Material Pluralism and Symbolic Violence: Palm Leaf Deeds and Paper Land Grants in Colonial Sri Lanka, 1680–1795
Keywords:
Sri Lanka, land registration, property registration, palm leaf deeds, olas, paper land grants, giftebrieven, Dutch East India Company, VOC,Abstract
This article studies the registration practices of land and property on palm leaf deeds (olas) in Sri Lanka, in relationship to the advent of paper land grants (giftebrieven) under the Dutch East India Company (VOC)’s rule in the long eighteenth century. A database of about 2500 Dutch land grant deeds and translated olas, ranging from 1685 to 1795 are contextualised via judicial records of Dutch civil courts, where (translated) olas were regularly used as evidence. Not only does this allow us to track the geographical encroachment of Dutch power over coastal Sri Lanka as part of a colonial transition, but at the same time shift the perspective to study which individuals and communities on the island engaged with Dutch land bureaucracy. In doing so, we showcase the continued importance of traditional ola deeds and (pre-)colonial registers for both local land owners and the colonial bureaucracy itself, regardless of the Dutch government’s push for paper, attempted to delegitimise the local ola recordings, and acts of symbolic violence to infringe on both the materiality as well as the perceived importance of palm leaf deeds. In the long eighteenth century several paper and palm leaf realities coexisted in Sri Lanka and at times conflicted, entangled, and convoluted within and outside the bureaucratic institutions to form what ‘material pluralism’ within a larger context of legal pluralities.
References
1
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2
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Even though the intersection between law and the colonial transition has been prominent in the works of Bernard S. Cohn, subsequent scholarly works seem to have lost track of this agenda; see, for example: Bernard S. Cohn, “Law and Colonial State in India,” in Colonialism and Its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India, ed. Bernard S. Cohn (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 57–75. There are exceptions, such as the earlier referred to works of Raman (2018) and Sen (2013), although neither explicitly looks at the effects of such a political/economic transition of law (or vice versa).
8
For example, Rosalind O'Hanlon and David Washbrook, eds., “Special Issue: Munshis, Pandits and Record-Keepers: Scribal Communities and Historical Change in India,” The Indian Economic & Social History Review 47 (2010): 441–619; Bhavani Raman, Document Raj. Writing and Scribes in Early Colonial South India (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2012); Danna Agmon, A Colonial Affair. Commerce, Conversion, and Scandal in French India (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017); and Rosalind O'Hanlon, Anand Venkatkrishnan, and Richard David Williams, “Special Issue: Scribal Service People in Motion: Culture, Power and the Politics of Mobility in India's Long Eighteenth Century, c. 1680–1820,” Indian Economic and Social History Review 57 (2020): 443–60.
9
Somewhat of an exception perhaps being Miles Ogborn, Indian Ink: Script and Print in the Making of the English East India Company (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007).
10
In Sri Lankan historiography, see, for example, Rupesinghe's earlier-cited article on the role of oath-taking in the Dutch rural court of Galle; Rupesinghe, “Do You Know the Ninth Commandment?”
11
Ibid. As has been argued by Strathern and Biedermann, Sri Lanka's history can offer interesting new perspectives on better-known South Asian and global histories, yet its historiography has so far remained largely localized. Zoltán Biedermann and Alan Strathern, Sri Lanka at the Crossroads of History (London: UCL Press, 2017), 2–3.
12
Kotelawele, D.A., “Agrarian Policies of the Dutch in South-West Ceylon, 1743-1767,” A.A.G. Bijdragen 14 (1967): 3–34Google Scholar; and Schrikker, Dutch and British Colonial Intervention in Sri Lanka, 39–50.
13
Rupesinghe, Nadeera, “Defining Land Rights in Dutch Sri Lanka,” Portuguese Journal of Social Science 16 (2017): 157–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a change that has similarly been described for other regions in South Asia in the eighteenth century, where direct interactions between (colonial) states and their subjects intensified significantly, see Guha, Sumit, “Property Rights, Social Structure and Rural Society in Comparative Perspective: Evidence from Historic South Asia,” International Journal of South Asian Studies 5 (2013): 19–20Google Scholar.
