History of Sri Lanka
For an island of its size, Sri Lanka has a history that is among the best documented in the world. The written record speaks of a rich history that extends beyond two and a half millennia. The monuments found in the country’s ancient and medieval cities give ample evidence of a civilization that flourished through in those days. This civilization grew due to Sri Lanka’s strategic location on the "Silk Route" of the sea at a strategic point on the Indian Ocean. It shows contacts with and the influences of Phoenicians and Greeks, Romans and Chinese, Saracens and Arabs, Indians and Indonesians.
If the ancient and medieval history of the country saw all these influences, from the 16th Century it also saw the influence of Western traders, proselytizers and colonizers in the form of the Portuguese, Dutch and British. While the Portuguese and Dutch ruled the Maritime Provinces for 150 years, the British had domain over the entire country for roughly the same period, until independence was obtained in 1948.
The official record begins more than 2,500 years ago with the arrival of migrants believed to be from the Northern parts of India, who were Aryans and brought with them many of the technological skills of that day as it had spread from Persia and Babylonia. The island also had its own inhabitants who were aborigines as well as others with a fairly well developed social structure. There cannot be the least doubt that before the arrival of immigrants from North India, who became known as the Sinhalese and fanned out throughout the country as the major community, there must have been immigrants who came in from the South of India that is closer. These are the Tamils, whose numbers were added to by subsequent frequent invasions and incursions by South India rulers, adventurers and plunderers particularly from the Chola, Kalinga and Maghada kingdoms.
If the Sinhalese came under the influence of the teachings of the Buddha, reportedly brought here by Mahinda, the missionary son of the Emperor Asoka, the Tamils largely remained under the influence of Hinduism. Nearly 1500 years ago there was also the influence of Islam, due to the arrival of Arab traders. All this was later followed by the influence of various branches of Christianity, brought by Western colonizers.
The Sinhalese rulers of the country for most of its 2,500 plus years of history were mainly influenced by Buddhism, brought here in the 3rd Century BC. The Buddhist kings of the past paid great heed to fostering Buddhism and the development of irrigation, and had massive inland reservoirs and channels built, that serve cultivators of rice even to this day. These and the "dagabas" or relics chambers of Buddhist temples in the ancient cities of Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa showed remarkable engineering and architectural development. Some of these "dagabas", especially the Ruvanveliseya at Anuradhapura (3rd Century BC) compares well in size and construction with the Pyramids of Egypt.
While Buddhism remained the dominant religion, there was also a considerable influence of Hinduism, particularly due to the Sinhalese kings bringing down princesses from India as their queens. The city of Polonnaruwa (10th to 12th Centuries AD) shows the influence that Hinduism had, with Hindu shrines having their own traditional architecture standing in very close proximity to the Buddhist temples. There is plenty of evidence to show that the Sinhalese Buddhists and the Tamil Hindus co-existed throughout the highly developed areas of the land, especially in the North Central and North Western regions and also in parts of the North. However, successive invasions by the adventurers from South India kept driving a large number of the Sinhalese towards the South, and to the central highlands.
By the time the Portuguese arrived in 1505, the Sinhalese in the Maritime regions had established themselves in the Kingdom of Kotte in the South West, while there was also the Kingdom of Kandy in the hills. Internecine fighting among the Sinhalese rulers led to three kingdoms and principalities in the Maritime region alone, no doubt encouraged by the Portuguese. The Portuguese were here for trade on their own terms. Sri Lanka was then, as it is today, a storehouse of rare spices of the Orient such as cinnamon, cloves, cardamoms, pepper, and nutmeg. They soon controlled the entire spice trade on the Maritime regions, laid much effort on spreading Roman Catholic Christianity.
The Dutch who followed the Portuguese, capturing the Maritime regions by force, were also interested in the spice trade and carried out a more systematic exploitation of these resources of the country, as well as its elephants and peacocks. They parleyed and won limited concessions from the King of Kandy especially for the spice trade. They introduced the Reformist Christianity of the Calvinist School. The Dutch, apart from their exploitation of the island’s resources, also made some effort to restore the ancient tanks of the Sinhalese and revive irrigation for a better rice harvest. They also introduced formal education to some degree, through the Church, and introduced the Roman-Dutch legal system, which is very much part of the system of justice to this day.
The last of the Western colonizers were the British. They also came for trade in 1796 and unlike the Portuguese and Dutch, were able to subjugate the entire country by 1815. It was part of the vast British Empire and was administered as such. While exploiting the natural resources of the land, the British also introduced coffee growing to the country, and when that crop was destroyed by blight, introduced tea. It opened up the vast virgin forests of the highland and took over the paddy lands of the peasants to plant tea, which remains a major export from Sri Lanka today. The British also built a good road network and railway to help in its trade and administration. They encouraged education, improved medical services and did many progressive changes including the introduction of Parliamentary Democracy that left Sri Lanka with a strong and efficient administration and a large number of professionals of its own, by the time the British left in 1948.
Since then Sri Lanka was first a Dominion within the British Empire till 1972, when it declared itself a Republic within the British Commonwealth, which is what it remains today as an elective democracy.