Paper short abstract:

Through mechanisms such as registration and a court, and despite the complexities of the local land tenure system, the VOC in Sri Lanka attempted to create a neat, circumscribed system that followed specific legal procedures and written forms on land matters.

Paper long abstract:

During its administration of parts of Sri Lanka the Dutch East India Company (VOC) set up the Landraad, a court composed of European and native officials, in the eighteenth century. Its primary task was to hear civil cases and its primary tool the thombo or land register. The VOC wished to set down who could do what in which piece of land and what it could extract in return. This paper is a study of land rights in southern Sri Lanka, providing a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the types of possession recognised in the thombos. Local terms relating to land tenure such as paraveni, malapalu and nilapalu were adopted in the thombo, the Landraad and other official discussions. 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. Dutch practices of surveying, indigenous land tenure, and existing and new practices of registering lands combined with a new institutional legal framework in which to settle disputes. Despite the complexities of the local land tenure system, the VOC attempted to enforce regulations that would create a neat, circumscribed system that followed specific legal procedures and written forms. The important role of the non-elite actors who appear in this study for the first time can also be seen. Their priorities and claims encountered those of foreign and local elites.

Key words: colonial law, land tenure, registration, land law, VOC, Sri Lanka