There are not two social categories whose condition was as different as Tamil workers of Indian origin residing on the large European plantations, of which they formed the core of the labour force, and the indigenous Sinhalese villagers living in contact with these plantations. The former were a regularly employed workforce, at a very low standard of living, but nourished, housed and materially protected from absolute misery thanks to a system of recruitment and wage control. In return, these workers were closely supervised, fixed, enslaved, irremediably indebted to their employers and their foremen (kangani). The latter, especially those who lived in plantation areas, had more diversified resources: cultivation of paddy fields, small plantations, gardens, public works sites, occasional or regular jobs on medium and large plantations. Their relationship to the plantation economy was of a different nature from that of resident workers. Auxiliary, peripheral labor, necessary in periods of expansion, but towards which the planters did not feel bound by any obligation; free workers with little supervision, often paid by the task, but for whom the contribution of resources drawn from the plantation economy had often become vital, the balance of the villages having been made fragile by the direct or indirect effects of the intrusion of these plantations. The study of the differential impact of depression on two distinct groups is indicative of both local socio-economic structures and the effective mechanisms of impact of a crisis. The major fact is that villagers were no less affected than workers living in plantations by the crisis – on the contrary. But they were in different ways, and after a certain latency time. We will first observe the apparently simple impact of the crisis on the former, before analyzing the rather complex modalities on the latter.
TAMIL PLANTATION WORKERS IN THE DEPRESSION
One could imagine that in times of economic depression leading to mass unemployment, immigrant workers deprived of rights would be the first to lose their jobs, for lack of means of resistance. The reality is quite different. In the case studied here, this workforce had been established for decades on the estates where it resided, and formed the core of the employees: it was both at the mercy of employer’s decisions, but difficult to replace because of its competence. In addition, if the control over population movements exercised jointly by the planters and by the colonial administration made mass dismissal possible, it also made it visible. Provided that the political context lent itself to it, the case could take on a political dimension. An overview of the history of Indian immigration in Ceylon is essential to understanding the situation of the 1930s.[1]
The logic of the system.
In 1928, British planters could have celebrated the first centenary of the immigration of Indian plantation workers. About a hundred in 1828, Tamils from South India were approximately 900,000 a century later, including 732,000 residing on the plantations. It has been said that the British Empire had three metropolises, the United Kingdom, India and China. Ceylon, unlike Malaysia, never received Chinese ‘coolies’; but without the influx of Indian ‘coolies’, the development of a colonial capitalist economy would have been impossible. It may seem strange that the British planters went to recruit workers in South India, when there was a relatively large peasantry in Ceylon. This phenomenon is in fact by no means isolated, it is found for example in Malaysia and Burma. Its causes have been the subject of historical controversies, from which political concerns were not absent. The planters, and in their wake the defenders of the colonial system, have always maintained that they would have preferred to employ a Sinhalese workforce, but that the indolence and lack of interest of the ‘natives’ for regular work had made it necessary to call on immigrant Indians. The first Sinhalese nationalist historians, on the contrary, claimed that the planters had voluntarily imported Indians in order to better control the colony, by virtue of the motto ‘divide to reign’. Nuancing and refining the colonial argument, ‘revisionist’ historians have sought to prove that the reluctance of the Sinhalese to be employed on plantations was explained by the prosperity of their subsistence agriculture and by the relative egalitarianism of the village society, which ensured the entire population access to land ownership. In addition, the downtimes of paddy farming did not correspond to the periods of activity of coffee cultivation. This interpretation, which is based on solid data, has several shortcomings in our opinion[2]. It turned out that in the very first years, Sinhalese were employed on coffee plantations, and that mistreatment and irregularity in the payment of wages discouraged them from continuing the experiment. On the other hand, there were a number of landless Sinhalese peasants, and their attitude of refusal is explained more by the maintenance of the dominance of the Kandyan aristocracy on which they were dependent than by an alleged rural egalitarianism. Finally, from the 1890s, the Sinhalese whose village lands surrounded by plantations became too narrow given the population growth, abandoned their preventions with regard to salaried work on the plantations.
But the advantages of the labour of Indian origin were so obvious to the planters that the employment of the Sinhalese villagers despite its significant increase remained subsidiary (1/5th of the employees in 1943) and did not call into question the foundations of the system. One might think that this system was simply an extension in other forms of the slave system of colonial plantations. But again, the reality is more complex: unlike migrants hired by planters under an indenture system such as those in Mauritius, the Tamil workforce of the plantations had theoretically come of its own free will and was in principle free to leave its employer to which it was not linked by any contract. Cut off from their villages of origin, they lived in their workplace, which allowed the estate to exercise close control and limit the rate of absenteeism, which would be impossible in the case of villagers returning home every night. Migration was not only a spatial phenomenon, but also a social phenomenon whose function was to uproot the workforce to make it docile to industrial discipline, and control them through rigorous master-servant laws. Such a system responded better than any other to the needs of plantations, labour enterprises whose profit rates depended on the ability to mobilize an adequate workforce at the right time and at the lowest cost. It was left for the planters to solve two problems. One was to fix their workers as long as they needed them, while keeping the freedom to send them back at will. The other was to control migratory flows, whose natural movement followed the fluctuations of the agricultural situation in southern India. To retain workers throughout the growing season, the first coffee growers practiced wage retention, content to feed (very badly) their ‘coolies’, paying them only at the end of cultivation operations, and using physical force to prevent any escape. These methods that generated discontent were less commonly practiced as soon as the planters saw that they could exploit the debt of migrants to their advantage. The leaders of migrant groups, called kangani, were tasked with recruiting the workers necessary for the next cultivation campaign, and were entrusted with increasingly considerable sums that they distributed in the form of advances to their recruits, after having taken a comfortable commission.
When seasonal coffee cultivation gave way to permanent tea cultivation, and the partially temporary immigration became more regular, the debt of ‘coolies’ reached such a level that they no longer had any prospect of freeing themselves from it. The ease with which the planters began to distribute advances, in contrast to their unwavering refusal to grant the slightest wage increase, had no other reason to be than to make migrants slaves for debts. The ‘coolies’ were in no way legally bound by these debts, only the kangani having signed recognitions to the planters; but they were morally bound. In Indian custom, the debt relationship has a binding force of an almost religious nature, which even death cannot untie, to the point that when a worker died in debt, his family or his comrades were practically obliged to contribute to repay his debt. The diversion of traditional attitudes of submission for profit purposes was one of the hidden springs of the plantation system and perhaps of the colonial system in general. The second problem was that of the adaptation of supply and demand for labour. The misfortune of the Indian peasants made the happiness of the British planters. The curve of migratory flows between 1875 and 1905 is parallel to that of food prices in South India. It turned out that the periods of famine in India coincided with the phases of growth in the plantation economy, which allowed the estates to obtain cheap labour during the years when they needed it most. Nevertheless, the planters were periodically worried about a risk of a break in labour supply, and demanded that the colonial government intervene in their favour; but they called back as soon as the State for the price of its services claimed a right of inspection over the treatment of ‘coolies’ or considered creating new taxes. It was not until the beginning of the 20th century that semi-official recruitment agencies were established in India, and that the authorities became responsible for transporting immigrants free of charge, the invoice being then directly paid by the plantation (a ‘cash on delivery shipment’ as the planters said, with inappropriate humor). Finally, it was necessary to allow the sliding of the workforce from one domain to another according to the work available. But the ‘coolies’ were fixed by their debts. The planters developed a mechanism that allowed a worker or more often an entire team to obtain leave provided that they were hired by another planter who reimbursed the debt of the ‘coolies’ (the ‘invoice’ was called tundu, and the term came to refer to the whole system). Thus, these new slaves could somehow be bought and sold; however, in times of labour shortage the ‘coolies’, or rather their kangani, could exploit the system by seeking to sell their workforce to the highest bidder, moving their teams according to the supply of increasingly higher advances. As a result, the system was abolished in 1923, the planters believing that the kangani had enriched themselves at the expense of the stability of the work force.
The ‘long walk’ of the coolies of the mid-19th century was a perilous and often dramatic adventure[3]. In the 1920s it had become a simple routine with the development of railways and the control by a joint organ of the planters and the State of the conditions of migration. Registered in a migration camp located in South India and transferred to the island, the migrants were enlisted on their arrival on the plantation that had pre-recruited them, in a hierarchical organization designed to exploit their workforce to the maximum. Each domain was a closed universe, a kind of small autonomous principality placed under the absolute power of the dorai (the planter, owner or manager), who had his staff administered by a hierarchy of small executives: the kanakapillai, accountant-pointer in charge of drawing up the list of coolies present, noting working hours and preparing pay; the periya kangani (chief-overseer) having under his orders brigades of up to several hundred men, divided into teams of a dozen coolies led by the silara kangani. Residents therefore had no recourse against arbitrariness. The dorai exercised de facto rights of justice, and sometimes even de jure. The registration of births, marriages and deaths was his responsibility, as was the later organization of school and medical services. It was rare for an administrator, a doctor, a judge or a police officer to enter a plantation for the exercise of his duties. Planters could privately welcome visitors, but the slightest attack on the sacrosanct nature of private property triggered reactions that a conservative governor of the 1940s did not hesitate to describe as hysterical. In the current state of research, it is very difficult to assess globally the conditions of existence that have reigned in all the two thousand large plantations of the island. The only certainty that emerges from the comparative study of the information available for the 19th and 20th centuries is that a very significant and general improvement occurred at the turn of the century, both in terms of hygiene and feeding conditions and in terms of treatments inflicted by planters to their people; nevertheless, I still encountered in 1913-1914 dramatic cases of mistreatment against immigrants refusing the discipline imposed on them; and mortality rates, especially infant mortality rates, remained very high (224 per thousand in 1910)[4].
The prosperous years
The 1920s were for the Tamil community of plantations relatively prosperous years. It benefited for the first time of the tea and rubber booms. The abolition of the tundu system at the request of the Indian authorities and with the consent of planters concerned about the enrichment and increased autonomy of the kangani removed one of the binding instruments of the servitude for debts, without making the debt itself disappear. The creation in 1922 of more effective control bodies on both the Ceylon and Indian sides provided more guarantees to the migrant both in terms of hiring and working conditions. Dispensaries and schools became more common on the plantations. Finally, in 1929, after much delay, the Planters’ Associations accepted the fixation of a minimum wage with guarantees for the number of days of work. This change in attitude can be explained by the improvement in living standard in the South Indian villages that supplied emigrants, which the planters mentioned with concern[5]: “To maintain a satisfactory labour position, that prosperity has to be competed with. Therefore, the wages and conditions in Ceylon on plantations must be such that they will induce the right type of labourer to come over”. Emigration itself was one of the origins of this relative prosperity and it is symptomatic that the large Indian landowners sought at the same time to put a brake on the exodus because it led to an increase in the price of labour in the villages. Plantation workers could subscribe significant sums when calamities hit the south of the peninsula in 1924[6]. In Ceylon itself, the spread of prosperity had the effect of diverting a fraction of the plantation workforce to the urban sector or even to the villages. The planters were worried about it and were led to grant bonuses to retain their workforce or resurrect the old tundu system in a disguised form[7]. Does this mean that the condition of all plantation workers had generally improved? Certainly not: this society remained very hierarchical and the main beneficiaries of prosperity were the kangani. Indeed, debt did not tend to decrease; on the contrary, in a period of easy money, it was the kangani who received the advances; the abolition of the tundu system was only illusory; in many cases the planters continued to ask for a certificate of dismissal from the previous employer and the kangani to whom debts were owed by his men and women demanded that the accounts be cleared before transmitting the document in question, which was refused to the worker who sneaked out to escape the debts or the blackmail of his kangani. According to the Agent of the government of India in Ceylon[8] “It is often stated by planters that the necessity for producing a certificate before a labourer can be employed restricts undue movement of labour. My own experience and that of all enlightened planters is that the movement of labour from estate to estate is almost invariably due to their chronic indebtedness”. As for the prosperity of the South Indian villages, it remained fragile and above all unequally distributed: it is the kangani and their protégés who had solid houses built, and became locally powerful; it is through them that transited a large part of the savings that the workers of Ceylon sent home. As the authors of the 1931 Indian Census Report noted, when the first effects of the depression were being felt[9]: “A strong and continuing emigration flow is necessary to maintain the population at a subsistence level (…) The Tamil has long been a rover and it is one of the problems of South India is that his opportunities for roving seem likely to diminish”
The re-exported crisis.
The impact of the Great Depression on migratory flows and on the condition of plantation workers was at first glance simple and somehow automatic: cessation of recruitment, dismissal of surplus workers, partial unemployment, wage reduction if the movement was confirmed. Thus, the plantation economy re-exported its crisis. However, the reality was more complex. First because the adaptation of supply and demand required a longer or shorter latency. Second because a majority of workers established with their families for more than a generation had ceased being mobile. Because from one district to another, or even from one domain to another, the severity of depression varied greatly. Finally because the economic mechanisms were influenced by political action, the worker of Indian origin becoming during the 1930s a pawn in the game played by the Sinhalese nationalists, the British planters and the Indian authorities. As a result, the migration crisis became structural; the movement reversed and then led to the paralysis of the system.
The testimonies of the period vary considerably in the assessment of the degree of mobility of the workforce in normal times. It is extremely difficult to interpret statistical data relating to mobility between India and Ceylon, as shown by Patrick Peebles. Case studies suggest that some plantations had a particularly stable staff, coming mainly from a single village and cemented by family ties, while others employed a more mobile workforce, the most frequent case being that of a stable nucleus and a mobile fringe[10]: “It has been the custom for a large number of years for estates to restrict largely their recruiting to relations of their resident labourers and thus on a great many estates the labour force is homogeneous, permanent and settled. To labourers brought up with an old established connection of this sort, the closing of the estate has come as an unexampled calamity, involving in many cases a complete break with the past”.
