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A history of the evolution of the Plantation Tamil community of Ceylon, a heterogenous sub-category of what the colonial government called "Indian Tamils", up to independence in 1948, with an emphasis on the years 1910-41. This text argues that, to some extent, the plantation labourers were able to act effectively by conscious decisions to emigrate, to work on the plantations and to settle there, but that their weakness made them "patients" as much as "agents". The Plantation Tamil community as it existed at independence was constituted dialectically: both the colonial demands for a cheap, efficient, reliable labour force and the discourse about these demands shaped the community, but the actions of the workers also contributed to social change.