Fabulous merchandise and fabulous nobodiesOctober 2008
By: Richard Boyle
Of Southasia’s port cities, Sri Lanka’s Galle – pronounced ‘Gaul’ – is remarkable due to its extensive maritime history, international trading links and threefold colonial domination, which led to a diverse and shifting ethnic composition. Unusually, one of the colonial powers – the Dutch – left a valuable legacy in the form of the best-preserved sea fort in the region, whose substantial ramparts and bastions largely protect it from the type of modernisation and homogenisation that has blighted most urban areas of this part of the world. More unusual still is that during the past decade, a small army of privileged Europeans has recognised the fort’s attributes and ambience (and appreciated the bargain price of the surrounding property) by purchasing and renovating many of the neglected 300-year-old architecturally important Dutch residences. While these self-described ‘fabulous nobodies’ have contributed to the preservation of Galle’s heritage, the irony is that the fort has once again become an enclave for acquisitive outsiders.
“Galle as seen from the causeway”, Steiger, c 1710
Galle’s location at the southwestern tip of Sri Lanka, with only the Antarctic across more than 5000 miles of ocean, ensured the prominence of the port during the early history of navigation. Not surprisingly, it became the natural focal point at the southernmost part of the Silk Routes that connected Asia with the Mediterranean. Galle also provided a relatively equidistant location for Arab and Chinese ships to converge and trade, thus avoiding much longer voyages. It had a fine natural harbour protected to the southeast by an elevated headland and to the northwest by a flat peninsula, although there were submerged rocks and the harbour was not protected from the southwest monsoon.
Part of the headland, known as Rumassala, is a mound-like hill, strangely out of place in the landscape. The Ramayana recounts that during the conflict between Ram and Ravan in Lanka, Ram’s brother, Lakshman, was wounded. Hanuman was then despatched to the Himalaya to bring a particular herb to cure Lakshman. But having reached his destination, Hanuman forgot the name of the herb. To solve the problem, he tore off a chunk of mountain containing many herbs, returned to Lanka, and deposited the rock at Rhumassala. There are many place names in the country associated with the Lanka scenes of the Ramayana. Unawatuna, the coastal village adjacent to Rhumassala, means ‘fell down’, again referring to Hanuman’s machinations.The prominent trade centre that Galle became 2000 years ago was described in 1859 by James Emerson Tennent in Ceylon:
It was the central emporium of a commerce which in turn enriched every country of Western Asia, elevated the merchants of Tyre to the rank of princes, fostered the renown of the Ptolemies, rendered the wealth and the precious products of Arabia a gorgeous mystery, freighted the Tigris with ‘barbaric pearl and gold’, and identified the merchants of Baghdad and the mariners of Bassora with associations of adventure and romance.
Chinese junks first sailed into Galle (which they referred to as ‘Lo-le’) for trade during the 4th century AD, introducing a link that would last for the next millennia. On their voyage to and from Galle, the Chinese invariably made landfall at the Thai island now known as Phuket, but earlier called Ujung Salang, or ‘Junk-Ceylon’. The Chinese brought with them silk, blue porcelain and enamelware, which they exchanged for the island’s fabulous merchandise, including ivory, ebony, calamander, tortoiseshell, pearls, corals and crystals, but most importantly gems – star rubies, blue and yellow sapphires, amethysts, garnets and topaz.
The Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta sailed from the Maldives to Ceylon during the mid-14th century and visited Galle. He described the town as “a small one”, and explains that “a Mussalman there, called the Ship-Captain Ibrahim, entertained us at his home”, which suggests that Arab merchant-seafarers had settled in Galle, as they had at other ports on the island’s west coast. Descendants of these merchant-seafarers, believed to be a composite group of Arabs, Persians and Muslim Indians, were known as Moors. That a cosmopolitan trading community flourished in Galle during this era is confirmed by the Muslim Chinese admiral Zheng He, who, on the third of his seven epic voyages, visited Galle in 1411, which he recorded in a trilingual inscription in Chinese, Tamil and Persian.
Punto de VOC
View of Galle, 17th century. Unknown artist
The European colonial era was presaged in 1505, when a Portuguese fleet took shelter in Galle harbour after being blown off course while pursuing Moorish spice ships in the direction of the Maldives. But although the Portuguese realised the strategic importance of the harbour, it was not until 1587, after the capture of Colombo, that they seized Galle and began the construction of a fortalice on the northwest peninsula of the harbour, a small and primitive affair made of palm trees and mud. Thus began Galle’s almost four centuries of European domination, which started with intense Roman Catholic missionary activity, and a Portuguese commander suspending young boys on the tips of spears and gloating, “Hear how the cocks crow!”
