The Ceylon Rifle Regiment (CRR) was a regular native regiment formed by the
British
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies.
* British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...
in
Ceylon
Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, also known historically as Ceylon, is an island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, separated from the Indian subcontinent, ...
. Its history goes back to 1795.
The nucleus of the Regiment was two companies of Malays recruited from among prisoners at St Helena. In 1795 there were some 300 prisoners there taken from vessels of the
Dutch East India Company
The United East India Company ( ; VOC ), commonly known as the Dutch East India Company, was a chartered company, chartered trading company and one of the first joint-stock companies in the world. Established on 20 March 1602 by the States Ge ...
. Some 70 or 80 Danes, Norwegians, and Swedes joined the British
East India Company
The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company that was founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to Indian Ocean trade, trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (South A ...
. The Malays apparently were glad to serve under British command as they found the treatment they received much better than that to which the Dutch had subjected them. The men of the two companies were trained as artillerymen. After about two years, the companies were transferred to
Bencoolen, and later from there to Ceylon.
[Brooke (1824), pp.313–4.]
In all, five independent companies of
Malays were transferred from
Dutch to
HEIC service. Since then the regiment under different names fought for the British in the
Kandyan War and the
Uva Rebellion of 1818.
The Ceylon Rifle Regiment saw action in the
Matale Rebellion in 1848. Since it served no practical application it was disbanded in 1873.
Trivia
*The regiment's officers'
mess
The mess (also called a mess deck aboard ships) is a designated area where military personnel socialize, eat and (in some cases) live. The term is also used to indicate the groups of military personnel who belong to separate messes, such as the o ...
is now known as
Visumpaya.
*The regiment's
barracks
Barracks are buildings used to accommodate military personnel and quasi-military personnel such as police. The English word originates from the 17th century via French and Italian from an old Spanish word 'soldier's tent', but today barracks ar ...
, known as the ''Rifle Barracks'', after being abandoned for a long time has been refurbished and in 2007 turned into the
National Defence Services’ School, Colombo.
Citations and references
Citations
References
*Brooke, Thomas Henry (1824) ''A History of the Island of St. Helena, from its discovery by the Portuguese to the year 1806''. (Kingsbury, Padbury & Allen).
See also
*
Sri Lanka Army
The Sri Lanka Army (; ) is the oldest and largest of the Sri Lanka Armed Forces. The army was officially established as the Ceylon Army in 1949, though the army traces its roots back in 1881 when Ceylon Light Infantry Volunteers was created; ...
External links and sources
Sri Lanka Army
{{Authority control
Regiments of Ceylon
Ceylon Defence Force
British colonial regiments
Indigenous counterinsurgency forces
Military units and formations established in 1795
1873 disestablishments