After first colonizers had settled
down, the Aryan immigration continued. The newcomers established themselves in
different parts of the country and form a number of communities and small
kingdoms. The most prominent among the
latter were the kingdoms of Sohana in the south and Anuradhapura in the north.
Under the Devamanpiyathissa (307-
267 B.C. ) in Anuradhapura, Mahinda the son of an Indian king called Ashoka,
arrived on the island with a group of Buddhist monks and began preaching and
promotion their religion throughout the country.
The expanision of the Buddhism
produced a development of literature and other forms of artistic expression,
and Buddhism become a unifying factor for the inhabitants of the country.
At the beginning of the 16th
century there were centers of power in the country, kotte in the south west,
kandy, in the central highlands and Jaffa in the extreme north.
In 1505, the Portuguese navigator
Lourenco de Almeida arrived at the coast of Sri Lanka. Exploiting the rivalry
between the king of kotte and Moslem merchants who monopolized the trade with
spices. The Portuguese established close ties with the king, who in addition, Viewed
them as his allies against the Molslem merchants and his other local rivals.
The first group of Europeans stayed
in the country for 150 years. When they met with strong resistance from the kingdom
of Sitawaka, the Portuguese helped strengthen the rulers of Kandy to turn them
against the former, but in the end the kingdom of Kandy turned against the
Portuguese with greater vigor than did Sitawaka.
The Dutch presence on the island
lasted from 1656 to 1796. In that period they concentrated in their hands the
export of cinnamon, acquired a monopoly on trade in elephants, built roads and
canals and improved the cultivation of rise by bringing in slaves from
Indonesia.
In 1796, the British arrived in
Sri Lanka and easily defeated the Dutch, upon which they turned the island in
to a colony.
The kingdom of Kandy, which for
years had fought the Europeans, finally fell in 1815 overwhelmed by the
military superiority of the enemy. Nevertheless, the Kandyans rose in rebellion
in 1818, only to be drowned in blood.
Although the British imposed
their domination on most of the island, they failed to subjugate completely the
seven kingdom into which its territory continued to be divided until 1815.
The long tradition of herioic
struggle by the Sri Lankans against foreign domination forced the British to
establish on the island in 1832 a colonial administration independent of the
administration of their Indian colonies in order to ensure better control of
the island.
In the course of the 19th
century, the British developed the exploitation of banana plantations until
they turned that crop in to the basic wealth of the country. However due to the
economic crises of 1844- 1844, a drop in banana prices and competition from
other countries, banana growing began to the replaced as of 1870 by the
cultivation of tea and rubber trees.
The two world wars created favorable
conditions for a considerable expansion of the export of tea. The whole tea
industry was monopolized by the British, and even today when the tea
plantations have been nationalized and in the hands of local producers, the
international tea trade continues to be controlled by British monopolies. Since
the beginning of this century the native inhabitants of Sri Lanka were
permitted to share gradually in the administration of the colony.
