Sri Lanka

Sinhalese tradition, recorded in the chronicle known as the Mahavamsa, traces the island's settlement to Prince Vijaya and his followers in the 5th century BCE, and attributes the founding of the kingdom of Anuradhapura to Pandukabhaya, third king of the Vijaya line. Modern archaeology complicates this legend: settled agriculture, tank irrigation, iron use and pottery were present before the Indo-Aryan migrations, and early Sinhalese culture emerged from a synthesis of Indo-Aryan, pre-Indo-Aryan and Dravidian elements during the Anuradhapura period, which spanned roughly the 3rd century BCE to the 10th century CE.

Around the 3rd century BCE a mission sent during the reign of the Mauryan emperor Ashoka brought Buddhism to the island. Its leader, Mahinda, met the Sinhalese king Devanampiya Tissa near the Mihintale hill outside Anuradhapura and converted him, making the king a powerful patron of the new faith. The Mahavihara monastery at Anuradhapura became a historic centre of Theravada Buddhism, and a sapling of the sacred Bodhi tree, brought by Mahinda's sister Sanghamitta, was planted there. Buddhism became central to Sinhalese identity and statecraft.

Anuradhapura flourished for some thirteen centuries as a religious and political capital. Its kings raised colossal brick stupas and, above all, mastered water: an intricate network of tanks (reservoirs) and channels turned the dry northern plain into productive rice land, a feat that earned the era the name of a hydraulic civilisation. From the 2nd century BCE the kingdom was repeatedly invaded from South India, and after a Chola conquest at the end of the 10th century the capital was finally abandoned in favour of Polonnaruwa around 1017.

Turning points

1. c. 5th century BCEFormation

   Sinhalese settlement and the founding of Anuradhapura

   By tradition Prince Vijaya's followers settle the island; the kingdom of Anuradhapura is founded under Pandukabhaya and grows into the strongest Sinhalese state, capital for over a thousand years.

   [2] [4]

2. c. 3rd century BCEReligion

   Buddhism introduced under Devanampiya Tissa

   The missionary Mahinda, sent during the reign of the Mauryan emperor Ashoka, converts King Devanampiya Tissa near Mihintale, establishing Theravada Buddhism as the island's defining faith.

   [3] [17]

3. from c. 2nd century BCECulture & Ideas

   Hydraulic civilisation and South Indian invasions

   Anuradhapura's kings build vast reservoir-and-channel systems to irrigate the dry plain, while recurrent invasions from South India culminate in the Chola conquest and the abandonment of the capital around 1017.

   [4] [13]

Figures of the era

After Anuradhapura fell, Polonnaruwa rose as the island's second capital, reaching its zenith in the 12th century under Parakramabahu I (reigned 1153–1186). A builder-king in the old hydraulic tradition, he is famed for the vast reservoir at Polonnaruwa known as the Parakrama Samudra, the 'Sea of Parakrama', and for a vision that no drop of rain should reach the sea unused. The garden-city he created, with its palaces, monasteries and monumental rock-cut Buddha images, survives as one of Sri Lanka's foremost archaeological sites.

Polonnaruwa's prosperity did not last. Renewed invasions from South India, the silting and decay of the great irrigation works, and the spread of malaria in the dry zone undermined the northern heartland. From the 13th century the centre of Sinhalese power drifted south-west and into the central highlands, fragmenting into competing kingdoms. The dry-zone civilisation that had sustained millions for over a thousand years gradually emptied, its tanks and cities reclaimed by jungle.

By the later medieval period several kingdoms shared the island. In the hill country the kingdom of Kandy emerged as the principal independent Sinhalese state, its mountainous setting making it remarkably difficult for outside powers to subdue. A Tamil kingdom centred on Jaffna held the north. This patchwork of states, with no single ruler over the whole island, was the political landscape that European powers encountered when they reached Sri Lanka's shores in the 16th century.

Turning points

1. c. 1017Politics & Power

   Polonnaruwa becomes the capital

   Following the Chola conquest and the abandonment of Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa is established as Sri Lanka's second great capital in the north-central dry zone.

   [14] [2]

2. 1153–1186Culture & Ideas

   Golden age under Parakramabahu I

   Parakramabahu I rebuilds the city and its irrigation, creating the immense Parakrama Samudra reservoir and a garden-capital that marks the high point of the Polonnaruwa period.

   [14]

3. 13th c. onwardPeoples & Migration

   Decline and the drift southward

   Invasion, the breakdown of the dry-zone irrigation system and disease lead to the abandonment of the northern capitals and the migration of Sinhalese power toward the south-west and the Kandyan hills.

   ↗See the data

   [2]

Figures of the era

In 1505 a Portuguese fleet under Lourenço de Almeida was driven into Colombo, beginning more than a century of Portuguese presence on the coasts. Drawn by Ceylon's cinnamon and other spices, the Portuguese built forts at Colombo, Galle and elsewhere and extended control over much of the littoral and the northern Tamil kingdom of Jaffna, while pressing Roman Catholic missions. They could never, however, master the highland kingdom of Kandy, whose terrain and resistance kept it independent.

Seeking to break the Portuguese monopoly, the Dutch East India Company allied with Kandy and, in a series of campaigns, captured Galle in 1640 and finally expelled the Portuguese with the fall of Colombo in 1656 and Jaffna in 1658. The Dutch ruled the maritime provinces for nearly 140 years, prizing above all the island's cinnamon, which they regarded as the world's finest. Their legacy survives in the great fortifications of Galle, an exceptional example of a European fortified town adapted to South Asian conditions.

