Many Little Revolts or One Rebellion? The Maritime Provinces of Ceylon/Sri Lanka between 1796 and 1800

Abstract

Contemporaries and later historians have recorded that between 1796 and 1800, when the island of Ceylon was ruled from Madras by the English East India Company, a number of violent protests directed against the new rulers took place. These are generally read as a single rebellion ‘caused’ by the imposition of a tax on owners of coconut gardens, a reading that justifies the often violent counterinsurgency methods practised by the British military and the difficulties met by the British in quelling sporadic occurrences of protest. A critical reading of petitions and other testimonies suggests a more complex and uneven picture, however. It shows especially that the root cause lay mainly in the power vacuum that appeared at the village level after changes to the administration and taxation system. The shift in authority from local headmen to renters meant that peasants could not anymore bring forward their complaints to the government through the official channels. Their anger and frustration led to resistances of different sorts, sometimes peaceful and at other times violent.