The number of immigrants from India decreased even before 1929, but the figure does not distinguish plantation workers from urban workers [11]. From 159,398 in 1927, it went down to 133,712 in 1928, 105,095 in 1929 and 91,422 in 1930; the early beginnings of the rubber depression corresponded to a series of good years in South India; in addition, the implementation of minimum wages led plantation managers not to rehire a certain number of marginal workers. Recruitment for rubber plantations stopped in 1930, and for tea plantations in 1933. There was a shift in the workforce from closed rubber plantations towards tea plantations, where there was still employment, or where the presence of parents made it possible to survive while waiting for better days[12]. This shift, more considerable than expected, reduced for a time the number of ‘beneficiaries’ of a ‘repatriation’ plan put in place at the end of 1930. The number of returnees amounted to 10,645 (+4,772 indigents) in 1931 “What is surprising is that there are not more because it is estimated that about 100,000 acres of rubber were abandoned”. In the following years, the number of returnees varied greatly: 14,338 in 1932; 42,343 in 1933, due to the entry into force of a new repatriation plan with greater facilities: in two months, May and June 1932, 15,000 workers left[13]. But the adoption of the concerted restriction plan for tea production immediately led to a sudden surge in demand in August 1933 and recruitment resumed from September 1st at the initiative of the planters. The trend intensified in 1934[14]: “The labour requirements of estates had been limited to a flat rate of 1. 1/8th labourers per acre but as a result of representations made by the planting community these were raised to 1. 1/4th labourer per acre. Applications for licenses came pouring in and recruitment from coast went on briskly. The unprecedented drought and the decline in the price of tea during the latter half of the year resulted in the curtailment by estates of their normal cultivation program. In spite of it the labourers were being recruited from India on licenses already issued. Owing to this heavy influx of labour it was found towards the end of the year that there was a sufficiency of labour on estates in Ceylon and that probably the total labour force was slightly in excess of actual requirements”. From the end of September 1934, the authorities sought to curb recruitment by stopping giving licenses to kangani, then resumed small scale repatriation operations (6,252 in 1935, 5,396 in 1936). A minor slump of the tea industry at the end of 1936 determined the adoption of a new repatriation plan in February 1937, of which 4,485 workers benefited during the year but from the month of May the resumption of rubber absorbed the excess tea and the planters demanded 5,000 additional workers: they encountered, for the first time, the opposition of the Indian government. In practice the planters managed to bring back former workers (palaial) accompanied by their close relatives “whose definition is on this occasion changed to include married girls, their husbands and children, parents, brothers and sisters and their children as well as paternal uncles and their families”. Thus 15,681 Tamils were recruited in 1938[15]. This ebb and flow was the sign of a disorganization of the labour market. The precipitation or the procrastination of the planters reflected their nervousness, and administrative measures always lagged behind. Such vicissitudes announced the final crisis of emigration, which will be discussed later.
How did returnees adapt to India? Their fate remains the great absentee of this depression story: ceasing to be public, it no longer interested anyone. The published documents are silent, vague, or contradictory, the Indian authorities arguing that there was no problem and the Ceylon administration that the migrants were eager to return. The representative of the Government of India in Ceylon pretended that these repatriates “appear to have settled down in their villages without noticeable distress. Weather conditions in South India were favourable and foodstuffs cheap”[16]. It was assumed that family solidarity and savings accumulated during the prosperous years made it possible to meet the essential needs and that, in any case, a few thousand more or less under-employees did not count in the Indian immensity. However, the good agricultural years were followed by less abundant harvests after 1933, and when the resumption of recruitment by Ceylon planters was announced, the influx of candidates to the employment offices left little doubt about the preferences of Tamils or their forced choices[17]. It seems that many of them had not returned to their villages: India was experiencing an industrial boom at the time resulting in part from the reorientation of local capital invested in agriculture, which was no longer profitable because of the depression. Two poles of this development, Madras and Bangalore, were located near emigration recruitment areas; in addition, large public works sites (irrigation works) were opened at the same time; this job-creating boom, which contrasted with the Ceylon depression, must have attracted many unemployed for a while. And it is the feeling of being able to employ all its workforce that led the Indian government to adopt under the pressure of the nationalist movement an increasingly restrictive attitude towards emigration, not only to Ceylon, but also to Burma, Malaysia and the sugar islands of the Indian Ocean, the Pacific and the West Indies.
The evolution of the standard of living of plantation workers[18].
The vast majority of them remained in Ceylon despite the increased difficulties of their existence. Does this mean that their standard of living had ultimately not been seriously affected, as the planters and the Ceylon authorities repeated? The figures prove them right at first glance: the decrease in wages was accompanied by the decrease in food (especially rice) prices. But to make a global judgment, it is also necessary to take into account two factors that are more difficult to quantify: the actual working hours, and the chronic debt of workers. The procedure for setting minimum wages was quite complicated: in each district, joint councils chaired by an administrator and composed of planters and kangani supposed to represent employees made proposals that were submitted for consent to a central council where employees were not represented, and then to the colonial administration. On the other hand, since 1920, housing, medical care and part of the rice were free, provided that the employee had worked a minimum number of days per month. The wage was usually evaluated on a daily basis and varied according to the amount of latex or tea leaves brought to the factory. Finally, workers were supposed to be able to get work six days a week. The decrease in wages was postponed until 1931, but due to the general decline in rice prices, most workers in the lower and middle districts stopped frequenting the shops of the plantations which continued to sell rice at the price set in 1929, more than 50% higher than the market price[19]. After trying to prevent workers from purchasing outside the estate, which caused deep discontent, the planters accepted to lower rice prices and wages at the same time. The government gave its assent to the new tariff in May 1931. The kangani who represented the interests of the workers at the joint councils raised no objections, admitting the argument that the measure did not affect the standard of living[20]. Immediately a new reduction was demanded by the planters; it did not come into force until February 1st, 1932. On May 10th 1933, another reduction was imposed, which was short-lived, because the recovery led the planters to adopt a higher tariff in November, and then to restore the 1931 rates a year later, which remained in force until 1939. The standard of living of the workers has not been theoretically affected; the continuous reduction in general and infant mortality rates seems to confirm this. In addition, imitating the villagers, a number of employees obtained from the planters permission to garden uncultivated plots or to engage in livestock rearing – an activity in which Tamils excelled[21]. There is no doubt that the legislation in force had protected workers to some extent from the effects of depression, as evidenced by the regular request from the ‘hard’ elements of the planters to suspend its application, which was regularly ignored by the colonial administration[22].
However, several signs suggest that the standard of living of those who had kept a job had been seriously amputated. The most obvious is the sudden fall in the amount of sums sent to India by immigrants in the form of postal orders. Other indices go in the same direction, such as the 25% drop between 1929 and 1930 in alcohol consumption in plantation areas[23]. To this amputation of purchasing power, there are three possible explanations: either the minimum wage was not really respected or cuts on the salary were made; or the number of consumers had increased. The latter hypothesis, of which the clues must be carefully sought, must in any case be retained. It seems that in a first phase, this is the mechanism that had made it possible to limit the number of repatriations: rubber plantation workers went up to live on tea plantations, appealing to the solidarity of their relatives established in the upper country. The proportion of people dependent on workers has indeed increased from 18% in 1925 to 28.8% in 1930[24]. Partial unemployment is another form of adaptation to the crisis leading to a decrease in purchasing power. On this point, the testimonies of the Ceylon and Indian authorities diverged, the former stating that the planters had always offered employees that they had not dismissed the six statutory days, while the latter argued that non-compliance with the legislation, even fraud, has been constant. In rubber plantations, it was traditional to employ the tappers only in the morning and to pay them by the weight of latex – tapping is done between 6 a.m. and 10 a.m., and the latex collected between 10 and 12 p.m.[25]. During the depression, the superintendents demanded that workers work eight hours to pay the minimum wage, but since they did not provide them with work in the afternoon, they deducted a quarter of the salary. It was also common to pay only one working day for two on the grounds of insufficient yield, or to deduct a few pounds of tea from the weight brought back at the end of the day by the pickers on the pretext that the leaves were particularly moist. Another expedient was to give less than six days of work a week “a desperate remedy for a desperate crisis” commented the Agent of the government of India in Ceylon[26]. The planters also threatened their workers of dismissal with the help of the kangani. This practice was illegal, but continued for lack of jurisprudence. So the Indian Government representative decided to file a complaint against the intendant of an estate, that of Perth, in order to obtain a judgment making jurisprudence; acquitted in the first instance, the intendant was condemned on appeal by the Supreme Court, to the fury of the planters who accused the Agent of “harassing the planting community in a time of depression”[27]. Colonial justice had so far always shown a certain bias, condemning planters to symbolic fines and workers to heavy prison sentences. Despite this jurisprudence, according to the Agent, the reduction of working days remained very common between 1934 and 1937, under various pretenses: in 1934, drought; subsequently, malaria epidemic, or fall in prices. On the other hand, the Ceylon Controller of Labour maintained after investigation that he has not found any such case. The case took a political turn in the context of exacerbating nationalisms that will be mentioned later[28].
There is a final explanation for the deterioration of the standard of living, which is due to the very nature of the employee’s relationship with his employer. The worker was indebted from the start. This structural debt was the main instrument of enslaving the workforce during the 19th century. It remained the best way for planters to fix and control it. To the debt due to estate was often added the debt due to the kangani who managed both debts. In the final analysis, the vital issue for the worker was not that of purchasing power, but of borrowing power and repayment capacity. Thus, the decrease in wages, regardless of the fall in prices, translated into a reduction in cash and pushed back the hope of freeing oneself from previous debts whose amount did not tend to be reduced; in this respect, the situation of the plantation worker was not fundamentally different from that of the small producer in debt with the Indian lender, the relationship to British capital being in both cases changed into a relationship to Indian capital. It is very difficult to obtain precise information on these unwritten debts. Most observers of the time were content with impressions. Asked by the Ceylon Banking Commission, the Indian Agent estimated that 75% of workers were in debt with the kangani and added “if the labourers do send money to India they borrow it from the kangani. About 75% of the labourers on estates are indebted to kangani”. In some estates, the intendants deduced from the wages the debts owed to the kangani. A survey revealed that in a given case, the total deduction amounted to 5,422.37 rupees (unfortunately the number of employees is unknown) but it can be recalled that the monthly pay was lower than 10 rupees[29]. Even when the pay was made without deduction, the kangani was always present during the operation, and passed the money from the master to the servant and inevitably “a portion of the wages sticks to the head kangani’s hands”[30]. How is it that, if wages were adequate, plantation workers continued to go into debt, asked in 1937 the Agent of the Government of India under the title ‘the most perplexing problem’[31]: “This is a question for which no satisfactory answer can be gathered. Some superintendents explain that it is the nature of the labourer to be in debt and that if a kangani does not lend some other professional moneylender will. Perhaps the explanation which is nearest to truth is that the debt to the kangani is the relic of the old days of the tundu system. Even now, it seems to be a fact that few gangs of labourers will go to an estate unless they are offered a substantial sum by the head kangani of the estate as an inducement. The head kangani either gets an advance from the estate or pays a sum himself to the labourers in order to keep them under his obligation. Once this ‘advance’ has been made, it persists and is scarcely ever admitted to have been completely liquidated even if it has been actually repaid”. We are at the heart of the debt issue. Debt, in the Indian cultural context, constitutes the contract par excellence, which binds the creditor as much as the debtor[32]. To enter the service of someone is to enter into his debt. It is therefore not conceivable to enter into the service of a plantation without performing this quasi-ritual act that must bind the boss or the kangani, commit him to employ and help you since you are his man. But there is another possible explanation, purely economic. Although the plantation worker is paid on a daily basis, he is paid only monthly, and therefore forced to a large extent to live on credit with the local shop, usually held by a relative or friend of the chief kangani[33]: “ Boutiques usually sell goods on credit to the labourers on the security of their head or sub-kangani, and when an improvident labourer has run up bills to a large extent in a boutique, he not only finds his lot on the estate miserable, but any attempt on his part to leave the estate is resisted. Some boutique keepers have gone to the extent of assaulting labourers to recover their debts and where possible have seized their chattels and even their discharge certificates”. Police reports confirm the frequency of the fact, but also suggest that the victims no longer allowed themselves to be done without protest: “In the planting districts complaints by these labourers that they had been robbed of their savings and jewelry just before their departure were frequent. Such complaints were often true, but the offender was not unfrequently some local shopkeeper who had seized the last chance of obtaining something more tangible from his customer than a promise of repayment of his debt”[34]. With this example we encounter one of the concerns that are at the heart of this research, namely the respective game of socio-cultural factors and economic factors. Debt is inexplicable as a pure economic phenomenon. But its economic consequences are no less real Here we have a traditional debt diverted by the planter or the kangani from its primary purpose.
The Chettiar debt provided us with the example of a contract in a way secularized, neutralized, but the kangani were themselves in debt with the Chettiar and the movement of judicial sales that will be studied later strongly suggests that many small plantations launched by kangani with the help of borrowed capital had to be sold. However, the principle of debt was beginning to be called into question, as evidenced by the multiplication of cheetu circles (mutual saving associations) on large estates, or the increasingly frequent request of workers to be registered by planters in an autonomous team independent from any kangani. The growth in the number of petitions points to a change of mind: most were directed against overseers (and not against the planter himself) and debt was directly or indirectly responsible for the majority of them. Their number remained stable from 1925 to 1929, then it tripled in the space of four years, to fall after 1934[35].
The immigration crisis
The end of the 1930s was marked by a general crisis, both internal and external, of immigration. Internal: the power of the kangani was called into question, trade unionism developed and the authority of the unions began to supplant that of the management staff. External: Sinhalese and Indian nationalist leaders condemned the system, which resulted in a serious break in relations between the two countries. Depression disrupted the labour market both directly and through politics[36]. Without an external catalyst, it is unlikely that the agitation would have taken on such an open character. The roots of discontent were already solid in the early 1930s, but a decisive element occurred in 1931: the right to vote, granted to about 100,000 ‘Indian Tamils’, made them overnight courted citizens: meetings were held, an electoral literature was broadcast, and to the surprise of the planters who hoped to be elected by their employees, it is two Indians who became members of the State Council, and one of them, Peri Sunderam, was chosen as Minister of Labour. In addition, the development of plantation schools, however modest, allowed an increased number of young people to keep their accounts and therefore to control the arbitrariness of the kangani. A radical Tamil journalist, a South Indian Brahmin, close to the Ceylon trade union movement for a time, Natesa Aiyar, founded the first trade union for plantation workers in 1931. Charismatic leader (although Brahmin, he defended the Untouchables), he was considered by many as a messiah, and closely monitored by the police. It is significant that his union’s primary objective was to eliminate debt and organize pension funds. But the planters set up the kangani against Aiyar, and the union proved unable to break through in times of depression, especially as the Ceylon trade union movement became violently anti-Indian with the blessing of a section of the British authorities. The fire continued to smolder, as evidenced by the incidents in 1933 in Hatton town[37]. Planters and the police became nervous: it was enough for an Australian apprentice planter, Bracegirdle, to speak in a meeting alongside the representatives of the Tamil workers and members of the Marxist party LSSP (Lanka Sama Samaja Party), and for the police to immediately obtain from the governor the authorization to expel him from the island (April-May 1937). From 1936, the left organized a new union on the plantations. Indians did the same and a demagogic outbidding appeared. The LSSP masterfully used the Bracegirdle case and the governor’s decision was eventually reversed by the Supreme Court.
