History
Early History
Palaeolithic human settlements have been discovered at excavations in several cave sites in the Western Plains region and the South-western face of the Central Hills region. Anthropologists believe that some discovered burial rites and certain decorative artefacts exhibit similarities between the first inhabitants of the island and the early inhabitants of southern India. One of the first written references to the island is found in the Indian epic Ramayana, which described the emperor Ravana as monarch of the powerful kingdom of Lanka. The main written accounts of the country's history are the Buddhist chronicles of Mahavansa and Dipavamsa.
The earliest-known inhabitants of the island now known as Sri Lanka were probably the ancestors of the Wanniyala-Aetto people, also known as Veddahs and numbering roughly 3,000. Linguistic analysis has found a correlation of the Sinhalese language with the languages of the Sindh and Gujarat, although most historians believe that the Sinhala community emerged well after the assimilation of various ethnic groups. Dravidian people may have begun migrating to the island from the pre-historic period. From the ancient period date some remarkable archaeological sites including the ruins of Sigiriya, the so-called 'Fortress in the Sky', and huge public works. Among the latter are large 'tanks' or reservoirs, important for conserving water in a climate that alternates rainy seasons with dry times, and elaborate aqueducts, some with a slope as finely calibrated as one inch to the mile. Ancient Sri Lanka was also the first in the world to have established a dedicated hospital in Mihintale in the 4th century BC. Ancient Sri Lanka was also the world's leading exporter of cinnamon, which was exported to Egypt as early as 1400 BC. Sri Lanka was also the first Asian nation to have a female ruler in Queen Anula (47-42 BC)
Ancient Sri Lanka was ruled by various small kingdoms that dominated different regions. The island was also infrequently invaded by South Indian kingdoms and parts of the island were ruled intermittently by the Chola dynasty, the Pandya dynasty, the Chera dynasty and the Pallava dynasty. The island was also invaded by the kingdoms of Kalinga (modern Orissa) and those from the Malay Peninsula. Buddhism arrived from India in the 3rd century BC, brought by Bhikkhu Mahinda, who is believed to have been the son of Mauryan emperor Ashoka. Mahinda's mission won over the Sinhalese monarch Devanampiyatissa of Mihintale, who embraced the faith and propagated it throughout the Sinhalese population. The Buddhist kingdoms of Sri Lanka would maintain a large number of Buddhist schools and monasteries, and support the propagation of Buddhism into Southeast Asia.
1517-1948: Colonial Era
Portuguese Era
The first Europeans to visit Sri Lanka were the Portuguese: Francisco de Almeida arrived in 1505, finding the island divided into seven warring kingdoms and unable to fend off intruders. The Portuguese founded a fort at the Muslim port city of Colombo in 1517 and gradually extended their control over the coastal areas. In 1592 the Sinhalese moved their capital to the inland city of Kandy, a location more secure against attack from invaders. Intermittent warfare continued through the 16th century.
Many lowland Sinhalese converted to Christianity, but the Buddhist majority disliked Portuguese occupation and its influences and welcomed any power who might rescue them. In 1602, therefore, when the Dutch captain Joris Spilberg landed, the king at Kandy appealed to him for help.
Dutch Era
In 1638 that the Dutch attacked in earnest, and not until 1656 that Colombo fell. By 1660 the Dutch controlled the whole island except the kingdom of Kandy. The Dutch persecuted the Catholics but left the Buddhists, Hindus and Moslems alone. However, they taxed the people far more heavily than the Portuguese had done. A mixed Dutch-Sinhalese people known as Burgher peoples are a legacy of Dutch rule.
In 1659, the British sea captain Robert Knox landed by chance on Sir Lanka and was captured by the king of Kandy. He escaped 19 years later and wrote an account of his stay. This helped to bring the island to the attention of the British.
British Rule
During the Napoleonic Wars the United Kingdom, fearing that French control of the Netherlands might deliver Sri Lanka to the French, occupied the coastal areas of the island (which they called Ceylon) with little difficulty in 1796. In 1802, the Dutch part of the island was formally ceded to Britain in the Treaty of Amiens, and became a crown colony. In 1803, the British invaded the Kingdom of Kandy in the 1st Kandyan War, but were bloodily repulsed. However, in 1815, Kandy was occupied in the 2nd Kandyan War, finally ending Sri Lankan independence. Following the bloody suppression of the Uva Rebellion or 3rd Kandyan War in 1817 - 1818, a treaty in 1818 preserved the Kandyan monarchy (Nayaks of Kandy) as a British dependency.