14
For a more thorough consideration of the relationship between registration and recognition, see Keith Breckenridge and Simon Szreter, eds., Registration and Recognition: Documenting the Person in World History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).
15
Exceptions were lands granted to Buddhist orders for the creation of temples and the maintenance of the monks there; lands granted to families loyal to the king who had performed extraordinary services, for example during wars; and the “ancestral lands” (paravēni) that had been owned by families for generations.
16
M.U. De Silva, “Land Tenure, Caste System and the Rājakāriya, under Foreign Rule: A Review of Change in Sri Lanka under Western Powers, 1597-1832,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Sri Lanka 37 (1993): 1–57.
17
A word with Tamil roots, used to describe a group of secretaries, a term possibly inherited during the Chola period, which was used by the Dutch in their sources to refer to local scribes, also see Raman, Document Raj, 12.
18
Stephen C. Berkwitz, “Materiality and Merit in Sri Lankan Buddhist Manuscripts,” in Buddhist Manuscript Cultures. Knowledge, Ritual, and Art, ed. Stephen C. Berkwitz, Juliane Schober, and Claudia Brown (New York: Routledge, 2009), 36.
19
Also see Jinah Kim, Receptacle of the Sacred. Illustrated Manuscripts and the Buddhist Book Cult in South Asia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013).
20
Sir Archibald Campbell Lawrie, A Gazetteer of the Central Province of Ceylon, Excluding Walapane ( London: British Library, Historical Print Editions, 2011), esp. 758, where he describes in 1896 how the ending of a deed promises that all those who would dispute the wording of the deed would suffer in the eight hells.
21
We thank Alex McKinley for pointing out this custom to us.
22
Berkwitz, “Materiality and Merit,” 36–39.
23
See, for example, the contributions of Guha and others in the earlier mentioned 2010 special issue on scribal practices in South Asia published in Indian Economic & Social History Review 47 (2010): 441–619; and Raman, Document Raj.
24
See, for example, Jurrien van Goor, Jan Kompenie as Schoolmaster: Dutch Education in Ceylon 1690–1795 (Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff, 1978), 109–11; and José Vicente Serrão, “The Portuguese Land Policies in Ceylon: On the Possibilities and Limits of a Process of Territorial Occupation,” in Property Rights, Land and Territory in the European Overseas Empires, ed. José Vicente Serrão et al. (Lisbon: CEHC, 2014), 183–96.
25
H.A.P. Abhayawardhana, Lēkam Miti Vimarshanaya (A Critical Study of Lekam Miti) (Colombo: Department of National Archives, 2009).
26
For a much more detailed account regarding this system and how it changed under colonial influence, see Dewasiri, The Adaptable Peasant, 131–35.
27
S. Arasaratnam, “Elements of Social and Economic Change in Dutch Maritime Ceylon (Sri Lanka) 1658–1796,” Indian Economic & Social History Review 22 (1985): 35–54; Chandra Richard de Silva, “Sri Lanka in the Early Sixteenth Century: Economic & Social Conditions,” in History of Sri Lanka, ed. K.M. De Silva (Peradeniya: University of Peradeniya, 1995), 37–60; and Serrão, “The Portuguese Land Policies in Ceylon.”
28
Serrão, “The Portuguese Land Policies in Ceylon,” 189.
29
Principally drawing from earlier-cited literature from authors like Arasaratnam, De Silva, Dewasiri, and Serrão.
30
Additionally, the colonizing states showed great interest in the capture of elephants to sell to different markets on the Indian subcontinent.