The wave of strikes that shook the plantations in 1939 – 1940 resulted from the paralysis of the fundamental mechanisms of immigration resulting from the rise of the Indian and Ceylonese (rather Sinhalese) nationalisms. Since the elections of 1931 and moreover since those of 1936, a large fraction of the Sinhalese political class had fueled the anti-Indian sentiments of the indigenous population, amalgamating Indian capitalists and poor plantation immigrants according to a well-known process in Europe. Workers of Indian origin, although settled for generations in the estates, were branded as aliens without abiding interest in the island. In this propaganda stands out the founder of Ceylonese trade unionism, A.E. Goonesinha, who remained close to British Labour for a long time, but embarked on a career as a xenophobic agitator after 1930. However, his influence remained strictly urban, practically limited to Colombo. In the same vein, a character of a completely different magnitude, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, who would become Prime Minister in 1956, launched an opinion campaign from 1933 in order to limit or even stop immigration accused of being the cause of unemployment, and to replace the Indian workforce with a Sinhalese workforce. Facing the refusal of the colonial administration which declared: “It is not in the interest of the country to prefer an inefficient workforce to a qualified workforce”[38] he persisted and finally obtained in August 1936 the creation of a commission of inquiry, which reported a year later. To satisfy the Sinhalese demands, it suggested the preferential employment of Ceylonese and the organization of local recruitment agencies for plantations; but the planters showed no enthusiasm. The Sinhalese ministers also decided to exclude people of Indian origin from the benefit of agrarian laws providing for the distribution of land to the needy, and to deny plantation workers the right to vote for elections to the village councils[39]. These measures triggered from 1937 a very lively response from the Indian government, threatening to dry up the flow of immigration, which created great concern among the planters. When Colombo authorities decided to dismiss a number of government employees of Indian origin, the crisis broke out. From August 1, 1939, Delhi and Madras forbade former workers from Ceylon to return to the island, which created a dramatic situation for many of them, separated from their families, “ a complete disregard of the ordinary feelings of humanity”, according to the Controller of Labour. Communalist feelings were exacerbated on both sides, the Sinhalese boycotted the Indian merchants of Colombo, the Indians retaliated by ceasing to frequent the Sinhalese shops up-country. The discontent was eventually deflected against the kangani and the planters, and an unprecedented wave of strikes broke out on the plantations[40]. The safety valve that was free migration between the two countries was blocked, while these trips were all the more necessary for those who had interests in India. The flexibility of the system was called into question. It is interesting to note that the first strike that broke out spontaneously, in the Kotagala estate, in April 1939, originated from the workers’ request to form a temperance society that met with the refusal of the superintendent. In the words of the Controller of Labour, “the rise of the unions tends to conceal the fact that the current movement is social and not political” contrary to what the planters thought. In his confidential diary, the Governor commented on the ‘neurotic condition’ of many planters and added: “the agitation is the strongest where the planters are the most retrograde”[41].
The impact of the Great Depression on plantation workers was therefore quite complex. The maintenance of the standard of living linked to the decline in food prices is a thesis that does not stand up to the examination: partial unemployment, debt, swelling of the number of unemployed dependent on workers who had kept their jobs, had amputated their purchasing power. But it took almost ten years before the situation resulted in an open crisis. It was when the freedom of movement of Indian migrants was called into question that the explosion prepared by a decade of malaise broke out.
*
SINHALESE VILLAGERS IN THE DEPRESSION
Village society was infinitely more complex than that of plantations. From one region to another, the resources differed; the major contrast opposed the villages of the dry zone still living largely in self-subsistence, and those of the wet zone dependent to varying degrees on the plantation economy. From one village to another, the social and economic condition was not the same: there were villages of small landowners, villages of day laborers, villages of artisans; a majority of high-caste villages, a minority of low-caste villages and a number of multi-caste villages. And inside each village, social contrasts, which most contemporaries claimed to be definitely less marked than in India and which were indeed less ostentatious, but which remained a determining element when it comes to appreciating the behaviour of a society in times of depression.
System elasticity and survival strategies
When elder villagers were asked about these difficult years, a Sinhala word naturally came to their mind: “pirimähuwa”: we managed, we got by, we survived[42]. In a way, it may be interpreted, along the lines defined by James Scott, as a case of ‘everyday form of peasant resistance’, using the ‘weapons of the weak’[43]. It is not a question of reducing the social history of depression to this aspect of things: powerful forces were at stake, often without the knowledge of those concerned. But to neglect it, we would fall into the bias of so many socio-economic surveys that, ignoring these underground mechanisms, are naively surprised to meet a majority of households that spend more than they earn, debtors who do not care at all about repaying their debts, lenders who claim their debts but never collect them, etc. The question is what is the degree of elasticity of the system, how long, in a given conjuncture, one can hold, and who can hold. Supporters of dualistic theses, already mentioned, imagine the social structure of colonial countries in the form of two juxtaposed entities whose reciprocal influence is minimal: it would be enough to cross the demarcation line to find oneself safe in an intact pre-capitalist universe. On the contrary, I am convinced that the ‘indigenous’ social practice is encompassed in a whole largely determined from the outside by the fluctuations of the capitalist economy. The administrative reports of the early 1930s repeatedly affirmed that, although depression affected the population, its effects did not reach a severity requiring the intervention of the authorities. The most pessimistic simply stated in 1931: “Although no actual distress save in limited areas was reported during the year, there seems no doubt that indigenous labour in rural and estate areas has had what would popularly be called a thin time”[44]. These opinions of colonial bureaucrats do not always agree with those of men in the field, notably Settlement officers, who encountered more pockets of misery during their in-depth inspections than district officers. The official argument was nevertheless retained by the Ceylonese historian Lal Jayawardena, who considered that “depression had at most an uncertain impact on the small man in the coconut and rubber areas” because salaried jobs did not represent a decisive element in the balance of the villages[45]. The boundary between poverty and destitution is, of course, perfectly subjective, and it is to be expected that administrators forced to a policy of austerity by the real or supposed crisis of colonial finances tended to minimize the situation to avoid getting caught up in the gear of interventionism, and that their indigenous assistants avoided drawing their attention to unpleasant realities. We also observed how deep-rooted throughout the colonial world was the belief that dualism would allow peasant societies to better resist depression than industrial societies. This colonial variant of the myth of the return to the land certainly influenced many observers: as evidenced by the surprising statement of the interim agent of the government in Ratnapura, who declared in 1934 to the investigators of the Ceylon Banking Commission that the population, living in a non-monetary economy, was spared from the effects of depression[46]. These statements were in perfect contradiction with the pessimistic findings of the investigators of the years 1936 and following, whose observations were indeed made after the malaria epidemic: as much as we are poorly informed about the reality of the peasant condition at the beginning of this century, the information became abundant from the 1930s following the depression and the establishment of the democratic regime, which attracted the attention of the ruling classes to rural poverty.
The series of socio-economic surveys undertaken in 1936 was conducted with methods that may seem primitive: random sampling of a very limited number of villages per district; evaluation of family budgets by household and not by family group; collection of employment statistics on the basis of imprecise definitions of rural unemployment, etc. But these investigations remain close to the lived reality, and are much more significant for social history than subsequent work where the search for statistical refinement and systematic aggregates crush the facts under the avalanche of numbers. They also have the interest of having been conducted independently of the official apparatus; the hostility shown towards them by some indigenous headmen says a lot about their fear of losing their monopoly on information on the condition of the peasantry[47]. As far as we are concerned, their main defect is in the end of being isolated and late, which prevents any comparison with the situation before the crisis. Their conclusions are corroborated by the work of the medical teams who came to investigate the state of health and the level of nutrition of the villagers following the malaria epidemic[48]. On the basis of the data from the peasant surveys of 1936-39, it is possible to argue that, from the point of view of the villages, work on plantations, small and large, was something other than an auxiliary resource during the Great depression. In the Kalutara district, 20 to 22% of families mainly derived their resources from occasional work, to which must be added about 20% families more regularly employed on plantations. In the coconut plantation district of Chilaw, the proportion of casual workers was 32%, plus 4% of heads of household regularly employed in coconut plantations. In the district of Puttalam, 22%. In the district of Kurunägala, the total number of agricultural employees was 55% of heads of families, in Galle 40%, in Matara 34%. Finally, in Matale, where tea predominated, associated with rubber, investigators counted 11.85% of daily workers and 15.55% of more regular workers, or 27.4%, the percentages varying greatly from one village to another. It can be concluded that between a quarter and half of the population depended on this type of employment, the percentage being the highest in the coconut areas. But the temporary character of this activity made these villagers eternal job seekers, rarely employed more than 20 days a month, working in a large estate to the task, then employed on a public works site, lending a hand to a neighbour during the harvest, transporting food for a shopkeeper from the nearby village, and so on. This instability, which was attributed by the British to a weakness of character, was in reality a guarantee, however fragile, against the risks resulting from an excessive dependence on a single employer, like the peasant who practices polyculture.
We will now retain an element of particular interest. The district of Matale, on the border of the dry zone, includes to the north and east villages practicing food agriculture, to the south and west villages whose most of the resources are linked to the proximity of plantations. It is in the latter that economy was the most disrupted by depression and where misery was the most visible[49]. In 1940, the diet of the villagers of the plantation areas was found more deficient than that of the inhabitants of the dry zone, although it was commonly admitted that the miserable villages of the north of the district were unable to properly feed their inhabitants; malnutrition reached the highest levels in localities where the majority of the population lived on jobs as day laborers, both on plantations and in paddy cultivation. One cannot fail to be struck by the contrast between the optimistic picture of the peasant condition drawn by official observers at the beginning of the century, whose archetype is the report on the 1911 census[50], and these dark images. A hypercritical historian would conclude that the contradiction was simply political in nature. However, I prefer to test the hypothesis that the depression had indeed led to a profound deterioration in the standard of living in areas dependent on export products, initially delayed by a series of circumstances: existence of village savings, reduction in the prices of consumer products, implementation of substitute resources, family solidarity or customer relations.
Lower wages and reduced employment.
The movement of village incomes is difficult to grasp statistically. Indications comparable to those concerning resident workers of Indian origin are not available for occasional Sinhalese plantation workers, nor even for workers on public works construction sites. The income of paddy farmers or small planters is also poorly known. The 1936-1939 surveys provide precise figures, but no comparison is available for previous years. Among the few pieces of information available, those provided by headmen to the Labour Controller in 1932 indicate a decrease in wages of the order of 40% compared to the pre-crisis – much lower than that of rice prices; other sources report declines of more than 50%, but these values are not significant if they are not weighted by short-time unemployment rates[51]. However, casual workers were the first to be dismissed when plantations had to cope with the crisis. As early as 1930, for example, a deputy from the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce recognized before the governor that Ceylon planters gave their Sinhalese day laborers only three days of work a week instead of six, and demanded that the government align itself by reducing wages on public works sites which were 75 cents per day compared to 50 cents on rubber plantations[52]. In 1934, wages continued to fall: for example women travelled about twenty kilometers for a daily wage of 25 to 30 cents per day, while an entrepreneur had tiles transported on their head by peasants for 28 cents a day[53].
More than the wage trends, it is the variations in the level of employment that matter for day-to-day workers in most cases. To assess the seriousness of the effects of depression, it is necessary to recall the main lines of the history of the employment of Sinhalese workers in plantations[54]. Contrary to popular belief, their number has never been negligible, but statistics, which until the 1930s only take into account workers residing on the estates, conceal this fact, which is revealed by an early 20th century report, and many indications in administrative reports. It is clear that during periods of expansion, planters called on villagers and low country Sinhalese for tree felling and planting operations, and then if necessary as permanent labour (coconut, rubber) or additional (tea). The Sinhalese were considered by the planters as good workers as the Tamils, the only problems being their least regularity and the need for a certain amount of patience and humour to deal with them: in fact, the prevention of planters came from the fact that unlike the Tamils, the Sinhalese refused the sort of military discipline which they tried to impose. Recruitment was usually done through village headmen, or job middlemen who, like the kangani, were responsible for the number of men present; but it was also possible to show up at the plantation after the call of regular workers to get a day job. Among these Sinhalese, there were many young people who did not yet have access to the land and a number of women. It also seems that the percentage of members of the ‘low’ Kandyan castes was relatively high, and the fact can also be explained by the location of large domains in areas where these communities were numerous. During the 1920s, the expansion of rubber and coconut cultivation attracted a more numerous village workforce, young people that the demographic boom had multiplied or farmers who abandoned paddy fields or gardens whose cultivation was not very lucrative: the impact of depression during the next decade would be all the more conspicuous. In the absence of reliable overall statistics, the only process is to review the various districts, as is done by the authors of a 1934 report, who highlight the particularly difficult situation of the coconut and rubber areas[55].
The administrative reports of the province of Sabaragamuwa make it possible to follow the drying up of employment year by year[56]. In 1928, when prices began to fall, village workforce was still welcome. In 1929, a considerable number of young villagers from the most remote canton of the province (Kolonna korale) still abandoned paddy and chena cultivation for salaried work but in 1930, although very few estates closed down, hiring ceased for villagers; at the end of the year, currency stopped circulating in the villages, and the respective condition of the localities that had recently depended on this type of employment and those that had not, reversed to the detriment of the former. The contrast is evident in the canton of Kukul korale, whose southern part continued in 1931 to subsist as usual, while in the northern sector where plantations had been opened about ten years before, destitution was very marked. Two years earlier, villagers could earn a rupee per day (double the normal pay) by working on the task: of the 438 inhabitants of the village of Karawita, 30 to 40 men worked daily on an estate near Niriella after selling their chenas (130 acres) to the plantation, neglecting their paddy fields (190 acres of poor land) and their gardens (291 acres)[57]. Not all villagers had as much land: the fate of some of them, who did not have paddy fields and were deprived of the majority of their chenas during the rise of plantations, was much worse than that of the Karawita villagers. This was the case, for example, in Maliboda (southeast of the district of Kägalla), in Magurukanda (east of the district of Kurunägala, near the plantation of Shakerley), in Puwakpitiya (district of Matale)[58]. The district of Matara was an overcrowded rural area, a source of emigration, on the periphery of which were established, especially by Ceylonese, plantations of tea and rubber employing very few workers of Indian origin. The unemployment already obvious in 1931-32 resulted from the cessation of weeding and pruning operations on the one hand, and the dismissal of tappers and pickers or the reduction of almost half of their wages. In 1936, the situation did not improve, a survey by the headmen estimated at 7,000 the number of people who, having lost their jobs, did not find sufficient resources by cultivating their own land; it was in this area that two years later one of the first rural employment agencies in the country was created and the region subsequently became a communist stronghold[59].
The villagers of the coconut areas also experienced serious difficulties during the depression. The dependence of the population varied according to the nature of the exploitation of the coconut tree: grown in gardens, it was only partially marketed; cultivated in large plantations, it dominated all aspects of economic life. In the North Western Province, which is most of the Coconut Belt, the villagers generally had a small coconut garden of less than one hectare and worked part-time on large nearby plantations, or in coir (coconut fibers) or arrack (palm alcohol) local factories. In a single-production area, where the sale of copra and other coconut by-products represented the main support for the economy, villagers were doubly affected: as small producers, by the slump; as employees, by unemployment. From the late 1920s, expansion stopped and new jobs were rare, while shopkeepers sometimes refused to buy nuts from small producers. After a brief recovery in 1932, the relapse in 1933 resulted in the closure of a very large number of estates[60]. In the south of the district of Kägalla there were two villages whose inhabitants, victims of the closure of the coconut plantations, were in a more miserable situation than that of their neighbours surrounded by rubber plantations; at the beginning of 1934, they had only a frugal daily meal for all food. And in the district of Kurunägala, where many immigrant families from coastal areas had settled as squatters near large estates, women and young people were among the hardest hit, the first as tea pickers, or workers in coir factories, the latter, in all sectors where the demand of the 1920s had attracted them; for example in Timbulkotamulla village, “14 out of 17 families are landless outsiders living in wretched little mud huts on the verge of starvation; most are almost entirely unemployed (…) Unemployment is as demoralizing in this country as it is in England (…) A young widow alleged in her thirties with seven children has been living by working as a coolie on an estate for 45 cents a day; recently it was reduced to 30 cents; soon it will be nothing at all and one begins to wander how such people will manage to subsist”[61]. Some planters claimed that the income lost as a result of the unemployment of these categories was not essential, forgetting that female labor provided a substantial part of the village resources[62].
