British Ceylon

British Ceylon was the British colony on the island of Ceylon, today Sri Lanka. Britain took over the Dutch-held coasts in 1796, conquered the inland Kingdom of Kandy in 1815 and ruled the whole island until independence on 4 February 1948. The period brought the end of the island's ancient monarchy, a plantation economy built on coffee, tea and rubber, large-scale migration of Tamil labourers from India, and a gradual, negotiated path to self-government.

Europeans had held parts of the coast for nearly three centuries before the British. The Portuguese arrived in 1505 and built a fort at Colombo in 1517, while the Sinhalese kings moved their capital inland to Kandy in 1592. Invited by Kandy to help against the Portuguese, the Dutch took Colombo in 1656 and by 1660 controlled the island apart from the Kandyan kingdom. After the Dutch Republic was weakened by war with Britain and conquered by France, the Dutch handed their part of Ceylon to the British, against the wishes of Dutch residents on the island. Britain valued the island for its cinnamon plantations and its harbours at Trincomalee and Colombo.

Kandy refused British offers of protection, and a first war in 1803 failed to bring the kingdom down. The last king, Sri Vikrama Rajasinghe, of South Indian descent, had alienated his own chiefs, and in 1815 they combined with the British to depose him. Under the Kandyan Convention signed that year the chiefs accepted the British Crown, which promised to protect Buddhism. Two years later, discontent with British rule broke out in the Uva Rebellion of 1817–1818. It was crushed with scorched-earth methods, including the burning of rice fields and the killing of livestock; more than 10,000 Sinhalese are reported to have died. Kandy was annexed outright in 1817.

After the rebellion, a Crown lands ordinance of 1840 stripped many Kandyan peasants of their land. British planters opened coffee estates in the hill country; after coffee rust wiped out the coffee, tea and rubber took its place, and Ceylon tea became a staple of the British market. Planters brought large numbers of Tamil workers from South India as indentured labourers, who lived in cramped "line rooms" on the estates. New roads and a railway opened up the interior. The first census in 1871 was followed by one in 1881 recording about 2.8 million people, mostly Sinhalese, with sizeable Tamil, Moor, Burgher and Malay communities.

Constitutional change came slowly. A partly elected legislature appeared in 1909, and elected members became a majority only in 1920. The Ceylon National Congress, founded to press for more autonomy, soon split along ethnic and caste lines, while the Marxist Lanka Sama Samaja Party, formed in 1935, demanded full independence. The Donoughmore reforms of 1931 created a State Council and introduced universal suffrage, over objections from parts of the Sinhalese, Tamil and Burgher elite.

During the Second World War Ceylon became a front-line British base against Japan. The Japanese navy bombed Colombo on 5 April 1942, and Lord Louis Mountbatten later made his headquarters on the island. The ministers led by D. S. Senanayake cooperated closely with the British authorities and drew up a draft constitution in 1944, which the Soulbury Commission largely adopted. Senanayake founded the United National Party in 1946, won power in a coalition after the 1947 election, and became the first prime minister when Ceylon gained independence as a dominion on 4 February 1948. It became the Republic of Sri Lanka in 1972.

Our 1815, 1878, 1880, 1900, 1914, 1920, 1930 and 1938 maps draw the island as "Ceylon", south of British India.