About Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka (ශ්‍රී ලංකා); Tamil: இலங்கை, formerly known as Ceylon and officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is a beautiful island country in South Asia. It lies in the Indian Ocean, southwest of the Bay of Bengal, and southeast of the Arabian Sea. Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte is its legislative capital, and Colombo is its largest city and financial center.

Sri Lanka has a population of around 22 million (2020) and is a multinational state, home to diverse cultures, languages, and ethnicities. The Sinhalese are the majority of the nation's population. (About 75%) The Tamils, and Moors who are a large minority group, have also played an influential role in the island's history. Other long-established groups include the Burghers, the Malays, , and the indigenous Vedda.

Sri Lanka is well known for its rich Buddhist culture as well as other religions. Being a religious country, Sri Lanka has many places with religious and historic significance, and lush greenery, with sunny weather all throughout the year which attracts tourists from all over the world. This tiny island nation is only 9,833,517 sq. km but it has a huge range of diverse landscapes such as hills filled with tea plantations, waterfalls, and beautiful beaches.

A brief history of Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka's documented history goes back 3,000 years.

Sri Lanka was known to travelers by a variety of names. According to the Mahāvaṃsa, the legendary Prince Vijaya named the island Tambapaṇṇĩ ("copper-red hands" or "copper-red earth"), because his followers' hands were reddened by the red soil of the area where he landed

Ancient Greek geographers called it Taprobanā from the word Tambapanni. The Persians and Arabs referred to it as Sarandīb (the origin of the word "serendipity") It is called the pearl of the Indian ocean and the paradise island. The country is now known in Sinhala as Śrī Laṅkā and in Tamil as Ilaṅkai. 1972, its formal name was changed to "Free, Sovereign and Independent Republic of Sri Lanka".

Sinhalese history traditionally starts in 543 BCE with the arrival of Prince Vijaya, a semilegendary prince who sailed with 700 followers to Sri Lanka, after being expelled from Vanga Kingdom (present-day Bengal) He established the Kingdom of Tambapanni, near modern-day Mannar. Vijaya (Singha) is the first of the approximately 189 monarchs of Sri Lanka described in chronicles such as the Dipavamsa, Mahāvaṃsa, Cūḷavaṃsa, and Rājāvaliya.

The early modern period of Sri Lanka begins with the arrival of Portuguese soldier and explorer Lourenço de Almeida, in 1505. Portuguese presence in the island lasted from 1505 to 1658. Their arrival was largely accidental, and the Portuguese sought control of commerce, rather 2 than territory. It was the primary contact the Islanders had with Europeans and their dissimilar life and advanced military equipment

They established trade relations with the Kotte kingdom. During the early 16th century, their intentions were directed toward defending their trading interests, particularly the lucrative spice trade. Cinnamon and elephants became articles of Portuguese monopoly; they provided good profits, as did the trade in pepper and betel nuts (areca nuts). The Portuguese generally lacked a proper understanding of traditional Sinhalese social and economic structure, and excessive demands put upon it led to hardship and popular hostility. The Battle of Mulleriyawa (Sinhala: මුල්ලල්රියාව සටන) in 1559 was part of the Sinhalese–Portuguese War. It was one of the most decisive battles in Sri Lankan history and is considered as the worst defeat of the Portuguese during that period.

During the reign of Rajasinha II, the Dutch captain Joris van Spilbergen and Dutch explorers arrived on the island. In 1638, the king signed a treaty with the Dutch East India Company to get rid of the Portuguese who ruled most of the coastal areas. The following Dutch–Portuguese War resulted in a Dutch victory, with Colombo falling into Dutch hands by 1656. The Dutch remained in the areas they had captured, thereby violating the treaty they had signed in 1638. The Burgher people, a distinct ethnic group, emerged as a result of intermingling between the Dutch and native Sri Lankans in this period.

In 1802 by the Treaty of Amiens, the Dutch part of the island was ceded to Britain and became a crown colony. Vimala Dharma Surya realized that without sea power he could not drive the Portuguese out of Sri Lanka. He saw the arrival of the Dutch as an excellent opportunity to gain naval support against his adversaries.

The Kingdom of Kandy was the last independent monarchy of Sri Lanka. In spite of ongoing intermittent warfare with Europeans, the kingdom survived. The Kandyan Convention is a unique document for both national and international communities. It was signed on 2nd March 1815 at the Palace in the city of Kandy. It has been a document prepared for a settlement between British Empire and the Kandyan Kingdom.

The British Ceylon period is the history of Sri Lanka between 1815 and 1948. It follows the fall of the Kandyan Kingdom into the hands of the British Empire. It ended over 2300 years of Sinhalese monarchy rule on the island. The British rule on the island lasted until 1948 when the country regained independence following the Sri Lankan independence movement.

Centuries of influence of European invaders are still visible in Sri Lankan language and culture. Many Sinhalese adopted Portuguese surnames-although most were modified to a degree. The colonials brought western instruments like the ‘ukulele’ and the guitar and introduced musical forms like the ballad. At present Sri Lanka is a semi-presidential representative democratic republic, whereby the President of Sri Lanka is both head of state and head of government, and it relies on a multi-party system. Executive power is exercised by the President on the advice of the Prime Minister and the Cabinet of Ministers