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Archaeologists believe Sri Lanka was occupied by hunter-gathers when the Sinhalese first arrived in the sixth century BC. The Sinhalese founded a kingdom named for its capital city, Anuradhapuran. By the third century BC, the kingdom drew the attention of the king of India, Asoka, who sent emissaries to the court to promote Buddhism. They successfully converted the Sri Lankan king, and for the next six centuries the kingdom of Anuradhapuran continued to thrive, grow, and expand its Buddhist practices.
Anuradhapuran's main rivals were the Tamil rulers in South India. The Tamils, who were Hindu, often conducted raids or assaults on the capital. After centuries of repeated conflict in which the capital city was sacked and destroyed, Anuradhapuran was abandoned in the eleventh century in favor of a new capital, Polonnaruwa. The kingdom began gloriously under King Vijayabahu I, who drove out invaders from Chola (a Tamil dynasty from southern India). Later under King Parakramabahu I, the Sinhalese army conquered Chola territory and even reached faraway Myanmar.
But the many conflicts left the kingdom financially depleted, which—combined with a series of weak kings—led to the decline of the kingdom. As Polonnaruwa lost control, power shifted to Jaffna, a northern commercial center with strong connections to southern India and Indian Tamil culture. Thus began a Sinhalese-Tamil split between Jaffna (northern, Tamil-speaking, Hindu) and Polonnaruwa (southern, Sinhalese, Buddhist).
When the Portuguese arrived in 1505, they made use of the political divisions between the kingdoms. They negotiated a treaty that favored the Sinhalese kingdoms over the Tamil kingdom. They further enraged Tamil rulers by trying to convert the populace from Hinduism to Catholicism. In time, the Portuguese controlled large sections of the island and the lucrative spice trade with Europe.
Eventually first the Dutch (in 1656) and then the British (in 1796) took over from the Portuguese. British rule exacerbated class divides between the Sinhalese and the Tamils. It wasn’t until after Indian independence in 1947 that Ceylon (the colonial name for Sri Lanka) gained its own independence in 1948.
After independence, the Sinhalese-Tamil divide came to the forefront of Sri Lankan politics. Both sides felt threatened: the Tamils by fear of being relegated to second-class citizens, the Sinhalese by fear that India might intervene on the Tamils’ behalf. An early attempt by Prime Minister S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike to create a federation between the two groups provoked his assassination in 1959.
Eventually a state of emergency was imposed on Tamil lands in 1971. For many Tamils, this was viewed as an act of aggression akin to an occupation, hence the formation of opposition groups such as the “Tamil Tigers.” The cycle of mistrust and revenge during the next decades was largely confined to the northern, Tamil-controlled Jaffna peninsula. The Sri Lankan government pledged to fight the rebels until they surrendered. With the final surrender of the Tamil Tigers in 2009, the peace process has begun.