Chapter 5 - Defining Land Rights

Summary

Abstract

The primary task of the Landraad was to hear certain civil cases and maintain the thombo, through which it defined land rights and taxation. This chapter studies land rights by providing quantitative and qualitative evidence on the types of possession recognised by the VOC. The thombo and the Landraad were in effect the legal mechanisms by which the conversion of land, whether collectively or individually held, into alienable title was sought to be consolidated. Despite the complexities of the local land tenure system, the VOC attempted to enforce rules and regulations that would create a neat, circumscribed system. This was not always achieved in practice, indicating the important yet discreet role played by peasants in defining land rights in plural ways.

Keywords: Land tenure, land registration, thombo, land rights, planter's share, pluralities.

Any state, whether colonial or not, seeks to acquire a grip on its subjects and the resources under its jurisdiction. Creating a standard grid of land tenure involved looking at “exceptionally complex, illegible and local social practices,” as James C. Scott observes. Despite the difficulties in coding land tenure, it was a necessary step to render the terrain more understandable and its produce and subjects more controllable. This was the case with both local and foreign rulers in Sri Lanka. The Dutch power paid special attention to the standardisation of the legal aspects of land rights; however, this was not always achieved in practice. A cadastral survey was important for the VOC to understand and govern its subjects and resources in coastal Sri Lanka. Legality and simplicity were clearly difficult to ensure, yet diligently attempted by company officials as this chapter will demonstrate. The primary institution used for this was the Landraad, and its main instrument the thombo. The eighteenth-century agrarian regime in Sri Lanka included written and oral forms of the thombo, the Landraad, and the accompanying translation processes that such institutional developments gave rise to. The Landraad and the thombo are said to have been necessary given the “infinite variety” of tenures in Sri Lanka.

This chapter describes, for the first time, the discreet role that non-elite actors played in this process. Understanding land rights in eighteenth-century Sri Lanka has so far involved piecing together information from sources at a higher administrative level of company rule.