British Ceylon

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බ්‍රිතාන්‍ය ලංකාව (Sinhala)
பிரித்தானிய இலங்கை (Tamil)
British Ceylon (English)

Britanya Lankava (Sinhala)
Birithaniya Ilangai (Tamil)
British Ceylon
1815-1948
Flag of Ceylon (1875–1948) .svg
British Ceylon seal.svg
Official language Sinhala , Tamil , English
Capital Colombo
Form of government Colony of the United Kingdom, with partial constitutional representation from 1911
Head of state Monarch
George III. (1815–1820)
George IV (1820–1830)
William IV (1830–1837)
Victoria (1837–1901)
Edward VII (1901–1910)
George V (1910–1936)
Edward VIII (1936)
Georg VI. (1936–1948)
Head of government Governor
See British Governors of Ceylon
currency Ceylon Rixdollar (until 1828)
National anthem God Save the King / God Save the Queen
Sri Lanka (orthographic projection) .svg

The British colony Ceylon ( Sinhala : බ්‍රිතාන්‍ය ලංකාව Britanya Lankava Tamil : பிரித்தானிய இலங்கை Birithaniya Ilangai ) existed from 1815 to 1948 and comprised present-day Sri Lanka .

history

The island of Ceylon (the historical name, the name Sri Lanka only became common in 1972) had been a colony of the Dutch East India Company since 1640 . When the Netherlands was occupied by the armies of post-revolutionary France as a result of the First Coalition War from 1792 to 1797 , the Batavian Republic , a French subsidiary republic, was proclaimed instead of the previous Republic of the Seven United Provinces .

The Kingdom of Great Britain , which was at war with France, feared that France would take power in the Dutch colonies ( Cape Colony , Ceylon, Dutch East Indies , and others) and had them occupied by British troops. After the lost sea ​​battle at Camperduin , the Dutch colonies were left defenseless. William V , governor of the Netherlands, who fled to England from the French troops, gave the island to the British king. Ceylon was a British crown colony from 1803 . In the course of the British-French colonial conflict , the island was briefly occupied by the French Empire from 1810 to 1812 . In 1813 the island became British again, except for the Kingdom of Kandy , and after the Congress of Vienna in 1815 it finally came under British rule. After the defeat of Napoleon in 1814/15 the Netherlands got back the Dutch East Indies, other colonies, including Ceylon, remained in British possession.

In 1815 the British were also able to win the Kingdom of Kandy , the last Sri Lankan king Vikrama Rajasinha was arrested and brought to India. The last uprisings were put down by 1818. In the following years, the infrastructure in particular was expanded and the cultivation of coffee in plantations was promoted. From 1840 Indian Tamils ​​were recruited to work on the plantations in the highlands. Since 1860, tea plantations replaced the cultivation of coffee. The first at least partially elected parliament existed in Ceylon from 1911. The first national movements arose during the First World War . The "Ceylon Reform League" founded in 1917, which two years later became part of the "Ceylon National Congress", was able to push through a constitutional reform in which 19 out of 27 members of the legislative assembly were to be elected. However, this national movement broke up due to disputes between Sinhalese and native Tamils . Even after the “Donoughmore Commission” (1927/28) there was no real participation of the local population in the government. Seven of the ten ministers have now been elected, but the three most important ministerial posts have remained in the hands of the British governor. The women's suffrage was introduced in the 1931st

During the Second World War , in which the Japanese a. a. bombed the capital Colombo, national independence movements increased. The United National Party under Don Stephan Senanayake achieved in June 1947 that Ceylon became the British Dominion . On February 4, 1948, Ceylon finally became independent within the British Commonwealth .

literature

  • Lennox A. Mills: Ceylon Under British Rule 1795-1932 . Barnes & Noble, New York 1965.
  • Patrick Peebles: The History of Sri Lanka . Greenwood Press, Westport 2006, ISBN 0-313-33205-3 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Jad Adams: Women and the Vote. A world history. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2014, ISBN 978-0-19-870684-7 , page 437