DiplomacyEast India Company rule
Recruitment of Tamil labourers for Ceylon plantations begins
Labourers from the Tirunelveli, Tiruchi, Madurai and Tanjore areas were recruited for British coffee estates in Ceylon.
Historians record that in 1827 Governor Sir Edward Barnes of Ceylon, acting on a request from the planter George Bird, recruited workers from the Tirunelveli, Tiruchi, Madurai and Tanjore regions. As the British opened coffee estates in the central highlands, and later tea, rubber and coconut plantations, migration grew to a large scale. Much of the recruiting ran through the kangani system, under which trusted Tamil foremen gathered labourers from their own villages. Their descendants make up Sri Lanka's Indian Tamil, or Hill Country Tamil, community, whose citizenship and repatriation became a significant dispute between India and Sri Lanka.
_(14764108484).jpg){kind=link}