Colonial history of Sri Lanka
Encyclopedia
The Colonial history of Sri Lanka
is dated from the start of the Portuguese period in Ceylon
, in 1505, until the end of the independence of Sri Lanka in 1948.
: Francisco de Almeida
arrived in 1505, finding the island divided into seven warring kingdoms and unable to fend off intruders. The Portuguese founded a fort at the port city of Colombo
in 1517 and gradually extended their control over the coastal areas. In 1592 the Sinhalese moved their capital to the inland city of Kandy
, a location more secure against attack from invaders. Intermittent warfare continued through the 16th century.
Many lowland Sinhalese were forced to convert to Christianity
while the coastal Moors
were religiously persecuted and forced to retreat to the Central highlands. The Buddhist majority disliked Portuguese occupation and its influences and welcomed any power who might rescue them and defeat the Portuguese. In 1602, therefore, when the Dutch
captain Joris van Spilbergen
landed, the king of Kandy appealed to him for help.
s are the legacy of Dutch rule.
In 1659, the British sea captain Robert Knox
landed by chance on Sri Lanka and was captured by the king of Kandy. He escaped 19 years later and wrote an account of his stay. This helped to bring the island to the attention of the British.
the United Kingdom
, fearing that French
control of the Netherlands might deliver Sri Lanka to the French, occupied the coastal areas of the island (which they called
Ceylon) with little difficulty in 1796. In 1802 by the Treaty of Amiens
the Dutch part of the island was formally ceded to Britain, and became a crown colony. In 1803 the British
invaded the Kingdom of Kandy in the 1st Kandyan War
, but were bloodily repulsed. In 1815 Kandy was occupied in the 2nd Kandyan War, finally ending Sri Lankan independence.
Following the bloody suppression of the Uva Rebellion
, the Kandyan peasantry were stripped of their lands by the Wastelands Ordinance
, a modern enclosure
movement and reduced to penury. The British found that the uplands of Sri Lanka were very suited to coffee
, tea
and rubber
cultivation, and by the mid 19th century Ceylon tea had become a staple of the British market, bringing great wealth to a small class of white tea planters. To work the estates, the planters imported large numbers of Tamil workers as indentured labourers from south India, who soon made up 10% of the island's population. These workers had to work in slave-like conditions and to live in line rooms, not very different from cattle sheds.
The British colonialists favoured the semi-European Burghers, certain high-caste
Sinhalese and the Tamils who were mainly concentrated to the north of the country, exacerbating divisions and enmities which have survived ever since. Nevertheless, the British also introduced democratic elements to Sri Lanka for the first time in its history. The Burghers were given some degree of self-government as early as 1833. It was not until 1909 that constitutional development began with a partly elected assembly, and not until 1920 that elected members outnumbered official appointees. Universal suffrage
was introduced in 1931, over the protests of the Sinhalese, Tamil and Burgher elite who objected to the common people being allowed to vote http://www.dawn.com/events/millennium/12.htm,
http://www.ambedkar.org/News/News080802.htmhttp://www.crisisstates.com/download/seminars/Spencer.pdf.
Commission reforms (1931) and the Soulbury Commission
recommendations, which essentially upheld the 1944 draft constitution of the Board of ministers headed by D. S. Senanayake. The Marxist Lanka Sama Samaja Party
(LSSP), which grew out of the Youth Leagues in 1935, made the demand for outright independence a cornerstone of their policy http://www.priu.gov.lk/news_update/features/20020104edmund_samarakkody.htm Its deputies in the State Council, N.M. Perera and Philip Gunawardena
, were aided in this struggle by other less radical members like Colvin R. De Silva
, Leslie Goonewardena, Vivienne Goonewardena
, Edmund Samarkody Natesa Iyer and Don Alwin Rajapaksa. They also demanded the replacement of English as the official language by Sinhala and Tamil. The Marxist groups were a tiny minority and yet their movement was viewed with grave suspicion by the British administration. The heroic (but ineffctive) attempts to rouse the public against the British Raj in revolt would have led to certain bloodshed and a delay in independence. British state papers released in the 1950s show that the Marxist movement had a very negative impact on the policy makers at the Colonial office.
