A History of Sri Lanka Book

Synopsis This book presents the history of Sri Lanka from the earliest times to the present. Sri Lanka is an ancient civilization, shaped and thrust into the modern globalizing world by its colonial experience. With its own unique problems, many of them historical legacies, it is a nation trying to maintain a democratic, pluralistic state structure while struggling to come to terms with separatist aspirations. This is a complex story, and there is perhaps no better person to present it in reasoned, scholarly terms than K. M. de Silva, Sri Lanka's most distinguished and prolific historian. "A History of Sri Lanka", first published in 1981, has established itself as the standard work on the subject. This fully revised edition, in light of the most recent research, brings the story right up to the early years of the twenty-first century. The book provides comprehensive coverage of all aspects of Sri Lanka's development - from a classical Buddhist society and irrigation economy, to its emergence as a tropical colony producing some of the world's most important cash crops, such as cinnamon, tea, rubber and coconut, and finally as an Asian democracy. It is a study of the political vicissitudes of Sri Lanka's ancient civilization and the successive phases of Portuguese, Dutch and British colonial rule. The unfortunate consequences of becoming a centre of ethnic tension and Sri Lanka's long-standing relationship with India are also discussed. Exhaustively researched and analytical, this book is an invaluable reference source for students of ancient, colonial and post-colonial societies, ethnic conflict and democratic transitions, as well as for all those who simply want to get a feel of the rich and varied texture of Sri Lanka's long history. Contents: Glossary. Preface and acknowledgements. 1. Colonizers and settlers. 2. The Anuradhapura Kingdom I: aspects of political history from Saddhatissa to the Cola conquest. 3. The Anuradhapura Kingdom II: An irrigation civilization. 4. The Anuradhapura Kingdom III : the political economy. 5. The Anuradhapura Kingdom IV: a Buddhist civilization. 6. The Polonnaruva Kingdom: Indian summer of Sinhalese power. 7. The fragmentation of the Sri Lankan polity: from c. 1250 to the end of the fifteenth century. 8. The periphery stakes a claim. 9. The crisis of the sixteenth century. 10. Portuguese rule in the maritime regions, C. 1600-58. 11. The Kandyan Kingdom at Bay, 1658-87. 12. The struggle for mastery over Sri Lanka, C. 1680-1766. 13. Trade and agriculture under the voc. 14. The VOC in Sri Lanka: the last phase, 1767-96. 15. The impact of Dutch rule. 16. Religion, literature and the arts in the Kandyan Kingdom. 17. The English East India Company in Sri Lanka, 1796-1802. 18. The fall of the Kandyan Kingdom. 19. Economic and social change in the early nineteenth century, 1802-32. 20. Crown colony government, 1802-32. 21. An era of reform and reconstruction, 1833-50. 22. A plantation economy, 1850-1910. 23. Peasant agriculture, 1850-1910. 24. The consolidation of British rule : the triumph of conservatism. 25. Education and social change in the late nineteenth century. 26. Religion and the rise of nationalism, c. 1870-1900. 27. Politics and constitutional reform in the late nineteenth century. 28. Political change in the early twentieth century. 29. Elite conflict and the Ceylon National Congress, 1921-28. 30. Social and economic change in the early twentieth century, 1910-28. 31. The Donoughmore Commission and its recommendations, 1927-31. 32. The politics of the transfer of power: the first phase, 1931-42. 33. D.S. Senanayake and the passage to dominion status, 1942-47. 34. Social and economic change in the Donoughmore era, 1931-47. 35. Literature and the arts: the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 36. Sri Lanka since independence: the dominance of the UNP, 1947-56. 37. Linguistic nationaliRead More