Sri Lanka

HISTORY

The aboriginal people of Ceylon/Sri Lanka, the Veddas, were conquered about 550 BC by the Sinhalese from north India under their first king, Vijaya.

Hindus on the island started building the first ever purpose built hospitals in the fifth century BC.

In the 3rd century BC the island became a world centre of Buddhism.

Ptolemy's world map of Ceylon, first century AD, in a 1535 publication

The spice trade brought Arabs, who called the island Serendip, and Europeans, who called it Ceylon.

Marco Polo's travels brought him to Ceylon, where his aim was to seize the tooth of Buddha, one of Buddhism’s most holy relics, dating back to 543BC. Though the expedition was unsuccessful, Marco Polo was entranced by the land. He deemed Ceylon “the finest island of its size in all the world”.

Sri Lanka and India were connected by a faint 50 kilometer (31 mi) long sandbar that existed until 1480 when a storm broke it. People used to walk the wispy sandbar from the mainland to the large island in the Indian Ocean, losing sight of the land masses. Scientists still argue as to how it was formed.

Ceylon was subject to waves of European settlement and eventually colonization. The Portuguese were the first to arrive in the 16th and 17th centuries, the Dutch took over in the 17th and 18th centuries, and lastly the British settled there from 1796 to 1948. The island was ceded to Britain in 1802 and it became a crown colony.

 Dutch explorer Joris van Spilbergen meeting with King Vimaladharmasuriya in 1602

In the 19th and 20th centuries, Sri Lanka became a plantation economy, famous for its production and export of cinnamon, rubber and Ceylon tea.

The British developed tea plantations on Ceylon after a fungus destroyed the coffee plantations in 1869. The tea plantations were the basis of the island's prosperity for the next century.

By 1965, Ceylon had become the world's leading exporter of tea, with 200,000 tonnes of tea being shipped internationally annually.

Tea plantation in Haputale, Hill Country. By Adbar 

Under British rule Tamils from South India, Hindus who had been settled in the north and east for centuries, took up English education and progressed rapidly in administrative careers. Many more Tamils emigrated to work on the tea and rubber plantations developed in the Kandy District of Central Sri Lanka.  Conflicts between the Singhalese majority and the Tamils surfaced during the 1920s as nationalist politics developed.

In 1931, universal suffrage was introduced for an elected legislature and executive council in which power was shared with the British. The newly created State Council of Ceylon was the first democracy in Asia.

Ceylon became independent within the British Commonwealth on February 4, 1948.

Formal ceremony marking the start of self-rule - the opening of the first parliament

In 1960 Sirimavo Bandaranaike the first woman to head a government when she was elected Prime Minister of Ceylon on July 21, 1960. She was elected after her husband, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, was assassinated in September 1959. Bandaranaike served as prime minister of Ceylon and later Sri Lanka for three terms, from 1960 to 1965, from 1970 to 1977, and from 1994 to 2000.

Bandaranaike was a controversial figure, but she was also a popular one. She was known for her strong leadership and her commitment to social justice. She was also a champion of women's rights.

On May 22, 1972, Ceylon changed its name to Sri Lanka, adopted a new constitution, and officially became a republic. The name change was a result of a growing Sinhalese nationalism in the country, and the new constitution established a unitary state with Buddhism as the state religion. The change in status was met with mixed reactions, with some people welcoming it as a sign of Sri Lanka's independence, while others saw it as a step towards Sinhalese dominance.

The name "Ceylon" was derived from the Portuguese name "Ceilão", which was in turn derived from the Sinhalese name "Sinhaloka". The name "Sri Lanka" is a combination of the Sanskrit words "Sri" (meaning "blessed") and "Lanka" (meaning "island"). The name was chosen because it was believed to be more reflective of the country's ancient history and culture.

The new constitution of Sri Lanka established a unitary state with a president as head of state. The president was elected by the people for a six-year term. The constitution also established a unicameral parliament, which was elected by the people for a five-year term.

The current Sri Lankan flag was adopted on May 22, 1972. The lion is holding a sword in its right paw representing bravery. There is a crimson background with four leaves in each corner representing Karuna, Meththa, Muditha and Upeksha. The orange stripe represents the Sri Lankan Tamils and the green stripe represents the Sri Lankan Moors.

Beginning on July 23, 1983, there was an intermittent insurgency against the Sri Lanka government by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (also known as the Tamil Tigers), which fought to create an independent Tamil state called Tamil Eelam in the north and the east of the island. This prompted legislation outlawing separatist organisations. The ensuing civil war cost thousands of lives and blighted the country's economy. The tourist industry collapsed and foreign investment dried up.

The civil war was decisively ended when the Sri Lanka Armed Forces defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in 2009. Since then tourism has rapidly grown as a source of foreign investment and currency.

Protesters stormed the President's House in the city of Colombo, on July 9, 2022. They forced President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee and Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe to agree to resign. The government had been criticized for mismanaging the Sri Lankan economy, leading to a subsequent economic crisis and severe inflation, daily blackouts, and a shortage of fuel, domestic gas, and other essential goods. 

Sri Lanka suffered the  world's worst post-pandemic slump in Sri Lanka.  The World Bank placed Sri Lanka at the bottom of its list of 148 countries in terms of the ease of doing business in 2023. This was a significant drop from Sri Lanka's ranking of 99 in 2022.

FUN SRI LANKA FACTS

The total population of Sri Lanka is roughly 21,444,000 people, with an annual population growth rate of 1.14%.

The capital of Sri Lanka is Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte while the largest city is Colombo.

Sri Lanka has three main ethnic groups. The largest of the three groups is the Sinhalese people, most of whom are Buddhist, and who have their own language, Sinhala. They make up about 75% of the population. The second largest group is the Tamil people, who are Hindu. There are about 2,271,000 Tamils in Sri Lanka. The third largest group is the Sri Lankan Moors, who are Muslim. There are over one and a half million people in this group and they use Tamil as their language today.

Sri Lanka has 103 rivers. The longest of these is the Mahaweli River, extending 335 kilometres (208 mi). These waterways give rise to 51 natural waterfalls of 10 meters or more.

Although Sri Lanka is relatively small in size, it has the highest biodiversity density in Asia. A remarkably high proportion of the species among its flora and fauna, 27% of the 3,210 flowering plants and 22% of the mammals, are endemic.

Source Hutchinson Encyclopedia