Although its political power was eliminated when the maritime regions of Sri Lanka became a Crown Colony in 1802, the English East India Company still retained a monopoly of the trade of the new colony and, with the colonial government itself, was one of the two forces which shaped the colony’s economy. The East India Company’s influence operated through its control of the colony’s external trade, in particular the cinnamon trade. In the first three decades of the nineteenth century, cinnamon was the staple of the colonial economy and revenue from this source was the mainstay of the colonial finances.1 In 1802, the East India Company was given the sole right to buy cinnamon from Sri Lanka for the European market, the quantity being fixed beforehand. The terms of these contracts, which the colonial government accepted under pressure from Whitehall, were more advantageous to the company than to the colony. The market in Europe for Sri Lanka cinnamon was buoyant throughout these years and the company obtained quite substantial profits. When the contract came up for renewal in 1814 there was considerable pressure in the colony for the colonial government to become the direct supplier of cinnamon to the European market. Although it did not succeed in this, the judicious application of pressure did result in better terms for the colony,2 while no great hardship was caused to the company which continued to enjoy substantial profits from the trade. In 1822, when the contract expired, the colonial government took up the position that it should not be renewed. The Colonial Office was still hesitant to support such a stand, but the pressure from the colonial government was too strong on this occasion. From 1822, the sale of cinnamon overseas was brought directly under its control.
The island reputedly produced the finest-quality cinnamon in the world. This enabled it to dominate the market and obtain a monopoly in Europe. On the complacent assumption that there would be no difficulty in retaining these markets, the colonial government resorted to restricting production and maintaining artificially high prices. It soon became evident that Sri Lanka’s ‘natural monopoly’ was due as much to proper management as to the fine quality of its cinnamon. High prices stimulated severe competition from cinnamon grown in Java and in parts of India, especially the Coromandel Coast and Malabar. Though coarser than the Sri Lanka product, these were substantially cheaper. An even more formidable rival was cassia (Cassia lignea) which grew widely in south India, the Philippines, the Dutch East Indies and above all in southern China. In the face of increasing competition, the price of Sri Lanka cinnamon dropped sharply as did the quantity sold, although the situation improved somewhat in the later 1820s when the stocks of the East India Company dwindled and cassia began to lose its attraction.
The economic relations between Sri Lanka and the East India company ranged over the whole field of the island’s external commerce, for Sri Lanka lay within the area in which the company’s chartered privileges were in operation. Besides, some of the company’s Indian territories were traditionally Sri Lanka’s trading partners. Thus the company could, almost single-handedly, determine the pattern of the colony’s external trade, a point clearly demonstrated when—after it had lost its monopoly status as the sole buyer of the island’s cinnamon—it introduced its own cinnamon as a competitor against the Sri Lanka product. Cinnamon was perhaps a special case, but the same pattern of activity may be observed in relation to other products as well, particularly arrack and tobacco produced on the island. If further proof were needed one could turn to the coastal trade between the south-west of Sri Lanka and the Malabar and Coromandel Coasts, which from early times had formed a component part of the trade of the Indian subcontinent. This had survived, in a clandestine form, despite all the VOC’s efforts to eliminate it3 and in the early nineteenth century was an important element in the colonial economy. It was mainly controlled by the south Indian mercantile communities, who had long dominated the coastal trade of the Indian Ocean. Since the capital investment involved was not very substantial, Sri Lanka traders living in and around Jaffna and Galle—the main ports concerned with the trade—and Colombo were able to obtain a small share of this trade; Europeans settled in Madras, Pondicherry and Cochin, as well as those in the colony, occasionally invested their capital in it. The profits obtained were substantial and in terms of volume it was variously estimated at between two-thirds and four-fifths of the entire foreign trade. Successive governors of the colony recognized its importance in the colonial economy and made determined attempts to convert it from a clandestine to regular trade free of the discriminatory duties and restrictions which were the inevitable consequence of the monopoly practices of the East India Company. But in this they had little success, since opposition of the East India Company to any relaxation of these restrictions was unshakable.4
The island’s trade with Europe and especially Britain was slow to develop and at first it was almost entirely in the hands of the government, which exported cinnamon (through the East India Company), arrack, coconut oil and other articles and imported all articles of necessity for its European servants and for the elite in Colombo. The local merchants engaged in the coastal trade lacked capital and the organizational resources to enter this trade. European agency houses established on the island won a major breakthrough in this trade in 1824, when in response to their agitation, Governor Sir Edward Barnes decided to halt importing on account of the government. By 1830, the trade was well established if not flourishing, with eleven firms engaged in it in Colombo, Galle and Trincomalee. But it soon came up against the monopoly structure of the colonial government’s economic activities and the East India Company’s resolute defence of its own interests.
