Le Pèlerinage de Charlemagne (c. 1140) and…

Sinhalese culture experiences fundamental change during this extended period of domestic instability and frequent foreign invasion.

Rice cultivation continues as the mainstay of agriculture but is no longer dependent on an elaborate irrigation network.

In the wet zone, large-scale administrative cooperation is not as necessary as it had been before.

Foreign trade is of increasing importance to the Sinhalese kings.

In particular, cinnamon—in great demand by Europeans—becomes a prime export commodity.

Because of the value of cinnamon, the city of Kotte on the west coast (near modern Colombo) becomes the nominal capital of the Sinhalese kingdom in the mid-fifteenth century.

Still, the Sinhalese kingdom remains divided into numerous competing petty principalities.

The Portuguese soon decide that the island, which they call Cilao, conveys a strategic advantage that is necessary for protecting their coastal establishments in India and increasing Lisbon's potential for dominating Indian Ocean trade.

These incentives prove irresistible, and, the Portuguese, with only a limited number of personnel, seek to extend their power over the island.

They have not long to wait.

Palace intrigue, then revolution in Kotte threatens the survival of the kingdom.

The Portuguese skillfully exploit these developments.

In 1521 Bhuvanekabahu, the ruler of Kotte, requests Portuguese aid against his brother, Mayadunne, the more able rival king who has established his independence from the Portuguese at Sitawake, a domain in the Kotte kingdom.

Powerless on his own, King Bhuvanekabahu becomes a puppet of the Portuguese, but shortly before his death in 1551, the king will successfully obtain Portuguese recognition of his grandson, Dharmapala, as his successor.

There are three native centers of political power at the onset of the European period in Sri Lanka in the sixteenth century: the two Sinhalese kingdoms of Kotte and Kandy and the Tamil kingdom at Jaffna.

Kotte is the principal seat of Sinhalese power, and it claims a largely imaginary overlordship not only over Kandy but also over the entire island.

None of the three kingdoms, however, has the strength to assert itself over the other two and reunify the island.

Foreign rulers take advantage of the disturbed political state of the Sinhalese kingdom, and in the thirteenth century Chandrabhanu, a Buddhist king from Malaya, had invaded the island twice.

He attempted to seize the two most sacred relics of the Buddha in Sinhalese custody, the Tooth Relic and the Alms Bowl.

In the early fifteenth century, the Ming dynasty Chinese intercedes on behalf of King Parakramabahu VI (1412-67), an enlightened monarch who repulses an invasion from the polity of Vijayanagara in southern India, reunites Sri Lanka, and earns renown as a patron of Buddhism and the arts.

Parakramabahu VI is the last Sinhalese king to rule the entire island.

A conflict between the expeditionary forces of the Chinese Ming empire and the Sinhalese Kotte kingdom, located in the southern territories of present-day Sri Lanka, results in the overthrow of the Sinhalese ruling house.

Portugal had pledged to Bhuvanekabahu VII of Kotte to protect his grandson Dharmapala from attack in return for privileges, including a continuous payment in cinnamon and permission to rebuild the fort at Colombo on a grander scale.

When Bhuvanekabahu dies, Dharmapala, still a child, is entrusted to the Franciscans for his education, and, in 1557, he converts to Roman Catholicism.

His conversion breaks the centuries-old connection between Buddhism and the state, and a great majority of Sinhalese immediately disqualify the young monarch from any claim to the throne.

The rival king at Sitawake exploits  the issue of the prince's conversion and accused Dharmapala of being a puppet of a foreign power.

Portuguese power in Ceylon is by 1641 restricted to the west coast.

Sirimavo Bandaranaike, the widow of the assassinated Ceylonese prime minister Bandaranaike, leads the SLFP to victory in the 1960 election and becomes the world’s first woman prime minister.

Sirimavo Bandaranaike returns to the office of Ceylon’s prime minister in 1970 as the head of a pro-Sinhalese left-wing coalition that promotes state control of the economy.