old Kandyan kingdom which had preserved, to a much greater extent, the social and cultural patterns of the traditional Sinhalese society. It was Governor Barnes’s system of roads which first broke the isolation of the Kandyan region and brought it securely under British control. The Colebrooke–Cameron reforms of 1832 provided the legislative and administrative (including judicial) framework for Sri Lanka’s unification. The successful establishment and expansion of plantation agriculture in the Kandyan provinces consolidated this unification by providing an economic basis for it.