The most valuable items of export were in the hands of the government and thus a two-way trade was almost impossible. Imports required for Sri Lanka were shipped first to Madras, Bombay or Calcutta, which functioned as entrepots for the island. Since the customs policy of the East India Company did not favour an entrepot trade, re-exporters in India profited excessively at the expense of importers in Sri Lanka. The situation within the colony was not much better: high port dues and customs duties as well as unfavourable rates of exchange hampered this trade. The one item of external trade in which European firms established on the island had secured a foothold was in the export of coffee, but here again the East India Company’s privileged position in Britain was a serious obstacle. Exports of coffee to the English market from Sri Lanka faced discriminatory duties; exporters agitated to get these removed by the home government. They also sought markets elsewhere and found one in Mauritius, but an Act of Parliament prohibited the importation there of coffee produced within the area where the East India Company’s charter operated and so exporters turned their attention in the 1820s to having this manifestly unfair provision repealed. But once again they were thwarted by the influence exerted by the company. Only one area of the colony’s external trade was unaffected by the interests of the East India Company: the trade with countries in south-east Asia, mainly the Malay Peninsula and the Dutch East Indies, but it was not of any great importance in terms of volume and value.
The claim was often made in public statements that the economy was liberalized under the British administration, but far from that being true, the basic policies of the successor regime were very much like those of the Dutch; indeed the monopoly structure was if anything much more thoroughgoing than that of the VOC. There was at the same time a mutually incompatible and often conflicting policy of fostering private enterprise. Where such conflicts arose, the monopoly structure generally prevailed, the one exception being coffee culture. Also, although successive governors recognized that a spirit of individualism was emerging among the indigenous population, a process which they wished to encourage, yet they refused to come to terms with similar developments, largely initiated by Europeans in the sector of the economy in which the government held sway, with coffee culture being, once again, the one notable exception to this pattern.
The contradictory nature of these policies is seen with regard to a decision taken by Whitehall at the time when the former Dutch possessions on the island became a British Crown Colony: it was not to be modelled on the West Indian ‘plantation’ type. Europeans were prohibited from holding land outside the confines of the town of Colombo. While the early governors of the colony themselves viewed the island as a military station with a mercantilist economic tradition, they were nevertheless unhappy with the decision to restrict European landholding. They believed this to be detrimental to the economic development in the colony and by judicious application of pressure succeeded in getting the Colonial Office to rescind the ruling. From 1812 onwards, Europeans and their descendants were permitted to purchase or receive as grants up to 4,000 acres of land. Maitland, who was largely instrumental in persuading Whitehall on this matter, believed that it would help transform the colony’s economy. This did not mean that Maitland and his successors were intent on giving freer rein to individual enterprise; the current ambivalence on this matter continued to bedevil the government’s economic policies.
The island was regarded as a potentially attractive field for European investment, if not settlement (several writers advocated European colonization), with cinnamon still the main attraction for prospective European investors. But with the government insistent on the maintenance of its monopoly, the investors turned their energies to other crops. Although many of these crops seemed to have real promise, the one positive success, by the end of the 1820s, was coffee, which owed much to the interest taken by the government and in particular by Governor Sir Edward Barnes. Investors in coffee were readily accommodated in regard to loans and wastelands (that is, jungle or scrub jungle). Coffee holdings were exempted from the prevailing taxes on land and the export duty on coffee was abolished—all these measures originated from Barnes who deliberately devoted the resources of the state to promote coffee culture. The government itself opened an experimental coffee plantation of 200 acres attached to the Botanical Gardens at Peradeniya. While the success of coffee—isolated though it was—pointed the way to a viable economic base for the future, the state was so firmly entrenched in the economy that few envisaged the triumph of private enterprise over monopolies, even though these monopolies were neither more efficiently run as enterprises nor less damaging to the economy as a whole than under the Dutch.
