Abstract:
Plantation agriculture was introduced to Sri Lanka during the British administration in
the early 1940s. It was the only successful technical crop introduced during this period
as others such as cotton failed to produce successful results. Colonial policy biases
strongly favoured large estates, and at the early stages of rubber cultivation, was mainly
practiced in large scale due to economies of scale and availability of Indian labour.
Rubber was first introduced to the Western Province and thereafter was expanded to
Sabaragamuwa, Southern, Uva, and North Western Provinces at different times and to
different degrees. As a result of this technical crop, Sri Lanka managed to earn sufficient
foreign exchange from raw material export.
