by Eric Meyer

In the series of articles on agrarian history of colonial Ceylon, we publish a new study on the Land settlement department, based on the diaries of Settlement officers.

Land settlement in time and space

In colonial Ceylon, ‘settlement’ meant establishment and registration of land rights by a judicial or an administrative process set up by the colonial authorities, with or without the concurrence of the population. As such, it introduced full property relations in an agrarian society where they were inexistent or limited. There was a tendency along the years to extend its scope to a sort of planning of land use. In India, settlement was the basis for taxation of the regularly cultivated lands: no such mechanism existed in Ceylon, the meaning of the term was thus different [1].

The general policy of the British regarding land can be characterized by four periods: before 1840 there was no fixed policy; from 1840 to 1897, land administration was taken up by local Revenue officers through headmen; from 1897 to 1931, it was progressively centrally coordinated by a department with specialized Settlement officers; after 1931, the land policy became politicized through the creation of a Ministry of Agriculture and Lands.

During the second part of the 19^th century, in the plantation areas, the colonial agents felt free to declare the property of the Crown under the 1840 Waste Lands Ordinance lands areas sought after by purchasers, usually European planters, but also locals, on the basis of ad hoc surveys, and without any general policy. There was no idea of planning. The first wave of plantation development was characterized by systematic official favouritism of the British planters. Until 1897, the system of indirect administration through the recourse to headmen selected by the colonial government meant that for land matters the Revenue officers depended on headmen and that these headmen were in position to manipulate the system to their advantage.  The institution of special officers distinct from the Revenue officers under the new Waste Lands Ordinance of 1897, and the creation of a separate department limited the power of the headmen over land, which was until then the basis of a sort of unspoken and unwritten political pact with the colonial administration; it opened the way to a form of direct administration, which was strongly opposed not only by headmen but by the rising land-based bourgeoisie; it set in motion a process which contributed to the drive towards independence.

When land grabbing by locals became an organized business which impinged on colonial authority, and when individuals started to contest every decision taken by the colonial State, land policy became stricter, at a time when the Ceylonese would-be planters of citronella, tea, rubber and coconut came into the picture. It was evident for the first nationalists that the new land policy was aimed at Ceylonese entrepreneurship, rather than at land speculation in general, even if European land speculators were also affected. The setting up of a distinct Settlement administration, in addition to the Revenue officer system to enforce the new Waste Lands Ordinance of 1897 was a decision of the first magnitude taken by the governor West Ridgeway. It was immediately resented by the emerging Ceylonese bourgeoisie and by a section of the colonial milieu, and its working met with constant hurdles. The first three settlement officers working under the Waste Lands Ordinance of 1897 were John Penry Lewis[2] (November 1897 to December 1900), Walter Edward Davidson[3] (January to September 1901) and John George Fraser (1901 to 1911)[4]. Before them, Leonard William Booth had been Forest Settlement officer in the early 1890s and his opinion on settlement work is also valuable. J.P. Lewis could not find the time to review the general policy because he was busy countering in Matara the claims of Le Mesurier and his followers. J.G. Fraser was the real initiator of the Land Settlement Officer way of thinking, distinct from the Revenue Officer ways: he systematized a conception based on direct administration at the root level bypassing the recourse to the headman system.

The Department was set up progressively during the first decade of the 20^th century ordinance and impinged on the prerogatives of the local revenue officers and their headmen.  In the context of the second wave of plantation development, in which the British planters were partly superseded by local entrepreneurs, the activity of the department was resented more by the rising bourgeoisie than by the colonial plantocracy. With the emergence of a social approach among a section of the colonial administration and among the rising political class, the Department slowly evolved in the late 1920s into a tool of social redistribution. At that point, the emerging bourgeoisie changed its mind and used land administration as a tool to rule and the headmen system disappeared (but a part of the headmen class joined the ranks of the emerging bourgeoisie whose power was based on land control)

A spatial approach is necessary to understand the working of the Settlement Department: its activities did not extend to the whole of the island. The map produced in 1930 by the survey department provides a synthetized information on its first thirty years.

• Its initial activities focussed on the Morawak korale of the Matara district, the theatre of intense speculation and opposition led by a former revenue officer, Le Mesurier, who attempted to subvert the official land policy
• Then the Ratnapura and Kurunegala districts were taken up, together with parts of the Kalutara district, because these were the areas were land speculation for rubber was booming
• Other districts such as Uva, where land hunger was intense, were also taken up at the same time
• The villages of the coconut triangle in the North western province were then systematically settled
• And finally, work was started in the extensive north central areas where paddy colonies were being set up in the dry zone.
• The plantation areas of Kandy, Nuwara Eliya, Matale and Kägalla districts were practically left aside

The principle of individual property was initially the basis of the working of the department. It is only after many years that a section of the officers stared to think in terms of ‘commons’. No settlement was possible without a preliminary survey; the next step was for Government to recognise claims (of actual cultivators or of outsiders) or the sell (at low price) land to cultivators or would be cultivators. This process involved the fixation of individual property where before there was an undefined common usufructuary system controlled by the headmen.

The motive behind the new Waste Lands Ordinance of 1897 was to block the extension of land speculation to the mid-country where new products – low grown tea, rubber and coconut, and new actors – Ceylonese entrepreneurs, local lawyers, small scale planters, Chettiar moneylenders, and a few European speculators, were at work. The position of the colonial administration was however ambiguous, because its aims were often contradictory: revenue considerations, economic development, European planting interests, preservation of the peasantry, preservation of natural resources. It was too late in many areas to stop land speculation: chena highlands in the Kelani valley, Kägalla and some areas of Ratnapura and Kurunegala, had already been sold out to land brokers through Ceylonese middlemen, to the final benefit of European planters. But there were large chena or forest areas where coconut and rubber plantations could be developed, in Kurunegala, Ratnapura and Kalutara districts, and the emerging Ceylonese entrepreneurs were prospecting these new opportunities, bypassing the colonial government control.

There was a contradiction at the core of the colonial system: the European colonial planters of the 19^th century had initiated the land grabbing process; they were followed by the Ceylonese bourgeoisie of the next generation; the colonial administration which had set the alienation process into motion (or left it to develop) pretended to protect the peasantry at a later stage. The Ceylonese who resented the difference of treatment between the European speculators and the local speculators, turned towards a specific form of nationalism, and accused the colonial administration of hypocrisy when it pretended to protect the peasantry against the native speculators with its settlement procedures, but at the same time the nationalists were accused of hypocrisy by the colonial administrators when they pretended to side with the peasantry.

Initially, there was no question of interfering with claims and rights between villagers, but only to define the respective property of the Crown and the people. Ellis, when he was Government agent of the Western province, wrote in 1900[5]: “It is in every way better to leave the people to settle their own land claims rather than make any attempt to do this for them” Quoting the case of a garden possessed in common: “These people have up to the present lived quite peacefully, possessing the produce of the land by some system of division known to themselves. I can hardly imagine a more helpless task than that of an officer who undertakes to make in this garden a proper surveyed division based on the legal rights of the parties”. The settlement officer Fraser considered that it was outside the scope of the ordinance to assign the private property of a land to a specific individual[6]. But the experience of settlement work progressively put into question the principle of non-intervention, and led the Land settlement department to redefine its policy during the 1920s, on the basis of a new concept: land planning.

The sources: diaries and the other land settlement records[7]

From the 1880s, and especially during the governorship of Arthur Gordon, the members of the Ceylon Civil Service administering districts  (Assistant Government Agents) and provinces (Government Agents,) were required to keep official diaries which were sent to their hierarchy for reading and comment before being returned and kept in the record room of the kachcheri for the perusal of their successors[8]. With the development of specialized departments, the practice was extended to a few of them, and these documents were kept in their respective offices. The Settlement officers and their assistants, who were originally drawn from the same pool as the district administrators and had the same kind of field experience, adopted the practice which they found useful for the efficient functioning of their department. These semi-official sources are extremely valuable. Of course, their value depends on the personality of their authors, which they reveal[9], and they must be analyzed and interpreted in the context of power relations and often conflicting interests within the colonial administration. But they have the freshness and often the frankness which the official and publicized administration reports lack. This is specially the case with the Land settlement administration reports which are statistical lists of villages settled (for example the 84 page report for 1912-1913) and offer little information on the social history of the villages.

The diaries of the settlement and assistant settlement officers were meant to be read by their superiors (the Controller of Revenue, the Colonial Secretary or the Governor, and after 1931, the Minister of Agriculture and the Land Commissioner) who sometimes wrote marginal comments, and returned them[10].  

Little research has been done on the basis of these documents, which were difficult of access. Lal Jayawardena read and used for his unpublished Cambridge thesis[11] a certain number of them. I have myself examined all the diaries from 1897 to 1939 and noted the information of a general nature and the local information dealing with my research on the relations between the plantations and the villages. I propose here, using a selection of significant excerpts, to show the difficulties and oppositions encountered by these colonial administrators to define and defend a clear policy in land matters, and in a second part to follow the evolution of the Land settlement doctrine and practice in fighting land speculation until 1930. Of course, on the subject of the relations between colonial administration and the people at large, the partiality of the source should be balanced by the recourse to other sources and/or to inner critique – reading against the grain. 

Apart from diaries and administration reports, the departmental records contain the files of settled villages, the final village reports which were printed until the late 1930s: they are very detailed, giving population statistics, often information on caste, agricultural resources, land acreages; but they can be used only in specific cases and lack the vivid notations of the diaries. There are also special files regarding the work of such and such civil servant and the general correspondence of the department.

John Penry Lewis in Morawak korale of Matara district (1897-1900)

The Southern province had specific features which distinguished it from the Kandyan provinces: the Dutch impact was much deeper, especially in the registration of land and people. Morawak korale was the northern part of the Matara district, abutting on the Ratnapura district. The villagers of this hilly area, many of them belonging to minority castes, especially Vahumpura, were living on a mix of chena, paddy and garden produce, and had been the victims of bouts of chena repression by several revenue officers, in the 1860s-70s, and again in 1890, with the result that starvation conditions were often prevailing; an Assistant Government Agent, Elliott, had recognized the right of the peasants to cultivate their highlands on the basis of the ‘Dutch thombos extracts’, in order to settle the long standing distrust between the administration and the people, but he was disavowed by his superior[12]. By the end of the 19th century, under the impulse of Karawa entrepreneurs from the coastal areas, the cultivation of tea, citronella and rubber was developing in Morawak, and the colonial administration was confronted with a demand for land which it could not understand nor admit because in its conception, based on the Crown ownership of ‘waste’ and forest lands, land development was to be controlled by the State (and practically reserved to European planters), and any attempt at claiming private rights was suspect. For example, this is how in 1898 the Matara Assistant Government Agent described the process of land appropriation[13]: “A suitable extent of forest or jungle is selected, if possible with indication of its containing plumbago. A neighbouring villager is then persuaded that as the owner of a garden on the borders of the forest, the whole tract belongs to him. Or else an old family tradition that his ancestors at one time cultivated the land is revived. A claim thus springs up, a transfer in favour of a speculator is executed. Jak and other fruit trees which are found in nearly every jungle in the district are seriously pointed out as indication of a former cultivation, and the Crown (in stepping in to prevent the destruction of the forest) is loudly accused in the public newspapers of wholesale spoliation and oppression. The result of course has been demoralizing in the extreme. Fictitious claims have sprung up in the most unexpected quarters, and both villagers and speculators are intent on acquiring land at the public expense”.

The diaries of J.P. Lewis span a period beginning in November 1897 up to the end of December 1900. They offer an insight into an intensive land broking activity of a very unusual nature, because it was encouraged or rather engineered by C.J.R. Le Mesurier, an ex-civil servant formerly posted at Matara, who had been dismissed as a result of various provocations[14].  During these first three years, most of the time of Lewis was spent fighting the ‘spurious’ claims set up by Le Mesurier and his associates (Lewis 9.02.1900)[15]. The paradox was that the appointment of a special officer to enforce the ordinance of 1897 was done at the request of Le Mesurier himself.  The legal issues raised by Le Mesurier touched on the sore point of the colonial system in which the colonial agent was at the same time judge and party as defender of Crown interests (Lewis 27.06.1899), and he radically challenged the concept of Crown land, which was at the basis of the settlement work. The following quotations of the diary give an idea of these exchanges:

“Mr. Le Mesurier has told the people that the only Crown land in the island are Pidurutalagalla and Adam’s Peak” (Lewis 13.11.1897) and the growing number of claims is due “to the notion developed by Le Mesurier that the payment of 1/10^th tax before 1874 meant that the land was private”. In the settlement of Atureliya village, (Lewis 21.01.1898) Le Mesurier appeared as agent of the claimant who promised to give Le Mesurier 1/3^rd of the land to if he won: “this is a case of champerty”. Lewis was compelled to stay with Le Mesurier at the kacceri while the latter studied the wattoru (taxation lists) to find out which chenas were taxed at ‘private’ rate. Le Mesurier declared (Lewis 31.01.1898) “I do not even know where the land is. I claim it on public grounds and in order to prevent government from getting possession of it”. Lewis commented (14.02.98): “I have never seen a case more dishonorably conducted, even by the shadiest of proctors”. “Engaged in reply to Le Mesurier memo facetiously entitled ‘Spoliation of lands by the Crown in the Matara district’. It is a plausible but ridiculous attempt to show that the British government have by Ordinance 12 of 1840 dispossessed the villagers of their highlands. According to Mr. Le Mesurier there are no Crown lands in the Matara district, not even the primeval forests. He has put this theory into practice by setting up claims to half a dozen of the latter” (Lewis 16.01.1899).

Lewis depicted Le Mesurier as a dishonest land grabber, even at the time he was posted at Matara: Le Mesurier’s brother had started mining operations in the district while Le Mesurier was Assistant Government Agent, and according to Lewis he was just a front-man for Le Mesurier who paid himself the mining coolies (Lewis 6.06.1899).  At Talgahahena in 1893 as Assistant Government Agent he prosecuted a villager for illicit clearing, but the villager was cleared, he then put up a part of the land for sale at 10 Rs per acre, and when dismissed he purchased himself the rest of the land from another villager (20.02.1900). Lewis considered that the extensive land purchases at the beginning of 1890s at Asmagolla, Kotawila and Marambe by one Mr. Bultjeens for Mr. Creasy were actually for Le Mesurier who was then Assistant Government Agent and conducted the sales, and to whom the lands were transferred in February 19^th 1896. The firm Julius and Creasy were the agents for T.N. Christie, an influent member of the Ceylon Planters Association, who was an associate of Le Mesurier during and after his Kägalla days[16]

Among the documents used by Le Mesurier and his associates to assert private property were the ‘Dutch Extracts’ forged by a local goldsmith, Don Salomon Wijendra, (who was rewarded once the claim was admitted) and certified by the notary B. J. Wijenayaka “who was prepared to write any act, the usual practice being to describe a chena as garden and a forest as chena”. Another actor in the land business was Jayasuriya, the son of a land registrar of Matara, who was using an old fiscal transfer of 1834 to assert private title (Lewis 4.12.1897), in competition with T.N. Christie : “It is a relief to have these landgrabbers quarreling among themselves”. But it appeared that Christie was acting for Le Mesurier to whom he sold back his claim as soon as it was admitted by the Crown by a Certificate of Quiet Possession for half the area claimed, and Le Mesurier transferred the property to his wife (Lewis 6.09.1898).  Another actor, Floris de Silva, was the schoolmaster of Urubokka (Lewis 22.03.1900): “nominally schoolmaster but his real business is acquiring shares in claims from the villagers”. He was the brother of Francis de Silva, a dismissed mudaliyar (chief headman) of Wellaboda pattuwa, who was behind most of the sales together with his brother in law, the division officer of Morawak korale (Lewis 3.03.1898): “I have been told several times that that the late mudaliyar of Morawak had examined the wattoru and had ‘made the land private’ (praveni karala).  Possibly it is from him that Mr. Le Mesurier got this notion on which all his claims are based, or it may have been the reverse. The mudaliyar was his agent in the plumbago business, and Mr. Le Mesurier was very much concerned to hear of his dismissal as he told me himself”. There were other schoolmasters involved, and the brother of the Rest House keeper of Urubokka (Lewis 25.03.98), Dias (31.10.1898) “trying to get into favour with the villagers by posing as an exceptionally devout Buddhist”. There was the case of an ex- village headman, who threatened to commit suicide if his claim was not recognized (Lewis 19.11.1898); in some cases, there are several actors who purchased the same land from a villager or ‘helped’ him purchasing it at an auction sale to grab it after. Local headmen or dismissed headmen were always involved in these land dealings (Lewis 16.12.1897). “I wonder whether there is any native official, clerk, registrar or headman in the Matara district who is not interested in some claim, either openly or secretly” (Lewis 3.10.1900).  What Lewis failed to clearly understand is that the power of headmen over highlands was the result of their giving permits to cultivate highlands at the demand of the colonial authorities. 

The diary leaves the impression that Lewis was obsessed with the defense of Crown rights, overwhelmed by the fight against land speculators, and unable to understand the real grievances of the peasantry. He was upset by the systematic attitude of the judges who usually discharged the offenders, and of the press, especially The Independent, that sided with Le Mesurier in February 1899, and The Times of London that published a letter of the same in April 1899. Lewis felt insulted by Rudra, Le Mesurier’s lawyer, and by the Chilaw Association which started its agitation against the Waste Lands Ordinance of 1897 and also against that of 1840 by using the arguments of Le Mesurier (Lewis July 1899). His action was also impeded by the poor quality of many surveys, the lack of cooperation from the Survey department, and the corruption of young surveyors who accepted bribes (Lewis 17.03.1900). Another problem was the lack of cooperation between the Assistant Government Agent and the Settlement Officer, the former putting up for sale or settlement lands which the latter was going to proclaim under the Waste Lands Ordinance. And the worst point was that the kacceri and the district court administration themselves were “the headquarters of the land speculation” (Lewis 20.11.1900). Lewis felt betrayed by the position of the Supreme Court which considered as peasants notorious landgrabbers such as Dias; the clash between the judicial order and the executive was just the same as in Kägalla during the preceding decade.  

Lewis admitted genuine claims, but felt that the system did not preclude speculation (26.10.1898): “The villagers complain that when the lands are put up for sale they are unable to compete with the outsiders – rich fisher caste people and Moormen who want land for citronella cultivation. If the extents sold are small (3 or 4 acres only), the villagers are not likely to sell them to outsiders, as they prefer cultivating themselves than becoming the coolies of the citronella people”. In a Vahumpura village, Narawelpita, “noted both for their industry and for crime, especially cattle stealing”, but where there were many disabled persons “I found that the real explanation for it was want of land,  and I decided that it would be better not to proclaim this block, but to have it surveyed into small lots to be sold to the villagers” (16.12.1897). Progressively, Lewis became more preoccupied with the condition of the peasantry and the impact of the restriction to chena cultivation; he took into consideration that the local headmen had always admitted wattoru as proof of property. In the end of his diary (10 and 26.11.1900) he quoted the case of Alapaladeniya and Idandehita villages: “chena was allowed from 1885 to 1892 and in 1892 it was fully put a stop to. The people were then much better off than they are now, as there is not enough paddy land to cultivate. The men now go to Panagoda in Hinidum pattu to work in the plumbago pits (…) but all the people cannot get work at the pits. The headmen assure me that very few families in their division have more than one meal a day. Whether they tell a different story to the Assistant Government Agent I don’t know. I am told by the headmen that the people owing to the stopping of chena cultivation and the want of paddy lands do not get enough to eat. Yet the Administration report usually says that ’food was plentiful’ etc…”

Walter Edward Davidson as Settlement officer (9 months in 1901)

Davidson had an extensive knowledge of land speculation when he was Assistant Agent in the Kägalla district in the early 1890s[17], and was an efficient administrator, but his experience as Settlement officer was limited and his appointment of short duration. A practical and hard-working man, his future career as Colonial secretary in Transvaal, then Governor of Seychelles, Newfoundland and New South wales in Australia is a testimony for his value.

