Sri Lanka—Profile

(2001 est. pop. 19.4 million). A small island nation located at the southernmost tip of the Indian subcontinent and measuring only 65,610 square kilometers, Sri Lanka has a diversified geography that includes harmoniously associated landscapes of lowlands and highlands (reaching a lofty elevation of 2,524 meters). It is richly blessed by natural beauty, and greatly benefits from its location and climatic conditions.

Its tropical location and the monsoons have given Sri Lanka a good environment for cultivating tropical crops, of which tea, rubber, and coconut palms are the most important. A wide variety of tropical vegetables and fruits are also grown, mostly on family farms; common crops are bananas, mangos, pineapples, avocados, and melons, as well as cashew nuts and many spices, including chili peppers, black pepper, cardamom, cinnamon, and nutmeg, which altogether flavor the traditional hot, spicy local curries. In the cold tropical environment of the highlands, even a large variety of so-called British vegetables from the middle latitudes are grown.

Sri Lanka is divided into a wet zone that occupies the southwestern quarter and the highlands, and a dry zone that covers all others quarters. The wet zone is defined by perennial rainfalls and the dry zone is characterized by a striking dry period, ranging from four to six months(from April/May until August/September).

The two ethnic groups that account for 92 percent of the Sri Lankan people—the Sinhalese (74 percent) and the Tamils (18 percent)—originated in India. The Sinhalese, who are thought to be of Indo-Aryan origin, probably entered around the fifth century BCE. The larger part of the Tamils, from southern India, entered Sri Lanka at the start of the Christian era, while a smaller part came only during the British colonial period in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century for employment in the plantation industries. Subsequently, both groups established their own culture and civilization in Sri Lanka. Today, the Sinhalese community is Buddhist, whereas the Tamil community is Hindu. (Small numbers of Sri Lankans—7 percent in all—from both ethnic groups are Christians, as a result of the influence of colonial powers in Sri Lanka, particularly the Portuguese in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The 7 percent of the population whoare Muslim are descended from early Arab traders, who came mostly during the ninth and tenth centuries.) Both the Sinhalese and the Tamils speak their own languages (Sinhala and Tamil, respectively). English is also widely spoken, particularly by members of the upper and middle class. Since 1983, a civil war has been fought in north and northeastern Sri Lanka; Tamil rebels desire an independent Tamil homeland, Eelam, which is strongly opposed by the Sinhalese-dominated Sri Lankan government.

The early Sinhalese invaders settled in the semi-dry north-central, northern, and eastern lowlands, and introduced an effective system of paddy rice cultivation based on irrigation water stored in large natural reservoirs. The important Anuradhapura kingdom flourished from the fourth century BCE until the eleventh century, followed by the Polonnaruwa kingdom until the thirteenth century, when Tamil incursions from south India forced the Sinhalese reign to withdraw to a safer interior part of Sri Lanka. In the thirteenth century, with the weakening Sinhalese reign and an ascendent Tamil power over the north of Sri Lanka, the country was no longer unified, instead breaking into the three independent kingdoms of Kandy and Kotte (both Sinhalese) and Jaffna (Tamil) until the colonial period started in the early sixteenth century.

The Portuguese were the first Europeans to colonize Sri Lanka; they gained control of the coastal regions by the beginning of the seventeenth century. The Dutch, called in by the Sinhalese kingdom of Kandy to help drive out the Portuguese Dutch, stayed and colonized the island themselves from the mid-seventeenth century until the British took over in 1796. The British called the island Ceylon, the name by which it was known until 1972. While the Portuguese and Dutch were interested in the island's many spices, including the endemic cinnamon (Cinnamomum ceylanicum), British interests centered on the cultivation of tea and rubber after coffee and cinchona failed. Agricultural exploitation on a large scale was concentrated on the southwestern quarter, including the dense evergreen tropical forests of the highlands, which were cleared and converted into plantations. The colonists also exploited the island's wealth of gemstones (such as blue sapphire, ruby, and moonstone) and ivory.

The economic development of Sri Lanka following independence resulted in diversification of agriculture and industry, with light industry (particularly the manufacturing of garments) becoming the backbone of a liberalized and privatized economy. Sri Lanka's economic growth was also due in part to generous international aid. Sri Lanka's fishing industry is organized and practiced in traditional ways. Fishing boats are only partly mechanized and fishing occurs mostly in the coastal areas, while deep-sea fishery resources have been exploited only slightly, due to the lack of fishing vessels. Fishing catch is commonly low, though Sri Lanka has an important export trade in prawns and lobsters. Animal husbandry is not widely practiced, which leads to deficits in milk and meat. Sri Lanka offers a wide variety of traditional (called "antique") and modern handicrafts, including woodcarving, silversmithing, jewelry making, and batik textile manufacture. While the rate of unemployment is officially 10 percent, the lack of jobs that pay well has led hundreds of thousands of young Sri Lankans (mostly women) to seek work in the Middle East, commonly as housemaids.

Sri Lanka has a flourishing tourism industry, mostly for vacationers from Western Europe (in 1999, there were 450,000 arrivals). Although tourism is concentrated in sun and beach resorts along the western and southern coasts (for example, in Negombo, Kalutara, Beruwala, Bentota, and Hikkaduwa), ecotourism and health tourism have also become popular. The latter is an interesting development. As Europeans have become familiar with traditional ayurvedic medicine (the medicine of ancient India), they have traveled to Sri Lanka to seek treatment according to this practice in ayurvedic clinics and in hotels that offer this service.

Manfred Domroes

Johnson, B. L. C., and M. Le Scrivenor. (1981) Sri Lanka: Land, People, and Economy. London: Heinemann.

Farmer, B. H., ed. (1977) Green Revolution? Technology and Change in Rice-Growing Areas of Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka. London: English Language Book Society and Macmillan.

Domroes, M. (1976) Sri Lanka: Die Tropeninsel Ceylon. Darmstadt, Germany: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.

Domroes, M., and H. Roth, eds. (1998) Sri Lanka—Past and Present: Archaeology, Geography, Economics. Weikersheim, Germany: Margraf.

Peiris, G. H. (1996) Development and Change in Sri Lanka: Geographical Perspectives. New Delhi: Macmillan.