How did the modern nation of Sri Lanka come to be? In search of an answer to this question, Islanded returns us to the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries and to the advance of the British on the kingdom of Kandy, which saw the fall of the last foothold of kingly rule on the island. Thus began Britain’s process of ‘islanding’ and ‘partitioning’, which cast the island, its nature and geography, its supposedly religious and ethnic character, and its historical traditions and maritime culture, as separate from British domains in mainland India and elsewhere. 

Ten years have passed since Islanded was first published: it is even more open to response and critique.