In his diary of July 1901, he gave an illuminating explanation of the working of the ‘Dutch Extracts’ system in the Matara district: “The Dutch made a record of all cultivated lands in private hands with a view to their taxation” “It became the custom for each native family to hold an extract [of the register]. The Sinhalese called it a ‘black letter’, or Dutch extract from the rolls, and we can see from the date of the issue of true copies by the authorities when pressure was put on them. It then became a mark of gentility to hold an extract, like a sannas in Kandyan district. I know of one case when a copper sannasa was made simply to forward negotiation for a marriage into a respectable family, to show that the suitor’s family was also respectable. These paper monuments have often been destroyed – damp, rats, white ants and so on. But the tradition in the village that your panguwa has held a Dutch extract was enough among easy going people. Then came Mr. Le Mesurier, and the land speculator’s period, and each family became anxious especially as government (very wrongly as I most deferentially submit) practically prohibited chena cultivation and absorbed chenas which the villagers bona fide believed to be theirs, and a desire arose for extracts. Ingenuity is never lacking in the forgery line in the Matara district, when a saleable article is wanted. So, two sets of makers of Dutch extracts appeared. The procedure was this: an agent found an anxious householder who either believed that the family had had an extract, or wanted one badly to recover his chenas. Enquiries by the forger’s agent ascertained what the householder believed to be his lands and elicited what more he would like to have. A suggestion followed that the extract might be traced and recovered for a consideration. The householder readily concurred. A few months later, an extract appears. It is very worn and aged, but it is taken to the village schoolmaster, and he traces triumphantly the name of the family and the names of the family’s fields and gardens and these coveted chenas. The body of the document was in an unknown tongue and did not signify. The bargain is then struck. One hundred rupees in cash if squeezable, if not cash down as much as possible and a pronote or assignment of half the chenas.”

“Then speculators appeared and bought conditionally the highlands for citronella cultivation. The difficulties arose. A painstaking officer, with highly developed antiquarian tastes [J.P. Lewis] arrived to settle this title to waste land. He peered into those easily acquired documents and found that the balance of the extract was gibberish, that a whole series contained the same type of errors, he collated them and called in experts in Dutch, brought the documents before the civil courts and had them declared forgeries (…) But an able and painstaking advocate, Mr. Bawa for instance, can convince a jury if he be strenuous enough (that) the expert is no clever than you and after all he knows very little more than we do about what happened about 150 years ago.”

Davidson attempted to win the confidence of the Wellaboda pattu villagers  (Davidson 20.06.1901) “If I am to do any good in the settlement of these valuable villages (…) it will be by a crushing defeat to the most prominent landgrabber [Don David Kulatunge](…) The people understand that while settlement is going on I am all patience and consideration. It is only the interloper who has cause for fear”.

When he left his post as Settlement Officer, he drew a program for his successor (Davidson 10.08.1901), in which he displayed his deep understanding of the peasant condition and the role of chena cultivation in the villager’s subsistence, his paternalistic attitude, and the opposition he encountered on the part of a section of the Ceylon civil administrators[18]:  

“Keep good relations with Government and Assistant Government Agents and never appeal to the government against their wishes. Consult Ellis [Controller of Revenue] personally, not on papers because he has a destructive genius and is an awkward person to disagree with. Spend time with Surveyor General and Government printer and give them full particular of what you require, never oblige a busy man to make reference and thus delay his answer. Work with the mudaliyar and headmen; the clerk Gunatilake wants to do too much himself. Continue to work on the lines of the panguwa or communal interest. It is true that in the Southern province the communal instinct has been dying out. Revive it, it gives the poor man and the stupid man a chance and it saves you the risk of doing the weaker man an injury. Hunt out men that should be claimants and let them come in at any time. Do not rule out claims for want of a paper title, but strive that every householder should have 5 acres of highland near his field or garden to do what he likes with. You will thus check illicit chena clearing and yet provide a man enough land to feed him.

Keep the man on the land. Let him have land sufficient to feed him and keep him honest. Your settlement will last twenty years, but then the people will be encroaching just as they do now. Then there should be a revision and a further apportionment of Crown land for nothing, for by then most of the chena given will have become garden lands. Begin before you ‘notice’ the land by a cursory inspection of the land and note then what you mean to give and what you mean to reserve. Speak firmly then to the villagers as to what you mean to reserve. By the time the three months are passed, no one will claim what you mean to reserve.

Your duties are merely to declare this or that land Crown or private. Never hesitate to exceed your duties. You will have occasional setbacks and be told to confine yourself to your duties. Don’t take much notice of that, always exceed your duties in these directions. When and where you can, declare a private land in favour of the persons who ought to have it. If you think a ‘Crown land’ should be devoted to any specific purpose (village forest, small allotments, sale to capitalists for plantation or plumbago, deniya for paddy, irrigation scheme etc.), attach a rider to your finding and convey the recommendation to the Government Agent…Always value the lands, undervalue per choice. The Crown does no want to lock up a lot of unproductive land, it wants it to go into cultivation. My scheme is good of apportioning a tract of Crown chena with permission to cultivate small extents, an acre a year, paying a rent of 1/10^th to government. The Government Agent of the South Province disapproves it, but with all deference, he carries his horror of chena cultivation to extremes. A landless labourer is the lowest of all in the scale of happiness. A wanderer is a danger to the community. And you cannot make colonists of the weak and stupid and timid villager. Give him an opportunity to live and thrive in the village where he was born. The government did not definitely decide against me, it merely said it was not my duty to make such proposals. Remember that chena cultivation to excess is destructive, yet it is in moderation in some districts a necessity for bare livelihood, and it will be continued in defiance of you, if you do not make reasonable provision for villager to raise their food somehow. Keep the two registers I have opened out (…) This has the immediate advantage of interesting the government in your work and preventing your being forgotten (…) Get each report printed (…) it is the landraad roll of the village it should contain the description of the village” etc.

Davidson ended his diary with a personal note: “Both my present work and the Ceylon Civil Service I leave with the keenest regret. Starting life again at middle age I have doubts whether my wife and I will ever do such good work again and whether we will succeed in winning this regard and confidence of the Afrikaners as we believe we have won the real affection of the Ceylonese. In the East only custom and caste continue undisturbed. Individual influence may work largely for the time, but the work and name perish out of memory. It is something to remember for a year or two.”

Land Settlement under John George Fraser (1901-1911)

Fraser remained in his post for an unusually long period and was able to set up the principles and the practice of settlement on a firm footing, but his progressive views, partly inherited from Davidson, were opposed by a section of the colonial administration and he was prevented from implementing them. He was however critical of the idealism of Davidson (Fraser 24.09.1901): “The more I see of these villagers, the more I am persuaded of the fatuity of Mr Davidson’s hopes of re-establishing a communal system. That idea had passed away and individual possession is the aim of everyone”. His project was to develop a land settlement department with an island-wide approach and a strong staff, which would deprive the local Revenue officers and their headmen of a large part of their power, and to set up a sort of rural development planning – which actually took shape 30 years later.  With the passing of years, he became more interested in developing the strength of his department and his later diaries are less interesting for the social historian.

From August 1901 to June 1903, Fraser was special officer under the Waste Land Ordinance of 1897. In July 1903, a Department was set up by the Governor West Ridgeway with wider powers: “to settle amicably as between the Crown and subject the title to all land, cultivated as well as uncultivated”. It was staffed with one Settlement officer, one Assistant settlement officer and 18 employees. In 1911, the Department had one Settlement officer, 11 Assistant settlement officers, and 84 employees.  In the meantime, 1081 villages had been settled and 1357 were being settled, in spite of the difficult coordination with the Survey department.[19]

During the first two years, under the governorship of West Ridgeway, Fraser was busy trying to pacify the relations between the Morawak villagers and the Crown. His diaries from October 1901 to January 1904 are filled with remarks on the difficulty to deal with the headmen in the Morawak korale: “Settlement in this part of the country has been rendered more difficult through the action of a former mudaliyar who went about admitting chenas to be private whenever a 1/10^th wattoruwa was produced (…) I have seldom seen a more worthless set of headmen than the vidane araccis and police officers of the Morawak korale (…) The great difficulty in this part of the country is that there is practically no documentary evidence and that most of the headmen side with the villagers when difference of opinion arises”. It is clear that the intervention of the colonial administration in land matters was strongly resented by the landed class – the headmen class, because it impinged on the basis of their arbitrary power. Apart from the questions of power, another problem was the organization of surveys, which “almost exclusively lay on the information of local headmen”. By 1904, Fraser seems to have succeeded in dispelling the distrust[20] : “Features highly indicative of the good relations have been the success of land sales held in course of the settlement of villages and the large number of applications made to the Settlement officer to purchase land. The latter is a new development not originally contemplated and is in great measure consequent on the special arrangements made by the Settlement officer to accelerate the surveys and thus curtail the length of time that elapses between the application for land and its actual sale” “The villagers first imagined that I was merely here for one of these numerous inspections made by Revenue officers which settle nothing. Now that they realize that the whole village is to be completed, they are becoming very anxious of amicable settlement” “A year ago, my operations were regarded with the greatest distrust, now the people willingly come forward and meet me half way in effecting amicable settlements (…) The success is entirely due to our living in the villages, inspecting each lot ourselves and coming into contact with the claimants who soon convince themselves that their distress is unfounded”. For example, in the case of Puwakbodaowita village, (Fraser 12.08.1902): “The claimants all except a landshark, C.A. Goonewardena by name, came before me and asked me to let them have the 6 acres of land I offered them in full settlement of their claims instead of referring them to court. I agreed and we sat down in a roadside hut and made our treaty. This deprives Goonewardena of all his props and we shall now crush him effectually”.

The new popularity of Fraser was also the result of his recognition of the value of chena cultivation in the subsistence economy of the peasantry of the hills; his critical remarks of the effect in Morawak of repressive government policy are worth quoting in full (Fraser 30.11.1901): “I drove to Urubokka Rest House. As I came along, I was forcibly struck by the miserable appearance of the villagers. I stopped my carriage occasionally and had a chat with some of the wayfarers, picking up some hints about their condition and about the geography of the place. They appear a simple-minded set of people, these Morawaka villagers, easily led, not as gentlemanly as the Kandyans in their instincts, but only requiring fair and considerate handling. Their great grievance is of course the restriction, or shall we say prohibition of chenaing. After hearing their views and considering the question without bias, I am of opinion that it is desirable to set apart certain areas of waste land useless for other purposes for chena cultivation in villages in which large areas have not been handed over to claimants. I further believe that the early introduction of some such system would tend to a great reduction in claims. What the people want is to chena. They do not want the land and will be quite content to cultivate on permits from the Crown, and I do not think any damage can accrue to government as such cultivation would only be allowed after all necessary reserves have been set aside. A careful enquiry should be made into the circumstances of each village by a sympathetic but firm officer. The main objections to chena cultivation are: a. That forests, a valuable asset of the community, were frequently ruthlessly destroyed; b. That climatic changes for the worse might follow on indiscriminate felling of forest and jungle; c. That the villagers set up title to the land in any case, clearing without permit; d. Ethical objections [Fraser omits the planter’s pressure to get land]. The first three objections will be surmounted by the operation of the Waste Lands Ordinance and by the constitution of reserved village forests. The ethical objection is that chena cultivation is detrimental to character in making the people lazy and improvident. But for my part I cannot see how the enterprise and exertion spent upon chenaing can be half as demoralizing as periods of enforced idleness and loafing. For it is not as if gardens and fields were being neglected for chenas. No, they are cultivated, in many cases over cultivated, planted with trees until production is impeded by overcrowding. Even if given new areas to convert into gardens, the people, destitute of money, must have a means of livelihood until the new gardens come into bearing. And this means can only be found in chena cultivation. Only by some such scheme will it be possible to introduce a little of the joy of life into the hearts of these dejected and poverty-stricken subjects. And I am sure the government will also reap its reward in the greater contentedness of the people and in the greater rapidity with which chena claims will be disposed of. Often when I ask claimants who have not a bit of evidence why they claim, they say: ‘What are we to do? We are not allowed to chena on Crown land. So, we must claim on the chance of getting a bit of land for ourselves to chena!”

 When Fraser undertook the settlement of the Middeniya area, further east, in the dry zone, he noted (Fraser 14.06.1902): “All the lands here, except a few tanks and fields, is waste land covered with thorny scrub jungle of no commercial value whatsoever. It is of vast extent and will take many years to plant it with permanent products, supposing they will grow in a country where there is so little water. Formerly the villagers used to cultivate large extents on permit from the Crown, paying share to the Crown. During that period, the title of the Crown was never questioned. Then the policy was adopted of restricting chena cultivation, in the hope that the people would then devote themselves to permanent products, especially paddy (…) If I am right that Government desires to foster a native peasantry, I do not think this policy is likely to have the desired results. There has been misunderstanding on both sides of course, and this chena question has greatly strained the relations between the Revenue Officers and the villagers. When chena cultivation was restricted, the villagers retaliated by clearing what they chose without permit, or clearing in excess of their permits. The Revenue Officer then prosecuted them. They pleaded guilty and were fined 4 or 5 Rs for each acre cultivated, instead of 1 Re per acre they used to pay as permit. They still laid no claim to the land in most cases. When the Revenue Officer saw his order disregarded in this way, and that he was hindered with large numbers of prosecutions, he began to forbid cultivation, to prosecute where it was persisted in, and to sequester the crops. This, the villagers say, drove them to desperation for they must live, and they then began to clear, claiming the land on any frivolous title, sure that in the Police Court the Crown would then be referred to its civil remedy. Finding that the result came up to their expectations, they then began to think their claims would hold water. It is in this way that a great many claims have originated. Now the Assistant Government Agent reports that the villagers refuse to acknowledge the Crown title or to take permits. This appears to be the net result of the present policy, according to the views of the villagers. The villagers yesterday spoke quite sensibly and said they did not want the land but only their immemorial right to chena (…) If the intention of the present policy was to protect Crown rights, it does not appear to have been very succesful. If it was to put a stop to a ‘wasteful system’ of cultivation, I fail to see how the present means of cultivating their thorny area can be termed wasteful. There is no doubt that these lands formerly produced an immense quantity of Indian corn and fine grain, whereas they now produce next to nothing. The ‘waste’ all seems to be on the side of the present system if the question is regarded from the economic point of view (…) To ask villagers to desist from chena cultivation is much the same as asking them to starve to please government, and of course if they are not allowed chena cultivation they will cultivate without permits. It is a question of life or death for them”.

Fraser reiterated during the next years his analysis and suggested a new policy, repeated in his Administration report for 1906, but his views were censored by Governor Blake, and it took practically two decades for the colonial administration to seriously reconsider its position with the Land commission of 1927[21]: 

“To the villager’s mode of thinking, there is nothing immoral in making encroachments on Crown property. Probably this is the result of former administration prior to the British administration. In Dutch times, the Company did everything to increase the area under cultivation and did not much object to encroachment, as every encroachment brought money to the exchequer. The Company had an interest in every land in its domains and maintained these interests by levying a share of the products. The people were content to hold their land subject to these taxes. The Dutch system may thus be said to have encouraged cultivation and as they had regularly kept thombos giving the particulars of each land, there was a very efficient check on encroachment or rather a check that encroachment did not escape payment of taxes.

The British system has altered most of this. The registers were allowed to lapse and gradually a period of chaos set in, the results of which are still being felt. Registers were kept only of Crown lands except in the case of fields. The tax on private gardens and chenas was relaxed and thus all the advantages of having a complete list of all the cultivated lands in each village with all particulars of extent, ownership and so on were lost. It is true that a tax was levied on private chenas also and that yearly statements of crops raised were made but this was quite another thing from the complete register of Dutch times. Now as then, the desire of the people is to have a land for cultivation. The average villager does not much mind whose land it is as long as he is allowed to take his crops. This is seen every day in the case of villagers who chena Crown lands without permit, knowing that they will be prosecuted and fined. They prefer to take this course to that of applying for a permit which may be refused. They are quite ready to pay a fine.

The policy of government has of late been to restrict chena cultivation. With this every right-minded person will agree. But have we substituted anything for it? Have we made it easy for the villager to take up permanent cultivation in place of chena cultivation? I think not. To ask the average villager, leading a hand to mouth existence, to purchase land at 10 Rs an acre and fees, is to demand of him an impossibility. Even if it were possible for him to raise this amount, it would mean that he would have to borrow it or that in paying he would exhaust his capital. Neither of these is desirable. We do not wish him to become indebted, neither do we desire to strip him of all his capital, for the result will be likely that the moneylender will reap the benefit of the villager’s labours by selling him up, and in the other case he will have no capital to enable him to develop his purchase.

What is wanted would appear to be a system of rent in perpetuity coupled with the power to purchase outright whenever desired (…) at a rate of say 50c or 1 Re per acre per annum (…) The result would be:

1. A great decrease in the number of cases
2. A development, probably immediate and enormous, of permanent cultivation`
3. The majority of Crown land in populous villages thus disposed of
4. The necessary register would keep alive the Crown title
5. Sales on these terms would form a convenient introduction to a general land tax if it is even desirable to have one
6. It would save the delays of a re-survey and the difficulties inherent in the constitution of communal chenas”

Formation of the Land Settlement Department: a political decision

The policy of the colonial government in land matters was subjected to recurrent reviews. It was the most intricate political issue encountered by successive governors, from West Ridgeway to Clifford. The contradictory imperatives were:

• To support British colonial interests, especially interests of the planters
• To preserve government control over ‘waste’ lands
• To avoid social discontent and peasant unrest
• To foster economic development
• To delineate the respective roles of the Revenue Officers and the Settlement Officers

The Waste Lands Ordinance was the brainchild of Governor West Ridgeway and had met with the opposition of his predecessor Gordon (Lord Stanmore) and of a large section of the Revenue Officers, who considered that the creation of a distinct department would impinge on their prerogatives, that it bypassed the age-long hierarchical working of local administration based on the headmen system and introduced a system of direct administration. For some time, the Revenue Officers could still effect settlements under the Ordinance of 1897, but they could not devote sufficient time and expertise to that work, and they distributed chena permits without proper enquiries, in the view of the Settlement Officers (Fraser, 29.07.1907).

The long despatch sent to London in June 1903 by the governor West Ridgeway[22] paved the way for the formation of a Department (which he would put under the direction of the Controller of Revenue F.R. Ellis, the officers in the field being junior). West Ridgeway was about to leave his post and was anxious to establish on a firm footing a project which he had started in 1897 at the beginning of his almost eight years long governorship (February 1896 to November 1903): “I regard the success of this enterprise as the most important feature of my administration (…) for I have had ample experience of the fatal results of the absence of any systematic method of disposing of land claims which is the main cause of ill feeling towards government and discontent among the mass of people (…) I look forward with apprehension to what may happen during the first years of my successor’s rule, unless the department is placed on a permanent and satisfactory footing before I leave”

He painted the situation prevailing before his ordinance of 1897 as characterized by “a chronical state of hostility between the Crown and the villagers” due to the lack of survey and uncertainty regarding the status of unsettled lands. Hostility to his ordinance was reduced, but the settlement work had to be organized in a systematic way at an all-island uniform level, with a continuity in time. It was therefore impossible to rely on the Revenue Officer network for the task, because of the lack of continuity and the ever-growing multiplicity of tasks. Annexed to the despatch were four case studies (supposedly randomly chosen) with a commentary by Ellis: Baduraliya (Pasdun), Dankoluwa, Gorakawala and Puwakbodaowita (Morawak, along the Nilwala Ganga), to explain the working of settlement. The idea of village planning was present, the basic rule being that no sale should be allowed “unless there is ample reserve to meet the requirements of the expansion of the village for many years. If there is land available, it is desirable to allow capitalists to open an estate, as by this means money is brought into the village, and the people benefit greatly by the demand for labour. But this cannot be allowed if it would have the effect of excluding the villager from his own village”.

During the following years, the policy of the department, under the direction of the Controller of Revenue, F.R. Ellis, was to undertake the systematic settlement of certain areas – especially the coconut areas of the Kurunegala district and the rubber areas of the Ratnapura district, a task entrusted to the Settlement officer Fraser and his assistants; and to intervene where problems arose which could have political consequences, a task reserved to Ellis[23]. The Settlement department records preserve a collection of the cases settled by Ellis; some documents are also found in the Colonial secretary records, and the Colonial Office papers are also useful to follow the affairs. After the departure of West Ridgeway, as head of the department, Ellis effected personally the settlement of the most intricate cases involving European and Ceylonese land speculators, especially in the North Western Province, where the early 20^th century witnessed a boom of coconut plantations. This led to an great amount of correspondence between the Settlement department, the Colonial secretariat in Colombo, and the Colonial Office in London[24].

The Settlement department facing land speculation by European planters in the Kurunegala  and Matale districts

The Kurunegala district is large and its ‘Kandyan’ identity is somewhat blurred because it is more connected with the maritime areas and the dry zone than with the hilly districts. The history of village land sales in the North Western province started with the bursts of anti-chena legislation in the years 1860-1870, like in Kägalla and Matara. In Kurunegala there were two very different facies of plantation development: in the hilly border areas adjoining the Kandy and Matale districts, especially in Madure korale, the demand for land was for rubber or tea estates by Europeans; elsewhere in the district, especially in the Katugampola and Dambadeni Hatpattus,  it was for coconut plantations and came from Ceylonese rather than from European would-be planters.