The Kandyan peasantry were stripped of their lands by the Wastelands Ordinance, a modern enclosure movement and reduced to penury. The British found that the uplands of Sri Lanka were very suited to coffee, tea and rubber cultivation, and by the mid 19th century Ceylon tea had become a staple of the British market, bringing great wealth to a small class of white tea planters. To work the estates, the planters imported large numbers of Tamil workers as indentured labourers from south India, who soon made up 10% of the island's population.
The British colonialists favoured the semi-European Burghers and also certain high-caste Sri Lankans, fostering divisions and enmities which have survived ever since. The Burghers were given some degree of self-government as early as 1833. It was not until 1909 that constitutional development began with a partly-elected assembly, and not until 1920 that elected members outnumbered official appointees.
The city of Colombo was established as the administrative centre, and the British established modern schools, colleges, roads and churches that brought Western-style education and culture to the native people. Increasing grievances over the denial of civil rights, mistreatment and abuse of natives by colonial authorities gave rise to a struggle for independence in the 1930s, when the Youth Leagues opposed the Ministers' Memorandum, which asked the colonial authority to increase the powers of the board of ministers without granting popular representation or civil freedoms. Universal suffrage was introduced in 1931, over the protests of the Sinhalese, Tamil and Burgher elite who objected to the common people being allowed to vote.
During World War II, the island served as an important Allied military base. A large segment of the British and American fleet were deployed on the island, as were tens of thousands of soldiers committed to the war against Japan in Southeast Asia.
1948: Political Independence
Following the war, popular pressure for independence intensified. On February 4, 1948 the country won its independence as the Commonwealth of Ceylon, with military treaties with Britain (the upper ranks of the armed forces were British) and British air and sea bases remaining intact. Senanayake became the first Prime Minister of Sri Lanka. In 1949, with the concurrence of the leaders of the Ceylon Tamils, he disenfranchised the Indian Tamil plantation workers. He died in 1952 and was succeeded first by his son Dudley Senanayake and in 1953 - following a massive general strike or 'Hartal' by the Left parties against the UNP (United National Party) government which led to Dudley Senanayake's resignation - by a relative, John Kotelawala. This led to the party being nicknamed the 'Uncle Nephew Party'.
In 1956, the UNP was defeated at elections (being reduced to 8 seats in Parliament) by the Mahajana Eksath Peramuna, which included the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) led by Solomon Bandaranaike and the Viplavakari Lanka Sama Samaja Party of Philip Gunawardena. In 1957 British bases were removed and Sri Lanka officially became a non-aligned country. The Paddy Lands Act, the brainchild of Philip Gunawardena was passed, giving those working the land greater rights in comparison with absentee landlords.
Bandaraike entered into a pact with Chelvanayagam of the Tamil-based Federal Party to secure more rights for the Tamils, but this was torpedoed when JR Jayawardene of the UNP organised a 'March on Kandy' in protest. This triggered hostility from the Tamil minority which soon led to disturbances, culminating in serious riots in 1958.
Philip Gunawardena was removed from the government as the right-wing of the governing coalition grew into the ascendant. Bandaranaike was assassinated in September 1959. His successor Wijayananda Dahanayake was unable to hold the government together, and elections in March 1960 brought the UNP under Dudley Senanayake back to office, but without a working parliamentary majority.
Fresh elections in July saw Bandaranaike's widow, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, lead the SLFP to power and become the world's first elected female head of government. Her government avoided further confrontations with the Tamils, but its socialist policies of nationalization led to a cut-off of United States aid and a growing economic crisis. After an attempted coup-d'etat by right-wing Army and Police officers, aimed at bringing the UNP back to power, Bandaraneike nationalised the oil companies. This led to a boycott of the country by the oil cartels, which was broken with aid from the Kansas oil producers co-operative. In 1964, she formed a coalition government with the LSSP, (Marxist Lanka Sama Samaja Party) with Dr N.M. Perera as Minister of Finance.
