Becoming the State: Territorializing Ceylon, 1815-1848

This dissertation studies the political, economic, and cosmological processes through which the idea of "total territorial rule" at the core of the modern state came into being in the context of British colonial rule on the island of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) between 1815 -1848.It develops a decolonial theoretical framework informed by the idea of a "pluriverse" of multiple ontologies to show the empirical and imperial avenues through which the idea of the modern/colonial state became normalized in Ceylon.Specifically, I discuss the rajamandala system and its long history in Buddhist South Asia as an approach to organizing political society that is ontologically distinct from British approaches.The process of "Buddhification" enabled foreign rulers to naturalize into the rajamandala system; it provides a context within which to better understand the importance of British rule across the island, traditionally marked as beginning with the 1815 Kandyan Convention.I present the Convention as a moment of sovereign ontological collision where two ontologies of sovereignty conflicted.The ontological conflict manifested in different forms of violence locally, regionally, and imperially, through insurrections, religious politics, and political economic transformations.By drawing attention to Europe's externalization of violence in modern state formation, we must rethink the characterization of 1815 -1914 as "peaceful" as the European peacefulness of this period depended on the violence of colonial state formation.Relatedly, though historians of South Asia tend to mark the rise of the British Raj in 1858 India, one of the empirical contributions this dissertation makes is showing that the period between the 1815 Kandyan Convention and the 1848 Matale Rebellion in Ceylon and the associated contestations between colonizing and anti-colonizing vectors intersectional, trans-disciplinary guidance of Hans-Martin Jaeger, Cristina Rojas, and Chinnaiah Jangam, I would not have been able to research and write this dissertation.Dr. Hans-Martin Jaeger's critical guidance over the last seven years has been an anchor and a model of how to be an intellectual.I mean this not only in his capacity as my supervisor; I and other graduate students have come to respect his perpetual intellectual curiosity and the depth to which he engages ideas.As my supervisor, he has engaged my work in its most raw and incoherent forms, playing a steady and inspirational role in its gradual refinement.The amount of academic writing he has received from me pales in comparison to the volumes of verbose, panicked emails he has always taken care to respond to with lightning-fast speed, or the unannounced and lengthy visits to his office after which I have always left feeling challenged, inspired, and more intelligent.Without Dr. Cristina Rojas, this dissertation would simply not have been possible.Through Cristina's constant, generous mentorship and enormous social network, I first learned about pluriversality and decolonial studies, as well as how to be an international colleague.Cristina's humility, precision, and exciting writing and research has driven me (nearly) to learn Spanish to enter her world of research more completely.Beyond her vital feedback on this dissertation, she has also been instrumental in my understanding of publishing and has given valuable eleventh-hour feedback on manuscript revisions.Dr. Chinnaiah Jangam has also been a critical juncture in my intellectual and professional life.Aside from saving my project when I was denied travel documents to Sri Lanka by urging me to take my research in a more historical direction, he has always seen, several steps ahead of me, the broader, real-world benefit of the research.Every vi meeting we had left me excited, and in the early days, I did not realize that this turn towards history would ultimately lead to a faculty position in the Department of History and International Development Studies at Dalhousie University.My committee's collective contribution to this dissertation and to my life cannot be overstated.

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