ABSTRACT
The beginnings of the modern economic history of Sri Lanka are conventionally traced to the commencement (in the 1840s) of organized cultivation of export crops and the related development of “modern” trading, transport, communication, and financial activities under British colonial rule. Based initially on capital from Britain, capitalist development in the colony gradually gave rise to a capitalist class of domestic origin.1 Workers brought from southern India to work in plantations as indentured labor formed the core of the working class, which gradually expanded in numbers as well as in terms of trade union organization, drawing in workers from other growing sectors.2
