In 1773, the disāva received a request letter from three sisters regarding the inheritance of a plot of land that had once been owned by their father, Malikeaatjege Battan Nainde.1 Battan had served for many years as a lascarin. For this service he had been granted said plot of land, on which he had lived with his family. Since he and his wife, Babinaatjere, had only been bestowed with daughters, and thus had no male heir to inherit the service duty (and with it, the land compensating for it), they had attempted to secure their estate by having a will compiled at the office of the kōrāla.2 In this will, the couple’s youngest daughter was recorded as the prime inheritor of this plot, as she was the only one still living with her parents at the time. While she was not married back then, the will read her future husband would share the lascarin service with the husbands of her sisters. This was done to keep the land in the family, even though colonial law officially forbade the sharing of lascarin duties.3 Despite it being an illegal practice, this arrangement worked as intended, or at least it did for a while. After Battan’s death, his sons-in-law took over his duty in turns, and the family’s home seemed secure.
However, almost ten years after the will had been compiled, Battan’s daughters made a shocking discovery. “To their tremendous astonishment” they had not only found out that Battan had another child – a son – but that this young man was registered in the thombos as Battan’s primary beneficiary.4 To make things worse, the daughters discovered that this supposed son had actually
The letter of Battan’s daughters raises many questions. Practically, it is quite puzzling that the same lascarin duty was apparently observed twice, by at least four different people (Battan’s three sons-in-law taking turns, and the son no one had known about) without anyone noticing. Similarly, one could wonder what compelled Battan’s daughters to check the thombos in the first place. If this was a common practice, why had they not done it sooner? And if it was not a common practice, what made them check the registers at all? Legally and administratively, this case is also anything but straightforward. For one, it is fascinating that Battan (thought he) could secure his lascarin title despite only fathering daughters with his wife, by compiling a testament at the kōrāla’s office which broke not one, but two colonial laws: the inheritance of caste-related duties through the female line (see the case of Radege Thomis Fernando in chapter three), and such a service being carried out by more than one person (as mentioned above). Neither the kōrāla, nor the Landraad commissioners ever questioned this solution, and if not for the unexpected existence of Battan’s son, it by all means seems it would have worked. Additionally, including his daughters who had left the household in the will was atypical, because a woman who left the family home to live with their husband’s family (diga) typically forewent any stake in their own family’s estate.5 In more ways than one, Battan’s case makes for a confusing read.
If Battan’s situation would have been unique, an outlier in the registers or the legal archives, this case could have easily been dismissed as atypical – a fluke in an otherwise neatly organised world. However, just as with land tenure, the situation on the ground seems to have been much more complicated than the VOC’s laws, statutes, and (appropriated) categories could account for. Complex labour regimes within family and village networks are a common sight in both the thombos and the archives of the Landraad and the disāva. The intersection of deeply rooted caste mechanisms, local variations to the associated labour that was provided, and colonial corvée labour based on both, made for a complicated and layered reality, with clashing and conflicting genealogies
Literature on the plurality of labour regimes (and their legacies) which existed simultaneously in colonial South Asia is about as diverse and plentiful as those regimes themselves. From enslavement and bondage, to wage and caste-based labour, scholars like Susan Bayly, Rosalind O’Hanlon, Sumit Guha, Indrani Chatterjee, Nira Wickramasinghe, Alicia Schrikker, Markus Vink, Matthias van Rossum, Peter Boomgaard (in no particular order) and many others have considered the question of (dis)continuities in (the categorisation of) labour in the Indian Ocean World.8 Considering the fact that (forced) labour and imperialism are inherently connected, similar questions have been asked for other empires across the globe and across time, and questions regarding the universality or specificity of (forced) labour regimes became linked to debates surrounding modernisation, globalisation, and the rise of capitalism (comparable to the efforts of some historians to historicise global land grabbing by connecting it to the rise of capitalist colonialism, as covered in the previous chapter).9 While the publications on this topic are numerous, the underlying conundrum is actually quite simple: are systems of (semi-)forced labour simply universal in the long history of humanity (even though exact characteristics of these systems are different per place or time), or is there something inherently
A relatively recent contribution to these debates that primarily argues for the second hypothesis (the specificity of European-colonial labour regimes) came from the hand of Matthias van Rossum and Merve Tosun. They argued corvée labour systems appropriated or transplanted by the VOC throughout Asia were “crucial instruments in the expansion of (early) modern colonialism and capitalism” (as opposed to remnants of local forms of feudalism).11 They included the Company’s presence in Sri Lanka in their analysis, specifically referring to the practice of annually enforced menial labour duties for “outsiders” (specifically Muslims) named uliyam as one such instrument. From a comparative perspective, interpreting uliyam as one of the many local corvée labour regimes systematically exploited by the Company makes sense, especially because its exact origins are still unknown, and the concept was seemingly first introduced during the Dutch era of colonial rule.12 That said, the word’s Tamil-origins and its prevalence in other locations, like Travancore, suggests it has a much older history (predating both Portuguese and Dutch “capitalist” colonialism).13 Additionally, this system was also upheld in comparative ways by the synchronous but independent kingdom of Kandy,14 and was seemingly organised locally, not by the offices of the VOC.15
The contrast in these readings of uliyam within the labour system upheld by VOC, highlights the difficulty of making global or trans-imperial comparisons, while also keeping true to local realities, specificities, and contexts – a problem faced by all self-proclaimed global and imperial historians (including myself). Considering the availability, accessibility, and comparability of high-government colonial sources – particularly laws, on which Van Rossum and Tosun largely based their analyses – it also makes sense that historians of empire often come to the conclusion that the empires they study are responsible for the unidirectional deployment of such institutions, and their empire-spanning practices. However, as countless studies into the colonised or “contested” spaces around the globe in early modern times have shown, “empires could do little to enforce common practices within their dominions, let alone globally.”18 And, more importantly, like Battan’s case shows, reality often alluded the simplified paper reality found in the laws, registers, and categories applied by colonial governments.19
This chapter offers a “global history on a small scale” of labour(ing families) in eighteenth-century Sri Lanka.20 It will do so by focussing on individuals like Battan and the ways they managed their labour on a micro-level, while dealing with colonial intrusions and regional labour regimes of long standing. Doing so will not just reveal these intrusions and regimes (and their workings in practice, outside of the realm of law in theory), but at the same time showcases