31
Serrão, “The Portuguese Land Policies in Ceylon,” 189–90; regarding the Dutch period, directly following the conquest against the Portuguese, the area surrounding Colombo had been significantly depopulated. There were not enough Europeans to resettle the lands or to function as officials. Therefore, the local families that had fought on the side of the VOC were granted high positions within the pre-existing system of indirect rule as established by the Portuguese and paired with fairly large plots of arable land, see Sinnappah Arasaratnam, Dutch Power in Ceylon, 1658–1687 (Amsterdam: Djambatan, 1958), 120–21; Rijckloff van Goens (sr.), Memoirs of Ryckloff van Goens Governor of Ceylon Delivered to His Successors Jacob Hustaart on December 26, 1663 and Ryckloff van Goens the Younger on April 12, 1675, ed. Edmund Reimers (Colombo: Ceylon Government Press, 1932), 46–47.
32
Chandra Richard de Silva, “The First Portuguese Revenue Register of the Kingdom of Kotte,” The Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies 5 (1975): 69–153.
33
Serrão, “The Portuguese Land Policies in Ceylon,” 189.
34
S.W. Mottau, “Documents on Ceylon History (2): Documents Relating to the Tombo Registration of the Dutch Administration in Ceylon: Instructions Issued to the Tombo Commissioners,” The Ceylon Historical Journal 3 (1953): 173–89; K.D. Paranavitana, Land for Money. Dutch Land Registration in Sri Lanka (Colombo: Sri Devi, 2001); and Luc Bulten, “Reconsidering Colonial Registration: Documenting People, Property, and Labour in Eighteenth-Century Sri Lanka” (forthcoming dissertation, Radboud University, Nijmegen), ch. 1.
35
See Albert Van Den Belt, Jan Kok, and Kees Mandemakers, “Digital Thombos: A New Source for 18th Century Sri Lankan Family History. Research Note,” History of the Family 16 (2011): 481–89; and Jan Kok, “The Thombo Treasure. Colonial Population Administration as Source for the Historical Demography of Early Modern Sri Lanka,” Australian Economic History Review 60 (2020): 105–21.
36
Dewasiri, The Adaptable Peasant; and Serrão, “The Portuguese Land Policies in Ceylon,” 191–92.
37
Database of land grant deeds based on Sri Lankan National Archives (hereafter SLNA), Lot 1: Dutch records, inv. nrs. 2509-2516, “Gifte-Boeken” or registers of land grants, 1679–1767.
38
Kotelawele, “Agrarian Policies,” 5.
39
Schrikker, Dutch and British Colonial Intervention in Sri Lanka, 35–37. The exact meaning of Van Imhoff's expressions are disputed, with Dewasiri claiming that he meant that the envisioned policy changes should be beneficial for the Company and the local ruling elites, but as we argue farther along in the article, this seems unlikely, as Van Imhoff intended to bypass the power of the local headmen and chiefs instead.
40
See, for example, Gerrit J. Knaap, “Coffee for Cash. The Dutch East India Company and the Expansion of Coffee Cultivation in Java, Ambon and Ceylon 1700-1730,” in Trading Companies in Asia: 1600-1830, ed. Jurrien Van Goor (Utrecht: Hes uitgevers, 1986), 33–50.
41
Baron Gustaaf Willem van Imhoff, Memoir Left by Baron van Imhoff to His Successor, 1740, ed. Sophia Pieris (Colombo: H C Cottle, Government Printer, 1911), 19.
42
Nadeera Rupesinghe, “Negotiating Custom. Colonial Lawmaking in the Galle Landraad” (unpublished PhD diss., Universiteit Leiden, 2016), 27–29.
43
Kotelawele, “Agrarian Policies,” 14–15, 27.
44
As per a dispatch sent from Colombo to Batavia, about 35% of the Company's revenue stemmed from tax farming, SLNA 1/1187, fol. 40. Regarding the social conflicts between the renters and local peasants, see Bulten, “Reconsidering Colonial Registration,” ch. 2.