Before the ordinance of 1897, there was a general tendency for Kurunegala Government Agents to minimize the impact of village sales, especially when European purchasers were involved[25]. An example is found in the report for 1896 by Aelian King: “As far as the villager is concerned there is, I am convinced, but little room for alarm for he only sells generally speaking what he has a very uncertain claim to, namely some of the waste lands of the village more or less often cleared and sown with dry grain at intervals of from 8 to 15 years, perhaps at even a greater interval, probably not by himself but by the village in general. Defective legislation, or tenderness on the part of the courts, made it very difficult for the Crown to assert its rights. Consequently the village is in a position to offer a good deal of land for sale and the Crown is after all probability the only sufferer in the transaction (sic). No instances have come to my knowledge of villagers impoverishing themselves and rendering themselves homeless by such sales (…) These sales are only possible in the damp and therefore fertile parts of the province. In such localities chenaing is not a necessity to the people while it is certainly a most wasteful system (…) Few candid persons could hesitate to declare that it would be immensely to the advantage of their inhabitants that the desolate wastes should be put under permanent cultivation, bringing capital into their midst and opening up markets for their labour and for their produce. New areas of cultivation are consequently large, cultivation of coconut is advancing everywhere”.  But another administrator, Sewell, drew a different picture : “In many instances whole families have been turned out of the holdings so acquired, their houses broken down and the members left to shift for themselves – in some cases they have left the district, in others they remain about the villages as vagrants and having no occupation it is to be feared become criminals (…) It is also going on in the Katugampola and Dambadeniya Hatpattu to a large extent, chiefly among the invaders from the low country and European companies in search of coconut properties. [It is difficult to dissuade the villagers to sell] as their neighbours selling they are gradually squeezed out of their lands, they find their fields ruined by the wash from the highland opened for cultivation above them”. Sewell pleaded for an immediate legislation to stop sales “for the low country middleman or Moorman is making large profits by buying at low prices and re-selling to Europeans”, and “prevent the serious evils which must ensue from the displacement of a large a number or native landowners and their conversion into casual labourers”. He added: “It is notorious that the planters will not as a rule accept and work Sinhalese labour – especially the Kandyan villagers – and the inevitable result must be the increase of crime and theft of praedial produce”[26]

Madure korale had features similar to Kägalla district: it attracted the attention of European planters between 1890 and 1910. Its center was the upper valley of the Deduru Oya, from its springs to the well-known locality of Ridigama with its historical temple. It was partly inhabited by Kande minissu (Vahumpura), partly by Goyigama, with a few Batgam interspersed. The kandegam were considered as royal villages in the Kandyan times, the Vahumpura being in possession of highland chenas (often cultivated with älvi) for the service of furnishing jaggery and honey to the capital: all the highlands were still in the 1840s recognized private by the Revenue officers[27].

The whole Madure korale became the hunting ground of various land brokers, mostly Europeans (especially the Farquharsons), in association with local headmen (Palipana), who were acting for the big managing agency Finlay Muir, with the assistance of the legal firm De Sarams.  The process was quite similar to that which had taken place in the Kägalla district during the previous years, and was characterized by the considerable extent of gardens and even paddy fields included in the sales. The sales to Europeans for the years 1894, 1895 and 1896 were as follows: 3,149 acres of chenas sold 28,667 Rs (9.10 Rs an acre); 214 acres of gardens sold 5,157 Rs (24.07 Rs an acre); 84 acres of gardens and chenas and paddy fields sold 1,193 Rs (14.10 Rs an acre). And in addition 141 acres of paddy fields and 15 acres of houses and gardens. The large extent of gardens and paddy fields is to be noted, this was quite unusual in such circumstances[28].

In Madure korale, the largest land buyers were the members of a Scottish family, A.J. and R.J Farquharson, who were followed by other members of the same family, George Fraser and Francis G. Farquharson.  Niyangama, a Batgam Duraya locality, was totally absorbed by an estate: there  the Farquharsons purchased between July 1891 and April 1896 an area of 172 acres, allegedly for 5,010 Rs, which included 11 acres of houses and gardens, 31 acres of gardens, 11 acres of gardens and chenas, and 118 acres of chenas. The local headmen (the korala, Palipana Meduma Banda, and the ex-aracci and the vel-duraya) sold their lands and acted as intermediaries to sell first chenas belonging to Batgam people;  the estate later extended with sales of gardens and houses between August 1892 and July 1893 at a rate up to 100 Rs an acre (in the deeds, but probably much less). Further north, in the localities of Padeniya, Mahawela, Akolagomuwa and Madige Malbe, the Farquharsons purchased from May 1895 to September 1896 some 450 acres for 4,930 Rs, including 23 acres of gardens, 8 of fields, 84 of fields, gardens and chenas, and 334 of chenas. The sellers were Goyigama and Muslims in Malbe, and Palipana served as middleman, purchasing for 110 Rs chenas in 1893 and reselling them to the Farquharsons for 817.75 Rs Another Palipana, P.B. Palipana Ratemahatmaya, acted as intermediary in the sale of Bolagama (Goyigama village), Elawissa and Mayamulla (Duraya villages), which were purchased by him for 620 Rs for 364 acres (6 acres of fields and gardens and 357 acres of chenas sold 1.34 Rs per acre), between May 1894 and May 1896.

Another landgrabber was W.L. Strachan, also active in the Kägalla district. He purchased from the peasants and also from the local monk, between January 1894 and September 1896, 404 acres (including 4 acres of gardens) for 3,337 Rs in the localities of Moratuwa, Dunukewatta, Mitenwala. In Panagamuwa (a Muslim village), Rambodagalla, Ogodapola (Vahumpura), the purchasers were the North and South Sylhet Tea Companies which acquired 1,028 acres paid 11,859 Rs (10 to 15 Rs per acre), including 50 acres of fields and 94 acres of gardens, an enormous amount, between August 1894 and August 1896, from various sellers, including numerous Moormen, large Goyigama landowners (notably Tikiri Banda Delwita, 111 acres) and some Vahumpuras : the Delwita estate was as a result a patchwork : this is very characteristic of these estates made up entirely of village sales.  

Pitiakande estate was purchased from villagers by Edmund Scott and Frank Shelley who paid 3,079 Rs for 400 acres including 4 acres of gardens, between 1894 and 1896, from Goyigama villagers of Kotikapola and later Duraya villagers of Rambatta and Mitenwala, including a vel-duraya and a washerman. Another purchaser, J. Manley Power, had acquired 64 acres at 1,946 Rs, and this included 18 acres of gardens and 2 of paddy fields, near Kotikapola. In Ellagonna and Talahengoda 286 acres were purchased by F.W. Harper and F. Watson Davidson, including 62 acres of fields and 26 acres of gardens. And at Etagahawela, one A. Melville White purchased 216 acres (including 5 acres of paddy fields), through the intermediary of Alfred Gaspar Herat, for 2,595 Rs.

Delwita is one of the best documented cases of large estates built up by land purchases from villagers[29]. In 1904, the Controller of Revenue, Ellis, undertook a settlement of the estate’s claims. The Surveyor General sent his deputy, Ferdinands, to inspect Delwita; he was apparently in the best terms with the superintendent of Delwita, Long Price, and wrote that “the settlement should be an easy one with so many facilities placed at the disposal of the Settlement officer”. But Ellis was not prepared to be lax in the matter, and considered that “this is a typical case of large property formed by purchases from villagers, which should be considered as a test case of the working of the Waste Lands Ordinance”. The estate owned 1,846 acres, entirely purchased from villagers by A.J. Farquarson who resold them to the Finlay Muir business. As usual, De Sarams were managing the legal interests of the firm and they sent to the Assistant settlement officer Fox “a trunk containing the Delwita Estate deeds, there are between 500 and 600 of them, most date from 1894-1898”. The settlement proposed by Ellis recognized 597 acres of paddy fields, old gardens and reasonable percentage of appurtenances to be settled on Certificates of Quiet Possession and asked the estate to pay from 10 Rs to 20Rs per acre for the rest, adding that the Crown would not defend the estate against village claimants as it could not ascertain whether all village claims had been purchased by it. Finlay Muir transmitted the refusal of the settlement by the successors of Farquarson, but accepted to pay 17,507 Rs; however the Certificate of Quiet Possession was not issued until December 1912.

In a report of March 1906, the Kurunegala agent informed the government that the superintendent of Delwita was felling 400 acres of forest “apparently outside the settlement, in the village of Reddagoda”, that Farquarson was doing the same near Malbe, and that the superintendent of Nelahella was felling 100 acres of forest. He asked for a general settlement of the whole valley of Madure korale : “the rush for rubber land is so great that it is evident that planters and speculators are not going to wait any longer and are felling freely in all directions, trusting to luck as to the consequence. The land in Madure korale is about the most promising and valuable rubber land in the province.”

Finally, the Settlement department resurveyed in the 1930s several villages of the valley and found that most villagers were practically landless and lived on rubber tapping on the estates, which was curtailed as a result of the great depression[30]. Buluwalakanda was described as follows in May 1931: “One of the largest villages in the korale, a large part occupied by part of the Shakerley estate on title plans. The village lies on the slopes of a steep hill, land is very rocky. I think that the villagers might find it difficult to pay for their settlements because they depend for ready cash on employment in the estate which is now nearly closed. The villagers own no paddy fields. About half the village was sold 20 years ago to the estate”. A few years later, in Niyangama (Pinnapota hamlet), there was “little chena land in the village, ¾ of the village is paddy land, the highlands consist of old gardens. The area under notice was keenly claimed owing to the scarcity of any available highland. In one case, an extent of 6 perches was settled on 6 persons. Many of the villagers find employment in the neighbouring Keppitigala estate, Population 190 for 230 acres of which 150 acres are paddy, 45 families mostly of the Batgam Duraya caste”.

The position taken by Ellis had an echo in the nearby district of Matale, where two influential European land grabbers, Anderson and Malcolmson, who had asked for Certificates of quiet possession for land purchased from villagers, felt threatened. As Europeans, they believed they could obtain the indulgence of the colonial government. In the case of Anderson, the position of Ellis was uncompromising. The file ‘Anderson claims’[31] begins with a minute by Ellis (26.04.1904) dealing with the claim of James Anderson, the owner of Gansarapola / Bandarapola estates, which Ellis considered to be a test case.  “I advise that Mr. Anderson be informed that the Crown is not prepared at present to issue a Certificate of quiet possession (…) This is merely the precursor of much larger similar claims (…) Mr. Anderson has purchased these lands probably at a nominal figure, land which is really the property of the Crown (…) These purchases involved a double fraud: the Crown is deprived of its land, which properly belongs to it, and the people of the use of the land for chena and grazing purposes. If one villager sells land which was in this way occupied by himself and ten others, the latter have no redress, they cannot claim the land because it belongs to the Crown and no one therefore has a locus standi to eject the purchaser (…) There is some reason to suppose that in the past there has not been sufficient check exercised by government over the alienation by private parties of land of this description (…) The question is simply whether the laxity is to be continued. If it is, it will involve to giving up of probably half the land in the North Western province and three quarters of the land in Ratnapura. I cannot for a moment advise this wholesale abandonment of Crown right especially when it is borne in mind that the benefit will accrue no to the villager, who will in all probability sustain severe loss, but to foreign speculators, who will, not improbably, resell at a fair price when they had bought it at an inadequate one, and who will do this on the strength of a title which government, entirely disapproving of the sale, has given to them (…) Anderson  now asks government to give him a good title for his defective one, and thereby allow him to secure for himself the difference between what he paid for the land and its true value. It seems clear that the difference in justice belongs to the villagers and not to Mr Anderson [author’s emphasis]. I cannot see how the fact that a man has succeeded in inducing the headmen not to report a clearing, or the fact that the Revenue Officer has delayed in holding an inquiry into the matter, can in any way alter the occupant’s title.”

The other speculator, Joseph Malcolmson, was an Anglo-Irish Quaker turned missionary, who attempted to use his status to exert an influence in favour of the planter’s lobby. His exchange of letters with the colonial administration offers a typical example of the colonial discourse at the beginning of the 20^th century[32]:  

“The action of Government in the North Western Province with regard to native lands has caused considerable disquiet amongst planters in this district, and will certainly do so amongst capitalists at home. Though I am now a missionary and I am not directly connected with business except so far as being owner of this estate [Clodagh], I have a great many friends and connections at home who are very considerably engaged therein, and I know how they and other possible investors will be influenced by the action taken. Not long ago I was spoken to regarding the possibility of one of the Cadbury family coming to the island and acquiring land for cocoa. The Cadburys have I believe cocoa estates in other countries and are as you probably know one of the largest cocoa firms in the world. I also know the heads of the firm of J.S. Fry and co, Bristol, and Rowntrees of York, both very largely interested in this product, as well as others who are very largely interested in tea; some of them are already owners of estates in the island. I am quite sure these men, who are cautious but at the same time enterprising men of business, could be greatly if not entirely dissuaded from investing in new estates in Ceylon by the fear that the government might step in and claim their purchase, when it is considered that land which costs say 20 Rs., takes 300 to 400Rs. to bring into bearing in tea or cocoa. There is a considerable amount of land in the Matale district suitable for planting cocoa, coconuts and rubber, but it is mostly in native hands and is of little benefit to anyone at present, being under chena cultivation only. I need hardly throw Your Excellency’s attention to the general benefit that arises when such land is opened up and planted. An estate of the size of this (800 acres opened) pays about 7,500 Rs a year in rail freights, in some cases more, say about 10 Rs per cultivated acre. I have paid during some years over 15,000 Rs per annum in wages to the Sinhalese villagers, apart from carpenters, carters and contractors employed, and Tamil coolies’ wages, which are mainly spent in the district. The villages adjoining the estate, when I came first, were exceedingly unhealthy, fever, dysentery, etc. constantly prevailing. Since the land has been opened, they are as healthy as any in the district (…)

No one can blame the Crown for claiming land which has been undoubtedly encroached on, but lands which have been held by villagers for generations without dispute, and have been bought in good faith for estates from them while the Government has been quiescent, ought certainly not to be subject to dispute and disturbance. I may say that my own investment here was on the faith of Sir West Ridgeway statement to the Matale planters eight years ago [1896]. His words are well remembered by me and can no doubt be referred to, “that bona fide investors and planters had nothing to fear from the Waste Lands Ordinance, that it was only directed against land speculators and middlemen; and that Certificates of quiet possession would be given without difficulty”. How difficult these are to obtain is well known and from the nature of the case it must be so. It would take the Assistant Agent some weeks to inquire into all my title deeds for instance of which I have some 300 to 400, though I believe not one piece of my land has ever been claimed by the Crown, except the Crown land I have bought in the usual way at the kacceri sales (…) As you are aware the largest portion of lands bought from villagers are held by them under piya uruma [ancestral heritage] and Government can easily dispute such title (…) I cannot conceive of anyone either purchasing for himself as a bona fide planter or acting in good faith for his employer, speculating as you suggest (…) If he was a man of any substance, he would rarely take such a risk, and I feel sure few Europeans would do so. I do not dispute that such may be done by Moor traders and Low country Sinhalese. I do not think I have ever come across a case of a Kandyan doing so (…) My position as a Sinhalese missionary [sic] brings me into close touch with the Kandyans and I can positively state that ancestral lands are well known to the people”.

Malcolmson pointed the problem resulting from the frequent change of Revenue officers “I communicated with the Assistant Government Agent and told him what boundaries I wished to buy within, and asked him ‘was any land belonging to the Crown?’;  he informed me that he would take no responsibility and that I must find out for myself. Mr E.B. Alexander was the first Assistant Government Agent that I could get information from and he came down here and took great pains to investigate doubtful pieces on more than one occasion (…) I would far rather buy from the Crown than from the villagers, but there is almost no good land in the hands of the Crown in this district. We are compelled to buy from the villagers or not at all.”[33]

Storey, Chairman of the Matale Planter’s Association, exchanged simultaneously letters with the Colonial Secretary in September 1904, who answered that intending purchasers could ascertain from Government if a land was Crown land, that after Kurunegala, Matale would be taken up by the Land Settlement department, and that “until each case has been considered on its merits, Government does not propose to issue Certificates of quiet possession”. Storey insisted that “if carried out to the letter, it will affect thousands of acres of land in the Matale valley, and the owners thereof could ill afford to pay even 10Rs an acre for such lands (…) In the case of the estates Muwagala and Owitikande (…) held mainly on native titles purchased in good faith by me (…) will you kindly give me a letter assuring me of government’s no intention of contesting our claims to same, similar to the document or letter given to Mr James Anderson on behalf of the owners of Gansarapola estate by Mr Im Thurn”.

Ellis, in a note to the Governor, developed his position: “Government is not prepared to depart from the policy previously communicated (…) It does not feel called upon to supplement the titles which capitalists have considered sufficiently strong to justify investment as the land has probably been bought below its value on account of the weakness of the title.(…) Mr. Storey’s letter is full of humour. He first states as a threat or warning that planters will cease to buy lands on native titles, this being the very object with which the circular issued. He then predicts the practical ruin of the villager”. Storey should send a schedule of his deeds and then trace the title to the original owner: “It is a common practice for low country men and other unprincipled speculators to go round the villages collecting signatures on native deeds which they use to form the basis of a subsequent transfer to the planter”

The enquiry of the Assistant Agent at Matale (25.11.1904) concluded that Malcolmson had paid a fair price for the lands but revealed that there were many cultivated lands included in the estate, just as in the case of Delwita: 348 lots purchased from 441 persons covering 1,075 acres, were paid 45.77 Rs. an acre. The larger lots, 165 acres in all, were purchased in 1897-1898, they were paid 41 Rs. per acre: “all appear to have been old gardens, some with coconut trees over 20 years old, except one claimed as appurtenance to a field; coffee had previously been planted on much of the land and there are on some lots old houses or sites of houses; as regards the other lots generally inquired into, it will be seen that they include fields.” Malcolmson had purchased mainly from Low country men and not from Kandyans: one lot from Abraham Appuhami, the schoolmaster of Kaikawela, his wife and other family members who themselves had house and coconut trees; another from Lokuge Alwis Silva who declared that he bought the land in 1873 from the (Kandyan) aracci Koralegedara Appuhami, another from Samuel Appuhami “It was old paddy field or small garden, purchased from 100 to 200 Rs per acre. These lands have been planted by me with tea and coconut and rubber at different dates from 1897 on”. Other intermediaries, Welgamage Simon and David Appuhami “bought the land to sell to Mr. Malcolmson, including small paddy fields (about 13 acres)”; and one Wickramasekere who claimed upon a fiscal transfer”. On the basis of this enquiry, Ellis was compelled to admit Malcolmson’s claims (minute of 10.02.1905) but added: “it could be noted that for a good deal of the land claimed by Mr. Malcolmson, title deeds have been issued by Crown (but) he apparently has no bought from the persons who received the deeds; this however is not a matter in which the Crown is interested”.  

In his annual report for 1905, Hellings, the new Assistant Government Agent, underlined the social effects of such the land sales[34] : “Sales of whole chenas by some of the shareholders only; many of these transactions occurred years ago; the chenas were recently cleared by the purchasers, and the co-owners who did not join in the sale found themselves compelled to accept such compensation if any as the purchaser chose to offer, or to enter upon a costly action at law against perhaps a wealthy company. This involved hardships on poor people. I did what I could to promote fair settlements”

The Settlement department facing land speculation by Ceylonese entrepreneurs : the first Kurunegala meeting (June 1904)

There was a geographical and historical continuum between traditional coconut cultivation in small holdings in the coastal areas (Chilaw / Negombo) and its extension in the interior (Kurunegala). But investment in large scale coconut cultivation was not a peasant activity: it became between 1880 and 1930 the main field of investment for the emerging bourgeoise hailing from the coastal areas, from Chilaw to Panadura via Negombo, Colombo and Moratuwa. Quite often belonging to the Karawa caste, these investors had accumulated a capital through arrack distillery or tavern renting, trade and the professions, and could hardly access the European banks. Rich Muslim traders were also in the field. Following their example, smaller investors, such as clerks and government employees, opened medium scale coconut estates with borrowed money. The Nattukottai Chettiar merchant bankers from South India (Chettinad) established at that time hundreds of small agencies in the district to finance the development of coconut estates. Their implantation in Ceylon dated from the mid-19^th century: they acted as money changers for the coffee planters and the Tamil coolies up-country, and after the collapse of coffee by 1880 they partly converted their activity to money lending to Ceylonese on mortgage[35].

