Family formation and marriage patterns: a comparison between Sri Lanka and Europe.

Abstract

This thesis attempts to reconstruct the family structure of late eighteenth‐century Sri Lankan peasant society and to compare this society to the very different European society of that time. The family as a social unit will receive focus; differences between the European marriage pattern and the Sri Lankan marriage pattern, differences between the family as a unit in both regions, and differences in size and composition of families will receive attention. The thombos of eighteenth-century Sri Lanka form the primary source of this research. These are documents that registered people from different villages, the information gathered, such as names, ages, castes, services, marital status, children, family ties etc., enabled an analysis of Sri Lankan peasant society to be made.