Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon, is an island in the Indian Ocean off the southeast tip of India. It officially became Sri Lanka in 1972. The capital of the country is Colombo.
Indo-Aryan emigration from India in the 5th century BC came to form the largest ethnic group on Sri Lanka today-the Sinhalese.
Tamils, the second-largest ethnic group on the island, were originally from the Tamil region of India and emigrated between the 3rd century BC and AD 1200.
The British took over in 1796, and Ceylon became an English Crown colony in 1802. On February 4th, 1948, after pressure from Ceylonese nationalist leaders, Ceylon became a self-governing dominion of the Commonwealth of Nations.
Its recent history has been marred by a thirty-year civil war, which ended decisively when the Sri Lanka Armed Forces defeated the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009.
The official languages are Sinhala and Tamil. The currency is the Sri Lankan rupee.
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