During the Napoleonic Wars the United Kingdom, fearing that French control
of the Netherlands might deliver Sri Lanka to the French, occupied the coastal
areas of the island (which they called Ceylon) with little difficulty in 1796. In
1802 by the Treaty of Amiens the Dutch part of the island was formally ceded
of Kandy in the 1st Kandyan War, but were bloodily repulsed. In 1815 Kandy
was occupied in the 2nd Kandyan War, finally ending Sri Lankan independence.
Following the bloody suppression of the Uva Rebellion, the Kandyan peasantry
were stripped of their lands by the Wastelands Ordinance, a modern enclosure
movement and reduced to penury. The British found that the uplands of Sri
19th century Ceylon tea had become a staple of the British market, bringing
great wealth to a small class of white tea planters. To work the estates, the
planters imported large numbers of Tamil workers as indentured labourers
from south India, who soon made up 10% of the island's population. These
workers had to work in slave-like conditions and to live in line rooms, not
very different from cattle sheds.
The British colonialists favoured the semi-European Burghers, certain high-
caste Sinhalese and the Tamils who were mainly concentrated to the north
of the country, exacerbating divisions and enmities which have survived ever
since. Nevertheless, the British also introduced democratic elements to Sri
Lanka for the first time in its history. The Burghers were given some degree of
self-government as early as 1833. It was not until 1909 that constitutional
development began with a partly-elected assembly, and not until 1920 that
elected members outnumbered official appointees. Universal suffrage was
introduced in 1931, over the protests of the Sinhalese, Tamil and Burgher
elite who objected to the common people being allowed to vote [1],
Source : Wikipedia The Free Encyclopedia
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