The Soulbury Commission
was the most important result of the agitation for constitutional reform in the 1930s. The Tamil leadership had by then fallen into the hands of G. G. Ponnambalam
who had rejected the "Ceylonese identity". Ponnamblam had declared himself a "proud Dravidian", and attempted to establish an independent identity for the Tamils. Ponnamblam was a politician who attacked the Sinhalese, and their historical chronicle known as the Mahavamsa
. One such inflamed attack in Navalapitiya led to the first Sinhala-Tamil riot in 1939. Ponnambalam opposed universal franchise, supported the caste system, and claimed that the protection of Tamil rights requires the Tamils (15% of the population in 1931) having an equal number of seats in parliament to that of the Sinhalese (~72% of the population). This "50-50" or "balanced representation" policy became the hall mark of Tamil politics of the time. Ponnambalam also accused the British of having established colonization in "traditional Tamil areas", and having favoured the Buddhists by the buddhist temporalities act. The Soulbury Commission
rejected these submissions by Ponnambalam, and even noted their unacceptable communal character. Sinhalese writers pointed out the large immigration of Tamils to the southern urban centers, especially after the opening of the Jaffna-Colombo railway. Meanwhile, Senanayake, Baron Jayatilleke, Oliver Gunatilleke and others lobbied the Soulbury Commission
without confronting them officially. The unofficial submissions contained what was to later become the draft constitution of 1944.
The close collaboration of the D. S. Senanayake government with the war-time British administration led to the support of Lord Louis Mountbatten
. His dispatches and a telegram to the Colonial office supporting Independence for Ceylon have been cited by historians as having helped the Senanayake government to secure the independence of Sri Lanka. The shrewd cooperation with the British as well as diverting the needs of the war market to Ceylonese markets as a supply point, managed by Oliver Goonatilleke, also led to a very favourable fiscal situation for the newly independent government.
bombed Colombo, which led to the flight of Indian merchants, dominant in the Colombo commercial sector. This flight removed a major political problem faceing the Senanayake government. Marxist leaders also escaped, to India, where they participated in the independence struggle there. The movement in Ceylon was minuscule, limited to the English educated intelligentsia and trade unions, mainly in the urban centers. These groups were led by Robert Gunawardena, Philip's brother. In stark contrast to this "heroic" but ineffective approach to the war, the Senanayake government took advantage of the war to further its rapport with the commanding elite. Ceylon became crucial to the British Empire in the war, with Lord Louis Mountbatten
using Colombo as his headquarters for the Eastern Theater. Oliver Goonatilleka successfully exploited the markets for the country's rubber and other agricultural products to replenish the treasury. Nonetheless, Sinhalese continued to agitate for independence and Sinhalese sovereignty, using the opportunities offered by the war to establish a special relationship with Britain.
Meanwhile, the Marxists, identifying the war as an imperialist sideshow and desiring a proletarian revolution
, chose a path of agitation disproportionate to their negligible combat strength, and diametrically opposed to the "constitutionalist" approach of Senanayake and other Ethnic Sinhalese leaders. A small garrison on the Cocos Islands, manned by Ceylonese, asttempted to cast off the British yoke. It has been claimed that the LSSP had some hand in the action, though this is far from clear. Three of the participants were the only British Subject Peoples to be shot for "mutiny" during World War II http://www.awm.gov.au/journal/j34/cocosmutiny.htm. Two members of the Governing Party, Junius Richard Jayawardene and Dudley Senanayake
held discussions with the Japanese to collaborate in liberating the island from British colonialism.
Sri Lankans in Singapore
and Malaysia formed the 'Lanka Regiment' of the (pro/anti Colonial?) Indian National Army
.
The constitutionalists, led by D. S. Senanayake, succeeded in winning independence. The Soulbury constitution was essentially what Senanayake's board of ministers had drafted in 1944. The promise of Dominion status, and independence itself, had been given by the Colonial office.
