In the early 16th century, a pound of cinnamon in European markets was worth more than twice its weight in gold. In 1439, an average worker needed three full days of labor to earn enough to purchase just one pound of this precious spice. This extraordinary value would draw three successive European empires to the tropical island of Ceylon, each willing to wage war, establish brutal monopolies, and fundamentally reshape the island’s society—all for control of a fragrant bark peeled from the inner layers of a tree.
The Portuguese Conquest: A Storm-Blown Discovery
The European chapter of Ceylon’s cinnamon story began almost by accident in 1505, when a Portuguese fleet commanded by Lourenço de Almeida was blown off course by a storm and landed on Ceylon’s shores. What the Portuguese discovered would change the course of the island’s history for the next three centuries. Ceylon was home to the world’s finest cinnamon—Cinnamomum verum, or “true cinnamon”—growing wild in abundance along the island’s southwestern coastal belt, particularly around Colombo, Kalutara, and Negombo.
The Portuguese moved quickly to secure this prize. By 1518, they had constructed a fort on the island, enabling them to establish and protect what would become one of the most lucrative monopolies in the history of global trade. For over 150 years, Portuguese merchants controlled the cinnamon trade, reaping extraordinary profits. Historical records reveal that in the late 16th century, Portuguese traders enjoyed a tenfold profit margin when shipping cinnamon on the mere eight-day journey from Ceylon to India, where they could then distribute it throughout their vast trading network stretching back to Lisbon.
To maximize these profits, the Portuguese implemented a regime of extraordinary brutality. They made the destruction or poor management of cinnamon groves a crime punishable by death. When they needed to increase production to meet growing European demand, they enslaved many members of the Ceylonese native population, forcing them into cinnamon harvesting. The burden fell most heavily on the Salagama community, who had been compelled into cinnamon peeling as early as 1406 by the King of Kotte, though their situation deteriorated dramatically under Portuguese rule.
Under the Portuguese system, boys as young as 12 from the Salagama community were forced to peel cinnamon and deliver fixed quotas that increased according to their age and physical condition. Previously, only the head of household had been required to perform this work, but the Portuguese expanded the labor conscription to meet European market demands. The Portuguese monopoly would last until 1649, when a new and even more efficient colonial power arrived with ambitions of its own.
The Dutch Supremacy: Industrial Monopoly and Systematic Exploitation
In 1638, Dutch traders of the powerful Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC)—the Dutch East India Company—established their first trading post in Ceylon. By 1640, with the support of King Rajasingha II of Kandy, who sought allies against the Portuguese, the Dutch launched a successful attack and captured the strategic port of Galle from their European rivals. The competition between the Portuguese and Dutch over Negombo’s cinnamon trade was particularly fierce, as this region held some of the finest cinnamon plantations on the island.
By 1658, the Dutch had permanently expelled the Portuguese from Ceylon, thereby gaining complete control of what they recognized as the world’s only source of abundant, high-quality cinnamon. The island produced cinnamon unlike anywhere else on earth, and the VOC was determined to exploit this advantage to its fullest extent.
The Dutch transformed cinnamon production from a collection of feudal obligations into an industrial enterprise. They encouraged the systematic plantation of cinnamon along the entire coastal belt, particularly around Colombo, Kalutara, and Negombo, introducing improved cultivation methods and standardized harvesting techniques. By 1665, they had expanded their territorial control to the east coast, thereby controlling most of the cinnamon-growing lands and all points of entry and exit on the island.
The scale of Dutch operations was unprecedented. The VOC exported between 8,000 and 10,000 bales of cinnamon annually, generating an extraordinary income of 2.5 million guilders per year for the Dutch colonial administration. At the time, the Dutch were shipping approximately 270 tons of cinnamon per year—a vast quantity for that era, though modest compared to modern production of around 35,000 tons annually.
To maintain their monopoly and keep prices astronomically high in European markets, the Dutch implemented ruthless strategies. They deliberately burned wild cinnamon forests to create artificial scarcity and established strict quality controls. The VOC monopolized cinnamon trading completely, protecting it fiercely not only from European competitors but even from private Dutch merchants who might challenge the company’s control.
