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The British in Ceylon (1796-1900)
The British East India Company's conquest of Sri Lanka, which it called Ceylon, occurred during the wars of the French Revolution. When the Netherlands came under French control, the British began to move into Sri Lanka from India. The Dutch, after a halfhearted resistance, surrendered the island in 1796.
In 1802 Ceylon was made a crown colony, and, by the Treaty of Amiens with France, British possession of maritime Ceylon was confirmed.
Economic changes:
Coffee
From 1830 to the 1870s the phenomenal growth of coffee dominated Ceylon's economic development. Acreage under coffee expanded, and roads were constructed to fill the needs of coffee planters. Because of a labour shortage on the plantations, labour under indenture contracts came from southern India in large numbers beginning in the 1840s.
Tea and rubber
In the 1870s coffee was destroyed by a leaf disease. Experiments with tea as a plantation crop in the 1880s were immediately successful, and tea spread along the upper and lower slopes of the hill country. About the same time, rubber and coconuts were cultivated as plantation crops. Capital investment poured in to tea and rubber, which grew as large-scale industries and needed a permanent labour force. Steps were taken to settle Indian labour on the plantations.
Ancillary services soon arose. Increasing export trade led to the development of the Colombo Harbour and to railway and road construction. Opportunities were created for the Ceylonese entrepreneur, and employment was plentiful for the English-educated.
Capitalist enterprise was restricted, however, to the urban areas and the plantation country. The rest of the country continued with subsistence agriculture, using traditional methods, though the isolation of the village was broken somewhat by roads and railways. The people there were brought into the monetary economy by the increased trade.
"Sri Lanka" in: Encyclopaedia Britannica 2003 (Encyclopaedia Britannica Premium Service)
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