Sri Lanka under Siege by US Cowboys & Indian Sahibs
Posted on February 10th, 2023
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What is the relationship between the 19th-century origins of the Bank of Ceylon (BoC) and the Oriental Bank Corporation (OBC). The BoC & OBC were first set up by the English to exploit Sri Lanka’s recently stolen lands and impose the coffee plantations,. Their HR (Human Resources, ahem) expertise was based on American (yes, this term includes the Caribbean) chattel slavery. The OBC in 1863 effected ‘the largest transfer of property ever in Ceylon’.
The OBC later lent 500,000 silver dollars in 1868 to the Japanese government
‘to finance its path of modernization’, to industrialization,
as ee reported last week.
That loan to Japan did not prevent the Oriental Bank Corporation from soon declaring bankruptcy. So where did the interest from that huge loan of silver dollars go? And what did all this have to do with setting up an English spy network alongside its mercantile ‘agency houses’? (see ee Focus)
• India’s Foreign Minister Subramaniam Jaishankar buzzed in to Colombo imposing the usual conditions for India’s support for the US IMF’s debt restructuring. The IMF wishes to delay any assistance as long as possible to buy off some of Sri Lanka’s top national assets for a song (a rock’n’roll dirge perhaps?).
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