1 Solidifying Caste and Labour
Without much of a doubt, the phenomenon of caste (and slavery-)based extraction of labour was found throughout South and Southeast Asia long before the arrival of the first European colonisers in the region.23 Additionally, the enumeration, categorisation, and (local) registration of caste-bound (and enslaved) labourers also has a history much older than that of European expansionism.24 That said, almost every colonial government which ‘succeeded’ (i.e. forcefully removed) local polities in this area of the world attempted to appropriate such labour regimes, as well as the bureaucratic apparatuses recording them. While initially most such attempts were aimed at leaving these systems as undisturbed as possible, it is equally undeniable that caste systems (and comparable forms of societal organisation) changed rapidly under the influence of e.g. Portuguese, Dutch, French, and British presences.25
When it comes to caste in southwestern Sri Lanka specifically, the lower castes in the Sinhalese-majority south were not technically enslaved, in contrast to the “slave castes” found in South India and northern Sri Lanka. They were, however, kept in place (physically and metaphorically) through other
As was mentioned before, colonial intermingling in the Lankan caste-labour systems was initially limited to certain social groups that could bring something to the table that was of direct interest to the respective Portuguese and Dutch governments – such as the salāgama cinnamon peelers. Next to that, the colonisers imported enslaved labourers from other regions – like Africa, the Indian subcontinent, and the Indonesian archipelago – to maintain the public works (roads, fortifications, docks, etc.).28 However, as colonial intrusion in the hinterlands expanded over the eighteenth century, the VOC increasingly demanded low-caste labourers to work directly for them. Additionally, as the colonial government started to intensify the documentation of caste as a category, and of the labourers that could soothe said demand, labour duties and social status became increasingly solidified, and social mobility became (more) restricted – at least on paper.29
Turning to this paper reality – the thombos specifically – families were classified and divided by the Company into “occupational guilds”.30 Whether described with a (Dutch corruption or translation of a) local caste category (e.g. bellale for vellālar and goygama; “visser” for karāva or paravar; “smith” for āchāri) or a proto-ethnic classification (chettiar, or Moor),31 all these groups were associated with some form of labour, service, or occupation.32 Such a classification was typically only recorded for the head of the family (with only
Sumit Guha has stressed that this link between social standing and occupation can be found in most pre-modern and early modern societies throughout the world, and that this link has consistently characterised and determined caste structures in South Asia.35 The same can be said for the ways caste and rājakāriya were inherently connected in Sri Lanka, well before the days of the VOC and their thombo registers.36 For example, members of the artisan castes (such as the āchāri silver and gold smiths) would primarily have worked on their lands and their crafts, but also had to perform annual labour duties on the public works as was reserved for the lower castes.37 However, because the Company was directly appropriating these labour regimes during the time the thombos were compiled, the labour duties recorded in the registers did not always correspond directly to the caste category of the registered families (see Table 6).38
Categorised labour services as found in the head thombos of Hapitigam and Siyane combined, 1760–1771
| Registered duty | N | % |
|---|---|---|
| Lascarin | 400 | 24.4 |
| Mayorāl | 330 | 20.1 |
| No service/occupation | 224 | 13.7 |
| Coolie/unskilled labourer/temporary labourer/transport duty | 155 | 9.5 |
| Extraordinary service (interim service, or temporary replacement – mostly lascarins) | 127 | 7.7 |
| Nainde (low caste labourer) | 107 | 6.5 |
| Village washer | 44 | 2.7 |
| Black/gold smith | 41 | 2.5 |
| Saparamādu | 27 | 1.6 |
| Potter | 22 | 1.3 |
| Kangān | 19 | 1.2 |
| Mudaliyār | 19 | 1.2 |
| Drummer | 18 | 1.1 |
| Bookkeeper of rice tax | 16 | 1 |
| Vidāne | 14 | 0.9 |
| Scribe | 9 | 0.6 |
| Ārachchi | 8 | 0.5 |
| Messenger | 8 | 0.5 |
| Other | 52 | 3.2 |
| Total | 1640 | 100 |
SOURCE: DATABASE OF THE LAND AND HEAD THOMBOS OF UDUGAHA, HAPITIGAM, AND MEDA, SIYANE, BASED ON SLNA 1/3688, 3690, 3736, 3772, 3776, 3816, 3819, 3856, 3860, AND 3861
The majority of the “services” (diensten) recorded in the thombos were directly exploitable by the Company, and did not reflect the everyday rhythm of the peasantry in Siyane or Hapitigam (similar to how the types of crops and trees grown that were recorded in the thombos were only directly related to
To make sure that families would consistently perform these duties and services, the Company combined bureaucracy (registers, lists) with law.39 To illustrate this mechanism, let us briefly return to the salāgama, as this group was most continuously and deeply affected by colonial efforts to exploit their labour.40 Inspired by the Portuguese colonisers before them, the early Dutch colonial government was quick to organise the salāgama peelers into divisions called mahabaddu. Each mahabadde had a European captain, who (together with local chiefs) was responsible for keeping track of the available labouring bodies to do the actual peeling.41 Moreover, by the eighteenth century there were thombos specifically designed to document the salāgama families.42 These registers were combined with regulations forbidding intermarriage between the cinnamon peelers and other communities, and laws which relegated people born from such forbidden inter-communal relationships to the salāgama caste by default.43 These were all mechanisms meant to provide the Company with a steady supply of peelers, from whom they demanded this labour on a scale that would have been incomparable to any pre-colonial context.44 Naturally, this constraint led to frequent conflicts between the salāgama communities and the VOC.45 However, at the same time the Company’s reliance on the salāgama in exploiting and regulating the cinnamon-producing forests also increased the social standing of this group, which would lead to conflicts with other communities.46
While the salāgama are arguably the most extreme example of this colonial practice, the solidification of social standing and labour would later also be applied to other social groups. In an undated collection of mandates, estimated to be published in the late 1760s or early 1770s, three specific statutes regarded
Again, bureaucracy and law went hand in hand here, as the thombos were meant to prevent people from lower standing to acquire ranks above their standing. If a family was performing a service unrelated, or in addition, to their caste-status, they had to provide the thombo keeper with evidence proving a colonial official had consented with the arrangement. Many could not, as the thombos of Meda (Siyane) highlight, where at least sixteen families failed to prove that they were authorised to carry out the service they said they were performing (e.g. as lascarin, or as saparamādu).50 In such cases, the thombo keepers were to report these people, and document them according to their ‘original’ social status.51 Similarly, native commissioners were warned not to accept any olas produced by the disāva’s office as evidence for the procurement of higher ranks or titles, as disāvas were not authorised to make such decisions (implying these olas were being forged). Whether these legal-bureaucratic policies had an actual impact on the daily routines of local actors is an entirely different matter, as we shall see below, but it is clear that the VOC tried to use laws and registers to prevent social mobility among the lower classes in an effort to exploit these people more effectively.