(UNP) in 1946 http://countrystudies.us/sri-lanka/68.htm, when a new constitution was agreed on, based on the behind-the -curtain lobbying of the Soulbury commission. At the elections of 1947, the UNP won a minority of the seats in Parliament, but cobbled together a coalition with the Sinhala Maha Sabha of Solomon Bandaranaike and the Tamil Congress of G.G. Ponnambalam. The successful inclusions of the Tamil-communalist leader Ponnambalam, and his Sinhala counterpart Bandaranaike were a remarkable political balancing act by Senanayake. However, the vacuum in Tamil Nationalist politics created by Ponnamblam's transition to a moderate opened the field for the Tamil Arasu Kachchi, a Tamil soverignist party (rendered into English as the "Federal" party) led by S. J. V. Chelvanaykam, the lawyer son of a Christian minister.
Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is a country off the southern coast of the Indian subcontinent. Known until 1972 as Ceylon , Sri Lanka is an island surrounded by the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait, and lies in the vicinity of India and the...
is dated from the start of the Portuguese period in Ceylon
Portuguese period in Ceylon
Portuguese Ceylon was a Portuguese territory in present-day Sri Lanka, representing a period in Sri Lankan history from 1505–1658. The Portuguese first encountered the Ceylonese kingdom of Kotte, with whom they signed a treaty. Portuguese Ceylon was established through the occupation of Kotte and...
, in 1505, until the end of the independence of Sri Lanka in 1948.
Portuguese era
The first Europeans to visit Sri Lanka in modern times were the PortuguesePortugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
: Francisco de Almeida
Francisco de Almeida
Dom Francisco de Almeida , also known as "the Great Dom Francisco" , was a Portuguese nobleman, soldier and explorer. He distinguished himself as a counsellor to King John II of Portugal and later in the wars against the Moors and in the conquest of Granada in 1492...
arrived in 1505, finding the island divided into seven warring kingdoms and unable to fend off intruders. The Portuguese founded a fort at the port city of Colombo
Colombo
Colombo is the largest city of Sri Lanka. It is located on the west coast of the island and adjacent to Sri Jayawardenapura Kotte, the capital of Sri Lanka. Colombo is often referred to as the capital of the country, since Sri Jayawardenapura Kotte is a satellite city of Colombo...
in 1517 and gradually extended their control over the coastal areas. In 1592 the Sinhalese moved their capital to the inland city of Kandy
Kandy
Kandy is a city in the center of Sri Lanka. It was the last capital of the ancient kings' era of Sri Lanka. The city lies in the midst of hills in the Kandy plateau, which crosses an area of tropical plantations, mainly tea. Kandy is one of the most scenic cities in Sri Lanka; it is both an...
, a location more secure against attack from invaders. Intermittent warfare continued through the 16th century.
Many lowland Sinhalese were forced to convert to Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
while the coastal Moors
Sri Lankan Moors
The Sri Lankan Moors are the third largest ethnic group in Sri Lanka comprising 8% of the country's total population . They are predominantly followers of Islam. The Moors trace their ancestry to Arab traders who settled in Sri Lanka some time between the 8th and 15th centuries...
were religiously persecuted and forced to retreat to the Central highlands. The Buddhist majority disliked Portuguese occupation and its influences and welcomed any power who might rescue them and defeat the Portuguese. In 1602, therefore, when the Dutch
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
captain Joris van Spilbergen
Joris van Spilbergen
Joris van Spilbergen was a Dutch naval officer of the 17th century.His first major expedition was in 1596, when he sailed to Africa....
landed, the king of Kandy appealed to him for help.
Dutch era
It was in 1638 that the Dutch attacked in earnest but ended with an agreement(which was disrespected by both parties), and not until 1656 that Colombo fell. By 1660 the Dutch controlled the whole island except the kingdom of Kandy. The Dutch(who were Protestants) persecuted the Catholics (the left-over Portuguese settlers) but left the Buddhists, Hindus and Moslems alone. However, they taxed the people far more heavily than the Portuguese had done. A mixed Dutch-Sinhalese people known as Burgher peopleBurgher people
The Burghers are a Eurasian ethnic group, historically from Sri Lanka, consisting for the most part of male-line descendants of European colonists from the 16th to 20th centuries and local women, with some minorities of Swedish, Norwegian, French and Irish.Today the mother tongue of the Burghers...
s are the legacy of Dutch rule.
