Michael Roberts Papers at Adelaide University Library-by Michael Roberts

Michael Roberts

MICHAEL ROBERTS PAPERS, MAINLY ON SRI LANKA ……MSS 0031 AT = UNIVERSITY OF ADELAIDE LIBRARY HTTPS://WWW.ADELAIDE.EDU.AU/LIBRARY/SPECIAL/

Philip Gunawardena

Series 1: Transcript Fil

Aluwihare, Sir Richard 68 p.
Blood, Sir Hilary 62 p.
Dyson, E.T. 46 p.
Ferguson, G.H. 51 p.
Gimson, Sir Franklin 84 p.
Goonewardena, Leslie 34 p.
Hartwell, Sir Charles 45 p.
Leach, Frank 127 p.
Lucette, E.H. 34 p.
Miles, G.C. 58 p.
Mulhall, J.A. 65 p.
Newnham, H.E. 71 p.
Nihill, J.H.B. 22 p.
Roberts, T.W. 89 p. **
Rodrigo, Edmund 54 p.
Sandys, M.K.T. 38 p.
Stevens, F.G. 23 p.
Strong, A.N. 180 p.
Tilney, C.E. 41 p.
Wirasinha, V.L. 53 p.
Woolf, Leonard 30 p.
Woolley, Sir Charles 45 p.

Comments on E. Leach’s book Pul Eliya 87 p.
(various correspondents, arranged alphabetically

Comments on interviews 200 p.
(various correspondents, including both those for whom transcripts are available and many others, arranged alphabetically)

Curricula vitae
Collins, Charles 2 p.
Fernando, S. Shelton C. 1 p.
Naish, R.B. 1 p.

Philip Gunawardena interviewed by T.B. Subasinghe: first transcripts

Lists of questions for interviews and background on personnel (2 folders)

Confidential letters G.L. Davidson to M.W. Roberts and information 1966-67

MS letter 1966 from Sir Edmund Leach re permission to quote from Pul Eliya, with letters University of London Institute of Commonwealth Studies re interviews

** Also includes Thomas Webb Roberts’ Memoirs, C.V., comments on the interview, answers to questions and unrecorded information compiled by Michael Roberts in 1966. Plus copies of family data and photographs, letters from T.W. Roberts, obituaries and appreciations.

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A SPECIAL NOTE

The ROHP tapes and all the papers above are also available with the Roberts Mss at the National Library Services Board in the heart of Colombo on Torrington Rd [old name) alongside the National Archives [contact Mr Welimuni Sunil for details at sunilnldsb@gmail.com ,,,,].

A SIDELINE NOTE that is PERTINENT:

Having described the inspirations for this project while at Oxford in 1965 and indicated how the Barr Smith Library’s SPECIAL COLLECTIONS unit has facilitated access to the recorded interviews so that readers/researchers can access the data, I proceed here to (A) list the categories of personnel whose experiences were tapped April/May 1966 and circa 1969. The list of those interviewed can be accessed in a pdf file referenced at the end of this document as well as this reference in the University of Adelaide: ……………………………………………. https://digital.library.adelaide.edu.au/dspace/handle/2440/83263

In Britain:

In Ceylon (yet to become Sri Lanka):

I was teaching in Department of History at Peradeniya University from March 1966 to mid-1975. Most of this work was exacting because it was in the Sinhala medium and the marking of scripts was particularly onerous. However, I may have received some research grants from Peradeniya University to assist my trips to Colombo over week-ends and during vacation-time –for most of the Ceylonese public servants were located in its environs. I was also in the happy position of having two sisters, Dodo Sirimanne and Estelle Fernando, in Colombo to provide a home-base for my research endeavours.

As critical, nay vital, was the comfort and support provided by my wife Shona Roberts –not only seeing to home comforts but in the work of transcribing some of the interviews.[1] Since the interviews were recorded in old-fashioned tapes, this task was, as the Aussies say, hard yakka.[2]

Kim, Shona & Maya …. and the young ones in our first car

A particular dimension of this body of oral research demands clarification. My historical dissertation work had focused on British agrarian policies and their impact in the mid-19th century. As a university man I was exposed to the products of eminent scholars on contemporary Sri Lankan that focused on the impact of British rule in the 20^th century and on the colonisation schemes launched by DS Senanayake in the dry zone. Thus, the book The Disintegrating Village as well as Ralph Peiris’ Sinhalese Social Organisation (1956) were facets of my background knowledge. So, too, were the detailed ethnographic findings of such anthropologists as Edmund R Leach,[3] and Nur Yalman; while Marguerite Robinson presented paper at Peradeniya incorporating her fieldwork in villages in the Kandyan hills at some point in the 1960s and I recollect having her visit our home at Siebel Place for a chat and a meal at one point.[4]

These details are presented in order to clarify why and how I chose to focus on particular aspects of Leach’s findings during his village study of Pul Eliya in Anuradhapura District ….. and to subject these accounts to exacting examination. YES, examination and critical response from those public servants (both British and Sri Lankan) who had experience of the dry zone villages, the colonisation schemes and the working of the Land Development Ordinance of 1935. This highly specific and focused investigation was not conducted orally. It was on paper and by post.

I consider these results (the documents) to be among the most important of the whole Roberts Oral history Project. They can also be presented wholesale and immediately – a Thuppahi item that will follow this item.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brow, James 1978 Vedda villages of Anuradhapura: The historical anthropology of a community in Sri Lanka, University of Washington Press.

Farmer, BH 1957 Pioneer Peasant Colonisation

Leach, Edmund R. 1961 Pul Eliya. A Study of Land Tenure and Kinship, CUP

Peiris, Ralph 1956 Sinhalese Social Organisation

Robinson, Marguerite 19?? Political Structure in a Changing Sinhalese Village, CUP.

University of Ceylon Press 1957 The Disintegrating Village, University of Ceylon Press Board.

YALMAN NUR 1967 UNDER THE BO TREE: STUDIES IN CASTE, KINSHIP, AND MARRIAGE IN THE INTERIOR OF CEYLON,

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END NOTES

[1] Since Maya was born in February 1967 Shona’s work was amid minding both Kim and Maya and running our home. Indeed her typing aid continued way into the 1970s. Since the recordings were on spools this task was no sinecure ….and demanded work from me as well in listening and crosschecking the transcripts.

[2] The yakka, or yucca, grows and survives in arid and deserted landscape. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca.

[3] Edmund Leach had been one of the scholars assigned to read my doctoral dissertation and therefore was part of my interview board.

[4] This was after she had presented a paper at Peradeniya university on her ongoing field work.