HISTORY

The earliest known inhabitants of Ceylon were aborigines who migrated, about five thousand years ago, from the pre-Dravidian tribes which populated the Deccan. The most important of these early settlers were the Nagas, a tribe which ruled the northern and north-eastern coasts of Ceylon, and the Yakkas, who dominated the interior. Their descendants, the primitive Veddhas, are still to be found in small numbers in the remote forests of the interior. The ancient Sanskrit name of Ceylon was Lanka.

The chronological sequence of the earliest Sinhalese kings is confused and open to some doubt. Vijaya I, the traditional founder of the Great Dynasty in 543 B.C., was the son of Sinha Bahu (the lion), a petty nobleman of Bengal. Expelled from India for lawlessness, Vijaya landed in the island and soon became the King of Ceylon. Vijaya's followers were called Sihala, or Sinhala (lion race) after Vijaya's father, and are now known as Sinhalese.

Vijaya and his successors organised the country on a patriarchal village system and colonists from southern India were encouraged to settle. The civilization of Ceylon from the earliest times up to the twelfth century was centred on the dry zone; the wet zone in the south-west part of the island was the least developed. The whole surface of the northern plains, comprising some twelve thousand square miles of jungle and semi-desert, was converted to cultivated land by means of a vast irrigation system, which was to last for fifteen centuries, involving the construction of huge tanks or reservoirs, supplying an intricate system of canals which watered every village.

Buddhism was introduced into Ceylon during the reign of Tissa, circa 247-207 B.C., by the son of the Emperor Asoka, Prince Mahinda, who planted at Anuradhapura the sacred Bo-tree which survives to this day. Successive kings constructed tanks for irrigation and built dagobas. Monasteries and Buddhist temples were constructed in every important village and became centres of spiritual life, education and culture.

The country flourished for several centuries until it was invaded from southern India. The history of Ceylon thereafter is largely a succession of invasions from southern India and of internal strife fomented by Sinhalese chiefs who employed Tamil mercenaries in their conflicts with the royal line. From the seventh century onwards the Tamils came in increasing numbers and they filled all the principal offices, including that of Prime Minister. In the eighth century they forced the king to leave Anuradhapura, which had been the Sinhalese royal seat for almost a thousand years, and the capital was moved to Polonnaruwa. In 1017 the whole of Ceylon was subdued by a great invasion from the Chola Empire but sixty years later a Sinhalese prince of the exiled royal house succeeded in restoring part of the Sinhalese kingdom. The exploits of a successor, King Parakrama Bahu I, who became ruler of the entire island and reduced the Chola and Pandya Empires to the position of tributaries, are among the most notable in the history of Ceylon. Thirty years after his death invaders from Kalinga in southern India appeared and under their leader Magha the north of Ceylon became a Tamil kingdom. This kingdom, which came to be known as the Jaffna Kingdom, survived successive invasions from India and remained separate from the Sinhalese kingdoms. Magha's invasion compelled the Sinhalese rulers to move south and a new capital was eventually established in 1410 at Kotte, near Colombo.

The Sinhalese kings who followed Parakrama were weak and exercised little

control over their semi-independent chiefs, who, beyond acknowledging the nominal supremacy of the Kotte king, usually obeyed no other authority than their own. This led, at the end of the fifteenth century, to the rise of an independent kingdom of Kandy, dividing the inhabitants into low-country and upcountry Sinhalese. The high-country kingdom of Kandy comprised the present North-Central and Eastern Provinces and Hambantota District. The lowcountry kingdom of Kotte covered the present North-Western, Western and Sabaragamuwa Provinces and the Galle and Matara Districts. In the sixteenth century the low-country was divided between the Sinhalese king at Kotte and Sitavaka, a relative and rival to the throne.

The Portuguese first visited the island in 1505 and were granted permission to build a fort at Colombo. At this period the commerce of Ceylon was in the hands of the Ceylon Moors, so-called by the Portuguese, who were Muslims of Arab stock and had traded with Ceylon for centuries before the birth of Muhammad. The principal trade of the island was centred on Galle.

The Portuguese returned in 1517 and built the fort, and later named the township the City of St. Lawrence. The Sinhalese king at Kotte was persuaded to submit to Portuguese protection and gave them the cinnamon trade, for the collection of which Sinhalese villagers were organised into forced labour. Despite the defection of their king the Sinhalese people resisted the Portuguese as far as they were able and Portuguese records later showed that Ceylon was 'gradually consuming her Indian revenues, wasting her forces and artillery, and causing a greater outlay for the government of that single island than for all her other conquests of the East'. The last legitimate king of Ceylon ruling from Kotte was Dharmapala, a protégé of the Portuguese. He died in 1597 bequeathing Ceylon to King Philip II of Spain (Philip I of Portugal), who thus gained control of the island except for the Tamil kingdom of Jaffna, which the Portuguese took in 1621, and the territory of the king of Kandy. The Portuguese introduced monopolies on cinnamon, areca and pepper, precious stones, elephants and the pearl fishery. They also introduced Roman Catholicism, which to-day has more than three quarters of a million adherents in Ceylon.