Among the pioneer Karawa entrepreneurs stand out the De Soysas, who had already entered the plantation business up-country in the mid 19^th century during the coffee area, and continued to do so in rubber and coconut areas of the mid-country after 1900. The Lenawa case[36] offers an early example of the trend: in this remote area of Hiriyala (north of the Kurunegala district), the elder son of C.H. de Soysa, J.W.C. de Soysa, in association with one Mr. Whitehead, had purchased five entire villages (1168 acres) from Thomas Benjamin Lenawa in 1899, including paddy fields and chenas, and started planting on forest and chenas “claimed by the villagers on deeds as the paraveni appurtenances of their fields: no highlands were thus left to villagers who complained (…) They continue to chena and grow tobacco on highlands and dispute the right of De Soysa ». The Settlement officers therefore allowed the villagers some highlands (134 acres on the condition that they reach an agreement with De Soysa) – but they were opposed by the De Soysas who were influent in Colombo (“hopes to obtain better terms from H.E. the Governor”) and wanted them to lower the price they asked for the offer of a Certificate of quiet possession for the Lenawa estate (17,900 Rs for 998 acres)”.  In 1936 when the village was surveyed for mapping out there was absolutely no Crown land left: “Lenawakanda from which the villagers had been in habit of obtaining their fence sticks and creepers had been settled in 1906 on Lenawa estate”

The colonial administration was more alert to the activities of the Ceylonese land speculators in coconut than in the case of European land grabbing in Madure. The governors Henry Arthur Blake (December 1903 to July 1907) and Henry McCallum (August 1907 to January 1913) had to manage the agitation created by the government policy in the Kurunegala district. The starting point of the whole affair was a petition of “landowners and proprietors of estates” of the Kurunegala district led by Jacob de Mel[37], Clovis de Silva and others, dated 10.10.1903 (just before the governor West Ridgeway left), in which the petitioners expressed their dissatisfaction of the land policy of the Government Agent, S.M. Burrows, who attempted to control the sale of village lands as he had done a few years before when he was in charge of the Matale district. They asked – paradoxically, the government to bring the district under the Land settlement department and entrust the work to Fraser. The government answered that it would treat liberally the paraveni owners but strictly scrutinize the claims of “the persons who, by purchasing such lands, have ejected the original proprietors”.

A few months later, the Controller of Revenue, Ellis, went to Kurunegala to find out by himself the situation[38]. Ellis position was to defend Crown rights uncompromisingly, his approach was that of a legist and an accountant: “As far as I could discover, the land business in the North Western Province is in a more unsatisfactory state than in any other part of the island (…) Everyone seems to have taken possession of any land that he thought suitable for his purposes (…) The usual mode of procedure has been as follows: any person, native or European, who wished to become possessed of an estate and had a small capital, selected a certain block of land and obtained a transfer for it from anyone who was willing to sign the deed (…) The land was then cleared. If the matter was reported, the occupant forwarded his transfers and, in some cases, the Ratemahatmaya reported that the land was chena; this was considered sufficient to justify the tacit abandonment of all claims on behalf of the Crown. In many cases the cultivation was not reported, but the claimant himself when he had cleared and planted the land got it surveyed by a private surveyor and applied for a Certificate of quiet possession which in many instances was granted to him (…) In this way many estates varying in extent from 3,000 to 2,000 acres have been acquired without the payment of one rupee to government, by the simple process of giving a trifling sum to some villager who may or may not have had a small interest in the land.” In the area between Wariyapola and the Kurunegala-Negombo road – the heart of what was to become the ‘coconut triangle’: “the whole country seemed to have been planted within the last few years, say since 1896. On enquiring who were the planters, I found that with few exceptions they were non-residents who had taken possession of the land in the manner indicated above. Mr J.G. de Silva has already taken a Certificate of quiet possession for over 300 acres and now applies for 340 acres more”. Quoting the case of a Kurunegala shopkeeper, and of Mr Modder, a resident of Kurunegala, (“who had bought land on a writ issued against some Tamil man”) “it has I believe been the practice in Kurunegala tacitly to waive Crown rights with reference to chenas and to allow the villagers the temporary use either of chenas where the paddy crop was insufficient for their maintenance, or as appurtenance of their fields (…) this cannot however be constructed into the abandonment of Crown rights when the villagers have shown that the possession of these lands is in no way necessary to them”

Ellis concluded: “I advise that an offer be made to the occupants of a grant at 10 Rs an acre for all the lands planted prior to 1899 (…) For the lands cultivated or purchased since 1900, I would advise that 15 Rs be demanded for cultivated and 20 Rs for uncultivated land (…) For the future I advise that the Ratemahatmayas be informed that they will be held strictly responsible for failure to report at once any clearing (…) I believe from what I have seen that chena cultivation is much less extensive than it used to be, and if the land which I inspected were really old chenas, the representations made by scientists and others as to the injury done to the soil by this species of cultivation must be considerably exaggerated (…) The villager at all events can have no cause of complaint at the resumption by the Crown of land which he himself has already alienated.” Ellis failed to understand that only some of the villagers had sold, while all had use of the highlands; another factual element is that in the Kurunegala district there was a gradual transition between the intermediate zone, where chenas were a supplement to paddy and garden and the dry zone, where they were the main source of food especially when paddy crops failed: it was therefore difficult to impose a uniform rule.

In the case of the coconut lands of Kurunegala, the Governor decided to publicize the decision to settle lands at a price on the basis of Ellis advice: 3,000 copies were printed in Sinhala and a few in English together with oral instructions to headmen (“held strictly responsible for failure to report at once any clearing ”) but also with the recommendation to be lenient and use the ordinance of 1897 and not that of 1840. The publication of the notice created a commotion, but interestingly enough it is group of estate proprietors distinct from the petitioners of 1903 who reacted. Most but not all of them were anglicized Kandyans, their leaders were T.B.L. Moonemalle and G.E. Madawela, together with C.F. Markus, a Burgher lawyer.  They held a public meeting at the Kurunegala town hall (4.06.1904), and sent a resolution to the private secretary of the Governor, in which they made out that the unsigned notice distributed by the kacceri “will involve a large majority of villagers in absolute ruin (…) One question only for a series of years has disturbed our equanimity, namely the tenure of land in this district. It seems to have been a mistake from the beginning”. The ordinance of 1840 had never really been enforced in Kurunegala and the courts “recognized the distinction between Crown lands and private chenas” and often issued Certificates of quiet possession for the latter; this proclamation “has been flown among us like a bombshell (…) That you have opened up lands and planted them at great cost, increasing thereby the wealth and importance of the district, and that you have largely employed native labour, and put into circulation among them money, whereby their condition has been materially improved, will not be considered”. Commenting on the report of the Government Agent Burrows (15.06.1904) on this meeting, Ellis asserted that “there is no intention of government to interfere just at present with the system of chena cultivation”, but to prevent the alienation of highlands to outsiders. Another meeting was held on 30.07.1904 by the Kurunegala Planter’s Association which condemned the action of government ‘as unconstitutional’ in stronger terms[39].

Blake, under the influence of European planters whose interests in the Kurunegala and Matale districts were similar to those of the Ceylonese petitioners, finally gave an oral promise that the administration would recognize the principle of appurtenance of chena lands to paddy fields on a ‘3 to 1’ basis in the North Western province, and this offer was the starting point of a long opposition between the Land settlement department and the central government.

The controversial history of the “appurtenances to paddy fields” and the “3 to 1 settlements”

The introduction of the principle of appurtenance was the result of the pressure put on the Settlement department by the Kurunegala petitioners. The history of the case is given in a letter sent by the Settlement Officer to the Colonial secretary (12.10.1929), where he regrets that the issue has not been raised before the Land commission[40]. “The origin is a speech made by Sir H. Blake at Kurunegala on 6.02.1906. There is I believe no official record of this speech, but according to newspapers reports of this time, a deputation consisting of Mr T.B.L. Moonemalle, G.E. Madawela and T.B. Delwita waited upon H.E.” stated that “it had always been recognized fact that the owners of paddy land had from time immemorial possessed highlands as appurtenances to their paddy fields” and went on to urge that the people “be allowed to retain their highlands without payment of the high rates demanded and that a Certificate of quiet possession in respect of such lands be issued to them on payment of survey fees to Govt”. Blake answered that “all officers have been instructed to concede highlands in the proportion of 3 to 1 of paddy land”. “No such instruction had, as a matter of fact, been issued to this Department, and the method of settlement adumbrated in this speech was at that time wholly unknown and a complete innovation and I believe that the Settlement Officer of this period, sir John Fraser, had no previous intimation of a proposed change of policy. Therefore, until the present day, the 3 to 1 system has been in operation in those parts of the Kurunegala district (and not elsewhere: this is underlined by the papers of the 3^rd interim report of the Land Commission quoting the letter of the Colonial Secretary to the Government Agent Central Province, 20.04.1912, excluding the Matale district from the benefit of the promise) where chenas are claimed. In the case the villagers prefer a 3 to 1 settlement, there is no survey and no individual settlement but a global area of chenas is allowed free to the villagers as a group. The application of the 3 to 1 system is the source of difficulties, because they have been clearly exploited by purchasers of land to develop coconut cultivation and that it gave rise to endless disputes. Among these purchasers of village title figure chief headmen such as C.E. Tennakoon (Devamedi Hatpattu), who acted as middleman for Mr. Dias Bandaranaike and Proctor Paul”[41].

The historical argument of the Kurunegala petitioners is corroborated by a few texts of the 19^th century unknown to them. In discussions regarding the Waste lands ordinance of 1840[42] in which the Kurunegala agent said that “scarcely any land in this district is held upon sannas or grant, and more particularly of the original possessors. Many lands are held by deeds of purchase from the ancestors of those who have no documents whatever for the remaining portions of their lands. The decisions in these cases will therefore affect a very large proportion of the property in this district as it is only in the upper part that paddy has ever been cultivated on high ground which have been taxed (…) Each field has always been considered to have a certain portion of high ground attached to it”. In a further letter, Morris raised the issue of the kandegam – the villages inhabited by jaggery caste villagers, who had no documents to prove their ownership of highlands, but should be recognized by virtue of tradition.  In 1884 it was still accepted by the administration: “The jaggery caste people owned no paddy land and only occupied gardens as tenants of a Vellala landlord. Yet I have seen claims admitted to chenas claimed as appurtenant to the arambas of the jaggery caste people”.  In other districts, the principle of appurtenances was also accepted: in Madulla village, Nuwara Eliya, in 1869, the administrator, Braybrooke considered “that highland should be allowed in the village in the proportion of 2 to 1 or higher according to the local custom and the nature of the soil”; and in 1927 the Settlement officer finds that “there are evidences of settlements on these lines”. According to Hulugalle, Ratemahatmaya of Dewamedi Hatpattu the rule 3 to 1 was the result of an undated conference between Braybrooke, Government Agent Central Province and Kandyan chiefs, but in Kurunegala there was no fixed proportion. [43]

The appurtenance principle was always unpopular with the settlement officers. Fraser wrote in 1903[44] : “there being no such things as appurtenances to fields, the best basis in determining the land to be given is in ascertaining the area required to produce a sufficient supply of food for the claimants and their families”.  One year after the Blake promise, at the request of Fraser, Brodhurst, the Controller of Revenue, wrote to the Colonial Secretary to suggest that 3 to 1 settlements be no longer offered and that settlements should be done by the Revenue officers only in cases of great urgency and on the principles of the Settlement department: “The villagers are not so much interested in the question of appurtenances for ranges of paddy fields as in securing a clear title from the Crown for each individual holding (…) The general recognition of appurtenances, especially where they have been alienated, is likely to give rise to untenable claims and consequent dissatisfaction as there are cases in which rights to appurtenances did not exist”[45]. The government answered by the negative.

In practice, the Settlement officers advised the claimants to prefer either individual settlements which gave definite title to land, or chena reserves, but they often met with the opposition of the headmen and the reluctance of the peasants. Brayne, when he was Assistant settlement officer, vividly described the process:[46] “I was present at an interview between the Settlement officer and C.E. Tennakoon, the Ratemahatmaya of Devamedi Hatpattu, at which the Settlement officer carefully explained to him the two methods of settlement now definitely approved by Government in this district, viz. the grant of appurtenances – a concession in land; or instead an all-round concession in price. The Ratemahatmaya finally expressed his opinion that the terms were ‘more than liberal’. An old ex-aracci of Dehikumbura was the called in. He had no land of his own but seemed to consider he held a brief from his fellow villagers, and had petitioned government that they should be granted appurtenances. The Settlement officer carefully explained matters to him, showing him how in this part of the district where a great deal of land was planted the all-round concession in price was very much more to the advantage of the people than the grant of appurtenances. The ex-aracci pretended to think that the people might get appurtenances and an all-round concession in price as well. The SO made quite clear to him they he could net eat his plantain twice, and he said that his people would choose concession in price”. The story is recounted by Fraser in a private and confidential correspondence in which he mentions that Tennekoon had purchased from the villagers and sold to one Miss Wodehouse, and that the demand for a 3 to 1 settlement by the ex-aracci was “instigated by someone behind the scenes”. He suggests that “the concession of highlands to owners of paddy fields is made in the interests of paddy cultivation (…) if such lands are diverted from the purpose for which they were granted, the land is to revert to the Crown, for example if they are planted with coconuts they will cease to be appurtenances; and that when the demand is made by a majority of field owners for a settlement on the 3 to 1 basis, the whole village will be dealt with on that system and no application will be entertained to a reversion to the other system”[47] .

According to other settlement officers, “The more I see of the results of the 3 to 1 provision, the more I realize how unfortunate that promise was. In the first place, a large acreage is admitted private and the villagers have a heritage of disputes concerning the division, or else, as this is done in most cases, they sell the lands to some speculator who plants coconut. The villager has a temporary benefit as he receives a certain amount of money, but in 2 or 3 years he is worse off than he was.  Then, no chena at all. Consequently the 3 to 1 settlement is not in the interest of the villager. A chena reserve is Crown land and the villager enjoys the right of re-cultivation”. “From a government point of view, a 3 to 1 settlement is a sheer waste of time and money, for the villagers, it is the beginning of litigation and trouble”. Stace showed the class implications of the choice to the villagers and asserted the position of the colonial administration: “I explained in detail the options, between 3 to 1 settlement and individual settlements, the disadvantages of the former and the advantages of the latter. After I had finished two of the chief men of the village at once rose and demanded a 3 to 1 settlement. The others were silent. Then I pointed out to the crowd that it was in the interest of the two powerful men of the village to ask for 3 to 1 settlement since they could seize whatever chena land they liked and the other villagers would be pushed out. I said that this matter was not going to be decided by the wishes of the first two speakers but by a majority of claimants and I asked the rest what they had to say. With one accord they called for individual settlements and so it was decided”.[48]

In 1926, Madawela raised before the Legislative Council the question whether the Settlement Officer always offered the villager the 3 to 1 option.  Hodson, the Government Agent at Kurunegana, answered in an official letter to the Colonial secretary explaining the options offered: either 3 to 1 free, or 3 or more to 1 as chena reserve, or land sold in individual shares at 20 Rs maximum per acre. The last option according to him was preferred in the wet zone, and the second in the driest zone; the only case where the appurtenance system was regularly adopted was in the case of the pillewas close to the paddy fields. In his diary he reiterated his  position in favour of individual settlements and against the projects of communal lands: “ In a few cases, the villagers have sold to capitalists chena lands which were admitted private by the S.O. but as a rule they did not part with any lands to which the SO gave them individual title (…) A villager complained that 1 ½ acre of his land had been sold to a capitalist by another man, and the capitalist had forcibly fenced it: another Victor Corea case, but I hope to get the capitalist to disgorge without recourse to court”. The same Hodson, in his Administration report for 1928, wrote that “the villager is ready enough to part with his sometimes shadowy and always vaguely defined claims to unsettled land, but he is extremely loath to part with land settled on him to which he has good title. I have therefore found little need for using the ‘peasant-proprietor’ system in disposing of Crown land to villagers, except in a few cases where the village lands are hemmed in by estates which are anxious to expand”[49].

After the reforms of 1930, the social implications of the 3 to 1 offer were still apparent[50].  “All the claimants except an e-aracci preferred a settlement according to claims. The ex-aracci had recently planted up more than his share and would no doubt have continued to plant a further acreage, had a 3 to 1 settlement been made. It is interesting to note that the villagers are gradually opening up most of the chena land in permanent products and the only sales to outsiders amount to about 2 acres. In the surrounding villages most of the lands except old gardens and fields, and sometimes even old gardens and fields, have passed into the hands of outsiders within recent years”. In that case outsiders were taken away by the enterprise of ‘koulaks’.  But the domination of a few enterprising individual could lead to violence: “Villagers stated they had violent quarrels over land disputes and a 3 to 1 settlement would they said reduce their population quickly by the number of fatal affrays over land questions”. In April 1934, Rasaretnam noticed “the inclination of the average villager to ask for a 3 to 1 settlement. The reasons appear to be: 1. Poverty, 2. Desire to get land free 3. A mistaken idea that the Crown is benefitting pecuniarily from individual settlements 4. The desire of the rich landlord or bully to squat on more land than his lawful share 5. The desire of the unscrupulous villager to sell land for which he has no claim 6. The anxiety of the village capitalist to lay claim to village chena for which he has paid and to which he vendor has not a justifiable claim”. In his opinion,  3 to 1 settlements should be restricted to cases of real poverty. In 1936, the Ellepola wrote: “I am of opinion that the preference of 3 to 1 settlement is at the instigation of the more influential people of the village (Illukpitiya). On such a settlement they will continue to possess the land themselves to the detriment of the interests of the weaker and more ignorant among them. This appears to be how the land is possessed in the village at present (…) The complaint of inability to pay individual settlements seems a myth” He succeeded in convincing the villagers after 2 months that individual settlements were in their interest.

Charting settlement work: the second Ellis memorandum and the Fraser report (1906-1907)

After the Kurunegala meeting, the department continued to systematically organize its work in the coconut areas of the district and confront numerous speculative claims. In December 1904, the Settlement officer Fraser wrote in his diary[51]: “The usual North Western Province speculative type: 1,059 acres in 9 villages on either side of the Deduru Oya near the confluence with the Maguru Oya. Mr. Dandasekera bought these lands from the villagers and resold 1/3^rd of it to Mr. Scott (…) who sold ½ of it to Mr. Van der Poorten”. In immediate proximity, the department had spotted another speculation[52]: “Gonagama coconut estate is claimed by H.H.J. Pieris on the basis of 30 acts (1895-96), 6 villages, more than 1,000 acres, one third or one quarter cultivated in coconut. Includes an old gangoda (village cluster). The land purchased includes old gardens and paddy fields, chenas and forest, but consists mainly of the latter two”.

By the end of 1906, Ellis, who was to relinquish his office, sent privately and directly to the Colonial Office a second long and detailed memorandum[53] including guidelines for his successor, in which he explained the settlement process, expressed auto-satisfaction on the success of the settlement operations (contrary to the persisting critique of the Kurunegala memorialists) and developed his views on the origin and nature of land ownership and the legal value of titles.  “Fiscal transfers, because they are executed by Government officers, are sometimes regarded almost in the light of Crown grants. Such view is totally erroneous. Prescription is established only by uninterrupted possession for 30 years, that is when a chena has been transformed into garden or field. The claims on the basis of ‘appurtenances’ are accepted by an act of grace, as a right to use and not as a right to possess: the ‘3 to 1’ rule (allowing 3 acres of highlands for 1 acre of mudlands) is just indicative and can be increased: in point of fact, the smaller the amount of paddy with the Kandyan family, the larger may be the extent of appurtenance which it may require for its maintenance (…) The extent of land which the villager has already alienated or converted into garden must be taken into consideration (…) and it is usual to make allowance to the requirements of the poorest by assigning to them limited extents”.

Ellis explained the working of the settlement: verification of titles, genealogies, determination of limits in the field, and then “fair offer by the settlement officer”, and noted that when the settlement was made by a revenue officer, reports by headmen instead of personal enquiries, were usually accepted as conclusive, which was absolutely unsatisfactory. The question of who effects the settlement depended on the nature of the claims. The head of the department took up cases “in which capitalists, whether European or native, have purchased lands alleged to be chenas from villagers”; Ellis quoted the Delwita case, in which the sellers admitted they did not know what they had sold; “in many cases, especially in Ratnapura, the villager has been careful to sell nothing to which he could set up any reasonable claim (…) in addition to this, the deeds obtained from the villagers are in the majority of cases defective and self-contradictory”; in such settlements work was made heavy : a mass of acts had to be analysed, private surveys usually inaccurate to be checked, erroneous decisions by former Revenue Officers to be accepted (“it would be unequitable to hold purchasers responsible for the carelessness or inefficiency of government servants”). The proposed settlement was finally submitted to the Colonial Secretary and to the claimant and if he accepted it, he was given a deed precising that the government does nor guarantee his rights against those of other native claimants: the settlement did not determine the right of one individual versus another, but only the rights of a family group (actually a panguwa) versus the rights of the Crown.

