Late 19th Century
By the late 19th century the upper class natives of Ceylon (called Ceylonese by the British) formed a second class group in their own land, serving their colonial masters. The finest example of this would be the famous second class and third class carriages use by the Ceylonese on the trains due to the first was reserved only for Europeans. This upper class of Ceylonese derived their wealth from land holdings that were passed down the generations and derived their power from severing in posts in the British colonial administration. At first these were limited to post special posts reserved for natives such as Rate Mahattaya in the central highlands and the Mudaliyars in the coastal areas, letter as new generation of these native chieftains grew up educated in the Christian missionary schools, public schools modeled after their English counterparts and at British Universities they were taken in to the prestigious Ceylon Civil Service, others took up places in the Legislative and later the State councils. Entering into this upper class were successful merchants who gained wealth in the lucrative mining industry of the time.
A middle class emerged at this period of a bourgeois people who gained their status by Professions or by Business.
Read more about this topic: Social Structure Of Sri Lanka
Famous quotes containing the words late and/or century:
“When any man expresses doubt to me as to the use that I or any other woman might make of the ballot if we had it, my answer is, What is that to you? If you have for years defrauded me of my rightful inheritance, and then, as a stroke of policy, of from late conviction, concluded to restore to me my own domain, must I ask you whether I may make of it a garden of flowers, or a field of wheat, or a pasture for kine?”
—Matilda Joslyn Gage (1826–1898)
“There dwell the children of the dark Night, the dread gods Sleep and Death.”
—Hesiod (c. 8th century B.C.)