Anonymous Author: The English in Ceylon” … in The United States Magazine and Democratic Review, Vol. XXVIII, No. CLV, 1851 May, pp. 409-12.
Placed at the western entrance of the Bay of Bengal, Ceylon is separated by a narrow strait from the mainland of Hindostan. In size, it is nearly as large as Ireland; and it possesses a population of about a million and a half of souls, made up of various tribes of native Cingalese, Malabars, Mahometans, Coolies, Dutch and English, and their mongrel descendants. Once the abode of civilization, as is evidenced by the ruins of ancient cities, canals, bridges, aqueducts, &c., in which the interior of the island abounds, its geographical position, and natural advantages of soil and climate, should make of Ceylon, in our day, the chief mart of Eastern commerce. That it does not occupy this position, can only be attributed to that system, as short-sighted as vicious, by which the island has, for half a century, been governed, for the immediate profit of the mother country. In 1796, Ceylon was taken possession of by the English, and the Dutch expelled from its shores. From that period, down to so late as 1819, the native chiefs boldly resisted the usurped authority of the invaders, and were finally reduced to subjection only after a desperate struggle, and by such agencies as England alone is skilled to employ for the accomplishment of her darling objects. Since 1819, the government of the colony has been administered by a Governor, appointed by the Colonial Secretary, for the time being, at home, assisted by a council composed entirely of European civil and military servants, who are described by MeCulloch as being, from their tenure of office, totally subservient to the will of the Governor. The religion of the island is that of Buddha, as established by the following clause of the treaty of the 2nd of March, 1815, between the British government and the native chiefs The religion of Buddha, professed by the chiefs and inhabitants of these provinces, is declared inviolable; and its rites, ministers and places of worship, are to be maintained and protected. The period embraced between the years 1819 and 1846, was not remarkable for any extraordinary occurrences in Ceylon; suffice it to say, that the history of the island during this interval, is made up of patient suffering and distress on the part of the natives, and of heartless tyranny and exaction on the part of their foreign rulers.
In 1846. Lord Torrington was appointed by Earl Grey, Whig Colonial Secretary,to the lucrative office of Governor of Ceylon. Arrived at the seat of government, his lordship is surprised to find the financial affairs of the colony in an embarrassed condition; and, accordingly, in virtue of the wide discretionary powers vested in him, proceeds to meet the difficulty off-hand by the imposition of severe new taxes of his own invention. These taxes, though decidedly original in their way, were yet of that character, that any one at all acquainted with the colony might have foreseen that they could never by any possibility be collected. The most obnoxious of them were, a road-tax, a shop-tax, a gun-tax, and a dog-tax.
The first ordained, that every male resident in the island, between the ages of fifteen and fifty-five, should either labor for six days in each year on the public roads, or pay three shillings sterling, in lieu of such personal service. The second enacted, that every occupant of a shop, the rental of which amounted to £ 5, should take out a yearly license on a £ 1 stamp. The third directed, that on a certain day in each year, the Cingalese should repair to the chief towns, armed, and apply for licenses for their fire-arms, at a cost of 2s. 6d. for each gun. The fourth, imposed a tax of ir. on every dog kept in the island, and sentenced to death all puppies above three months old whose proprietors could not produce the protecting shilling.
Now, it is necessary to understand, that in Ceylon, as in all countries subject to the British flag, the bulk of the population are extremely poor; hence, the payment of these taxes was to them an impossibility. Those, moreover, upon dogs and guns, were imposed upon what were to them absolute necessaries of life. Besides, the road-tax was a direct outrage upon that religion which, as we have shown above, the English had bound themselves by treaty to protect, since the native priests are restricted by it, both from labor and from touching money. The promulgation of the decree announcing these new taxes naturally created great excitement throughout the island. Petitions, memorials, remonstrances, from all classes of the inhabitants, were laid before the Governor. They were disregarded. By any means, Lord Torrington was resolved to carry out his object. The assembling of the people in large masses was encouraged by the government agents, in the hopes that a collision between them and the British troops would occur. It did occur. A British soldier is slightly wounded, whether by any of the native inhabitants or not, does not appear from the evidence taken before the Parliamentary Committee, which is the only authority which we shall quote. But the collision, so anxiously sought for by Lord Torrington, had taken place; and martial law is at once proclaimed. Proclamations are issued, confiscating the lands and properties of all those who, terrified at the atrocities they had before seen committed under martial law, had fled into the jungles. Courts martial, composed of subaltern officers, ignorant of the language of the country, tried, convicted, sentenced, and put to instant death, hundreds of the innocent inhabitants; and this, not only in violation of all law, human and divine, but in utter contempt of the 7th article of the treaty, to which we have already referred, which stipulates that No sentence of death can be carried into execution against any inhabitant, except by the written warrant of the British Governor or Lieutenant Governor for the time being. But what cares Lord Torrington for treaties, or for the laws of humanity ? Must he not govern ? And what means government in the vocabulary of a British aristocrat, but confiscation and murder ?