In 1659, the British sea captain Robert Knox
Robert Knox (sailor)
Robert Knox was an English sea captain in the service of the British East India Company. He was the son of another sea captain, also called Robert Knox....
landed by chance on Sri Lanka and was captured by the king of Kandy. He escaped 19 years later and wrote an account of his stay. This helped to bring the island to the attention of the British.
British rule
During the Napoleonic WarsNapoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...
the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, fearing that French
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
control of the Netherlands might deliver Sri Lanka to the French, occupied the coastal areas of the island (which they called
Geographical renaming
Geographical renaming is the changing of the name of a geographical feature or area. This can range from the uncontroversial change of a street name to a highly disputed change to the name of a country. Some names are changed locally but the new names are not recognised by other countries,...
Ceylon) with little difficulty in 1796. In 1802 by the Treaty of Amiens
Treaty of Amiens
The Treaty of Amiens temporarily ended hostilities between the French Republic and the United Kingdom during the French Revolutionary Wars. It was signed in the city of Amiens on 25 March 1802 , by Joseph Bonaparte and the Marquess Cornwallis as a "Definitive Treaty of Peace"...
the Dutch part of the island was formally ceded to Britain, and became a crown colony. In 1803 the British
British Empire
The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...
invaded the Kingdom of Kandy in the 1st Kandyan War
Kandian Wars
The Kandyan Wars refers generally to the period of warfare between the British colonial forces and the Kingdom of Kandy, on the island of what is now present day Sri Lanka, between 1796 and 1818...
, but were bloodily repulsed. In 1815 Kandy was occupied in the 2nd Kandyan War, finally ending Sri Lankan independence.
Following the bloody suppression of the Uva Rebellion
Uva Rebellion
The Great Rebellion of 1817-1818, also known as the 1818 Uva-Wellassa Uprising, , or simply the Uva Rebellion was the third Kandyan War with the British, in what is now Sri Lanka...
, the Kandyan peasantry were stripped of their lands by the Wastelands Ordinance
Wastelands Ordinance
The Cultivation of Wastelands Ordinance, also known as a Wastelands Ordinance, is an ordinance that presumes that, in a given area, there exists the problem referred to as a tragedy of the commons...
, a modern enclosure
Enclosure
Enclosure or inclosure is the process which ends traditional rights such as mowing meadows for hay, or grazing livestock on common land. Once enclosed, these uses of the land become restricted to the owner, and it ceases to be common land. In England and Wales the term is also used for the...
movement and reduced to penury. The British found that the uplands of Sri Lanka were very suited to coffee
Coffee
Coffee is a brewed beverage with a dark,init brooo acidic flavor prepared from the roasted seeds of the coffee plant, colloquially called coffee beans. The beans are found in coffee cherries, which grow on trees cultivated in over 70 countries, primarily in equatorial Latin America, Southeast Asia,...
, tea
Tea
Tea is an aromatic beverage prepared by adding cured leaves of the Camellia sinensis plant to hot water. The term also refers to the plant itself. After water, tea is the most widely consumed beverage in the world...
and rubber
Rubber
Natural rubber, also called India rubber or caoutchouc, is an elastomer that was originally derived from latex, a milky colloid produced by some plants. The plants would be ‘tapped’, that is, an incision made into the bark of the tree and the sticky, milk colored latex sap collected and refined...
cultivation, and by the mid 19th century Ceylon tea had become a staple of the British market, bringing great wealth to a small class of white tea planters. To work the estates, the planters imported large numbers of Tamil workers as indentured labourers from south India, who soon made up 10% of the island's population. These workers had to work in slave-like conditions and to live in line rooms, not very different from cattle sheds.
The British colonialists favoured the semi-European Burghers, certain high-caste
Caste
Caste is an elaborate and complex social system that combines elements of endogamy, occupation, culture, social class, tribal affiliation and political power. It should not be confused with race or social class, e.g. members of different castes in one society may belong to the same race, as in India...
