Conclusion
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also in Colombo that the colonial space of Ceylon and the larger imperial space of the British Empire both converged and fused into a single entity giving access, on one hand, into the external world of empire and, on the other, for some at least, the interior world of the colony. Space is whole and broken, global and fractured, at the same time. 6 As much as social spheres, space also can be conceptualized at various “scales” and “levels”--of world-space, empires, states, city structures, landscapes and in terms of urban and architectural design, in regard to the political, economic, and cultural construction of these. As I have argued in Chapter One, the Ibero-Papal spatial practices--such as the division of the world between the Portuguese and the Spanish, and the mounting of expeditions to the same place in two opposite directions using a particular perception of the extra-European world--in effect, constructed for Europe a world-space that was knowable and controllable. Although what the Portuguese actually created was largely limited to a seaborne space across and around the Indian Ocean, marked by military and trading outposts, the Dutch, British, and French, displacing them, constructed a world wide system of states and empires that was centered on western Europe. In making this investigation, I have emphasized the multivalence of meanings of social space by addressing its transformations across various spatial scales, social spheres, and through the lenses of different disciplines. Thus, the restructuring of Colombo--particularly the destruction of fortifications, and the creation of a marine promenade and the suburb of Cinnamon Gardens--in the late nineteenth century is equally a political, economic, and cultural phenomenon, a response to, as well as being a part of, both a global and “national” restructuring of space between the 1860s and 1890s. Addressing the multiple meanings of the factors behind the production of space and the built environment is not a new scholarly endeavor; nonetheless, the attention placed on economic or cultural primacy, and assumed in many studies of social space, has tended to downplay the politics of its construction, reproduction, and institutionalization. Going somewhat further, this book has attempted to demonstrate that what is often seen as the primacy of the economy in a capitalist system is also a particular construction of that same system. Hence, more attention should be focussed on the phenomena of politics and culture in the construction of society and space. A further conclusion emerging from this study is that, despite the political, economic, and cultural intentions generating the production of space, the decisions of various agencies regarding what spaces to produce and when and where to produce them are frequently the outcome of cultural decisions. These are only facilitated and modified by social, political, and economic systems, physical constraints, and the availability of resources and technology. This is evident in, for example, the Iberian construction of “India,” the Portuguese construction of the “Moors,” and the factories and forts in Asian ports based on perceptions brought from the metropole. In regard to the B ritish, this process is exemplified by the cognitive and spatial familiarizing of both Colombo and Kandy, the physical as well as mental and cultural construction of the residential suburb of Cinnamon Gardens,