Abstract:
The history of Sri Lankan Administration was changed with
several new aspects in the European period. “Administration is a process of
systematically arranging and coordinating”. Thus, the administration of a
government should be organized and coordinated. It is noted that such
administrative system was changed as per the purpose of rule of
Portuguese, Dutch and British in accordance with the period of Europeans.
Among such Europeans Dutch, ruled from the period 1658 to 1796. Under
their administration it was ruled the coastal areas of Ceylon by the three
Commanderies namely Colombo, Galle and Jaffna. Among such three
Commanderies Jaffna Commandery plays the significant part. The
documents belonged to Dutch period help to identify the salient features of
Jaffna commandery. The identity of Jaffna Commandery was shown through
several reports of Dutch. It can be easily known the political economical
religious and social aspects of Jaffna by such reports. So the purpose of this
study is to know the importance of Jaffna Commandery from the Dutch
Report, published by Rijckloff vanGoens in 1658. This research is carried
out based on the primary and secondary data using the historical and
descriptive analysis. The research will be useful to reveal the importance of
Dutch documents and to expose several aspects which were not exposed
before. And it will be supportive to the Jaffna society.
