British Colonial Period
The Sri Lankan Tamils were eager to take up the educational and economic opportunities available to them when Sri Lanka was under British colonial rule.
Many of the Vellalar Jaffna Tamils availed themselves of the educational opportunities provided by the colonial authorities & missionaries and together with their hard work earned many government posts offered to locals by the British. In foreign lands under British rule, the British needed obedient, trusted, hard-working and skillful people to take up government posts, mainly as clerks. This led to the first wave of migrations by the Tamils to countries such as Malaysia (then Malaya), Singapore and the then Madras Presidency in India.
Read more about this topic: Sri Lankan Tamil Diaspora
Famous quotes containing the words british, colonial and/or period:
“These battles sound incredible to us. I think that posterity will doubt if such things ever were,—if our bold ancestors who settled this land were not struggling rather with the forest shadows, and not with a copper-colored race of men. They were vapors, fever and ague of the unsettled woods. Now, only a few arrowheads are turned up by the plow. In the Pelasgic, the Etruscan, or the British story, there is nothing so shadowy and unreal.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Are you there, Africa with the bulging chest and oblong thigh? Sulking Africa, wrought of iron, in the fire, Africa of the millions of royal slaves, deported Africa, drifting continent, are you there? Slowly you vanish, you withdraw into the past, into the tales of castaways, colonial museums, the works of scholars.”
—Jean Genet (1910–1986)
“... there has never been a period in history when there have been necessary killings which has not been instantly followed by a period when there have been unnecessary killings.”
—Rebecca West (1892–1983)