Many visitors from Europe since Saar of Nuremberg (1647-1658) have left on record their experiences in Ceylon during the time of the Netherlands East India Company, and the most important of these narratives have been translated into English and published from time to time. Much information is contained in the pages of various journals and magazines, and an important series of seven memoirs issued since 1903 by the learned government archivist and his able Assistant, Mrs. Anthonisz, has shed a great deal of light on the administration and policy of the company till 1740. Sir Alexander Johnston, Chief Justice of Ceylon from 1811 to 1819, left behind a valuable collection of manuscripts, much of which has been rendered accessible to me through the great kindness of Mr. A. W. Winter of Baddegama. In addition, private documents in Sinhalese Walauwas throw an interesting and personal sidelight on the period. Out of this material the present compilation has been made, in the hope that it will furnish the average inhabitant of Ceylon who can read English with a coherent, reasonably accurate, and perhaps not uninteresting account of his country during its transition from the mediaeval to the modern. The Medal shown in the Frontispiece was very kindly placed at my disposal by Mr. H. de O. Ekanayake of Matara. This book is the sequel to another, Ceylon and the Portuguese, written for publication in England. Though the issue of this latter has been delayed by war conditions, the reader has been treated as not unfamiliar with its contents.
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