Fablewings › Sri Lankan history › Part 11

Coffee, Tea and Revival (1848–1919)

Between the Matale rising of 1848 and the founding of the Ceylon National Congress in 1919, Ceylon became a plantation colony. Coffee boomed and then collapsed to a leaf fungus, tea took its place, and railways and immigrant South Indian labour bound the hill country to the world market. At the same time Buddhist, Hindu and Muslim revivals answered Christian missions, and a new English-educated elite began asking for a political voice.

Read in the page-turning reader

Rebellion and the coffee frontier (1848–1866)

This chapter opens with a tax revolt in the Kandyan hills and follows the coffee boom, the first railway plans and the first public challenges to Christian missionaries.

Before 1848: the setting

The Colebrooke-Cameron Commission (1829–1832) had urged an end to rajakariya, the old system of compulsory service, a single administration and English-medium schooling; Britannica says most proposals were accepted. In 1840 the Crown Lands (Encroachments) Ordinance No. 12 made it easier for the state to claim uncultivated land, much of it later sold to coffee planters.

The politicsThe National Archives suggest Kandyans may have lost ancestral land under the 1840 ordinance. Land, tax and labour grievances fed directly into 1848.

1848 (July): the Kandy petition

On 6 July 1848 people from Dumbara handed a petition to the Kandy Kachcheri. They said Roads Ordinance No. 8 of 1848 brought back the compulsory labour abolished in 1833, and asked for the new road, shop, gun and dog taxes to be withdrawn. Governor Torrington put the crowd at about 3,000 unarmed people and wrote that Government Agent Buller 'somewhat lost his presence of mind'.

1848 (late July): Dambulla and martial law

On 26 July Gongalegoda Banda was consecrated as a king-claimant at Dambulla Vihara, reportedly before about 4,000 supporters. On 28 July Captain Albert Watson left Kandy with Malay troops; the next morning rebels attacking Wariyapola estate were cut down. Martial law was declared in Kandy on 29 July and in Kurunegala on 31 July, where eight people died.

1848 (August–November): repression

Veera Puran Appu was executed on 8 August. Some leaders were court-martialled at Matale and shot. Gongalegoda Banda was arrested by Malay soldiers on 21 September and tried at the Kandy Supreme Court from 27 November. His death sentence was commuted to 100 lashes and deportation to Malacca. Monks such as Kudapola Unnanse were also among those captured.

Protest or rebellion?

Even the name of 1848 is argued over.

What the sources sayBritish despatches called it a rebellion and justified martial law. The Sri Lanka National Archives' online exhibit frames 6 July as a peaceful protest that turned violent. Sri Lankan nationalist writers and the archives' own exhibit title treat it as a freedom struggle. Modern accounts stress the mix of tax grievances, land loss and older royalist hopes.

1848: dates and rewards

Small details differ between sources.

Myth and correctionOne encyclopedic summary says unrest began in 1847 at Paranagama, Matale; the archives date the crisis to July 1848. The archives show a £100 reward for Gongalegoda Banda and £5 for Puran Appu, while another account gives £150. An archival Gazette notice about a Purang Appu is dated January 1847, before the rising, so it may refer to an earlier case.

1848: the politics of blame

Torrington, aged 35 on taking office and a cousin of Prime Minister Lord John Russell, backed Watson's harsh methods.

The politicsA Sunday Times history says a Royal Commission judged Watson's conduct unfavourably; he was court-martialled and acquitted, and Parliament debated the affair. Torrington was recalled early. Colonial Secretary Earl Grey and Colombo's Colonial Secretary Emerson Tennent were drawn in. Captain Henderson, a participant, published his own account in 1868.

1848: Arumuga Navalar opens a Saiva school

In Jaffna, Arumuga Navalar (born Nallur, 18 December 1822) had worked for the Methodist missionary Peter Percival on a Tamil Bible. From 31 December 1847 he preached weekly at the Vaitheeswaran temple, Vannarpannai, and in 1848 founded the Saivaprakasa Vidyasala and left Percival's service. He aimed to match mission schools with Saiva ones.

1849–1851: a Tamil printing press

In 1849 Navalar and his colleague Sadasiva Pillai went to Madras to buy a press. Set up at Vannarpannai, it produced its first children's readers in 1850–1851. Scholars such as David Shulman and Kamil Zvelebil credit Navalar with early printed editions of classical Tamil works and with prose that bridged medieval and modern Tamil.

