2019 Statelessness & Citizenship Review 1(1) growing of coffee in Ceylon for export had been experimented with as early as 1824, and due to a decline in the export of West Indian coffee to Britain resulting from the 1833 abolition of slavery in the colonies along with a reduction on the duty on Ceylon coffee in 1835, 49 the potential promise of commercial coffee production was pursued by British planters with alacrity. Having reached record exports exceeding 50,802,345 kilograms per year by 1870, 50 king coffee had assumed the throne of plantation agriculture in Ceylon by the mid-nineteenth century. Many authors state that planters responded to this demand by first employing indigenous Sinhala labour. 51 However, the spread of plantation agriculture is believed to have done little to interrupt land ties among the Sinhala peasantry, for traditional economic activities were preferred over the harsh labour regimes encountered on plantations. 52 The failure to secure Sinhala labour prompted planters to look to southern India, specifically what was then known as the Madras Presidency and now as the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, to recruit the requisite labour supply. 53 The systematic recruitment of labour is said to have begun in 1839, 54 and various population figures chronicling the nineteenth century increase of the Up-Country Tamil population are provided in the literature. 55 Further, there is near-consensus in the literature that migration was circular until hemileia vastatrix devastated the island’s coffee plantations in the 1880s, 56 causing planters to pursue the commercial cultivation of tea which required a resident rather than seasonal labour force. 57 Yet, as Patrick Peebles argues, misrepresentation and inaccuracy plague the conventional historical account presented above. 58 First, Peebles states ‘that there is little evidence that planters attempted and failed to hire a Sinhalese plantation labour force’, and that ‘[i]t is only after a homogeneously Tamil labour force emerged that planters emphasised the unsuitability of the Sinhalese for plantation work’. 59 Further, 1839 is the year the Government of Ceylon began counting the number of travellers moving between India and Ceylon, not the year that recruitment began. In fact, the recruitment in India of labour was outlawed between 1839 and 1847, meaning that the plantation labour force created in the 1830s and 1840s was comprised of Tamil labourers already in Ceylon who had relocated of their own volition, not to mention that ‘the presence of people of south 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 S Nadesan, A History of the Up-Country Tamil People in Sri Lanka (Ranco 1993) 17. S Rajaratnam, ‘The Growth of Plantation Agriculture in Ceylon, 1886–1931’ (1961) 4(1) Ceylon Journal of Historical and Social Studies 1. S M Thomas, A History of the Tamil Church Mission: A Centenary Volume 1854–1953 (Mortlake 1954); M W Roberts, ‘Indian Estate Labour in Ceylon During the Coffee Period, (1830–1880)’ (1966) 3(2) The Indian Economic & Social History Review 101; Fries and Bibin (n 48); Nadesan (n 49); Kanapathipillai (n 46); A P Kanapathypillai, The Epic of Tea: Politics in the Plantations of Sri Lanka (Social Scientists’ Association 2011); Jayarwardena and Kurian (n 47). Kanapathipillai (n 46); Jayarwardena and Kurian (n 47). Jayarwardena and Kurian (n 47). Nadesan (n 49); Sivapragasam (n 1); Vijayapalan (n 37). Fries and Bibin (n 48); Kanapathypillai (n 46); A Lawrence, Malayaha Tamils, Power Sharing and Local Democracy in Sri Lanka (Social Scientists’ Association 2011); Vijayapalan (n 37). Vijayapalan (n 37). Roberts (n 51); Fries and Bibin (n 48); Nadesan (n 49); Kanapathipillai (n 46); Kanapathypillai (n 51); Lawrence (n 55); Jayarwardena and Kurian (n 47). Patrick Peebles, The Plantation Tamils of Ceylon (Leicester University Press 2001). ibid 30. 14