during this period. The Cardamom Proclamation of 1822, issued by the Rani Uthrittathi Thirunal Gowri Parvathi Bayi, the regent of the British Princely state of Travancore at that time, paved the way for bringing people from outside for collecting Cardamom from the forest of the Cardamom Hills in the district. The proclamation, issued on Malayalam Era 15 Medam 997 (which curresponds to CE 28 April 1822), entrusted Tamil workers from neighbouring districts of the Madras Presidency with harvesting cardamom in the region. The Kannan Devan Hills on the High Range region were given on lease on 11 July 1877 by the ruler of the Poonjar dynasty to John Daniel Munroe from London and for tea plantations. This created an influx of a large number of migrant Tamil plantation workers into the region from the neighbouring districts of the Madras Presidency and the linguistic demographics in the Taluks of Devikulam and Peerumede underwent a significant transformation during the last decades of the 19th century CE. Earlier the region was inhabited by various aboriginal tribes like Malavedas, Malayarayas, Muthuvans, and Paliyans, and was sparsely populated. The land and the plantations were later resumed by the Government of Kerala through the Kannan Devan Hills (Resumption Of Lands) Act, 1971. Munnar has acted as the summer residence of the British residents in Travancore. Tradition states that Colonel Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, was the first British man to pass through Munnar during Tipu Sultan's campaign into Travancore in the last decades of the 18th century CE, but this is unsubstantiated. The first survey of the terrain was undertaken by Benjamin Swayne Ward in 1816–1817, who followed the Periyar River into the Western Ghats and established a camp at the confluence of three rivers, from which the name of Munnar is derived. Munroe, Henry Turn, and his half-brother A W Turner, obtained ownership of the Cardamom Hills from the Raja of Travancore and began clearing forest around Devikulam in 1879. Munroe formed the North Travancore Land Planting & Agricultural Society in 1879. Soon many other Europeans began establishing tea plantations in the area throughout the 1880s, after A H Sharp, a European planter entered into tea cultivation in the region. Early plantations had few facilities and were mainly huts of straw. Most labourers on the tea estates were Dalits brought by the British from the neighbouring districts of the Madras Presidency. In 1897, a