The Portuguese Arrival

By about 1500, trade in the Indian Ocean was dominated by Arab, Indian, Malay and Chinese merchants. Portuguese ships with mounted guns arrived in these waters early in the 16th century, as Encyclopaedia Britannica describes.

In 1505 a fleet commanded by Lourenço de Almeida, son of the Portuguese viceroy in India, reached Sri Lanka by accident. Britannica says it was blown into Colombo by adverse winds. A Library of Congress country study says stormy weather forced it to dock at Galle while it was looking for Moorish ships to attack. Both agree on what followed. The king of Kotte, the principal Sinhalese kingdom, received the visitors well. The Library of Congress study adds that he offered gifts of cinnamon and elephants and gave the Portuguese permission to build a residence in Colombo for trade.

The Portuguese soon returned. In 1518 they were permitted to build a fort at Colombo and were given trading concessions. In 1521 the kingdom of Kotte was divided among three brothers, and the eldest, Bhuvanaika Bahu, turned to the Portuguese for help against his brother Mayadunne, king of Sitawake.

Britannica records an agreement of 1543 under which the king of Portugal guaranteed the protection of the heir, Bhuvanaika Bahu's grandson Dharmapala. In return the Portuguese were confirmed in their privileges and were to receive a tribute of cinnamon. Dharmapala was educated by Franciscans, and his conversion to Christianity, announced in 1556 or 1557, cost him support among his people. In 1580 he was persuaded to deed his kingdom to the Portuguese, and when he died in 1597 they took formal possession of it. The kingdom of Jaffna in the north was annexed in 1619.

Portuguese possessions on the island became part of the Estado da India, governed in name from Goa. Britannica notes that the administrative structure of the Kotte kingdom was kept. The island was divided into four provinces, each headed by a dissava. Portuguese held the highest offices, and local officials came from the Sinhalese nobility loyal to them.

The existing system of service owed for land was used to secure cinnamon and elephants, which became Portuguese monopolies, and officials compiled a land register called a tombo. Roman Catholic missions were active throughout the period. Franciscans set up centres from 1543 onward, and Jesuits, Dominicans and Augustinians followed. Many coastal communities converted, converts took Portuguese surnames at baptism, and the Portuguese language spread among the upper classes. The Library of Congress study adds that Buddhist and Hindu temples were destroyed and their lands given to religious orders.

One Sinhalese kingdom stayed outside Portuguese control. Kandy, in the Central Highlands, routed a Portuguese army in 1594 under its king Vimala Dharma Surya, and later attempts to subdue it failed. Its kings had no sea power and looked for an ally. The first Dutch envoy, Joris van Spilbergen, met the king in July 1602.

In 1638 King Rajasinha II concluded a treaty with the Dutch admiral Adam Westerwolt. It gave the Dutch a monopoly on most of the island's cinnamon in return for help against the Portuguese. Galle was taken in March 1640. The Portuguese surrendered Colombo in May 1656 after a siege, and their last strongholds in the north, Mannar and Jaffna, fell in February and June 1658. Britannica records that the Dutch shut the Kandyans out of Colombo and kept the coast for themselves.

The Library of Congress study names the conversion of a large number of Sinhalese and Tamils to Roman Catholicism as one of the most durable legacies of the Portuguese, and notes that many converts assumed Portuguese names.

Few buildings survive. At Galle, which UNESCO describes as founded by the Portuguese in the 16th century as a fortified town, ICOMOS found few vestiges of the Portuguese phase, because the Dutch replaced the earlier defences after 1640. The Galle Heritage Foundation identifies the Black Fort, originally built by the Portuguese and called Santa Cruz, as the oldest surviving construction in the fort.

The spice that the Portuguese took as tribute is still grown. The Department of Export Agriculture describes cinnamon as cultivated commercially in the island's coastal belts, and says that the making of cinnamon quills is unique to Sri Lanka.