The plantation era transforms the Sri Lankan…

The plantation era transforms the Sri Lankan economy.

This is most evident in the growth of the export sector at the expense of the traditional agricultural sector.

The colonial predilection for growing commercial instead of subsistence crops will later be considered by Sri Lankan nationalists to be one of the unfortunate legacies of European domination.

Late nineteenth-century official documents that record famines and chronic rural poverty support the nationalists' argument.

Other issues, notably the British policy of selling state land to planters for conversion into plantations, are equally controversial, even though some members of the indigenous population participate in all stages of plantation agriculture.

Sri Lankans, for example, control over one-third of the area under coffee cultivation and most of the land in coconut production.

They also own significant interests in rubber.