Towards a Self-sufficient Economy in The Colonial Commercial Economy, The Impact of Land Reforms in the 1930s

Abstract

The Land Act, introduced by the British rulers in 1840, declared that all uncultivated land belonged to the government. With this, it was inevitable that most ordinary people would become landless. The Land Act of 1897 exacerbated this situation. In addition, large-scale land acquisition for plantation cultivation disrupted local farming activities and caused severe economic hardship to the country's people. The Land Act introduced in 1927 did not relieve the local people. The proposals of the Land Commission, appointed in 1928, were instrumental in alleviating this situation to some extent. The purpose of the study was to examine what economic reforms the Land Acts of the 1930s brought about for the welfare of the people. The study used primary and secondary sources based on the qualitative data collection methodology. Primary and secondary sources such as Land Ordinances, Dispatches, Administration Reports, Hansards Records, Sessional Papers, Blue Books, Ceylon Census Reports, and Furguson's Directory were used. The Land Acts of 1931 and 1935, introduced in the 1930s, are optimistic compared to those implemented during the colonial economic reforms to promote commercial crop cultivation and plantation expansion. However, these new land reforms introduced by the British did not create the previous self-sufficient economic pattern.