1852: a young Scot arrives

James Taylor, born in Kincardineshire in 1835, sailed from London on 22 October 1851 and reached Ceylon in 1852, aged 16, according to the Ceylon Tea Museum. By 1857 he managed Loolecondera, a coffee estate bought from the Crown in 1841. Many early planters were Scots, especially from around Aberdeen.

1854: 'King Coffee'

A Sri Lankan newspaper history dates the first coffee estate to George Bird near Gampola in 1821, a boom from 1825, a price fall in 1847 and a peak of 'King Coffee' around 1854. Governor Barnes had backed coffee earlier; the Sri Lanka Tea Board notes hill land sold for a few pence an acre and new roads such as the Kandy–Colombo trunk route.

1856–1857: surveying a railway

A Ceylon Railway Company, formed in 1847, began work towards Kandy in 1856 but made little progress. In December 1856 Governor Sir Henry Ward ordered Captain W.S. Moorsom to survey a line. His report of May 1857 compared six routes and favoured one of about 79 miles over the 'Parnepettia' pass, with a summit near 1,780 feet.

1862–1864: the state takes over

Moorsom's estimate proved far too low and the Ceylon Railway Company was wound up in 1862. The colonial government created the Ceylon Government Railway in 1864. That year M.C. Siddi Lebbe, a young Kandy-born Muslim lawyer, was admitted to the Supreme Court; he would later lead a Muslim educational revival.

1864 or 1865? The first train

Railway histories disagree on the first opening.

Myth and correctionThe first train ran from Colombo to Ambepussa on 27 December 1864, the date Sri Lanka Railways marked with a 160th-anniversary run in 2024. The 34½-mile line opened to public traffic on 2 October 1865, according to a Sunday Observer railway history. So both years are right for different events. All accounts agree the line reached Kandy in 1867.

1865: debates begin

Migettuwatte (also Mohottiwatte) Gunananda Thera, born 1823 near Balapitiya, began open challenges to missionaries. A debate in writing took place at Baddegama, and a spoken one at Waragoda in 1865. By then Navalar had also opened a Saiva school at Chidambaram in India, and Taylor was trying cinchona and planting tea seeds from Peradeniya along Loolecondera's paths.

Rust, rails and tea (1867–1882)

Rails reached Kandy just as a leaf fungus began to destroy coffee. Planters searched for a new crop while Buddhists, Saivites and Muslims built their own presses and schools.

1867: the railway reaches Kandy

The last rails were laid to Kandy on 15 April 1867 and the first engine arrived the next day. A goods train ran from Colombo on 30 April and passenger trains began on 1 August. Moving coffee to Colombo became far cheaper, and the hill country's link to the port was set for generations.

1867: nineteen acres of tea

At Loolecondera, James Taylor cleared 19 acres (about 7.7 ha) and planted tea, using Assam hybrid seed according to one account. The Sri Lanka Tea Board treats this as the start of the Ceylon tea industry. Neighbouring estates such as Hope, Rookwood, Mooloya, Le Vallon and Stellenberg later followed.

Was Taylor first?

Taylor's fame can hide a longer story.

What the sources sayThe Tea Board records a tea plant brought from China to Peradeniya in 1824 and Assam plants in 1839. King's College London's archive also dates the plant's arrival to 1824. Taylor's 1867 field is best seen as the first commercial tea plantation, not the first tea in Ceylon. The Tea Museum says he was chosen for the first sowing in 1866.

1869: coffee rust

The fungus Hemileia vastatrix, coffee leaf rust, was first recorded in Ceylon in 1869, the date given by the Ceylon Tea Museum and by historian Stuart McCook. Leaves dropped, yields fell year after year, and through the 1870s the disease steadily ruined plantations. Planters tried cinchona and cocoa, but the Tea Board says pests also defeated these.

When did the rust strike?

Popular histories give different years.

Myth and correctionAn Island newspaper article says 'around 1867'; the Tea Museum and McCook say 1869; the Tea Board speaks of the 1870s. The common view is first detection in 1869 with damage building over a decade. Stories of overnight ruin exaggerate: exports were still near their peak, about 118 million lb, in 1870, and fell steeply only from about 1879.

