From Plantations to Military: Heritage of Galle Fort in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka’s position in the Indian Ocean trade led to the development of port cities. Galle fortress is a paradigm of coloniality, testifying to the interactions of the local and the global. While drawing attention to the Portuguese heritage, overshadowed by the Dutch and the British imprints, this paper also highlights the significance of Galle as an entrêpot for enslaved Africans. An early nineteenth-century manuscript in the British archives lists the names of enslaved Africans running away from the French in Diego Garcia. I argue that the heterogeneous names of the enslaved reveal multiple ethnicities of their owners and the complex world of plantations on which they laboured. Change in status from labourers to soldiers in the Ceylon Regiments typifies a wider demand for African military skills in the Indian subcontinent. The timing of the purchase of enslaved Africans, however, raises questions about the abolition of slavery in the Indian Ocean World.