Much has been said of the magnanimity of the British soldier. Let the following letters, addressed by the commandant of Kandy, to the presiding officer of one of the courts martial, hounding him on in his bloody career, serve as a specimen
| My dear Watson: | |
| You are getting on swimmingly. Impress on the court that there is no necessity for taking down the evidence in detail; so they are satisfied with the guilt or innocence of the individual, that is sufficient for them to find and sentence. This is the law and the mode. | |
| Yours, | T. A. DROUGHT, |
| August 16, 1848. | Col. Commanding. |
Well were these magnanimous instructions obeyed. For a period of nigh three months, confiscations, burnings, massacres, were the order of the day in Ceylon: and this, be it remembered, notwithstanding that subsequent to the imposition of martial law, not a single offense was pretended ever to have been committed by the inhabitants. Amongst those who suffered during this period, was one whose execution is thus mentioned by Lord Torrington in a dispatch to Earl Gray___”An influential priest who was convicted of administering treasonable oaths, was shot at Kandy in full robes. This priests trial took place at Kandy, and he was arraigned–
First, For having directly or indirectly held correspondence with rebels, and Cur not giving all the infomation in his power which might lead to the apprehension of a proclaimed rebel, Kaddapolla Unanse, professing to know his place of concealment on or about 17th August, 1848. Second, For administering, or conniving at the administration (!) of a treasonable oath to one Kerr Bande, on or about the 17th August, 1848.”
On these absurd and unintelligible charges the poor Buddhist priest was dragged before a military tribunal; tried by military judges, not one of whom understood the language in which the evidence against him was given; convicted and shot! Several attorneys who were present at the trial; and who did understand the language, felt satisfied that the witnesses for the prosecution had perjured themselves for the purpose of currying favor with the Governor, and that the priest was innocent. Under this impression they besought the Governor to postpone the execution.
In vain Lord Torringtons answer was By G, sir, if all the lawyers in Ceylon said that the priest was innocent, he should be shot tomorrow morning. And shot he was. More, Earl Grey, in answer to Lord Torringtons dispatch announcing the execution, pronounced the death of the Buddhist priest to be highly satisfactory! Again, in a subsequent dispatch, Earl Grey, in the name of the Queen, complimented Lord Torrington, and declared his complete approval of his decision, promptitude, and judgment. Thus sustained by the Home Government, and having triumphed over the refractory inhabitants of Ceylon, surely Lord Torrington must feel proud and happy! But no: after all the massacres, pillages, burnings and confiscations after he had made
These proceedings had now begun to attract popular attention in England, and in the session of 1849, a parliamentary committee was appointed to investigate then-i. Upon the evidence taken before that committee, we have based our statements. Their authenticity, therefore, cannot be impeached. And this is England England of the Worlds Fair, and the Peace Congress ; England of George Thompson, and the Abolition Societies! What matters it, that a few men, Cobden and Bright, and their associates, should denounce these atrocities, and that the London Quarterly Review should stigmatise them as a disgrace to the English name they have been sanctioned by the British government, and are the consequences of the policy by which, in its foreign and colonial relations, that government has invariably been directed. The history of Lord Torringtons administration in Ceylon affords an epitome of English rule, wherever throughout the world, by force, or fraud, or violence, she has succeeded in planting her guilty flag. The horrors perpetrated during 1848 in the island-gem of the East, are the counterpart of those of which, from time to time, during a period of seven centuries, the green isle of the West has been the victim.
We have reproduced this Ceylon tragedy, because it contains a moral upon which it behooves the Democracy of America, at the present moment, seriously to reflect. The flag which sanctioned the massacres of the Cingalese, and has witnessed the devastation of Celtic Ireland; the flag which, usurping every advantageous commercial and political position throughout the globe, has been the harbinger everywhere of desolation and death this flag, which in two wars, our fathers levelled in the dust, now flaunts us in the face on the southern portion of this our continent ; out-spreads its crimson folds over republican soil, insulting our manhood, blighting our commercial prospects, and dimming the lustre of the stars and stripes. Shall Central America share the fate of Ceylon ? Shall our sister Republics on this continent, whose independence, hy every principle of honor, of interest, and of duty, we are bound to protect, be consigned to the tender mercies of a Torrington ? Shall the island of Ruatan become the Ceylon of the Western Hemisphere, and the Isthmus of Central America be made, on a smaller scale, a second Hindostan ? We submit these questions, in all earnestness, to the consideration of the Democracy of America, confident that they will be answered in a manner worthy of those, xv hose pride it is, that they inherit the principles of a Jefferson, a Madison, a Monroe, a Jackson and a Polk.