1870: coffee's height and deadly roads

Coffee was near its height: a WGBH report drawing on Stuart McCook puts exports at about 118 million lb in 1870. That year the Principal Civil Medical Officer reported mortality of 24.5 per cent among Indian labourers found sick along the roads and 20.5 per cent among sick estate labourers, against 8 per cent for the sick local poor. Later 'quarantine routes' aimed to stop infection spreading rather than protect migrants.

The kangani system

Estates rarely hired workers directly. A trusted labourer, the kangani, went back to South Indian villages to recruit relatives, friends and caste fellows, then supervised them on the estate, handling wages, rations and disputes. Advances for travel created debts deducted from wages, and many workers arrived already owing money. About a million Indians are estimated to have come between 1840 and 1942.

Who ran the labour system?

Historians disagree on how far the state was responsible.

What the sources sayRoland Wenzlhuemer (Modern Asian Studies, 2007) argues the government gave immigration practically no attention for most of the century, leaving the kangani system as an informal substitute; only late in the century did its weaknesses push the state into regulation. Other studies stress debt, caste pressure and coercion. Advances were often framed as generosity, which made the debts binding.

1871: the first island-wide census

The 1871 census counted 2,400,380 people, according to the Department of Census and Statistics' published series (shown as 2,400.4 thousand). In June 1871 Gunananda debated Christian speakers at Gampola over two days, 9 and 10 June. Census categories of 'race' introduced by the British would later shape political representation.

1872: a tea factory

Taylor opened a fully equipped tea factory at Loolecondera, using a leaf-rolling machine of his own design, and made the estate's first tea sale in Kandy. This mattered because tea, unlike coffee, needed processing on the estate. Factories, machinery and resident labour forces made tea estates larger, more capital-heavy businesses.

1873: the Panadura debate

On 26 and 28 August 1873, in a temporary shed at Dombagahawatte near Panadura, Gunananda faced the Wesleyan pastor David de Silva and other Christian speakers. Rules had been signed on 24 July. Large crowds gathered. Buddhists claimed victory, and the debate became a symbol of renewed Buddhist confidence.

Panadura, August 1873

Crowds gathered at a temporary shed near Panadura beach to hear Buddhist and Christian speakers debate.

Panadura: what really happened?

Accounts of Panadura are mostly by sympathisers.

What the sources saySri Lankan press histories name Gunananda the winner; no neutral judge decided. K.D.G. Wimalaratne noted de Silva's learned Pali and Sanskrit, which few listeners followed, against Gunananda's plain Sinhala. Historian Vijaya Samaraweera called the monk 'a debater of a very higher order' but not especially learned, and credits the debate with restoring Buddhist confidence over the next decade.

1873: tea goes to London

The first Ceylon tea, about 23 lb (10 kg), was shipped to London; the Tea Museum says Taylor's tea sold at Mincing Lane that year. It was a tiny start. The Tea Museum records production rising from 23 lb to 81.3 tons by 1880, as rust drove more planters from coffee.

1875 or 1878? Panadura reaches America

The debate reached a world audience in print.

Myth and correctionAn English summary, commissioned by the Ceylon Times editor John Capper, was published in the United States by J.M. Peebles as 'Buddhism and Christianity Face to Face'. The Sunday Times dates the book to 1875; another summary gives 1878. The common claim that it brought Olcott to Ceylon comes from Sri Lankan accounts and is plausible but rarely documented.

1879: coffee doubts; Navalar dies

R.B. Tytler still wrote hopefully about Ceylon coffee despite the leaf disease, a sign of how long some planters held on. In Jaffna, Arumuga Navalar died on 5 December 1879, aged 56. D. Dennis Hudson describes him as central to a Saiva revival that spread across Sri Lanka and South India.

Navalar's legacy

Navalar is honoured and criticised in equal measure.

What the sources sayAdmirers see a reformer who defended Saivism against missions, printed classical Tamil and campaigned against drink. Critics, including Peter Schalk and left-leaning writers, argue his work strengthened Vellalar caste privilege. A. Sivathamby faulted his focus on religious texts over secular writing. Supporters reject any hidden caste agenda. The debate continues among Tamil scholars.

