 The Invasion of Ceylon was a military campaign fought as a series of amphibious operations between the summer of 1795 and spring of 1796 between the garrison of the Batavian colonies on the Indian Ocean island of Ceylon ( now Sri Lanka ) and a British invasion force sent from British India . The Dutch Republic had been a British ally during the French Revolutionary Wars , but was overrun by the French Republic in the winter of 1794 and reformed into the client state of the Batavian Republic . The British government , working with the exiled Stadtholder William of Orange , ordered the seizure of Batavian assets including colonies of the former Dutch Empire . Among the first territories to be attacked were those on the coast of the island of Ceylon , with operations initially focused on the trading port at Trincomalee . 
