Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 June 2009
Historians and anthropologists in Sri Lanka have tended to migrate in opposite directions, but away from the multiethnic confusion of the port cities. Typi- cally, the heterogeneous, semi-Westernized, postcolonial urban society of Colombo and the larger towns has been only a transit point on intellectual journeys outbound to European archives or inbound to “traditional culture.” This was certainly my viewpoint as I arrived “inbound” in Sri Lanka for my first anthropological fieldwork. I took only passing notice of the clerks of mixed European and Sri Lankan descent who sold me stationery supplies at Cargill's and mosquito nets at Carvalho's. These people are given the official designation of Burghers in the government census: they are the racially mixed descendants of the Portuguese, Dutch, and British personnel who occupied the island during four and a half centuries of colonial rule.
An earlier version of this paper was read at the Society for the Humanities, Cornell University, in April 1979. I am grateful for research support from the United States Public Health Service (MH38122 and MH11765), the British Social Science Research Council (HR5549/1 & 2), the Smuts Memorial Fund and the Travelling Expenses Fund of Cambridge University, and the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship Program of Cornell University. I am also indebted to Ian R. Smith, to K. David Jackson, and to the late Father J. W. Lange, S.J., for their help in providing data; to Nilam Hamead and to K. Kanthanathan for their assistance with fieldwork; and to H. A. I. Goonetilleke for having compiled his exhaustive Bibliography of Ceylon (Zug: Inter Documentation Company, 1970), without which I would never have attempted this article.
1 Sri Lanka became the official name for Ceylon in 1972.
2 The Kandyan kingdom, situated in the central highlands of the island, remained independent until 1815.
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9 Today approximately 8 percent of Sri Lanka's population is Catholic.
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Here from this elevated ground
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Moormen, Gentoos, and Cingalese,
Mix'd with those mongrel Portuguese,
Who boast indeed the Lusian name,
But recreant to their fathers’ fame;
Their torpid breasts no virtue fires,
Degenerate sons of valiant sires!
And then lauds the phlegmatic but virtuous Dutch:
Those houses closely wedged in rows,
Where faint and weak the sea-breeze blows,
And heat reflected doubly glows,
While clouds of smoke from every room,
The stiffening atmosphere perfume,
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