1880: Olcott and Blavatsky

Henry Steel Olcott and Helena Blavatsky, founders of the Theosophical Society (New York, 1875), landed at Galle on 17 May 1880. At the Wijayananda temple in Galle they publicly took the three refuges and five precepts, among the first Westerners to do so formally. Olcott then promoted a Buddhist Theosophical Society to fund Buddhist schools.

1880: when and where?

Even the arrival is told differently.

Myth and correctionA Buddhist Publication Society biography says they landed at Galle on 17 May 1880, and that Olcott's handwritten certificate dates the pansil ceremony at Wijayananda to 19 May; some newspaper accounts give 25 May, and one has them reaching Colombo first. The safe statement is a Galle landing on 17 May, with the ceremony there days later. Their wider aim was to 'purify' popular Buddhism, which critics later questioned.

1881: census and a long tour

The 1881 census counted about 2.76 million people (2,759.8 thousand in official tables), roughly 15 per cent more than in 1871. Olcott returned for a second visit and toured the Western Province for eight months raising money for Buddhist schools. Village subscriptions and English-medium teaching became the hallmark of the new Buddhist schools.

1882: Muslim Nesan and Orabi's exile

In December 1882 Siddi Lebbe launched Muslim Nesan, described as the first Muslim journal, in Tamil. That month the defeated Egyptian nationalist Ahmed Orabi (Arabi) Pasha and six companions were sentenced to exile in Ceylon; they reached Colombo in January 1883. His presence became a rallying point for the island's Muslims.

Timeline: 1867–1882
1867 — Rails reach Kandy; Taylor plants 19 acres of tea
1869 — Coffee leaf rust spreads
1871 — First island-wide census: 2,400,380
1873 — Panadura debate; first tea shipped to London
1879 — Death of Arumuga Navalar
1880 — Olcott and Blavatsky take pansil at Galle
1882 — Muslim Nesan launched; Orabi exiled to Ceylon

The tea empire and the revivals (1883–1899)

Tea overtook coffee, Colombo became an auction centre, and the revivals produced flags, schools and international movements. Communal seats in the Legislative Council grew.

1883: the Colombo tea auction

On 30 July 1883 the first public Colombo tea auction was held at Somerville and Company's premises under the Ceylon Chamber of Commerce. Selling locally rather than only in London gave Colombo merchants and brokers a bigger share of the trade. Orabi Pasha was by then living in Ceylon, eventually with a home in Kandy.

A tea estate in the 1880s

Tea bushes spread over cleared hillsides, with a factory and workers' lines below. By 1888 tea covered more land than coffee.

1884: schools and factories

Siddi Lebbe opened the first Anglo-Mohammedan school in Colombo with Orabi Pasha and Wapichie Marikar. He also founded Muslim schools in Kandy, Gampola, Polgahawela and Kurunegala, and a girls' school in Kandy. The Central Tea Factory opened at Fairyland estate (Pedro) near Nuwara Eliya.

1885: a flag and a holiday

After Olcott lobbied in Colombo and London, Governor Sir Arthur Gordon declared Vesak a public holiday on 27 March 1885. A Colombo committee chaired by Hikkaduwe Sri Sumangala, with members including Gunananda and Don Carolis Hewavitharana, designed a Buddhist flag, hoisted at Dipaduttaramaya, Kotahena, on 28 April 1885, the first Vesak holiday under British rule. Winning the holiday was a political victory for the revival.

April or May 1885?

Sources disagree on the flag's first day.

Myth and correctionThe journal Pravada and the Theosophy Wiki give 28 April 1885, the first Vesak holiday; that day was the April full moon. Wikipedia's 28 May appears to be an error. A fact-checking site has rebutted another viral date, 14 February 1885. The flag was adopted internationally by the World Fellowship of Buddhists in 1950.

1886: Ananda and a new flag

A Buddhist English school opened at 61 Maliban Street, Pettah, with C.W. Leadbeater as first principal and 37 pupils; it grew into Ananda College. Olcott and J.R. de Silva reshaped the flag to national-flag proportions, published in Sarasavi Sandaresa on 8 April 1886. A handbook for London's Colonial and Indian Exhibition promoted Ceylon tea.

'Protestant Buddhism'

Scholars still debate what the revival changed.