It was commonly accepted that the slump in tea price did not have effects on villagers to the same extent as that in rubber and copra: employment of villagers on tea plantations was less extensive and the technical characteristics of tea production differed significantly: tea must be picked, or in any case pruned and weeded, whether the leaves are sold or not, to prevent the estate from returning to the jungle, while the coconut plantations and rubber plantations can be abandoned for a few years without serious risk[63]. However, in tea-producing regions at mid-elevation, in the middle of villages, the situation worsened in 1932. The mechanisms were especially apparent in the Kotmale valley, where a majority of large European plantations and a sprinkling of small tea gardens coexisted. The former, to keep their resident workforce, stopped giving work to the villagers. The latter, who employed only villagers, reduced wages by half, so that they remained competitive for a while. But from 1934, the large planters imposed a system of quota of production that led to the abandonment of small properties, whose owners preferred to sell their coupons to the large estates rather than producing themselves: so that in 1935-36, the Kotmale valley, once one of the most prosperous in the upper country, became a pocket of poverty and unemployment[64]. On the other hand, the province of Uva, where, according to the authorities, few villagers were employed in the tea fields, was less severely affected by the employment crisis; however difficulties began to appear in 1933[65].
According to official estimates, 120,000 workers would have lost their jobs on rubber plantations by 1932. Of this total, about 60,000 would be Sinhalese. Other data, concerning only the resident Sinhalese workers employed on the largest estates also including workers of Indian origin, indicate a decrease of 16% of the former, compared to 19% of the latter, but these were only the resident workers. Statistical data on employment at the all-island level is hardly unreliable, but the employment policy followed in the plantation industry is clear enough. It could have been expected that planters, forced by legislation to pay a minimum wage only to workers of Indian origin, would make more use of villagers for whom there was no control. On the contrary, employers assured that it was the obligation to pay a high minimum wage to their Tamil workforce that forced them to dismiss their village workforce in 1932-33[66]. This choice of planters became more explicit in 1933-34, when the recovery they expected led them to resume hiring. At first, the difficulty of bringing back Indians in a sufficiently short time pushed them to hire villagers. But as soon as the prospects for recovery were confirmed and the possibility of mass recruiting in India was assured, the recruitment of villagers stopped. According to the candid expression reported by the Agent of the Indian Government in Ceylon, the Tamils are “of better composition”[67]. In 1931, 1932 and 1933, 122,000 Indians had not returned to the island; in 1934, the surplus of immigrants was 97,000: the previous deficit was therefore compensated to 80%. These workers were employed on the large plantations which reopened thanks to the establishment of quotas; the small estates operating with the help of only the village workforce closed down and transferred their coupons to the large plantations. It is not possible to accurately estimate the number of villagers who lost their jobs, but it is clear that the return of the Indian Tamil emigrants broke a timid movement of employment of the villagers on the large estates. Such an evolution, even if not voluntary, was in the logic of the plantation system where the non-resident had always been considered a subsidiary worker. The different treatment of Sinhalese and Tamils of Indian origin was justified by the planters in the name of technical and financial arguments. Tamil veterans would be more productive; they must therefore be kept even if they were more expensive. But this explanation is not sufficient; it is the very structure of employment that determined the policy of planters. In times of crisis and production restrictions, a core of veterans was kept and marginal workers were dismissed. In Ceylon, by virtue of an inversion specific to the colonial system, it is the indigenous workforce that was peripheral and the immigrant workforce that was nuclear. Such a phenomenon was not new: during the brief crisis of 1920, it was already the villagers who had been the first to be reduced to unemployment and especially those of them who had sold their land for the development of the rubber plantations “as the policy of estates was to conserve the immigrant labour force as long as possible, the first class thrown out of employment was the daily paid local Sinhalese labour on local rubber estates”[68].
The employment situation in 1936 was therefore, despite the recovery, more serious than in 1933: the survey on unemployment in Ceylon published in 1937 mainly concerned urban employment, but the few passages devoted to rural unemployment, without providing an overview, insisted on the effects of the restriction, citing for example villagers ready to accept a job for 10 cents a day or a little rice, and giving a list of villages where a dozen heads of families were in absolute unemployment, due to the establishment of the coupon system which had resulted in the closure of very small estates[69]. Village surveys revealed the presence of a large number of villagers who could only be classified in the category of unskilled casual workers. According to the enquiry, these villagers were people who had a more regular job on the plantations before the depression. The Labour Controller in his report of 1931 anticipated the situation: “in the rural areas where work available largely depend on estates there has undoubtedly been a great reduction in the work available (…) making men who would not normally work for daily pay, seek for employment”[70]. It is unfortunately not possible in the current state of knowledge to compare these data with those of the pre-crisis to verify these assertions which, if well-founded, would mean that depression had led to a lasting structural change.
How did the authorities react to the spread of unemployment? Most district administrators first minimized the seriousness of the situation to avoid being dragged into an interventionist policy, while a few sought to act in favour of special cases, for example by distributing more generously land to needy villagers. The administration woke up from its nonchalance only under the spur of political action. In 1931, the first general elections in the history of the country were held; dominated more by rivalries of people or parties than by debates of ideas, they were hardly influenced by the economic depression. However, a few rural representatives became aware of the situation during their campaign, and once elected sought to remedy it by putting pressure on the administrative apparatus. This was the case of the Minister of Agriculture, D.S. Senanayake, who developed peasant settlement schemes in his stronghold; and of less influential figures, such as E.A.P. Wijeratne, member of State Council for Kägalla, who was faced with the disbelief of the Assistant Government Agent and the refusal of the Labour Controller when he asked for the opening of emergency public works[71]. When the request was made by the peasants themselves, it was even less likely to succeed: in the same district in 1932, villagers who asked the government to organize public works to repair irrigation channels were told that they had to undertake them at their own expense; they replied that being undernourished it was too hard a task for them; the Agent commented: “during the rubber boom, it was so easy to earn a living that these people have lost the habit of working”[72]. Such a reaction should not be surprising if we remember that the government itself set an example, by massively compressing public works expenditure. It was only during the malaria epidemic that government decided to start public works, catching up but too late for five years of inaction. And it is finally only in 1937-1938 that the problem was taken up following the recommendations of the reports on unemployment and immigration, and the results of the 1936 elections that led to a radicalization of political life. The planters then agreed to employ villagers, because the recovery of rubber was accompanied by the adoption of new transplanted plants instead of old trees: felling and planting are operations for which villagers had always been employed in large numbers by the estates. The districts of Kägalla and Kalutara were the main beneficiaries of this movement. A number of small village tea plantations were reopened, and small businesses such as coir factories resumed their activities; the construction of minor roads in 1935 finally facilitated the access of villagers to plantations. Another reason that pushed planters to these new choices was the increased difficulty they encountered in obtaining Indian labour due to the first restrictive measures of the authorities of the peninsula. Finally, political pressures relayed by press campaigns urged them to do so[73]. Within a year, the percentage of Sinhalese on large plantations went from 10.9% in 1936 (average 1929-1936 9.9%) to 14.2% while between 1932 and 1934 the increase was only two points (9% to 10.9%). The statistics do not distinguish the Kandyan villagers from the Sinhalese who came from the coastal regions of the Low country to work on the estates, but in 1938, workers residing on the plantations represented 30% of the Sinhalese employed on the large plantations[74]. To promote the movement, the authorities initially organized labour cooperatives, to avoid the multiplication of parasitic intermediaries and to ensure the financing of advances for resident workers. They then sought to regularize the conditions of employment, and to eliminate frequent abuses, such as the irregular payment of wages, or the payment by food vouchers on the shop of the estate[75]. Finally, two recruitment agencies were established in 1937-38, one in the southern province, the other near Kandy in the center of the island. Their goal was to get the Sinhalese to live on the plantations, but a large number of new recruits left the domain as soon as they arrived “finding conditions of life so uncongenial” both in terms of housing and discipline. From the point of view of the recruiters, another obstacle was the dispersion of the potential workforce; there was no such thing as “a definite reservoir of labour willing to take up work on estates in gangs or families”. Finally, although the argument was not openly put forward, relations between the Sinhalese and the Tamils had always been difficult insofar as the language, religion, and caste system were different. The failure of recruitment agencies led to their closure, also explained by the slowdown in the economic recovery from the end of 1937[76].
The tribulations of small producers
Ceylon is often presented as a country of small owners compared to India where in the colonial period the large property (in fact often more theoretical than effective) of the zamindar and other absentee owners dominated. This particularity is attributed to the historical circumstances which spared the island the tax collection systems established by the Muslim sovereigns and taken over by the British, and to the Dutch rule in Ceylon which imposed a legal system copied from Roman law. Such an image should not mask the existence of very large estates – in this case, the plantations owned by British or Ceylonese capitalists, nor that of a few large rice properties, often belonging to temples. The estimates of the number of landless peasants are perfectly contradictory, and this is not the place to go into detail of the controversies raised by the data of the 1936-1939 surveys, which give percentages varying according to the district between 28% and 56%, the average being around 40%. These figures are certainly overestimated, if only because of the basis used for this calculation: young people that did not yet have access to family heritage were considered landless peasants. For the moment, we can simply say that more than half of the villagers owned land; if we follow the conclusions of Lal Jayawardena, it would be the vast majority of families. I would rather say that a majority of villagers had access, directly or indirectly, to the profits provided by the exploitation of paddy fields, gardens and highlands.
In the paddy sector, a very large part of the locally produced rice was self-consumed by the farmer or by the owner who gave out his land in sharecropping. The fall in rice prices had no other effect, in this case, than to discourage any expansion of areas. There were a number of large ‘rice villages’, especially in the Kurunägala and Kägalla districts, which marketed a fraction of their production; most of these villages were inhabited by members of the Batgama caste (whose name means ‘rice village people’) who were placed very low in the social hierarchy. The purchasing power of these peasants, some of whom were owners and others tenants, was seriously affected and the debt of sharecroppers with their owners increased; money became dramatically rare in these villages, which were seriously affected during the 1934-1935 malaria epidemic[77]. The impact of the rice price depression was also specially felt in the two areas of large-scale paddy cultivation: the district of Hambantota and its margins on the one hand, that of Batticaloa on the other. In the first, the price of rice paid to the producer collapsed by 50%, and three-quarters of farmers traditionally indebted to their owner were no longer able to pay their due[78]. In the second, owners who employed agricultural labourers could no longer sell their production on their traditional markets, the Jaffna Peninsula and the province of Uva, due to the competition of cheap Burmese rice. The situation was all the more serious as the government had set up credit unions to finance production, which went bankrupt one after the other. Local notables insisted on the abolition of irrigation taxes and the imposition of a surcharge on imported rice, but their request was ignored by the government which considered that the low price of rice was in the present circumstances the only way to avoid a catastrophe in the plantation sector[79].
It has already been explained under what circumstances plans were adopted to restrict production, or rather to restrict exportable quantities, first of tea and then of rubber. These plans had been conceived in European metropolises, without small producers, particularly numerous but disorganized. The intention of large planters was to see the competition of small owners, which they considered responsible for overproduction, disappear. In a confidential letter sent in 1932 by the Ceylon Association in London (the lobby of Ceylon planters) to the head of the South Asia department at the Secretariat for the Colonies, these ulterior motives are clearly expressed. The Association was concerned about projects to limit production, and was rather in favour of limiting exports. Limiting production “will in fact produce a very serious danger of still greater overproduction when restriction terminates in five years’ time. Not only those areas, largely native, which produce 50 million lbs. of unwanted tea be kept in being, but also young areas not yet in production will be encouraged to come in production”[80].
In times of depression, small holdings had an advantage over large estates: their cost price was lower, they had fewer fixed costs, and they employed a workforce that was not subject to any wage regulation; in 1925, the cost of producing a pound of latex was estimated at 20-25 cents for a large estate, 12-15 cents for a village property, but the latter produced rubber of lower quality[81]. Economists do not agree on the respective degree of flexibility in a period of depression: according to P.T. Bauer, the production of large plantations varies little, while the elasticity of small ones is strong, because of the ability of small farmers to turn to alternative incomes; for J.C. Kunhardt, on the contrary, peasant farmers tend to increase production to make up for the shortfall in prices; for G. H. Peiris, large plantations adapt their production to the situation by taking advantage of the fact that a large part of their labour force is composed of occasional workers, and small producers do the same[82]. My observations also go in the latter direction, at least for rubber and the period prior to the establishment of the restriction. In 1932, 40% of the areas of rubber were untapped. But in the case of tea, it seems that the production of large plantations had resisted much better while a number of small gardens were abandoned even before the restriction, for technical and economic reasons, as many small producers who used to sell their fresh leaves to the factories of the large plantations lost that outlet[83].
