Latest / The History of Portugal: The Small Nation That Built a Global Empire — Fexingo History / Portugal's Pearl of the Indian Ocean: Ceylon Lost to the Dutch
Transcript
- Lucas: So far in our Portugal series, we've crisscrossed the globe — India, Brazil, Africa, Japan. But there's one island that Portugal held onto for over a century and a half, and it's sometimes called the Pearl of the Indian Ocean: Ceylon. Luna: Modern-day Sri Lanka, right? And it wasn't just a spice stop — cinnamon was huge. Lucas: Exactly. Cinnamon was the original luxury spice, and Ceylon had the best in the world. The Portuguese first turned up in 1505, when a fleet under Lourenço de Almeida was blown off course and landed near Colombo. They quickly realised the island's potential. Lucas: But they didn't just conquer outright. The island was divided into several warring kingdoms: the powerful one in the southwest was Kotte, which controlled the cinnamon lands. There was also Sitawaka in the interior, and up in the central highlands, the independent Kingdom of Kandy. Luna: So they played the divide and conquer game from the start. Lucas: Pretty much. They allied with the king of Kotte, who was struggling against Sitawaka. In exchange for protection and trade privileges, the Portuguese got a foothold. By the 1550s, they had effectively turned Kotte into a protectorate. But that created a backlash. Lucas: The Sitawaka king, Mayadunne, fought back fiercely. His son Rajasinha I actually managed to defeat the Portuguese in a major battle in 1568 near Colombo. For a moment, it looked like the Portuguese might be expelled. Luna: Wait — Rajasinha? That name comes up again later, right? I think I've heard of a King Rajasinha II. Lucas: Great catch. Rajasinha I is a different guy — he never quite finished the job. But his legacy set the stage for his namesake a century later. The Portuguese held on, because they had forts and sea power, but the interior was never fully under their control. Lucas: By the early 1600s, the Portuguese had established a network of forts along the coast — Colombo, Galle, Jaffna, Trincomalee. They controlled the cinnamon trade through a state monopoly. But the cost of maintaining that control was high, and the local population resented the forced conversions and heavy taxes. Luna: Didn't the Dutch show up around then too? Lucas: Exactly. The Dutch East India Company, the VOC, was aggressively challenging Portugal everywhere in Asia. In Ceylon, they found a perfect ally: the Kingdom of Kandy, which had never been conquered by the Portuguese. And the king of Kandy at that time was Rajasinha II. Lucas: Rajasinha II came to the throne in 1635, and he was a brilliant strategist. He saw that the Portuguese were overstretched and that the Dutch were eager to break their spice monopoly. In 1638, he signed a treaty with the VOC: the Dutch would help him drive the Portuguese out of Ceylon, and in return they'd get trade rights. Luna: But the Dutch didn't just leave after the Portuguese were gone, did they? Lucas: You guessed it. The alliance was always uneasy. Together, they besieged the Portuguese fort at Batticaloa and took it in 1638. Then Galle in 1640. But the Dutch were careful to keep the best ports for themselves. Rajasinha realised he'd swapped one European power for another. Lucas: The biggest prize was Colombo, the Portuguese capital on the island. The Portuguese had turned it into a formidable fortress. In 1655, the Dutch and Kandyan forces surrounded it. The siege lasted seven months — from August 1655 to March 1656. Inside, the Portuguese commander, António de Sousa Coutinho, held out with a few hundred men against disease and starvation. Luna: Seven months — that's brutal. What finally broke them? Lucas: Relief from Goa never came. The Estado da Índia was stretched thin fighting the Dutch elsewhere. When a final Portuguese attempt to provision Colombo failed, the garrison surrendered. The Dutch marched in, and just like that, Portuguese Ceylon was over — after 150 years. Luna: So Rajasinha II helped kick out the Portuguese, only to have the Dutch take their place. That must have felt like a hollow victory. Lucas: It wasn't purely symbolic — he did gain some territory in the interior. But the coastal cinnamon lands were now in Dutch hands. The Portuguese never returned. It's a classic story of how smaller European powers leveraged local alliances to oust a bigger player, but the long-term result was just another empire. Lucas: One last footnote: the Portuguese left a surprising cultural legacy in Sri Lanka. There are still communities of Portuguese Burghers — descendants of Portuguese settlers and locals. And the Sinhalese language has quite a few Portuguese loanwords, like 'almari' for cupboard, 'janela' for window. Even today, in the town of Batticaloa, there's a dialect of Portuguese Creole spoken by a few elderly people. Luna: That's fascinating — a tiny linguistic remnant of an empire that collapsed four centuries ago. Lucas: You know, it's moments like that which make this history feel alive. If you've enjoyed walking through these stories with us episode by episode, honestly, if today's conversation was worth a coffee to you, that's the link — buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Keeps the show ad-free and lets us keep digging into these details. Luna: Yeah, and it really does help. We're grateful for every bit of support. Lucas: Alright — so the Portuguese lost Ceylon, but they held on in other places. Macau, for instance, remained theirs until 1999. And in a way, the loss of Ceylon marked the beginning of the end of Portugal's Asian empire. But that's a story for another time. Luna: I look forward to it. Thanks for walking us through this chapter. Lucas: Thanks for listening. Until next time.