My colonial history

Just before I left the UK my grandfather gave me a small piece of card on which was written ‘Gilbert Cooper, Troup Estate’. He explained that one strand of our family used to be tea planters in Ceylon

Shortly after settling into the geography department at Peradeniya I went to visit the map room. This contains a complete edition of the 1 inch: 1 mile collection produced by the Ceylon Survey Office in the 1950’s – still perhaps the most comprehensive maps to be found of this country. I borrowed the sheets covering the tea country and after poring over them for a couple of hours located Troup Estate up in the hills near Talawakale.

 

Gilbert Cooper lies four generations back up my tortuous family tree. I won’t bore you with the genealogical connection, but he came to Ceylon in the 1840s at the height of the empire hoping to make his fortune as a planter. Using domesticated elephants he cleared a patch of jungle in hills and planted coffee. Coffee never really took off in Ceylon and his crop has soon wiped out by a pest. He returned to England a broken man. Having gathered some more capital he soon returned to the plantation, replacing the diseased coffee plants with tea bushes.

Tea proved much more suited to the climate and, safely protected by British trade controls, his crop flourished. He established the Troup estate and built a large tea factory and a classic tea bungalow with manicured lawns, flower beds and a very British pond. With his wife he lived the hard and adventurous life of a colonial planter. Their nearest neighbours lived several miles away down bone-rattling roads. Trips to school, to the shops and or to ‘the club’ involved lengthy journeys and a great deal of time was spent at home with the gin.

My great aunt Lorna has born in Ceylon in the 1920’s and grew up here on Troup estate. She met my great uncle Hamish (my grandfather’s brother) before the war and they lived up in the tea country until shortly after independence. My Dad’s first cousin Rob was born here and fondly remembers his childhood years, though this was a turbulent period. Apparently there was a fair amount of agitation on the estates and on one occasion their bungalow was set on fire by a disgruntled employee. Things came to a head in the late 1950’s shortly after independence when Mrs Bandaranaike’s government nationalised the tea estates. Hamish and his family returned to Scotland.

Armed with our map and in the able company of Sanath our driver and his ageing Japanese sports car, Magali and I set off to find Troup estate late last year. We wound our way out of Kandy, swiftly ascending above the tea line and into a landscape of big rounded hills carpeted in spectacular green. We passed gushing waterfalls and dramatic landslides while the gently cooling air grew rich with the smell of cinnamon, cloves and lemon grass – and the inevitable diesel fumes from the old lorries struggling at high altitude.

Eventually we pulled into Talawakele and after making some enquiries were soon grinding our way higher into the hills. Wizened old tea pluckers stood aghast as the old sky blue speed machine swooped by and children stopped their never-ending cricket games to point and run. We soon arrived at a rusty gate and a rusty guard came out of his hut and let us in. We had found it. Troup estate still exists and appears to be in good health. The signs were freshly painted, the bushes were neat and the roads were relatively well maintained. We drew up at the factory – an enormous building out of proportion to the modest constructions around and after a few misunderstandings we were introduced to Arun the manager. Arun was a charming man in his mid-40’s who was fascinated to hear my connection. He quickly handed us over to Chaminda the factory manager for a tour, and instructed him to deliver us to his bungalow for the obligatory cuppa once we were done.

We were led around the factory like visiting dignitaries and traced the processes tea goes through to get from tip to bag. Chaminda explained that these were little changed from Gilbert Cooper’s day. In fact the four-storey factory was still the original building. We tasted a number of types and learnt to differentiate between the famous Orange Pekoe and the dust that goes into your average tea bag. Already high on tannin we made our way down to the bungalow. 

Arun met us with more tea and some super-sweet biscuits and listened patiently as I tried to explain my connection. Unfortunately all of the Troup records appear to have been lost in a fire shortly after the post-independence handover and he had no knowledge of the estate’s history. He explained that Troup is now one of a number owned by a big business conglomerate – that also operates a chain of supermarkets in Sri Lanka. He was just the manager and had only lived on site for a year.

It was slightly disappointing not to find a more tangible connection – a portrait or some hunting trophies – but it was still fascinating to see the place for real and to get a sense of its splendour, its isolation and the deeply iniquitous character of the tea industry. The political economy of tea is little changed since colonial days and a large number of Tamil workers still live on the breadline in basic accommodation with little chance of alternative employment. In many ways it appears that an expatriate upper class was swiftly replaced by an indigenous upper class. The charming Arun regaled us with stories of cricket, his public school and high living in Colombo. 

We were soon on our way again bearing a generous parcel of Troup tea and a new awareness of the longevity and spatial extent of colonial connections.

This story has an interesting further chapter…

Last week my friend Seela, who is a lecturer in the department, asked me to come along to her class on colonial geography and tell her first year students a little about these connections. This was an interesting opportunity. I told my story and then tried to set it in the context of the continued fascination of Sri Lanka to British visitors like myself and the ongoing interconnections between the two countries. Labouring to put my ideas in simple English for the Sinhala medium class, I thumped my chest and presented myself and my current work as distinctly ‘post-colonial’. 

At the end one bright girl asked me if I felt guilty for my past. I tried to explain the shift that has occurred in the UK since the end of empire, as the popular sense of British history is now tinged with remorse and regret and many people feel a need to make form of reparation. However, as Seela and I discussed the issue amongst the students it became clear that many felt little had changed, they were still governed from afar by an Anglicised elite working within the constraints of the Western international development industry. We talked instead about neo-colonialism and the differing commercial and religious imperatives of those governments and organisations that now come to invest time and money in Sri Lanka.

 

This was a fascinating experience for me and hopefully for the students. It gave some substance to the vague sense of unease I have felt out here when interacting with fellow academics, environmentalists and policy-makers. They are not quite sure why I am here, what power is vested in me and where my research will end up. While I am hoping to set the present in its historical context it is difficult to extricate myself from my own colonial history.

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