According to Ellis, who criticized earlier settlements by Revenue officers, cases dealt with by Settlement officers were usually well received: “The outcry raised on various occasions by interested parties, that Government was taking possession of the ancestral lands of the people, never proceeded from the villagers or from paraveni owners. It has emanated entirely from speculators who had purchased, frequently for a nominal figure, lands belonging to the natives, often the only lands they have, but had also obtained transfers of large extents of Crown lands to which people had never asserted any claims. Such settlements take time and require field inspections instead of headmen reports; there is no short and at the same time reliable mode of settlement”. Settlements by Revenue officers had hitherto proved almost total failures: the kacceries were full of unfinished enquiry files and the carelessness of the administration had encouraged the swelling of spurious claims and petty encroachments which grew from year to year with the complicity of ‘village proctors’. To get rid of these land problems, the Revenue officers distributed Certificates of quiet possession: “the insertion of the magic letters CQP in the plan or the record was the most effectual way of evading a land enquiry (…) Some Revenue officers are I fear unwilling to undergo the fatigue, exposure and hardship necessarily involved in a personal lot to lot inspection in remote villages and lack sufficient authority on headmen to impose the respect of the settlement by the villagers”.   

In 1906, H.R. Freeman, the Revenue officer at Kurunegala[54] recognized that “the law as what constitutes Crown waste land has not been enforced in the past: Certificates of quiet possession were given right and left on the recommendation of Agents and with the sanction of Government. Lands for which Certificates of quiet possession were given should have been settled on purchasers from villagers on payment of a fair settlement price to Government, and it required the intervention of Mr. Ellis in 1904 to indicate to everybody that land affairs were not what they should be”. He insisted on a speedy settlement of large claims[55]: “For years it had been said : the Settlement officer is going to the district, though, when he does come, it is not the burning claims, with few exceptions, which he undertakes, but block plans, where there is no particular hurry. He works I know on a proper method, whereas what is in the most insistent interest of government here is: Johannes de Mel’s claims in Gadolwakka[56]; another similar claim of the De Mels[57]; the new Delwita estate clearings; Mr. Holloway’s claim; Capt. Farquharson; Mr. Vanserslots. There is between 30,000 and 40,000 Rs of revenue in this list and possibly more”.

The same year Fox, the Assistant settlement officer, pleaded for wider powers to sell or lease Crown lands in villages already settled: according to him there was a great desire to purchase lands but the process when dealt with by the kacceri administration was impeded by the necessary recourse to headmen. In his opinion the settlement was useless if it was not followed by a continuous monitoring of village development through judicious land sales; the popularity of settlement depended on the possibility it offered the villager to obtain land when required. Such a plan would go “a long way to obliterate the recollection of the former antagonism that existed between the Crown and the subject” “The facility for the acquisition of land thus offered renders land settlement easier for us and more palatable to them. But on the completion of these villages, these facilities will cease to exist and would-be purchasers will no doubt encroach on Crown lands that they want for the cultivation of citronella and for the extension of their gardens” [58]. This proposal was opposed by most Revenue officers, notably those of the Southern and Central provinces, who felt that it would deprive their headmen of their authority, except Brayne (at Mullaitivu) and Booth (at Badulla) who stressed the necessity to have a large staff of settlement officers “ One of the most urgent needs of the colony is a speedy land settlement. The existing uncertainty (…) creates a feeling of irritation between the officers of government and all classes of the community (…) The settlement must be a fair compromise between the Crown and the subject, erring if at all on the side of generosity towards the latter”[59].

Fowler, successor to Ellis, aligned himself on the position of Governor Blake[60]: “I find that in the North western province it is generally believed that the policy of government is to prevent as far as possible the alienation of chena land, not because such alienation is illegal, but because it is desirable to keep the land available for chena cultivation. This is the sense in which the Government Agent, headmen and natives understand clause 11 of the notice of 1904. If this view is correct, I can only express my dissent from such policy, as I consider that there cannot be greater blessing than the conversion of chena into permanent cultivation of any kind. The contention that chena cultivators will become vagrants and pests carries no conviction to my mind when I see the results of the process of conversion in Kegalle, Ratnapura, Kalutara and many parts of the North western province, where chenas have been converted with plantations of coconut, tea or rubber. The people are far better off than before, with profitable employment at their doors and an improved and assured market for their field and garden produce. The people who become vagrants for the want of chenas are of the class already worthless, depending solely on desultory cultivation, and the absence of chenas is more likely than anything else to compel them to take to honest work and a settled life”.

The relations between the Settlement officer and the Revenue administration became again tense. In January 1907 Fraser sent to the governor a memorandum on the future of the Land Settlement Department which included paragraphs (14 to 26) omitted from the printed Administration Report for 1906, at the express request of governor Blake[61]. In these censored sections, he developed a strong critique of the colonial land policy: “The English government having upset or allowed to fall into disuse the land policies existing in his Eastern possessions at the time of annexation cannot escape the responsibility of substituting for these the most perfect form of land policy which our western civilization can devise. The present chaotic state of land matters in Ceylon is most unsatisfactory both to the government and to the governed”. “The question must be dealt with as a whole, the chief points being the making of the block survey, the settlement of whole claims between the Crown and private individuals, the preparation of plans showing such settlements, the gradual conversion of the block survey into a cadastral survey in connection with the registration of private title to land, the keeping up to date of the cadastral survey and the registers of titles, the question of a land tax”. Fraser finally respectfully demanded “a complete scheme for dealing with the lands of the colony” and insisted that his proposals outlined what could be the basis for “a homogenous and continuous land policy for the whole island” to prevent “the recurrence of the same deplorable state of things as has just been remedied” by the work of settlement.

The omitted paragraphs affirmed that the retransfer of settled villages to Revenue officers “would be a retrograde step”, that only a Land department, “a natural outcome of land settlement”, could manage settled villages in order to keep the settlement plan up to date, secure the protection of Crown lands, reserve certain lands and “offer business-like facilities for the purchase or lease of such areas not required as reserves” and organize land registration for the areas recognized as private. The cost of such undertaking would be upset by the reduction of land-related crimes and the creation of a land tax. This program was actually realized thirty years later under the ‘mapping out’ system developed by C.V. Brayne.

In his diaries of 1907, and his correspondence of 1908, Fraser looked back at his action, and tried to defend his views against the critiques which were expressed by the governor himself. In his diary of March 1907, entitled ‘the dawn of a new era’, he wrote: “It must of course take time to reintroduce the idea of purchasing land from the Crown after so many years during which everyone and anyone has simply helped himself to any land he fancied, and no one objected, least of all the headmen who were all in the swim”. In July 1907, according to Fraser, the peasants were rushing to purchase lands from the Settlement department: “If Government desires the ‘pacification’ of the North Western Province, the moment has now come for it. So take action. Large areas adjoining those now dealt with have been surveyed and these can now be settled and revenue of many million rupees gathered in if Government will give the necessary staff and equipment”. In August 1907, just after Governor Blake left his post, he expressed his hope that the new governor, Mac Callum, and his Colonial Secretary Hugh Clifford, would be more open than Blake: “I have endeavoured to demonstrate that it is possible to settle disputes as to the ownership of land on a large scale practically without recourse to litigation (…) As the time went on, I arrived at the conclusion that it was feasible to settle not only all waste lands, but all lands whatsoever in a village, and after much opposition on the part of the Revenue officers, my scheme prevailed and the Land settlement department was constituted. It was obvious to me at an early stage that encroachments on Crown lands had in the past been done as much to want of proper facilities for acquiring land in a legitimate way as to any desire to rob the community of its prosperity, and I succeeded in obtaining authority to receive applications to purchase land and to hold the sales. These facilities which I offer bring the people into personal touch with me, convince them in the long run that my intentions are honest, and result in the effacement of all bad feeling due to the long-maintained struggle in the past for the assertion of their claims. (…) It is true that my operations have hitherto been on a comparatively small scale and that their effect on the progress of the colony can therefore not be assumed to have been great [its extension is a matter of men and money] My appeals to government for assistance in carrying out this scheme have been numerous, the appreciation of the work by government considerable, the answers to my appeals entirely inadequate (…) One of the chief duties of the British in this island at the present moment is the establishment of a sound and consistent policy in connection with land, and I am confident that this will soon be a fait accompli”.

The second Kurunegala mass meeting (October 1907) and renewed agitation in the North Western province[62]

Kurunegala remained the focus of organized agitation against the land settlement policy. Opposition to the Settlement department in the North western province was led by the lawyers of the Chilaw Association and more generally by the interests of the landed bourgeoisie who was investing in the ‘coconut triangle’. They were vocal enough to have the sympathy of a section of the Colonial office, as in the case of their critique of the Land Registration ordinance of 1907[63]. Their argument was that land registration should be effected by persons independent of the government and with a legal background; enquiries should be made where there are lawyers and not on the spot : “a peripatetic court is altogether unsuited to the conditions of the people , it would always be less expensive and more convenient  to the people to have their claims taken up at places where they have been accustomed to go for legal redress and where the services of lawyers are easily procurable, that is in the towns where the ordinary courts of law are, than at places at which legal assistance will not be available although such places maybe nearer their own homes”

Another mass meeting (40,000 participants according to the organizers, 6,000 “peasants collected and brought in by their headmen” according to the Government Agent) was convened at Kurunegala in October 1907 by the same Ceylonese leaders as in 1904. At that date T.B.L. Moonemalle had been chosen as the first Kandyan member of the Legislative Council and his position was much stronger than previously; he had the support of Buddhist monks, headmen (Hulugalle Dissawe), and Low country plantation owners. They elaborated a memorandum (dated 29.10.1907) signed by Moonemalle, Madawela, Modder, Markus, Dodanwela, Jayasundera, followed by a question before the Legislative Council ‘on the Kurunegala land question’ (15.11.1907)[64]. Their thesis was grounded on historical arguments: that the kings had never asserted their proprietorship over chenas; that in 1840 the absence of a Kandyan member led to the acceptance of the Crown lands ordinance; that sannas “ were granted to immigrants from India and other places who desired to settle down in this country  and to that end sought the protection and patronage of the king”; that the provisos of the ordinance of 1840 were never strictly enforced in the North western province: “as regards chenas in this district, successive Government Agents who being on the spot foresaw the evil effects, doubtless informed the government as to the situation. As a result the law was not put in force as regards chenas (…) In this feeling of security the people periodically cultivated and sometimes planted (…) and the Crown gave certificates of no claim and purchased from villagers chenas for public purpose such as building of village tribunals …(…) While the Waste lands ordinance on 1897 was before the Council it was the cause of no small agitation among the people from the sense of insecurity it had aroused, and though the ordinance was passed, it was not put into operation in this district to any considerable extent.” The Governors (Ridgeway, then Blake) proclaimed that “the government wishes to make the people sure and safe in the possession of the land”. The memorandum mentioned the special case of the Vahumpura caste: “There is a section of the Kandyan people known as Kande Ätto (hill tribe) who live in the hills and whose chief occupation is the manufacture of jaggery. They have been known to live on and possess these hills, chenaing and planting them from time immemorial.” Finally, the enforcement of the 1904 circular “must undoubtedly have involved much hardship to the ordinary villager as he was totally unable to pay the rate demanded from him”, and its suspension by a circular of 10 September 1907 “aroused a feeling of widespread unrest” : “the government had not laid down a settled policy on the land question”.

The new governor (McCallum) and his Colonial Secretary (Hugh Clifford) were really upset by the situation and in a lengthy despatch they exposed in detail the problem to London in order to cover themselves in the eventuality of a serious political crisis[65]:  “in spite of the firm attitude which I have taken up in the matter, a very determined attempt is still being made by certain interested individuals to keep alive the excitement and to mislead the ignorant peasantry as to the intention of government (…) When I assumed the government of this colony I found that the Land settlement officer was engaged in settling claims in the North western province on equitable terms, irrespective of the above mentioned notification”. McCallum therefore decided to cancel the notification of 1904: “the immediate consequence of this action was a public meeting held at Kurunegala on October 5^th , Mr Moonemalle taking the chair on that occasion (…) It may safely be predicated that any action which government may take in this matter, unless it be in the direction of abandoning all claims to Crown lands, will assuredly meet with more or less violent protests”. The attitude of Hulugalla Adigar encouraged the obstruction of surveyors, and the press published ironical letters attacking the colonial authorities, for example by Mr. Corea (who signed ‘Abhayaratna Vijayasekera Seneviratne’): “In this 20^th century of grace Hon. members of the executive ask in derision and scorn how is it possible that this rabble horde of nigger, this canaille of natives, could ever had justly acquired the vast tract of land which they now so impudently claim”. Corea in his articles and Moonemalle before the Legislative council developed arguments which were reiterated in the 1930s during the depression: the owners had no money to pay for the settlements and were compelled to borrow from Indian Chetties who exploited them. Petitions received in 1907 had a xenophobic tone: “Ceylonese borrow money the interest of which they cannot pay, and the invariable result is litigation which ends disastrously to themselves, the alien Shylock-like moneylender grabbing their land”.

In 1908, the agitation eventually receded in the Kurunegala district, but other demonstrations against settlement were held in the deep South, (Beliatta, 22 May 1908), instigated by the chief monk of Mulkirigala and one Ratnayaka, which led to obstruction[66]. A result of the agitation was to define the principles governing the selection and action of Settlement officers[67]: “The work is of a somewhat unpopular character, and it is of supreme importance that the settlements arrived at should be accepted without question (…) I consider it would be unwise to select for such work gentlemen who have local ties, sympathies and connections”.  The Governor reiterated the official position in a minute on the Administration report of 1907 that the Settlement officer should not deal with the disputes of ownership between private parties, but only with the relations between Crown and private rights; Fraser answered in March 1908 that “where different  portions of what appears to be prima facie one block of Crown land are claimed by different parties, it is necessary to subdivide the block as originally surveyed in order to deal with the separate claims”.[68]

The success of direct administration by the Settlement department was underlined in a memorandum of 1909 by the Controller of Revenue[69]  : “Theoretically after paying the first one tenth instalment to the Settlement officer the purchaser should pay the balance 9/10^th to the kachcheri, but this balance is almost invariably paid to the Settlement officer on his next circuit to the village (…) The purchaser naturally prefers to pay in the village as it saves him the journey to the kachcheri and back, the time occasionally wasted in obtaining a receipt, and other possible irregularities” – allusion to the widespread corruption of kachcheri petty officials.

But discontent in the North western province was simmering during the following years, and the relations between Settlement and Revenue officers remained strained. The clash between J. G. Fraser and W. E. Thorpe is an example of this state of things.[70] In April 1911, Thorpe, the new Government agent of the North-western province, in a letter to the Colonial Secretary, warned of numerous sales of so-called ‘paraveni’ chena lands, even of considerable growth, to outsiders for the plantation of coconut estates, with the assistance of headmen who regarded ‘paraveni chenas’ as lands not at the disposal of the Crown, “trading upon the apathy of the kacceri in years past”. He considered that the settlement system was too slow to take pace with the growth of the plantations. He quoted the case of Digana, a whole village sold through a Colombo middleman, Sundarasekera, to a German planter, Boysen. He proposed that villagers be noticed ‘by tom-tom’ that they have no right to sell to outsiders, that permits for chena must be insisted upon and delivered by chief headmen. The Secretary instructed him to “confine himself to prevent further encroachments and let the Settlement officer deal with land ownership”. Thorpe further requested government to let him deal with the chena question, stating that during numerous meetings the chief headmen “entirely accept the government view of the law and the baselessness of the paraveni chena claim”. He considered that the ordinance of 1840 should not have been superseded with ordinance of 1897, and that settlement should be undertaken by the Revenue officers as before and not by Settlement officers.

Fraser, in a personal letter (31.07.1911) to his superior Frederick Bowes expressed his apprehension: “We have had several interviews on the subject since Thorpe assumed duties as Government agent, but nothing has been in writing. I now wish to put on record that I believe the apprehensions that I have communicated to you verbally are well founded, and that unless great care is exercised by government, in restraining Thorpe’s well meant but almost fanatical zeal, you will shortly have a recrudescence of the whole land question in Ceylon (…) I understand that the people of the Weudawili Hatpattu are contemplating organized action which may result in the whole land question being brought up again, when the reorganized Legislative Council meets for the first time (…) The trouble is that Thorpe is persuaded that the action taken by him is absolutely in the interest of government, that such action is popular, and that no opposition will result. I advise the government to act on the safe side…”  As a result, the Secretariat sent a confidential mail to Thorpe censoring his “apparently unconscious inability to discern the natural feelings of the people”, and warning him of dismissal in case of any indiscreet further action.

In a long letter (22.08.1911) Fraser reviewed the policy concerning the application to ‘paraveni’ chenas of the 1840 land ordinance: “The Government had seemed fit to relax its application to some extent, and to undertake that in the Kurunegala district certain undetermined extents of chena proved to be the appurtenances of fields shall be regarded as private property: a class of chena lands has been created which, though falling within the definition of the chenas by ordinance of 1840, has been as an indulgence exempted from the application of that ordinance (…) A very difficult position was created for the officers of the Crown [and now] interference with such chena rights may give rise to very intricate situations” . The Settlement officers adapted themselves to the situation, and the smooth working of the settlement depended on “what I may call a truce”.  “To my mind matters have been allowed to go so far in the Kurunegala district in the past that it is exceedingly doubtful whether any commensurate result will be obtained from a belated attempt to deal with this class of land (…) I can see no object in exasperating the people with fines and prosecutions”. Fraser added that “the planting up of chena lands with permanent products is in my opinion a very desirable thing”. Fox, the successor to Fraser, was again attacked by Thorpe who wrote that the settlement department “deliberately exposes the administration to suspicion of corruption” and Thorpe was again censored in January 1912: “The Governor views your letters with much displeasure”

Criticism of the settlements and sales done by Revenue Officers remained frequent in the settlement diaries after Fraser left the department. Davies mentioned ‘extraordinary settlements’ by Thorpe, “the result of trying to settle land without personally inspecting it and examining the alleged documentary title”.  Settlement work was made difficult because some villagers objected to the headmen playing a role in the settlement sales: “This department has always found that the direct communication between the Settlement officer and the villager which is always insisted on in this department even in small matters, has entirely prevented this sort of grievance from arising”[71]. In other districts, the rivalry between Revenue and Settlement officers was common. For example, the Revenue officer at Matale, Saxton, considered that the government should not intervene in disputes between villagers and planters and that the time-consuming genealogical enquiries of the Settlement officers were useless, when a simple report by the chief headman could easily settle the matter. Fox, on the contrary, considered that it was unjust and unpolitical to leave the villager without support facing the planter’s raj. Similarly in the Sabaragamuwa province where the Government agent, E.B. Alexander, was notoriously pro-planter, Madampe Estate was asked to pay for his settlement 150 Rs per acre by Fox, for land purchased from villagers, and Alexander intervened to reduce the price at the instance of planters; he was followed by the Controller of Revenue, who disavowed Fox[72]. During the next decade, the Revenue officers were still considered by the Settlement officers as bureaucrats out of touch with the people[73]: “There must be scores of villages the Government agent never finds time personally to visit while under present conditions we have lot of departmental people going about the country whilst the Civil service sits largely in office” The nomination in September 1925 as settlement officer of a member of the revenue service, Frank Bartlett, former Government agent at Galle, was resented by the settlement department and finally Bartlett had to leave his post.

The Settlement department at war with Ceylonese land speculators in the 1920s.

In the context of the accelerated development of coconut and rubber estates after the first world war in the areas where settlement was in progress (especially in the Kurunegala and Ratnapura districts), Settlement officers fought against powerful Ceylonese entrepreneurs who purchased large extents of village highlands for conversion into plantations, generally in advance of settlement. These entrepreneurs followed the example set up by the European land speculators in the 1880s, with the difference that the colonial administration was equipped with new legal tools and was harsher against ‘native’ speculators in its paternalistic defense of the ‘native’ peasants, and that Ceylonese entrepreneurs could tap on the nascent nationalist movement to confront the colonial administration. The position of the settlement department was either to protect the rights of the villagers by forbidding the sales or forcing the purchasers to pay them a fair price – but it lacked the authority and the means to implement such a program, and consequently it more often tried to make the purchasers pay the highest price to the Crown in exchange of the legal recognition of their acquisitions.