What the sources sayAnthropologist Gananath Obeyesekere coined 'Protestant Buddhism' for the reformed lay Buddhism of this era: protesting against Christian claims, yet borrowing missionary methods such as schools, tracts and lay activism. David McMahan calls Dharmapala a model Buddhist modernist. Many Sri Lankan Buddhists see instead a recovery of older tradition.

1888: tea overtakes coffee

The area under tea passed the area under coffee. That year the English-language paper The Buddhist began, edited by C.W. Leadbeater, with the young David Hewavitarne (born 17 September 1864) closely involved. Educated at Christian schools, he had worked as Olcott's translator, joined the Theosophical Society and taken the name Anagarika Dharmapala.

1889: new communal seats

Two seats were added to the Legislative Council to represent the Kandyans and the 'Moors' (Muslims). The council had begun in 1833 with 15 members, nine officials and six nominated unofficials. Nominations were by community, and this logic of representing 'races' would shape Ceylon's politics for decades.

Communal representation

Why did the British count by community?

The politicsOfficials argued that nominating members for each community kept the peace. Critics, then and since, say it encouraged leaders to speak for ethnic blocs rather than the island. Low-country Sinhalese, Tamil, Muslim, Kandyan and Burgher elites each pressed for their own seats, an argument that would come to a head after 1910.

1890: deaths and dealmakers

Gunananda Thera died at Kotahena on 21 September 1890. Thomas Lipton, the Glasgow grocer, visited Ceylon and bought four estates; King's College London's archive notes he cut out middlemen to sell cheap tea to the British public. The Tea Museum gives 1890 production as 22,899.8 tons.

1891: census and the Maha Bodhi Society

The census counted 3,007,789 people. A Statesman's Year-Book table lists 2,041,158 Sinhalese, 723,853 Tamils including Indian immigrants, 197,166 Moors, 21,231 Burghers, 10,133 Malays and 6,348 Europeans. On 31 May 1891 Dharmapala founded the Maha Bodhi Society in Colombo to restore Bodh Gaya in India.

Reading the census

Colonial censuses must be read with care.

Myth and correctionOfficial categories changed between censuses. In 1891 'Tamils' included Indian estate workers; later tables separate them, or leave out estate immigrants entirely. The Statesman's 1891 total (3,009,461) includes the military, unlike the official series. Historians warn that such labels hardened identities as much as they recorded them.

1892: endings and beginnings

James Taylor died at Loolecondera on 2 May 1892, of dysentery according to the Tea Museum. Al-Madrasathul Zahira opened in Colombo on 22 August with 35 pupils; it later became Zahira College. The Maha Bodhi Society moved its offices to Calcutta and began its journal.

Who founded Zahira, and when?

Muslim school histories differ.

What the sources saySiddi Lebbe's biography dates a Madrasatul Zahira at Maradana to 1882, becoming Zahira College in 1892; Zahira's own histories give 1892, following Siddi Lebbe's 1891 appeal at the Maradana mosque. An Egyptian magazine credits Orabi with founding it. Most accounts name Siddi Lebbe, I.L.M. Abdul Aziz and Wapichi Marikar as founders, with Orabi as patron.

1893: Chicago

Dharmapala, aged 29, represented Theravada Buddhism at the World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago and opened an American branch of his society. Ceylon tea sold over a million packets at the Chicago World's Fair, and a Ceylon tea fetched a record £36.15 a pound at a London auction.

1897: the moving workforce

The Statesman's Year-Book recorded 153,075 arrivals and 109,213 departures in 1897, mostly estate labourers. It called Tamil immigrants the mainstay of tea as they had been of coffee. The figures show a constant two-way flow between South India and the estates.

Timeline: 1883–1899
1883 — First Colombo tea auction
1885 — Buddhist flag; first Vesak public holiday
1888 — Tea area passes coffee
1889 — Kandyan and Moor council seats added
1891 — Maha Bodhi Society founded
1892 — Zahira opens; James Taylor dies
1893 — Dharmapala at Chicago

Reform and riot (1900–1919)

A larger, better-educated elite pressed for reform. Temperance became a mass cause, the 1915 riots and martial law shocked the island, and the Ceylon National Congress was born.

