During their occupation of Sri Lanka (1640–1796) and following Sinhalese and Portuguese practices, the Dutch created an elaborate registration of people, estates, and labour services. The administrative records known as the thombos are incomparable in their level of detail, yet they have hardly been used for the purposes of demographic or economic history. This article describes the challenges involved in ‘decoding’ the thombos, that is, reconstructing the meaning of particular variables in the light of the prevailing legal pluralism in which Sinhalese common law and Roman‐Dutch law co‐existed uncomfortably. It also summarises research findings from a pilot study involving about two hundred small villages in Colombo province. Finally, it sketches research horizons, as the thombo ‘treasure’ holds great prospects for (comparative) studies into family systems and the impact of colonial rule on fertility and mortality.

中文翻译：

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THOMBO宝藏。殖民人口管理作为现代斯里兰卡早期历史人口统计的来源

在占领斯里兰卡（1640年至1796年）期间，并遵循僧伽罗人和葡萄牙人的做法，荷兰人对人，房地产和劳工服务进行了详尽的注册。行政记录被称为“血栓”，其详细程度无与伦比，但几乎没有用于人口统计或经济历史的目的。本文介绍了“解码”血栓所涉及的挑战，即根据普遍存在的法律多元性来重新构造特定变量的含义，在这些法律中，僧伽罗人的普通法和罗曼-荷兰法共存。它还总结了一项涉及科伦坡省约200个小村庄的试点研究的研究结果。最后，它勾勒了研究的视野，