Sri Lanka

From the hydraulic kingdoms of Anuradhapura to an island republic.

Sri Lanka's recorded history reaches back more than two millennia, to Sinhalese kingdoms that built one of the world's great hydraulic civilisations around the city of Anuradhapura and embraced Buddhism in the 3rd century BCE. After medieval capitals at Polonnaruwa and, later, Kandy, the island's coasts passed in turn to Portuguese, Dutch and British control, with the whole island unified under Britain in 1815 and remade as a plantation economy. The Dominion of Ceylon won independence on 4 February 1948 and became the Republic of Sri Lanka in 1972. The modern nation has been shaped by a long civil war (1983–2009), the catastrophic 2004 tsunami, and a severe economic crisis in 2022.