British rule was brutal, but the plantation economy was accompanied by limited infrastructure development, including the construction of roads, which began to breakdown Ceylon’s regional isolation.

So the British government appointed the Soulbury Commission to visit Ceylon and grant wider powers. The Soulbury Commission comprised of (first Baron later Viscount Soulbury, J F Rees and S J Burrows.

THE lovely island of Ceylon, which had been a British Crown Colony since 1798, could have become completely independent in 1948 if its political class had so decided. In the vast, comprehensive ...

Walter Terence STACE was a British man born in 1886 who entered the British colonial service after a university education and was assigned to Sri Lanka in 1910. He married a Burgher lady, MM Beven in ...

The Dutch were a pre-eminent politico-economic and military power in Ceylon and South India in the 17th and 18th centuries, having driven out the Portuguese from the region’s lucrative spice ...

In July 1944, the British Government announced that a Commission would be appointed to visit Ceylon toward the end of the year for the purpose of providing "full consultation to take place with the ...

The beautiful 15-minute short film looking at Julia’s three years (her last) from 1875 to 1879 spent in Ceylon in plantations in Kalutara, Glencairn and Bogawantalawa, is a sepia and black and white ...