The State and Peasant Politics in Sri Lanka
The State and Peasant Politics in Sri Lanka

Author: Mick Moore

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1985-11-14

Total Pages: 341

ISBN-13: 9780521265508

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Dr Moore's enterprising book focuses on an apparent paradox: the failure of Sri Lanka's highly politicized smallholder electorate to place on the national political agenda issues relating to the public distribution of material resources. Sri Lanka has more than fifty years' history of pluralist democracy and such issues directly affect the interests of the smallholder population. Yet successive Sri Lankan governments have pursued economic policies favouring food consumers and the state itself at the expense of agricultural producers. In exploring the features of Sri Lanka's history, geography, politics and economy which explain this paradox, the author looks in detail at some of the dominant features of contemporary Sri Lanka: the political consequences of the plantation experience; the persistence of elite political leadership; and the causes and consequences of ethnic conflict.

The Adaptable Peasant
The Adaptable Peasant

Author: Nirmal Ranjith Dewasiri

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2007-12-31

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 9047432827

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This study investigates the structural changes in western Sri Lanka's agrarian society under the administration of the Dutch United East India Company (VOC). In the areas where peasant agriculture was the predominant form of production, changes in the land tenure system paved the way for a modern system of private property relations. A new class differentiation emerged and the indigenous chiefs turned into powerful landowners. In addition to this, new light is shed on the dynamics of caste formation as a result of the early colonial encounter.