The following academic resources are (co-)created by members of the Colonialism Inside Out project. Titles that are freely available through open access are marked with ‘access here’, directly linking to the file itself.                                                                       

Nadeera Rupesinghe (2017). ‘Defining land rights in Dutch Sri Lanka.’ Portuguese Journal of Social Science 16 (2): 143-161.

Luc Bulten, Jan Kok, Dries Lyna & Nadeera Rupesinghe (2018). ‘Contested conjugality? Sinhalese marriage practices in eighteenth-century Dutch colonial Sri Lanka.’ Annales de Demographie Historique, 135 (1), 51-80 (access here).

Dries Lyna (2018). ‘Ceylonese Arcadia? Colonial encounters in mid-eighteenth-century Dutch Sri Lanka.’ In: P. Puschmann, T Riswick, T.G.M.W. Riswick & P Puschmann (Eds.), Building Bridges: Scholars, History and Historical Demography. A Festschrift in Honor of Professor Theo Engelen (pp. 157-172). Nijmegen: Valkhof Pers (access here).

Nadeera Rupesinghe (2018). ‘Navigating pluralities reluctantly: the marriage contract in Dutch Galle.’ Itinerario. Journal of Imperial and Global Interaction 42 (2), 220-237 (access here).

Alicia Schrikker & Dries Lyna (2019). ‘Threads of the legal web. Dutch law and everyday colonialism in eighteenth-century Asia.’ In: G. Vermeersch, M. Van den Heijden & J. Zuijderduijn (Eds.), The Uses of Justice in Global Perspective 1600-1900 (pp. 42-56). London: Routledge (access here).

Nadeera Rupesinghe (2019). ‘Facing the law in eighteenth-century Galle.’ In: G. Vermeersch, M. Van den Heijden & J. Zuijderduijn (Eds.), The Uses of Justice in Global Perspective 1600-1900 (pp. 57-80). London: Routledge.

Nadeera Rupesinghe (2019). ‘Do You Know the Ninth Commandment: tensions of the oath in Dutch colonial Sri Lanka.’ Comparative Legal History 7 (1), 37-66 (Winner of the Van Caeneghem prize).

Nira Wickramasinghe & Alicia Schrikker (2019). ‘The ambivalence of freedom: slaves in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.’ The Journal of Asian Studies 78 (3): 497-519 (access here).

Jan Kok (2020). ‘The thomboFrom the Portuguese ‘tombo’, which translates as tome or volume, these land and population registers had pre-colonial roots in the palm-leaf inscribed ‘lēkam miti’ registers. First translated by the Portuguese, by the second half of the eighteenth century under Dutch these centralised registers contained the names of hundreds of thousands of local inhabitants and their property in the form of sowing fields, gardens and plantations. [link to longread] More treasure. Colonial population administration as source for the historical demography of early modern Sri Lanka.’ Australian Economic History Review 60 (1): 105-121 (access here).

Alicia Schrikker & Nira Wickramasinghe (eds.) (2020). Being a slave, histories and legacies of European slavery in the Indian Ocean. Leiden: LUP (access here), specifically see: ‘Introduction: Enslaved in the Indian Ocean’.

Bente de Leede (2020). ‘Children between Company and Church: Subject-making in Dutch colonial Sri Lanka, ca. 1650–1790.’ BMGN-low countries historical review 135 (3-4): 106-132 (access here).

Dries Lyna (2020). ‘Leven na slavernij en voor abolitionisme. Op zoek naar vrijgelaten slaven in achttiende-eeuws Sri Lanka.’ (transl. ‘Life after slavery and before abolitionism. Searching for manumitted slaves in 18^th-century Sri Lanka’) Nieuw Letterkundig Magazijn, XXXVIII, 12-17 (access here).

Luc Bulten and Dries Lyna (2021). ‘Classifications at work. Social categories and Dutch bureaucracy in colonial Sri Lanka.’ Itinerario. Journal of Imperial and Global Interactions 45 (2), 252-278 (access here).

Jan Kok, Luc Bulten, & Bente de Leede (2021). ‘Persecuted or permitted? Fraternal polyandry in a Calvinist colony, Sri Lanka (Ceylon), seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.’ Continuity and Change, 36 (3), 331-355 (access here).

Dries Lyna (2022). ‘Restrained freedom? Widows, blended families and inheritance in eighteenth-century urban Sri Lanka.’ The History of the Family 22 (3), 596-617 (access here).

Dries Lyna, & Luc Bulten (2022). ‘Material pluralism and symbolic violence. Palm leaf deeds and paper land grants in colonial Sri Lanka, 1680–1795.’ Law and History Review (online first, access here).

Bente de Leede & Nadeera Rupesinghe (2023). ‘Registering and regulating family life: the school thombosFrom the Portuguese ‘tombo’, which translates as tome or volume, and in this case means register. The school thombo was a church register in which not only school children were registered, but also their families, as well as when each member was baptised, married and deceased. Not related to the Land and Head Thombo. More in Dutch Sri Lanka.’ Law and History Review (online first, access here).

Alicia Schrikker & Byapti Sur (2023). ‘An empire in disguise: the appropriation of pre-existing modes of governance in Dutch South Asia, 1650–1800.’ Law and History Review (online first, access here).

Nadeera Rupesinghe (2023). Lawmaking in Dutch Sri Lanka: navigating pluralities in a colonial society. Leiden: Leiden University Press.

Luc Bulten (2023), Reconsidering colonial registration: social histories of lives, land, and labour in eighteenth-century Sri Lanka. Unpublished PhD-thesis, Radboud University Nijmegen (access here, and here).

Bente de Leede (2023), ‘De irrelevantie van succes. Over de veelzijdige relatie van Sri Lankanen met de Nederduits Gereformeerde Kerk in koloniaal Sri Lanka (1658-1796).’ In: Bente de Leede and Martijn Stoutjesdijk (eds.), Kerk, kolonialisme en slavernij. Verhalen van een vervlochten geschiedenis. Utrecht: Kok Boekencentrum.