16th Century Clash Of Civilizations The Portuguese Presence In Sri Lanka

16th Century Clash Of Civilizations The Portuguese Presence In Sri Lanka by Susantha Goonatilake. Sri Lanka with a written history extending up to 2,500 years has had many invasions and threats to its integrity. The most recent was the LTTE. Previous non-European ones included several invasions from South India. But these were from similar cultures and civilizations. The experience with three Western colonizers, the British, the Dutch and the Portuguese was with alien cultures. The most brutal of these – a true clash of civilizations – was with the Portuguese.