Original text courtesy of the
Cornell University proto-type Digital Library Collections – Making of America
Reformated Text in HTML put Online at Lakdiva.net with their Permission.
| Title: | The English in Ceylon |
| Author: | |
| Journal: | The United States Magazine and Democratic Review. |
| Print: | Vol. XXVIII, No. CLV, – 1851 May, p. 409 p. 410 p. 411 p. 412 |
| Publisher: | J.& H.G. Langley, New York. |
Editors Note: Text Proof read by Kavan but many OCR and reformating errors, probably still remain………………. Please also see notes on other interesting articles like this that have been put online in the Digital Library Collections [of Cornell University?]
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THUPPAHI EDITORIAL ADDITIONS: ILLUSTRATIVE
Puran Appu Execution (a reconstruction I presume in Daily News –item referred to below]
THUPPAHI EDITORIAL ADDITIONS: BIBLIOGRAPHICAL SELECTIVE
Kingsley M. de Silva (ed.): Letters on Ceylon 1846-50: ….The ‘Rebellion’ of 1848, Colombo, KVG De Silva & Sons, 1965.
Arjuna Parakrama: Language and Rebellion.: Discursive Unities and the Possibility of Protest, London, Katha Publishers.
Palitha Kohona: “Sri Lanka’s Heroic Freedom Struggles of 1818 and 1848,“……………….. ………. https://www.indepthnews.net/index.php/the-world/history/2358-sri-lanka-s-heroic-freedom-struggles-of-1818-and-1848-part-4
Anon: “Veera Puran Appu,” 4 February 2020, ………………………….. ………………………………………. https://www.dailynews.lk/2020/02/04/features/210356/veera-puran-appu
Wikipedia: “Matale Rebellion,” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matale_rebellion
COMMENT from RICHARD SIMON, 11 March 2021: “I received this article in an email a few days ago. I was surprised that anyone could find it of interest nowadays, but I suppose there are those who need an external cause on which to blame their present-day troubles. In the absence of anyone else, the departed British will do.
The United States Magazine & Democratic Review invented, I believe, the term ‘manifest destiny’ – the claim that the United States government had the right to colonize the entire North American landmass. Later on, manifest destiny morphed into the Monroe Doctrine, which declared South and Central America a sphere of US influence within which European adventurism would not be tolerated.
This article appears to have been written in order to frighten excitable Americans about British imperial moves in Central America, particularly with respect to the Caribbean island of Roatán. Ceylon and Torrington are used merely to portray British imperialism in an evil light – in just the same way as American media in the twentieth century used scare stories about life under the Soviets, and uses scare stories about China today, to justify self-serving American foreign policy.
Why did the writer choose Ceylon? Because it was in the news. The facts quoted in the story are taken from the record of the UK Parliamentary debate on Torrignton’s misgovernment of Ceylon, which took place about the time the article was written and was well covered by the British press – and by the Ceylon press, too. Some of the facts have been misrepresented. The rebellion against the East India Company was not inspired by ‘native chiefs’ so much as it was a popular uprising, and it took place in the maritime provinces, not Kandy (which hadn’t been conquered yet). The ‘chiefs’ who ‘boldly resisted the usurped authority of the invaders’ had in fact signed the Kandyan Convention earlier, acknowledging that authority. And speaking of the Convention, the interpretation placed on it in this article with respect to the ‘religion of Ceylon’ is a bit, shall we say… sweeping.
Torrington’s administration was, of course, a disgrace. His incompetence and stubbornness were legendary in his own time. But this is hardly news to us. Anyone who knows a bit of British-era Ceylon history knows it. Reading through the Ceylon newspapers from 1848 up to about 1851, one finds that they are dominated by polemics against Torrington and verbose defences of him (and of themselves) by his lieutenants. The Colonial Secretary James Emerson Tennent was especially prolix. As noted earlier, the British press also made no secret of the affair. Torrington was sacked, and his name in Britain and Ceylon was mud. Queen Victoria, to whom he was related, had to take pity on him and make him a permanent lord-in-waiting to her husband, Prince Albert. His public career was over.
The United States Magazine & Democratic Review ceased publication not long before the US Civil War. Only a fool would believe that the editors had any sympathy with the Ceylonese. Neither were they anti-imperialists; they just wanted the imperialism on their side of the Atlantic to be American rather than British.