The most conspicuous feature of this economic system was cinnamon, the base of the colony’s mercantilist structure. A complex set of regulations, largely inherited from Dutch times, rigidly enforced the monopoly, with little heed given to the adverse effects these had on the economy. Two aspects of this require emphasis. The regulations protected the cinnamon plant, but their effect was to depress the value of land on which cinnamon was found growing, quite apart from retarding the development of such lands. Second, in a concerted bid to obtain ever-increasing quantities of cinnamon, the government drove the Sal•gamas to the utmost limits of their capacity. However, this proved economically wasteful, for the Sal•gamas generally deserted in large numbers while many died of fever contracted when peeling cinnamon in the jungles and the government was forced to depend more and more on less efficient labour. Besides, despite this reliance on compulsory labour, the expenses of the cinnamon department kept increasing and the profits from the monopoly were much less than anticipated at the beginning of British rule.
To turn to another state monopoly, the high price of salt—the government’s margin of profit was estimated to be as high as 1,100 per cent—not only caused hardship to the average consumer, but also hindered the development of a potentially valuable fish-curing industry on the coastal belt. Indeed, the harsh enforcement of this monopoly was responsible for the desolation of the once thriving Magam-pattu, the premier salt-producing area.
One of the crucial features of the colonial government’s direct intervention in the economy was the use it made of r•jak•riya. The Portuguese and the Dutch had been content to maintain and exploit it for their own purposes and such changes as they saw fit to introduce did not materially alter its character. The British adopted a strikingly different course of action: although many officials viewed r•jak•riya as basically obnoxious to British principles of justice and deleterious in its effects upon the people, they still continued to rely on it and to make more efficient and profitable use of it to further their policies, all of which changed its character and transformed it into the true compulsory service system it became under the British. There were two features of r•jak•riya which British officials regarded as being of crucial importance: the personal service rendered to the ‘king’ or his agents by landholders who enjoyed lands granted by him; and the liability of all landholders, irrespective of the nature of their tenure, to provide labour services on public works. During the last phase of Dutch rule, one saw the beginnings of a trend towards dissociating service tenure from r•jak•riya. In Andrews’s impulsive reform of r•jak•riya during the early years of the Madras administration, this trend was accelerated and taken to its logical conclusion, although Andrews himself did not see a continuity between his reforms and anything that had happened under the Dutch. Despite the jaundiced view North took of Andrews and his reforms, his own attempts at improving the r•jak•riya system showed that, at bottom, his attitude towards it was much the same. This time, however, there were no disturbances but there were other disconcerting consequences: the monetary loss sustained by the state and the difficulty which the state faced in obtaining voluntary labour.
Maitland, although an unfriendly critic of North’s reforms of r•jak•riya, did not reject them in their entirety. He restored service tenure, but as land continued to pay tax, r•jak•riya was not placed on its original footing. Significantly, he did not abrogate the right of the state to extract service on the basis of caste and the performance of duties in connection with public works was made, as under the kings, a gratuitous service. A significant modification of the system of labour services was developed, attuned to the peculiar requirements of the colonial administration, namely, compulsory services proper. After the suppression of the Kandyan rebellion of 1817–18, a form of neo-r•jak•riya similar to that of the littoral was introduced there, without its traditional sanction—expressed in the ancient adage, ‘king’s duty is greater than service to the gods’—and this perhaps made compulsory services doubly distasteful to the people. The colonial officials, in fact, acknowledged that theirs was a fundamentally different system—one in which the ideological framework of the past was to a great degree superseded by a newer and more pragmatic concept of service viewed as no more than a personal tax owed by the individual to the state.
With these changes, caste became firmly established as the basis of personal service. Although this affected all castes, the most repressive effect was upon the castes who were called upon to perform services considered economically vital to the state. Of these, the Sal•gamas suffered most because the cinnamon monopoly was the pivot of the mercantilist system operated by the British.
One other point needs special mention: the extensive use of r•jak•riya in public works, which under the British meant roads to the exclusion of almost all else. Their construction and maintenance in the difficult terrain of the interior, especially in the Kandyan provinces, made for unusually heavy demands on the services of the people. The colonial government most notably under Barnes, found r•jak•riya the cheapest and most effective means of accomplishing this. To the people at large, however, this emphasis on the use of r•jak•riya services for road construction was perhaps the most obnoxious feature of the British administrative system.
