Lawmaking in Dutch Sri Lanka : : Navigating Pluralities in a Colonial Society / / Nadeera Rupesinghe.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Amsterdam University Press Complete eBook-Package 2023
• VerfasserIn: Rupesinghe, Nadeera,
• Place / Publishing House: Leiden : : Leiden University Press, , [2023]; ©2023
• Year of Publication: 2023
• Language: English
• Series: Colonial and Global History through Dutch Sources ; 6
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (316 p.)
• Other title: Frontmatter --; Contents --; List of Maps, Figures and Tables --; Acknowledgements --; Notes on Usage --; Glossary --; Maps --; INTRODUCTION Conjecture and Deliberation --; CHAPTER 1 Building the Landraad --; CHAPTER 2 Divided Authority --; CHAPTER 3 Facing the Law --; CHAPTER 4 Marshalling Unseen Forces --; CHAPTER 5 Defining Land Rights --; CHAPTER 6 On Inheriting Land --; CONCLUSION Revisiting Colonial Legal Practice --; APPENDIX I European Members at the Galle Landraad 1759–96 --; APPENDIX II Rulers of Kandy and Dutch Governors --; APPENDIX III List of Accommodessan Grants --; Bibliography --; Index
• Format: Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
• ISBN: 9789400604247; 9783111023748
• DOI: 10.1515/9789400604247
• Access: restricted access
• Hierarchical level: Monograph
• Statement of Responsibility: Nadeera Rupesinghe.

Navigating Pluralities marks a break in understanding the history of Roman-Dutch law in Sri Lanka. Methodologically, it challenges socio-legal studies that concentrate on major jurisdictional conflicts alone, emphasizing the lived experience of everyday practices of judicial forums. It uncovers the navigation of plural practices in the Landraad, a judicial forum set up by the Dutch East India Company in seventeenth-century Sri Lanka. A choice of laws came into play in that forum, that choice being significant at varying degrees for different areas of the law such as evidence, inheritance, land, and marriage law. While there was inevitable conflict, the local normative order was as much a social fact for the early colonial rulers as Roman-Dutch law. This is contrary to the received wisdom of the ages that Roman-Dutch law was imposed on the Sinhalese of the maritime provinces under Dutch control. When translated into everyday lives, such adoption of plural practices could rebound on coloniser and colonised in unexpected ways, revealing the complexities of colonial law in practice.