1901: census and Orabi's return

The census counted 3,565,954 people (3,566.0 thousand), an increase of about 18.6 per cent on 1891 by our calculation. Orabi Pasha was pardoned and returned to Egypt after about 18 years in Ceylon. His former house in Kandy now holds the Orabi Pasha Cultural Centre. Tea then covered almost 400,000 acres (1899), coffee only about 11,392 acres (1900).

1906–1907: press and passing

In 1906 Dharmapala founded the Sinhala weekly Sinhala Bauddhaya, which spread his message of Buddhist moral reform and criticism of colonial and Christian influence. Olcott died at Adyar, near Madras, on 17 February 1907, aged 74. Schools linked to his work include Ananda, Dharmaraja, Mahinda and others.

Dharmapala: reformer or polemicist?

Dharmapala divides opinion more than any revival figure.

What the sources sayAdmirers see an anti-colonial reformer who revived Buddhism in India. Scholars note sharp rhetoric against Christians and colonial rule, and his blaming of Muslim rule for Buddhism's decline in India. Some critics link his ideas to later Sinhala Buddhist nationalism; defenders say this reads later politics back into him.

1910: the 'educated Ceylonese' seat

The Crewe–McCallum reforms enlarged the Legislative Council to 21 members: 11 officials and 10 unofficials. Four unofficials were elected by a narrow franchise: two Europeans (urban and rural), one Burgher and one 'educated Ceylonese'. Six were nominated by community: two low-country Sinhalese, two Tamils, one Kandyan and one Moor. The first polls followed in December 1911.

1910: the politics of reform

The 1910 reforms satisfied few.

The politicsBritain kept an official majority and conceded only a tiny elective principle. On 13 December 1911 the educated seat, with fewer than 3,000 voters, went to the Tamil lawyer Ponnambalam Ramanathan, who beat the Sinhalese doctor Marcus Fernando, reportedly 1,645 votes to 981, with much Sinhalese support. Historians often link the result to caste rivalry within the Sinhala elite.

1910: schools by the numbers

According to the Statesman's Year-Book, in 1910 the government ran 734 vernacular schools with about 91,000 pupils; 1,699 aided vernacular schools taught about 170,000; and 236 English or Anglo-vernacular schools taught about 38,000. Missions ran many aided schools. English schooling was the road to office, and the English-educated remained a small, influential class.

1911: the census by community

The March 1911 census counted about 4.11 million people (4,106.4 thousand in the official series). Including estate immigrants, the Statesman's Year-Book lists 2,714,616 Sinhalese, 1,059,354 Tamils (about 460,000 of them recent immigrants), 266,454 Moors, 26,857 Burghers, 13,089 Malays and 7,625 Europeans. Buddhists numbered 2,144,605, Hindus 500,375, Christians 369,947 and Muslims 276,361.

1912: the temperance movement

Dharmapala and others had campaigned against drink since the 1890s, but a mass movement followed Governor McCallum's liquor policy of 15 April 1912, which meant more taverns to recover revenue. It was formally launched on 14 July 1912. D.S. and F.R. Senanayake, D.B. Jayatilaka, W.A. de Silva and Piyadasa Sirisena were prominent. A 1915 colonial intelligence report on the movement survives in British files.

Temperance as politics

Was temperance moral reform or disguised nationalism?

The politicsA Sunday Times history argues the British feared temperance would become a freedom movement and worried about falling arrack revenue. Temperance leaders presented it as moral and religious reform. Scholars note it gave the Sinhala elite mass organisation for the first time; after 1915 officials treated it with suspicion.

1915 (May): the riots begin

The 1915 riots broke out at Vesak, the centenary year of the 1815 Kandyan Convention. In Kandy, a dispute over a Buddhist procession passing the Castle Hill Street mosque with music led to violence on the night of 28–29 May. Rumours that Muslims would attack the Temple of the Tooth helped spread the riots to Colombo (from 31 May), Rambukkana, Matara and elsewhere.

Where did it start?

The first spark is placed differently.

What the sources sayOne Sunday Times article says rioting broke out at Gampola on 27 May; another, and the Sunday Observer, place it in Kandy at Vesak on 28 May, after the Government Agent ordered a procession not to pass the Castle Hill Street mosque. Background disputes over processions passing mosques, including at Gampola, had run for some years. Colonial officials and later writers also pointed to commercial rivalry between Sinhalese and Muslim traders.