Among the big coconut plantation investors stands out the powerful De Mel family from Moratuwa, who had made a fortune in plumbago mining in the Kurunegala district in the late 19^th century. The H.L. De Mel company started acquiring extensive highlands in the same district for coconut and also in the Ratnapura district for rubber in the late 19^th and early 20^th century. The same De Mel company also tried to develop tobacco cultivation in the driest part of the Kurunegala district which was settled in the 1920s[74]. At Diyankonwewa (near Maho): “Villagers appear to be poor, their gardens and coconut being in bad condition. Several attempts have been made to grow tobacco but there has been sufficient water. Most of the chenas was high jungle. Was interested to find that the villagers had sold their rights in chena land about 10 years ago to one Peter Perera of Kurunegala and De Mel company. The villagers while admitting that they had sold all the chenas stoutly asserted that they had not received the full consideration which was promised on survey of the land (…) They described the visit of the brokers like martial law in the riots. People were paid 5 Rs for deeds transferring about 3 villages to which they had no paraveni claim, and some of the grantees had no claim at all. This method is of course common, but in this case the purchaser left behind his agreements, or rather receipts, which clearly show that the full purchase amount was not paid”. When Batugedara, a feudal village in Ratnapura, was settled in 1924, the department had to deal with the “extremely speculative claim” of H.L. De Mel “representing himself and eleven brothers and sisters”[75].

During the 1920s., the hostility increased between the Settlement officers and the coconut lobby represented by the Low Country Products Association, an extension of the Chilaw Association. In the settlement diaries there are constant allusions to the activities of the Corea brothers, C.E. and Victor[76]: “Ratmale, one of the villages claimed on the Pihimbiya sannas. Villagers had previously on the advice of Mr. C.E. Corea refused to pay for their gardens and wanted Certificates of quiet possession. They now greed to accept Crown grants in the absence of Mr. Corea, there was no difficulty at the sales. I feel sure the villagers would have accepted settlements long ago but for the intervention of Mr Corea who I believe told them he would get them all their lands without payment”. C.E. Corea was indeed very vocal against the British land policy, as member of the Legislative council: “There was a time when it was the proud boast of this country that every villager within its bounds was a landed proprietor, but thanks to the activities of a callous bureaucracy (…) I think that about 50 p.c. of our peasantry are coolies or vagabonds while their forefathers were independent freeholders”[77].

Land speculation through legal means was widely practiced by the Chilaw lawyers, especially the Corea brothers who were considered by the Settlement officers as their strongest opponents, especially because they adopted a nationalist stance, which was not the case with the De Mels who were strong supporters of the colonial government.[78]: “These speculations [in  Puttalam district] have been greatly encouraged by the success of the claimants in the Potukulama case which went to the Privy council and in which careless handling in Ceylon caused government the loss of about 90,000 Rs over the one claim”. The officer Davies pleaded for the nomination in this district of officers “as strong in character, numbers and ability as possible”, as for example “the total value of the land inspected this week is about half million rupees”. Local Mudaliyars (one Rajapaksa), local Tamils (Canagasabei) and several low country Sinhalese (A de Zylva) were together active in manipulating old deeds to purchase and re-sell large tracts of land[79]. Among the people dabbling in land for rubber before the ordinance of 1927, Francis Kotelawala was especially active in the Weudawili area (close to Madure korale, in a Vahumupura area) and his purchases disturbed the peace in the villages[80] (Puswelikanda, Puswella, Erepolakanda). D.D. Pedris, the most affluent and influential member of the Vahumpura caste, was himself active as a land buyer in the area, although the basis of his wealth was not plantation land.

Baladora korale (north of Hettipola) was already the scene of intensive land speculation in the 1910s: “proctors, plumbago merchants and ratemahatmayas have vied with each other in buying up large tracts of chenas; in some cases whole villages have changed hands and always at the rate of one or two rupees an acre (…) the aracci apparently buys at 2 Rs per acre and sells at 34 Rs perhaps the money will not pass until the land has been settled. The aracci has applied for a Certificate of quiet possession for more than 1,000 acres”[81]. In the 1920s, the scramble for land extended to Yagam Pattu, and finally to the whole district. The Government agents at Kurunegala were facing new methods of land speculators who took advantage of the recognition of ‘paraveni chenas’ by government in 1926[82]: “The settlement is difficult to carry out with any justice to the villager (…) There are usually several claimants, and advantage has been taken of the policy recently adopted in this district by persons whose claim is, to say the least, dubious, to submit applications for chenas. Another aspect which strikes villagers as an injustice is the fact that they have been compelled to submit applications for their chenas, while many estates equally held on village title in practice escape with immunity.”

In 1927, the Government Agent, asking for the proclamation of the totality of the district of Kurunegala under the new Land ordinance, mentioned that the most affected areas were Dewamedi, Hiriyala and Madure. His aim was to prevent speculative purchases before settlement “it had come to my knowledge that 800 acres of land at Kiribamuna, Hiriyala, had been purchased by an outside capitalist for a consideration of approx.. 2.50 Rs an acre and this was one of a number of other cases (…) In Madure which is being block-surveyed, land speculators are doing their best to get a footing. In unsettled parts of Dewamedi, all of which are suitable for coconut cultivation, I have considerable difficulty with capitalists who buy up unsound claim to a small share in a large extent of land and then put their men to take possession of the land. In Hiriyala a number of cases where extremely exiguous claims to chena have been sold to capitalists in Kurunegala and Colombo. Hitherto I have generally succeeded in protecting these lands from depredation, but my powers are limited and the capitalists know it”. The commission after hearing Hodson recommended the proclamation of these areas, in spite of the strong opposition of Madawela who feared that this measure would prevent the ordinary villagers of his coconut district to clear their ‘paraveni chenas’, and of Senanayake, who considered the measure to be unjust for owners who were in the process of opening their lands. The question of ‘paraveni chenas’ was specific to the North Western Province, and was since the beginning of the century the subject of a long-standing controversy between the colonial administration and the local members of the Legislative council, especially G.E. Madawela.[83]

Outside the coconut triangle, the settlement department had to deal with European as well as Ceylonese planters, and in many cases the Planters Associations played the same game as the Ceylonese entrepreneurs in the 1920s. For example, in the Kägalla district, where many rubber estates sprang up on lands purchased from villagers, a deputation visited the Colonial secretary in 1922, using the same arguments as those of C.E.Corea to circumvent the rules established by the Settlement department under the Waste lands ordinance[84] 

In the war between land speculators and the Settlement department, the latter was handicapped by the slow pace of its operations, which allowed the former to keep the initiative in purchasing land in advance of settlement. “The delay in settlement [in the south of the Kurunegala district] encourages the operations of the speculators, and leads to the available land passing into the hands of outside capitalists to the exclusion of the small local man and to the creation of a landless peasantry”. “Much harm continues to be done in unsettled areas by speculative capitalists who buy up shares of land on village title, often from someone who has no shadow of right to the land, and then endeavour to take forcible possession”. “During the previous two years speculators, mostly low-country Sinhalese, had been buying up village claims to unsettled lands on an enormous scale in areas which it was expected would in the near future be taken up for settlement by the settlement officer [in the Ratnapura district]. Whether his vendor’s claim was a genuine one or not was of little interest or concern to the purchaser. His object was to create for himself a ‘claim’ to cover his entry upon the land, which he would then proceed to clear and plant”[85].

This is how a fresh Settlement officer described the situation: “My first experience of the chaotic land grabbing in progress in the North Western Province. Half the chenas had been planted up since the surveyors left the village. There is no doubt that the Land Settlement Department operations are a powerful fertiliser of the soil here. Most of the encroachments were by big landowners. The notary of the place came to pay me a call. I found he was an ex-Badulla practitioner whom I had occasion to report to the attorney general for irregularities. Mr. Rajapakse, one of the late agricultural scholarship holders of the island, accompanied me on a couple of inspections, representing one of the estate owners for whom he is now doing agency work”[86]

In a report of 1926 which was perused by the Land Commission, Tyrell, the Government agent of the North western province, gave several examples of settled villages in Kiniyama korale around Dandagamuwa where land sales which were rife before settlement had ceased after settlement: “For this reason, efforts are always made by speculators to induce villagers to part with their rights before settlement. When the settlement survey is in progress, these harpies appear and carry on their propaganda. They tell the people that all the land will be declared Crown. ‘You will in any case lose your land, you may as well get something for it and transfer your claim to us for hard cash’.  On the same theme, Hodgson, the Government agent of Sabaragamuwa reported in October 1925 on the situation in Kukul korale: “The action of the Land Settlement department tends to accelerate the sale of village lands in undeveloped parts of the province, for example in the Kukul korale, by attracting speculators who hope to open the country in rubber or tea. But in the more developed regions such as Nawadun or Kuruwiti, I do not think that settlement accelerates or retards the sale (… ) The ordinary villager cannot command the capital required for the development of permanent cultivation, except on a small scale, and the idea of combination and cooperation does not enter his head (…) The chief benefit that strikes the villager is that he can sell lands with a Crown title at a considerably enhanced price” [87].

With the second boom in rubber demand after the end of the war, there was a rush for rubber land by Ceylonese investors in the wet zone, especially the Ratnapura district[88]. European speculators had started the process before the war. In the Karandana area there was initially “a large rubber estate set up after 1910 by a Mr. Fletcher through share purchases from villagers done in 1907 for about 600 acres, and resold in 1910 to the Grand Central Rubber company at a price of… 760 Rs per acre! When the area came under settlement 15 years later, the estate, property of the Grand Central Rubber company was of 900 acres. Wattoru I find cover only 690 acres, the rest is at law Crown land” As usual in such cases it was the De Sarams firm which was employed by the company to negotiate with the Settlement officers, and which said they would ask Fletcher to pay what was demanded (24 Rs. an acre…), but “Fletcher has retired to the remote fastness of Scotland in order to be safe from the Land Settlement Department”. Finally, the local representative of Fletcher, another planter, alleged that “in 1910 Mr. Fletcher applied to the Government Agent for a Certificate of quiet possession and was allowed to continue clearing and planting on the understanding that the SO would deal with the application after the block survey. These are the pleasant creations of Mr. Fletcher’s imagination”. But after the first world war, the most enterprising investors in rubber were Ceylonese. A very powerful concern, the Panadura bus company founded by W. Leo Fernando (allied with the De Mels) invested in rubber land in the Kukul korale, together with other ‘rubber kings of Panadura’ such as Abraham Perera. And the example set up by these big entrepreneurs was followed by smaller investors.

The settlement officers were confronted by 1925 with a spate of speculation which they found difficult to resist.  Stace described the process at work in the Ratnapura district: “In nearly all the villages, low country speculators, chiefly from Panadura and Moratuwa, had feverishly bought up just about the time of the survey (1922-23) and were excitedly rushing in and clearing and planting large extents of chena lands, evidently with the idea that if only they got extents planted up  before the settlement enquiries, the Settlement officer could be practically compelled to settle on them what they had planted. Warnings were sent through headmen and had little effect. These gentlemen gave solemn undertakings to stay operations pending settlement but after staying their hands for a few weeks they began once merrily burning down jungle and sticking in rubber plants (…) The Settlement officer cannot allow himself to be coerced in this way, and it may be necessary either to refuse to settle on these people considerable tracts of land actually planted by them, or have them declared Crown and sold by auction, or settle on them at prices which will teach them a lesson”. The same Stace noticed another trick to ‘fortify’ title: “every villager has sold chenas to each other villager (…) the result was that practically every single claimant produced stacks of deeds and then greatly complicated the enquiry”. “The most important of the causes which complicated the settlement and rendered a fair division of the chena land almost impossible was the growing habit, not only of speculators, but of villagers, to clear and plant up their chena claims in rubber just before settlement enquiry. Some plant and clear far more than they are entitled to, some far less or none at all”.

The case of the village of Nugadanda Kahandikele was typical of the difficulties encountered by settlement officers[89]: “Any rights to chena lands have mostly passed out of the hands of the villagers in the following way. They signed a deed to the late korala of the district, locally known as Toranagoda korala. This gentleman however, being a government servant, did not wish to appear in the deed, which was actually drawn in favour of a certain vederala whose miserliness, rapacity and meanness are well known in the district. The korala died almost at once, without paying the consideration on the deed to the villagers, or paying only small sums of 2,3 or 5 Rs each, the balance being promised at a later date. On the death of the korala, the vederala declined to pay anything further to the villagers, but sold his rights for fat sums of money to various low country speculators who have now planted up nearly the whole of the chena lands in rubber.  I do not think there are 50 acres of chena left. At the inquiry all the villagers claimed when it was pointed out that they had sold all their rights, they replied: ‘yes, but we claim because we were paid nothing’ I shall certainly do anything that appears possible to help the villagers in this case”

“I contrived to settle at least small areas on those villagers who had the best claim to consideration. Land settlement in Ratnapura is an odd business. It is so complicated and the claims so confused and muddled that no matter what you do, your decision is certain to be illogical and inconsistent with some other decision in the same inquiry. If the inconsistency is spotted by the claimant there is a howl at once. One becomes expert at reconciling irreconcilable principles, and making the illogical appear logical. The whole business is one of dancing among eggs.”. “The notorious landgrabber and forest thief, Mr. W.D. (Warusahennedige Daniel) Fernando, who was a large claimant in the village, received a block of 200 or 300 acres and is forming himself into a limited liability company and wants to hurry up the sanction of government for his settlement. The agents of the new company (Gordon Fraser and co) appear to have seen the Controller of Revenue, and I received letters from the Settlement officer and Gordon Fraser and a personal visit of Mr. Fernando. Incidentally he informed me that he was appealing to the Colonial Secretary against the decision in Ayagama calling him to withdraw his claim to forest. He hopes if the matter was referred to me that I should view it ‘with sympathy’”

The village of Hindurangala was the theatre of extensive purchases by the well-known ‘bus tycoon’ from Panadura Warusahennedige Leo Fernando; Stace wrote in his diary: “The most difficult settlement I have done. Nothing seemed to fit in. Every inch of chena feverishly planted up by speculators after the survey so that he village bears little resemblance with that shown on the plan (…) The biggest claimant was Mr W.A. Fernando: he told me in his evidence that he had planted up some 300 acres and that he had bought up the whole of a certain panguwa (…) It was shown on inspection that he had planted only 180 acres and that he had purchased only about 1/3^rd of the panguwa (…) I decided to make him pay heavily in order to get him in the right frame of mind”. Stace proposed to sell him 100 acres and to retain 80 acres for the Crown, and Fernando “sat in total silence, unable to speak, beads of perspiration on his forehead”, then he proposed an enhanced price for the remaining 80 acres “which was that I had intended all along. He agreed with infinite relief (…) His statement that he had bought the whole panguwa was apparently his bona fide belief”[90]

In the village of Yatipahuwa, Stace met with what he called the machinations of Moratuwa speculators: “One group of lots had previously been sold to Mr. H.P. Dickman de Mel. It was afterwards found on the representation of a certain apothecary Jayaratne that he had obtained the settlement of these lands upon himself by what may be euphemistically called an omission to state the whole truth. I held full enquiry and settled them upon Jayaratne. In another group of lots the same De Mel figured. He and a certain Dr. Mendis had nearly come to blows and their coolies had actually come to bloodshed in their feverish endeavours to plant up in rubber certain chena lands in the village and to get them fully planted prior to settlement. I had both parties up about a year ago and they gave solemn undertakings to cease operations pending settlement. This solemn undertaking they soon broke, each clearing and planting, and each accusing the other of having begun it. They were warned many times. Now one block of this land has I found been declared Crown by the Government agent 20 years ago. I therefore put up this block for sale without of course bringing it under the Waste Lands Ordinance. At today’s sale I made these parties pay at the rate of 150 Rs per acre for this chena land since it had been declared Crown, I had them completely at my hand. It is a pleasure occasionally to be able to make the land speculator dance to the tune one sets”[91].

Land settlement, peasant indebtedness and peasant resistance

Critics of land settlement operations argued that they contributed to peasant indebtedness and eventually led to land alienation to outsiders. The argument was already developed by Moonemalle in his speech of 1907, and was regularly invoked by the nationalist leaders during the next twenty years. There was a definite tendency for members of the national elite to lay the blame of landlessness at the door of non-Sinhalese groups, especially the Chettiar moneylenders. In 1925, a Committee of the Legislative council on landless villagers, of which D.S. Senanayake was a member, collected evidence from Madahapola, Ratemahatmaya of Hiriyala hatpattu[92]:

Senanayake: “About 50 years ago the villagers owned much land, but now very much less. The chief offenders have been the coast Moors, Chetties and so on. Do you know that they tried to get undivided shares and harass the villagers and put them into court and so a man loses all his land?

Madahapola: “Yes, that is the chief cause of losing land that must be prevented if we want to make the people prosperous”

Senanayake: “What is the effect of the Waste Lands Ordinance in your district. Has it not helped the outsider to acquire title to the land?”

Madahapola: “When Land settlement is going on, they have to borrow money to pay. Then the outsiders make arrangement with the land owners and afterwards buy these lands. In certain cases they buy the land before the settlement. At the same time the settlement helps the villager to get away from litigation”

Senanayake: “After settlement will the villagers not get rid of the land?”

Madahapola: “Before settlement outsiders buy the land at the rate of 10 to 25 or even 35 Rs an acre. The villager will not sell the land after settlement unless he gets a very good offer”

A couple of years later, the evidence collected by the Land Commission, especially the testimonies of Mediwaka, of Jayatileke and of Leslie de Saram, together with the diaries of the Settlement officers, suggested that the working of the sales and settlement under the Waste Lands Ordinance had encouraged land litigation and land speculation, and the large scale transfer of land from peasant cultivators to absentee coconut landowners in the North Western Province. In his comments on the proposals of the Land commission[93] the Assistant Settlement Officer Bassett considered that 50% of the lands settled on peasants were resold, and that if the resale was forbidden, the villagers would sell their fields and gardens to pay for the settlement; in his diary[94] he wrote: “Now that villagers may not sell lands settled upon them, a certain hardship has arisen (…) If a very poor villager gets the settlement of perhaps 3 or 4 acres at even 10Rs an acre, he cannot pay for it. If he could sell one acre, he could do so (…) the remedy is for villager’s settlements up to about 5 acres to be given free. There is a present marked increase in the sale by villagers of fields and old gardens, partly to meet this difficulty, although to a great extent the increase in this disastrous practice which was rare before the prohibition of unsettled lands, is due to the necessity for ready money which the villagers used to meet by the sale of chenas on doubtful title”.

The diaries of other Settlement officers are full of similar stories: “The general complaint is that the villager cannot afford to pay. It appears that previously he was prepared to pay because as soon as he got a settlement a capitalist was ready to buy up the land or a portion of it settled on him at a much higher price, and thus he raised the money to pay. Now he cannot sell. This is one of the drawbacks of ordinance 8 of 1927 as the villager has to deal with his garden or paddy field to raise the money”[95]. “One result of the overlavish settlement of chenas on ancestral claimants: quite a number of lots sold in Mangulagama 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”. “A villager [of Karaulla] who purchased [at settlement sale] was already so heavily in debt that he wanted me at once to enter the name of an outsider. This is a direct infraction of the spirit of ordinance 8 of 1927 to prevent improvident alienation, but very difficult to prevent, unless the debtor can be put on his legs to start afresh, it is doubtful whether he will have the energy, enterprise and the capital required to make his land pay. He certainly cannot do it by drawing merely 50 to 75 cent a day as an estate coolie”[96]. “Two women appeared and asked me to allow them to sell the greater part of the land I had just settled on them. One of them I know head over ears in litigation and debt, the other an old cousin completely under her influence (…) If one consents, they will lose most of their chena lands; if one refuses, their planted and dwelling lands will be sold up for debts and they will be ruined hat way. It is a choice of evils. They have not paid for the lands yet, and are not likely to be able to pay for it. One sometimes wonders whether it is possible to rescue the peasant from his own innumerable weaknesses”[97]

“The sales may be divided into two classes: to outside capitalists / to villagers. The capitalists in most cases paid the full sale value, but the villagers were unable to even pay a first deposit, that is 1/10^th 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 negotiate 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.”[98]. “Sales on applications by landless villagers about 2 or 3 years ago. There is reason to believe that quite a number of these applications have been made at the instigation of third parties who intended subsequently to get hold of these lands. Several of the applicants who appeared before me asked permission for the deed to be drawn up in favour of a third party, who was in no way connected with the applicant. In some cases the third party was some big landowner owning lands adjoining the allotment or some representative of him. Such cases were turned down”.[99]

The link between settlement sales and indebtedness is suggested by the extension of the activities of Chettiar moneylenders in the North Western province. In the diaries of the 1930s, there were very numerous cases of villagers either indebted before settlement to Chettiars, who needed titles to repay their debts, or who mortgaged their land to Chettiars as soon as it was declared private. The obvious correlation between the rapid development of Chettiar agencies in the North Western province and the advance of settlement will be explored in a further study[100].  

