When served with a summons in 1780, Kalegana Bastian Naidelage Maria of Dutch-controlled Galle in southern Sri Lanka was displeased. She was reported to have brazenly responded that even her dog would not appear before the judicial forum that had summoned her. The council decided that Maria would be flogged for this perceived affront. While her brashness reveals how locals subverted the authority of their early colonial rulers, this was more often the exception than the rule. From the sixteenth century, successive European occupations influenced Sri Lanka's legal culture to varying degrees. From at least the late seventeenth century onwards, indigenous litigants in Sri Lanka had been bringing their lawsuits before panels of Dutch and local judges.

The rise of a colonial power and its implications for the structure of power in society is reflected in the way the authorities execute the law. Given Maria's example, to what extent did the locals perceive the Landraad as intruding on local affairs? Legal practices may be inherently inclusive or exclusive, or may be deliberately made so by those in power. Colonial judicial bodies are known to have stimulated relatively marginalised groups in society to come forward. Similarly, in Sri Lanka, supplicants, in the form of litigants, sought justice by applying to the Landraad. By extension, witnesses who bolstered case narratives were involved in this pursuit and I will consider them as individuals who were required to engage with the law.