Changing Face Of Colombo

Author – R.L Brohire

Publisher – Visidunu Prakashakayo

Third Batch 2007

ISBN 955-9170-31-7

62 Pages

The Changing Face of Colombo is a unique historical record with the focus on the island’s principal city, Colombo. 1505 to 1972 which spans the Portuguese, Dutch and British periods and takes the reader to the present. This book is by one of Sri Lanka’s well-known writers, Dr. R.L. Brohier, Hon. D. Litt. (Ceylon), Officer of Oranje Nassau, O.B.E., F.R.I.C.S., F.R.G.S. It was published posthumously from a manuscript that was completed in the early 1970’s.

Apart from being one of the most distinguished officers of the Survey Department where he served for 40 years and a reputed scholar on Sri Lanka, he had a special bond with Colombo. Richard Leslie Brohier whose family’s Huguenot-French founder came from Jersey to this island in 1777 to serve under the Dutch East India Company was born and bred in the heart of the city and his knowledge was enriched by his family especially by his grandfather from whom he says he gathered much of the concepts of Old Colombo.

Writer, scholar, antiquarian and historian, R.L. Brohier left this charming book for posterity. Readers will be interested to know the derivation of the name, Colombo; they will find themselves absorbed by the intrigues of political power struggles and the blood and thunder of battle and enchanted by the atmosphere of life in the Pettah of a generation ago.

The maps, specially selected from Land Maps and Surveys Vol. II, by R.L. Brohier and J.H.O. Paulusz interface effectively with the text. The illustrations which come as an Addendum – Views of Colombo (1518-1900) by Ismeth Raheem are rare, some of them which were published in a book for the first time, and researched to highlight the storied past the author guides the reader through.

This book is valuable, to both the expert and library collector, as well as to the general reader.

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