THE THOMBO TREASURE. COLONIAL POPULATION ADMINISTRATION AS SOURCE FOR THE HISTORICAL DEMOGRAPHY OF EARLY MODERN SRI LANKA

Jan Kok

Australian Economic History Review, 2020, vol. 60, issue 1, 105-121

Abstract: During their occupation of Sri Lanka (1640–1796) and following Sinhalese and Portuguese practices, the Dutch created an elaborate registration of people, estates, and labour services. The administrative records known as the thombos are incomparable in their level of detail, yet they have hardly been used for the purposes of demographic or economic history. This article describes the challenges involved in ‘decoding’ the thombos, that is, reconstructing the meaning of particular variables in the light of the prevailing legal pluralism in which Sinhalese common law and Roman‐Dutch law co‐existed uncomfortably. It also summarises research findings from a pilot study involving about two hundred small villages in Colombo province. Finally, it sketches research horizons, as the thombo ‘treasure’ holds great prospects for (comparative) studies into family systems and the impact of colonial rule on fertility and mortality.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/aehr.12190

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:ozechr:v:60:y:2020:i:1:p:105-121

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0004-8992

Access Statistics for this article

Australian Economic History Review is currently edited by Stephen L Morgan and Martin Shanahan

More articles in Australian Economic History Review from Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().