The restriction mechanisms had therefore the purpose and effect of endorsing a pre-existing trend in tea, and in the case of rubber to enlarge the gap between large estates whose production was maintained, and small ones, where it was stopped. In order to make this discrimination practically possible and socially acceptable, compensation was given to small producers, by the issue of coupons. The system was not new, it had been experimented with under the Stevenson plan to restrict rubber production during the 1920s; but while in the Stevenson plan, it was theoretically forbidden for the small producer to sell his coupons, that is to say his quota, to a large producer, this possibility was now offered and discreetly encouraged[84]. The survey of the 76,149 small tea holdings was the subject of many challenges: the opportunity was too good for small planters to inflate their income cheaply, by obtaining from an understanding headman the signing of a false declaration, with if necessary the complicity of a planter interested in the low-priced buyout of their coupons: in Kägalla 60% of the declarations were considered false! According to an administrator in charge of verifying the declarations “tea control seems to be regarded as a philanthropic organization by which small holders get something for nothing”[85]. A year later, the same operation was repeated for the 97,996 small rubber holdings and proved to be even more difficult : “the most troublesome work”, commented a controller in his diary. “They were only concerned about the coupons and not the land”. Others noted a multiplication of thefts of rubber plants, “many rubber plants having a migratory existence”, everyone seeking to have the maximum extent planted before or during the survey[86]. In 1935, in the midst of the epidemic, the Kägalla Planters’ Association was busy hunting shadow holdings, and offered the government its services to do so. A minority of planters were hostile to the negotiability of coupons; one of them declared that “there was no better work for the villager than to get into the habit of rubber tapping by which they would earn much more than by selling their coupons and sitting on their backs”[87]. But once the evaluation was done, small producers almost without exception sold their coupons to a planter. A number of shopkeepers and traffickers appeared, who were in charge of collecting coupons for this or that planter and of course received their commission on the operation: “All coupons pass into the hands of shopkeepers when prices are low; the villagers sell their coupons in advance. Now the price of the coupon on the market is 25 or 26 cents but the coupons were sold 10 or 15 cents by the villagers”. There were indeed significant variations in the prices of the coupon between the moment they were issued and everyone wanted to sell, and the end of the year, so that hoarding developed. The coupon thus involuntarily became a kind of parallel currency, it was exchanged and endorsed, it was used to pledge loans from a lender or a neighbour. As for the registration of property in the controller’s books, it was soon considered a safe title of ownership, in a country where registration did not exist, and where notaries accepted any declaration. But the sale of the coupon did not necessarily lead to the cessation of production. When there was a trafficker to buy their latex, the villagers did not hesitate to sell with both hands but at a very low price[88]. The selling price of the coupon alone was not always remunerative. In 1938, a tea coupon (for an annual pound of tea) was sold 35 cents: an acre of tea would yield about 73.5 rupees. The average area of a small tea holding is 0.8 acre: the rent provided by the coupons was therefore on average 58.8 rupees per year, 4.9 rupees per month. However, village surveys estimated that the resources necessary for the livelihood of a peasant family amounted to about 15 rupees per month. The situation of the villager who owned a plot of rubber was no better. The average size of these micro-holdings was 1.33 acres; an acre yielded about 41.25 rupees (the coupon was sold 25 cents); the annual revenue was on average 54.8 rupees, 4.57 rupees per month. By way of comparison, in the village of Kulupana, when work was resumed, the rubber tappers earned 7 rupees per month, while the teacher earned 50 rupees, and the shopkeeper could go up to 80 rupees[89].
It is clear that the sale of coupons lightened the burden of the small peasantry, but that other resources had to be found, possibly by illegally selling their production. In a village, only a minority of wealthy peasants had enough to live on their income, and it is in fact mainly outsiders, shopkeepers and other inhabitants of small towns, who took advantage of the situation. It was precisely these small absentee owners who employed village day labourers to exploit their land; as the sale of their coupons was enough for them to live, they completely ceased exploitation, further reducing the amount of jobs available in the village. The trend towards the abandonment of plantations and the rise in unemployment took on worrying proportions to the point that the Controller was considering stopping the distribution of coupons to abandoned holdings, or finding a way to lower the price of coupons to make them less attractive; thus, the tea factories operating with leaves bought from the peasants closed one after the other (nine around Balangoda town)[90]. The issue was raised before the State Council. A council member representing the interests of these manufacturers took a stand against the alienability of tea coupons, also advancing the argument that the Sinhalese worker would be replaced by the Indian; he questioned the European planters who, according to him, were jealous of the natives capable of producing at a lower cost price. The spokesman for European interests strongly replied. In 1935, another representative raised the question without success. Finally in 1936, the first motion tabled at the opening of the assembly by one of the two Marxist members who had just been elected, N.M. Perera, aimed to abolish the transferability of coupons: “The present condition of the villages is due not only to the dire consequences of malaria, but also to the dire consequences of the coupon system.”[91]. During the discussion of the motion much later the debate opposed the defenders of unemployed workers (N.M. Perera) and those of small owners, such as the member for Gampola, A.S.S. Gunawardena, who stated that the coupon system had greatly improved the condition of small holders by freeing them from their debts, and that these people, even if they no longer employed workers on their land, gave them other work or provided them with food[92].
The situation of small owners of coconut plantations was significantly different. They were much more numerous: there is no reliable evaluation, but it can be argued that every villager who owned a garden belonged to this category. They were not affected by any restrictive measure, so that their ability to sell their production alone determined the level of their income: their fate was in the hands of traders, arrack contractors or manufacturers of oil or copra. Prices were very irregular. The number of plantations belonging to Europeans, in Ceylon as well as in the Philippines and in other producing countries, was too small to induce them to control production. Although the fall in prices was apparent as early as 1927, the villagers continued to plant until 1929. The collapse of prices in 1931, the recovery of 1932 linked to Indian demand, the relapse of 1933, the recovery of the end of 1936 partially obliterated by a decline in production resulted in a constant instability of the income[93]. When prices were lowest, the profit of a one-hectare property, which is already considerable, was less than 5 rupees per year, roughly what the sale of coupons of a micro-holding could pay off in one month. It was therefore impossible for a small-holder to live on his income and he had necessarily to work elsewhere or produce fruits or vegetables for the market. On the other hand, as the plantations did not close, it seems that unemployment itself was less marked in the coconut areas than elsewhere, but the misery was certainly not less, and no one escaped it in the villages, the small owner being no better than the small wage earner and often being one with him.
The drying up of savings.
The gap between the moment when the decline in income occurred and when the social effects of the crisis became acute could be explained by the presence of peasant savings. But all contemporaries agree to deplore what they called the lack of foresight of the Sinhalese villager, which they oppose to the thriftiness of the Tamil villager, a stereotype that contains a good dose of exaggeration[94]. The truth is that the climatic conditions prevailing in Tamil areas (a tropical climate with dry season) encourages savings, while the virtual absence of seasons of the humid tropical environment where the majority of the Sinhalese population lives favours a certain carelessness of the next day. One must avoid an excess of schematism: hoarding was not unknown in the Sinhalese villages, and the depression put an end to it. In 1931, the Registrar of cooperative societies noticed that due to the dry-up of employment on plantations, there was a striking increase in the amount of money rupees in the coffers of cooperatives: “In many cases these have come out of holes in the ground. It is a very good thing that they should come out of that very unsatisfactory type of bank, but I am afraid that their appearance means that the pinch is beginning to be felt in the villages”[95]. The Settlement Officers responsible for settling on the villagers or selling to them the lands they claimed met with more and more difficulties in obtaining payment of the survey fees or the price for the lots, as the money was scarce, while during the 1920s peasants were ready to pay for an indisputable property right. The case of Galdunupitiya village is quite typical: “ Some lots advertised for the second or third time. All the claimants as they have done before declared that they had no money, and saw no reason why they should pay even if they had. After a lot of talk, I managed to get one man to buy one lot for which he had to pay 1.30 cash down. He produced one rupee and then disgorged the balance of 30 cents mostly in one cent pieces at the rate of a cent a minute”[96]. The scarcity of money led more peasants to pay their local tax by working a few days a year to repair the roads, although the rates had often been reduced by half, and such work was considered socially humiliating; to the point that in 1933 the village committees that managed these funds found themselves with a manpower they could not employ[97]. Gold jewelry, the traditional form of hoarding among Tamils and Sinhalese bourgeois and wealthy peasants, became rare. Pawnshops in the south of the island had to close down because residents no longer had anything to give as collateral. In the absence of savings, could the villagers have lived on loans? Village surveys reveal very high debt ratios. Depending on the district, between 70% and 80% of families were in debt; the median debt per family was less than 50 rupees, and if we examine the destination of the loans, the majority of them were devoted to food expenses and contracted with shopkeepers or relatives[98]. But with the decline in activity of Chettiar, credit became less and less easy, lenders devoted most of their activities to getting repaid old debts, and shopkeepers were in trouble; the fall in land prices and marketable products reduced the value of guarantees (mortgages or crops) that villagers could provide.
The decline in the prices of consumer products.
Peasant savings made it possible to meet exceptional expenses (purchase of land, ceremonies) but were in no way used for consumer expenses, for which shop debt was commonly used; if the amount of these debts did not immediately increase in unsustainable proportions, it is mainly because of the sharp drop in rice prices and in some everyday consumer items such as textiles. It is difficult to follow the movement of these prices at the consumer level because of the absence or uncertain nature of market price data. Economists use import price indices, a large part of everyday food being imported, but the question is to what extent the price decline were passed on by retailers; we know, for example, that shopkeepers operating near plantations had lowered their prices enough for immigrants to desert the stores of the estates that continued to sell at a high price. But there was a market to win: what was the attitude of the small village merchant in a monopolistic position, himself pressed by suppliers less inclined to do credit, due to the contraction of Chettiar operations. To the extent that we can rely on rice price data, they confirm that the decline was only reflected incompletely and with delay and they also show that other essential foods, such as chillis or dried fish, had not decreased in similar proportions. With regard to textiles, there are no similar price lists, but a number of qualitative indications suggest that low-priced Japanese imports had largely penetrated rural markets, until the imposition of quotas under the imperial system of preference established by the Ottawa agreements led to a brutal price increase in fabrics, “still lowering the very low standard of living of the poor peasantry of the district, according to the Government Agent in Kurunägala, and appreciably increasing the hardships of the sick caused by inadequate clothing” [99]. These reservations once made, it is indisputable that a decrease in the price of rice by almost half between 1930 and 1934 considerably lightened the burden of the vast majority of the village population: indeed, according to the figures collected by socio-economic surveys, rice represented between 50 and 75% of household spending at that time, and with the exception of the villages of the dry zone and a limited number of large rice-growing localities in the interior, more than half of the rice consumed was imported. In the villages studied by the 1936-1938 surveys, the percentage of imported rice was estimated between 60 and 75% of consumption depending on the locality. It is generally to this fall in prices that contemporaries attribute the absence of deep misery[100]. Economists studying the period argued that the overall decline in the standard of living had not been as significant as might have been expected. The maintenance of the volume level of rice imports between 1930 and 1933, while the immigrant population of the plantations tended to decline, corroborates this view. However, there was a price that did not fall, that of arrack: consequently the variations in the level of alcohol consumption would be an excellent index of the standard of living, if their movement were not affected by two variables that make its interpretation difficult: the variations in the number of plantation workers, large consumers; and the progress of the temperance movement, which reduced open consumption and encouraged clandestine distillation. Despite everything, their curve is significant especially at the level of certain districts.
Back to food production
In the pre-war colonial domain, the ideal of many administrators was to see the peasants stay where they were, or return to where they came from. Peasants do not bother with theories; if they have the material means, they naturally fall back on food crops as an expedient while waiting for better days. In the case of Ceylon, this decline could take the form of an extension of areas or an intensification of rice yields, or an increase in vegetable, fruit and tuber crops in gardens and on uncultivated land.
The state of stagnation in paddy production and yields was linked to competition from imported rice, the facilities offered by other sources of income, and the nature of production ratios in this sector. Of these three factors, one was strengthened (decrease in rice prices), another attenuated (scarcity of jobs) the third remained unchanged. No spectacular development could be expected. As a Settlement Officer noticed in 1934 “Extremely low paddy returns. The villagers hold floods and the ravages of animals responsible, but the truth is that yields are low where the fields are near a road: the work necessary for the production and marketing of rice is not paid enough”[101]. The fact that rice cultivation for self-consumption developed under these conditions in limited areas shows how severe the impact of depression was. Thus, the swampy valley bottoms (owita) of the districts of Kalutara and Galle, abandoned during the rubber boom or even before, or converted into rubber plantations, were again cleared (asweddumized, in the Anglo-Sinhalese sabir) as early as 1930[102]. In the North Western province, coconut plantations established with the help of the government on previously irrigated lands were reconverted into paddy fields[103]. In the Kandy district “the villagers who had been in the habit of supplementing their resources by work on tea and rubber plantations, no longer able to obtain this type of job, cultivated their land more intensively”[104]. But if the phenomenon had been general, it would certainly not have escaped the attention of the agronomic stations whose managers do not mention it in their reports. The problem is that we do not have any reliable statistical data on the evolution of local paddy areas and yields, because the colonial administration was concerned until then only with the plantation sector. The Director of Agriculture admitted in 1931 that “the examination of returns of rice imports are some indications of conditions bearing upon the paddy industry within the island”[105]. We are as unarmed as he was. It is not enough to compare the evolution of the population with that of rice imports: it is also necessary to weigh the result obtained according to the number of residents of the plantations who were proportionally larger consumers of imported rice than the villagers, and take into account a possible reduction in the consumption of rice per capita, which is precisely one of the data that we would be most interested to know.
Until 1931 rice imports varied hand in hand with the number of migrant workers, from 1931 to 1933 they were maintained despite their exodus which suggests an increase in indigenous consumption. The recovery of imports in 1934 corresponds to the return of emigrants and a catastrophic drought that annihilated local production, their strong growth in 1935 and their maintenance at a high level afterwards are linked to the sequelae of the malaria epidemic. In any case, the maintenance of imports between 1930 and 1933 excludes any significant growth in local paddy production; given the departure of more than 100,000 Indians, it suggests, on the contrary, a reduction in this production, or an unlikely increase in per capita consumption. The process of intensification of rice production without modernization described as involution, which Clifford Geertz observed in Java, did not occur in Ceylon: the British imperial system, different from the Dutch system, was based on the sharing of tasks, by virtue of the same principle that had led to the abolition of the Corn laws in the previous century. The profitability of plantations, a labour industry, was largely based on the maintenance of low wages made possible by the import of cheap Burmese rice. Planters hardly imported vegetables which were locally produced, and it was precisely in the horticultural sector that the phenomena of intensification and extension of crops were the most marked. To the point that in 1936, nearly 200 hectares of paddy fields were planted with vegetables during the dead season[106]. The first reflex of the villagers was to turn to substitute commercial production and not to food products: thus they cut down rubber trees in Kägalla to grow coffee and pineapple instead; elsewhere they experimented without much success cotton or pepper[107]. Other peasants who were less enterprising, or less stimulated by the market, or closer to famine, resorted to the traditional expedient in the years of scarcity: the cultivation of chenas on highlands. The problem was that in some districts the growth of plantations had not left the slightest space available, and that the State had strengthened its control over ‘waste lands’ since the beginning of the century. The resort to chenas was not general, according to the administrator of Kurunägala who wrote in 1932: “There was not the great increase of chena cultivation that might have been expected for food production in view of the failure to get any profit from rubber or good profit from coconut cultivation”[108]. It is the growth of permanent and not temporary cultivation of vegetables and tubers in gardens that was most marked; the phenomenon was general in the wet zone, especially near the rubber plantations, where this cultivation was undertaken by the rubber tappers who had lost their jobs, but this activity was described as unusual by some administrators when it extended to the tea areas in the upper country[109].
When employment resumed on plantations, what happened to food cultivation? It may have experienced a certain decline: at the end of 1938, in the district of Kägalla vast spaces that the peasants had previously planted in älwi (unirrigated rice) were abandoned: the villagers said that this cultivation required a long fallow, which is correct, but it also turned out that they had resumed work on the plantations, which led them to neglect their land. In other regions the change seems to have been sustainable with the transition from intermittent cultivation of chenas to permanent cultivation of gardens; the remarks of the administrator of Nuwara Eliya are relevant in this regard: “ wherever plots of lands are available, vegetable cultivation has become very popular in the district especially during the maha season and is the chief source of money making in the villages; there is a ready market in the neighbouring estates and Sunday fairs”[110].
