Reviews for History of Sri Lanka

The average rating for History of Sri Lanka based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-01-25 00:00:00 Mark Elliott This is the best and most authoritative English-language source of Ceylonese / Sri Lankan history that I have found. It is easy to read for a non-academic person like myself. It not the sort of book that I would read cover-to-cover, but it is an utterly useful source for reference purposes as well as being very interesting in parts.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-07-28 00:00:00 Kristofer Heim I wanted a book that spanned island's history from the earliest know societies to the present day and one that could be for a general audience rather than a purely academic one. This was the one book I could find that fitted that brief. It does so pretty comprehensively. I especially found the pre-colonial period of interest and the level of infrastructure (especially irrigation) that had been developed and how that compared with Europe at that time. It's 700+ pages in this edition in paperback, an easy style to read, but could have been more concise in a number of places. The only bit that left me wanting was the coverage of the latter stages of the civil conflict. It ends before the conclusion and therefore leaves that open, but also leaves out the kind of retrospective analysis which could only be done once the conflict had ended.