ABSTRACT
Colombo was from the beginning the chief focus of this Westernmanaged transformation, and although it cannot be said that it was founded by Westerners, it quickly became a more thorough-going agent and representative of the Western drive for commercialization and economic development, and more dominated by Westerners and their Asian collaborators, than any of its later parallels among the colonial ports.1 As the Colombo-based drive for commercialization of the Ceylon economy progressed, with production funneled out for export through the chief (and later the only practicable) port, Colombo virtually monopolized all urban functions for the island as a whole. It became the only 'real' city, with the entire island as its hinterland, including the other urban places (towns) as its direct satellites. Colombo's commercial development occurred later but in a similar manner.
