Sri Lankan history:

King Rajasinghe II of Kandy

by Husna Inayathullah

Continued from last week

The Treaty of Munster had secured Dutch independence in Europe in1648. They could now pursue colonial and mercantile expansion without fighting a ruinous war on their doorstep simultaneously.

In contrast the kingdom of Kandy was exhausted by constant war and still without access to Batticaloa, Trincomalee, and the lowlands. It had limited resources and was increasingly wracked by internal instability.

Nevertheless from 1652 joint Kandyan-Dutch forces waged an increasingly brutal war against Portuguese strongholds along the coast.

During this time Rajasinghe had to request support from the sub-king Patabanda of Koggala which suggests that the Kandyan kingdom had by this time become very decentralised, and that local leaders held considerable power.

The landlocked Kandyans were successful in the inland area of the Korales and the Sabaragamuwa but relied heavily on Dutch sea power.Accordingly in August 1655 a large Dutch fleet commanded by Gerard Pieters. Hulft arrived and the war entered its final phase with the siege by land and sea of the Portuguese colonial capital Colombo.

Rajasinghe did not trust the Dutch at all and insisted that the city should be ceded to the Kandyans the moment it fell.

When this happened in 1656, however, the Dutch shut the gates and left the Kandyans in the hinterlands.

Faced with what he saw as yet another example of Dutch treachery, Rajasinghe repeated his devastation of the mid 1640s in the hinterlands of Colombo and withdrew to Kandy. The Dutch secured power over the kingdom of Jaffna in 1658 and replaced the Portuguese as Kandy's natural enemy on the island.Safe in his mountain abode Rajasinghe now adopted the same tactics he had deployed against the Portuguese to harass the Dutch.

In 1660 his army was known to have been in the vicinity of Dutch held Trincomalee and seized the Englishman Robert Knox who subsequently moved to Senkadagala and lived there until the 1680s. His writings provide one of the best sources on the Kandyan kingdom in the 17th century.

Rajasinghe may also have considered involving the French in Sri Lankan politics in an attempt to get yet another European power to displace the Dutch.

In Kandy, Rajasinghe faced discontented nobles and a populace who had always been opposed to the alliance with the Dutch. The internal situation became so unstable that for a while Rajasinghe was forced to abandon the palace and allow rebels to seize control of Sengkadagala and even suspended the annual perahera.

In 1664, he faced open rebellion from a noble known as Ambanwela Rala and unable in his fury to think of a suitable punishment, sent him to the Dutch, assuming they would execute him as a Kandyan noble.It was a mistake as Ambanwela Rala traded his knowledge of the workings of Kandy for a large coconut estate in Dutch territory and died a rich man.Despite this the king managed to retain control of the crown and expanded the sacred precinct of Kandy, the Dalada Maligawa, adding an extra storey to the central building.

The single most important trend of Rajasinghe's long reign was the replacement of the Portuguese by the Dutch.

The strategy of bringing in one European power to help fend off another had backfired spectacularly. The Kandyan kingdom found itself in much the same position as it had been with the Portuguese. Despite the Dutch being less determined to convert the mass populace and impose their cultural dominance, Europeans increasingly came to be seen as rapacious adventurers who were simply incapable of honouring their deals.

The situation inside the Kandyan kingdom became increasingly unstable. During Rajasinghe's reign many of the powerful families that came to dominate Kandyan politics in the 18th century acquired greater power.

It is interesting to note that attempts on Rajasinghe's life appear to have been rather commonplace.Rajasinghe's reign also saw a gradual diminition of the Kandyan's dreams of reuniting Sri Lanka under a single native crown.