The growth of food production therefore did not mean that the villagers were returning to self-subsistence. On the contrary, everything indicates that it was accompanied by a marked development of trade[111]. The period of depression paradoxically coincides with that of the development of a dense road network traveled by bus lines and many lorries. After a brief period of stagnation between 1930 and 1933, the number of vehicles in circulation increased by 73% from 1933 to 1938; railway traffic, it is true, stagnated or decreased; railways were used almost exclusively for the transport of the product of large plantations, and it is likely that a transfer from one mode of transport to another occurred. But the multiplication of rural markets during the same period and the observations of contemporaries show that at least part of this spectacular increase in the vehicle fleet was due to the progress of trade in the village sector. The rise of Sunday markets (pola) predated the crisis; it was originally linked to the increase in the purchasing power of plantation residents who, not working on Sundays, went down to stock up in the neighbouring villages, buying from merchants and increasingly from small village producers. Very quickly the small urban merchants followed their example, so that the markets proliferated along all the roads leading to Colombo, Kandy, Galle or Jaffna. This spontaneous proliferation worried the authorities, first because fraud was frequent, and because it was feared that the ‘improvident villager’ would sell the stocks necessary for his livelihood under the pressure of merchants with whom he would have gone into debt, and the swelling of vegetable production was such that prices collapsed and farmers were forced to mortgage their upcoming harvests from local merchants. The return to land was far from being a panacea[112].
Land hunger and colonization schemes.
The redevelopment of food crops in densely populated areas where plantations controlled large areas came up against another problem: many villagers had no longer enough land at their disposal; and when they had enough, the unequal distribution of land reserved the benefits of these crops for the larger landowners. Depression was therefore indirectly responsible for an increased hunger for land. The Land Commission reports mentioned it in the late 1920s but at the time the demand for land was rather a demand from the rural and urban middle classes eager to take advantage of the high price of export products to open new plantations. While during the 1930s, it was the pressing demand of a jobless peasantry, which became aware that in lean times, it was with the small profits of the gardens or the sale of coupons that one could best survive. The period of the Great Depression coincides with the questioning of agrarian policy hitherto followed by the colonial administration[113]. In a first phase, which lasted until about the beginning of the 20th century, the villagers tried to appropriate the lands necessary for the expansion of their crops with the complicity of the indigenous headmen and against the always assertive but unequally effective will of the British administration. In a second phase, with the establishment of the Settlement Department, the government strove to practice a direct administration to fight against the actions of headmen who, together with the planters and the new class of indigenous land traffickers, plundered the villagers of their lands, and the government of the profits it expected from sales to planters. In the early 1930s, the conjunction of the widely publicized Land Commission’s conclusions, the institution of universal suffrage, and the Depression, resulted in a wave of encroachments on uncultivated lands and, for the first time, by legislation, a ‘decriminalisation’ of these practices. The unpublished diaries of the Settlement Officers show how the normal process of land sales to peasants was disturbed. These administrators, unlike district officers, were field men who resided for days or even weeks in the villages. They were brought to know all the land transactions and get a precise idea of the financial situation of each village family. As early as 1929, the cases of peasants unable to pay for the land they claimed multiplied and traffickers and indigenous owners of large plantations took advantage of it, as in the typical example of Mangulagama village: “quite a number of lots sold were at once transferred, before the ink of the land register was dry, to the proprietor of a large coconut estate, who was there waiting for his prey. These lots would have been of inestimable value for future village expansion. Instead of that they have in effect been alienated at slightly over 10 Rs an acre to an outside capitalist”[114]. Despite the crisis supposed to dry up the resources of plantation owners, the phenomenon continued in 1932: “Piliyapitiya: the capitalists in most cases paid the full sale value, but the villagers were unable to even pay a first deposit, that is 1/10th price of their lands. In such cases, a few hours’ time was given to them to make the payment, which they did during the course of that day. There were two instances where the villagers on being told the sale value negotiated with outside capitalists who were present, and obtained from them the necessary sum. In these latter cases, it is surmised that the villagers arranged to sell their lands to the capitalists.”[115]. Settlement operations, in a situation of scarcity of money, and drying up of savings, had the consequence of aggravating the indebtedness of villagers and favouring the alienation of their lands – a result diametrically opposed to the objective pursued. Settlement Officers encountered increasing difficulties in making the villagers pay, and from 1933 were often forced to postpone sales operations, particularly in the rubber growing areas of Sabaragamuwa and in the coconut regions of Kurunägala[116]. Although the land was put up for sale at a very low price of 10 rupees per acre, sometimes no one showed up. An increased number of peasants asked for free settlements, under a clause that authorized Settlement Officers in the Kurunägala district alone to assign to each villager possessing paddy fields a triple area of highland[117]. The link between unemployment and hunger for land was made explicit in this request made by villagers in the district of Kurunägala in 1932: “Certain villagers stated that as they could not earn money as labourers, the only way they had of trying to earn money and spending their time usefully was to plant coconuts. They wanted to be allowed to plant chenas with coconuts. They were informed that they will have to wait till the settlement enquiries were completed”[118]. Sometimes the Settlement Officer, believing that depression served as an excuse for peasants not to pay, adopted a rigid attitude. One of these administrators was faced with concerted obstruction, in a village where was only 8 hectares left to share between 200 families; a phenomenon all the more significant as it was unexpected for those who took for granted the passivity of the Sinhalese peasantry: “There was something very like a riot in Nanwatta shortly after I got there. A crowd as big as that assembled for an enquiry gathered round me, weeping women with howling children and men who seemed on the verge of physical collapse demanded land”[119]. In the district of Kägalla, where the Settlement Officers hardly exercised their activities, as the amount of available land was minimal, the last uncultivated areas were eagerly coveted by villagers and planters. The government planned to establish colonies in favour of the former, and to reserve them for landless peasants unable to pay the price of a settlement: the land would therefore be allocated as usufruct and not as alienable property, to villagers recruited within a limited radius, who would be invited to reside on their lots. The first colony, that of Paspolakande, was opened in 1927; the success was not very marked at the beginning, but the second tranche of the same project, inaugurated in 1931, attracted 300 candidates for 50 plots. A series of other colonies, established after 1931 on the initiative of E.A.P. Wijeratne (the representative of the district at the State Council), were a great success; they were located almost all in the canton of Kinigoda, where for more than a generation the peasants had embarked on small-scale commercial crops, and where a systematic settlement was carried out during the 1910s, reserving for the State well-defined areas that it was therefore possible to give to allottees. In the northern part of Kinigoda there were 240 hectares for more than 1,000 candidates, and, to the testimony of the agent of government in charge of distribution “the deserving cases are so numerous that it is very difficult to make a selection”[120]. The beneficiaries rushed to plant vegetables, cassava, millet, and banana trees, at the same time as young coconut plants that would take about ten years to mature. Nevertheless, tensions soon appeared between the settlers and neighbouring villagers who did not benefit from the project while they considered these lands as theirs. The villagers took revenge by calling the settlers ‘assisted people’. The Kandyan headmen were accused of having shown bias in guiding the choice of English administrators. Caste rivalries were grafted on these jealousies, the peasants of high caste refusing to mix with Batgama villagers, the majority in this canton, and the latter being systematically excluded by some headmen, to the extent that a new distribution had to be made in their favour [121]. The hunger for land was no less in the south of the district of Kägalla: but there the poorer terroirs were hemmed in by large plantations, and the peasantry, less enterprising, had been living for two generations on the crumbs of large estates. The tradition of the cultivation of älwi [unirrigated paddy] on the chenas had however survived the alienation to the planters of the vast majority of the highlands. As early as January 1931, 176 villagers signed a petition in which they demanded forest land to plant älwi: they had read in the newspapers that it was given to the peasants of Kalutara. A year later, the demand was still pressing in localities affected by unemployment in rubber plantations, where there were many landless peasants[122]. In a group of villages located near Kitulgala, the case took a critical turn: the villagers helped themselves, without waiting for the good will of the authorities, fearing that their land would be used for a colony for the benefit of settlers from elsewhere. There was only a block of 16 hectares left, all that remained of the several hundred hectares once devoted to chena cultivation, which were gradually alienated by the peasants themselves who sold them to Muslim traffickers serving as intermediaries for planters, or to small indigenous capitalists. Regretting their mistake, a number of peasants reoccupied the land of one of these plantations that the buyer abandoned due to the depression. Finally the Marxist deputy N.M. Perera elected in 1936 obtained from the authorities in 1938 the release of the ban on cultivating reserved land in the Kelani Ganga valley, this same region where six years before the peasants had taken the initiative to occupy land. In a further move, Perera pressed for the State to buy poorly managed plantations to distribute them to peasant allottees[123]. In these new demanding attitudes, it is difficult to determine what was the share of peasant initiative and that of external incentives. Informal interviews with former residents of the district I had in 1978-1979 suggest the following pattern: the new electoral system deprived indigenous headmen of their privilege of exclusive intermediaries between the colonial power and the peasantry; some politicians took advantage of it and their initiatives released a long-contained flow of demands. The new settlements soon escaped the control of the traditional leaders, to become the business of politicians, flanked by influential mudalali (petty traders) established nearby, who quickly kept the peasants in their debt and became the new notables.
A limited rural mobility
Rural exodus represented in many countries another way out of the Great Depression. But this possibility was limited, in Ceylon, for two reasons: one of an economic nature: the urban sector was no less affected by the crisis, to the point that population movement was oriented rather in the direction of the villages; the other of a social nature: one of the most striking features of the behaviour of the Sinhalese peasants was their reluctance to move away from their village. Nevertheless, there was a prospect, the repopulation of the jungles of the dry zone. The Rajarata (land of kings) had remained for a millennium and a half the center of the power and prosperity of the ancient hydraulic civilization. Abandoned between the 12th and 14th centuries as a result of a combination of unfavourable factors, the Rajarata had attracted the attention of colonial administrators at the end of the 19th century. While archeologists with the support of the authorities began to raise the ruins of the ancient cities of Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa, engineers restored some of the ancient dams, and a few nationalists promoted the idea of returning to a glorious past. But at that time no mass movement was emerging: on the contrary, it was difficult to attract settlers, and in general only adventurers or members of Kandyan ‘low castes’ (especially Batgama) settled there. Many abandoned after a season of cultivation, undermined by malaria, discouraged by a material and psychological isolation particularly trying for peasants accustomed to the sociable existence of the villages, and for whom recourse to family solidarity in case of need was vital. The attachment to the terroir, considered by contemporaries as a cultural trait, is one of those complex phenomena whose analysis raises theoretical controversies. There were exceptions to the refusal to expatriate, such as that of the inhabitants of the southern districts of Galle and Matara who since the Dutch period migrated to the rest of the island to work as artisans, carpenters, shopkeepers and traffickers of all kinds. What was special about them? In terms of caste, there were proportionally many Karava (originally fishermen), Salagama (cinnamon peelers), Durava (toddy extractors), and relatively few Goyigama (theoretically cultivators). The three above mentioned castes settled in the island at a relatively later date and have always been more mobile if only because of their original professions. A second originality of the region is that it had experienced early population growth and was commonly considered ‘overcrowded’[124].
With regard to the Kandyans of the central districts of the country, if it is true that until the middle of the 20th century they showed many preventions against mobility. Before the 1940s, two factors seem to have slowed down emigration: the insufficiency of means of transport, and the influence of dominant families who retained enough material resources to ensure the livelihood of their dependents, especially members of the ‘lower castes’, and enough prestige to prevent them from leaving. In this regard, one can quote two successive administrators of the district of Kägalla[125]: “In the division most affected by the fall in the price of tea and rubber, the pressure of economic stress is not as severe as one believes it to be from the considerable number of men who, even in the villages, want work. I have been astounded by the answers I have had from village headmen when I questioned them closely on the number of men who are not only landless or out of work, but also without any relatives on whom they can sponge (…) And yet when I enquire what prospect there is of getting these men from the area near Talduwa to migrate 15 miles to peasant proprietor allotments I hope to make in Kitulgala, I am assured that the men will not go even so far from their village. Economic stress in this locality then seems to fall short of the point when it exerts enough pressure to disturb custom and habit”. In other words, it is the survival of traditional structures that would make it possible to face the crisis. “The low mobility of the villager is not entirely due to his lack of entrepreneurial spirit, but at least partially to the awareness that once out of his home and his family group, essential products such as salt, jaggery (palm sugar), sugar or tea will cost him more, but that an acre of land will hardly provide him with a marketable surplus”. A Settlement Officer reported the answer of a simple peasant whom he suggested to emigrate: “And how shall we live while we build new houses and wait for the harvest?”[126]
The pressure of the crisis finally proved to be strong enough to push a few villagers to migrate in the mid-1930s, when the government organized the allotment of uncultivated areas at a reasonable distance from the villages, in the Kalutara district (Pasdun korale east), and later in well-organised colonies in the Rajarata (Kalawewa, Nachchaduwa) “The effect of the slump in the stimulation of colonization have been very noticeable during the year under review”, wrote in 1932 the Land Commissioner[127] “The peasant is at ordinary times attached to his village and naturally loath to emigrate. During the last 50 years the population of the wet zone has increased by leaps and bounds. Up to the beginning of the present slump this population was largely supported by various forms of employment which was provided at its doors by the prosperity of the major industries. As the depression increased these means of livelihood were gradually curtailed and in some cases cut off altogether. The village population was thrown back upon its resources, and it was then found that the available village land was insufficient to support the largely increased numbers. The result has been that the villagers of the cultivating classes have been more and more compelled to go further afield and seek localities in which Crown land still remained available for allotment to them. This has enabled extensive settlement of peasants from the Kalutara and Colombo districts in the Pasdun korale east colonies, from Galle district in Urugasmanhandiya area, and the development of large acreages under Nachchaduwa and Kalawewa in the North Central province”. But next year “the return of better times in the tea and rubber industry providing employment for increasing numbers of villagers, who have for the last 2 or 3 years been deprived of this additional means of livelihood, militates against colonization. The villager is naturally loath to leave his home and permanently migrate to what is to him a new country (…) He will only be induced to make the plunge after he is satisfied that sufficient means of livelihood are not to be found in his own village”[128]
The attraction of the Rajarata was a new phenomenon during the 1930s. It was linked to the publicity given to colonization projects, and to the rise of a nostalgic representation of the Sinhalese past, which presented the rebirth of this lost country as a revenge on the British occupier and the Tamil invader. But the illusion was short-lived; the State councilor of Anuradhapura, a non-conformist former British administrator, gave this picture of the influx of migrants[129]: “A great number of unemployed from all parts of the island have come to Anuradhapura this year. They come without money and without making enquiries as to the conditions there. They start with a few rupees, either on foot or by bus, and get nothing”. These settlements were far from successful. In addition to the sociological obstacles already mentioned, and countless errors due to the inexperience of those responsible, they stumbled on the problem of the weakness of rice prices. This led to a reflux towards the villages of origin, obvious in 1933-1934. It is true that many villagers returned to the colonies afterwards, judging by the number of settlers established in Rajarata at the time of the 1946 census. But it is difficult to measure the exodus accurately due to a lack of indications on the regions of origin of these new inhabitants and because of the excessive gap between censuses. For example, the village surveys of 1936-38 suggest that outmigration occurred from the villages of the district of Kurunägala, because they note that in 9 villages out of 10 the population decreased compared to 1931, and in four of them by more than 40%; but the location of the villages where the decrease was the strongest suggests an alternative interpretation: mortality resulting from the malaria epidemic. In other districts, the correlation between migration and depression is clearer: in Matale, out of 6 villages studied, 5 lost an average of 11.8% of their population, including 2 that lived from employment on plantations. The only locality whose population increased was a village in the dry zone living in self-subsistence. In his personal diary, Bernard Aluvihare, the elected representative of the region, wrote that landless and unemployed peasants left without enthusiasm to a colony near Elahera, and complained bitterly about the favouritism shown by the indigenous headmen during the distribution of land. In the district of Chilaw, where the population decrease was on average 14%, the most affected village, Bandarahena, was also the one where the proportion of coconut estates belonging to absentee owners was the highest. Who left? Landless peasants, mainly squatters from coastal areas, emigrated first, followed by indigenous peasants forced to sell their land to their creditors[130].
