From 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. Read more in our longread.
