The Forts That Cinnamon Paid For

South of our farms, on the coast, is Matara. There are two old forts there and cinnamon is the reason they exist.

The forts

Matara sits at the mouth of the Nilwala River. The name means great ford, from the river crossing (Britannica).

The Portuguese built a fort there in the 16th century to serve their spice trade. The Dutch took the town in the 18th century and rebuilt it.

The first fort was not built for fighting. It was an elephant taming and training centre, and the river made it easy to bring animals down from inland.

That changed in 1761, when local people and Kandyan forces took the fort. The Dutch answer was the Star Fort, finished in 1765, six-pointed so its guns covered each other.

Why they were here

They were here because of what grew inland.

Cinnamon was worth a great deal, and controlling it was worth building forts over. We have written the longer version in the great spice monopolies.

People here cut the bark and the money was made somewhere else.

It did not really stop

The forts stopped mattering. The way the money moved did not change.

Spice still passes through a collector, a processor, an exporter, an importer and a distributor before it reaches a jar. Everyone takes a margin. The person who cut the bark is furthest from the money.

That is not colonialism, it is just how commodity trading works. It is also why we do not do it.

What we do instead

Our farms are at Wilpita and Morawaka, inland from that coast, in the same district those forts were built to hold.

We sell straight from them, with nobody in between, so more of what you pay stays in the district.

We have not fixed four hundred years of anything, and we would not claim to have. We have shortened one chain, on two farms.

If you go

Both forts are still standing. They are worth twenty minutes if you are in Matara.

Sources: Matara, Britannica · Star Fort, Lakpedia · Matara Fort, Lakpedia