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UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title The Military Economy of Seventeenth Century Sri Lanka: Rhetoric and Authority in a Time of Conquest Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4nk5z4h1 Author Pirani, Cenan Publication Date 2016 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles The Military Economy of Seventeenth Century Sri Lanka: Rhetoric and Authority in a Time of Conquest A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in History by Cenan Pirani 2016 © Copyright by Cenan Pirani 2016 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION The Military Economy of Seventeenth Century Sri Lanka: Rhetoric and Authority in a Time of Conquest by Cenan Pirani Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Los Angeles, 2016 Professor Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Chair From the end of the sixteenth century, the overseas administrative arm of the Portuguese Crown, the Estado da Índia Oriental, sought to gain complete territorial control of the island of Sri Lanka and outlined the tenets of the military project dubbed in administrative letters, “the Conquest of the Island of Ceylon”. Such efforts however would be impeded by military rebellions (ie. mutinies and desertions) by native military personnel in Portuguese service, where a rebellion that occurred in 1630 severely weakened the Estado's position in the island from which it could not recover. The specific event, the death of a Portuguese general at the hands of his own Christianized native troop, left a deep imprint on Portuguese memory. Decades later, the chronicler Fernão de Queiroz claimed the event, which paved the way for the European's eventual removal from the island by 1658, bore testament to the unbridgeable cultural and religious schism between the Portuguese and the native Sinhala people, an established viewpoint in current historiography. This study focuses attention on the documentation in Portuguese, English, Spanish, and ii Sinhalese written during the more active moments of the conquest period (1580-1640) in order to test such well-established views. Starting with the more general question of how anyone captured and maintained territorial authority in the island, since native island kings were said to have encountered similar challenges in keeping the loyalties of their military personnel, the study argues that any person or group vying for territorial authority was required to engage with a military service market consisting of personnel from inside and outside the island. One's posterity depended on how well one could recruit, compensate, and keep such personnel in service. This case study is influenced by the topics and themes of larger studies on war in early modern South Asia and the Indian Ocean World, from which common challenges regarding territorial expansion are identified. Such pervading themes are enveloped in the concept military economy; a political and economic system of war that understands military personnel to be its central agents. iii The dissertation of Cenan Pirani is approved. Sebouh David Aslanian Kevin B. Terraciano Ângela Barreto Xavier Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2016 iv CONTENTS Abbreviations vi Preface / Acknowledgments viii Vita / Biographical Sketch xiv Introduction - War in Early Modern Sri Lanka: Moving from the Model of a 1 Civilizational Clash to a Military Economic Model Chapter 1 - Cinnamon, Crown Trade Monopolies, and Private Trade during the 52 Conquista da Ilha de Ceilão Chapter 2 - The Military and Land Administration: Problems in the Making of the 88 Estado Land Tenure Structure, 1605-1630 Chapter 3 - Military Labor, Recruitment, and the Theme of Loyalty: Common 117 Conventions between the Sinhala Hatana Kavya and the Portuguese Account of the Jaffna Conquest Chapter 4 - Switching Camps and Changing Beliefs along the Contingencies of War: 166 The Economy of Loyalty in European Accounts Chapter 5 - Of Reis and Rajas: The Rhetoric of Kingship and Military Methods of 210 Attaining and Maintaining Kingly Authority Conclusion - The Military Economy: A Common Disconnected and Connected Early 262 Modern Political Economic System BIBLIOGRAPHY 266 v Abbreviations AHU-Caixas Arquivo Histórico Ultramarino; Caixas da Índia. ANTT-CSV Instituto dos Arquivos Nacionais – Torre do Tombo; Colecção de São Vicente: Book 19. ANTT-LM Instituto dos Arquivos Nacionais – Torre do Tombo; Livros das Monções. Assunção Instituto dos Arquivos Nacionais – Torre do Tombo; Manuscritos da Livraria: Codex 1699, ff. 243-320. Bocarro O livro das plantas de todas as fortalezas, cidades e povoações do Estado da Índia Oriental, Vol. 1, Isabel Cid (ed.) (Lisbon, 1992). DRI-LM