That the thombos were unapologetically aimed at exploiting labouring bodies also becomes apparent when one pays attention to a category present in the Dutch registers that has hardly ever been singled out by any of the scholars
Oversight of people recorded to have visual, auditory and physical impairments in the thombos of Hapitigam and Siyane, 1760–1771
| Category (translation of category in thombo) | N for Hapitigam | N for Siyane |
|---|---|---|
| Audibly impaired (‘deaf’, or ‘deaf-mute’) | 0 | 4 |
| Visually impaired (‘blind’) | 96 | 97 |
| Physically impaired (‘lame’, or ‘crippled’) | 175 | 191 |
| A combination of either category | 0 | 6 |
| Total | 271 | 298 |
SOURCE: DATABASE OF THE LAND AND HEAD THOMBOS OF UDUGAHA, HAPITIGAM, AND MEDA, SIYANE, BASED ON SLNA 1/3688, 3690, 3736, 3772, 3776, 3816, 3819, 3856, 3860, and 3861
The exact practical outcome of this paper reality is slightly more complicated than what the records show at face value. In theory, failure to perform labour meant that the land you were granted to compensate for said labour would be retracted. In practice, however, there is no record of such a retraction. In contrast, in at least one case an elderly lascarin got to keep his accommodessan grant despite being unfit for duty, which suggests there could be advantages to having one’s impairment registered and recognised.55
There is little to compare this case to. While disability history as a discipline has really taken off over the last few years, literature on the actual dynamics of disability in early modern colonial and/or Global South societies is still fairly scarce.56 Exceptions being histories on the intersection between disability and unfree labour and slavery,57 or works in disability studies that are expressively focussed on how ideas regarding disabled people from the Global North spread throughout the world and impact global society today.58 More modern examples, however, like Gildas Brégain’s study on French-Algeria, highlight how complicated and diffused the effects of imperial policy on disabilities could be.59 Specifically he argued that, on the one hand, French-colonial policy saw the introduction of tools to aid the blind (e.g. the introduction of Braille schools, eye clinics, and allowing the blind to work using their hands), but on the other saw a complete disruption of local practices regarding aid for the visually impaired. Similarly, disability in colonial Lanka could mean the government granted you the land you held for your labour services, or take it away from you (and with it, away from you family).
Unfortunately, in the end the ways in which labour duty and disability were actually recorded in the thombos tells us more about the reasoning behind these categories – the exploitation of labouring bodies – than about the social
2 Paper versus Practice
Virtually all historians are faced by the fact that the archives they study were typically created by a (relatively) powerful institute, and consists of records of atypical situations, rather than everyday settings. Piercing through an archive to get to a past social reality hidden in it, is a tough act to follow.61 Even more so, when said archive is created by a colonial entity, with foreign ideas and foreign interests, and a deeply unequal relationship with the indigenous population they colonised.62 The crux lies in understanding that norm-breaking, or norm-remaking moments typically refer to what used to be the norm (before it was broken, or remade). Or in the words of Sumit Guha: “It is important that if we are to understand how a society works, not to obsess over understanding stated norms and laws, but rather asking how breaches in them were filled–what mechanisms existed for that repair?”63
For example, the Dutch laws forbidding social mobility imply people actually tried to use the moment they were being documented by the colonial government to gain it.64 Similarly, Battan’s forecited case shows laws only meant so much, and could seemingly be ignored if the situation on the ground demanded it.65 Additionally, in the previous chapter we saw how people could enter negotiations with the Company to gain additional land in return for
That the situation on the ground could differ significantly from the world in the minds of the colonisers, lawmakers, and bureaucrats, should be of little surprise to most historians of (South and Southeast) Asia. Only a few decades ago, scholars were taken aback by the orientalist and systemic categorisation of people in solid castes in the laws and descriptions created by European colonisers. So much so, that some believed caste (a Portuguese word after all) to be a colonial construct. More recently, however, research focused on local-colonial encounters on the ground showcased that early European interactions with societies inhabiting the Indian subcontinent actually created a moment of fluidity when it came to existing social hierarchies.67 Several cases have shown how people from the traditionally lower echelons of society successfully convinced imperial officials they were to be regarded as high caste.68 Alternatively, some groups gained status and capital by bridging the gap between government and society, comparable to the social mobility of some of the salāgama families as was alluded to in the previous section.69 It seems European colonialism could impact caste in a plurality of ways.70
Partially based on the labour arrangements and social categories as registered in the thombos, but more obviously in those observed in the correspondences between the disāva (or Landraad) and members of local society, it is safe to say caste was much more fluid than colonial laws like those cited above suggest it was. Next to aforementioned arrangements which broke laws (like the sharing of labour duties),71 Lankan agents could appeal to the Company to
This chief, named Pelleperoemege Abraham Fernando, wrote a letter to governor Willem Jacob van de Graaf (g. 1785–94), which was internally transferred to disāva De Coste. In it, Abraham Fernando observed that Galkissa was the only village in the region where the Company had not appointed a mahavidāne to oversee the management of caste labour provided by the karāva, and other low caste labourers.75 He offered to become mahavidāne for the VOC, to be in a better position to manage the surplus in labour that was now left unutilised. Abraham Fernando ensured this would not lead to extra costs for the Company, because in return he merely requested a plot of land close to the village, where he would build a cinnamon plantation to the benefit of both the VOC, and himself.76 From a separate report it appears that his request was taken seriously enough to have the plot of land investigated on behalf of the disāva, and later tax records confirm he made the promotion.77
Surely, the fact that Abraham Fernando’s letter and the petition compiled by the karāva labourers from Galkissa were sent around the same time, is no coincidence. While the exact details of their arrangement are probably lost to time, it is pretty obvious that Abraham and some of his fellow villagers had conjured up a plan that would benefit them all. It highlights a certain level of resilience and cunning, to sway the Company into offering them social mobility, land, and better terms for their labour duties. It also showcases the complexity behind the organisation of such labour relations between members of these coastal communities and families. To further illustrate the last point, let us return to the dispute between the children of former lascarin Malikeaatjege Battan Nainde, with which I introduced this chapter. The testimonies given during this trail (both before the court and on paper) offer us a unique insight into the intricate division of labour within this family in a way the thombos could never do.