45
SLNA 1/1187, fol. 31–36. A much more detailed account regarding the interactions between the colonial government and the local landowners and their families who were registered will be explored in the earlier-mentioned upcoming dissertation “Reconsidering Colonial Registration.”
46
For example, in relation to land tenure, inter and intra-caste relations, class formation, and labor duties, see Dewasiri, The Adaptable Peasant, 235–38.
47
Schrikker, Dutch and British Colonial Intervention in Sri Lanka, 35–37, 50–51.
48
To illustrate how sometimes more “conservative” policy still led to more intensive administration, one need only to look at Governor Jan Schreuder (r. 1757–62) who ordered an update of the 1745 thombos to prevent the local population of illegitimately acquiring more lands and harming the cinnamon-producing forests that way; Kotelawele, “Agrarian Policies,” 19, 21–22.
49
For example, olas were used by local landowners as evidence for their property and the tenurial categorization the land should receive in the thombo registers, see Bulten, “Reconsidering Colonial Registration,” ch. 2 and 6; also see Rupesinghe, “Negotiating Custom”; Rupesinghe, “Defining Land Rights”; and Luc Bulten, Jan Kok, Dries Lyna, and Nadeera Rupesinghe, “Contested Conjugality? Sinhalese Marriage Practices in Eighteenth-Century Dutch Colonial Sri Lanka,” Annales de Démographie Historique 135 (2018): 51–80.
50
James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998).
51
Guha, “Property Rights,” 19–20.
52
Database of 2497 land deeds, handed out by Dutch officials in Sri Lanka between 1679 and 1795 (84% of all deeds, as records are missing for July 1767-July 1786). We would like to thank Sanne de Jong for her support in constructing this database.
53
Specifically the “sannas olas.”
54
For example, the Dutch often ordered local headmen to compile lists of “serviceable people”—that is, people from specific caste groups bound to labor duties—which were usually presented by the chiefs on olas that were reworked to paper records by the (mostly Eurasian) clerks of the VOC. See Bulten, “Reconsidering Colonial Registration,” ch. 2.
55
Lodewijk Hovy, Ceylonees plakkaatboek: plakkaten en andere wetten uitgevaardigd door het Nederlandse bestuur op Ceylon, 1638-1796 (Hilversum: Verloren, 1991), vol. I, ordinance from July 16, 1648: Ordonnantie voor de commissarissen der dagelijkse zaken als rechtbank van eerste aanleg in de Galle corle. In this ordinance, the Court of First Instance is installed, as a local court to relieve the governor and the Political Council in Colombo of everyday civil matters that arose in and around Galle. Central to the Dutch interest was the lack of registration or documentation of real estate between Sinhalese, which apparently led to disputes.
56
Hovy, Ceylonees plakkaatboek, vol. 1, ordinance from April 25/August 14, 1704: Compendium van plakkaten en ordonnanties voor Jaffna, no. 24.
57
Chatterjee and Hodges witness a similar process in the appropriation of the parwanas (Indo-Persian grans) in eighteenth-century Southern India.
58
Disāva was a Lankan title for the highest-ranking chief under the king, who was both an administrative and a military aid to him. During colonial times, this title was appropriated by Portuguese and Dutch colonial officials respectively, and these officials functioned as the brokers between the colonial governments and the local chiefs, although they could also be addressed by local inhabitants directly.
59
Luc Bulten and Dries Lyna, “Classifications at Work: Social Categories and Dutch Bureaucracy in Colonial Sri Lanka,” Itinerario Journal of Imperial and Global Interactions 45 (2021): 252–78.
60
Hovy, Ceylonees plakkaatboek, vol. II, ordinance from May 31 (Colombo) and July 4 (Galle), 1757: Plakkaat verbiedende de vervreemding en verhypothekering van onroerend goed en vaartuigen anders dan bij schepen- of justitiële akte. On that same day, the Dutch government also issued a similar ordinance to regulate the private trade in enslaved people.
