Acknowledgements -- Notes to the reader -- Glossary -- Maps -- Prologue -- Introduction -- Historical setting -- Historiography -- Conceptualising the 'peasant' in the context of the colonial hegemony -- Some methodological issues -- Sources -- Organisation of chapters -- Chapter One: The World of the Peasant -- Everyday life of the peasant -- Links with the outside world -- The world of the peasant and external forces -- Demographic patterns -- The horizons of the peasant's life -- Gama: What's in a name? -- The boundaries and the geographical sense of gama -- The internal setting of the village -- 1. The internal setting of Kahambilihena -- 2. The vasagama group and the internal setting of gama -- 3. Caste in the internal setting of the gama -- Some concluding remarks -- Chapter Two: The System of Production and Its Changes -- Level of rice production -- Three systems of production -- Changing patterns of land utilisation in the peasant production -- 1. Company policy towards chena cultivation -- 2. The changing role of gardens -- Coconut, areca nut, and jak trees as garden crops -- The market for garden crops -- Plantations as a new mode of land consumption -- 1. The rise and fall of cinnamon plantations -- 2. Ownership of cinnamon plantations -- 3. Coconut plantations -- Changing aspects of the traditional labour organisation -- 1. Colonial rule and the social division of labour -- 2. Draining labour out of peasant production through rajakariya -- 3. Labour supply for plantations -- 4. Changing labour relations among manufacturing and service castes -- Some concluding remarks -- Chapter Three: Land Tenure and Its Changes -- The main features of pre-colonial land tenure -- The land tenure system as found in the tombos -- 1. Paraveni lands -- 2. Lands that belong to the 'lord of the land' -- 3. Principal Land Holders (PLH).

4. Absentee Principal Land Holders -- Changes in the land tenure -- A historical explanation of the change -- Accommodessan grants -- The theory and practice of the concept of bhupati -- Summary of structural changes that occurred in traditional land tenure under the Dutch administration -- Chapter Four: The Emergence of a New Class Formation and the Rise of a Landowning Class -- Prelude to the new class differentiation -- Class structure of the Ogodapola formation -- Class structure of Mapitigama -- Some comparative observations on the class structure in Ogodapola formation and Mapitigama -- The rise of the landowning class -- 1. Numerical strength of the landowning class -- 2. Sources of economic power of the landowning class -- 3. Modes of acquisition of lands by the landowning class -- 4. Labour mobilisation by the landowning class -- 5. Production process of the lands of the landowning class -- Some concluding remarks -- Chapter Five: Caste and Social Mobility -- Caste in a colonial context -- Caste communities and hierarchies -- 1. Revisiting caste hierarchy: some problems in the history and historiography -- 2. The Goyigama caste and the ritual order -- 3. Perpetuation of caste distinction -- Caste formation in the mid-eighteenth century -- 1. Some features of the geographical distribution of castes -- 2. Regional specificities of the concentration and dispersal tendencies of the geographical distribution of castes -- Long term dynamics of the caste formation -- Caste and the Company -- 1. Changing economic power of non-Goyigama interior castes -- 2. Emergence of internal hierarchies in castes -- Communities v. hierarchy: some concluding remarks -- Chapter Six: The Discussion -- Land and labour -- Class and caste -- Dynamics of caste relations -- The problem of 'change' in peasant societies -- Epilogue -- Notes -- Appendices.

1. Chronological list of Kings of Kandy and Dutch Governors of Ceylon -- 2. List of accommodessan grants -- 3. Classification of people in various sources -- Bibliography -- Index.