Money and markets were of little significance in the Kandyan provinces. The economy of the maritime regions was also largely based on subsistence agriculture, although trade was of greater significance there. Most villages could obtain many essential food items—especially salt—and textiles only from outside, while many were not self-sufficient in rice. A fair proportion of the population was dependent for rice on ‘imports’ (that is, from outside the village boundaries); indeed the whole country was not self-sufficient in rice and the colony’s customs returns showed a considerable import of rice, principally from south India. This reliance on imports was the continuation of a trend which began under the Dutch. Chēnas formed an essential part of village agriculture and the dry grains produced on them were a necessary supplement to, if not a substitute for, rice.
The peasants, on the whole, had only a precarious return for their labours on their paddy fields at the best of times. They were often compelled to fall back for their sustenance on other occupations as well—not all of which were necessarily associated with agricultural work within the village. There is evidence of the increasing resort to wage labour by the government (despite the existence of compulsory services), by European capitalists and even by the local inhabitants themselves. On the coast, trade was, on a modest scale, another avenue of sustenance.
The general picture is one of stagnation in agriculture and this was attributed to the scarcity of capital and the absence of industry. In the early years of British rule various remedial measures were considered. There was the belief that capital formation would be stimulated by compelling the people to pay their taxes in cash instead of in kind. Others stressed the need for improvements in agricultural techniques. In an age when so much hope was placed on the possibilities of rapid development through colonization and immigration, it was inevitable that proposals should be made for the introduction of European colonists and Indian and Chinese immigrants. The former, it was argued, would invest their capital in agriculture while the latter would set an example of industry to the proverbially indolent natives. Again, there were demands for a more positive role by the government in responding to the needs of agriculture. The neglect of irrigation was highlighted, and it was argued that r•jak•riya should be utilized, as in earlier times, for restoring and maintaining the country’s irrigation network, as much as it was used for road construction.
Barter was of great importance in the lives of the people, both within a village and on a wider regional basis. The Kandyans, for instance, bartered dry grains, areca and jaggery for salt, salt fish and cloth, which they obtained from traders on the coast, while the inhabitants of the Jaffna Peninsula exchanged salt, tobacco and cloth for areca, cotton and beeswax from the south-west coast. To some extent the resort to barter was made necessary by the scarcity, if not absence, of circulating specie, but, more important, it had behind it the sanction of custom and tradition. There was, however, a slow but quite perceptible departure from this system in the early years of British rule, although once again this was a continuation of trends which had their origins in the last phase of the Dutch administration in the maritime regions of Sri Lanka. Trade was the main agency of this transformation. The removal of internal trade barriers—especially after the cession of the Kandyan kingdom—also contributed substantially to the growth of trade, as did the political stability which followed upon the establishment and consolidation of British rule and the new markets and economic opportunities which emerged from these. By the 1820s the beginnings of a market economy were clearly discernible.
The new economic opportunities were exploited mainly by the people of the maritime regions, not only in their own areas but also in the Kandyan provinces. Men from the low country established themselves as traders and engaged in wage labour—in the Botanical Gardens at Peradeniya, for example. This pattern was to continue throughout the nineteenth century. The Kandyans themselves were not entirely insensitive to economic stimulation as was demonstrated by the eager participation of the peasants in cultivating coffee as a garden crop. While these developments and the network of roads that was built, had the effect of integrating the Kandyan provinces into the larger economy of the island, they were nevertheless not powerful enough to prevent the Kandyans from continuing to maintain a separate identity. Indeed, the distinctions between the coast and the Kandyan areas were given greater emphasis in the next few decades by the economic and educational advances achieved by the people of the littoral.
Economic stagnation continued to affect the country till the 1830s, when the gradual success of coffee culture had a profound effect on the economy. Moreover, by the 1830s the British, as undisputed masters of the Indian seas, were in the process of consolidating their possessions in India and had more time to ponder the possibilities of profitably developing the island’s economy and settling its major internal political problems. The appointment of the Commission of Eastern Inquiry—the Colebrooke-Cameron Commission—was a clear indication that the Colonial Office had decided that a new phase in the colony’s development should begin. Once the value of the island as a strategic station had begun to wane with the end of the Napoleonic Wars, Whitehall no longer viewed its financial difficulties—the persistent failure of all efforts to equalize revenue and expenditure—with an indulgent eye. Indeed, the recurrent deficit in the colony’s finances prompted Whitehall to initiate this searching scrutiny of Sri Lanka’s affairs. But the problem of the deficit could not be treated in isolation from the wider issues of colonial administration. It was recognized that the time had come for a thorough evaluation of economic policy. The choice was between the ‘tropical system of compulsion’ and the principle of economic freedom. Reduced to the basic realities of the situation in Sri Lanka in the 1830s, it meant a choice between the continuation of the Dutch pattern of mercantilist restrictions and monopolies and the use of native devices such as r•jak•riya, or a clean break from these in favour of what may be termed laissez-faire economics.