Sinhalese and the Tamils who were mainly concentrated to the north of the country, exacerbating divisions and enmities which have survived ever since. Nevertheless, the British also introduced democratic elements to Sri Lanka for the first time in its history. The Burghers were given some degree of self-government as early as 1833. It was not until 1909 that constitutional development began with a partly elected assembly, and not until 1920 that elected members outnumbered official appointees. Universal suffrage
Universal suffrage
Universal suffrage consists of the extension of the right to vote to adult citizens as a whole, though it may also mean extending said right to minors and non-citizens...
was introduced in 1931, over the protests of the Sinhalese, Tamil and Burgher elite who objected to the common people being allowed to vote http://www.dawn.com/events/millennium/12.htm,
http://www.ambedkar.org/News/News080802.htmhttp://www.crisisstates.com/download/seminars/Spencer.pdf.
Independence movement
Ceylon National Congress (CNC) was founded to agitate for greater autonomy. The party soon split along ethnic and caste lines. Prof. K. M. de Silva, the famous Peradeniya historian has pointed out that the refusal of the Ceylon Tamils to accept minority status to be one of the main causes which broke up the Ceylon National congress. The CNC did not seek independence or "Swaraj". What may be called the independence movement broke into two streams, viz., the "constitutionalists", who sought independence by gradual modification of the status of Ceylon, and the more radical groups associated with the Colombo Youth League, Labour movement of Goonasinghe, and the Jaffna Youth Congress. These organizations were the first to raise the cry of Swaraj, or outright independence, following the Indian example, when Nehru, Sarojini Naidu and other Indian leaders visited Ceylon in 1926. The efforts of the constitutionalists led to the arrival of the DonoughmoreDonoughmore
Donoughmore is a parish in County Cork which lies 25 km west north west of Cork city in Ireland.-Amenities:Donoughmore has two primary schools. Scoil Iósaif and St. Lachteen's...
Commission reforms (1931) and the Soulbury Commission
Soulbury Commission
The Soulbury Commission, announced in 1944 was, like its predecessor, the Donoughmore Commission, a prime instrument of constitutional reform in Sri Lanka. The immediate basis for the appointment of a commission for constitutional reforms was the 1944 draft constitution of the Board of Ministers,...
recommendations, which essentially upheld the 1944 draft constitution of the Board of ministers headed by D. S. Senanayake. The Marxist Lanka Sama Samaja Party
Lanka Sama Samaja Party
The Lanka Sama Samaja Party is a Trotskyist political party in Sri Lanka....
(LSSP), which grew out of the Youth Leagues in 1935, made the demand for outright independence a cornerstone of their policy http://www.priu.gov.lk/news_update/features/20020104edmund_samarakkody.htm Its deputies in the State Council, N.M. Perera and Philip Gunawardena
Philip Gunawardena
Don Philip Rupasinghe Gunawardena introduced Trotskyism to Sri Lanka, where he is a national hero, known as 'the Father of Socialism' and as 'the Lion of Boralugoda'.-Early life & education:...
, were aided in this struggle by other less radical members like Colvin R. De Silva
Colvin R. de Silva
Colvin R. de Silva was a former Cabinet Minister of Plantation Industries and Constitutional Affairs, prominent member of parliament, Trotskyist leader and lawyer in Sri Lanka. He was one of the founders of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party – the first Marxist party in Sri Lanka.-Personal...
, Leslie Goonewardena, Vivienne Goonewardena
Vivienne Goonewardena
Violet Vivienne Goonewardena was a Sri Lankan pioneer socialist and feminist. Her life and politics were shaped by the most interesting times of the Sri Lankan Left and she was in turn one of its more colourful personalities.-Political beginnings:Goonewardena was drawn into politics while still...
, Edmund Samarkody Natesa Iyer and Don Alwin Rajapaksa. They also demanded the replacement of English as the official language by Sinhala and Tamil. The Marxist groups were a tiny minority and yet their movement was viewed with grave suspicion by the British administration. The heroic (but ineffctive) attempts to rouse the public against the British Raj in revolt would have led to certain bloodshed and a delay in independence. British state papers released in the 1950s show that the Marxist movement had a very negative impact on the policy makers at the Colonial office.
