Critical Juncture I

As noted in the Chapter 3, Sri Lanka’s transition from the status of colony to independent state was conspicuously untraumatic when compared with the decolonization experience of India. The transfer of political power to the ‘Model Colony of Ceylon’ was technically challenging, but free of the political turmoil or social catharsis evident in other cases of decolonization (de Silva 1982). Academic accounts of the transition illustrate the elite character of the process, that is, political power was passed from the British to an Anglicized indigenous elite (de Silva 1982, 1986; Manor 1989). As the next chapter illustrates more fully, the ascendant post-colonial political elite strikingly resembled the departing colonial elite — in political form and content (Oberst 1985). These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Ancient history · Ceylon · Colonialism · Decolonization · Elite · Ethnology · Independence (probability theory) · Indigenous · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Protectorate · Sociology · State (computer science) · Asian Studies and History · History · Law · Socioeconomic Development in Asia · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies