Rural life in imperial Ceylon

There is a growing interest among historians about the role of the British Empire. There is no agreement among them as to its contribution. Even among an older generation in Sri Lanka who yet remember the tail-end days of the British, there is much controversy about the British legacy. John Darwin, the Oxford historian of the British Empire has said that instead of looking at the role of the British and arguing about its rights and wrongs, we should focus more on how the British empire worked in its time. We have several volumes by various authors, who have traced the history of Imperial Ceylon. They have mostly concentrated on the larger issues of constitutional and political development, the rise of the plantation economy and the role of the governors. The present volume by Dr. Ananda Meegama blazes a new trail by looking more at the rural areas, the peasantry and the work of civil servants, engineers, doctors and surveyors who performed at the grassroots of the British Empire in Ceylon. Meegama’s volume is in line with John Darwin’s proposition.

The book is an outstanding work of social history. It is based on a critical reading of material available in the Colombo Archives, and especially the reports and diaries of Government Agents, Assistant Government Agents, Engineers, Surveyors, Doctors and others who recorded first hand experiences, living in what were remote districts. (Mercifully, we have been spared any thoughts from Leonard Wolff.)

One overriding impression is that it is these public servants of British times, serving in distant parts of Ceylon, who were the true champions of the poor, and who attempted to improve the quality of life at the grassroots with the meagre resources available to them. There were no politicians to argue the case for the peasantry and the Colombo based politicians and administrators were more concerned with the Sri Lankan elite and British plantations. If there are any heroes in this volume, they are G.R.W. Campbell, Inspector General of Police from 1868 to 1891, Thomas Skinner, Head of the Public Works Department from 1820 to 1867, and Dr. W.R. Kynsey, Principal Civil Medical Officer in the latter half of the 19th century. They created new institutions which have lasted. The volume largely covers the period 1832 to 1910 or so, when the British empire looked as if the sun would never go down on it.

A word about the author. Dr. Meegama, having obtained a first-class in Economics and Mathematics from the University of Ceylon in the 1950s, obtained his Masters from the Indian Statistical Institute and specialized in Demography at the London School of Economics, obtaining his PhD. He lectured at the University of Ceylon, and then University College London. He was Director General of the Ministry of Planning in the 1970s, and for 10 years in the 1980s, he was Director of the UN Statistical Institute for Asia and the Pacific in Tokyo. He has written several books. He has had a fascinating career as a university academic, scholar, administrator in government and the United Nations.

The volume has 14 chapters and they deal largely with three clusters of issues. Apart from three or four chapters dealing with a changing rural economy and society and the plight of the peasantry, and the transport revolution, one cluster addresses land, forestry, wildlife and environmental issues; a second cluster deals with disease and epidemics and health issues; and the third cluster deals with issues of law and order and the rule of law. A general theme is the breakdown of the established order that was feudal and the lack of any new order which protected the rural economy and its peasantry. The market economy which was emerging in some parts of the country failed to benefit the rural poor.

The chapter on Land Grabbing gives us some rare insights into the rise of a land owning class in the wet-zone. We know more about the plantation economy which was developed by the British than about the rise of an indigenous land owning class with interests in coconuts, rubber and tea. In the 1970s, with land reform, Sri Lanka’s land owning class was heavily diminished. We knew very little of how these very large land owners built up their properties in the first place. According to this volume, this class of people not only obtained crown land, but also acquired by various devices, the lands of the peasantry. There were no land laws to protect the small holders. The price of land at the time appears to be about 25 rupees per acre and there have been occasions when whole villages were bought up. A former British civil servant (Le Mesurier) turned poacher after being game keeper had acquired large extents of land through various questionable deals. The British enacted legislation like the Notaries Ordinance to afford some protection to small land owners.

In Sri Lanka now, we are much concerned with the country’s dwindling forest resources. According to the chapter on Dwindling Forests, there was an equal concern at the time. But this concern was of a different order. The forests were being depleted of high value timber (halmilla, teak, mahogany) which had taken long years to grow to their current size. So it is during this period that Ceylon lost its valuable forestry resources, leaving it with forests of low quality. Even in 1960, it was recorded that Sri Lanka had 50% of its land area under forests. But these forests were not the same forests as of old. The highly sought after varieties had been depleted already. Many British civil servants and foresters did their best to undertake replanting. It was these concerns that led to the establishment of a department of forestry aimed at the better management of forests and the appointment of a new cadre of trained foresters.

The volume deals with several issues concerning the health situation and the constant outbreak of epidemics such as cholera. The opening up of a new transport network made travel easier but it also led to the rapid spread of disease. Large numbers of deaths have been recorded during the middle years of the British rule due to epidemics. In 1866-67, there were over ten thousand deaths from cholera in the Jaffna peninsula alone. The volume describes actions taken by the Government to control these epidemics, such as quarantine and the control of pilgrimages. Gradually, the standards of health increased with trained Health officials being recruited. The volume notes the great commitments to duty of these officials. In 1891, for example, when cholera was rampant in the Hambantota district, preventive measures were taken through establishing a quarantine area. When the disease broke out of the quarantined area and appeared near Dickwella, the Assistant Government Agent, Herbert White, took up residence there and oversaw control measures, which proved so successful that only one case occurred. This is the kind of public servant we had at that time.

Nearly one fourth of the volume is devoted to law and order and rule of law issues. There was growing lawlessness in the country with the judicial and the legal systems still in its early days. Economic and social changes were resulting in severe destruction of established and traditional systems of law enforcement. The system the British introduced to maintain the rule of law was new to the people. The poor did not obtain access to justice through these new systems. Those with resources could exploit the system for their own benefit. The author provides us with a geography of crime at the time. In 1902 serious crime was mostly evident in the southern belt from Matara to Colombo (over ten per ten thousand inhabitants) while the lowest were in the Hatton and Nuwara Eliya districts (one per ten thousand inhabitants). In the early years, Ceylon was largely unpoliced, and gradually, the police coverage of the country expanded.

This is a book on social history. It is also partly a story of public administration in Ceylon in the 19th century. The diaries of the public officials referred to here tell us about the challenges they faced and the way they managed them. This volume should be essential reading for the officials of today, if they are so inclined to read it in English.

(This book is available at Kiyawana Nuvana

Bookshop, High Level Road, Nugegoda)