GCE A/L History cheat sheet

Primary source: produced at the time by a participant or eyewitness; secondary source: later interpretation drawing on primary material.

External criticism tests authenticity (date, authorship, provenance, physical form); internal criticism tests credibility of content and the author's bias or competence.

Corroboration: independent sources agreeing strengthens a claim; sources sharing a common origin are not independent.

Mahavamsa (5th-6th c. CE, attributed to Mahanama) and Culavamsa are chronicles with religious intent; Dipavamsa is earlier and simpler.

Rajavaliya and Vamsatthappakasini are later Sinhala/Pali sources; Portuguese, Dutch and British records give outsider perspectives with their own agendas.

Ola-leaf manuscripts, rock inscriptions (Brahmi cave inscriptions from around 3rd c. BCE) and copper plates are key Sri Lankan primary evidence.

Historiography: Ranke's empiricism, Annales school (longue duree, total history), Marxist class analysis, subaltern studies and postcolonial critique.

Anachronism means reading later concepts into an earlier period; periodisation itself is a historiographical choice, not a natural fact.

Oral tradition can preserve genuine memory but is reshaped by transmission; treat genealogies and founding myths as ideological as well as factual.

Balangoda Man: Late Pleistocene skeletal finds from caves such as Fa-Hien Lena, Batadombalena and Belilena, associated with microlithic tools.

Mesolithic cave occupation predates agriculture; geometric microliths, bone tools and evidence of hunting and gathering characterise these sites.

Protohistoric Iron Age sites (e.g. Anuradhapura citadel, Aligala, Ibbankatuwa) show iron technology and early rice cultivation before written records.

Earliest writing: Brahmi inscriptions in caves recording donations to the sangha, often naming a donor, kin group and monastery.

Early historic period conventionally begins with the arrival of Buddhism (traditionally 3rd c. BCE, Ashoka's mission) and the growth of Anuradhapura.

Vijaya legend in the Mahavamsa is a dynastic origin myth; it should be read ideologically rather than as straightforward history.

Megallithic/urn burial sites such as Ibbankatuwa and Pomparippu indicate ranked societies and exchange before urbanism.

Early trade contacts with South India, the Roman world and Southeast Asia are attested by beads, coins and imported ceramics.

Linguistic evidence: Sinhala is an Indo-Aryan language with Dravidian substratum features; early Prakrit inscriptions underlie its development.

Anuradhapura (c. 3rd c. BCE-10th c. CE) and Polonnaruwa (11th-13th c.) were the great dry-zone capitals, sustained by large irrigation works.

Kingship combined dharma-based legitimacy with hydraulic authority; the king as protector of the sangha and builder of tanks and dagobas.

Major rulers: Devanampiya Tissa (Buddhism), Dutugemunu (unification), Vasabha, Mahasena (irrigation and monasteries), Parakramabahu I (Polonnaruwa).

Elara, a South Indian ruler at Anuradhapura, is remembered in the chronicles as a just non-Buddhist king defeated by Dutugemunu.

Caste in Sri Lanka was regionally variable and tied to land and service (rajakariya); the Govi (cultivator) and Karava, Durava, Salagama groups dominate the southwest.

The sangha's wealth and the monastic landlord system shaped economy and politics; periodic purification of the sangha was a royal duty.

South Indian invasions (Cola, Pandya) and the Cola occupation of the 10th-11th c. shifted power and eventually to Polonnaruwa.

After the 13th c., the dry-zone civilisation declined and political centres shifted to the southwest (Kotte, Kandy) and to Jaffna in the north.

Medieval kingdoms: Jaffna (Aryacakravarti), Kotte, Sitawaka and Kandy; the Kandyan kingdom survived until 1815.

Portuguese (1505-1658) controlled the southwest coast, introduced Catholicism and are remembered for harsh coastal rule and the Sitawaka wars.

Dutch (1658-1796) took the coast from Portugal, held a monopoly on cinnamon and other trade, and administered through the Roman-Dutch law that still influences Sri Lankan civil law.

British (1796 coastal; 1815 Kandyan kingdom by the Kandyan Convention) unified the island administratively for the first time under one power.

1817-18 Uva Rebellion and 1848 Matale Rebellion were responses to taxation, land policy and loss of Kandyan elite power.

Colebrooke-Cameron Reforms (1833) created a unified administration, a Legislative Council and English-based education; Crown land ordinance turned land into a commodity.

Plantation economy: coffee from the 1820s-40s, then tea (from 1867), rubber and coconuts; Tamil labourers were brought from South India under indenture.

