Sri Lanka

The island now known as Sri Lanka has been inhabited since prehistoric times, with archaeological evidence of anatomically modern humans at sites such as Batadombalena and Fa Hien Cave dating back tens of thousands of years. The earliest historical population is associated with the Sinhalese, whose traditional chronicles, the Mahavamsa and Dipavamsa, trace their origins to settlers from the Indian subcontinent in the sixth century BCE. The conversion of King Devanampiya Tissa in the third century BCE, attributed to a mission led by the Indian emperor Ashoka's son Mahinda, established Theravada Buddhism as a defining cultural force. The early kingdom centered on Anuradhapura, which flourished for over a millennium as a hydraulic civilization renowned for its irrigation tanks, stupas, and monastic universities, before the capital shifted to Polonnaruwa in the eleventh century after Chola incursions from southern India.

From the thirteenth century onward, political authority fragmented as successive capitals moved southwest, producing kingdoms at Dambadeniya, Yapahuwa, Kurunegala, Gampola, and Kotte, while a distinct Tamil kingdom emerged in the north around Jaffna. European contact began in 1505 with the arrival of the Portuguese, who gradually controlled coastal areas and propagated Roman Catholicism. The Dutch East India Company displaced the Portuguese between 1638 and 1658, consolidating control of the maritime lowlands and codifying Roman-Dutch law, elements of which survive in the modern legal system. The interior highland Kingdom of Kandy preserved indigenous sovereignty until 1815, when it was ceded to the British Crown under the Kandyan Convention, completing the unification of the island under a single colonial administration named Ceylon.

British rule transformed the economy through plantation agriculture, first in coffee and later in tea, rubber, and coconut, and brought large numbers of Indian Tamil laborers to the central hill country. Constitutional reforms accelerated in the twentieth century, with the Donoughmore Constitution of 1931 introducing universal adult suffrage, an unusually early reform for a colonial territory. Ceylon achieved independence on 4 February 1948 as a dominion within the Commonwealth, with D. S. Senanayake as its first prime minister. The 1956 election of S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike marked a shift toward Sinhala nationalism, including the Sinhala Only Act, which deepened tensions with the Tamil-speaking minority. In 1972 the country adopted a republican constitution and the name Sri Lanka, and in 1978 a second constitution introduced a French-style executive presidency under J. R. Jayewardene.

Ethnic tensions escalated into a protracted civil war that began in 1983 between government forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, who sought a separate state in the north and east. The conflict persisted through cycles of negotiation and renewed fighting, including Indian Peace Keeping Force involvement from 1987 to 1990, before ending militarily in May 2009 with the defeat of the Tigers under President Mahinda Rajapaksa. Postwar reconstruction was accompanied by political contestation, the brief reformist government of 2015 to 2019, and a severe economic and currency crisis in 2022 that triggered mass protests, the resignation of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, and a turn to International Monetary Fund assistance.

Sri Lanka today is a unitary semi-presidential constitutional republic, with an executive president, a unicameral Parliament elected by proportional representation, and a multi-party system operating under the 1978 constitution as amended.