But the most brutal aspect of Dutch rule was the treatment of the Salagama cinnamon peelers, whose suffering intensified dramatically under VOC administration. The Dutch demand for cinnamon far exceeded that of the Portuguese. Workers faced horrific punishments: they had their ears cut off, were confined in chains, and were regularly whipped and branded. The Dutch forced anyone “who could stand up and walk with the help of a stick” to peel cinnamon, regardless of their physical condition.
When some Salagama people attempted to escape their fate by marrying into lower castes, the Dutch discovered this strategy and passed new laws declaring that even marriage to a person of lower caste could not free someone from their hereditary obligation as a cinnamon peeler. By the era of British control, mortality rates among Salagama workers had increased sharply, and it became common practice for families to register their children under the names of other castes to spare them “a life of ever-growing misery,” as historical records describe it.
For nearly a century and a half, until 1796, the Dutch maintained this profitable but brutal system, making the cinnamon monopoly the cornerstone of their colonial presence in the maritime provinces of Sri Lanka.
The British Transition: From Monopoly to Modernization
In 1796, as the Napoleonic Wars reshaped the map of Europe, British forces captured Ceylon from the Dutch. The immediate prize was substantial: the British acquired £300,000 worth of goods along with the valuable cinnamon plantations that had enriched the Portuguese and Dutch before them. By 1799, British Governor Frederick North had secured control of the prime cinnamon-growing lands around Colombo and Negombo.
The British maintained the cinnamon monopoly until 1833, when they finally opened the trade to private merchants. However, by this time, the extraordinary value of Ceylon’s cinnamon monopoly had already begun to decline. The British had successfully introduced cinnamon cultivation to other colonies, including the establishment of the Anjarakkandy Cinnamon Estate near Kannur in Kerala, India, in 1767—which would become Asia’s largest cinnamon estate. As cultivation spread geographically, prices fell.
Moreover, European consumer preferences were shifting. The cheaper cassia bark, though inferior to true Ceylon cinnamon, became more acceptable to average consumers. New commodities from around the globe—coffee, tea, sugar, and chocolate—began to outstrip the popularity of traditional spices. Under British rule, colonial administrators increasingly turned their attention to what they perceived as more profitable crops, particularly coffee and later tea, which would come to define Ceylon’s agricultural economy in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The British did expand and modernize the spice industry, developing infrastructure and increasing production efficiency, but cinnamon would never again command the extraordinary prices that had once made it worth more than gold. By the mid-19th century, the age of the cinnamon monopoly—the era when a single spice could justify wars, enslavement, and the conquest of an entire island—had definitively ended.
Legacy of the Golden Bark
The cinnamon trade fundamentally shaped Sri Lankan history for more than three centuries. It determined which European powers would control the island, drew the boundaries of colonial territory, and profoundly affected the social structure of Ceylonese society, particularly the Salagama community whose descendants still bear the historical memory of forced labor and brutal exploitation.
The story of Ceylon’s cinnamon is ultimately a story of how global commerce, colonial ambition, and the European appetite for luxury goods could transform an aromatic tree bark into an instrument of empire-building. Three successive colonial powers—Portuguese, Dutch, and British—recognized that control of this single commodity was worth the investment of military force, administrative infrastructure, and the human cost of an exploited labor force.
Today, Sri Lanka remains the world’s leading producer of true Ceylon cinnamon, exporting this spice to markets around the globe. But the cinnamon that workers carefully peel and roll into the distinctive quills now commands prices measured in dollars per kilogram rather than its weight in gold. The era when cinnamon required three days of labor to purchase a single pound, when it could justify the conquest of an island and the enslavement of a people, belongs to history.
Yet that history continues to shape Sri Lanka’s economy, society, and place in global trade networks. The cinnamon gardens of Colombo, though mostly disappeared beneath urban development, gave their name to neighborhoods that remain today. The techniques of cinnamon peeling, passed down through generations of Salagama families, represent centuries of accumulated knowledge. And Ceylon cinnamon itself, recognized worldwide for its delicate flavor and superior quality, remains a testament to the island’s unique agricultural heritage—a heritage born from both natural abundance and the darker chapters of colonial exploitation.