Throughout these two colonial centuries the kingdom of Kandy preserved the last independent Sinhalese state and remained the custodian of Buddhism and the Tooth Relic. It resisted European powers for over two hundred years until 1815, when, amid conflict between the king and his own chiefs, the Kandyan aristocracy invited British intervention. By the Kandyan Convention, signed at Kandy on 2 March 1815, the kingdom was annexed to Britain's other holdings, bringing the entire island under a single ruler for the first time.

Turning points

1. 1505Colonisation

   Arrival of the Portuguese

   A Portuguese fleet reaches Colombo, opening more than a century of Portuguese control over Ceylon's coasts and its profitable cinnamon trade.

   ↗See the data

   [6]

2. 1640–1658Colonisation

   Dutch supplant the Portuguese

   Allied with Kandy, the Dutch East India Company takes Galle (1640) and expels the Portuguese with the fall of Colombo (1656) and Jaffna (1658), ruling the maritime provinces for cinnamon.

   ↗See the data

   [2] [15]

3. 2 Mar 1815Colonisation

   Kandyan Convention unifies the island under Britain

   The Kandyan chiefs cede the highland kingdom to the British crown, ending the last independent Sinhalese kingdom and placing the whole island under a single colonial administration.

   ↗See the data

   [7] [16]

Under British rule the whole island, now governed as the single colony of Ceylon, was transformed into a plantation economy. From the 1830s European capital opened coffee estates in the central highlands; when coffee leaf rust destroyed that crop in the late 19th century, tea took its place and became the colony's economic backbone, alongside rubber and coconut. To work the estates the British brought large numbers of indentured Tamil labourers from southern India between roughly the 1830s and 1930s, creating a distinct Indian (or Hill-country) Tamil community that came to form the bulk of the plantation workforce.

Colonial rule also brought roads, railways, English-language schooling and a Westernised elite, but it dispossessed the Kandyan peasantry and entrenched divisions among the island's communities. In the 20th century a constitutional reform movement gathered pace. Ceylon gained universal adult suffrage in 1931, unusually early for a colony, and a generation of moderate, largely English-educated leaders pressed for self-government through negotiation rather than mass struggle.

After the Second World War Britain conceded full independence. A new constitution took effect and, on 4 February 1948, the Dominion of Ceylon became independent within the Commonwealth, with D. S. Senanayake as its first prime minister and the British monarch still represented by a governor-general. The transition was comparatively smooth, but the constitutional settlement left unresolved tensions over language, religion and the status of the Tamil minorities that would dominate the decades to come.

Turning points

1. 1830s onwardEconomy & Trade

   Plantation economy and Tamil labour migration

   British coffee and later tea estates transform the highlands; indentured South Indian Tamil labourers are brought in to work them, forming the Indian Tamil community of the plantation districts.

   ↗See the data

   [2]

2. 1931Politics & Power

   Universal suffrage and reform

   Constitutional reforms grant universal adult suffrage in Ceylon, far ahead of most colonies, strengthening a moderate movement for self-government.

   [11] [16]

3. 4 Feb 1948Independence

   Independence of the Dominion of Ceylon

   Ceylon becomes an independent dominion within the Commonwealth as its 1947 constitution takes effect, with D. S. Senanayake as first prime minister.

   ↗See the data

   [8] [16]

Figures of the era

Post-independence politics were quickly reshaped by Sinhalese nationalism. In 1956 S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike's Sri Lanka Freedom Party swept to power and passed the Official Language (Sinhala Only) Act making Sinhalese the sole official language, with support for Buddhism and Sinhalese culture; the measure deepened grievances among the Tamil minority. Bandaranaike was assassinated by a Buddhist monk in 1959. In 1972 a new constitution declared the country a republic and changed its name from Ceylon to Sri Lanka, and a further constitution in 1978 created a powerful executive presidency.

Tensions over language, education and land erupted into open conflict. After anti-Tamil riots in July 1983, remembered as Black July, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) waged an armed campaign for an independent Tamil state in the north and east. The civil war lasted, with intervals, until the government forces decisively defeated the LTTE in May 2009, ending some twenty-six years of fighting that killed tens of thousands. The conflict and especially its final phase remain the subject of disputed accounts and international concern over the conduct of both sides.

Two great shocks bracket the modern era. On 26 December 2004 the Indian Ocean tsunami struck the coasts, killing more than 30,000 people in Sri Lanka and displacing hundreds of thousands, the island's worst natural disaster. In 2022 a balance-of-payments crisis pushed the country into its first-ever sovereign default; shortages of fuel, food and medicine triggered mass protests that drove President Gotabaya Rajapaksa from office. An IMF programme and debt restructuring followed, and in 2024 voters elected an outsider, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, on an anti-corruption platform as the nation worked toward economic recovery.

Turning points

1. 1972Politics & Power

   Ceylon becomes the Republic of Sri Lanka

   A new republican constitution ends dominion status and changes the country's name from Ceylon to Sri Lanka, while it remains within the Commonwealth.

   [8] [9]

2. 1983–2009War & Rupture

   Civil war between the state and the LTTE

   After the anti-Tamil violence of Black July in 1983, the LTTE fights for a separate Tamil state; the war ends with the group's military defeat in May 2009 after about twenty-six years.

   ↗See the data

   [9] [2]

3. 26 Dec 2004Catastrophe

   Indian Ocean tsunami

   Waves from a magnitude-9.1 undersea earthquake off Sumatra devastate Sri Lanka's coasts, killing more than 30,000 people in the country's deadliest natural disaster.

   ↗See the data

   [10]

4. 2022Economy & Trade

   Economic crisis and sovereign default

   A foreign-exchange crisis forces Sri Lanka's first sovereign default; shortages and protests topple President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, leading to an IMF bailout and, in 2024, the election of Anura Kumara Dissanayake.

   ↗See the data

   [9]

Figures of the era