This book is a study of the relationship between the British government and the Kandyan Kingdom between 1976 and 1818 in which new methods of assessing evidence are adopted and new views offered on a number of themes. The existing historiography is based on a study of British primary and secondary sources in which primary sources preponderate and the documentary sources are neglected to a surprising degree. The unreliability of hearsay is not recognized and hearsay is far too often accepted as fact. The documentary evidence in the national archives at Colombo and Kandy has been neglected, too.