The Colebrooke-Cameron Commission introduced an integrated and in many ways radical set of reforms5 designed to establish in Sri Lanka the superstructure of the laissez-faire state. They had much in common with Bentinck’s reforms in India, but were more far-reaching in their impact and more consistent in the application of current liberalism. As adherents of laissez-faire and free trade, the commissioners saw little to commend in the pattern of economic activity then prevailing in the colony with its mercantilist structure, discriminatory administrative regulations and the overwhelming importance of the state monopolies in the economy. Not surprisingly, they gave very high priority to the abolition of the cinnamon monopoly, which was by far the most conspicuous of them all and the embodiment—as they saw it—of all the deficiencies of the mercantilism which they portrayed as the main obstacle to economic growth in the colony. In their view, the state should restrict itself to creating an environment conducive to the growth of private enterprise. It should encourage the entry of foreign capital (mainly British) to invest in plantation agriculture—primarily cinnamon—and in the production of rice on a commercial basis. Their sharpest criticisms were directed at the r•jak•riya system. Colebrooke and Cameron objected to it primarily on humanitarian grounds—they regarded it as an intolerable and oppressive relic of feudalism—but these were by no means the only consideration in their forthright insistence on its abolition. R•jak•riya was an obstacle to the free movement of labour and to the creation of a land market, both of which were vitally important in the establishment of the laissez-faire state.
Economic improvement and the growth of educational opportunities were the most powerful stimuli of social change in the nineteenth century. But in the period covered by this chapter it was the elite, those in the higher rungs of the caste, social and administrative hierarchy—the headmen belonging to the Goyigama caste—that profited most from them. While this was especially so with regard to educational opportunities, it was equally true of economic ones. Thus the lists of renters (of revenue) of both the Madras and Crown governments contained a substantial number of headmen, many of whom had accumulated wealth by the efficient manipulation of the system of compulsory labour for personal ends. When shares in the newly opened stage coach service were available for purchase, many of the headmen, including some who had made money by supervising compulsory labour employed in the construction of the Colombo-Kandy road invested in them. Thus, the new economic and educational opportunities were used by the headmen and their families to strengthen their position in local society.
The entrenchment of caste in the compulsory services system, and through the courts as well, protected the Goyigama headmen from their most likely competitors for these economic and educational opportunities—the emergent castes of the littoral, the Sal•gamas, Kar•vas and Dur•vas. In the last phase of their rule, the Dutch had conferred great and unprecedented privileges on the Sal•gamas in recognition of their value in regard to the cinnamon monopoly. They were exempted from certain land dues, tolls and taxes and from r•jak•riya outside the Cinnamon Department. Besides, the care and respect which the natives were taught to bear for the cinnamon plant had the effect of raising among the Sal•gamas a pride in the caste and service. The situation changed considerably under the British, beginning with North. Calls on their labour, under service tenure, increased inexorably within the Cinnamon Department and without, while the privileges they had received from the Dutch were gradually removed. Indeed, they had become so accustomed to these privileges that they complained in a petition to London that the changes effected under British rule reduced them ‘to the same equal footing with natives of other castes’. The changes in their status in the economy and, in particular, the loss of their privileges were reflected in attempts to avoid service in the Cinnamon Department, when Sal•gamas once more resorted to the tactic of registering their children under the names of persons who were not attached to that department. This was in marked contrast to the last phase of Dutch rule when attempts were made by non-Sal•gama people to register themselves as Sal•gamas to take advantage of the privileges conferred on cinnamon-peelers.
