ABSTRACT
The purpose of this chapter is to chart the rise of accountancy in Sri Lanka and to examine the infl uence of the British Empire on its organization. Highlighting the infl uence of British accountants practising in Sri Lanka and British models of education and training for accountants of Sri Lankan origin, the chapter will focus on the tussles between competing groups within the profession. There were two main groups: the ‘elite accountants’ with British accountancy qualifi cations who founded the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Sri Lanka (ICASL); and the ‘nonelite’ Registered Accountants (RAs) who took the examinations of the local accountancy board, graduated from local universities and formed the lower tier of the profession. The former group, being members of the elite stratum of Sri Lankan society with access to British-style education and local political connexions, crafted an elite accountancy tradition that
1. Sri Lanka is a tropical island in the Indian Ocean, 25,483 square miles in area. The population is 19.9 million and highly educated; the literacy rate of 96 per cent being attributable to the free education system. Colonial rule began in Ceylon with the arrival of the Portuguese in 1506 and the subsequent arrival of the Dutch in the seventeenth century.
