Michael Roberts Papers, mainly on Sri Lanka ……MSS 0031 …. AT = University of Adelaide Library………………………………………………. https://www.adelaide.edu.au/library/special/mss/roberts/transcripts%20list
Philip Gunawardena
Edmu
nd R Leach
Category Archives: land policies
Severe Food Insecurity on the Horizon for Sri Lanka because of MONLAR’s Programme
Chandre Dharmawardena, in The Island, 25 October 2023, …. with this title “Monlar, a force for food insecurity, now blames 70-years of government!
Image courtesy CGIAR Research Programme on Water, Land and Ecosystems (WLE
According to newspaper reports (Island 16th October [1]), the NGO carrying the acronym MONLAR has presented the accusation that “the agricultural policies of successive governments have rendered millions of Lankans insecure”. It claims that “As of today, 5.3 million people in Sri Lanka are food insecure. This proves that what the government has been doing for more than 70 years to this date to feed its people has failed”.
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Talking about Oral History Work on Ceylon in the 1960s
Adilah Ismail in the Sunday Times, 7 June 2015, where the title is “Colourful history of a historian” … with highlighting imposed by the Editor Thuppahi viz, Roberts himself
Looking back on his ‘going-down memory lane interviews’ with retired Britishers and Sri Lankans who served mainly in the Ceylon Civil Service, Michael Roberts who was in Sri Lanka recently, talks to Adilah Ismail about the beginnings of a passion.
In Colombo last week: Michael Roberts. Pic by M.A. Pushpa Kumara
It’s the late 1960s: On most Fridays, Michael Roberts would make his way towards Colombo from Peradeniya, [1] recording equipment balanced at his feet and his bag filled with assorted clothes strapped to the back of his trusty scooter. Navigating the sharp curves and turns on his two wheeler, once in Colombo, he would spend his weekend sprinting from one interview to another.
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‘Knots’ and Disputes in Settling on the Border between Victoria and South Australia
Bob Dunn’s Book on THE DISPUTED COUNTRY. AUSTRALIA’S BORDE , pubd in 2004 and bearing ISBN 0 646 43306 7 serves up an intriguing set of stories amidst fascinating photographs and illustrations. It is yet another insight into the complexities of colonisation in this continent made possible for me by Michael Evans who has lent me the booklet.
Travails of a Rookie District Officer in Polonnaruwa, 1957-58
Sugath Kulatunga
Fresh from the University of Peradeniya, after a stint of teaching at St. Anthony’s College Kandy, I was selected as an Administrative Officer in the Department of Agriculture in November 1957 with 18 others in a new cadre of administrative officers established in the Department. This cadre was the brainchild of the then Minister of Agriculture Philip Gunawardhane and was operationalized by the then Deputy Director Administration Sam Silva, who Philip called a ‘” human dynamo”. (Sam was also the prime mover in the establishment of the CWE and the Petroleum Corporation).
Sugath
Philip Gunawardena
CP De Silva
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The Travails of the Villagers of Musali on Film
Yomal Senerath-Yapa, in Sunday Times 18 June 2023, with this title “A humane look at the villagers of Palaikuli”
Sumathy Sivamohan’s maiden documentary film ‘Amid the Villus’ tells the story of a pastoral people for whom the land was simply home. This film, Sumathy Sivamohan’s latest documentary – also her first (having so far done only feature films) — takes you to Palaikuli, the dry scrubland village in Musali South where for ages a pastoral people have tended to cattle and goats.
It is a poetic, humane, behind-the-headlines look at the ‘Musali land-grab’ where she documents the story of the community that was vilified in the news for infringing on the vintage ‘land of the leopard’ at Wilpattu.
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British Ceylon Deciphered by Stress on the Deep Structures of Social Togetherness
Uditha Devapriya, in The Island on 24 March 2023, with this title “Sri Lanka under British rule: Neither Gemeinschaft nor Gesellschaft”
Since at least Marx and Malinowski, anthropologists have been fascinated by, and focused on, the links between “primitive-tribal” and “modern-secular” societies. I use these terms with a pinch of salt – hence the asterisks – for the simple reason that no society can be said to fit one case or the other. In its initial phase the social sciences did, admittedly, distinguish between the two, and took the teleological position that the one would lead to another: hence Ferdinand Tönnies’s idea of a progression from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft. Such progressions were depicted as long, eventual, but inevitable, and were accepted widely at a time when Europe, the harbinger of industrialisation and colonialism, had consolidated its position as the main, if not sole, locomotive of world history.
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Early Academic Endeavours: Michael Roberts & His D. Phil. Dissertation
Michael Roberts
Rather out of the blue, Avishka Mario Seneviratne approached me seeking access to my first academic work , viz., the D. Phil. dissertation in History that I had secured in Oxford in mid-1965. I have a copy and it is possible there is one at Peradeniya University Library, but it is not widely available.
Mario
Milos
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The Northways of Ceylon & Lanka: Tempestuous Pioneering Paths
Hugh Karunanayake, whose title is “The Northways – Pioneering Planters” …. IN …. https://www.historyofceylontea.com/ceylon-publications/feature-articles/the-story-of-the-northways-pioneering-planters.html
The four generational links that the Northways had with the plantation enterprise in Ceylon ended with the death of the last of the Northways in Sri Lanka, that of Michael Northway in 1995. The progenitor of the family in Ceylon was Samuel Northway who together with the Winters, Bowmans, Hawkes, and Gotteliers, and others were induced to come over to Ceylon to establish the sugar industry in which these families were successfully associated with, in the Mauritius where they lived previously. All, or most of these families were of French extraction including the Northways.
The Samuel Northway bungalow now used as a guesthouse ……..
….. & Charles Northway and his wife on Deviturai Estate on their motorbikes. She with a Douglas and he on a Bat (circa 1910) 
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Julia Margaret Cameron: Her Journeys, Camerawork & Gravestone at Bogawantalawa
George Braine, in The Island, 10 October 2022, where the title reads thus: “Irrepressible Julia Margaret Cameron at peace in Bogawantalawa” … with highlighting imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi
Some years ago, my sister, BIL, and I drove to the Dimbula area, visiting Anglican churches and graveyards looking for evidence of our ancestors. At the quaint St. Mary’s Church, Bogawantalawa, we found the grave of my grand uncle, Frank Wyndham Becher Braine, who died on March 9, 1879, at only 11 months. We may have been the first family members to visit his grave in more than a 100 years.
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