SOCIAL HISTORY THROUGH CHITTY FAMILY Archives

LIFE IN BRITISH CEYLON – 1850 TO 1950: SOCIAL HISTORY THROUGH CHITTY FAMILY PALIMPSESTS Social histories bring history to life when they draw on voices from the past. Memoirs, letters, and photographs will enliven a historical narrative about a bygone Ceylon that evokes nostalgia. The period in question is the century between1850 and1950. The talk will be quartered into an introduction, a section on the period 1850-1900, another on the period 1900-1950, and a reflective conclusion. The introduction will provide a framework that tracks the speaker’s perspective as it evolved from his schoolboy days in Kandy to his life as a university professor in Sydney. The talk will offer an account about ancestors who arrived on the island during the reign of Rajasinha II as King of Kandy. Commentary will be made in the talk about what constituted the Chetties who formed the Colombo Chetty community in Dutch times and ...