Outbreak of the Great Rebellion of 1817–18 in Sri Lanka

Background. Following the annexation of the Kandyan Kingdom by the British under the Kandyan Convention in 1815, certain British actions increasingly antagonized the Kandyan chiefs, who found themselves under foreign administration. The Crown annexed the Kingdom of Kandy to British Ceylon in 1817. Earlier incidents included a secret 1816 proposal to remove the Sacred Tooth Relic from Kandy and a public offering at Bintenne and Kataragama calling for the overthrow of the British and restoration of a native king. Kandyan nobility were also unhappy with developments under British rule since 1815.

Outbreak. Around September 1817, the Governor, on D'Oyly's recommendation, appointed Haji Marikkar Travala as Madige Muhandiram, and Kandyan chiefs who disliked the appointment of Hadji Marikar as Madige Dissawe initiated the rebellion. In the same month, Major Wilson in Badulla received word that a person of Malabar origin was gathering a following in the Uva Wellasse region with claims to the throne of Kandy. The rebellion soon developed into a guerrilla war of the kind the Kandyans had fought against European powers for centuries.