The use of the word cock has special significance, for the people of the Galle area were called Gallas, and galo is the Portuguese for cock. Indigenous etymology suggests Galle derives from the Sinhala gaalla, a place where a large number of bullock carts gathered. This appears to reflect Galle’s history as a trading centre. However, such etymology, when applied to the name of the satellite village of Magalle, presents the derivation magaalla, a place where there were a greater number of bullock carts. Perhaps it was advantageous to assemble the majority of the transport just outside Galle. Other researchers believe the name derives from the Sinhala gala, meaning rock, which is a remarkably common component of place names in Sri Lanka. Besides, Galle harbour hosts plenty of rocks.
The colonial nomenclature stems from the report that the Portuguese heard a cock crowing when they arrived, and so christened the town Punto de Gale, (‘Point of the Cock’), a name the Dutch borrowed after they wrested Galle from the Portuguese in 1640. In the bloody denouement, the Dutch had to contend with some valiant Portuguese hand-to-hand fighting that left the streets littered with dead. Happily, this was the only occasion on which Galle would witness conflict on such a scale.
The Dutch upgraded the 36-hectare fort by building an encircling rampart with 14 massive bastions, the three most important being the Ster (Star), Maan (Moon) and Zon (Sun), which isolated the peninsula from the mainland. Inside the fort, they devised a grid system of straight yet narrow streets. Many of the street names reflected the presence of commercial activity, such as Leyn Baan (Rope Lane) and Mohrische Kramer Straat (Street of the Moorish Traders). The Dutch installed an ingenious underground system of sewers flushed out by the tides. And then there was the distinctive architecture of the houses, low-roofed with ornate gables, wide hospitable doorways, street-facing colonnaded stoeps (verandas) and plant-filled courtyards. When completed, Galle was second only to Batavia, or Jakarta, among the Asian ports of the United Dutch East India Company, (Vereenigde Oost Indische Compagnie, or VOC).
To swell their presence on the island, the Dutch encouraged middle-class traders and businessmen in Holland – known as Burghers, or ‘free citizens’ – to migrate to the colonies to generate business, especially in trading centres such as Galle. As incentive, the Burghers were offered the privilege of keeping shops, and the sole right to become bakers, butchers and shoemakers. Most Burghers were employees of the VOC, but the company also enlisted men from Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Austria, so the cosmopolitan mix at Galle was further extended.
Moreover – and surprisingly – Swiss rather than Dutch soldiers patrolled the ramparts of Galle and other forts. As the colonists mainly belonged to the VOC, a mercenary regiment founded by a Swiss nobleman, Count Charles de Meuron, was contracted to defend them and their interests. In an extraordinary example of colonial deception, the British acquired Ceylon with minimum effort and miniscule cost by offering de Meuron GBP 5000, which exceeded the payment made to him by the Dutch. In late 1795, the regiment transferred to the British, and the Dutch were forced to surrender.
Galle’s architectural heritage remained unblemished during British consolidation, although plans were mooted that involved the destruction of most of the fortifications. The first detailed description of Galle in English, contained in Maria Graham’s Journal of a Residence in India, from 1812, confirms the untouched nature of the fort, and reveals a dearth of British subjects during the initial years of British rule:
Plan of Galle from Valentyn, 1726
Point de Galle is an old Dutch fort, very much out of repair, and not worth making better. It is very neatly kept, and has a cheerful air from the rows of trees planted on each side of the streets. There are not above six English families resident here, but at present a much greater number are collected, as the fleet assembles here for convoy, and to take in spices on the voyage home.
Note that Graham uses the name Point de Galle, an Anglicised version of Punto de Gale employed by the British during the initial decades of their rule, before common sense prevailed and Galle achieved common use. Graham also informs readers that a Chinese colony existed near the fort, “brought here by the government as gardeners; for none of the Europeans who have possessed Ceylon have yet been able to raise vegetables in the island; the patience of the Chinese has however succeeded.” Thus there were two Chinese communities in Galle – the gardeners imported by the British, and the long-settled traders in silk and textiles. The town even had a Chinese section, referred to by the Ceylonese as Cheena Koratuwa.