To specifically pursue the illegitimacy of their half-brother named Louis – who was claiming to have inherited his father’s lascarin rank and the land compensating for it – the sisters pointed towards an inconsistency in the thombos. They argued that the omission of Louis’ mother from the entry of Battan’s family was highly suspicious, and tried to convince the Landraad of the fact that their half-brother’s presence in the same entry was his mother’s doing. She had gone to the thombo keeper in secret to have Louis falsely recorded as Battan’s legitimate heir, or so they claimed.86 They specifically referred to the fact that people were obligated by law to have themselves and their children recorded
Naturally, Louis and his mother were not going to let this go that easily. In a letter written on their behalf as defendants,87 it was confirmed that Battan had indeed been “married in the Sinhalese way” to the mother of the three sisters.88 However, from there, their statement diverged significantly from the one of Pantjinahamij, Kaloehamij, and Dona Natalia. Louis’ mother claimed that after the mother of Pantjinahamij and her sisters had died, she herself had actually moved in with Battan. Moreover, after Louis was born they had lived together with Battan’s daughters for quite some time, and Louis was actually raised by Battan himself. When Louis was old enough, he started carrying out his father’s lascarin service, reportedly to the satisfaction of the local chief.
After his father’s death, Louis had continued to perform this duty and had done so to the day his half-sisters had accused him and his mother of abusing the thombos to steal their estate. Louis and his mother claimed the sisters and their husbands had “gambled” in an attempt to gain wealth and status by trying to make the Landraad believe the thombos were wrong, and the will was right. In fact, the husbands of the sisters were actually already granted land in compensation for other services they were providing (one as a kangān, and another as a lascarin), and they were only looking for more out of greed. Lastly, Louis and his mother requested the Landraad to recognise Louis’ entry in the thombos as Battan’s heir, because a lascarin service could never be inherited through a will.89
It is clear that Louis tried to play his half-sisters by their own game, citing colonial laws, registers, and regulations (like the inheritance of the lascarin service, and the credibility of the thombos) to delegitimise their claims.90 At the same time, the story his mother and himself recounted is dramatically
Battan’s relationships with multiple women, with children being born from each relationship as well, affirms the prevalence of polygamy, and the looseness of conjugal norms in general.92 The fact that labour services – and the livelihood they provided in the form of compensation lands – could apparently be inherited by both male and female siblings (in the latter case, through their husbands), both virilocally and uxorilocally, and through arrangements that were both fluid and flexible, could create incredibly complicated (and contestable) situations. It thus makes sense that such families tried to keep track of the way they organised their labour duties, the lands they held for it, and the way both were to be divided during a generational shift. It also makes sense that these families would use both pre- and para-colonial (e.g. through village scribes, or in Battan’s case the kōrāla’s office), as well as colonial mediums to document these complex systems. With this wisdom in mind, and to see exactly how the latter manifested itself in society, we shall return to the thombos.
During the revision of the thombos in the southwestern territories in the late 1750s, the thombo keepers were specifically instructed to safeguard the continuity of the registers by using the same family names as those used in the previous version of the registers.93 Similarly, they were to maintain the names for the plots of land that were previously recorded as well, and to check whether previous proprietors were still alive and whether they still owned the land in question. While the thombo committee was allowed to change the name and owner of a plot land if the situation had changed over the years, under no circumstances were the keepers allowed to change the “huys- of stamnaam” (literally: name of the house or tribe).94 Rather ironically, instructions like these would lead to a strange glitch the in the thombo registers: the presence of ‘immortal’ family heads.95 In their effort to make sure the records could be used to reliably trace people, they created ghosts.