It is difficult to assess the depth of peasant discontent and resistance using the settlement diaries as a unique source: when such cases of opposition occurred, the colonial authorities usually explained them by the peasant ignorance of the real working of the settlement, and by the influence of outside agitators, speculators affected by the working of the settlement. On the other side, complaints against settlement were often aired in the Ceylonese press by nationalist writers but not by peasant themselves. What cannot be doubted is that opposition in land matters was the most sensitive issue encountered by the colonial administration. There was a tendency for settlement officers to see land speculators everywhere, and on the part of the villagers, to see administrative demands as potential expropriation and/or greed for taxes. As late as after 1931, when the department was manned by young Ceylonese officers, distrust or diffidence was not far away: “Villagers here seem to regard land settlement as land grabbing. A villager presented a petition, it mentioned that there was a rumour that the Crown intended to take away from the villagers a considerable extent of their land, which they had owned from the time of the Sinhalese kings. It was an unalienable right of the villager to till his paddy field and clear his chena. The Crown had therefore no right to interfere with his land”[101]. Even when villagers accepted to collaborate with the Settlement department, “I was struck by the intimate knowledge the villagers had, especially the elder ones of the village, and by their usefulness in settlement work. They show you round out of sheer willingness to help you, but have a certain fear that some of their lands may be taken away from them”. “I found the villager an extremely courteous man, a characteristic which should not be confused with subservience” [102].

The most common form of resistance was delaying acceptance, refusing to collaborate, pleading poverty and refusing to pay for settlement, as in the case of Welipitiya (Hambantota district): “the failure to pay is due not so much to the want of money as to a conviction that if they do not settle nothing will happen”, wrote the Settlement officer[103]. According to his subordinate, C.V. Brayne, the difficulty to settle in the region of Walasmulla was due in part to poverty, in part to organized resistance: “The people are poor and very obstinate, and repeated visits at short intervals will be necessary to complete settlement (…) They are under the influence of one Don Lewis Appuhamy of Dikwella, a pretty scoundrel who was the only claimant under the old notice and had no real claim”. Another young officer, Wedderburn, displayed a typical colonial attitude in his description of the confrontation: “Crusade against the villagers who refuse to pay and plead poverty. I assisted the crusade by being mistaken for a police superintendent. The chena headman joins the crusade. The villagers show a more reasonable frame of mind and a number of settlements are effected”[104]. The settlement officers were often confronted by these amaru karayo, acting for their fellow villagers as ‘jungle proctors’. But popular forms of defiance or opposition were also expressed through rumours. For example, in 1908 in the Matara district, “there is a curious rumour prevalent among the uneducated classes (sic) that the Japanese are to take over Ceylon in a few years with a view to the improvement of Buddhism, and that is the reason why Government wants to collect as much money as possible through the sale of lands before the transfer takes place”.[105]

Self-critical views of settlement work in the 1920s.

After the first world war, a new generation of Settlement officers such as Hughes (1924), Stace (1923-1932) and Sandys (1929-1930) produced diaries or memoirs in which they questioned the aims and impact of settlement work and exposed its practical and structural difficulties. In the 1920s, at least in Ceylon, colonial paternalism began to be undermined by a section of the officials who denounced its inefficiency in fighting land speculation, questioned the legitimacy of the colonial interference upon the socio-economic structure, or pleaded for a redistributive policy.

The first pages of the diary of Hughes show how a candid Settlement officer discovered field work in the Ratnapura district: “The long and tedious work of inquiry into genealogy is apparently necessitated by the intention to deal mildly with the villager, and settle land at upset price on claimants who have an equitable, if not legal claim. Some knowledge of the rules of equity as established by settlement officers is common in the villages” “It looks like a jigsaw jungle, first getting applicants into genealogical groups according to the panguwa and then fitting their reduced demand into the available lots. The settlement officer has to be the historian and geographer of the village (…)  but the original necessity for chena cultivation had passed to a great extent with the development of the district and the demand for other forms of labour”. Interference by the Settlement officers with the balance of village society is another problem: “To raise the question of ownership occasionally store up a hornet nest of petitions (…) Once you propose to sell land to a villager, others will remember all sorts of occasions on which their ancestors took a crop off it or helped him to cultivate. The enquiry then becomes one of settlement of family disputes rather than waste lands proceedings” [106].

In the village of Batugedara, Hughes came across an “extremely speculative claim. It is astonishing to find a highly placed Ceylonese family (Sir H.L. de Mel’s family) involved in such a transaction. The unmasking and defeating of such sales appear to be a strong justification for the existence of this department”. Later, on inspection in the North central province: “One feels rather an intruder in these villages where for years the villagers have cultivated their chenas and planted up land with coconuts undisturbed by the claims of the central government; and in many cases to charge them for their land cultivated with recent but permanent cultivation appears as harsh as squeezing a man struggling from poverty. In the case of these jungle surrounded villages, struggling with survival where so many have succumbed, I should like to have discretion to recognize the fait accompli and charge up the villager only with the cost of survey”. In the margin of the diary E.B. Alexander, then acting Controller of Revenue, wrote this patronizing comment: “Mr. Hughes ideas will probably be considerably modified after a year or two of work in this department”. In the wet areas of the south-west Hughes questioned the status of deniyas and owitas (wet/marshy areas where cultivation was possible)[107]: “It is clear  from the attitude of the people that although they often claim them, they really regard them as Crown lands which they occupy temporarily from year to year for their own purposes, usually with impunity, unless the headman, for some particular reason, brings in a prosecution. This is however a very rare occurrence” Hughes decided to admit these private or settle at low rates instead of reserving them as Crown, because “land would probably be sold hereafter at auctions at which outsiders from Ambalangoda would buy out the villagers” and that “it is very unsatisfactory having a large number of small pieces of Crown land scattered about in the village”

1. T. Stace in his manuscript Notes on Life in Ceylon offers an uncensored vision of the working of the colonial administration, and of land affairs[108]. According to him, the colonial government was “wholly paternal and undemocratic” and the Revenue officers were left without any training, although they had “to deal with the land [which] is to deal with the heart of the people”. The Settlement officers were working close to the people without depending on headmen, especially if they could speak sinhala. Stace admitted that the land settlement system could appear unjust because the government compelled villagers to pay for their lands “but in fact the claimants usually welcomed our enquiries and decisions because a Crown grant put an end to all private disputes”: because of the system of undivided shares (complicated by polyandry up-country), in the absence of individual settlement, “the land would go out of cultivation altogether and revert to jungle because if any individual tried to cultivate his share he would be attacked by others who disputed his right”. Stace put his fingers on the result, a settlement between villagers, which was not the initial intention of the Waste Lands ordinance: with the passing of time the settlement of claims between private parties became de facto the main raison d’être of these operations and the reason why they were accepted. “There was scarcely a villager who did not claim to be a part owner of some of the lands included within the boundaries of his village. There were indeed a few landless villagers but this was a recent condition produced mainly by large estate owners, many of whom were European firms, who largely bought up village claims for a song in order to get the land they needed for tea and rubber plantations. Lipton’s Ceylon tea, known to everyone, has usually this sort of background. But in my day in Ceylon this process of dispossessing the villager of his land, though well advanced, still left perhaps 80% of the land in the hands of the peasant proprietors. And this left plenty of work for the Land settlement department to do”.

In his diaries written on the spot, Stace offers a much less optimistic view of settlement work, pointing the lack of money to pay for the auctioned lands and the resulting indebtedness[109]: “How auction sales hit the villager: practically all the sales in this circuit were small village lots, mostly of planted lands (…) As a rule it was found that the influential village applicant had succeeded in suppressing bids, while the poor man with no influence in the village had to bid high and generally lose his land to an outside applicant. The excessive price of land in the Kalutara district rendered it practically impossible for the poorer villagers to get even an acre of land, so long as auction rules are applied. The fat mudalali from Bentota or Kalutara, replete with combs, watch chains and sandals, come on the scene, his pocket bulging with 100 rupees notes, and snaps up even the one acre for which the villager applied and paid his survey fees, often 5, 8 or 10 years ago”. Almost ten years later, another Settlement officer, Abhayakoon, noted that in a North-western province village, Malabendiyawa, where “villagers had bought large extents of land from the Crown, some of them are still in chena: the villagers in some cases exhausted all their resources in paying for the land, and have no means of improving the land a present”[110]

The finality of settlement operations was also questioned by the young M.K.T. Sandys when he undertook field work for a rather short period (1929-1930) in the Dandagamuwa/Kuliyapitiya area of the Kurunegala district[111].  He was a strong critique of the method of settling land according to the genealogical rights of the claimants: settlement according to claims based on tax receipts and genealogical position tended to enhance inequality and favour the more assertive claimants:  “The drawbacks of accepting the inheritance principle in the matter of what is presumed to be Crown lands are obvious. [Some villagers] inherit too little to support them and have to emigrate or starve. If one could treat the land on a different basis, they could all have a new start. I do not mean that one could prevent the subdivided inheritance principle from operating thereafter. The only way to do that would be to adopt the leasing system”.

Sandys was upset by the arbitrary character of the settlements: “I tremble to think what will be the result if a board is ever appointed to review our settlements. What is wanted is more finality about it, not less. In these congested regions where the chenas are in an inextricable muddle, it is impossible to give reasons why one settles the fraction of an acre more on this party than on that; legal considerations are not the only ones and one feels that if one came to a decision on purely legal grounds it would generally be wrong. For example a man gets into debt and sells the whole of his vague ancestral share, but his widow and children go on living there and from time to time, without taking he slightest notice of the sale, help themselves to the chena. Other villagers living in the neighbourhood do the same. 10 or 20 years later, it is impossible to say that the purchaser who bought 10 acres is now entitled to have anything like 10 acres settled on him”. In August 1929, Sandys considered that the possibility to revise settlements as suggested by the Land Commission would nullify the benefits to the poor villager to escape from endless litigation: “What is wanted is a reasonably speedy and final decision, not a slow and revisable one that is theoretically equitable”. He also noted that confusion regarding land rights was common in the villages of the North western province, as is the case of Akkarawatte, where “the villagers had been leaving fallow for several years a relatively large tract of their own paddy fields under the belief that they were Crown”. In Denawaka Udakada (Ratnapura district), he noticed a similar situation: “It was quite a new experience for me to find a number of small lots settled on villagers some years ago but left uncultivated and still in jungle. A good illustration of the advantages of the lease system over a system of outright sales”[112]

In a perspective of social justice, Sandys envisioned that settlement work could be a tool of redistribution: “One claimant said: ‘the fact is we have not the least idea which chena is which or what the extents are’. The names vary from time to time and some people call them by one name, and some by another[113]. The same kind of remark could be applied to almost every chena tract in Ceylon, yet it is on this shifting, variable, unreliable basis that all so-called village title rests. Why should we lay such exaggerated stress on paraveni claims, thereby ignoring the point of view that Crown land should be given not to those villagers with the biggest claims but to those whose needs are greatest?” “There is a regrettable lack of finality about the whole business. In this part of the country, which is seething with litigation, I am frequently asked by parties in whose favour I have decided in settlement and who have paid for the lots or shares settled on them, to save them from the legal machinations of the defeated opponents. There are unfortunately no satisfactory means of doing so. The Crown is thereby exposed to a charge of breach of faith in that it has raised hopes whereof it is unable to secure the realization” (…) “One family claims 2/3^rd of a village and another family 1/3^rd (but) it was found that the second claimed 10 acres more than the first” because they had been more enterprising. “Morale: grab as much land as you can before settlement (…) It is practically impossible to discover what each individual possesses; they possess in most cases not as individuals but as groups and what share of each ‘group possession’ (old gardens) the individual owns is an unknown and unascertainable quantity” [114].

The position of Sandys was that it should be better for both the administration and the villagers to abandon the tedious work of genealogical reconstruction and distribute land according to the needs of each villager and not to his pedigree, especially in the North-western province where the landless outsiders are numerous. “but this would be unorthodox”. His critique of settlement work was that it creates private property and inequality “The villagers before settlement wander all over their neighbour’s lands, whether planted or not, because the title is vague and uncertain and few are in a position to forbid them. But after settlement all is changed. Title becomes stronger, and the exact position of the land is known. Barbed wire fences spring up in all directions. The villagers do not have plans before them and often cannot realize in advance that their easiest route to the tank or for their children to go to school is liable to be cut off by settlement”[115].

The Settlement department and the Land commission of 1927-28. 

The decision to review the land policy of the colonial government of Ceylon was taken by Hugh Clifford, governor from November 1925 to June 1927, as the result of a combination of often contradictory factors: to answer the criticism of the land by a section of the westernized bourgeoisie adopting the nationalist stance and at the same time investing in the plantation economy; to remedy the lack of coherence and vision in the management of land matters; to protect the peasantry in a context of growing landlessness. A Land commission reporting to the Legislative council sat in 1927 and 1928, collected extensive evidence and proposed substantial reforms. The Land settlement department was in the spotlight, and using the platform offered by the proceedings of the Land Commission and the debates at the Legislative council, nationalist critics renewed their attacks against the department, which answered by accusing its detractors of double standards, and defending the fairness of their decisions. G.E. Madawela, member of the Legislative council and leader of the Kurunegala demonstrations before 1915, accused the Settlement officer of arbitrary behaviour in favour of European planters: “The Settlement officer has prostituted the ordinance to squeeze money out of the villager (…) It is not possible for a man to pay 15 Rs to 20 Rs.  for an acre without getting into debt (…) It was Mr. Fraser who commenced this policy, he gave to European planters and to Messrs Finlay Muir land in Kurunegala at 7.50 and 10 Rs an acre. He also gave to other capitalists at that price”[116]. Madawela, together with other witnesses at the Commission such as Mideniya Adigar, defended his thesis that the ordinance of 1840 did not aim at koralegam (freehold) but only at feudal villages, and that prior to the ordinance of 1897 the government regularly recognized the existence of private ancestral (paraveni) chenas by the issue of Certificates of quiet possession. Repeated pronouncements of the Kägalla administrators, and admission under pressure of the appurtenance principle (3 to 1) by the Revenue officers, in spite of the opposition of the Settlement department, were according to him sufficient proofs of his thesis.  He therefore proposed that a new legislation compel the Settlement department to recognize paraveni chena rights.

Wait, Controller of Revenue, retorted: “In the Kurunegala district in which the mover is most interested, the settlement of the village is really a compendious series of partition cases on a system which most villagers well understand and appreciate, and which they generally prefer to the 3 to 1 alternative”. Wait defended the ‘case on its own merits’ approach of the Settlement department; according to him: “the claimant pays no legal fees whatsoever, and gets the land demarcated and settled on him at a less cost than he would have had to pay for a mere survey of the same extent in a partition case in a civil court. If the motion is accepted, it will lead to a scramble in which the honest villager will go to the wall, ousted by the more unscrupulous trafficker in paper titles”.

In his official report for 1929, Stace considered that the proposed rules would deprive the Settlement officers to decide ‘according to the merit of the case’ and finally benefit the capitalist speculators[117]: “The settlement has usually consisted in a mediation or compromise between the two sides, the village claimant buying from the Crown whole or part of the chena lands claimed at a low rate such as 20 Rs per acre. This purchase constitutes the ‘settlement’ of their claims. The land might often be worth 100 Rs an acre, but the lower rate was the recognition of the equitable right of the claimant. It represents the price paid for the bare legal right and the good title conferred upon him”. According to Stace, the new instructions concerning ‘bona fide ancestral village titles’ to be settled gratis except survey and title fees (about 10 Rs more or less) would not affect the fundamentals, but established the right of every claimant to obtain a settlement for the whole of his claim, and the principle that it is not the price of the land, but the price of the title to land, which is paid by the claimant: hence the Crown is no longer the proprietor of uncultivated highlands as in 1840, but the administrator of these lands for the benefit of the people if the people recognize this role by signing the settlement. But as regards the outside claimants, until then the rate was fixed by the Settlement officer according to the merits of each case (usually from 25 to 100 Rs an acre) but “in future, the capitalist claimant will know beforehand exactly what rate he will have to pay – the same whether the land is valuable or worthless, whether he has paid the villager handsomely or meanly. The rates have been fixed by the Governor in council as follows: Sabaragamuwa and North Western Province, 24 Rs per acre, North Central Province 10 Rs per acre, Central Province 20 Rs per acre, Uva 22 Rs per acre. On the whole, the capitalist claimant will get his land settled on him at considerably cheaper rates than he did before.”

In their unpublished diaries, the settlement officers denounced the collusion between the promoters of the proposed legislation and the land speculators: “Many lawyers have stated that there is considerable prospect of very nourishing fees in the latest Waste Lands Ordinance” [118]. One went so far as to cross out some sentences in a manner which made them readable[119]: “A large amount of clearing by low-country landsharks, a good deal of which forests. The position is bad enough now, but it will be worse if the proposals of the Land commission are put into operation. If these proposals which in matter of private and Crown title must surpass the landshark’s wildest dreams meet with the politicians’ approval, government will find it difficult to adopt proposals less favourable to them which have not been discussed, and the political and landgrabbing classes, if they are not identical, have a great deal in common (…) Some of Mr. Madawela’s ad hoc historical pronouncements seem to have been swallowed without condiments (…) The method of arriving at conclusions first and recording evidence later appears a novel one, but is perhaps dictated by political exigencies. Apparently one side is prepared to stomach the peasant tenure scheme, if the other will refrain from regurgitating the former historical notions”.

Among the land speculators denounced by the department were G.E. Madawela and his father in law C.E. Tennekoon: “Mr Madawela, a staunch upholder of villager’s rights, appeared in office on behalf of Mr Tennekoon, a speculator”. After the passing of the new legislation recognizing paraveni chena rights, Tennekoon claimed entire villages, some of them uninhabited, on no other title than “having by the more or less illegitimate use of his great influence as Ratemahatmaya, forced the villagers to yield 2/3^rd of the produce” and the settlement officer was compelled to settle on him large extents owing to the new legislation based on the Land Commission recommendations recognizing as private ‘paraveni chenas’[120]. Madawela’s expertise was sought in the whole island: he was considered as the authority able to oppose the Settlement officers. In the case of the village of Paranagama where the leading family held a sannasa apparently never produced and had sold most of their lands for rubber, the headman “had consulted the Hon. Mr. Madawala about the sannas some 2 or 3 years ago and the fee he demanded was too high for them to pay”[121]. Other nationalist leaders followed suit in the 1930s.: for example, in Hitgoda Wapola village (Kandy district) in 1933, “M. George de Silva appeared and wished the sales postponed with a view to his making representations to have lands involved declared private. I declined to allow a postponement. The villagers however sensing the presence of a champion in their cause brought the old cry of ‘no money’, thus bringing things to an impasse. Mr Winter too and Mr Halloway, local planters and purchasers of land from the villagers, declined to pay anything more than 6 Rs. per acre. I wonder how far all this had to do with the electioneering campaign that was going on in the area at the time”.[122] 

The new land policy which was the outcome of the recommendations of the Land commission and was framed by the State council instituted by the Donoughmore constitution and its Minister for agriculture and lands, D.S. Senanayake, will be the subject of a further chapter. It put the Settlement department under the control of the Land commissioner and organized land development from above with the ‘mapping out’ concept.

Appendix : the testimony of Frank Leach[123]

In his interview with Michael Roberts and in written answers to questions posed by him, Frank Leach recalled his experiences as Assistant Settlement Officer in the Kurunegala and Badulla districts and gave detailed descriptions of the working of the settlement team and of the speculator’s tricks. The working of the department depended on the character of the officers who started with ‘easy villages’: some worked on a day to day routine, others (like him) had a wider vision of the future. It depended also on the type of villages settled: in small villages of the dry zone without much speculation the work was simple, but in the estate areas it involved a lot of preliminary research “it was surprising how the extent of a piece of land grew with the number of transfers made”. It depended also on the quality of the survey

Leach confirmed the role played by Kurunegala proctors as land brokers, their stratagems in preventing claimants to appear before the settlement officer, and the preference of the villagers for allotments, which saved them disputes, and opened the possibility for paddy-less villagers to obtain land, instead of undivided chenas given on a 3 to 1 basis. He listed as land speculators Victor Corea, Van der Poorten, Charles Batuwantudawe, Madawela, Berry, Henry de Mel. Chief headmen, such as Madahapola, who claimed half the villages north of Kurunegala along the Dambulla road, induced the surveyors to demarcate more land than what was given by the settlement; but the simple village araccis had less lands than village traders who advanced paddy upon mortgage and became petty landlords. The result of the extension of coconut plantations was to make the villages dependent on coconut and to block the extension of subsistence agriculture: “they were no longer agriculturists, except for their own little garden”.

