Jaffna kingdom, Portuguese invasion of
Years: 1560 - 1560
The Portuguese invasion of Jaffna kingdom in 1560 is the first expedition against the Jaffna kingdom by the Portuguese Empire.
It is led by Viceroy Dom Constantino de Bragança and results in the capture of the capital, Nallur.
The king of Jaffna, Cankili I, manages to escape and regains the capital through a pact that he makes with the Portuguese.
He subsequently incites a peoples' rebellion against the Portuguese, resulting in their withdrawing their forces from Nallur.
The Jaffna kingdom, however, loses its sovereignty over Mannar Island and its main town, Mannar.
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Portuguese missionaries have also been busily involving themselves in the affairs of the Tamil kingdom at Jaffna, converting almost the entire island of Mannar to Roman Catholicism by 1544.
The reaction of Cankily, king of Jaffna, however, is to lead an expedition to Mannar and decapitate the resident priest and about six hundred of his congregation.
The king of Portugal takes this as a personal affront and sends several expeditions against Jaffna.
The Portuguese, having disposed of the Tamil king who flees south, installs one of the Tamil princes on the throne, obliging him to pay an annual tribute.
In 1619 Lisbon annexes the Kingdom of Jaffna.
Only the central highland Kingdom of Kandy—the last remnant of Buddhist Sinhalese power—remains independent of Portuguese control after the annexation of Jaffna.
The kingdom acquires a new significance as custodian of Sinhalese nationalism.
The Portuguese attempt the same strategy they had used successfully at Kotte and Jaffna and set up a puppet on the throne.
They are able to put a queen on the Kandyan throne and even to have her baptized, but despite considerable Portuguese help, she is not able to retain power.
The Portuguese spend the next half century trying in vain to expand their control over the Kingdom of Kandy.
In one expedition in 1630, the Kandyans ambush and massacre the whole Portuguese force, including the captain-general.
The Kandyans foment rebellion and consistently frustrate Portuguese attempts to expand into the interior.
The areas the Portuguese claim to control in Sri Lanka are part of what they majestically call the Estado da India and are governed in name by the viceroy in Goa, who represents the king, but in actuality, from headquarters in Colombo, the captain-general, a subordinate of the viceroy, directly rules Sri Lanka with all the affectations of royalty once reserved for the Sinhalese kings.
The Portuguese do not try to alter the existing basic structure of native administration.
Although Portuguese governors are put in charge of each province, the customary hierarchy, determined by caste and land ownership, remains unchanged.
Traditional Sinhalese institutions are maintained and placed at the service of the new rulers.
Portuguese administrators offer and grants to Europeans and Sinhalese in place of salaries, and the traditional compulsory labor obligation is used for construction and military purposes.
The Portuguese try vigorously, if not fanatically, to force religious and, to a lesser extent, educational, change in Sri Lanka.
They discriminate against other religions with a vengeance, destroy Buddhist and Hindu temples, and give the temple lands to Roman Catholic religious orders.
Buddhist monks flee to Kandy, which becomes a refuge for people disaffected with colonial rule.
One of the most durable legacies of the Portuguese is the conversion of a large number of Sinhalese and Tamils to Roman Catholicism.
Although small pockets of Nestorian Christianity had existed in Sri Lanka, the Portuguese are the first to propagate Christianity on a mass scale.
Sixteenth-century Portuguese Catholicism is intolerant, but perhaps because it had caught Buddhism at its nadir, it has nevertheless became rooted firmly enough on the island to survive the subsequent persecutions of the Protestant Dutch Reformists.
The Roman Catholic Church is especially effective in fishing communities—both Sinhalese and Tamil—and contribute to the upward mobility of the castes associated with this occupation.
Portuguese emphasis on proselytization spurs the development and standardization of educational institutions.
In order to convert the masses, mission schools are opened, with instruction in Portuguese and Sinhalese or Tamil.
Many Sinhalese converts assume Portuguese names.
The rise of many families influential in the twentieth century dates from this period.
For a while, Portuguese becomes not only the language of the upper classes of Sri Lanka but also the lingua franca of prominence in the Asian maritime world.
The Dutch become involved in the politics of the Indian Ocean in the beginning of the seventeenth century.
Headquartered at Batavia in modern Indonesia, the Dutch move to wrest control of the highly profitable spice trade from the Portuguese.
The Dutch begin negotiations with King Rajasinha II of Kandy in 1638.
A treaty assures the king assistance in his war against the Portuguese in exchange for a monopoly of the island's major trade goods, particularly cinnamon.
Rajasinha also promises to pay the Dutch war-related expenses.
The Portuguese fiercely resist the Dutch and the Kandyans and are expelled only gradually from their strongholds.
The Dutch capture the eastern ports of Trincomalee and Batticaloa in 1639 and restore them to the Sinhalese, but when the southwestern and western ports of Galle and Negombo fall in 1640, the Dutch refuse to turn them over to the king of Kandy.
The Dutch claim that Rajasinha has not reimbursed them for their vastly inflated claims for military expenditures.
This pretext allows the Dutch to control the island's richest cinnamon lands.
The Dutch ultimately present the king of Kandy with such a large bill for help against the Portuguese that the king can never hope to repay it.
After extensive fighting, the Portuguese surrender Colombo in 1656 and Jaffna, their last stronghold, in 1658.
Superior economic resources and greater naval power enable the Dutch to dominate the Indian Ocean.
They attack Portuguese positions throughout South Asia and in the end allow their adversaries to keep only their settlement at Goa.
The king of Kandy soon realizes that he has replaced one foe with another and proceeds to incite rebellion in the lowlands where the Dutch hold sway.
He even attempts to ally the British in Madras in his struggle to oust the Dutch.
These efforts end with a serious rebellion against his rule in 1664.
The Dutch profit from this period of instability and extend the territory under their control.
They take over the remaining harbors and completely cordon off Kandy, thereby making the highland kingdom landlocked and preventing it from allying itself with another foreign power.
This strategy, combined with a concerted Dutch display of force, subdues the Kandyan kings.
Henceforth, Kandy is unable to offer significant resistance except in its internal frontier regions.
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
― George Santayana, The Life of Reason (1905)