Sri Vikrama Maduro

Sri Vikrama Rajasinha’s captured throne

From about 1812 until 1815, members of the Kandyan nobility conspired with a foreign power, the United Kingdom, promising to acknowledge its suzerainty over their country in exchange for help in removing their king while confirming them in their titles and positions under a new regime. The parallel with what happened in Caracas on the third of January seems exact.
    There were hints of it before, but Marco Rubio’s remarks yesterday let the cat out of the bag. The US, he seemed to suggest, will accept whatever constitutional arrangements the remaining leaders of the old Maduro regime propose, leaving them in power and granting them impunity in exchange for acknowledgement of effective US sovereignty over Venezuela and a monopoly of the country’s natural and economic resources. The form of words to describe this arrangement remains to be worked out, but the practical meaning of it is that Venezuala becomes an economic colony of the United States and America takes over its oil industry.

    It seems obvious now how it was possible to find Maduro and capture him so easily. The arrangement with Rodriguez, Padrino et al. must have been agreed some time ago; since then, their agents have been keeping track of Maduro’s movements and informing the Americans. I wonder who the person was who made the approach and conducted negotiations from the US side. Who was the American equivalent of John D’Oyly?

    In the fall of Kandy and its incorporation into the British Empire, the Kandyan chieftains ended up being the biggest losers of all. They got what they demanded from the British all right, but soon realised how worthless it was under a new culture and economic dispensation that devalued their assets and rendered their privileges meaningless. The Venezuelan ‘nobility’ will discover, in their turn, that they have sold their country and their people out for fools’ gold.

    The people of Venezuela will realise it earlier. In Kandy, it took just two years before the Uva Rebellion erupted and almost succeeded in driving the British out of Kandy. In that rebellion, most of what remained of the Kandyan nobility was wiped out. I expect much the same fate to befall the Chavista elite of Venezuela.