Sri Lanka's first settlers were the nomadic Veddahs. Legend relates them to the Yakkhas, demons conquered by the Sinhalese around the 5th or 6th century BC. A number of Sinhalese kingdoms, including Anuradhapura in the north, took root across the island during the 4th century BC. Buddhism was introduced by Mahinda, son of the Indian Mauryan emperor Ashoka, in the 3rd century BC, and it quickly became the established religion and the focus of a strong nationalism. Anuradhapura was not impregnable. Repeated invasions from southern India over the next 1000 years left Sri Lanka in an ongoing state of dynastic power struggles.
The Portuguese arrived in Colombo in 1505 and gained a monopoly on the invaluable spice trade. By 1597, the colonizers had taken formal control of the island. However, they failed to dislodge the powerful Sinhalese kingdom in Kandy which, in 1658, enlisted Dutch help to expel the Portuguese. The Dutch were more interested in trade and profits than religion or land, and only half-heartedly resisted when the British arrived in 1796. The Brits wore down Kandy's sovereignty and in 1815 became the first European power to rule the entire island. Coffee, tea, cinnamon and coconut plantations (worked by Tamil laborers imported from southern India) sprang up and English was introduced as the national language.
Then known as Ceylon, Sri Lanka finally achieved full independence as a dominion within the British Commonwealth in 1948. The government adopted socialist policies, strengthening social services and maintaining a strong economy, but also disenfranchising 800,000 Tamil plantation workers. Sinhalese nationalist Solomon Bandaranaike was elected in 1956 and pushed a 'Sinhala Only' law through parliament, making Sinhalese the national language and effectively reserving the best jobs for the Sinhalese. This was partly instituted to address the imbalance of power between the majority Sinhalese and the English-speaking, Christian-educated elite. However, it enraged the Tamil Hindu minority who began pressing for a federal system of government with greater autonomy in the main Tamil areas in the north and east.
The country's ethnic and religious conflicts date from this time and they escalated as competition for wealth and work intensified. Bandaranaike was assassinated by a Buddhist monk in 1959, when he attempted to reconcile the two communities. He was replaced by his widow, Sirimavo, who became the world's first female prime minister. She continued her husband's socialist policies, but the economy went from bad to worse. A poorly organized revolt by the Sinhalese Maoist JVP in 1971 led to the death of thousands. One year later, the country became a republic and made Sri Lanka its official name.
In 1972 the constitution formally made Buddhism the state's primary religion, and Tamil places at university were reduced. Subsequent civil unrest resulted in a state of emergency in Tamil areas. The Sinhalese security forces faced off against young Tamils, who began the fight for an independent homeland. Junius Richard Jayewardene was elected in 1977 and promoted Tamil to the status of a 'national language' in Tamil areas. He also granted Tamils greater local government control, but violence spiraled out of control.
When Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) secessionists massacred an army patrol in 1983, Sinhalese mobs went on a two-day rampage, killing several thousand Tamils and burning and looting property. This marked the point of no return. Many Tamils moved north into Tamil-dominated areas, and Sinhalese began to leave the Jaffna area. Tamil secessionists claimed the northern third of the country and the eastern coast. They were clearly in the majority in the north but proportionately equal to the Sinhalese and Muslims in the east. Violence escalated with both sides guilty of intimidation and massacres, now known as 'ethnic cleansing.'
By 1985, 50,000 Sri Lankans were in refugee camps, and 100,000 Tamils were in exile in camps in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The economy suffered as tourism dwindled. Tea prices slumped and aid donors threatened to withdraw support because of human rights violations. When government forces pushed the Tamil Tigers back into Jaffna city in 1987, Tamil unrest in Southern India and domestic pressure on the Indian government raised concerns about an Indian invasion. Jayewardene reached a compromise with then Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi whereby the Sri Lankan Army would retreat and an Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) would maintain order in the north and disarm the Tigers. What looked sensible on paper failed in practice, as Sinhalese and Muslims in the south rioted over the Indian 'occupation' and the 'sell out' of non-Tamils in the east. The Tigers attacked the Sinhalese, the IPKF attacked the Tigers and Sri Lanka became a quagmire of inescapable violence.
