The Matrioshka Principle and Its Discontents

Chapter 3 explains on what grounds Lankan rulers remained committed to the idea of co-opting the Portuguese through tributary diplomacy, against the backdrop of a growing regional conflict involving the Muslim Mappilas of South India. Negotiations culminated in 1542 with the reception in Lisbon of an embassy sent by king Bhuvanekabāhu VII of Kōṭṭe to John III of Portugal. In addition to a magnificent ivory casket, significant archival materials survive today to give us a detailed picture of how the inter-imperial deal was imagined in the Lankan capital along the lines of the principle of nesting empires, the ‘Matrioshka principle’. These papers also show the limitations of the conversation. A picture emerges that is at once astounding in the way it contains two very different but commensurable imperial models, and ominous in the way these two models do not quite talk to each other in the way the elite of Kōṭṭe expected.