Sri Vikrama Rajasinha of Kandy, the last…
March 1806 CE
The king, of South Indian ancestry, had faced powerful opposition from the Sinhalese chieftains who sought to limit his power.
A successful coup had been organized by the chieftains, marking the end of two thousand three hundred and fifty-eight years of self-rule on the island and resulting in the imprisonment of the King in Vellore.
The treaty is quite unique in that it was not signed by the monarch on the throne but by members of his court and other dignitaries of the kingdom.
The convention gains a degree of infamy when, according to apocryphal sources, Wariyapola Sri Sumangala, a Buddhist monk of the kingdom, had seized and trampled a Union Jack hoisted by the British, demanding the flag of Kandy be left flying until the Convention was signed.
The authenticity of the native signatures has recently been called into question.