In 1989, just as the IPKF regained a semblance of control in the north, a Sinhalese rebellion broke out in the south and the JVP orchestrated a series of strikes and political murders. The country was at a standstill when the Sri Lankan government, under Ranasinghe Premadasa, tried to cajole the JVP into mainstream politics. When this ploy failed, Premadasa unleashed death squads that killed JVP suspects and dumped their bodies in rivers. A three-year reign of terror began which resulted in at least 30,000 deaths. The IPKF, which at its peak numbered 80,000 men, withdrew from its thankless task in 1990. The Tigers had agreed to a ceasefire but violence flared almost immediately when a breakaway Tamil group unilaterally declared an independent homeland.
The Sri Lankan government oscillated between political solutions and miltary offensives, neither of which ended the massacres and terrorism. Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated by a Tamil suicide bomber in 1991 and Premadasa suffered the same fate in 1993. Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga became prime minister in 1994, when the People's Alliance party defeated the United National Party in the August parliamentary elections. In 1995 Chandrika was elected President and for the second time since 1959, her mother Sirimavo Bandaranaike became prime minister.
A truce agreed to in early 1995 was unilaterally broken by the Tigers. The government responded with a massive military operation that seized the Jaffna peninsula and dislodged both the Tigers and the Tamil population of the city. With government initiatives aimed at appeasing the Tamil population relatively well received and the Tigers apparently quashed, it seemed that Sri Lanka was on the path to lasting peace. But the Tigers regrouped and, by mid-1996, were able to launch damaging attacks on government troops stationed in northern Sri Lanka and terrorist strikes in Colombo. The violence renewed Sinhalese opposition to peace with the Tamils, which in turn disillusioned the Sri Lankan majority that was desperate for an end to violence.
As the new millennium came and went, the Tamil Tigers were still trying to retake the Jaffna Peninsula and their suicide bombers were still blowing themselves and bystanders up all over the island, particularly in Colombo. The massacre in mid-October 2000 of 26 unarmed Tamil prisoners by a crowd of Sinhalese in the hill country town of Bandarawela showed the depth (or lack) of feeling between some of the combatants - the killings resulted in violent demonstrations and retaliatory attacks which dragged Sri Lanka's relatively peaceful central region into the conflict. Some hope was offered by Norway's attempts to broker peace talks between the government and the Tigers in Nov-Dec 2000 - in a diplomatic first, their peace envoy met individually with leaders of both groups - but it currently looks as if the only good stance in Sri Lanka is a hardline stance.
Chandrika Kumaratunga, elected Sri Lanka's first female president in 1994, won a second term in office in elections in December 1999, keeping her People's Alliance coalition in power despite losses in parliament. Days before the vote, the president and People's Alliance coalition leader was the target of a LTTE suicide bomber, an attack in which she lost the sight in one eye. In December 2001, Ranil Wickramasinghe, who lost the 1999 elections, became prime minister when the United National Party swept parliamentary elections. Though political infighting could have rendered the government immobile when dealing with Sri Lanka's national problems - high inflation, high unemployment, poor infrastructure and, of course, the 18-year-old civil war - both parties have come together in support of unlikely and promising peace talks with the LTTE.
Peace talks brokered by a Norwegian delegation inspired a one-month cease-fire beginning 24 December 2001 (the first in seven years), which was bilaterally renewed in January 2002. Sri Lanka's government also lifted a seven-year-old embargo on LTTE-controlled territory. Whether this round of talks leads to the peace so many people on either side desire remains to be seen, but things are more hopeful in this, the Pearl of the Orient, than they have been in a very long time.