The Soulbury Commission
Soulbury Commission
The Soulbury Commission, announced in 1944 was, like its predecessor, the Donoughmore Commission, a prime instrument of constitutional reform in Sri Lanka. The immediate basis for the appointment of a commission for constitutional reforms was the 1944 draft constitution of the Board of Ministers,...
was the most important result of the agitation for constitutional reform in the 1930s. The Tamil leadership had by then fallen into the hands of G. G. Ponnambalam
G. G. Ponnambalam
Ganapathipillai Gangaser Ponnambalam , known as G.G. Ponnambalam, was a Sri Lankan Tamil politician in British Ceylon, and then after independence, in Ceylon. He founded the first Sri Lankan Tamil political party, the All Ceylon Tamil Congress. Ponnambalam stood for the principle of minority...
who had rejected the "Ceylonese identity". Ponnamblam had declared himself a "proud Dravidian", and attempted to establish an independent identity for the Tamils. Ponnamblam was a politician who attacked the Sinhalese, and their historical chronicle known as the Mahavamsa
Mahavamsa
The Mahavamsa is a historical poem written in the Pali language, of the kings of Sri Lanka...
. One such inflamed attack in Navalapitiya led to the first Sinhala-Tamil riot in 1939. Ponnambalam opposed universal franchise, supported the caste system, and claimed that the protection of Tamil rights requires the Tamils (15% of the population in 1931) having an equal number of seats in parliament to that of the Sinhalese (~72% of the population). This "50-50" or "balanced representation" policy became the hall mark of Tamil politics of the time. Ponnambalam also accused the British of having established colonization in "traditional Tamil areas", and having favoured the Buddhists by the buddhist temporalities act. The Soulbury Commission
Soulbury Commission
The Soulbury Commission, announced in 1944 was, like its predecessor, the Donoughmore Commission, a prime instrument of constitutional reform in Sri Lanka. The immediate basis for the appointment of a commission for constitutional reforms was the 1944 draft constitution of the Board of Ministers,...
rejected these submissions by Ponnambalam, and even noted their unacceptable communal character. Sinhalese writers pointed out the large immigration of Tamils to the southern urban centers, especially after the opening of the Jaffna-Colombo railway. Meanwhile, Senanayake, Baron Jayatilleke, Oliver Gunatilleke and others lobbied the Soulbury Commission
Soulbury Commission
The Soulbury Commission, announced in 1944 was, like its predecessor, the Donoughmore Commission, a prime instrument of constitutional reform in Sri Lanka. The immediate basis for the appointment of a commission for constitutional reforms was the 1944 draft constitution of the Board of Ministers,...
without confronting them officially. The unofficial submissions contained what was to later become the draft constitution of 1944.
The close collaboration of the D. S. Senanayake government with the war-time British administration led to the support of Lord Louis Mountbatten
Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma
Admiral of the Fleet Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas George Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, KG, GCB, OM, GCSI, GCIE, GCVO, DSO, PC, FRS , was a British statesman and naval officer, and an uncle of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh...
. His dispatches and a telegram to the Colonial office supporting Independence for Ceylon have been cited by historians as having helped the Senanayake government to secure the independence of Sri Lanka. The shrewd cooperation with the British as well as diverting the needs of the war market to Ceylonese markets as a supply point, managed by Oliver Goonatilleke, also led to a very favourable fiscal situation for the newly independent government.
Second World War
During World War II, Sri Lanka was a front-line British base against the Japanese. Opposition to the war in Sri Lanka was orchestrated by Marxist organizations. The leaders of the LSSP pro-independence agitation were arrested by the Colonial authorities. On 5 April 1942, The Japanese NavyImperial Japanese Navy
The Imperial Japanese Navy was the navy of the Empire of Japan from 1869 until 1947, when it was dissolved following Japan's constitutional renunciation of the use of force as a means of settling international disputes...