1. The head [his social classification] | [his labour duty] | [his age]
3. the head’s sons
1. Son of head named A | [his age]
1. A has one wife named X | [her age]
1. A and X have one daughter named Y | [age]
1. Son of head named B | [age]
1. Son of head named C | [age]
1. the head’s brother named K, living in another village | [age]
1. Daughter of K named L | [age]
This example shows why they kept the names of the heads in the records, even if they probably knew those heads had died in the meantime.98 Without the head, the relation of “L” to the sons of “A” would be lost, even though “L” could technically still inherit part of the family lands. This example also shows how incredibly complex these genealogies could get. The thombo keepers meticulously kept track of the most distant families members that could possibly claim a share of the labour duties or lands owned by these families.99 Family members removed up to six times have been observed in the thombos,100 some of them living many kilometres away from the original household.101 It is doubtful the Company needed this amount of detail to know from who to demand labour, or who to tax – after all, someone who was six times removed from another was unlikely to ever inherit either a service of a taxable plot of land from the other. It is more likely, as was also observed by Schrikker and Lyna, and by Rupesinghe, that the intricacies of the family structures (and the genealogies of landownership) in the thombos were caused by a demand for conflict resolution coming from the population, for which the VOC courts needed the kind
To give yet another example of this supposed purpose of the registers, and to transition to the final chapter of this book where the legal utility of the thombos as an institution plays a central role, we return to the Landraad’s office in Colombo once more. On 18 March 1769, the Landraad received a letter written by Egoddewatte Areatjege Adriaen, a self-proclaimed appuhamy from Heiyanthuduwa (roughly fifteen kilometres east of the Colombo fortress).103 In this letter, Adriaen wrote that after his father’s death, he and his two brothers had – in turns – taken over their father’s duty as saparamādu for the atapattu (along with the land compensating for it). This had transpired peacefully, and so it was for many years, until they recently discovered that three distant family members had come to the village to occupy a large share of the field. As these men would not “adhere to reason”, Adriaen had written to the Landraad asking them to have the cousins removed from the land and, moreover, to have them compensate the costs for the damages they caused to the plot.
To provide evidence to back up their case, Adriaen presented an extract taken from the thombos where the oldest brother, Hattan, was registered as saparamādu, albeit “without evidence” – meaning he had apparently failed to prove this status to the thombo commissioners. Like Battan’s daughters, Adriaen and his brothers were seemingly not all too worried about the illegality of sharing a service like that, nor were they concerned about making that fact public in front of a colonial court of law. On top of that, Hattan’s entry in the thombo implied this saparamādu duty was carried out without proof that Company had consented to it. Yet, this irregularity in the register did not seem to have had a major impact on the lives of the three brothers at all, and again did not make them shy away from using this entry to protect their status and property before the Landraad.
Initially, the commissioners sent by the Landraad to the Egoddewatte family plot, found that the records were correct and the land rightfully belonged to Hattan (despite the fact that his entry in the thombo put doubt to his status as a saparamādu). Naturally, however, Adriaen and Hattan’s rivalling family members did not agree with the Landraad’s decision and protested. A letter compiled by (or on behalf of) three of Adriaen’s rivalling relatives (they themselves being brothers as well) reconstructed a very complex genealogy of ownership
Family tree of the Egoddewatte family by 1769, based on the thombos and statements from litigants and witnesses.
SOURCE: AUTHOR BASED ON SLNA 1/4785, FOL. 73–82
According to Salman and his brothers, this had been the situation in the village until Adriaen and his brothers had tried to use Hattan’s entry in the thombo to claim the entirety of the family plot (a claim which, again, makes this case remarkably similar to the one between Battan’s descendants). Naturally, they disputed the entry in the thombos altogether. Their reasoning,
The case file ends at this point, leaving the contemporary reader rather confused. However, the conflict over the accuracy (or in this case more accurately: the existence) of the thombos between the two sets of brothers clearly illustrates why local society was so concerned about the registers at all. It shows how an entry in the thombo could either be a way to defend property (even if the entry itself questioned the legitimacy of this property), or how an overly simplified version of reality in the records could threaten it as well. Either way, in this particular case (as well as in the conflict amongst Battan’s next-of-kin) the thombos failed to describe the complexity of the situation on the ground. It seems that for both judges and litigants at time, as well as for historians now, they provide(d) an equally mesmerising as incomplete baseline from which to start an investigation. If one wanted (or wants) to know the full extent of the world these registers tried to describe, one needed (or needs) to cross-reference it to witness statements and examinations, alternative documents, or visitation reports.
In the next and final chapter we shall see that despite of (or perhaps because of) the incomplete nature of the thombos, the legal life and afterlife of this institution was long. I will argue that this (after)life actually forces us to reconsider the very nature of this “colonial” institution, which has implications for similar such transplanted or appropriated systems in the world of (early modern) European colonialism and imperialism. However, before moving on to that, I want to briefly point out to fellow historians – and all others passionate about the past – that examples such as the ones cited in this chapter should encourage us to find ways to complicate the global and colonial history narratives that are being spun from top-down sources like laws, regulations, and registers alone. Preferably, we can do so through sources that allow us to get closer to the situation as it was on the ground, like letters (such as the ones written by
SLNA 1/4787, “Proces-boek” of the Landraad, 1773, fol. 185–215: Pantjinahamij, Kaloehamij, and Dona Natalia (daughters of the late lascarin Malikeaatjige Battan nainde) v. Galheenege Kaloehamij, and her son Louis [1773], fol 188. Note that ‘Nainde’ here is part of the individual’s name, and probably does not refer to the nainde service. Caste and caste-related services were often incorporated into people’s names, and would continue to be used this way even if later descendants would take on different services. See: Dewasiri, The Adaptable Peasant, 53–4.
SLNA 1/4787, fol. 191–2, something confirmed by three separate witnesses, including the chief himself who had the will compiled for them.
Hovy, Ceylonees Plakkaatboek, 524. This practice, however, was fairly common, and often recorded in the thombos as services being observed “in turns” (“bij beurtwisseling”).
SLNA 1/4787, fol. 189: “ … tot hunnen overgroote verbaastheid desen daagen ondervonden hebben.”
Bulten, Kok, Lyna and Rupesinghe, “Contested Conjugality?”, 67–9.
Guha, Beyond Caste, 143.
Wickramasinghe, Slave in a Palanquin, 7.
