Sri Lankan History Flashcards
To when does the first definitive evidence of settlements in Sri Lanka point to?
Roughly 28 000 BCE
Until when did a land bridge connect Sri Lanka to the Indian subcontinent?
Until about 5000 BCE
What name is given to Sri Lankan ancestor.
The people are called veddoid after the modern day Vedda people of whom they might have been the forbears.
Where did the Sinhala people come from?
The Sinhalese are thought to come from the Indo Aryan settlers (2 pts) who followed the Indian prince Vijaya south (2 pts) in 543 BCE (1 pt).
When did the Portuguese colonize Sri Lanka?
The first Europeans to set foot on Sri Lanka were the Portuguese in 1505. Laurenco de Almeida was the name of the portuguese explorer.
At that time Sri Lanka consisted of three kingdoms.
How did Colombo come to be?
Colombo was originally a port that the Portuguese founded when they set foot on the island.
What were some of the dynamics during Portuguese rule?
Many Sri Lankan’s were forced to convert from Buddhism to Christianity (2 pts). The Sinhalese people moved their capital to Kandy to prevent further conflict.
The Portuguese were cruel and greedy and the Sri Lankan’s disliked them so much that when Dutch explorer Joris van Spilergen set foot on the island in 1602, the king of Kandy, Vimaladharmasuriya I, begged him to help the Sri Lankan people to get rid of the Portuguese (3 pts).
The Dutch-Portuguese War
1601 - 1663 (1 pt)
The Dutch-Portuguese War was said to be an extension of the 80-year war that happened in the century prior (1 pt). The Dutch eventually won the war (1 pt).
Dutch Rule
1658 - 1796 (1 pt)
When the dutch finally took over the conditions they imposed on the islanders were even less favourable than those imposed by the Portuguese. They controlled the entire country, save Kandy. Taxes were steeper and many Catholics were persectued.
The Sinhalese-Dutch people emerged who become known as Burghers.
Was any part of Sri Lanka ever under the control of a nation other than Portugal, the Netherlands and Britain?
Yes, Trincomallee harbour was under French control for a few months in 1796.
The India - Sri Lankan Fishing War Origin & Geography
- North-Western coast of Sri Lanka (Mannar, Kilinochchi & Jaffna) and the South-Eastern coast of India (Tamil Nadu) particularly along Adam’s Bridge
- 70’s Border made fishing across it illegal
- During India’s financial crisis, the government gave fishing communities subsidies to buy new fishing boats (trawlers)
The legend surrounding Rama’s bridge
The Hindu god rama ordered an army of monkey-men to build a bridge from India to Sri Lanka so that he could go in and rescue his wife from a demon king.
