Negambo
In fact the very first town you come close from airport is Negambo it is the
place of all transit hotels. Negambo is A fishing town located 35 km from
Colombo and 6 km from Bandra Naike International Airport.
Negombo is approximately 37 km north of Colombo. It is located at the mouth of
the Negombo Lagoon, about 7 km from the Bandaranaike International Airport.
Negombo has a moderate sea port while it depends mainly on tourism and its
centuries-old fishing industry.
According to Wikipedia, The name "Negombo" was first used by the Portuguese, a
corruption of the Sinhala name Mīgamuva."which means locality of HONEY hailing
from era of Queen VIHARAMAHA DEVI mother of king DUTUGAMUNU. She had a craving
to eat honey when she conceived the prince at the Negambo Lagoon hence the name
of the place was famed to be Mīgamuva
History of Negambo
Negombo first flourished as a center for cinnamon production along the western
coast of Sri Lanka. The Moors (Muslims) began trading the spice prior to the
13th century, the quality of which attracted the Portuguese who ousted the Moors
in the late 16th century, constructed a fort in Negombo and took over the trade
to the West. It was during the Portuguese occupation that the Karawa, or
traditional fishing clan of Negombo embraced Catholicism almost without
exception.
The decline of Portuguese power in Ceylon began in the 1630s when warfare
between the Portuguese and the Kingdom of Kandy reached a stalemate and the King
of Kandy turned to the Dutch for help. In 1638 the Dutch agreed to help expel
the Portuguese from Sri Lanka, and treaty was signed giving the Dutch a monopoly
on the cinnamon trade and allowing them to garrison captured fortresses.[2]
Citation : Newitt, Marlyn (2005).
A history of Portuguese overseas expansion, 1400-1668.
New York: Routledge. pp. 234.
Initial successes resulted in the capture of Negombo in 1640 by Philip Lucas,
the Dutch Director-General of the East Indies, followed by major setbacks in
1644 when the Kandian army was defeated by the Portuguese and Negombo
recaptured. In 1646, following a successful Dutch recapture of Negombo an
armistice was arranged between Portugal and Holland for ten years from 1640 with
the two countries retaining their conquests in Ceylon. During this time period
the King of Kandy sought to provoke conflict between by passing through the
territories of the one to attack the other. On one occasion he marched through
Portuguese territory to capture the fort of Negombo and send the head of the
Dutch commander Adrian Vander Stell to his countrymen in Galle.
Citation : Tennent, James (1860).
Ceylon:
an account of the island physical, historical and topographical, with notices of
its natural history, antiquities, and productions, Volume 2.
London: Longman, Green, Longman and Roberts. pp. 44.
After the Dutch regained control of Negombo from the King through diplomacy the
cinnamon business would continue to be a key part of the regional economy and so
esteemed as to be described in 1663 as "the very best in the universe as well as
the most abundant." However the woods in which it grew where exposed to ongoing
invasions by the Kandyans for whom the disruption of the cinnamon trade was a
favourite method of harassing the Dutch [4] and increasing the costs of military
protection and decreasing the profits derived from cinnamon production. By the
time the British commander Colonel Stuart took over in 1796, the industry was in
decline. The Dutch Fort was constructed in 1672 and remains to this day, along
with a number of other Dutch buildings and the Dutch canal that runs 100 km from
Colombo in the South to Puttalam in the north.