1915 (June): martial law

Governor Sir Robert Chalmers declared martial law on 2 June 1915, first in the Western Province and then in most others, excluding the Northern and Eastern Provinces; it lasted until 30 August. Inspector-General of Police Herbert Dowbiggin was prominent in the crackdown. Troops, including Punjabi soldiers from India, could shoot suspected rioters. One writer noted: 'Martial Law was declared after the riots were practically over.'

1915: the arrests

Dozens of Sinhala leaders, many from the temperance movement, were held at Welikada and elsewhere. They included D.S. Senanayake, F.R. Senanayake, D.B. Jayatilaka, Dr C.A. Hewavitarne, John de Silva and A.E. Gunasinha. Most were released after about six weeks without trial (accounts give 40 to 46 days). Edmund Hewavitarne, Dharmapala's brother, got penal servitude and died in prison in November 1915.

1915 (July): Henry Pedris

Captain Edward Henry Pedris, aged 26 or 27 (sources differ), son of a wealthy Colombo merchant family and an officer in the Colombo Town Guard, was accused of firing on Muslims and inciting a march on Colombo. A field general court martial convicted him of treason with no appeal, and he was shot by firing squad on 7 July 1915. His case became a nationalist symbol.

How many died?

Casualty figures for 1915 vary and are partly unreliable.

What the sources sayFigures usually traced to official sources, cited by Verité Research and a Daily FT column, give 25 people killed by rioters, 189 wounded, four women raped, over 4,000 Muslim shops looted and 17 mosques burned. At least 63 more were killed by troops and police. The Daily FT column also describes the summary shooting of ten Sinhalese suspects. Claims of thousands shot are unverified.

1915: three perspectives

Each community remembers 1915 differently.

The politicsChalmers presented the riots as an ethnic outbreak and possible sedition. Sinhala nationalists remember martial law as a crackdown on the temperance elite. Muslim memory stresses that Muslims were the main victims of mob violence. Many accounts also note commercial and ethnic rivalries, and heavy-handed colonial policing.

1915–1916: protest and recall

E.W. Perera, later called the 'Lion of Kotte', sailed to London in wartime with a memorandum, reportedly hidden in his shoe, and Ponnambalam Ramanathan joined the campaign. Detained leaders were freed, Chalmers was recalled and Sir John Anderson replaced him. Dharmapala was confined to Calcutta and barred from returning.

The Pedris case revisited

The Pedris story has been re-examined a century on.

Myth and correctionColonial records presented his trial as lawful. Sri Lankan writers long called the charges false and the trial unjust. In December 2023 the Cabinet set up a committee to review the case, and on 12 September 2024 President Ranil Wickremesinghe granted him a posthumous pardon.

1919: the Ceylon National Congress

Reform groups, including the Ceylon Reform League of 1917 and the Ceylon National Association, combined on 11 December 1919 to form the Ceylon National Congress, a multi-community body seeking constitutional reform. The National Archives name Sir Ponnambalam Arunachalam, a Tamil leader, its first president. Its leaders, many detained in 1915, wanted elected majorities and an end to official rule.

1917 or 1919?

Some accounts blur the Congress's origins.

Myth and correctionA 1999 Sunday Times feature dates the Congress to 1917; the Sri Lanka National Archives give 11 December 1919. The earlier date probably reflects the Ceylon Reform League, founded in 1917 with Arunachalam as a leading figure. The Congress's later splits along communal lines, after 1920, are beyond this era.
Timeline: 1900–1919
1901 — Census 3,565,954; Orabi returns to Egypt
1906 — Dharmapala's Sinhala Bauddhaya founded
1910 — Council enlarged; 'educated Ceylonese' seat
1911 — Census about 4.11 million; Ramanathan wins educated seat
1915 — Riots, martial law (2 June–30 Aug), Pedris executed
1919 — Ceylon National Congress formed

Looking back: Coffee, Tea and Revival

Historians now see 1848–1919 as the making of modern Ceylon. The plantation economy brought railways, revenue and a large Indian Tamil workforce whose hardships were long ignored. Religious revivals built schools and identities that answered missionaries but also sharpened community boundaries.

The 1915 riots and martial law pushed a cautious elite into organised politics. Sinhala, Tamil, Muslim and colonial memories of these years still differ.

← Part 10Part 12 →