From Coffee to Tea Cultivation in Ceylon, 1880-1900: An Economic and Social History »

Roland Wenzlhuemer, Dr. phil. (2002) in History, Salzburg University, is Lecturer and Researcher at the Centre for British Studies, Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin. He has worked on the socioeconomic history of British Ceylon and recently on the history of global telecommunication in the nineteenth century.

In the early 1880s a disastrous plant disease diminished the yields of the hitherto flourishing coffee plantation of Ceylon. Coincidentally, world market conditions for coffee were becoming increasingly unfavourable. The combination of these factors brought a swift end to coffee cultivation in the British crown colony and pushed the island into a severe economic crisis.
When Ceylon re-emerged from this crisis only a decade later, its economy had been thoroughly transformed and now rested on the large-scale cultivation of tea. This book uses the unprecedented intensity and swiftness of this process to highlight the socioeconomic interconnections and dependencies in tropical export economies in the late nineteenth century and it shows how dramatically Ceylonese society was affected by the economic transformation.

List of Maps     xi
List of Tables     xiii
List of Figures     xv
Acknowledgements     xvii
Measures     xix
Abbreviations     xxi
Introduction     1
From Coffee to Tea     1
Structure of the Book     4
State of Research     5
Period of Observation     7
Geography     11
Geographical Features of Ceylon     11
History     19
Pre-History and the Aryan and Dravidian Colonisations     19
The Anuradhapura Period     20
The Pollonaruwa Period     21
The Shift of Sinhalese Capitals and the Tamil Kingdom of Jaffna     22
The Portuguese in Ceylon     24
The Dutch Period     26
The British Take-Over and the Conquest of Kandy     29
Reforms and Economic Development     30
Demography     33
Colonial Population Censuses in Ceylon     33
The Growth of the Population, 1881-1901     34
Ethnic Composition of the Population, 1881-1901     41
Religious Composition of the Population, 1881-1901     46
Export Economy     53
The Rise of 'KingCoffee'     53
Depression and Recovery     59
Monoculture, the Coffee Leaf Disease and the Period of Transition     62
The Depression of the Early 1880s     69
The Transition to Tea     75
Tea and the Sinhalese     90
The Evolution of Coconut Plantations     92
Diversification: The Emergence of Rubber Plantations     96
Transition-Consolidation-Diversification     99
Resources     103
The Factors of Production     103
Land     104
Labour     111
Capital     119
Infrastructure     125
Subsistence     135
A Subsistence Economy     135
Wet Rice Cultivation     137
Wet Rice Irrigation     142
The Paddy Tax and its Impact on the Peasantry     151
Chena Cultivation     160
Administration     165
Administrative Units     165
The Ceylon Civil Service     170
The Governor and the Government Agents     178
The Legislative Council     185
The Departments     191
The Headmen System     194
Education      201
British Educational Policy, 1796-1867     201
The Morgan Committee and the Department of Public Instruction     206
Education, 1880-1900     213
New Elites     221
Elite Status and Social Stratification     221
National Elites-The Mudaliyars     224
National Elites-The Nouveaux Riches     228
Local Elites-Headmen and Moneylenders     235
Non-Elites-The Peasantry and the Labourers     238
Immigrants     243
Social Background of the Immigrants     243
Recruitment, Coast Advances, tundus and the kanganies     245
En Route to the Plantations     252
Rice, Balance Wages and Indebtedness     256
Medical Aid Schemes     262
Revivals     271
Christian Missionary Activity and Buddhist Response     271
The Buddhist Revival: Theosophist Organisation     278
The Buddhist Revival: Central Issues     281
The Hindu Revival     288
The Muslim Revival     291
Conclusion     297
Export Economy and Monoculture     297
The Transformation of the Factors of Production     302
Peasant Agriculture     307
"Deconstructing the Dualistic Model"     310
Administration and Education     312
New Elites and Immigrant Labourers     315
Bibliography     319
Index     327