May 17, 2013, 8:12 pm

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by Kamalika Pieris

During the Portuguese occupation, the East was under the Sinhala king. D.G.B. de Silva says Rajasinghe II (1635-87) had extended the Matale Dissawa up to Trincomalee. He says Rajasinghe II directed his battles in Batticaloa from Gal Oya. Dutch governor Van Goens said in his memoirs (1663), that he had never been able to visit the area between Walawe and Trincomalee. It was under the Sinhala King.

The East had two excellent harbours at Trincomalee and Batticaloa .. the Dutch, British, French and Danes used them to enter Sri Lanka. The main route to the Udarata court in Kandy went through the Eastern Province and Portuguese like Barreto used it. Fr Simao de Coimbra wrote to the Portuguese king that he went to see the Sinhala king through Batticaloa.

The Dutch took over Trincomalee in 1665, Batticaloa and Kottiyar in 1668. Dutch control was at first limited to the ports only, but in 1766, they got control over the whole area. They then checked out the East to see what they could get out of it. Around 1786, the officer in charge of Trincomalee, Van Senden, visited villages, and showed them how to water paddy fields using dams and pipes. He showed them how to plant fruit trees. He considered providing the nearby river with a water mill, and dykes to prevent floods. Van Senden was viewed with distrust by the inhabitants. They fled when he approached.

In Batticaloa, inhabitants had told the Dutch that before the arrival of the Europeans that the Batticaloa area was very prosperous. It was well populated and agriculture was flourishing. With the arrival of the foreigners, the region became depopulated, and ‘farmland turned into jungle’. The Dutch tried to remedy this. The best canals constructed by the Dutch are in Batticaloa. There was a 31 mile canal from Batticaloa to Samanthurai. There was also a canal from Vanderkoen Bay, 20 miles north of Batticaloa, creating a 57 mile long continuous line of canals. This canal system served also as a flood protection scheme.

The Dutch wanted to grow rice in Batticaloa because they could not get even half the required amount of rice from the rest of its territory. The land was very fertile and Governor Graaf advocated transplanting paddy, instead of sowing, because the yield was better and there was less waste. He also encouraged manioc, so that the natives would consume less paddy, leaving more paddy for the Dutch. These projects were not successful because the Dutch created a monopoly over paddy. The inhabitants had compulsorily to sell the paddy to the Dutch, who bought it at a very low price, much lower than the price on the west coast.

Collection of paddy was so strict that sometimes peasants were not left even with seed paddy for the next harvest. Before the Dutch came, they had sold their surplus to Muslim and Chetty traders at the prevalent market price. Now they hid their paddy. Arasaratnam declared that a flourishing trade had been reduced to nothing at the first touch of the Dutch and that Dutch land policies were most ruinous in the East. He said that when the Dutch came into the East, people withdrew to the interior and lived at bare subsistence level. Prosperous markets became deserted and trade declined.

Jaffna was the weakest and poorest of the political units in the island in the 16th century. It was defended by mercenaries from South India and according to C.R. de Silva, both Vijayanagara (Karnataka) and Travancore were claiming Jaffna at this time. All transactions, whether salaries or trade, was in cash. According to a 17th century Portuguese document, its revenue was about one fourth that of Kotte.

The Portuguese wanted Jaffna only because Jaffna could be used to control the sea route between India and Sri Lanka. In 1560, they forced a treaty on Jaffna ruler Cankili I (1519-61). Pieris says the treaty was signed in Sinhala and Portuguese. The same year they also took over Mannar Island. Cankili was deposed by his son, Puviraja Pandaram, who was deposed by another, who was over thrown by a third. Puviraja regained the throne in 1582. He opposed the Portuguese, so the Portuguese replaced him with Ethirimanna Cinkam (1591-1616). Ethirimanna was succeeded by Cankili II who tilted towards Tanjore. In 1619, the Portuguese packed Cankili off to Goa and took over Jaffna. The ruler of Tanjore tried to push the Portuguese out in 1620, but failed.

Unlike Sitavaka and Udarata who resisted the Portuguese fiercely, Jaffna succumbed without much opposition. Jaffna had converted readily to Catholicism and the proportion of Catholics in Jaffna was, eventually, far greater than in the rest of Sri Lanka. These Catholics supported the Portuguese throughout their period of conquest. They prevented Cankili from getting aid from Tanjore. The Portuguese never had such support from Catholics in Udarata. The Portuguese churches selected for inclusion in ‘The architecture of an island’, published in 1998, are also from Jaffna and Mannar. They are located at Chankanai, Myladdi, Vadukoddai, Paisala and Mannar.

The Portuguese transferred the capital from Nallur to Jaffna in 1621. It was easier to defend Jaffna than Nallur. Work on the Jaffna fort started in 1625 and was still continuing in 1637. Kayts also had a fort. Both forts were by the sea. The Udarata king, Senerat invaded Jaffna in 1628. The Udarata army entered Jaffna unopposed and set fire to the churches there. Thirty churches were destroyed together with other external symbols of Christianity, such as crosses. The Portuguese regained Jaffna in 1629. Pieris notes that the Portuguese and Dutch never had a good word for the people of Jaffna, unlike for the Sinhalese. D.G.B. de Silva says Jaffna had more foreigners than locals.

Mannar and Jaffna went under the Dutch in 1658. The Dutch said that Jaffna, Mannar and Vanni had come to them as a direct conquest from Portuguese, who had taken these from the independent rulers of Jaffna. The islands around Jaffna got Dutch names, Karaitivu was Amsterdam, and Neduntivu was Delft. Pieris says that the Dutch missionary Baldeus created a name for Mannar, from two Tamil words signifying sand and river. . Dutch got down Tamils from South India for tobacco and indigo cultivation in Jaffna. Portuguese officers were replaced by Tamil mudaliyars.

‘Yalapana Vaipava Malai’, a so-called history of Jaffna was written in 1736 at the request of the Dutch Governor. Historian S. Pathmanathan says that this work is defective in chronology and genealogy. No specific contributions of any king is recorded in it. Of the ten kings who are said to have ruled till 1450, only four are known in sources other than in Yalpana Vaipava Malai. K.M. de Silva lists 17 ‘Kings of Jaffna’. He provides dates only for the last four and these dates start from 1478. The disava of Jaffna, Claas Isaaksz, was directed by the Dutch to document the customs in Jaffna. This was revised by 12 Tamil mudaliyars and was adopted in 1707 as the Thesavalamai. A statement of the rights of the ‘kings of Jaffna’ was also drawn up by the mudaliyars of Jaffna on the instructions of the Dutch.

The writings of T.B.H. Abeyasinghe, S. Arasaratnam, R.L. Brohier, C.R. de Silva, D.G.B. de Silva, K.M. de Silva, J.M. Flores, R Lewcock, Gaston Perera, P E Pieris, B. Sansoni, A. Schrikker, Laki Senanayake and M Quere were used for this essay.

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