Solidarity and patronage
In the Sinhalese villages, the extended family was no longer the basic social unit. But if conjugal household was the rule, collective solidarity had nevertheless lost none of its strength. In each locality coexisted a certain number of lineages that traditionally divided the terroir into as many lots (pangu) and it is within the lineage that solidarity was first exercised, that allowed the poor relatives to obtain means of subsistence. There was indeed a whole range of invisible resources in the village economy. Some fall under what could be described as a remnant of the gathering economy. It was accepted that poor children, or widows who were not remarried, come to pick fruit in their parents’ gardens, which were never fenced. It was also a rule that they were employed during transplanting and harvesting. They were present at all parties, weddings or funerals, and fed abundantly on these occasions. The tattumaru system described above was able to allow a number of jobless day labourers to reintegrate into the rice cycle, claiming rights that they may have neglected during the period of prosperity. But this phenomenon that could have led to an intensification of rice cultivation probably remained limited, the day labourers being precisely those whose shares in the pangu were too minute to ensure them a livelihood. On the other hand, it is very likely that the practice of ‘family sharecropping’ developed: it is still extremely common[131]. A poor relative was assured of obtaining from a wealthy owner a plot of paddy land or highland, for the duration of a growing season (on average six months). But these expedients were not enough for the poorest, especially since some lineages were poorer than others. In this case, more than the solidarity of the village as a whole, it is the protection of a powerful individual that would be sought.
Patronage relationships are one of the most conspicuous features of Sinhalese society. This was the case since the time of the Kandyan kingdom where, from the king to the peasant, a feudal-type hierarchical organisation grafted on the caste system ensured everyone by virtue of their place in the pyramid a capital of rights and obligations. So it remains today, where any successful man, politician or merchant, civil servant or owner, must maintain a clientele of obliged. To what extent and in what way these links have helped mitigate the effects of depression is one of the questions that is not possible to answer with the help of reliable data. It is certain that the depression initially reduced the ability of the powerful to maintain their clientele at least until the institution of coupons. On the other hand, the disintegration of the social position of traditional leaders limited their means of action. Nevertheless, in Kandyan regions where the caste system remained alive in the 1930s, the dependent of an aristocrat Radala, of a temple (devale) or a Buddhist monastery (vihare), could always expect from his or her protector the assurance of means of subsistence. And in areas where new notables (shopkeepers and teachers) sought to carve out a reputation, their assistance would not fail; but in the context of increasing monetisation, the informal interest loan may tend to prevail over the pure and simple donation. Finally, the marked renaissance of Buddhism in the first half of this century encouraged charitable acts, by virtue of an ethics that valued the performance of meritorious acts (pinkama). It is to charity that colonial administrators attributed the survival of many inhabitants: “the dislocation of the island’s economic life in recent years has very gravely affected the lives and fortunes of very many thousands, and the sums available for relief, whether governmental or local, seem pathetically small and would be so, were it not for the abiding charity of the people which alone keeps utter destitution from of very many homes”[132].
Crime and the Depression.
There is a tradition of rural violence in Ceylon, probably prior to the colonial period, but certainly aggravated by the trouble it has caused. The research conducted by John Rogers makes it possible to clarify its contours[133]. This tradition of violence was clearly different from that of near India or Latin America, for example, in that it had an individual, or family character, more than collective; the main motives were marital jealousy, disputes of boundaries, succession quarrels. The level of physical violence was very high: 6.9 murders per 100,000 inhabitants in 1933, compared to 0.5 in Great Britain, but 10.8 in the United States[134]. It appears to have worsened during the 1880s and 1890s, probably due to the disturbances caused by the great development of plantations and the population growth. The only type of rural crime that was similar to Indian practices was cattle theft that fed a vast traffic over which Muslim dealers held control. In parallel with the growth of employment outside the village, new types of crime (thefts on plantations or construction sites, burglaries) developed whose variations followed those of the economic situation. Thus, the theft of latex became prevalent when rubber reached high prices, in 1925; on the other hand, in times of low prices and restriction of employment on plantations, unemployment promoted theft of food produce. In 1923, in the two districts of Kalutara and Kägalla, a growth in crime of the order of 40% was reported, which was of great concern to producers. It was to be expected that the depression of the 1930s would result in a general increase in this type of petty crime. Police statistics and administrative reports provide abundant but repetitive information on a phenomenon to which the authorities have always been very sensitive. The seriousness of the phenomenon may have been exaggerated by the interest they had in it, just as police statistics were inflated by the growth in the number of police stations created to fight against it. The police superintendent, in his 1933 report, analyzed in detail the mechanisms responsible for the rise of crime[135]. “The low country estates in particular provided employment for the villager when not employed in the cultivation of his own fields (…) With many rubber estates abandoned or placed in a care and maintenance basis, and with the cessation of all building or contract work, those who worked as tappers and others who worked as masons and carpenters are living in the villages with nothing to do and unable to earn a regular wage. There may be little acute poverty in the villages, but there is lack of ready money and the smaller towns where the inhabitants catered for the needs of estate labourers have been particularly very hard hit. There is a great temptation for such people to commit crime. Another result of the depression has been the increased attention paid by the villagers to vegetable cultivation with the result that there have been disputes over land which had previously been lain idle. With less money available for settling land disputes by litigation, villagers have been tempted to take the law into their own hands”. The general evolution of the number of crimes and offenses was much faster than that of the adult population. It ran parallel to that of the economic situation from 1926, the recovery of 1934 resulting in a slight drop in the number of cases. However, this decline can also be explained by the malaria epidemic. Local administrators did not always agree with the police to blame the depression for the situation, and the comparison of the curves by province shows that some of the strongest growths were recorded in areas (North Central and Northern Provinces) where there were no plantations. The distribution by type of crime shows that the progression of acts of violence was stronger than that of burglaries; the depression reducing the value of stolen objects, cases went to the rural court and thus escaped police statistics, but thefts of livestock and agricultural products were experiencing a spectacular boom[136]. This point will keep us because it is especially significant of the mechanisms of depression. In this area too, there was a regression towards self-sufficiency, or rather towards subsistence at the expense of neighbours. The villagers of the North North Western Province returned to the abduction of cattle from neighbouring localities: this type of crime, in strong regression during the 1920s, regained in 1933 its level of 1921. It declined in 1934, particularly in the rubber-growing areas where recruitment resumed, but reached a record level in 1935[137]. The period of the malaria epidemic, which was accompanied by a severe food shortage, resulted in a 100% increase in cattle theft in the North North Western Province. The animals were taken to an isolated place and slaughtered; while in the past the meat was sold to Muslim butchers, it was consumed on the spot, which shows how severe the famine was; it was also believed that beef consumption could restore health, by virtue of a total inversion of values in the Ceylon Buddhist context, but that knowledge of the effects of the major European plagues makes less surprising[138]. While slaughtering cattle was a serious business, the spoils of coconut or other fruits and small shoplifting were committed in the absolute indifference of the population and generally did not give rise to complaints to the police, so that their indisputable progression is difficult to quantify[139]. This indifference was not free of ulterior motives; harvesting fruit in the garden of a wealthier parent was a right that no one disputed without being accused of avariciousness. Doing it on the domain of an absentee owner was not fundamentally different: if this owner had established his plantation on land bought from the villagers for a dish of rice, or even downright usurped, the act was appreciated as a fair return of things to which the planter had to resign himself if he did not want to attract the hostility of an entire village. The administration itself was divided: while the police was considering organising patrols in the coconut districts, the head of the Settlement department wrote: “Dowbiggin (the police chief) mentions that in the North Western province burglaries are increasing and that people thrown out of work in estates are stealing foodstuffs right and left. These are probably the people who appeared before us classified as landless. Colonies for these people will be better than jails”[140]. The growth of crime was also noticeable at the local level: the 1936 surveys came across a village where in 1935 all shopkeepers were victims of burglaries while the thing had never happened before. This village was the only one among those in the sample where the plantations had closed[141]. In addition to these petty offenders, professional burglars were also affected by depression: forced to expand their range of action, each catch being meagre, they were increasingly using the bus network. Organised theft was a regular practice in particular villages often located on the border of two provinces. It was often associated with clandestine alcohol distillation and thrived especially near plantations. Gangs of robbers organised as in the time of the famous Sardiel, the Ceylonese Robin Hood of mid-19th century, had disappeared at the beginning of the 20th century. Sign of the times, some reconstituted themselves in the North Western province, long famous for its spirit of insubordination; they were made of hungry peasants, or of beggars scouring local fairs, rather than of professionals[142].
The impact of the depression on the level of crime is clear from the point of view of law and order. Reversing the perspective, it may be that petty crime had indeed allowed an appreciable number of people to get out of trouble, somehow replacing the resources offered by occasional work. Looting was a constant in the areas of coconut cultivation and contributed to the subsistence of some marginal families (widows in charge of children, ‘low caste’ groups); it could develop in times of difficulty and contribute to the subsistence of a wider margin of the population. Before concluding this evocation of crime, it would be necessary to question the existence of social violence directed against wealthy peasants and village headmen such as rural societies in Asia provide frequent examples. We have not conducted exhaustive investigations on this subject, but there is nothing to suggest that depression has led to a significant swelling of this phenomenon, of which we have encountered several isolated cases, particularly in Sabaragamuwa and North Western provinces. [143]
*
Thus the impact of depression was felt unequally in the Ceylonese countryside. Geographical disparities: the crisis spared the villages of the dry zone that lived in self-subsistence, but hit those who marketed their paddy production; it remained more moderate in localities practising polyculture and those where the proximity of major roads favoured the development of horticultural production for the market; it reached its maximum intensity in villages dependent on a single source of income, be it rubber, coconut or even tea, and where the number of landless peasants was high. Social disparities: the crisis revealed the class stratification of the rural world in Ceylon. Indian plantation workers who had been able to keep their jobs had their standard of living reduced, but escaped misery; others were forced to emigrate. Their Ceylonese colleagues had their wages amputated by 50% and their number of working days reduced. Rural artisans working for plantations lost their jobs. Those of them who had a regular job become casual workers, and many casual workers were left out, especially from 1933-1934, when the coupon system resulted in the closure of small indigenous plantations where most were employed. Poor peasant micro-fundiaries with less than 2 or 3 acres of land experienced very difficult years until 1933-1934; they subsisted by cultivating part of their land in vegetables. The restriction system only partially lightened their fate. However, the decrease in jobs deprived them of complementary resources. Wealthy peasants and small non-cultivator owners (small traders, teachers, etc.), after being seriously affected, managed after 1933-1934 to take advantage of the situation by turning into rentiers (which brought them closer to the big planters): it is this category of small notables that began to make its voice heard in politics, and which would later form the social basis of the Bandaranaike regime. It is this class that most loudly proclaimed its fear of seeing ‘Indian immigrants’ steal the jobs of villagers. Indeed, there was a relationship between the coupon system, the closure of small plantations, the dismissal of Sinhalese workers, and the renewed Indian immigration of 1934; but in this process, small and large planters had objectively the same interests. The weight of the crisis, especially in rubber-growing areas, was passed from the capital onto the workforce.
[1] See the synthetic study of PEEBLES (Patrick) The Plantation Tamils of Ceylon, London, 2001, who argues that ‘coolies’ were not ‘migrants’ but a settled population; and the more detailed research work of WESUMPERUMA (Devapriya) Indian Immigrant Plantation Workers of Sri Lanka, a Historical Perspective, 1880-1910, Nugegoda, 1986.
[2] JAYAWARDENA (L.R.U.), The Supply of Sinhalese Labour to Ceylon Plantations, 1830-1930: a Study of Imperial Policy in a Peasant Society. Cambridge, Ph. D. thesis, 1963; MEYER (E.), “Between Village and Plantation: Sinhalese Estate Labour in British Ceylon” in M. Gaborieau & A. Thorner eds., Asie du Sud, Traditions et Changements. Paris, 1979 p. 459-468.
[3] VAN DEN DRIESEN (I.H.), The Long Walk. Indian Plantation Labour in Sri Lanka in the 19th century. New Delhi, 1997.
[4] WESUMPERUMA (D.), op. cit, 1986; and MEYER (E.) “A dramatic episode of labour migration to Sri Lanka: Marathi coolies in the Sabaragamuwa rubber estates during the early 20th century” Sabaragamuwa University Journal vol 1 n° 1, pp. 11-28, 1998.
[5] Yearbook of the Planter’s Association of Ceylon (hereafter YPAC) 1928 p. 75
[6] AR Controller of Labour (hereafter: AR CofL) 1939 p. O23; INDIA, Report of the Royal Commission on Labour in India, 1931: Madras and Coorg, written and oral evidence, vol II.
[7] YPAC 1927 p.47-48
[8] INDIA, Report of the Working of the Indian Emigration Act, the rules issued thereunder and of the Labour Ordinances of Ceylon, by the Agent of the Government of India in Ceylon. Calcutta (hereafter AGIC), 1932 p. 18
[9] INDIA, Census Reports, 1931, Madras, p. 45-47.
[10] AR CofL 1932 p.O19; see also JAYARAMAN 1975.
[11] AGIC 1929 p.4 ; 1930 p.5;
[12] AGIC 1931 p.8
[13] AGIC 1932 p. 1-2, 1933 p.3; AR CofL 1933
[14] AGIC 1934 p.3; CEYLON, Sessional Paper (hereafter SP) III of 1938, p.27-28
[15] AGIC 1935 p.4, 1936 p.3 ; 1937 p.6-7, 1938 p7 ; AR CofL 1937 p. 030, 031, 037, et 1938 p.044-45.