Such debates go back to the first European inquiries into the working of caste-systems as early as the sixteenth century, which have had a continuous impact on the academic ponderings regarding the European influence on such systems in the twentieth century, to more contemporary studies into local and colonial forms of forced labour and bondage – and the entanglement of the two. Obviously, this is a gross oversimplification of debates that go back centuries, for more profound and recent oversights of these debates, see e.g. the earlier cited: Guha, Beyond Caste; and Wickramasinghe, Slave in a Palanquin. Also see: Indrani Chatterjee and Richard Eaton (eds.), Slavery and South Asian History (Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 2006). Interestingly, recently a similar debate surrounding slavery and indentured labour in the Philippines has been brought up when Filomeno Aguilar (Jr.) challenged Ulbe Bosma’s claims about such labour having a precolonial precedent in the archipelago, which according to Aguilar has not been empirically proven as of yet. See: Filomeno V. Aguilar, “‘The Making of a Periphery: How Island Southeast Asia Became a Mass Exporter of Labor by Ulbe Bosma. Columbia Studies in International and Global History, New York: Columbia University Press, 2019. Pp. 304. ISBN 13: 978–0231188524.,’” International Journal of Asian Studies 18, no. 2 (2021): 305–7. With many thanks to Nicholas Sy for pointing me towards this debate.
Inherently connected to Marxist debates regarding global labour regimes and the systematic oppression of the lower classes, see: Cooper, Colonialism in Question, 44–5.
This conundrum stood very obviously at the centre of the debate on caste-labour on the Indian subcontinent, and the question whether caste is truly an ‘ancient’ system of social organisation and (forced) labour (as argued by e.g. Susan Bayly), or something (largely) invented by European colonisers (a strong proponent being, for example, Ronald Inden). It seems some level of consensus has been reached relatively recently in the interpretation of the caste system as something fluid and changeable which existed long before European colonialism in many different forms, was impacted thoroughly during the era of modern imperialism, but has again changed its shape since Indian independence (as we shall briefly see later on in the chapter as well). See: Guha, Beyond Caste; O’Hanlon, “A Reappraisal”.
Matthias van Rossum and Merve Tosun, “Corvée Capitalism: The Dutch East India Company, Colonial Expansion, and Labor Regimes in Early Modern Asia,” Journal of Asian Studies 80, no. 4 (2021): 911–32, 911–2.
Raben, “Batavia and Colombo”, 228.
V. Kavaskar, “A History of Social Movements in South Travancore from 1800 to 1947,” (Unpublished PhD-thesis, Manomaniam Sundaranar University, 2019), chap. 3.
Raben, “Batavia and Colombo”, 228.
Hovy, Ceylonees Plakkaatboek, 820, 860–1. The latter bylaw claims uliyam labourers themselves had petitioned to the colonial government that the local chiefs that were managing their labour were exploiting them, and generally had little knowledge of how uliyam was supposed to be performed.
Nira Wickramasinghe and Alicia Schrikker, “The Ambivalence of Freedom: Slaves in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” Journal of Asian Studies 78, no. 3 (2019): 497–519; Wickramasinghe, Slave in a Palanquin.
Also see: Norbert Peabody, “Cents, Sense, Census: Human Inventories in Late Precolonial and Early Colonial India,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 43, no. 4 (2001): 819–50.
Smith, “Contested Spaces”, 73.
Raben, “A Plea for Eccentric Reading.”
Francesca Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers. The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012), 7; also see: Andrade, “Toward a Global Microhistory.”
Smith, “Contested Spaces”, 76.
A methodology for using the thombos which was pioneered by Nadeera Rupesinghe, though on a smaller scale. See: Rupesinghe, Lawmaking in Dutch Sri Lanka, 180–90.
Guha, Beyond Caste.
Peabody, “Cents, Sense, Census.”
E.g. see: Bayly, Caste, Society, and Politics; Guha, Beyond Caste, chap. 5; Chatterjee and Eaton (eds.), Slavery and South Asian History; Wickramasinghe, Slave in a Palanquin, 45–6.
Wickramasinghe, Slave in a Palanquin, 95; Schrikker and Wickramasinghe (eds.), Being a Slave, 20.
See e.g. the dispatch to Batavia cited in chapter two. Also see: Pieter Sluysken, Eene beschryving van de landdienst op Ceylon (Colombo, 1784), held by Leiden University Libraries (http://hdl.handle.net/1887.1/item:3713904, last consulted on 6 September 2024).
Raben, “Batavia and Colombo.”
Guha, Beyond Caste, chap. 5; Schrikker and Wickramasinghe (eds.), Being a Slave, 45–6; Bellenoit, Scribes, Paper and Taxes, 119–20.
Guha, Beyond Caste, 2, 12.
Dewasiri, The Adaptable Peasant, 199–202; also see: Lyna and Bulten, “Classification at Work,” 262. As was argued by Sumit Guha, communities categorised based on religion or occupation were just as much seen as part of the larger multi-ethnic social systems as the ‘traditional’ castes were throughout the Indian Ocean World, Guha, Beyond Caste, 2–3, 10; also see: John Rogers, “Caste as Social Category and Identity in Colonial Sri Lanka.” Indian Economic and Social History Review 41, no. 1 (2004): 51–77. Note that the Muslim population of Lanka is still classified as “Moors” today, hence the use of the capital “M”.
Dewasiri, The Adaptable Peasant, 189. As mentioned before, “foreign” groups like the chettiars and Moors had to perform the uliyam service.
Heads of family were typically the eldest men in the respective families, but could also be single women (for example widows). For an overview of the most common social categories found in a selection of thombos, see: Lyna and Bulten, “Classification at Work,” 262.
Some other registers contemporary to the thombos offer a more distinct division between caste status and labour duty, e.g. see SLNA 1/3643, fol. 44–6.
Guha, Beyond Caste, 2, 12.
Dewasiri, The Adaptable Peasant, 25–9, 84–102, 180–9.
Next to the aforementioned maintenance of infrastructure (roads, docks, bridges, canals, ferries, fortifications) they could also be obligated to transport goods and construction materials.