Apart from the Chinese and Moors, other traders in Galle at the time included Parsis, South Indians, Maldivians and Malays. Then there were Chetties (now Colombo Chetties), who migrated from Tamil Nadu during Portuguese rule. Two prime examples of latter-day Colombo Chetties are the siblings Michael and Sir Christopher Ondaatje. Lastly, there were Kaffirs, of African descent, transported to the island by all three colonial powers. The Portuguese and Dutch acquired them from Mozambique to work as slaves; for the Dutch, they constructed the Galle Fort. The British purchased them from India and Mozambique, primarily as soldiers.
Rubies, amethysts and carbuncles
With the advent of tourism to travel and transit passengers, Galle became the gateway to the Orient for many travellers, often providing Western eyes with a first glimpse of tropical exoticness. As Tennent observed in 1859: “No traveller fresh from Europe will ever part with the impression left by the first gaze upon tropical scenery as it is developed in the bay and the wooded hills that encircle it … The feeling of admiration and wonder called forth by its loveliness remains vivid and unimpaired.”
Galle’s importance as a passenger port was highlighted in 1842, when the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company commenced an agency there. This was a time when the harbour was crowded with ships at anchor. Besides the vessels of the newly emerged passenger lines, there were always merchantmen, especially clippers loaded to the gunwales with China tea on its way to London. This proliferation of shipping meant that some remarkable goods found their way to Galle, even apples-on-ice from America.
On a busy day, as many as 700 passengers would land at Galle. The streets and bazaars were crowded with sightseers eagerly taking in the strange surroundings, as well as the fabulous (and sometimes not so fabulous) merchandise on offer. The steady filter of passengers through Galle at its zenith resulted in an accumulation of descriptions not only of the atmosphere, but also aspects of the diverse population – hence providing a valuable adjunct to conventional written history. “On shore we found ourselves among a varied population of Asiatics,” writes William Maxwell Wood in 1859 in Frankwei; or the San Jacinto in the Seas of India, China and Japan.
The Sinhalese, with glossy jet-black hair smoothly kept back from the forehead by a semi-circular tortoise-shell comb, and done up in a knot at the back of the head … Moormen, in caps, with shaven heads, and voluminous shawls wrapped around their waists, are everywhere. These Moormen are the traders in jewellery and precious stones. Jewel boxes are taken from the folds of their shawls, and sapphires, rubies and amethysts, carbuncles, emeralds, cat’s eyes, and moon stones, displayed in gorgeous abundance … Prices are coolly asked for these little glittering ornaments which would indicate that money was in great supply at Galle.
Ten minutes sufficed us to walk through the principle street. We rested under the verandah of a comfortable modern hotel, making a hundred inquiries concerning the island and its wonders, continually interrupted by tempting offers of carved ebony elephants, coffee-wood sticks, cinnamon paper cutters, Sinhalese lace, not to speak of diamonds, pearls, and sapphires.
In those days, the currency was gold, and it would be idle to speculate on the amount of sovereigns that flowed into the tills of the shops and premier hotels – with such names as The Pavilion, The Eglington and Loret’s – as well as into the pockets of ordinary citizens. Indeed, the interaction with passengers was such that many of Galle’s inhabitants became wealthy compared to the rest of Ceylon’s population. In addition, hearing firsthand reports of other lands and other opportunities induced a number of Ceylonese from Galle to dream of making their name and fortune elsewhere.
Although migration among the Ceylonese was rare, many did take advantage of the potential for travel that existed at Galle. Lace and curio dealers, jewellers and goldsmiths, and gem-and-pearl merchants used their contacts in the shipping trade and sailed off, frequently achieving considerable business success in Africa, South America, East Asia and Australia. This was the period when the millennium-old influx of immigrants to Galle was partly offset.
An image of Unawatuna beach with Rhumassala in the background. “Pleas of the boatmen”, from “Utazas Kelet Indiakon”, by Count Emanuel Andrasy, 1853
But Galle’s fortune ended in the late 19th century with the British realisation that the Colombo port needed to be developed to meet the needs of steamers, and to efficiently export the colony’s new products, rubber and tea. An essential breakwater was completed in 1882 and, by 1890, all steamers were calling at Colombo, suddenly relegating Galle to minor significance, as it was too far from the production centre. Yet connoisseurs of the past have reason to be grateful for the port suffering this dramatic decline at this juncture. If its ascendancy had continued, expansion may well have irreparably damaged Galle’s heritage.
The inevitable decline occurred in the decades thereafter, but Galle played a vital role during the Second World War. Winston Churchill claimed “The most dangerous moment … was when the Japanese Fleet was heading for Ceylon.” With the possible capture of the island, the threat to India, and Japanese control of the Indian Ocean, “the future would have been black.” That this did not occur was largely due to the multi-national Royal Air Force airmen – fittingly including a Dutch section – stationed at Koggala, a lagoon just south of Galle, who flew Catalina flying-boats on reconnaissance missions to hunt the Japanese fleet, the same that had earlier attacked Pearl Harbour.
