Origins of the Sri Lankan civil war

The origins of the Sri Lankan Civil War lie in the continuous political rancor between the majority Sinhalese and the minority Sri Lankan Tamils. Before and during the early part of colonial rule by Europeans, Sri Lanka was under the rule of three separate kingdoms. War and peace was a status quo between nations, unlike the present status quo of war crimes and terrorism between majorities and minorities. During the colonial rule by Portuguese and then the Dutch, the three sovereign states were ruled as separate entities. The final British colonial rule amalgamated the entire island into a single administrative entity after independence the minorities were handed over to the mercy of the majority who were warring parties before the period of the European colonisation. According to Jonathan Spencer, a social anthropologist from the School of Social and Political Studies of the University of Edinburgh, the war is an outcome of how modern ethnic identities have been made and re-made since the colonial period, with the political struggle between minority Tamils and the Sinhala-dominant government accompanied by rhetorical wars over archeological sites and place name etymologies, and the political use of the national past.

A primary contributor to the development of political awareness amongst Tamils during the European colonial rule was the advent of Protestant missionaries on a large scale from 1814. Missionary activities by missionaries of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Methodists and Anglican churches led to a revival amongst Hindu Tamils who built their own schools, temples, societies and published literature to counter the missionary activities. The success of this effort led the Tamils to think confidently of themselves as a community and prepared the way for self-consciousness as a cultural, religious and linguisitic community in the mid-19th century.

...
Wikipedia