Legal pluralism is closely related to the fragmented nature of colonial rule. Contested arguments over change in early colonial society have largely overlooked the practical realities of pluralities as they manifest in everyday life. This book contributes to an open debate of over 200 years on the extent to which Dutch and Sinhalese laws were applied to the Sinhalese of the maritime provinces in Sri Lanka. Cooray has opined that the question of the application or non-application of Sinhalese customary law remains purely academic today, as it is the Roman-Dutch law that is now applied to the low country (coastal) Sinhalese. For, whatever the outcome of a study of Dutch legal records, Roman-Dutch law is here to stay in Sri Lanka as its proponents would say that “it continues to be of great value to the legal system.” Developments under the British in the nineteenth century could be even more important in understanding present-day law, but the foundation for such developments was laid before their rule. The study of the application of Sinhalese law is of more relevance when one considers that, as Elizabeth Kolsky states, the legacy of Partha Chatterjee's “rule of colonial difference” is that “difference, exclusion, and exemption might still define how states and structures continue to behave.”