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Navigating Pluralities Reluctantly: The Marriage Contract in Dutch Galle

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2018

Nadeera Rupesinghe
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Abstract

This article examines diverse practices in the establishment of marriage partnerships in eighteenth-century Sri Lanka,1 parts of which were controlled by the Dutch East India Company (VOC). Family law was an area in which the attempt to transform local practices was conspicuously present, but not fully achieved. Lawful marriage was linked to conversion to Dutch Protestantism and to inheritance of property. In the authoritative space of the provincial board that heard the matrimonial disputes examined in this article, the Company did not proactively attempt to reform family life, an area where it could not easily dictate terms. It made a significant dent as the requirement for marriage registration was recognised by natives. But the limited reach of the introduced law is evident in the Company’s reluctant recognition that its two-step process of reading the banns and subsequent marriage ceremony created confusion and that locals still followed customary practices for forging unions. The VOC faced a normative order in the villages that was characterised by ritual underpinnings. Such local features went unrecognised in official law rules, but their perseverance is testimony to the pluralities in practice in an early colonial encounter in the Indian Ocean world.

Keywords

Marriage contractcustomary marriagepluralitiescolonial lawfamily lawSinhalese lawVOCGalleSri LankaCeylon
Type
Articles
Information
Itinerario , Volume 42 , Special Issue 2: The Indian Ocean of Law: Hybridity and Space , August 2018 , pp. 220 - 237
Copyright
© 2018 Research Institute for History, Leiden University 

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Footnotes

*

Nadeera Rupesinghe has taught at the Open University of Sri Lanka and has a doctorate from Leiden University. Her dissertation, “Negotiating Custom: Colonial Lawmaking in the Galle Landraad,” is an examination of a district-level judicial forum set up by the VOC in eighteenth-century Sri Lanka. She is at present a postdoctoral researcher under the Dutch NWO-funded project Colonialism Inside Out: Everyday Experience and Plural Practice in Dutch Institutions in Sri Lanka (ca. 1700–1800). She is grateful to the reviewers of this article for their extensive comments that have enriched it greatly.

References

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