'A tulip in Lotus Land': the rise and decline of Dutch burgher ethnicity in Sri Lanka

Abstract

[Extract] This study on the Burghers of Sri Lanka addresses itself to the problem of social identity, the idea of race, and the concept of ethnicity. In particular the thesis focuses on the institutionalisation in 1908, of Dutch Burgher identity, as opposed to Portuguese or other 'non-Dutch' Burgher, in the form of the Dutch Burgher Union of Ceylon (DBU). Although the thesis is based mainly on a literature study, my argument does not depend on an exhaustive catalogue of texts dealing with Sri Lanka and the Burghers. Rather, the focus is on one particular text - the Journal of the Dutch Burgher Union - in order to analyse how a group has semantically constructed a distinctive identity category for itself, as well as to delineate structural conditions that have led to that construction in the first place.