Pato, Raymundo António de Bulhão, Documentos Remittidos da Índia ou Livros das Monções (vol. 1-5) (Lisbon, 1880-1935). Rego, António da Silva, Documentos Remitidos da Índia ou Livros das Monções (vol. 6-10) (Lisbon, 1976-1982). Estado Panduronga Pissurlencar, Assentos do Conselho do Estado (Goa, 1956). Filmoteca Centro de Estudos Históricos Ultramarinos, Boletim da Filmoteca Portuguesa, Vol. 11 (Lisbon, 1954). Glossário Sebastião Rodolfo Dalgado, Glossário Luso-Asiático, (2 Vols) (Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade, 1919). HAG-Fazenda Historical Archives of Goa; Conselho da Fazenda. HAG-RV Historical Archives of Goa; Reis Vizinhos: Vol. 1. vi Jornada Jornada do reino de Huva, por Constantino de Sa de Noronha, offerecida a senhora dona Luisa da Silva e Mendonça. anno de 1635; Biblioteca da Ajuda (Cod. 52-VI-51). Knox Robert Knox, An Historical Relation of the Island Ceylon, J. H. O. Paulusz (ed.) 2nd edition (2 vols.) (Dehiwala, 1989). Kustantinu Hatana Kustantinu Hatana, Rohini Paranavitana (ed.) (Colombo, 2006) Mandarampura Puvata Mandarampura Puvata, D.E. Hettiaracci (ed.) (Colombo, 1958). Queiroz Fernão de Queiroz, The Temporal and Spiritual Conquest of Ceylon, translated into English by S.G. Perera (3 Vols.) (Colombo: A.C. Richards, Acting Government Printer, 1930). Rajasiha Hatana Rajasiha Hatana, Ellepola H. M. Somarathna (ed.) (Kandy, 1966). Rajavaliya A.V. Suraweera, Rajavaliya: A Comprehensive Account of the Kings of Sri Lanka (Ratmalana: Vishva Lekha, 2000). Regimentos Tikiri Abeyasinghe (ed. & trans.), A Study of Portuguese Regimentos on Sri Lanka at the Goa Archives (Colombo: Department of National Archives, 1974). Sitavaka Hatana Sitavaka Hatana, Rohini Paranavitana (ed.) (Colombo, 1999). vii Preface / Acknowledgements The year from which the study of this dissertation began, 2009, was a transitional moment in many respects for the two countries I would be regularly visiting from then on to complete my research; Portugal and Sri Lanka. In the case of Portugal, the 2010 European sovereign debt crisis, triggered by the 2008 collapse of the international banking system, impacted every person I met in my time there. The crash of two major national banks led to a series of annual debt crises that needed to be covered by multiple bailout packages over the next few years provided by the IMF and Germany. To repay the loans, and thus regain composure and international investor confidence, the government needed to enact spending cuts and austerity measures, most of which were directed at the relatively large public sector, causing high rates of unemployment. Some immigrant populations, people from the Lusophone world, began repatriating given the closing of opportunities in Portugal coupled with the strengthening of their national economies of origin; Brazil and Angola being the most impressive cases. Native Portuguese would follow this emigration trend to seek out employment in these places as well, with Angola being a prime destination given consistent economic expansion linked to the growth of the petroleum industry. The Portuguese private sector would also follow suit by attempting to appeal to the Angolan market; and even law offices dealing with national corporate law quickly learned Angolan business legal codes in order to serve the considerably more profitable market in Africa. In a statement that sparked public criticism, the Portuguese Prime Minister, Pedro Passos Coelho, in 2011 acknowledged the attractiveness of the Angolan and Brazilian economies and even encouraged the emigration of high-skilled Portuguese citizens to such places in order to obtain employment and thus lessen the burden on the Portuguese government. Though the appeal for emigration was unprecedented, such statements reflected a process already in place that many viii Portuguese enacted on their own. This search for foreign employment among some Portuguese re-evoked some popular viewpoints regarding the flexible cultural disposition of the Portuguese, where the concept of Luso-Tropicalism was constantly touched on without naming it outright. The concept originally developed in the 1930s by the Brazilian intellectual, Gilberto Freyre, posited that the Portuguese were a multiracial and thus culturally adaptive people who spanned over many continents since the fifteenth century, and in this contemporary context it began to provide some sort of cultural explanation for the willingness to emigrate. Previously, the concept was taken up by the Portuguese autocrat António de Oliveira Salazar as a means of legitimating his refusal to follow in the footsteps of other European nations and decolonize overseas possessions in the 1950s. Though treated as an uninterrupted cultural trait, the most recent manifestation