NEW South Asia

Editor's view · First written June 2023 · Updated October 2026

Sri Lanka's second chance

Most Americans know Sri Lanka, if at all, as a tropical island of serene beaches, elephants roaming in the wild and inexpensive resorts, and as the source of the fine tea they drink. Some know, vaguely, that the British science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke lived there for half a century. Canadians and Australians know Sri Lankans far better, because they took in large numbers of Tamil refugees fleeing the civil war. Sri Lankans also play excellent cricket; they won the World Cup in 1996, a feat few Americans noticed.

Fewer still know how old the American ties are. American missionaries arrived in Jaffna in 1816 and opened schools that educated generations of Tamils. In 1880 Henry Steel Olcott, a Union Army veteran of the Civil War, came to Ceylon and helped spark a Buddhist revival. He mentored the young Anagarika Dharmapala, who spoke for Buddhism at the World's Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893.

Those ties frayed in the 20th century. When Ceylon took over American oil companies' assets in 1962, Washington cut off aid. Sri Lanka declared itself nonaligned, and the Cold War rivals courted it without doing much for its people. From 1983 to 2009 the government fought the Tamil Tigers, who wanted an independent Tamil nation in the north and east. A UN panel later found that tens of thousands of civilians may have died in the war's final months. Western governments condemned Sri Lanka's human rights record, even as their citizens kept drinking its tea.

In this century China and America have courted Sri Lanka for its position on the Indian Ocean sea lanes, and Chinese loans built a port that Sri Lanka had to lease to China when it could not repay. In 2022 the country went bankrupt, and protesters drove the Rajapaksa family from power. In 2024 voters elected an outsider who promised to end corruption. Meanwhile, America has become the biggest buyer of Sri Lanka's exports, mainly apparel, tea and rubber.

Americans think of Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella when they think of South Asian success in tech. Sri Lanka has given us a gem of its own: Chamath Palihapitiya, born in Colombo and raised in Canada, an early Facebook executive turned billionaire investor. His All-In podcast, co-hosted with David Sacks, President Trump's former AI and crypto adviser, has become a forum where America's AI policy is argued. An island of 22 million that Americans rarely think about matters more than its size suggests.

— John Laxmi