For comparison, based on the social classification of the family heads (N=1259) in the thombos of Hapitigam and Siyane, these were the largest social groups: Goygama (67%), padu (11%), hakuru (7%), radā, or hināwa (4%), durāva (4%), karāva (3%), Moors (<1%), hunu (<1%), āchāri (<1%), tamblinjero (<1%), coolie (<1%), ämbättayo (<1%), chettiar (<1%), badahäla (<1%) (See: Bulten & Lyna, “Classification at Work,” 261 for a more detailed oversight). Note, however, that the artisanal castes (hunu, āchāri, ämbättayo, badahäla) are probably underrepresented because of the overlap between social category and occupation, and the apparent custom to only record one of the two in the thombos in such cases (as explored below, also see Table 6).
Also see: Rupesinghe, Lawmaking in Dutch Sri Lanka.
Dewasiri, The Adaptable Peasant, 86.
Hovy, Ceylonees Plakkaatboek, 78–90.
E.g. SLNA 1/3763, ‘The tombo-series of 1766 – 1771, “Landraad” series, “Hoofd” tombos, Kalutara District. Chalias.’
SLNA 1/2466, fol. 91–2. Also see Hovy, Ceylonees Plakkaatboek, 570–1.
Dewasiri, The Adaptable Peasant, 86.
SLNA 1/2466, fol. 1–11; 57–9; 84–8; 114–24.
Dewasiri, The Adaptable Peasant, 86, 211–2; also see: Roberts, Caste Conflict and Elite Formation. For some examples of intra-communal conflict between the salāgama and other social groups, see: SLNA 1/3643, fol. 104, 106.
SLNA 1/2466, fol. 168–9.
SLNA 1/2466, fol. 169, r., literally “buiten haere klasse”.
Dewasiri, The Adaptable Peasant, 196–7. This dynamic is reminiscent to some of the early interactions between the British and the high-caste Brahmins in India, see: e.g. O’Hanlon, “The Social Worth of Scribes.” Additionally, the next chapter presents a civil court case where the caste status of a Lankan woman is questioned by local litigants.
Database of the head thombo of Meda, Siyane, SLNA 1/3690 and 3819.
Hovy, Ceylonees Plakkaatboek, 521–2.
Kok, “The Thombo Treasure,” 109.
Database of the head thombos of Udugaha, Hapitigam, and Meda Siyane. There were a few slight differences between Hapitigam and Siyane: None were recorded as audibly impaired in Hapitigam, similarly none were recorded to have a combination of disabilities. In comparison, in Siyane only a few were recorded as ‘deaf ’ or ‘deaf-mute’ (four in total), and six recorded with a combination of disabilities. Additionally, in Hapitigam some of the physically impaired were categorised as ‘crippled’, whereas most in Hapitigam and all in Siyane were recorded as ‘lame’ (lam). It shows that the thombo commissioners (who were alternated) clearly had the same instructions to compile the thombo, but had slightly different interpretations of these instructions. It is also interesting that there were only twenty-seven more people recorded as impaired in Siyane, while the recorded population was almost double to that of Hapitigam.
Schrikker, “‘Op de Dijk Gezet’,” 161–2.
SLNA 1/2827, fol. 14, v., as cited in chapter five.
Gildas Brégain, “Colonialism and Disability: The Situation of Blind People in Colonised Algeria,” Alter 10, no. 2 (2016): 148–67: 149; Daniel Blackie and Alexia Moncrieff, “State of the Field: Disability History,” History 107, no. 377 (2022): 621–811, pp. 799–800.
E.g.: Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy, Between Fitness and Death. Disability and Slavery in the Caribbean (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2020).
See, for example, Karen Soldatic and Saun Grech, eds., Disability and Colonialism. (Dis)Encounters and Anxious Intersectionalities (London: Routledge, 2019).
Brégain, “Colonialism and Disability”.
SLNA 1/2466, fol. 157–8; SLNA 1/3643, fol. 119; Hunt-Kennedy, Between Fitness and Death, 87–9.
Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980).
Raben, “A Plea for Eccentric Reading.”
Guha, “Evidence from Historic South Asia,” 19.
Also see: Dewasiri, The Adaptable Peasant, 211–7.
Rupesinghe, Lawmaking in Dutch Sri Lanka.
Dewasiri, The Adaptable Peasant, 81–2.
O’Hanlon, “Identities in Flux”; Guha, Beyond Caste, O’Hanlon, “A Reappraisal”.
E.g. Bayly, Caste, Society and Politics, 101–3.
Dewasiri, The Adaptable Peasant, 211–2; Roberts, Caste Conflict and Elite Formation.
Guha, Beyond Caste, specifically the fifth and sixth chapters where he considers the development in caste in South Asia from the 1700s to the present day – in some cases creating dynamicity, in others solidifying caste.
The forecited case (see chapter three) between Egoddewatte Araetjege Adriaen (and his brothers) on the one side, and Salman, Lentoehamij & Egoddewatte araetjege Don Simon on the other (SLNA 1/4775, fol. 73–82), also revolved around a saparamādu service that was being shared (specifically, fol. 73–4). Again, neither the court, nor the litigants commented on the law-breaking nature of this division of labour. We will return to this case later in this chapter.
Rupesinghe, Lawmaking in Dutch Sri Lanka, 138.
In another example, disāva De Cock had to deal with a case in 1766 where several Muslim inhabitants of Arumugam had complained about the transferal of supervision over their labour duties from the kōrāla of Raygam, to the headman of the Moors of Panadura. They reported they had to endure all kinds of ‘injustice’ and ‘hurting’ since then, and therefore requested to be transferred back to the jurisdiction of the kōrāla instead. They argued their labour duties were suffering from it. The reinstatement of the kōrāla’s sovereignty was granted by the disāva, and a document was compiled in 1774 to solidify this decision. SLNA 3643, fol. 5.
SLNA 1/3643, fol. 23–4, 27, 40–1. None of the associated documents offer a specific date, but the dating on the surrounding documents in this volumes and the fact that it was addressed to governor Willem Jacob van de Graaf suggests this encounter took place at some point between 1785 and 1794.
