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.

Not every king ruled from Anuradhapura, and the most spectacular exception is still standing. Kassapa I, who reigned from 477 to 495 and came to the throne by killing his father, moved his capital to the summit and slopes of a granite peak rising some 180 metres straight out of the jungle. Sigiriya — the Lion's Rock — is entered through a stair emerging from the mouth of a colossal lion built of brick and plaster, and its frescoes have survived fifteen centuries on the open rock face. It was a fortress built by a man who expected to be killed, and a garden-palace built by one who intended to be admired; both readings are visible in the ruins.

The tank civilisation was not a set of monuments but a functioning system, and understanding that is the key to everything that follows. Rain fell on the island's south-west; the kingdoms grew where it did not. Every reservoir was a decision to make agriculture possible in a place that could not otherwise sustain it, and every dynasty that held the north held it by maintaining a hydraulic inheritance it had not built. When that maintenance faltered — through invasion, through the silting of channels, through the malaria that followed standing water — the plain did not decline gradually. It emptied.

Turning points

1. c. 5th century BCE — Formation:

   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 BCE — Religion:

   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 BCE — Culture & 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]

4. 477–495 — 477 — Culture & Ideas:

   Kassapa I builds Sigiriya

   A king who took the throne by killing his father moves the capital to the summit of a 180-metre granite peak, entered through a stair rising from the mouth of a brick lion.

   [23]

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. 1017 — 1017 — Politics & 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. 1153–1186 — 1153 — Culture & 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. onward — 1200 — Peoples & 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.

Britain arrived in 1796, taking the Dutch maritime provinces as the Netherlands fell under French control in Europe — the island changed hands as a consequence of a war fought entirely elsewhere. What followed was the pattern the Portuguese and Dutch had both failed to break, until the Kandyans broke it themselves. The highland kingdom had survived three European powers not by defeating them but by being unprofitable to reach: mountains, forest, fever, and a court that could always retreat further inland. It fell in 1815 to an invitation.

The relic mattered as much as the mountains. Kandy's claim to be the legitimate seat of Sinhalese kingship rested on its custody of the Sacred Tooth of the Buddha, and possession of that relic had been the token of rightful rule on the island since long before Europeans arrived. When the British took the kingdom they took the relic too, and the Kandyan Convention had to guarantee the protection of Buddhism to be signable at all — a colonial power obliged, in its founding document on the island, to make itself the patron of a religion it did not share.

Turning points

1. 1505 — Colonisation:

   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. 1640–1658 — 1658 — Colonisation:

   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. 1796 — Colonisation:

   Britain takes the Dutch coasts

   With the Netherlands under French control in Europe, Britain begins taking over the maritime provinces — the island changes hands as a consequence of a war fought elsewhere.

   ↗See the data

   [22]

4. 2 Mar 1815 — 1815 — Colonisation:

   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.

Administrative unification came later than political conquest. The Kandyan Convention of 1815 put the whole island under one crown, but it was the reforms of 1833 that put it under one administration, dissolving the separate legal and revenue systems the maritime provinces and the highlands had kept and governing Ceylon as a single colony. That is the moment the island became, in the bureaucratic sense, one country — and the moment its distinct communities began to be governed by a single set of rules written by people who did not belong to any of them.

The recognition was prompt and precise. Washington recognised Ceylon as an independent state on 4 February 1948, the date agreed between the British and Ceylonese governments, in a message from President Truman to the governor-general dated the day before. Ceylon's embassy opened in Washington that October, and an American mission was established in Colombo the following August. The dominion took its place among states with no war of independence behind it — an outcome that looked, in 1948, like the island's great advantage.

Turning points

1. 1833 — Politics & Power:

   One administration for the whole island

   Reform dissolves the separate systems of the maritime provinces and the highlands, governing Ceylon as a single colony for the first time.

   [22]

2. 1830s onward — 1840 — Economy & 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]

3. 1931 — Politics & 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]

4. 4 Feb 1948 — 1948 — Independence:

   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] [20]

5. 1949 — Politics & Power:

   Indian Tamil plantation workers disenfranchised

   The estate workforce brought from South India is stripped of the vote a year after independence — the opening move of a nationalism that alienated the Tamil minority.

   [22]

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.

The war did not begin in 1983 so much as become impossible to contain then. The LTTE had been founded in 1976 to fight for Tamil rights; the anti-Tamil violence of Black July turned a small insurgency into a war for a separate state. India intervened in 1987, brokering accords that created new councils for the Tamil areas of the north and east and putting an Indian peacekeeping force on the ground — which spent three years bogged down in the fighting it had come to end, and withdrew in 1990. Violence between army and separatists escalated immediately, and in the same year the LTTE expelled thousands of Muslims from the northern districts, an act of ethnic cleansing carried out by the movement that claimed to be fighting ethnic exclusion.

What followed was a war of assassinations and set-piece atrocity on both sides: Rajiv Gandhi killed in southern India in 1991 in an attack the LTTE was implicated in, President Premadasa killed by an LTTE bomb in 1993, the bombing of the island's holiest Buddhist shrine, a suicide attack that destroyed half the national airline's fleet at the international airport. A ceasefire signed in 2002 lasted, in name, until the government abandoned it in 2008 and launched the offensive that overran the last rebel-held ground in the northeast in May 2009. Estimates of the dead across twenty-six years run to 70,000–80,000.

The accounting has been slow and incomplete. In 2016 the government acknowledged for the first time that some 65,000 people were missing from the war and from the Marxist JVP insurrection of 1971 — a number it had spent decades not stating. Three years later, on Easter Sunday 2019, jihadist suicide bombers attacked churches and hotels and killed more than 350 people, a reminder that the island's fault lines were never only two-sided.

Turning points

1. 1956 — Politics & Power:

   The Sinhala Only Act

   S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike is elected on a wave of Sinhalese nationalism and makes Sinhala the sole official language, alongside measures elevating Buddhism.

   [22] [12]

2. 1971 — War & Rupture:

   The JVP insurrection

   A Marxist rising is put down; its missing would still be uncounted in the state's own figures forty-five years later.

   ↗See the data

   [22]

3. 1972 — Politics & 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]

4. 1976 — Politics & Power:

   The LTTE is founded

   The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam form to fight for Tamil rights, seven years before the war that would define them.

   [22]

5. 1983–2009 — 1983 — War & 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]

6. 1987 — Politics & Power:

   The Indo-Lanka accords and the Indian peacekeepers

   Accords create new councils for the Tamil north and east and bring in an Indian peacekeeping force, which spends three years bogged down in the fighting it came to end.

   [22]

7. 1990 — Peoples & Migration:

   Indian withdrawal and the expulsion of northern Muslims

   Indian troops leave and the war escalates; the LTTE expels thousands of Muslims from the northern districts.

   ↗See the data

   [22]

8. 26 Dec 2004 — 2004 — Catastrophe:

   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]

9. 2016 — Politics & Power:

   The state counts its missing

   The government acknowledges for the first time that some 65,000 people are missing from the 26-year war and the 1971 insurrection.

   [22]

10. 21 Apr 2019 — 2019 — Catastrophe:

    The Easter Sunday bombings

    Jihadist suicide bombers attack churches and hotels, killing more than 350 people.

    ↗See the data

    [22]

11. 2022 — Economy & 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