The struggle for caste mobility was diverted to the one field which lay beyond the government’s influence and pressure, namely indigenous religion. Here we need to turn to the revival of Buddhism in the maritime regions which derived its impetus from the invigorating influence of Välivita Saranankara’s activities in the Kandyan kingdom. One feature of the revival—Kīrti Śrī R•jasimha’s decision to restrict the upasampad• to the Goyigama caste—was a great setback to the aspirations of the three main non-Goyigama castes of the littoral, the Sal•gamas, Kar•vas and Dur•va. The Kandyan hierarchy itself recognized the strength of the processes of social mobility in the maritime regions of the south-west by a politic—and grudging—acceptance of the need to make exceptions to this rule in the case of prominent bhikkhus of those castes when appointments were made to temples in the maritime regions under the control of the VOC. But these concessions proved quite inadequate and the growing dissatisfaction with the Siyam Nik•ya sect on account of its restrictive caste outlook in the matter of ordination spurred Sal•gama bhikkhus in 1802 to send a mission to Burma to obtain valid higher ordination there. In the first decade of the nineteenth century, five delegations from the Sal•gama, Kar•va and Dur•va castes travelled to Burma for this purpose. The Amarapura Nik•ya, which emerged from these endeavours, was the only significant development in Buddhism in the first half of the nineteenth century; it was open to all castes, in defiance of the Kandyan practice which restricted ordination to those of the Goyigama caste.6 The Amarapura Nik•ya was to make considerable headway in the first half of the nineteenth century; its influence spread into the Kandyan areas, much to the chagrin and consternation of the Kandyan bhikkhus. At this time it appeared to possess a vitality that the more conservative Kandyan Buddhism lacked, but it soon settled into a groove of its own. Nevertheless, it left its mark on the Buddhism of the littoral, which in contrast to Kandyan Buddhism came to be distinguished by its greater flexibility and receptivity to the forces of change and social reform.
The recovery of Buddhism, of which the emergence of the Amarapura Nik•ya was one of the most notable features, owed not a little to the more relaxed religious attitudes of the British.7 The great majority of the people of the maritime regions shed their allegiance to the Dutch Reformed Church and identified themselves as Buddhists. But Buddhism was soon faced with the problem of survival in the face of the challenge offered by the British missionary societies. The struggle might have been a more unequal one had the new rulers shown greater enthusiasm for the propagation of Christianity, but in the first two decades of British rule the administration was always inhibited by a fear that religious controversies might provoke political difficulties. This was more noticeable with regard to the Kandyan region where, apart from other problems, there was the treaty obligation under the terms of the Kandyan Convention of 1815 to protect and maintain Buddhism. The government’s attitude to Buddhism was one of reluctant neutrality rather than open hostility. Thus, left largely to their own resources, the missionary organizations made slow progress in their efforts to make inroads among the adherents of the traditional religions of the country.
At the same time, from the beginning of British rule there was an attempt to alleviate the lot of the Roman Catholics. They obtained a great measure of religious freedom, especially under a regulation of 27 May 1806 which removed the religious disabilities affecting them. But in the early years of the nineteenth century, the Roman Catholic Church in Ceylon was in no position to consolidate the gains it had derived from this measure. There were, besides, limits to the liberalization that followed on the establishment of British rule on the island. British officials in Ceylon were not immune to the anti-Catholicism which influenced the behaviour of all classes in English society in the nineteenth century. Significantly, it was with the passage of the Catholic Emancipation Act in Britain that the position of the Roman Catholic Church in Sri Lanka improved. By the end of the period surveyed in this chapter, the resilience of Roman Catholicism on the island had been demonstrated and the recovery from its desperately poor position under the Dutch appears to have been complete by then.
Neither the Buddhists nor the Roman Catholics at this time matched the vigour and vitality of the British Protestant mission which sought to establish themselves on the island. The Dutch Reformed Church deprived of state support (when most of its clergymen refused to swear allegiance to the new rulers), lost the vast majority of its flock, thus demonstrating the essential superficiality of conversions to Protestant Christianity under the Dutch. Not that the scandal of ‘Government Christians’ or ‘Christian Buddhists’ did not linger on in British times. In the first two decades of British rule, there was no consistent support for British missionary societies from the state, although they were welcomed by the colonial authorities with formal correctness. Apart from Governor North, there was a general reluctance on the part of the British to encourage their activities, especially in the Kandyan areas where mission work was severely restricted. This was in keeping with the practice in India where the East India Company discouraged missionary activity for fear that the work of the missionaries might provoke religious strife and thereby create embarrassing political problems for the company. Thus in Sri Lanka too, during this period, the colonial government endeavoured to adopt and maintain an attitude of neutrality in religious affairs, but most of the influential officials of the day were sympathetic to the missionaries and assisted them in many ways.
