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THESIS ON THE HISTORY OF CEYLON TEA MONTE HOLSINGER (2002) History of Ceylon Tea is delighted to present an essay on the history of Ceylon tea written by former tea planter Monte Holsinger as a thesis for his Bachelor’s Degree in Management in 2002. This well-researched document comprehensively captures the history of the plantation industry while also touching on the country’s colonial past. HOCT is indeed grateful to Mr Holsinger for making it available to us and our readership. PART ONE 1 OUTLINE OF RECENT HISTORY The Island of Sri Lanka has a heritage rich in culture and rife with conflict. The aborigines of the country bear no relevance in this study and are of more interest to anthropologists and paleontologists, who have postulated that Homo sapiens possibly first set foot on the isle about 500,000 years ago. The more recent history, which is pertinent to this paper, is unfortunately, a combination of myth, legend, folklore, epigraphics and historical records. The historical records do not necessarily embody an unbiased or objective narration of historical events, and may well reflect the historian’s perception, or even be a valediction of the kings and rulers of a given period. Much research has however been done by the students of history in their assiduous search for the truth, and we are the beneficiaries of their diligence. We can now safely assume that these scholarly dissertations have unraveled the past with reasonable accuracy, and we can now rely on this historical perspective on which to predicate this thesis. Sri Lanka, known as Seilan or Ceylon in the days gone by, occupies an enviable geographic location. Like a tear drop shed by India, Sri Lanka lies below the southern tip of the mainland, about 8 degrees above the equator. This is directly in the path of the ancient trade routes and therefore the country has been a haven for seafarers and mariners from time immemorial. Although the island is now separated from the mainland by the Palk Straits, (a distance of only 40 kilometres), it was undoubtedly connected with mainland India at some point in prehistory. These factors have rendered the island, so rich in natural resources and bio diversity, vulnerable to invaders on the one hand and inviting to travelers, on the other. Sri Lanka was truly a tropical Paradise, ripe for the picking, beckoning to be exploited, and small wonder that nations all over the world vied for this prize. The history of man in Sri Lanka, in recent times as can be gathered from that indispensable record, the ‘Mahawamsa’ begins with the arrival of Vijaya, the legendary founding father of the Sinhalese (Sinhala). According to legend, Vijaya was banished for misconduct by his father, Sinhabahu, the ruler of the North Indian kingdom of Sinhapura. Vijaya and his disorderly group of cohorts numbering about 700 in all reached the Northwestern shores of Sri Lanka, near Puttalam and gained foothold in the country. The ‘Mahawamsa’ and its sequel, the Culawamsa were literary works of buddhistic chroniclers and quite naturally, liberally interspersed with miracles, supernatural interventions and fanciful inventions, all evincing a strong religious bias. While the cursory reader may go along with the story and its contrivances, the true historian will view this against the backdrop of world history, in piecing together the puzzle of the past. 2 Suffice it to say that the advent of Vijaya to the island as per the Mahawamsa coincides with the colonisation of Sri Lanka, by Indo-Aryan tribes from Northern India. A Later immigration from Bengal and Orissa is also strongly indicated. Although the sub continent exerted a great pressure in the shaping of Sri Lanka, its strategic location athwart the main sea routes, led inevitably to other equally important influences being brought to bear in this metamorphosis. Whilst the archeologists continue their scholarly research into the cradle of human civilisation, we are here mainly concerned in establishing with reasonable accuracy, a historical basis for the ethnic diversity in the demography of Sri Lanka. Anthropological postulations place the arrival of ‘Home Sapiens’ on the island, to around 500,000 thousand years, but there is very little evidence to go on about subsequent cultures in Paleolithic terms. Comparatively recent stone cultures show up around 10,000 BC and probably lasted up to around 1000 BC or less, when the metal ages surfaced. Traces of Mesolithic man have been found and these continue into proto-historic periods, via the ‘Balangoda Man” and ‘Balangoda Cultures’ which were submerged by the pressures exerted by the early Indo-Aryan colonisers, probably in the period 500 BC to the Christian era. The aboriginal of Sri Lanka has now disappeared. The Veddah tribes found today in the jungles of the Vanni are the descendants of the Balangoda Man intermixed with the Sinhalese and the Tamils. However, even this questionable ethnic integrity has been highly diluted and it is now not very