Donoughmore Constitution (1931) introduced universal adult suffrage; Soulbury Constitution (1947) set the framework for independence.

Colonial legacy: English-educated elite, plantation-dependent economy, ethnicised labour categories and a centralised state.

Religious revival (Anagarika Dharmapala, Theosophists, temperance movement) preceded political nationalism in the late 19th c.

Ceylon National Congress (1919) demanded constitutional reform; the Donoughmore and Soulbury commissions shaped the transfer of power.

Independence on 4 February 1948 came through negotiation, not mass struggle; D. S. Senanayake became first prime minister.

Citizenship Acts (1948-49) disenfranchised most Indian Tamil plantation workers, a defining early grievance.

Sinhala Only Act (1956) made Sinhala the sole official language, triggering Tamil protest and the 1956-58 ethnic unrest.

Bandaranaike-Chelvanayakam Pact (1957) and Senanayake-Chelvanayakam Pact (1965) on language and devolution were never implemented.

1971 JVP insurrection and 1987-89 second insurrection were Marxist-Leninist uprisings suppressed by the state.

1972 republican constitution made Buddhism primary and ended Ceylon's Dominion status; 1978 constitution introduced an executive presidency.

Black July 1983 and the civil war (1983-2009) dominated late 20th-century politics; the LTTE was defeated militarily in 2009.

Mesopotamia: Sumerian city-states, cuneiform writing, Hammurabi's code and the Babylonian and Assyrian empires.

Egypt: Nile-based state, pharaonic divine kingship, hieroglyphs, pyramid building and the New Kingdom empire.

Indus Valley: Harappa and Mohenjo-daro, planned cities, undeciphered script and a trade network reaching Mesopotamia.

China: Shang oracle bones, Zhou mandate of heaven, Qin unification and Han Confucian bureaucracy.

Persian Achaemenid empire: satrapies, royal road and a multi-ethnic imperial ideology; Zoroastrianism as state religion.

Greek city-states (polis), Athenian democracy and colonisation; Hellenism spread by Alexander and the successor kingdoms.

Rome: republic to principate, Roman law, citizenship extension and infrastructure; the empire's later division and the western collapse in 476 CE.

Medieval worlds: feudalism and manorialism in Europe, the Islamic caliphates and their scholarship, Byzantium, and Tang-Song China.

Transregional links: Silk Roads, Indian Ocean trade, the spread of Buddhism, Christianity and Islam, and the Mongol conquests.

Scientific Revolution and Enlightenment ideas (reason, natural rights, social contract) supplied the intellectual basis for political revolution.

American Revolution (1776) and French Revolution (1789) spread sovereignty of the people, nationalism and codified law (Napoleonic Code).

Industrial Revolution began in Britain c. 1760: coal, steam, textiles, railways, urbanisation and the factory system.

Industrialisation produced new classes (bourgeoisie, proletariat), labour movements, and ideologies such as liberalism, socialism and Marxism.

Imperial expansion and the scramble for Africa intensified rivalry among European powers in the late 19th c.

Causes of WWI: alliance blocs, militarism, imperial rivalry, Balkan nationalism and the Sarajevo assassination (1914).

Russian Revolution (1917) brought the Bolsheviks to power and created the first communist state, reshaping 20th-century politics.

Treaty of Versailles (1919) imposed reparations and territorial losses on Germany, feeding resentment and instability.

Causes of WWII: unresolved WWI grievances, the Great Depression, fascism and Nazism, appeasement and expansionism; the war ended in 1945.

League of Nations failed to prevent aggression; the United Nations (1945) added a Security Council with binding powers.

Cold War: US-Soviet rivalry, containment, NATO (1949) and Warsaw Pact (1955), nuclear deterrence and proxy wars.

Marshall Plan and Bretton Woods institutions (IMF, World Bank, GATT) shaped the post-war economic order.

Decolonisation in Asia (India 1947, Indonesia 1949) and Africa (Ghana 1957, the 'Year of Africa' 1960) dismantled European empires.

Non-Aligned Movement (Bandung 1955; Belgrade 1961) offered a third path for newly independent states.

Chinese Revolution (1949) and the Korean and Vietnam wars were key Cold War conflicts in Asia.

Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) showed the risk of nuclear brinkmanship; detente and later the Helsinki process followed.

Collapse of the Soviet Union (1991) ended the bipolar order; globalisation, regional blocs and new nationalism reshaped the world.

Post-colonial legacies: artificial borders, dependency, development debates and the persistence of neo-colonial economic ties.