Dissatisfaction with the economic situation brought the UNP under Senanayake back to office in 1965, but this government fared no better, since the underlying cause of Sri Lanka's problems was the declining market for its traditional commodity exports, tea, coffee and rubber. In 1968 Bandaranaike formed a coalition, the United Front with the LSSP and the Communist Party of Sri Lanka, which swept the 1970 polls on a platform of socialism.
1970: Independent Republic
Under Bandaranaike, the country became a republic, the Free Sovereign and Independent Republic of Sri Lanka, the Senate was abolished and the position of Sinhala as the official language (with Tamil as a second language) was confirmed. Full independence was established as the last remaining ties of subjection to the UK were broken. The British-owned plantations were nationalised in order to prevent the ongoing disinvestment by the owning companies.
An attempt was made at economic independence, with a five-year plan to achieve industrial development. However, this was blocked due to a shortage of foreign exchange, which was exacerbated by the oil crisis of 1974, combined with an unprecedented drought which severely affected the harvest of rice, the staple food of the country's people. Strides forward were made in the fields of heavy industry, automotive spares and electronics.
In 1971, a group variously labelled Maoist or Guevarist, the People's Liberation Front (JVP) launched a rebellion, ostensibly revolutionary but considered by some to be motivated largely by anti-Tamil nationalism. Although the JVP rebellion was brutally suppressed, the JVP found a place in Sri Lankan politics as a voice of leftist Sinhalese chauvinism, along with the right-wing movement in the UNP associated with Cyril Mathew. Militant Tamil Chauvinist movements, for example, the Pulip Padai, had been launched in Trincomalee in 1965. The Jaffna University was 'ethnically cleansed' of non-Tamils in 1976, and the city itself began to be subject to similar 'cleansing'.
The extreme-Tamil groups rejected and physically eliminated the main Colombo -Tamil leadership. Tamil public servants or members of parliament working with the government were harassed. The mayor of Jaffna was assassinated in 1975. The militants claimed their independence, their rights, and their 'traditional homeland', and formed armed separatist groups such as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam ('Tamil Tigers'), demanding an independent Tamil state called Eelam. Much of this had the implicit and material support of politicians in India.
New Constitution
By 1977, the voters were tired of Bandaranaike's socialist policies and elections returned the UNP to power under Junius Jayewardene on a manifesto pledging a free ration of 8 seers (kilograms) of cereals. The SLFP and the left-wing parties were virtually wiped out in Parliament (although they garnered 40% of the popular vote), leaving the Tamil United Liberation Front, led by Appapillai Amirthalingam, as the official opposition.
In 1978 Jayewardene introduced a new constitution making Sri Lanka a presidential 'Democratic Socialist' republic, with himself as executive President . In 1980 he crushed a general strike by the trade-union movement, jailing its leaders. When the UNP member for the parliamentary constituency of Kalawana was removed on an election petition by his Communist opponent, Jayawardene allowed him to continue sitting in the house.
President Jayawardene had the constitution amended (one of 13 amendments during his 10 years in office) to allow presidential elections to be held early, in 1982. These elections, held amidst widespread acts of electoral malpractice (Hector Kobbekaduwa, the main opposition candidate, arrived at the polling station only to find his vote had already been cast) resulted in Jayawardene's re-election. He followed this with an infamous plebiscite on postponing parliamentary elections for six years.
1983: Civil War
Political, economic and other relations between Tamils and Sinhalese have suffered since independence. The Tamil community cites extensive institutional discrimination and political disenfranchisement, and seeks increased regional autonomy and affirmative action. In the 1980s, the island's peace and stability was shattered by the Tamil separatist movement led by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), which demanded an independent state of Eelam in northeastern Sri Lanka. A 1986 peace accord brokered by India failed by 1988 when Indian peacekeepers were drawn into a direct military conflict with the LTTE while attempting to disarm the militants. Sri Lankan nationalists sought the exit of Indian troops, and by 2000 as many as 50,000 people were killed in battles between the Sri Lankan Army and the LTTE, which controls parts of the northeast.
A tentative ceasefire in 2002 restored peace to the island as the government and the LTTE engaged in diplomacy under the mediation of Norway. However renewed hostilities broke out in late 2005 and have continued to escalate, resulting in the deaths of over 4,000 people since November 2005.
