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Caste Conflict and Elite Formation is a study in the social history of Sri Lanka. However, it does not merely document the remarkable successes in business enterprise and in the acquisition of Western-educated professional skills which were achieved by families from the Karava caste during the last two centuries; their advances, and the social and political struggles which accompanied this process, are employed as a window through which a survey of social change in Sri Lanka during the last four hundred years is conducted. The interest of the book extends beyond the many fascinating social incidents, historical trends and channels of elite formation that are described within its pages to a series of controlled comparisons which reveal the factors responsible for the formation of the Karava elite. Thus the book extends the methodological frontiers of the social history of the region. It emphasizes the significance of the patterns of caste discrimination and caste interaction in Sri Lankan politics, and reveals how these patterns were central to the incentives and opportunities which powered the advances of the Karava families.
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CAMBRIDGE SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES CASTE CONFLICT AND ELITE FORMATION The Rise of a Karava Elite in Sri Lanka, ijoo-igji C A M B R I D G E S O U T H ASIAN STUDIES These monographs are published by the Syndics of Cambridge University Press in association with the Cambridge University Centre for South Asian Studies. The following books have been published in this series: 1 S. Gopal: British Policy in India, i8j8-igoj 2 J. A. B. Palmer: The Mutiny Outbreak at Meerut in i8jy 3 A. Das Gupta: Malabar in Asian Trade, 1740-1800 4 G. Obeyesekere: Land Tenure in Village Ceylon 5 H. L. Erdman: The Swatantra Party and Indian Conservatism 6 S. N. Mukherjee: Sir William Jones: A Study in Eighteenth-Century British Attitudes to India 7 Abdul Majed Khan: The Transition in Bengal, 1756-1775: A Study of Saiyid Muhammad Reza Khan 8 Radhe Shyam Rungta: The Rise of Business Corporations in India, 1831-igoo 9 Pamela Nightingale: Trade and Empire in Western India, 1784-1806 10 Amiya Kumar Bagchi: Private Investment in India, igoo-igjg 11 Judith M. Brown: Gandhi's Rise to Power: Indian Politics, igij-ig22 12 Mary C. Carras: The Dynamics of Indian Political Factions 13 P. Hardy: The Muslims of British India 14 Gordon Johnson: Provincial Politics and Indian Nationalism 15 Marguerite S. Robinson: Political Structure in a Changing Sinhalese Village 16 Francis Robinson: Separation among Indian Muslims: The Politics of the United Provinces3 Muslims, i86o-ig2j 17 Christopher John Baker: The Politics of South India, ig2O-igj6 18 David Washbrook: The Emergence of Provincial Politics: The Madras Presidency, i8yo-ig2o 19 Deepak Nayyar: India's Exports and Export Policies in the ig6os 20 Mark Holmstrom: South Indian Factory Workers: Their Life and Their World 21 S. Ambirajan: Classical Political Economy and British Policy in India 22 M. M. Islam: Bengal Agriculture ig2O-ig46: A Quantitative Study 23 Eric Stokes: The Peasant and the Raj: Studies in Agrarian Society and Peasant Rebellion in Colonial India 24 Michael Roberts: Caste Conflict and Elite Formation: The Rise of a Kardva Elite in Sri Lanka, 1^00-igji CASTE CONFLICT AND ELITE FORMATION The Rise of a Karava Elite in Sri Lanka I5OO-I931 MICHAEL ROBERTS Lecturer in Anthropology, University of Adelaide CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE LONDON NEW YORK MELBOURNE NEW ROGHELLE SYDNEY CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www. c ambridge. org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521232104 © Cambri