GCE A/L History key terms

The disciplined set of procedures historians use to locate, verify, interpret and synthesize evidence so that claims about the past rest on reasoned argument rather than opinion or tradition.

The practice of interrogating a document or artefact for its origin, purpose, audience, date and reliability before using it as evidence about past events or attitudes.

Material produced at or near the time under study, such as a chronicle, inscription, letter, treaty or excavation report, which a historian interprets as direct evidence of that period.

A later account, textbook, monograph or article that interprets and synthesizes primary evidence, offering argument and perspective rather than first-hand testimony about the events described.

The study of how history has been written, including changing interpretations, methods and schools of thought, and the assumptions that shape what historians select and emphasize.

The arrangement of events in the order they occurred, supported by dating techniques and calendrical systems, which allows historians to establish sequence, causation and change over time.

A systematic slant in a source or interpretation that favours a group, ruler, ideology or outcome, which historians identify and weigh rather than simply dismiss as false.

A Pali-language chronicle compiled by Buddhist monks, first in the fifth or sixth century CE, tracing Sri Lankan royal and religious history and a key, though partisan, source for early kingdoms.

An earlier Pali chronicle of Sri Lanka, composed probably in the fourth century CE, which records dynastic and Buddhist monastic history and is used alongside the later Mahavamsa.

The practice of recording dynastic and religious history in continuous narrative form, exemplified by Sri Lankan Pali vamsa texts and shaped by monastic patronage and didactic purpose.

Text carved on stone, rock or metal, often recording land grants, royal proclamations or religious donations, and among the most reliable contemporary evidence for Sri Lankan and Asian history.

A genre of Sanskrit religious and mythological texts compiled over many centuries, containing cosmologies, genealogies and dynastic legends used cautiously by historians of ancient India and its cultural influence.

A Greek ambassador at the Mauryan court around 300 BCE whose account of India, surviving only in fragments, informs discussion of early Indian society and its reception by outsiders.

The first large empire of the Indian subcontinent, founded by Chandragupta Maurya and expanded by Ashoka, notable for administrative centralization and the spread of Buddhism.

Mauryan emperor of the third century BCE whose edicts on rock and pillar promoted dhamma, Buddhist patronage and moral governance, and whose missions helped spread Buddhism to Sri Lanka.

The ancient capital of Sri Lanka's northern dry zone, flourishing from around the fourth century BCE with massive irrigation works, Buddhist monasteries and long-distance trade links.

The medieval Sri Lankan capital that succeeded Anuradhapura, noted for its irrigation reservoirs, Buddhist monuments and the reign of Parakramabahu I in the twelfth century.

Twelfth-century Sri Lankan king remembered for unifying the island, large-scale irrigation construction and Buddhist reform, a central figure in the medieval kingdom's political and religious history.

A system of reservoirs and channels built in Sri Lanka's dry zone to store monsoon water for rice cultivation, underpinning the economic and political power of ancient kingdoms.

The linked social and economic arrangements in which occupational status, service obligations and rights to land shaped Sri Lankan and South Asian rural society under kingdoms and colonial rule.

The last independent Sri Lankan polity, centred in the central highlands, which survived Portuguese and Dutch pressure until its annexation by the British in 1815.

The 1815 agreement by which Kandyan chiefs ceded sovereignty to the British, guaranteeing Buddhist and traditional privileges, and later invoked in disputes over colonial authority.

The colonial name for Sri Lanka used under Portuguese, Dutch and British rule, retained after independence in 1948 until the republic's renaming in 1972.

The Dutch East India Company, which controlled Sri Lanka's coastal trade and territories in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, monopolizing cinnamon and other exports.

The export of Sri Lankan cinnamon, especially by the Dutch, who monopolized and regulated cultivation, making it a central link between the island economy and global commerce.

An economic doctrine stressing state regulation of trade, bullion accumulation and colonial monopoly, which shaped Portuguese, Dutch and British commercial policy in Asia.

A British commission of the 1830s whose reforms restructured Ceylon's administration, courts and revenue system, and promoted English education and free trade principles.

An appointed and later partly elected advisory body in colonial Ceylon, which became a forum for elite political demands and a step towards representative institutions.

The 1931 constitutional reform in Ceylon that introduced universal adult suffrage and a system of executive committees, widening political participation before independence.

The transfer of power in February 1948 that made Ceylon a self-governing dominion within the Commonwealth, the outcome of constitutional negotiation rather than mass anticolonial struggle.

The 1956 law making Sinhala the sole official language of Ceylon, a landmark of majoritarian politics that deepened ethnic grievance and shaped later conflict.

S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike, prime minister of Ceylon from 1956, whose coalition politics and language policy reshaped post-independence party competition before his assassination in 1959.

Sustained political and later armed confrontation between Sri Lankan state forces and Tamil separatist movements, rooted in language, citizenship and devolution disputes from the 1950s onward.

Historical writing shaped by nationalist assumptions, often emphasizing ancient glory, continuity and victimhood, which historians must identify and critique as an interpretive stance.

The upheaval beginning in 1789 that overthrew the French monarchy, reorganized society around citizenship and law, and inspired nationalist and revolutionary movements worldwide.

The transition from agrarian and handicraft economies to machine-based manufacturing, beginning in eighteenth-century Britain, which transformed work, cities, class relations and global trade.

A political principle holding that a people sharing language, culture or history should form a self-governing nation, a powerful force in nineteenth-century Europe and twentieth-century decolonization.

The process by which European empires gave up colonial territories, especially after 1945, producing new sovereign states and reshaping international politics and development debates.

A grouping of states, formalized in 1961, that sought independence from both Cold War blocs, in which Sri Lanka and its leaders played a notable early role.

The prolonged geopolitical rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union after 1945, fought through alliances, proxy conflicts, aid and ideology, and shaping newly independent states' choices.