bombed Colombo, which led to the flight of Indian merchants, dominant in the Colombo commercial sector. This flight removed a major political problem faceing the Senanayake government. Marxist leaders also escaped, to India, where they participated in the independence struggle there. The movement in Ceylon was minuscule, limited to the English educated intelligentsia and trade unions, mainly in the urban centers. These groups were led by Robert Gunawardena, Philip's brother. In stark contrast to this "heroic" but ineffective approach to the war, the Senanayake government took advantage of the war to further its rapport with the commanding elite. Ceylon became crucial to the British Empire in the war, with Lord Louis Mountbatten
Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma
Admiral of the Fleet Louis Francis Albert Victor Nicholas George Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, KG, GCB, OM, GCSI, GCIE, GCVO, DSO, PC, FRS , was a British statesman and naval officer, and an uncle of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh...
using Colombo as his headquarters for the Eastern Theater. Oliver Goonatilleka successfully exploited the markets for the country's rubber and other agricultural products to replenish the treasury. Nonetheless, Sinhalese continued to agitate for independence and Sinhalese sovereignty, using the opportunities offered by the war to establish a special relationship with Britain.
Meanwhile, the Marxists, identifying the war as an imperialist sideshow and desiring a proletarian revolution
Proletarian revolution
A proletarian revolution is a social and/or political revolution in which the working class attempts to overthrow the bourgeoisie. Proletarian revolutions are generally advocated by socialists, communists, and most anarchists....
, chose a path of agitation disproportionate to their negligible combat strength, and diametrically opposed to the "constitutionalist" approach of Senanayake and other Ethnic Sinhalese leaders. A small garrison on the Cocos Islands, manned by Ceylonese, asttempted to cast off the British yoke. It has been claimed that the LSSP had some hand in the action, though this is far from clear. Three of the participants were the only British Subject Peoples to be shot for "mutiny" during World War II http://www.awm.gov.au/journal/j34/cocosmutiny.htm. Two members of the Governing Party, Junius Richard Jayawardene and Dudley Senanayake
Dudley Senanayake
Dudley Shelton Senanayake was a Ceylonese politician, who became the second Prime Minister of Ceylon and went on to become prime minister on 2 more times during the 1950s and 1960s.-Early life:Dudley was born on 19 June, 1911 as the eldest son to Molly Dunuwila and Don Stephen Senanayake, who...
held discussions with the Japanese to collaborate in liberating the island from British colonialism.
Sri Lankans in Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
and Malaysia formed the 'Lanka Regiment' of the (pro/anti Colonial?) Indian National Army
Indian National Army
The Indian National Army or Azad Hind Fauj was an armed force formed by Indian nationalists in 1942 in Southeast Asia during World War II. The aim of the army was to overthrow the British Raj in colonial India, with Japanese assistance...
.
The constitutionalists, led by D. S. Senanayake, succeeded in winning independence. The Soulbury constitution was essentially what Senanayake's board of ministers had drafted in 1944. The promise of Dominion status, and independence itself, had been given by the Colonial office.
Post-war
The Sinhalese leader Don Stephen Senanayake left the CNC on the issue of independence, disagreeing with the revised aim of 'the achieving of freedom', although his real reasons were more subtle http://www.atimes.com/ind-pak/CJ13Df01.html. He subsequently formed the United National PartyUnited National Party
The United National Party, often referred to as the UNP ), , is a political party in Sri Lanka. It currently is the main opposition party in Sri Lanka and is headed by Ranil Wickremesinghe...
(UNP) in 1946 http://countrystudies.us/sri-lanka/68.htm, when a new constitution was agreed on, based on the behind-the -curtain lobbying of the Soulbury commission. At the elections of 1947, the UNP won a minority of the seats in Parliament, but cobbled together a coalition with the Sinhala Maha Sabha of Solomon Bandaranaike and the Tamil Congress of G.G. Ponnambalam. The successful inclusions of the Tamil-communalist leader Ponnambalam, and his Sinhala counterpart Bandaranaike were a remarkable political balancing act by Senanayake. However, the vacuum in Tamil Nationalist politics created by Ponnamblam's transition to a moderate opened the field for the Tamil Arasu Kachchi, a Tamil soverignist party (rendered into English as the "Federal" party) led by S. J. V. Chelvanaykam, the lawyer son of a Christian minister.