A forgotten divorce. A contested empire. A deeply entangled past.

In 1817, British civil servant John Wallbeoff married Adriana Cornelia van Lynden, daughter of a Dutch VOC official born in colonial Ceylon. Twelve years later, he began divorce proceedings against her—a process left unfinished by his untimely death in 1831. From this quiet scandal emerges a richly layered story that opens a unique window into the social world of the English and the Dutch in Sri Lanka’s imperial meridian.

Blending intimate biography with panoramic history, The Wallbeoffs’ Divorce maps the deeply entangled lives of individuals shaped by overlapping empires—Dutch, British, and the indigenous empire of Trisinhalé. Drawing on rare archival sources and inspired by new imperial histories, this book brings to life colonial Colombo and its coastal towns, the inner workings of the colonial bureaucracy, and the subtle textures of race, gender, class, and power.

From furniture and fêtes to courtrooms and wills, Ramani Gunatilaka reconstructs not only the Wallbeoffs’ domestic world but also the imperial structures that framed it—revealing how personal lives were shaped by geopolitical forces, and how the intimate was inseparable from the imperial.

For scholars, students, and readers of South Asian, imperial, and social history, this book offers a compelling, human-scale view of empire—and an extraordinary tale of love, rupture, and survival across three empires.