30 SOCIAL SCIENTIST construction of churches, seminaries and schools.7 The traditional and indigenous system which had been catering from very early times to the educational needs of children of the upper strata was not interrupted in Travancore and Cochin to the end of the nineteenth century when institutionalized education of the Western type grew to a size capable of supplanting it.8 In mid-nineteenth-century Travancore and Cochin a variety of factors, both external and internal, seemed to have contributed to what may be called a transformation into modernity. Prelude to Modernisation The mid-Victorian prosperity of England was one of the most im» portant external factors. Consequent on the repeal of corn laws in the late 1840s and the discovery of gold mines in the USA and Australia in the early 1850s, the foreign trade of England registered a phenomenal expansion; the living standards of the English improved fast; and England's capital accumulation was'at an unprecedentedly rapid rate9. The British capitalists found immense possibilities in plantation industries in Kerala: they convinced the rulers of Travancore and Cochin of the economic significance ©f plantations for the enrichment of their states10. Secondly, the state monopoly in commodities like pepper and tobacco had been for long a serious bottleneck in trade between Travancore and British India. As a result of persistent persuasion by the British authorities the Government of Travancore abolished the monopolies in the late 1850s and the early 1860s,, by which "the commercial resources of the country received an impetus never known before/'11 Thirdly, the period also witnessed a rise in the demand for labour "both skilled and unskilled in British Indian provinces and the overseas British territories like Ceylon and Mauritius". Among internal factors accounting for the rapid changes of the mid-nineteenth century, the more outstanding were the threat of annexation of Travancore by the British government;1 a the abolition of slavery and of the custom of compulsory and gratuitous services to be performed by {backward classes'; and the severe drought of 1860-61 which created conditions necessitating radical changes in the economic and educational policies.1 s Consequently Travancore of the 1860s saw the beginnings of a series of social and economic innovations in infrastructural development, agriculture and industrialization. In the field of transport, rapid increase was registered in the length of roads and waterways and in the number of bridges, canals, ports and harbours. The introduction of the post and telegraph and increase in the number of newspapers and journals opened up new frontiers in communications and mass media. Development was also witnessed in facilities like irrigation, schools, public health and sanitation. Coffee, tea and rubber plantations in the mountain's. tapioca cultivation in the plains and backwater reclamation for rice in the