During the reign of Emperor Claudius, a Mediterranean tax collector named Annius Plocamus facilitated direct trade and first contact between Sri Lanka and the Roman Empire.

During the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War, British forces led by Sir Edward Hughes captured Trincomalee (1782), a Dutch-controlled port in eastern Sri Lanka.

In 1802, the Treaty of Amiens formally ceded the Dutch part of the island to Britain, and it became a crown colony known as British Ceylon.

These including a reform of the civil service to eliminate corruption, and the creation of a Ceylonese High Court based on the caste law.

Maitland also worked to undermine Buddhist authority and attract Europeans to the colony by offering grants of up to 4,000 acres (16 km2) in Ceylon.

The British discovered the hiding place of the last king of Kandy, Sri Vrikrama Rajasinha, who was then exiled and imprisoned in Vellore Fort in India, where he died 17 years later, in 1842.

The main cause of the rebellion was the failure by British authorities to upload Buddhist customary traditions, which the islanders viewed as integral parts of their lives.

To work the estates, the planters imported large numbers of Tamil workers as indentured labourers from south India, who soon made up 10% of the island's population.

Universal suffrage was introduced in 1931, despite protests by the Sinhalese, Tamil, and Burgher elite who objected to the common people being allowed to vote.

After the Second World War, Ceylon gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1948, with DS Senanayake being the first prime minister and founding father.

President Maithripala Sirisena made an official visit to the United Kingdom in 2015 and met Prime Minister David Cameron and Queen Elizabeth II.