long before the remnants of the Veddah ‘race’ will cease to exist being totally assimilated into the predominant ethnic groups. The early settlers were romantically portrayed as warrior nobility building new empires by conquest. However, more realistically, seafarers and traders of both West and East Asia found the country and its wealth of natural resources incentive enough to found their own settlements, in the Maritime Provinces. The Indo Aryan immigrants settled in various provinces of the island especially along the west coast and the banks of the Malwatu Oya River. Some settled on the East and moved inland along the Mahaweli River. Still later, a new wave of immigration settled in the Ruhunu Province along the Walawe River. These settlers were of various clans, the foremost among them being the Sinhalas, and the settlements were in the dry zone. By now the metal age had revolutionized archetypal existence. By the end of the Pre Christian era, Buddhism had gained ascendancy over other forms of religion and was under the patronage of the rulers. An agrarian economy was well established and self-sufficient and self-governing villages (settlements) began to flourish. The picture of this proto historical period is completed by the Dravidian incursions to the island. There was already a strong Dravidian Civilisation in South India, which relied substantially on international trading. Quite naturally therefore, Dravidians entered Sri Lanka either for trading by peaceful means or through more bellicose invasions. All historical evidence would tend to support the hypothesis that the Dravidians entry to Sri Lanka was preceded by the Indo Aryans. However, by the beginning of the Christian era, 3 they were firmly established in the country, in several settlements in the North and the East. Evidence also suggests that Sri Lanka, a multi ethnic society, lived in tolerance and racial harmony when under a unified polity, rather than a pluralistic one where ethnic tensions are a prime feature. The truth as to the actual conditions obtaining under a single polity is rather obscure. Myth and legend portray all their kings since the (mythical) Vijaya as rulers of the entire island, but this was not so. There were several kingdoms in the island during this period, with the strongest among them having hegemonic notions over the others. Even during the reigns of the few powerful kings who held sway over the entire island, there was no highly centralised autocratic power structure in the heyday of the Sinhala era, but one where the “Balance of political forces incorporated a tolerance of particularism, charactistic of most feudal polities”. (K M de Silva). This was mainly due to practical difficulties in administering far-flung lesser “kingdoms”. Although centripetally may have been the aspiration of several of the Sinhala kings, very few achieved it. The Anuradhapura period (250 BC –1050 AD) and Polonnaruwa period (1050 AD – 1250 AD) are fraught with accounts of invasion from India. By the turn of the 11thcentury Cola invaders from India overthrew the Sinhala regime and a Cola king was installed. The Sinhalese then retreated to Polonnaruwa from where a protracted war was waged upon the usurping Colas, the country liberated and the Sinhala monarchy restored. Although there are two periods of unified rule during the Polonnaruwa period, very often stability in the country deteriorated into bloody squabbles among motley congeries. Moreover, relentless invasions mounted by the Colas and Pandyans always accompanied by an orgy of destruction and desecration and led to the fragmentation of power and polity. Other factors, which precipitated the downfall of the Polonnaruwa kingdom, were firstly the highly centralised governance of the era, which proved unable to maintain, much less develop the mainstay of the economy – agriculture. Secondly the malaria epidemic, which gripped the country, ravaged the population. The malaria epidemic could well be a direct consequence of the latter day centralised authority’s failure in agriculture. The extensive and intricate network of reservoirs and channels fell into disuse and offered excellent breeding grounds for the dreaded Anopheles mosquito. The Sinhala kings and kingdoms continued their retreat Southward to Dambulla, Kurunegala, Gampola, Dedigama, Kotte and Sitawaka. A parallel kingdom was established in Kandy, in the mid 15th century and shortly, the kingdom of Jaffna was also established by the Tamils in the North. The fragmentation of the country was complete with the Sitawaka Kingdom making its appearance around 1520 AD. Thus, when the Portuguese first set foot in Sri Lanka, the country was governed by at least 4 kingdoms, whilst in the thickly forested and almost impenetrable Vanni Province there may have been several chieftains or Vanniars holding sway over smaller tracts of the province. 4 The Portuguese, whose first entry to the country was in 1505/6, was by accident returned 12 years later, with the intention of opening up a trading post.