Skip to Main Content

Islanded: Britain, Sri Lanka, and the Bounds of an Indian Ocean Colony

Online ISBN:
9780226038360
Print ISBN:
9780226038223
Publisher:
University of Chicago Press
Book

Islanded: Britain, Sri Lanka, and the Bounds of an Indian Ocean Colony

Published online:
18 September 2014
Published in print:
15 July 2013
Online ISBN:
9780226038360
Print ISBN:
9780226038223
Publisher:
University of Chicago Press

Abstract

How did the British come to conquer South Asia in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries? Answers to this question usually start in northern India, neglecting the dramatic events that marked Britain's contemporaneous subjugation of the island of Sri Lanka. This book reconsiders the arrival of British rule in South Asia as a dynamic and unfinished process of territorialization and state building, revealing that the British colonial project was framed by the island's traditions and maritime placement, and built in part on the model they provided. Using palm-leaf manuscripts from Sri Lanka to read the official colonial archive, it tells the story of two sets of islanders in combat and collaboration. The book explores how the British organized the process of “islanding”: they aimed to create a separable unit of colonial governance and trade in keeping with conceptions of ethnology, culture, and geography. But rather than serving as a radical rupture, it reveals, islanding recycled traditions the British learned from Kandy, a kingdom in the Sri Lankan highlands whose customs—from strategies of war to views of nature—fascinated the British. Picking up a range of unusual themes, from migration, orientalism, and ethnography to botany, medicine, and education, the book provides a retelling of the advent of British rule.

Contents
Close
This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

Close

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

View Article Abstract & Purchase Options

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Close