[16] AGIC 1932 p.2
[17] AR CofL 1937 P.O30
[18] A contemporary analysis of the social impact of great value is: SUNDARAM (L.) “The Indian labour force in Ceylon : the impact of the economic crisis” International Labour Review, July 1933
[19] AGIC 1931 p.10-14
[20] AGIC 1931 p.22
[21] AR CofL 1938 p.O44
[22] AGIC 1932 p.10
[23] AGIC 1930 p. 18-19
[24] SUNDARAM (L.) op. cit. 1933
[25] AGIC 1930 P.8-9, 1931 p. 13
[26] AGIC 1930, 1931 p. 13 ; AGIC 1933 p.9, 1934 p.5
[27] AGIC 1932 p.6-7 et 14
[28] AGIC 1935 P.6, 1936 p.5, 1937 p. 11-12. AR CofL 1937 p.O44
[29] CEYLON, Sessional Paper 23 of 1934, Memoranda and Evidence of the Ceylon Banking Commission (hereafter CBC II) p.475, cf AGIC 1935
[30] AGIC 1930 p. 11-12
[31] AGIC 1937 p. 15-17
[32] MALAMOUD (Ch.) ed. Debt and Debtors, New Delhi, 1983
[33] AGIC 1934 p. 14
[34] AR Inspector General of Police 1933 p. A19
[35] AGIC 1932 p. 12-13; AGIC 1934 p.11-13, 1939 p. 13
[36] JAYAWARDENA (V.K.), The Rise of the Labor Movement in Sri Lanka, Durham, 1972, chap. XIII
[37] AR IGP 1933 p.A31
[38] AGIC 1934 p. 21-22
[39] CO54/55531; AGIC 1937 p.7-8
[40] AGIC 1939 p. 26-28, AR CofL 1939 p. O22-23
[41] AR CofL 1939 p.O9-10; CO54/55569 “Things Ceylonese”, diary of Sir A. Caldecott, 1940
[42] Interview by the author, Talewala, Kägalla district, July 1979; see also AR Registrar of Cooperative Societies (hereafter RCS) 1933, p. E4
[43] SCOTT (J.C.) Weapons of the Weak. Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance in South-East Asia. Newhaven, Yale University Press, 1985; also The Moral Economy of the Peasant. Newhaven, Yale University Press, 1976
[44] AR CofL 1931 p.O35, AR Western Province 1929 p.A4-5, AR Kalutara 1929 p.A23, AR Kägalla 1930 p. I16 and 1932 p.I21
[45] JAYAWARDENA (L.R.U.) op.cit. 1963, p.277-278
[46] CBC II p. 402-405 and p.488
[47] CEYLON Bulletins of the Ministry of Labour, Industry and Commerce n° 5 to 12: Reports of the Economic Surveys of Villages (hereafter: SV) Kurunägala n°10 (70%), Kalutara n° 6 (80%), Chilaw n° 7 (75%), Puttalam n°8 (74%), Galle n° 11 (86%), Matale n° 9 (84%), Matara n° 12 (60%); CBC II p.181 (Ratemahatmaya of Wiyaluwa)
[48] NICHOLLS (L.) & NIMALASURIYA (A.), “A nutritional survey of the poorer classes in Ceylon”, in Ceylon Journal of Science, sect. D, November 1941.
[49] SV Matale p.25 (Selagama, Palleaswedduma, Wellangahawatta, Tibbotuwawa were villages connected with plantations, Bibile was a dry zone village) cf CBC II p.381
[50] DENHAM (E.B.), Ceylon at the Census of 1911, Colombo 1912.
[51] AR CofL 1932 p.O33 ; AR Nuwara Eliya 1932 p.B27
[52] SLNA Colonial Secretariat Records F/407 /1930
[53] Diary GA Ratnapura 18.01.1934 ; see also Diaries Settlement Officer 25.11.32, Assistant Settlement Officer (ASO) Fernando November 1932, ASO Abeyakoon April 1933.
[54] MEYER (E.) op. cit. 1979
[55] SP XX of 1934 p. 76
[56] AR Sabaragamuwa 1928 p.I4, 1929 p.I4-5, 1930 p.I5, 1931 p.I4
[57] SP I of 1929 (report on Karawita by Brayne)
[58] Diaries ASO Northcroft 8.02.1932, ASO Cocks 5-7.01.1931, ASO Aluvihare, 30.04.1939
[59] SLNA 26/1408 (15.10.30, 22.10.32, 9.12.320, 13 02.35) ; SLNA 26/256 (15.12.36)
[60] SV Kurunägala p.3 & 8, SV Chilaw & Puttalam, passim; AR North Western Province 1929 p.F18, 1933 p.F4; AR Registrar of Cooperative Societies 1933 p. E3
[61] Diary AGA Kägalla 18.12.1933 et 29.01.1934; diary ASO Sandys 21-22.10.1930 (Timbulkotamulla).
[62] AR Matara 1930 p.C10 ; SP VII of 1937 p. 12
[63] CO54/914/14 Ceylon Association to Cowell, 30.11.1932
[64] AR Nuwara Eliya 1932 p.B27, 1936 p.B33; cf diary ASO Fernando, November 1932
[65] AR Uva 1932 p.H6, CBC II p. 406-408
[66] AR CofL 1932 p.O33-34 ; SV Galle p.37, SP III of 1938 p.27, CO54/975, memorandum by the Controller of Labour 19.06.1938
[67] Diary AGA Kägalla 19.11.32, 18.07.33; AR Southern Province 1933 p.C4; AR Sabaragamuwa 1933 p.I4, 1934 p. I3; CBCII p.472 sq.
[68] AR Kägalla 1920 p. I16, AR Sabaragamuwa 1921 p.I2
[69] SP VII of 1937 p. 11-12
[70] SV Kalutara p. 26, AR CofL 1931 p. O35-36
[71] Diary AGA Kägalla 20.02.34, CEYLON Hansard 1935 p. 19
[72] Diary sAGA Kägalla 14.11.32
[73] AR RCS 1936 p.E5-6, SV Kalutara p. 44, AR Kägalla 1936 p. I22, AR Matale 1937 p.B21, AR CofL 1937 p.O15; Young Ceylon January and July 1936
[74] AR CofL 1938; AGIC 1938 p.8
[75] AR RCS 1936 p.E27-28, AR Central Province 1936 p.B5; AR ColL 1936 p. O5, 1937 p.O16-18, 1938 p.O20-21, 1939 p.O15; SP III of 1938 p. 32 et 36
[76] AR RCS 1937 p.E4, AR Ka1utara 1938 p.A22
[77] AR Kägalla 1932 p.I21, CBC II p. 105
[78] CBC II p.512 sq. and SV Hambantota, passim.
[79] CBC II p.216, AR Eastern Province 1932 and 1933 p. E4, AR Mannar 1932 p.D17, KARIAPPER (M.S.) Our Economic Needs, Kalmunai, 1940, SP IV of 1931 (Report of the paddy marketing committee)
[80] CO54/914/14 Ceylon Association to Cowell, 30.11.1932
[81] CO54/874 Evidence of the select committee on Rubber restriction, 1925, p.9; AR Western Province 1928 p.A5
[82] BAUER 1948; KUNHARDT (J.C.) – The Future of rubber, London, 1930, p. 10; PEIRIS, 1972.
[83] Divisional Agricultural Officer Report, Central (hereafter DAOR) 1928 p.5, 1929 p,4, AR Director of Agriculture 1930, 1931 p.O5 and O39, 1932 p.05. Diaries ASO Fernando, 30.03.1933, ASO Rasaretnam July 1934.
[84] SLNA 25/14, Minutes of the L.C.P.A. 8.07.1927. cf OLIVER (H.M.) Economic Opinion and Policy in Ceylon, Cambridge 1957 p.16
[85] Diary AGA Kägalla 10.04.1934 and 10.08.1933; AR Tea Controller 1933 p. S8-9, 1934 p. S5
[86] Diaries ASO Rasaretnam July 1934, ASO Abeyakoon, july 1934, AGA Kägalla 10.08.1934
[87] SLNA 25/20/14 (Wijeratne papers); Ceylon Daily News 24.09.34 (Meeting of the Kelani Valley Planter’s Association)
[88] CEYLON Hansard 1938 p.1686 (Kannangara] Ceylon Government Gazette, 24.09.37 p.984 (a case of Fiscal sale); SV Kalutara p.33
[89] SV Galle p.20 sq; AR Tea Controller 1938 appendix A; contra: CBC II p.472 ; SV Kalutara p.4 sq.
[90] AR Central Province 1934 p.B5-6, AR Tea Controller 1935 p,S4, AR Rubber Controller 1935 p.T8, AR Matale 1936 p. B21; AR Southern Province 1936 p.C5, AR Matara 1936 p. C21, AR Sabaragamuwa 1936 p.I6, 1937 p.I8
[91] CEYLON Hansard 1933 p. 727, p.873 (G.K. W. Perera), Ceylon Daily News 16.02.35 (S.A. Wickramasinghe) , CEYLON Hansard 1936 p. 26 and 407 (N.M. Perera)
[92] CEYLON Hansard 1938, p. 26-27 and 407-408; cf Sessional Paper VI of 1938 p.85
[93] AR RCS 1933 p.E6, SV Kurunägala p. 9-10, DAOR (central) 1929-p.4, AR Director of Agriculture 1931 p.06, AR North Western Province 1933 p.F4, 1936 p.F7, SP VII of 1937 p.12
[94] CBC II p,488, SP VII of 1947, p.7
[95] AR RCS 1931 p.E5
[96] Diaries ASO Jones Bateman 4-10.03.1933, and ASO Abeyakoon 25-28.04.33; AR Southern Province 1930 p.C3, Diary Ratnapura 26-27.09.34, AR Sabaragamuwa 1933 p. I4
[97] AR Kalutara 1932. p.A19, AR Southern Province 1932 p.C7, AR North Western Province 1932 p. F7, AR Sabaragamuwa 1932 p.I11, 1933 p.I12, AR Matale 1936 p.B26
[98] SV Kurunägala p. 30-31, SV Rayigam korale p. 10, SV Kalutara p. 18 ; CBC II p. 505
[99] AR 1935 p.F9
[100] Diary ASO Rasaretnam Feb. 1934, SV Kurunägala p. 13; AR Matale 1930 p.B17 & 1932 p. B21, AR Central Province 1932 p.B3, AR North Western Province 1932 p. F3-4. See also COREA (G.) op. cit. 1975 p.97
[101] Diary ASO Rasaretnam, February 1934
[102] AR Kalutara 1930 p.A14, 1932 p.A17. AR Southern Province 1930 p.C3, 1933 p.C4, AR Director of Agriculture 1931 p. D71.
[103] CBC II p.385 (Director of the irrigation department)
[104] AR Central Province 1932 p.B4
[105] AR Director of Agriculture 1931 p.D8
[106] AR Director of Agriculture 1936 p.D12
[107] AR Director of Agriculture 1930 p. D23, 1931 p. D40
[108] AGA Ke 18.01.31, 15.03.32, AR Ke 1938 p.I18. AR NWP 1932 p.F3-4
[109] AR Director of Agriculture 1931 p. D71 (Kalutara), AR Sabaragamuwa 1931 p. I4, AR Kägalla 1931 p.I18-19, 1930 p.I16. AR Southern Province 1931 p.C4. AR Matara 1931p.C14. AR North Western Province 1931 p.F3-4. SLNA 26/1408 22.10.32 (Matara) AR Nuwara Eliya 1932 p.B27.
[110] AGA Kägalla 1-2.11.38 AR Nuwara Eliya 1936 p.B35
[111] DE SILVA (K.M.) ed., History of Ceylon vol III, Peradeniya 1973, p. 303-316
[112] AR NWP 1928 p.F4, 1934 P.F4, CBC II p.517. AR CP 1938 p.B5 ; AR Sabaragamuwa 1933 p. I4, AR Director of Agriculture 1936 P.012, AR CofL 1932 p.034; Diary AGA Kägalla 21.03.1933
[113] See Eric Meyer, “Towards a new land policy in the Kandyan regions: from the Ceylon Land Commission of 1927-1928 to the Kandyan Peasantry Commission of 1949-1950” https://slkdiaspo.hypotheses.org/6972
[114] Diary ASO Sandys, October 1929
[115] Diary ASO Rasaretnam 6-7.12.1932
[116] Diaries ASO Northoroft Augist 1932 (Lassekanda), ASO Light March 1933 (Eratme], ASO Cocks September 1934 (Alutgama, Wanduragala, Hitgoda Walpola) cf. AR Matale 1931 p.B23
[117] Diaries ASO Fernando 4 & 23,07.30, ASO Christoffelz 1930 & 23 .04.1931
[118] Diary ASO Abeyakoon, july 1932
[119] Diary ASO Jones Bateman 5.07.32, 4 et 10.03.33 cf Diary ASO Ingledow 22 10.30
[120] Diary AGA Kägalla 8.12.1927, 11.01.1931, 5,09.31 to 12.12.31, 12.09.32
[121] Diary AGA Kägalla 27,06.32, 22.11.33,11.01,34
[122] Diary AGA Kägalla 18.01.31, 15.03.32 et 18.03.32
[123] Diary AGA Kägalla 5.02.32, 17.04, 11.06, 11.07.1934; 27.11.1937, 10-12.10.1938; AR Kägalla 1938 p.I8.
[124] SV Galle p.5
[125] Diary AGA Kägalla 18.10.1932 & 21.01.1933
[126] Diary ASO Sandys, 20.05.1930 (Doratiyagedara)
[127] AR Land Commissioner 1932, p. B5
[128] AR Land Commissioner 1933 p.P6, AR Western Province 1932 p.A4
[129] CEYLON Hansard 1931 (2) p.231 (H. Freeman)
[130] SV Kurunägala p.3 , SV Matale p.2; AR Land Commissioner 1933 p.P6; Diary B. Aluvihare
12 et 19.03.39
[131] SV Kalutara p.2
[132] AR CofL 1932 p.O37
[133] ROGERS (J.), Crime, Justice and Society in Colonial Sri Lanka. London, 1987
[134] AR Inspector General of Police (hereafter IGP) 1933 p.A16; AR Western Province 1925 p.A4, SLNA 25/14: LCPA Annual General meeting 1924 and minutes 28.03.1924
[135] AR IGP 1933 p. A13
[136] AR Sabaragamuwa 1933 p. I10, AR Western Province 1932 p.A6, AR IGP 1933 p.A17 and 1934 p.A11
[137] AR IGP 1931 p.A11 & 15, 1933 p.A19, 1934 p.A16
[138] AR North Western Province 1935 p.F10 & F15, Diary AGA Kägalla 19.06.35
[139] AR IGP 1930, AR RCS 1936 p. E5-6, AR Central Province 1936 p.B5, AR Southern Province 1931 p.C5
[140] AR NWP 1936 p.F12; SO 7.11.1930
[141] SV Kalutara p.33 (Iddagoda)
[142] AR IGP 1933 p.A17, 1934 p.A13-15, AR North Western Province 1935 p. F9, Diary Kurunägala 2.02.1935.
[143] Diaries Ratnapura 2106.1935, AGA Puttalam 21.01.1935
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