Ibid., fol. 23. As a patangatim, he only held authority over the karāva (which he calls “vis-sers”, or fishermen).
He expected the clearing and cultivating of the land to cost five-hundred rijksdaalders, which he would loan and pay back through his service as mahavidāne. How this would work exactly, is not specified in the letter.
Ibid., fol. 27; SLNA 1/621, ‘Annexes to the ordinary minutes (1742–1795): 1787’, fol. 271–2.
The exact position of the karāva in the Sinhalese caste system is disputed, but it suffices to say they were obliged to do menial duties, like other low caste groups.
There are countless examples of similar, though often slightly less complicated, cases. See e.g. in the same collection (SLNA 1/3643), fol 39: a letter from an ārachchi wanting to become a monhandiram.
SLNA 1/3643, fol. 40–1.
SLNA 1/3643, fol. 40, “den supp:[lianten] in veel opsigten als een vader de handen toerijkt”.
SLNA 1/4787, fol. 185–215.
Ibid., fol. 190.
See: Bulten, Kok, Lyna, and Rupesinghe, “Contested Conjugality,” 57.
This is compelling because illegitimacy as such was not a concept which existed according to any Sinhalese custom. Rather, illegitimacy was a consequence of procreation between people from different castes (more specifically, between a low-caste and high-caste individual). That said, Dutch-Roman law officially determined extra-marital children to be bastards who would not be able to inherit from their parents if there were other children born from either parent in the context of a marriage. The fact that Sinhalese “marriages” (like the one Battan and his wife had) were not officially recognised made the legal applicability blurry at best, and it was ignored in many civil disputes unless either party addressed it as an issue. See for a much more detailed account of this phenomenon: Rupesinghe, Lawmaking in Dutch Sri Lanka, 245–55.
Unfortunately neither party (nor any of their witnesses) elaborated, or commented on, how Louis’ mother had managed to do so.
It is not possible to accurately reconstruct who exactly wrote the letter. It could well be that the original draft was written or dictated by either Louis or his mother, and their names are also used to undersign the letter. That said, it is not unlikely a procurer produced the letter on their behalf, based on their testimony. Regardless, this letter is as close as we can get to a direct statement from these actors.
SLNA 1/4787, fol. 209–11.
Something that was repeated by witnesses called forth by Louis, who stated that such services could never be inherited through the female line altogether. A witness in the earlier-cited case between two radā men claimed the exact same thing (see chapter three).
A tactic widely seen applied by local litigants in the eighteenth century, perhaps aided by European legal aids, though at other times because the litigant in question was clearly well-versed in Dutch law and literature. See e.g. the earlier-cited cases presented in: Lyna, “Ceylonese Arcadia.”
Anthropologists like Nur Yalman, Edmund Leach, and – perhaps most famously – Gananath Obeyesekere, have written remarkably detailed accounts of village life and social organisation in deeply rural Sri Lanka during the 1960s. While, naturally, making direct comparisons between the middle of the twentieth century, and the second half of the eighteenth century is quite a stretch, some of their descriptions of deeply impactful but highly personal aspects of everyday life like conjugality, inheritance, and caste can definitely aid in imagining what life in coastal Sri Lanka must have been like in the advent of “modernity”. Specifically see: Obeyesekere, Land Tenure in Village Ceylon; Edmund Leach, Pul Eliya, A Village in Ceylon: A Study of Land Tenure and Kinship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961); Nur Yalman, Under the Bo Tree: Studies in Caste, Kinship, and Marriage in the Interior of Ceylon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967).
Bulten, Kok, Lyna, and Rupesinghe, “Contested Conjugality?”; Kok, Bulten, and De Leede, “Persecuted or Permitted?”
Hovy, Ceylonees Plakkaatboek, 654–7.
Ibid., 655.
Drixler and Kok, “A Lost Family-Planning Regime,” 99.
Ibid. Additionally there was significant age-heaping: people either did not know their age, or did not express it in a way the thombo keepers understood, so a unrealistic amount of people were aged ten, fifteen, twenty, twenty-five, and so on.
Kok, “The Thombo Treasure,” 110–1; Another sign that this is a defect of the registers, rather than a reflection of reality, is the fact that in the thombos of Colombo and Negombo previous heads of family are more consistently removed from the records (and replaced by widows or eldest sons). Again, legibility of society was likely much higher closer to the forts (and the offices of the thombo keeper).
Faulty data which could lead to wrongful claims when studying longevity is not reserved for early modern registers, as the 2024 Ig Nobel Prize winner for demography, Saul Justin Newman, has shown through his research. See, e.g.: Saul Justin Newman, “Errors as a Primary Cause of Late-Life Mortality Deceleration and Plateaus,” PLoS Biology 16, no. 12 (2018): 1–12.
Rupesinghe, Dutch Lawmaking in Sri Lanka, chap. 6.
Just to give an example: in the village of Pamunuwatta, in Hapitigam, one Deldeniege Hattanhami was recorded to be the son of the second husband of the daughter who was first married to the son of the headman’s niece on his mother’s side – with this niece being the daughter of the head’s mother’s sister.
In the most extreme cases, family members were recorded who did not even live in Ceylon. However, in most such cases this could be explained by their occupation or social category – e.g. highly mobile chettiar merchant families who seasonally moved between Sri Lanka and the Indian subcontinent.
Schrikker and Lyna, “Threads of the Legal Web,” 48–49; Rupesinghe, Dutch Lawmaking in Sri Lanka, 226–9. I will return to this line of reasoning in the final chapter.
SLNA 1/4785, fol. 73–82: Egoddewatte Araetjege Adriaen (and his brothers) v. Salman, Lentoehamij, and Egoddewatte araetjege Don Simon [1769], fol. 73–4.
Ibid., fol. 81–2.t.
E.g. SLNA 1/3708, 1760 land thombo of the Adikari pattu of Siyane.
Raben, “Ethnic Disorder”.