Colonial history of Sri Lanka
The Colonial history of Sri
Lanka is dated from the start of the Portuguese period in Ceylon, in
1505, until the end of the independence of Sri Lanka in
1948.
Contents [hide]1Portuguese eraDutch era3British rule3.1Independence
movement4Second World War5Post war6See also7References8External
links
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[edit]Portuguese era
Main articles: Portuguese Ceylon
and Portuguese conquest of Jaffna
Kingdom
The first Europeans to visit Sri Lanka in modern times were the Portuguese: Francisco de
Almeida arrived in 1505, finding the island divided into seven warring
kingdoms and unable to fend off intruders. The Portuguese founded a fort at the
port city of Colombo in 1517 and
gradually extended their control over the coastal areas. In 1592 the Sinhalese
moved their capital to the inland city of Kandy, a location more secure against attack from
invaders. Intermittent warfare continued through the 16th century.
Many lowland Sinhalese were forced to convert to Christianity while the coastal Moors were
religiously persecuted and forced to retreat to the Central highlands. The Buddhist
majority disliked Portuguese occupation and its influences and welcomed any
power who might rescue them. In 1602, therefore, when the Dutch captain Joris van Spilbergen landed, the king of
Kandy appealed to him for help.[edit]Dutch era
Main article: Dutch Ceylon
It was in 1638 that the Dutch attacked in earnest but ended with an
agreement(which was disrespected by both parties), and not until 1656 that
Colombo fell. By 1660 the Dutch controlled the whole island except the kingdom
of Kandy. The Dutch(who were Protestants) persecuted the Catholics(the left over
Portuguese setlers) but left the Buddhists, Hindus and Moslems alone. However,
they taxed the people far more heavily than the Portuguese had done. A mixed
Dutch-Sinhalese people known as Burgher peoples are the legacy of Dutch
rule.
In 1659, the British sea captain Robert Knox landed by chance on Sri Lanka
and was captured by the king of Kandy. He escaped 19 years later and wrote an
account of his stay. This helped to bring the island to the attention of the
British.[edit]British rule
Main article: British CeylonLate 19th century German map of
Ceylon.
During the Napoleonic
Wars the United
Kingdom, fearing that French control
of the Netherlands might deliver Sri Lanka to the French, occupied the coastal
areas of the island (which they called Ceylon) with little difficulty in
1796. In 1802 by the Treaty of Amiens the Dutch part of the island
was formally ceded to Britain, and became a crown colony. In 1803 the British invaded the Kingdom
of Kandy in the 1st Kandyan War, but were bloodily repulsed. In 1815
Kandy was occupied in the 2nd Kandyan War, finally ending Sri Lankan
independence.
Following the bloody suppression of the Uva Rebellion, the Kandyan peasantry were
stripped of their lands by the Wastelands Ordinance, a modern enclosure movement and reduced to
penury. The British found that the uplands of Sri Lanka were very suited to coffee, tea and rubber cultivation, and by the mid 19th century Ceylon
tea had become a staple of the British market, bringing great wealth to a small
class of white tea planters. To work the estates, the planters imported large
numbers of Tamil workers as indentured labourers from south India, who
soon made up 10% of the island's population. These workers had to work in
slave-like conditions and to live in line
rooms, not very different from cattle sheds.
The British colonialists favoured the semi-European Burghers, certain high-caste Sinhalese and the Tamils who were
mainly concentrated to the north of the country, exacerbating divisions and
enmities which have survived ever since. Nevertheless, the British also
introduced democratic elements to Sri Lanka for the first time in its history.
The Burghers were given some degree of self-government as early as 1833. It was
not until 1909 that constitutional development began with a partly-elected
assembly, and not until 1920 that elected members outnumbered official
appointees. Universal suffrage was introduced in 1931,
over the protests of the Sinhalese, Tamil and Burgher elite who objected to the
common people being allowed to vote [1], [2][3].[edit]Independence
movement
The neutrality of this section is
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Main article: Sri Lanka independence
struggle
Ceylon National Congress (CNC) was founded to agitate for greater autonomy.
The party soon split along ethnic and caste lines. Prof. K. M. de Silva, the
famous Peradeniya historian has pointed out that the refusal of the Ceylon
Tamils to accept minority status to be one of the main causes which broke up the
Ceylon National congress.[1] The CNC did not
seek independence or "Swaraj". What may be called the independence movement
broke into two streams, viz., the "constitutionalists", who sought independence
by gradual modification of the status of Ceylon, and the more radical groups
associated with the Colombo Youth League, Labour movement of Goonasinghe, and
the Jaffna Youth Congress. These organizations were the first to raise the cry
of Swaraj, or outright independence, following the Indian example, when Nehru, Sarojini Naidu and
other Indian leaders visited Ceylon in 1926.[2] The efforts of
the constitutionalists led to the arrival of the Donoughmore Commission reforms (1931) and the Soulbury
Commission recommendations, which essentially upheld the 1944 draft
constitution of the Board of ministers headed by D. S. Senanayake.[1][2] The Marxist Lanka Sama
Samaja Party (LSSP), which grew out of the Youth Leagues in 1935, made the
demand for outright independence a corner stone of their policy[4] Its deputies in the State Council, N.M. Perera and Philip
Gunawardena, were aided in this struggle by other less radical members like
Natesa
Iyer and Don Alwin Rajapaksa. They also demanded the replacement of English
as the official language by Sinhala and Tamil. The Marxist groups were a tiny
minority and yet their movement was viewed with grave suspicion by the British
administration. The heroic (but ineffctive) attempts to rouse the public against
the British Raj in revolt would have led to certain bloodshed and a delay in
independence. British state papers released in the 1950s show that the Marxist
movement had a very negative impact on the policy makers at the Colonial
office.
The Soulbury
Commission was the most important result of the agitation for constitutional
reform in the 1930s. The Tamil leadership had by then fallen into the hands of
G. G.
Ponnambalam who had rejected the "Ceylonese identity".[3]
Ponnamblam had declared himself a "proud Dravidian", and attempted to establish
an independent identity for the Tamils. Ponnamblam was a politician who attacked
the Sinhalese, and their historical chronicle known as the Mahavamsa. One such inflamed attack in Navalapitiya
led to the first Sinhala-Tamil riot in 1939.[2][4] Ponnambalam opposed
universal franchise, supported the caste
system, and claimed that the protection of Tamil rights requires the Tamils
(15% of the population in 1931) having an equal number of seats in parliament to
that of the Sinhalese (~72% of the population). This "50-50" or "balanced
representation" policy became the hall mark of Tamil politics of the time.
Ponnambalam also accused the British of having established colonization in
"traditional Tamil areas", and having favoured the Buddhists by the buddhist
temporalities act. The Soulbury Commission rejected these
submissions by Ponnambalam, and even noted their unacceptable communal
character. Sinhalese writers pointed out the large immigration of Tamils to the
southern urban centers, especially after the opening of the Jaffna-Colombo
railway. Meanwhile, Senanayake, Baron Jayatilleke, Oliver Gunatilleke and others
lobbied the Soulbury Commission without confronting
them officially. The unoffcial submissions contained what was to later become
the draft constitution of 1944.[2]
The close collaboration of the D. S. Senanayake government with the war-time
British administration led to the support of Lord Louis
Mountbatten. His dispatches and a telegram to the Colonial office supporting
Independence for Ceylon have been cited by historians as having helped the
Senanayake government to secure the independence of Sri Lanka. The shrewd
cooperation with the British as well as diverting the needs of the war market to
Ceylonese markets as a supply point, managed by Oliver Goonatilleke, also led to
a very favourable fiscal situation for the newly independent government.