There has been a good deal of new writing on the history of Sri Lanka published since the appearance of the first edition of this book in 1980. Much of this is, however, on early Sri Lanka and on the ethnic conflict in the late twentieth century. Some of my former colleagues at the University of Peradeniya and a few others connected with the International Centre for Ethnic Studies (ICES) have helped me with suggestions for changes and in the exhausting search for items for revision. Some changes emerged from discussions with colleagues on revisions of this volume; others have appeared from responses to the writings of critics, in books, journals and presentations at seminars. I am especially grateful to Professors Sirima Kiribamune, K.N.O. Dharmadasa and John Holt for their encouragement and help in revising this book. Many, if not most, of their suggestions have been incorporated in the revised text. Unfortunately, John Richardson’s monumental volume of 764 pages, Paradise Poisoned: Learning about Conflict, Terrorism and Development from Sri Lanka’s Civil Wars (ICES, Kandy, March 2005), appeared too late for me to benefit from a thorough reading.
This revision owes a great deal more to my wife Chandra than she will ever know. She kept insisting that the book was in need of revision and that it was something I owed to myself and the two institutions to which I was linked—the University of Peradeniya and the ICES. I started working on the revisions after my departure from the University of Peradeniya in July 1995. Although a substantial part of the revision was done before I fell ill in 2002, it was finally completed in 2004 after my recovery from the stroke.
The staff of the ICES has contributed more to the actual preparation of the revised text than any other group of persons. I am especially grateful to Ms Iranga Silva of the ICES for preparing two or more versions of the revised work on the computer, and to Kanthi Gamage, Librarian/Documentalist of the ICES, who has been enormously helpful in the search for published articles and for unpublished material whenever such material could be located, and in proofreading.
The maps in the book have been prepared by Dr Ram Alagan of the Department of Geography at the University of Peradeniya. Some of these maps are based on maps prepared in the 1970s for the original book and in the early 1980s for other publications by Professor G.H. Peiris. I am very grateful to all of them.
K.M. de Silva
Kandy, Sri Lanka
April 2005