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The British, like the Dutch and Portuguese before them, made no revolutionary changes in the way the colony was administered. The first Governor, Frederick North, saw the advantages of a local elite educated in the English language and supportive of British institutions and culture so in 1799 he established the Colombo Academy. The elite was to come from the families of native chieftains, the mudaliyars, and the Burghers. The British would govern through them. North furthered the move to English in 1802 when he decided that he would no longer accept petitions unless written in English. This screening process provided employment to graduates from both the Academy and those Dutch schools that had changed to teaching in English.

A report (in the Douglas papers) sent by the British Governor to the Secretary of State in 1800 stated:

The Dutch inhabitants are inimical [unfriendly, hostile], being almost to a man ruined by our occupation. Their personal as well as their national connection between them, their mother country and the Dutch settlements...require their exclusion from government employment so as to render us independent of the Dutch and to destroy their influence in the country...in certain cases it was impossible to do without Dutch help and...an exception was made in favour of the Burghers who, it was considered, would give an easy supply to all places of an inferior nature...and, in the police and other inferior departments, Dutchmen whose local knowledge and acquaintance with the language have rendered them necessary, have been employed (DBU Journal Volume LVII, 1967).

The Secretary of State in his reply stated:

The circumstances of the Dutch and other inhabitants considered as Europeans...make it requisite to act in a manner consistent with both the principles of justice and

humanity and...those who could not be suitably provided for according to their rank in life without dishonour or inconvenience...are to be considered proper objects of charity (DBU Journal Volume LVII, 1967).

The Burghers knew how taxes were collected, how justice was dispensed and how the country had been managed by the Dutch so, after Amiens in 1802, the British mistrust of the Dutch inhabitants grew less and Dutch descendants (Burghers) began to be employed. William Digby writing about Sir Richard Morgan (an early Burgher legal luminary), said:

52 PROUD & PREJUDICED

As British rule became consolidated, it was found that in the civilised, fairly educated European descendants, the authorities had in their hand material which could be manipulated for a thousand and one inferior offices rendered necessary by modern systems of government. The natives (Sinhalese and Tamils) were altogether

unacquainted with the English tongue...their sympathies are likely to be anti-European while the Dutch and Dutch descendants would naturally be on the side of the

European rulers (as quoted by T.Fernando in The Burghers of Ceylon in The Blending of Races, Marginality and Identity in World Perspective, p. 72).

From the earliest days the Burghers were considered honest, loyal and patriotic and suitable for employment. They lived in the towns, aspired to an English education, were mobile, and prepared to work not only in clerical and supervisory roles but also in the dangerous and unpleasant jungle and outstation areas in the government and mercantile sector. They had learned to speak English while at work and then in the home, (but Portuguese with the freed domestic slaves). In due course some of the Burghers became professionals when the opportunities presented themselves.

An education in English became the passport to upward social and economic mobility and the chief place for competition between the ethnic groups. A very high premium was placed on English for it brought prestige, access to higher education, material rewards, possessions and closer contact with the decision-makers. It was the entry requirement for careers in the bureaucracy and this in turn brought high social status and security in an agricultural economy where all the insecurities of weather and unstable prices were present.

An English education was never available to more than 10% of the people so it had an almost unattainable scarcity value to the other 90%. Those who did not have access to an education in English were condemned to an inferior role as unskilled or semi-skilled labour in the towns or tenant farmers in the rural areas. Neither they nor their children could aspire to the elite.

The British considered that the best way to modernise the locals was by way of an English education that exposed them to English culture and institutions. Missionaries had the monopoly for teaching the English language so Burghers and Christian Low-country

Sinhalese, usually of the Goigama and Karawa castes, were the first to be given an education in English. This advantaged them in status and skills and led to secure jobs in the

administrative hierarchy. American missionaries were assigned the role of education in Jaffna and as a result both high-caste and Christian Tamils in the Jaffna peninsula received a superior English education ahead of the other indigenous communities.

The education in English was provided in Christian missionary schools, mainly Protestant, and so the non-Catholics were the main beneficiaries. Catholic missionaries followed much later and modelled their schools on the Protestant missionary schools. Non- Christians were encouraged to attend the missionary schools but for the first fifty years of British rule it was mainly the Christians who attended and benefited from a quality English education. They went on to become the elite in Ceylonese society.

The Burghers were the community who were the greatest beneficiaries of an English education. They had quickly discarded Dutch and turned to English. Unlike the Sinhalese, Tamils and Moors, they spoke English inside the home and it had become their 'mother tongue'. The other communities continued to only speak in the vernac-

THE BRITISH 53

ular inside the home so the Burghers had a head start at school. English had become the Burgher language and their native tongue.

The author remembers that in his class at primary school in the early 1930s, Burghers were the first seven in scholarship ranking. The cleverest non-Burgher was ranked eight. In secondary school the advantage of English as the mother tongue became less important as the other children gained equal proficiency in English.

A major disadvantage of the British education system was that it produced clerks and administrators but not mechanics, plumbers, carpenters and technicians. It so downgraded these latter occupations that no educated person took to them. The faults of this education system continued after Ceylon achieved political independence because of the high value placed on 'book learning' as opposed to a practical education.

The missionary schools did more than provide an education in English. The schools were modelled on the public (private) schools in England and, by the time the pupils left, they were 'more English than the English'. Pupils were steeped in English literature, English history, the intricacies of English grammar, a second language (usually Latin or French), mathematics and the optional subjects of world geography, chemistry, physics, botany, zoology, biology and various subjects in the arts.

Academic staff were often British from Oxford or Cambridge, Burghers and

anglicised Sinhalese and Tamils. There was minimum reference to Ceylon history and Ceylon geography. The speaking of Sinhala and Tamil was discouraged. The stated aim of the schools was to create a colony that would look to England for its inspiration, and by example and not compulsion, modernise and westernise the country. It was a laudable objective but it

encouraged an elite, an oligarchy, unsympathetic to native culture and religious traditions. In this environment, ethnic identity and religion became irrelevant The mixing of ethnic groups created a new ethnic identity, the 'Ceylonese', who were no longer Burgher, Moor, Sinhalese or Tamil. The pupils were often Christians or respectful of Christians. They all spoke the same language and developed the one culture.

They were single gender private schools in which pupils were socialised to a view of the world that was centred on a civilised Christian England, its culture, its literature and its institutions. The teachers were themselves products of the same process, an anglicised culture. After they left secondary school, this special group were found supervisory positions where training in leadership and management were important or enrolled at a tertiary institution and eventually became professionals. This group, the westernised elite, thought of themselves as chosen to lead, privileged by birth, and with a mission to serve the country. They had a stranglehold on social and economic power. They were a network of influence. Burghers were major beneficiaries of this system and a part of this privileged group, but at a level lower than the British who were the rulers.(A description of school life in one of these schools is given in chapter 6, 'The English language fee-paying schools').