SRI LANKA HOLIDAYS; Ceylon Cinnamon & Dutch East India Company
The one anxiety of the Company’s (1) officers, who desired to win the approbation of the Directors, was to secure every year the ten thousand bales of Cinnamon (2) which provided the bulk of the Company’s profits. This created a most humiliating state of things, which Schreuder felt acutely. “In the whole of
Every year an embassy had to be sent to secure with abject genuflexions the right to collect it in the King’s dominions, & then it had to be fetched like “a firebrand from the fire” with heart burnings & anxiety as to whether it would be in time for the sailing season.
No sooner was one difficulty overcome than another was raised by the ingenuity of the courtiers, till the stuff reached the Company’s territory. The Chalias (4) served as a convenient tool for worrying the Hollanders; at a hint from Court they would disappear out of reach into the King’s dominions, & without them there could be no (5) peeling. Often they had to be coaxed back with a promise that even the ring-leaders would not be punished; but a Governor (6) would rather venture everything & even sacrifice a part of his own possessions, than fail in sending Cinnamon..
Above is an extract from Ceylon & the Hollanders by Dr. Paul E. Pieris
1 Dutch East
2.
3 Court of the King of
4. Chalias are Salagama cast workers engaged in harvesting & peeling Ceylon Cinnamon.
5. Peeling wafer-like thin Cinnamon inner barks from the trees is a highly skillful work practiced only by the Salagama community of the Western Coastal Belt of
6 Dutch Commander of the Western Coastal Belt of
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