61
Ibid.
62
The 1757 ordinance was not just a hollow phrase, but had actual implications in the legal sphere. In one civil case brought before the highest Dutch civil court in colonial Colombo in the late 1750s, two Sinhalese men fought out a legal battle over the use of two houses as collateral in a business deal. One of these Sinhalese men made explicit reference to the 1757 ordinance, claiming that his opponent had not registered these houses within the allotted year and 6 weeks, and that therefore, he could not be considered the legal owner of these houses. The incomplete case file does not allow us to tell much more about the outcome of this trial. SLNA 1/4325: Nicolaas Fonseca vs. Domingo Fernando and Francisco Rodrigo Chenepadij, 1759.
63
For example, Hovy, Ceylonees plakkaatboek, vol. II: ordinance from July 27, 1769 (Colombo): Resolutie om het vergaande besluit van het bestuur te Jaffna betreffende het opmaken van akten zodanig te wijzigen; ordinance from October 10, 1786 (Colombo): Resolutie om de voorgenomen heruitvaardiging door het bestuur van Jaffna van het plakkaat waarbij het aan de inlandse schoolmeesters verboden wordt enige notariële acten te passeren en onderhandse olassen te kontrakteeren, goed te keuren.
64
Bulten, “Reconsidering Colonial Registration,” ch. 2.
65
Ibid.
66
SLNA 1/4534: Goeroegammegeij Abraham De Silwe vs. Abraham de Zilva, 1793–94.
67
The village Mabotuwana/Mabottoewanne was an annex to the larger settlement Leelwalle/Leelwelle in the Gangaboda pattu (sub-district).
68
The precise role of Silvester's sister is left unexplained in the case file belonging to the lawsuit. Since she had been unmarried when her parents had died, she had collectively inherited their share of the family land together with Silvester in accordance with the Sinhalese bilateral inheritance laws upheld at the time. However, Silvester and his uncle seem to have put up this plot as collateral for this loan with either her permission, or behind her back. Either way, her later husband (Abraham) seems to have thought the plot still belonged to his late wife and her brother, Silvester.
69
SLNA/1 4534: Goeroegammegeij Abraham De Silwe vs. Abraham de Zilva, 1793-1794: Appeal from Goeroegammegeij to the Galle commander, June 18, 1794: “teegen de order en gewoonte van onheuglijke tijden af.”
70
Alicia Schrikker and Dries Lyna, “Threads of the Legal Web. Dutch Law and Everyday Colonialism in Eighteenth-Century Asia,” in The Uses of Justice in Global Perspective 1600-1900, ed. Manon Van der Heijden, Griet Vermeesch, and Jaco Zuijderduijn (London: Routledge, 2019), 44; also see Von Benda-Beckmann, Keebet, “Forum Shopping and Shopping Forums: Dispute Processing in a Minangkabau Village in West Sumatra,” Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law 13 (1981): 117–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Franz Von Benda-Beckmann and Keebet Von Benda-Beckmann, “Islamic Law in a Plural Context: The Struggle over Inheritance Law in Colonial West Sumatra,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 55 (2012): 771–93.
71
Native systems of recording that pre-dated the arrival of Europeans was not something unique to Sri Lanka or even Asia; in colonial Latin America the use of Quipus (Khipus) in the Andes, or pictographic records in Meso-America by Spanish colonial officials and courts showcase that such registration practices persisted throughout the colonial period and thereafter, despite attempts by the colonial authorities to control, translate, and eliminate them. See, for example, De la Puente Luna, Jose Carlos, “That Which Belongs to All: Khipus, Community, and Indigenous Legal Activism in the Early Colonial Andes,” The Americas 12 (2014): 1–36Google Scholar; and Graubart, Karen B., “Shifting Landscapes. Heterogeneous Conceptions of Land Use and Tenure in the Lima Valley,” Colonial Latin American Review 26 (2017): 62–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