Ä NOTE from THE EDITOR, THUPPAHI: “This is an incisive critique of the article based on solid knowledge of the period. As such its is an example to readers on how to analyse and eviscerate a propaganda piece.
I note, here, that I myself had some familairity with the issues and the discussions of that era. However that work was undertaken inthe 1960s and my memory is shot through with impening Altzheimer’s or whatever.
However I took the precaution of inserting some References so that assiduous readers (if any) could pursue the topic.
RICHARD’s dissection of thsis American polemic is also pertinent,with requiered adjsutments, as a CRITIQUE of the polemical a rguments of Sinhala patriots today who rail at the Western and HR pressures and high-jinks directed at Sri Lanka prevailing in the contemporary world by diving selectively into the 19th century History of Ceylon or the British policies to rail at past injustices.
Much of this line of attack from Sinhala or Lankan PATRIOTS is ill-informed, ahistorical and cheap.
In contrast SIMON’s dissection of both Torrington and the American “Slash-and-burn’ man is as incisive as well-grounded. It is a lesson in historical analysis.
A NOTE: IN presenting the American critque I took care to point readers to other literature so that those assiduous enough could follow up. Indeed, I also have encouraged Professor KM de Silva to enter the fray. somoen in colombo shoudl also encourage ARJUNA PARAKRAMA to do so too.
These arcane historical “BATTLES” do carry value in HOW TO DISSECT or ANALYSZE. Richard’s “cOMMENT” is just such a lesson.
The present day critics of us against the West and HR against Sinhalese are blind. They come from the British Ego that delve in their own supremacy and savagery.
The British are gone but the Indian colonists stayed and run the country with Empire India.
It is India and Indians all over the world who are behind the Core Group in UNHRC. India was and is behind the LTTE, JVP and Zaharan.
The CORE Group is managed by UK (Risshi Sunak, Pritiv Patel), USA (Kamala and Nikki) and all Indians in Canada.
Who benefited from the 1840 Ordinances, Trade Registrations kicked out Sinhalese (Buddhists, Muslims and Christians) etc.
Pots love calling kettles black. There is dark humour in an American in 1851 getting the vapours about the suppression of the rebellion of 1848 which was a Salvation Army meeting compared to America’s reaction to the Nat Turner slave rebellion of 1835. More recently during the Panadura Riots where a bikkhu who preached that Buddhists should protect their Muslim compatriots was not only beaten and circumcised,but then arrested by the Police, there was a hue and cry about the Uva Rebellion of 1819! The Brits are certainly good at air brushing the past. But aren’t we too?
NEAT …. and hitting NAIL on HEAD, Anoma. Clearly, your historical knowledge and sensibility matches your finger on the pulse of Today’s Sri Lankan affiairs. The number of references and or articles on British colonial SINS that have been presented TODAY by authors with Sinhala names indicates that chauvinism spawns defensive forays that are quite illogical and off-course.. As ifa BRITISH SIN in the past can justifya SINHALA SIN IN THE PRESENT ONTEXT. Michael THE THUPPAHI.
In almost all British-Indian colonies the historical stories are about the British and their superiority or savagery. The Indian colonists who went with the British as equal partners seldom get mentioned. If not for the Indian Sepoys, Peons and Coolies the British could not have conquered and maintained them until WWII.
Thanks for digging up this piece from the past. It adds (in a small way) to our knowledge about how one emerging imperial power sought to exploit the sins of another, established, imperial power by such propaganda writings. The sad thing is that this intellectual archaeology (valuable, as it is) inevitably provides yet another opportunity for those who want to cover up local racism that is ongoing today, to try to shift the blame and focus away from Sri Lankan politics and on to external forces – either Western imperialism and/or Indian hegemonism. There is absolutely no doubt that external forces do play a role in local affairs. But that is marginally so. In fact external forces can be active only because local/domestic forces have been busy awhile in crude and cruel racism and authoritarianism by ethnic majority-backed regimes as well as in responding divisive politics by the ethnic minorities. One can be content with ignoring such reactionary and racist drivel if not for the fact that such drivel serves to highlight cynical local manoeuvres attempting to cover up the shameful ongoing racism and ethno-supremacism and counter ethno-religious exclusivism. It is only when such juicy historical morsels are offered by meticulous social scientists like you that one finds various vermin crawling out of the woowdwork to exploit it. Ignore such vermin and keep up the good work! And do not be deterred by any Goons who may still lurk around.
This marginally useful historical morsel that your intellectual archaeology has dug up is, typically, inspiring those who dislike diversion from their targetting of minority ethnic groups here. Interesting to see how many vermin will come crawling out to defend racism and near-genocidal governance. Their apparently ‘injured’ egos (actually, they suffer from poor self-worth) need such soothing manic balm.