When Britain declared war on Kandy

Sometimes, very serious episodes in history sound incredibly silly. Such is the case with the British war against Kandy. Though it may sound like an ill-conceived health campaign, this was not a war on “candy” as in sweets, but rather “Kandy” as in the kingdom in modern Sri Lanka, around the year 1800. Sri Lanka The British were not the first European colonial empire to try and conquer Kandy (also known by names such as Senkadagala and Mahanuwara). The Portuguese in the 1500’s and conquered areas on the Sri Lankan coast, primarily to try and control the cinnamon trade. At the beginning this era, Kandy was just one of several local kingdoms in Sri Lanka (or Ceylon as it was then called), but by the early 1600s it had become the primary native power on the island. In 1638, Kandy enlisted the help of Portugal’s great rival, the Dutch, to drive out the Portuguese. The alliance was fragile at best, and the Dutch soon cemented themselves as even stronger rulers than the Portuguese ever…