The Dutch from 1602 began to take an interest in the island and from 1634, with help from the king of Kandy, gradually overran the Portuguese possessions. A Dutch Governor arrived for the new settlements in 1640 and a truce with the Portuguese was reached in 1646. This was broken in 1652 by the Dutch and on 11th May 1656 the Portuguese capitulated, the Dutch becoming masters of the island except for the kingdom of Kandy, and the Portuguese fort at Jaffna, which they took in 1658.

Throughout the Dutch occupation there was constant trouble with the king of Kandy. Following an abortive attempt to treat with the British at Madras in 1762 the king attacked the Dutch settlements, without success. In 1766 he was compelled to sign a treaty relinquishing to the Dutch not only the settlements they already held but also the remaining districts bordering the coast, the Kandyans being thus cut off from the outer world. The confinement of the Kandyans was the prime reason for further attacks on the Dutch. The expense of maintaining an inner ring of defence around the Kandyan kingdom as well as round the coast was a cause of great concern to the Dutch and to the British who succeeded them. The Dutch retained the monopolies and divided their settlements between Colombo, Jaffna and Galle, building a track round the coast. Tamil laws were codified and where there was any conflict between them and the Sinhalese usages

and customs, Roman-Dutch law was introduced. The Dutch Reformed Church was installed in Ceylon and severe measures were taken against Roman Catholics. The Ceylon Moors and Chetties (Indian Moors of Malabar stock) were treated as foreigners, liable to compulsory service which was, however, commutable on cash payment. The Malays, imported by the Dutch from the archipelago, were bound to military service. Education was placed in the hands of the Protestant Church and many schools were opened. Numerous canals between Puttalam, Negombo and Kalutara were constructed. These canals, together with RomanDutch law, the forts and the Burghers, who are the descendants of the Dutch colonists, are the principal legacies of Dutch rule in Ceylon.

Whilst Britain and Holland were at war over Britain's insistence on the right to search neutral vessels during the American War of Independence, a British Fleet captured Trincomalee in January 1782. The British force was dislodged eight months later by a French fleet which held Trincomalee until it was returned to the Dutch at the Peace of Paris in the following year.

France declared war on Britain and Holland on 1st February 1793 and during the next two years overran Holland. In January 1795 the Dutch Stadtholder, William IV of Orange, fled to England and called upon the Dutch overseas possessions to seek British protection. To forestall French designs on India and to acquire a safe naval base as near as possible to the harbourless Coromandel coast, the British Government in July 1795 ordered Lord Hobart, the Governor of the Madras Presidency, to secure the Dutch possessions. Disobeying the orders of the Stadtholder, the Dutch in Ceylon refused British protection. An expedition from Madras captured Trincomalee on 26th August 1795. Other Dutch posts were soon captured and Colombo was placed under siege. By the terms of capitulation, signed on 15th February 1796, Colombo and the remaining Dutch settlements were surrendered to Britain on the following day.

Britain originally had no intention of retaining the settlements and intended to hand them back to the Dutch at the end of the war. Later, however, Britain decided to retain the settlements and the possession of Ceylon by Britain was confirmed at the Peace of Amiens, signed on 27th March 1802. Difficulties with the Kandyan kingdom of the interior continued up to 1815 when the king was deposed and whole island came under the control of Britain.

The Kandyans had succeeded in defying the Portuguese and the Dutch largely by reason of the inaccessibility of their country. With the object at first of facilitating military movements, therefore, the British built a network of roads which by the middle of the 19th century gave Ceylon one of the best road systems in Asia. The development of roads was followed between 1864 and 1885 by the construction of railways linking the interior with Colombo and with the southwest coast. In 1858 the first telegraph line was constructed.

These improvements in communications, coupled with reforms in the ancient Sinhalese systems of land tenure, contributed very largely to the complete transformation of the economy of Ceylon which was one of the most significant results of British rule. Before the British arrived, the economy of the island was based on subsistence agriculture supplemented by a long-established export trade in gems, coconut products and, above all, spices. Beginning in the 1830s, however, the British introduced plantation crops, coffee, coconuts, rubber and, after coffee was wiped out by disease, tea, with such success that by the end of the 19th century the export of these crops formed the mainstay of Ceylon's economy. There was some Ceylonese participation in the coconut and rubber

industries but by far the greater part of the capital for the development of the plantations, and of the ancillary services such as banking, insurance and shipping which grew in the wake of the export trade, was provided from Britain. Particularly in the case of those at the higher altitudes, in which the best tea is produced, the estates were developed mainly with the use of labour brought in from Southern India. The descendants of these Tamil labourers (known as Indian Tamils to distinguish them from the long-settled Ceylon Tamils) still provide the bulk of the estate labour force and their presence in Ceylon has proved a considerable irritant both in internal Ceylonese politics and in Indo/Ceylonese relations. An Agreement, providing for the repatriation to India of a large number of these labourers, was reached between the Indian and Ceylon Government in October 1964. Now in the first stages of implementation, it offers prospects of a solution to this problem.

