Description
Vijitha Yapa Publications Hearsay & Versions in British Relations with the Kingdom of Kandy 1796-1818 by Upali C Wickremeratne
This book is a study of the relationship between the British government and the Kandyan Kingdom between 1796 and 1818 in which new methods of assessing evidence are adopted and new views offered on a number of themes. The existing historiography is based on a study of British primary and secondary sources in which primary sources preponderate and the documentary sources are neglected to a surprising degree. The unreliability of hearsay is not recognized and hearsay is far too often accepted as fact. The documentary evidence in the national archives at Colombo and Kandy has been neglected, too. The author has evolved new criteria for assessing hearsay evidence based on the English law of evidence enabling British sources to be used for a reliable study of domestic Kandyan politics. By this means Kandyan versions can be elicited from enemy sources. A close study has been made of the evidence in the Sri Lankan archives, too. Evidence is offered to show how tenaciously Governor North tried to persuade the Kandyan government to adopt a subsidiary alliance and how warmly this idea was supported by Governor – General Wellesley and Dundas, Secretary of State. This policy which succeeded in India failed in Sri Lanka. A letter written by Sri Vikrama Rajasinha, the Kandyan King, to Hobart, the Fort St George governor is produced. It purports to show that Robert Andrews agreed, at Kandy, to restore to the Kandyan government the territory of which it claimed it had been dispossessed wrongly by the Dutch government and not to let the Dutch to return to Sri Lanka ever. This view casts serious doubt on the reliability of Andrews’ evidence.