In the first three decades of British rule the one consistent agent of change was the missionary. Much more than the soldier and the administrator, he was committed to the advocacy of change, the more so because he had seldom to bear the consequences of impulsive attempts at evangelization and was much less concerned than the administrator and the soldier with the maintenance of political stability. Despite the government’s reluctance to commit itself to offering them any support on a formal basis, British missionary organizations on the island grew in strength and confidence during this period. Their increasing influence as pressure groups in the metropolitan country served to guarantee the successful establishment and expansion of missionary activities in the colonies.
From the beginning of their activities in Sri Lanka the British missions used the school system for evangelization.8 The Dutch had left behind a rudimentary network of parish schools in the maritime regions, in which children were taught reading, writing and Christianity. The Madras administration maintained these schools and did not allow them to fall into ruin. North was more positive in his endeavours to continue the ecclesiastical and education system of the Dutch, but he received scant support from Whitehall and indeed from many of his subordinates on the island. As a result, despite North’s enthusiasm, the parish schools made no substantial progress; their survival was due to the efforts of the Revd James Cordiner, North’s confidant and associate in the enterprise. The situation changed somewhat with the arrival of Governor Maitland. It was not that he was enthusiastic for the propagation of Christianity or for the support, much less expansion, of the system of parish schools. But the evangelical pressure of Whitehall was too strong to resist and Castlereagh, the Secretary of State for the Colonies, wrote to Maitland explaining that the government was being censured for discouraging Christianity. He enjoined on Maitland the necessity of promoting education. Thus it was because of evangelical pressure that the parish schools in Sri Lanka survived. They owed much to Sir Alexander Johnston, then chief justice of Ceylon, and to other officials, but above all else to the missionary societies who undertook their management.
When the Kandyan provinces came under British control, Brownrigg was reluctant to permit evangelism there and discouraged the Wesleyan missionaries who sought to establish a mission station in Kandy. But with the expansion of the civil and military establishments in Kandy, he appointed the Revd Samuel Lambrick as chaplain to the forces there in 1818. Lambrick extended his activities to evangelistic work among the Kandyans and eventually opened a vernacular school in the district. The Church Missionary Society moved in to continue this work and by 1823 the Kandy mission station controlled five schools. Brownrigg’s successor, Barnes, did not wish to maintain the parish schools. He thought that the existing education system was expensive, inefficient and far from useful, and he imposed rigorous cuts in expenditure on education. Nor was he at ease about teaching children the tenets of Christianity, believing as he did that an attempt to force these on others merely led to the thwarting of one’s own beliefs. In his view the reading and writing of the native tongue should be the first requirement.
In the years before 1832 there was no coherent policy on education, which was not regarded as a service normally provided by the state. As a result, the government’s contribution in this sphere was both slight and sporadic. But if the state was lukewarm, if not actually hostile, to the expansion of education, the missions became increasingly well equipped to continue their own educational work. Although their financial resources were still meagre, their administrative skills and their zeal for evangelization more than made up for this. Since the state lacked the administrative machinery for the purpose of running and maintaining a school system, the missions that had a rudimentary organizational structure which could be adapted for this purpose stepped in. Indeed, the distinctive feature of the first phase of missionary activity in nineteenth-century Sri Lanka is the single-minded struggle of the missionaries to build up a school system at a time when the government itself was disinclined to do so. Through the years they devised the guiding principles that were to govern educational development in Sri Lanka for decades thereafter, and from their experiments emerged the system of denominational schools which prevailed on the island for more than a century.
The view that education was a legitimate sphere of state activity was strongly endorsed by W.M.G. Colebrooke, the senior member of a two-member Commission of Eastern Enquiry (the other member being C.H. Cameron), whose reports and recommendations (1831) were to be major landmarks in British policy in Sri Lanka. Colebrooke observed that the schools maintained by the government were ‘extremely defective and inefficient’. He acknowledged unhesitatingly the superiority of the schools run by the missionaries and was not inclined to encourage the establishment of government schools in areas served by the missionary schools. To ‘facilitate the reform of the government schools’, he recommended that they be placed ‘under the immediate direction’ of a school commission composed of the Archdeacon of Colombo and the clergy of the island, as well as the government agents of the provinces and other civil and judicial officials. A notable change in government policy on education became evident with the implementation of Colebrooke’s recommendations on education in 1832. With the establishment of the school commission the state had indeed acknowledged its responsibility for the supervision, if not organization, of education. State intervention in education now assumed a regular and definite form.