The British brought with them to Ceylon their ideals of justice and the English common law—although some difficulty was encountered at first in assimilating this with the legacy of Roman-Dutch Law left behind by the Dutch. In 1801 a Supreme Court of Justice and a High Court of Appeal were established from both of which appeal lay to the Privy Council. A few years later trial by jury was introduced. In 1883 the judiciary was declared independent of the executive and common courts were instituted for the whole island, their jurisdiction covering expatriates and Ceylonese alike.

From 1834 onwards, as a result of a recommendation in the Colebrooke Report, the Government actively encouraged the spread of education, at first in the English medium but later in Sinhala and Tamil also. The Government both established its own schools and assisted financially the more numerous schools founded by the Christian missionary bodies and, after 1886, by Buddhist and Hindu associations. In 1921 University College was set up which became in 1942 the University of Ceylon. Three more Universities have since been established. As education became more widespread, so political consciousness grew among the Ceylonese, which led in turn to increasing pressure for them to be given a greater voice in the affairs of the Government. In 1908 the Ceylon National Association was appointed to forward this cause. The Association was succeeded in 1917 by the Ceylon Reform League which, in the following year, developed into the Ceylon National Congress. The efforts of these bodies culminated on 4th February 1948 in the achievement by Ceylon of complete independence as a sovereign monarchical member of the Commonwealth of Nations. (The actual constitutional stages by which independence was attained are described in the succeeding section.)

From 1948 to 1956 Ceylon was governed by the United National Party, which had its origins in the National Congress, supported by the Tamil Congress and the Indian Congress (representing the Tamil labourers). At first the Opposition consisted of the (Trotskyist) Marxist Lanka Sama Samaja Party and the Communists; from 1951 onwards its ranks were augmented by the Sri Lanka Freedom Party led by Mr S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike who had, with several others, broken away from the United National Party. The first Prime Minister was Mr D. S. Senanayake who had been prominent in the Ceylonese independence movement from its earliest days. In 1952 Mr Senanayake died and was succeeded in the Premiership by his son, Mr Dudley Senanayake. Dudley Senanayake resigned on grounds of ill-health in 1953 and the reins of office passed to Sir John Kotelawala—another veteran politician.

In the 1956 General Election Mr Bandaranaike joined hands with Mr Philip Gunawardena and Mr W. Dahanayake, to form the Mahajana Eksath Peramuna (M.E.P.) or People's United Front with a socialist and Singalese nationalist programme. Assisted by dissension among the Marxist groups, and by the fact that the Tamil constituencies in the north and north-east of Ceylon were contested almost entirely on a communal basis between the Tamil Congress and the Federal Party who, under the leadership of Mr S. J. V. Chelvanayakam, had previously broken away from the Congress, the M.E.P. won a sweeping victory, reducing the U.N.P. to eight seats in the House of Representatives.

The year marked a watershed in Ceylonese politics. The policies of the U.N.P. Governments had been moderately conservative in internal and economic affairs, and western-aligned in foreign affairs. The policies of the M.E.P. Government were based upon the three pillars of linguistic and racial nationalism in internal affairs, socialism in economic affairs and non-alignment in foreign affairs. One of the first acts of Mr Bandaranaike's Government was to negotiate with the British Government for the handling over to Ceylon of the naval base at Trincomalee and the airfield at Katunayake which had been retained under a Defence Agreement entered into on Independence. They were handed over in 1957.

In July 1959 Mr Philip Gunawardena, the leader of the left wing of the M.E.P., was expelled from the Government and in September 1959 Mr Bandaranaike was assassinated. He was succeeded in the Premiership by Mr Dahanayake who called a General Election in March 1960. This returned to power the U.N.P. of which Mr Dudley Senanayake had resumed the leadership. Although the U.N.P. were the largest single party, however, they were outnumbered by the Opposition parties and were defeated immediately on the Vote on the Address. A further General Election was therefore held in July 1960.

At this stage Mrs Sirimavo Bandaranaike agreed to assume the leadership of her late husband's original Party, the S.L.F.P. Assisted by a no-contest pact with the Trotskyist L.S.S.P. and the orthodox Communist Party, the S.L.F.P. won an overall majority in the House of Representatives. In June 1964 Mrs Bandaranaike entered into a coalition with the Lanka Sama Samaja Party led by Dr N. M. Perera to strengthen her administration and to combat mounting industrial unrest. The policies of the Coalition Government, however, aroused considerable uneasiness both within the S.L.F.P. and in the country at large. This culminated in December 1964 in the defection of a section of the S.L.F.P., under the leadership of Mr C. P. de Silva, the Minister of Lands, Irrigation and Power, which in turn led to the Government being defeated in the House of Representatives. Parliament was dissolved and a General Election was called for in March 1965, at which the United National Party emerged the largest single party with 66 seats. Mr Dudley Senanayake was able to form a government with the support of the two Tamil Parties (17), Mr C. P. de Silva's breakaway group the Sri Lanka Socialist Party (5) and other groupings. Although losing the support of the Tamil Party in 1969, Mr Senanayake remained in power until the General Election of May 1970, the results of which are shown below.

CONSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Under the Sinhalese Kings, under the Portuguese and Dutch, and initially under the British, Ceylon, or as much of it as they controlled, was governed autocratically by kings or governors, usually with the assistance of an advisory