Answering supplementary questions by Michael Roberts, Leach mentioned the frequent recourse to courts by speculators “who wanted to get full credit for dubious paper title often deriving from diga-married women (…) They would purport that the woman was not married in diga but in binna”. “It was common for a large land speculator with probably a mixture of good and bad village title to institute a partition case to get his portion defined by the courts. Having taken the initiative he stopped anyone else taking a case, and then he would take a minimum of action. If the judge insisted on getting on with the case, it would usually be found that one party had died and so the case would be postponed (…) meanwhile the speculator’s rubber grew and the other claimants were powerless to do anything short of murder”

Leach disagreed with the view that “selling the land to its occupant, even at a nominal price, meant selling it to the speculator”, because according to him the villager had time to save enough money to pay by planting one or two crops on the land or pledging valuables. He added that “one must not forget that in sophisticated areas such as the estate areas of Uva, Sabaragamuwa and Kandy, many of the villagers were rogues themselves in land matters and were not above engineering claims and selling on no title (…) but not so much in Uva where Crown title had been more rigorously defended”

[1] Research on the working of the land settlement department before independence is practically inexistent, except a chapter in the unpublished thesis of Lal Jayawardena, who made use of the Settlement diaries. The Agrarian Research and Training Institute (Colombo) had published in 1976 under the title Land Settlement in Sri Lanka, 1840-1975 a review of the writings on the subject which offers little information on the British period.

[2] J.P. Lewis (1854-1923), author of the Manual of the Wanni, ended his career as Government Agent of the Central Province in 1906, and was an active member of the Royal Asiatic Society

[3] W.E. Davidson (born in Malta, 1859, died in Sydney, 1923) had an Oxbridge education, and a brilliant career of colonial administrator, ending as governor of New South Wales; a representative of the progressive-paternalistic approach, his diaries display a witty frame of mind and a deep understanding of the Ceylonese society

[4] John George Fraser, junior of the three, was born in Edinburgh in 1864, and died in Launceston, Tasmania in 1941; a Scotsman, married to a German lady; he came as cadet in 1887 (Jaffna) and was Assistant Government Agent Chilaw in 1899. Wrongly qualified of pure bureaucrat by Bowes (Bows and Arrows p. 43), he was a sensible person who did his best to understand the people and a serious administrator who put his department on a firm footing. He was in 1903 assisted by Howard Orme Fox (born in 186, Cambridge educated, Assistant Government Agent Matale in 1899), and in 1907 by Walter Ernest Wait, son of a tea planter in India, cadet in 1902, and member of the Ceylon Rifle Corps (Arnold Wright, Twentieth Century Impressions of Ceylon, p. 135)

[5] Administration Report Western Province 1900, p. B9

[6] Diary  Fraser, 5.09.1901

[7] These land records were still kept in the Land settlement department record room and in the Old colonial secretariat record room in Colombo Fort area when I studied them in between 1979 and 1983; they are said to be now in the Sri Lanka National Archives repositories in Kandy and Colombo.

[8] The only published diaries are those of Leonard Woolf when he was Assistant Government Agent at Hambantota. The unpublished diaries are available in the Sri Lanka National Archives (SLNA). 

[9] The qualities of the Settlement officer are resumed by Frederic Lewis (not to be confused with J.P. Lewis) in his autobiography: he must have a flair for spotting tricks and falseness, and a gift to negotiate and convince.

[10] In his diary of 9.11.1937, the fresh Assistant Settlement Officer Ratnatunga writes: “Spoke to the Settlement Officer about diaries. He said we were the Minister’s eyes in the districts in which we worked. Our diaries should give an account of our observations, what we saw in these places”

[11] L.R.U. Jayawardena, “The supply of Sinhalese Labour to Ceylon plantations, 1830-1930, a Study of Imperial Policy in a Peasant Society”. University of Cambridge, Ph. D. Thesis, 1963.

[12] AR Matara 1872, p. 180 : see the controversy in my previous article on chena repression.

[13] Administration Report Matara 1898, p. E20

[14] C.J.R. Le Mesurier was a favourite of the former governor Arthur Gordon-Hamilton (later lord Stanmore) and in his various posts had acted as a sort of almighty benevolent despot. He pleaded for the abolition of the paddy tax and the defense of the peasantry, but was himself involved in numerous land speculations; his conversion to Islam in order to remarry in the face of the refusal of his first wife to divorce finally led to his dismissal. See Michael Powell “Fragile Identities: the Colonial Consequences of C.J.R. Le Mesurier in Ceylon” in Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History,11,1, spring 2010.

[15] The dates given between brackets or in footnotes refer to the entries of the diaries, preceded by the name of their author

[16] see “Abortive Chena Settlements in the Kägalla District during the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries” https://slkdiaspo.hypotheses.org/6432 (2024)

[17] See “Highland Appropriation by the Plantation Sector in the Kägalla District (1870-1930) https://slkdiaspo.hypotheses.org/6273 (2025)

[18] It is worth noticing that 27 years later, the Assistant Agent in Matara, A.N. Strong,  reproduced extracts from this entry in the diary of Davidson, with this commentary : “Compared with the state of affairs existing today, the truth of this prophecy is amazing (…) As a matter of fact, the villagers were too well looked after by the headmen to do much illicit clearing. Instead of that they either contented themselves with an adequate pittance (in Pittabeddara I found 180 shareholders subsisting on about ½ acre of village garden), or else eked out a living by precarious coolie work on other people’s land. The new policy came none too soon” (Administration report Matara 1928, p. C33)

[19] Administration report of the Land settlement officer Fox for 1911-1912, p. K1

[20] Administration report of the Land settlement officer Fraser for 1904, p. N1; Diary Fraser 26-27.01.1904

[21] Diary Fraser 31.10.1903; see also Administration Report Settlement Officer 1906; SLNA 65/Pending file 1684A ‘Formation of a Land Settlement Department’, Settlement Officer to Colonial Secretary. 9.01.1907

[22] CO54/682 n°240 of 17.06.1903

[23] Francis Robert Ellis (1849-1915) was a witty Irishman who was known for having “the gift of detecting at a glance anything that had the faintest scent of humbug or weakness about it” (Frederick Lewis, Sixty years…p. 317). A punctilious and painstaking administrator, his actions were resented by the young enterprising Ceylonese.

[24] Land Settlement Department Records, files on Ellis Settlement work: Anderson’s claims (1904), Land Settlement Work in the North-Western Province (1904), A uniform system of dealing with encroachments (10.02.1904). Colonial Secretariat records SLNA 65/Pending file 1075 (“Land settlement in the North Western Province”) for 1904-5 and Pending file 2537B (same title) for 1907-8. See also CO54/712.

[25] Administration reports North Western Province 1895 p. G1 to 5, 1896 p.G3, 1902 p. G9 .

[26] SLNA 59/Pending File 178 : Government Agent North Western Province to Colonial secretary, 13.11.1896

[27] SLNA18/2490 (Old chena file): Assistant Agent Kurunegala report, 26.10.1840: “There are in this district a number of hill villages called kandegam in which it is highly desirable that some measures should be taken to secure an equitable adjustment of the lands as regards the proprietorship of the inhabitants and the rights of government. The villages alluded to are situated chiefly on the ranges between Madure and Hewawisse, Tiragandahe, and Ganhaye korale, on which they occupy all the best portions of land such as would be preferred for coffee plantations. The kandegam were all royal, and their rajakariya was to provide jaggery and honey for the king’s store. The original proprietors are said to have been forced by the kings to reside on the hills for the above-mentioned service which was continued by their descendants until after the British possession, when the rajakariya was altered for road service, peeling cinnamon, furnishing cadjan and so on. On the abolition of the compulsory services and introduction of commutation, the holders of paddy land in the other royal villages were allowed to register them in their own names, and have since paid the same taxes as the other paraveni proprietors. The kandegam people, having no low grounds, were excluded from the registry, but the portion of high ground annually cleared and sown with paddy has always been taxed at the same rate as other paraveni grounds (…) The inhabitants of these villages claim the whole extent of lands included within the reported boundaries of the village and from which an extent sufficient for the wants of the inhabitants is annually cleared. The extent varying with the increase or decrease of the population. There can be no doubt of the proprietorship of these people to some portion of all these villages (…) in which I consider they ought to be quieted in possession as much as the other nilakarayas of royal villages. They, like almost all the proprietors of lands in the Seven korales, hold no sannas or document”.  

[28] SLNA 59/PF 178: correspondence and statistics on village sales in Weudawili for the years 1894-1896

[29] SLNA 59/ PF 1384 (Delwita estate settlement); “Land settlement work of F.R. Ellis”, file in the Land Settlement Department records; also Diary Fox, December 1904.

[30] Diaries of Cocks, May 1931 and Navaratnam, April 1937

[31] Land Settlement Department Records, file on Ellis Settlement work, subfile ‘Anderson’s claims’ (1904)

[32] SLNA 59/PF 1074 (Land settlement in Matale): Joseph Malcolmson to Governor, 10.08.1904; Malcolmson to Colonial Secretary, 9.09.1904 and 15.10.1904.

[33] Among the Matale agents, two opposite figures stand out: S.M. Burrrows, in 1896, was instrumental in bringing the issue of land sales by villagers to the attention of Ridgeway by publishing the description of the disintegration of village life written by Aluvihare Ratemahatmaya. And E.B. Alexander, who became after he left the service the head of the Ceylon planters lobby in London.

[34]  Administration report Matale 1905, p. B28

[35] On the Nattukottai Chettiar, see W.S. Weerasooriya, The Nattukottai Chettiar Merchant Bankers in Ceylon, Dehiwala, Tisara, 1973; David Rudner, Caste and Capitalism in Colonial India, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1994; Éric Meyer, Dépression et malaria à Sri Lanka: l’impact de la crise économique des années 1930 sur une société rurale dépendante. Paris, doctoral dissertation EHESS, 1980. On the Karawa elite, Michael Roberts, Caste Conflict and Elite Formation : the Rise of a Karawa Elite in Sri Lanka, 1500-1931, Cambridge, University Press, 1982.

[36] Diary Fraser, January 1906, Fox, September to December 1906, Administration report of the Land Settlement Department 1906, p. N22, Ellis Settlement Work file in Land Settlement Department records; Diary Perera 12.05.1936

[37] Jacob de Mel (1839-1919) from Moratuwa, a Christian Karava, plumbago mine proprietor, invested his fortune in large scale coconut plantations in the Kurunegala district; his son Henry de Mel (1877-1936) became the leader of the Low Country Products Association (founded in 1910) and a politician and died after being shot by a worker on one of his plantations. Clovis de Silva (1852-1916) and several other petitioners were also Moratuwites. The full list of the petitioners offers a fascinating catalogue of the coconut planters listed in order of importance, first those who write in English, including a few Tamils, then in Sinhala (about half their names being Kandyan); there is not a single Moor among them.  

[38] The Land settlement department file titled ‘Land Settlement Work of F.R. Ellis in the North-Western Province’ begins with a memorandum on encroachments dated 10.02.1904 (also found in SLNA 59/Pending File 1075 under registration number 03334) written after Ellis had “spent some days in the Kurunegala kacceri” while the Revenue Officers were on leave.

[39] SLNA 59/Pending File 2537B

[40] SLNA,65 L754/1929

[41] SLNA 6/374, RN 18393/1909 Settlement Officer to Controller of Revenue, confidential letter 3.11.1909

[42]  SLNA 18/2490 (‘Old chena file’) 8.09.1840 and 26.10.1840, letters of the Assistant Government Agent Kurunegala, William Morris, to the Government Agent Western province, Buller; Administration report Puttalam 1884, p. 100A.

[43] Diary Leach, 4.11.1927; SLNA 65, PF 1075, report Hulugalle of 4.06.1904

[44] Diary Fraser, 4.07.1903

[45] SLNA 6 box 15, 0107/1907

[46] Diary Brayne, 28.11.1909

[47] SLNA 6/box 374, RN 18393/1909 Settlement Officer to Controller of Revenue, confidential letter, 3.11.1909 Note that Charles Edward Tennekoon’s daughter married Godfrey Edward Madawela in 1903.

[48] Diaries Leach, 4.12.1924, Sandys, 3.09.1930, Stace, 1.07.1923

[49] SLNA L91/1926; SLNA L24/1928 3.02.1928; Diary Hodson, 6.08.1928; Administration report North Western Province, 1928

[50] Diaries of Seneviratne, February 1933 (Kahadenigama, near Kuliyapitiya), Abeyakoon, March 1933 (Ketiyawa), Rasaretnam, April 1934, Ellepola, April-June 1936

[51] Fraser, 9.12.1904, 05.1905

[52] Fox, 8.06.1904

[53] CO54/706, 16.11.1906

[54] Administration report North-western province 1906, p. F3

[55] Letter of GA Kurunegala H.R. Freeman to Colonial Secretary, 14.08.1906, in SLNA 59/Pending File 1383.

[56] Diaries Fox, 08.1906, Wait, 10.1906. Johannes de Mel had refused the terms of the Kurunegala circular in his numerous claims (Hendiyapola, Malattawa, Urapotha) and planted with coconut on the sole basis of village purchases

[57] Henry Lawson de Mel was a compulsive buyer of village lands, who was ready to settle with the Crown, but always at reduced prices. He became one of the biggest plantation owners in the coconut triangle: Diary Davies, 31.10.1907 (Nabeta), 12.12.1918: “Inspected Pallama, Pahala and Ihala Kolaeliya. In the list is a preposterous claim by Mr. de Mel, obviously a mere speculation in the hope of inducing the Crown too part with valuable land for less than its value; he has purchased from the villagers 300 acres of Crown forest”

[58] SLNA 59/ Pending File 1684A, Fox to Colonial Secretary, 1.07.1906

[59] SLNA 59/ Pending File 1684A, Government Agent Uva to Colonial Secretary, 8.05.1906; 

[60] Memo 8.09.1906 (SLNA 59/ Pending File 2226): the notification of 1904 is described by Fowler as “a bold attempt to create a new departure in the settlement of the land in the North Western Province, which proved a comparative failure”

[61] Fraser to Colonial Secretary, 9.01.1907, RN 0430/07 in SLNA59/Pending File 1684A

[62] SLNA 59/Pending file 2537B (‘Land settlement in the North western province’), CO54/712 (dispatch 740, 11.12.1907), Diary Fraser, 7-8.10.1907 

[63] CO54/709, dispatch 345 and 362 of 1907

[64] Burgher lawyers like proctor Modder of Kurunegala became experts in fighting the Settlement officers (Diary Fox, 7.12.1912).  

[65] CO54/712, 11.12.1907

[66] Diary Fraser, 27.05.1908

[67] CO54/718, 1.09.1908

[68] SLNA 59/Pending File 2226

[69] CO54/724, annex to despatch of 24.03.1909

[70] SLNA 59/PF 2059, April 1911. Thorpe was previously deputy collector of customs, and in 1901-1903 District Judge Matara, where he had already been in opposition with Fraser (Diary Fraser 15.02.1903)

[71] Diary Davies, 11.12.1913, 25.04.1914, 6.07.1914

[72] SLNA 6/ 761, RN 03961/1913 

[73] Diary Hughes, November 1924

[74] Diary Leach, 30.01.1924 and 8.12.1924

[75] Diaries of Wedderburn and Hughes, February 1924

[76] Diary Christoffelz, 8.05.1930

[77] Hansard 1931, p. 160 (17.02.1931)

[78] Diary Davies, 12.1918. Wright 20th Century Impressions of Ceylon… p. 749 ; SLNA 59 PF 2537B; See on Potukulama CO54/735 (20.07.1910)

[79] SLNA 6/483, Settlement Officer to Colonial Secretary, 2.04.1910; Diary Fox, 5 .12.1912

[80] Diaries Cocks, 15.05.1931 and Abhayaratne, 23.11.1933

[81] Diary Archibald, September 1915

[82] SLNA 65 L73 /1926: Government agent North Western Province (Codrington) to Colonial Secretary, 25.06.1926

[83] Diary Hunter, 20.05.1926; Government Agent North Western Province to Colonial Secretary, 25.11.1927 (printed in the 5^th interim report of the Land Commission, SP16 of 1928).

[84] Diaries Wait, 30.03.1922 and Wedderburn, April and June 1922

[85] Administration Report North Western Province 1924 and 1926; Administration Report Sabaragamuwa 1927, p. I4

[86] Diary Hughes, 24.07.1926 (Walgam pattu)

[87] SLNA65  L295/1926 ‘Effect of Land settlement on the alienation of village lands’, Kurunegala, 7.01.1926; Ratnapura, 12.10.1925

[88] Diary Stace 16. 02 to 26.10.1925, Karandana area (west of Ratnapura) and May 1926 (Kiriporuwa village)

[89] Diary Stace, 11/1925, 01/1926, 05/1927

[90] Diary Stace, September – October 1925

[91] Diary Stace, 7.01.1926

[92] SLNA, Land Commission file 907

[93] SLNA 65 L62/1928 Reports of the Revenue and Settlement Officers concerning their comments on the 3^rd interim report: “It has been my experience that after settlement quite 50% of the villagers immediately make every effort to sell the land to which they have got good title to capitalists, usually rich men from Panadure or Kalutara.

[94] Diary Bassett, 24.11.1927 (Akkarella, Ratnapura district)

[95] Diary Christoffelz, August 1928 (Lekamgoda, Ratnapura district)

[96] Diary Sandys, October 1929 and 16.07.1930

[97] Diary Aluvihare, 1.08.1930 (Kirindawa, near Kuliyapitiya)

[98] Diary Rasaretnam, 6/7 December 1932 (Kuliyapitiya)

[99] Diary Seneviratne, October 1933 (Niladure and Welanga, near Sinharaja forest); also 5.04.1932 (Wilattawa village)

[100] Diary Jansz, 12.03.1936; on the Chettiar moneylenders, W.E. Weerasooriya, The Nattukottai Chettiar merchant bankers in Ceylon, Dehiwala, Tisara, 1973

[101] Diary Ratnatunga, October 1938 (Nildandahinna, Walapane, Nuwara Eliya district)

[102] Diaries De Mel, January 1937 (Matale district) and Wijekoon (October 1937)

[103] Diary Fraser, 12.07.1909

[104] Diaries Brayne, 1910 and 1911, Wedderburn, February 1912

[105] Diary Toller, 14.11.1908

[106] Diary Hughes, January and February 1924, November 1924. 

[107] Diary Hughes, 18/19.11.1924.

[108] Walter Terence Stace (1886-1967) had an initial training in philosophy; he joined the Ceylon civil service in 1910 and retired in 1932 to become professor of philosophy at Princeton, where his influence was deeply felt. His unpublished Notes on Life in Ceylon are kept at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, London (ms. ICS 100)

[109] Diary Stace, 25-26.01.1926 (village of Ratmale, Kalutara district)

[110] Diary Abhayakoon, December 1935

[111] Diary Sandys, August and October 1929, July and December 1930. Melville Kerverne Trelawny Sandys entered the Ceylon civil service in 1919 and ended his career as Government Agent at Ratnapura in the 1940s. Copies of some of his diaries (but not those of his settlement officer period) are deposited at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London [ICS 71]  

[112] Diary Sandys, October 1929

[113] This was already noticed by Fraser (diary November 1901 “It is therefore desirable that any alias should be recorded”)

[114] This view was shared by his superior the Settlement Officer (diary July 1929, Tabbomulla, North Western province): “This village will be almost entirely private by the time it is finished (…) I gather that when these sales are completed, there will still be quite a number of applications for land by those who have abstained from putting forward these preposterous claims, and there will be no land left for them. That is the worst of admitting these claims: it puts a premium on grabbing”

[115] Diary Sandys, 18.07.1930

[116] Hansard 1927, p. 139-163. He was seconded by Francis Molamure, who insisted that there had never been Crown chenas in Kägalla, and that wattoru and ninda registers should be considered as proof of private property and should be freely accessible, while recognizing “that Settlement officers are most fair and most considerate when dealing with the villagers”. Victor Corea supported Madawela with pseudo-historical arguments drawn from the Mahavamsa chronicle

[117] Administration report of the Land Settlement Department (Stace), 1929, p. K3-4

[118] Diary Luddington, 13.12.1927

[119] Diary Hudson, 12.03.1928

[120] Diaries Hunter, 23.01.1928, Leach, 26.02.1927, Stace, 25.04.1930

[121] Diary Christoffelz, 23.10.1930

[122] Diary Seneviratne, March and December 1933

[123] Frank Leach interviews with Michael Roberts and written testimony,1966, in Michael Roberts Oral History Project, Oxford and Adelaide manuscripts. Not to be confused with the anthropologist Edmund Leach.