At dusk on 4 April 1942, a ‘Cat’ piloted by a Canadian spotted the fleet 350 miles southeast of Galle. This information was transmitted prior to the aircraft being shot down, providing time for some defensive planning before an air armada of 125 Japanese planes made landfall at dawn the next day in the Galle area, before heading north to attack Colombo’s harbour. Fortunately, the British Eastern Fleet had sailed for the Maldives as a precaution, and a subsequent raid on Trincomalee harbour also found few warships. Japanese attention then switched to the American threat in the Pacific.
Re-gentrification
After Ceylon’s independence in 1948, Galle had the chance of a new beginning, free of the yoke of four centuries of colonialism. But without a thriving port, and no alternative commerce, the town stagnated. Many of the Dutch houses and public buildings became dilapidated. The streets looked forlorn. However, there eventually came belated international recognition, first in 1969 when Galle was declared an archaeological reserve by the UN, and again in 1988, when the fort achieved the distinction of becoming a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Since the mid-1990s, Galle has experienced cultural and economic change on a scale not witnessed since the time of the Portuguese, Dutch and British. A number of wealthy foreigners, many of them British – from former actress Anouska Hempel to Jack Eden, descendant of former Prime Minister Anthony Eden – began to purchase the fort’s very favourably priced but ageing Dutch houses. Renovation customarily followed, sometimes adhering to traditional architecture, sometimes not. The result was a real-estate boom that ensured that the fort became a fashionable area, and created a vaguely aristocratic, often hedonistic crowd, proudly depicted by one of its members as “perhaps the greatest collection of fabulous nobodies in Asia”.
Beneath the imposing height of the inland-facing Star, Moon and Sun bastions, the Dutch prudently left a cleared area, two sides lapped by the Indian Ocean. Known by the British as The Esplanade, this was turned into a racecourse in 1876. However, in 1927 the racecourse was transformed into a cricket ground, upgraded to international standards in 1998. From the time of the first Test match between Sri Lanka and New Zealand, Galle provided a refreshingly different element of the game that grips Southasia. The Galle International Stadium is today considered one of the most picturesque cricket venues. The proximity of the bastions, from the top of which an excellent – and gratis – view of the game can be obtained, and of the ocean, sapphire-blue with traditional fishing craft sailing by, provides a further dimension to the game. Enthusiasts from Test-playing countries, in particular the numerous members of the so-called English ‘Barmy Army’, now had the opportunity to savour Galle.
Such regeneration suffered a major setback when the 2004 tsunami swept across another aspect of Galle, the characterless New Town situated beyond the fort’s peninsula. Thousands were killed, and the world witnessed horrific footage of the disaster, in particular people desperately clinging to the barely exposed tops of buses. The cricket grounds, substantially damaged (renovation was completed in December 2007), was able to play a vital role in Galle’s rehabilitation by becoming a temporary shelter for those who had lost all.
A valuable cultural aspect of the city’s regeneration is the ambitious Galle Literary Festival, which commenced in 2007 including William Dalrymple, Kiran Desai and Victoria Glendinning. It was immediately hailed by Harper’s Bazaar UK as one of the world’s six best literary festivals anywhere. In 2008, the chief participants were Gore Vidal, Vikram Seth and Alexander McCall Smith – creator of the detective from Botswana, Precious Ramotswe – who evoked Galle’s colonial past with his immaculate white suit and fedora. During the festival, Galle Fort partly regains the cosmopolitan atmosphere of a century and a half ago. The new hotels created from old buildings, such as The Fort Printers, The Galle Fort and the old New Oriental Hotel (refurbished and renamed Amangalla) all overflow. The narrow streets bustle with animated ‘passengers’, but instead of carrying curios of ebony and ivory, with perhaps some gems secured in a pocket, this 21st-century variety clutches books.
Although Galle has been described in travel books since the early 19th century, it has not entered the realm of fiction, despite the potential of its location and the arrival of so many literary types. Jorge Louis Borges could have concocted one of his masterful short stories set within the confines of the fort. Imagine Alexander McCall Smith shifting his heroine Precious Ramotswe from Botswana to Galle for an extraordinary case. I can just see her in the back of a three-wheeler, speeding down Rampart Street in quest of the truth.
Richard Boyle is an English writer who has lived in Sri Lanka for 25 years. His latest book is Sindbad in Serendib (2008).
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