Maldives

Maldives Republic Travel

Located just southwest of India, the Maldives are a chain of atolls stretching southwards over the equator. This is not a destination with a variety of attractions: visitors head to the Maldives for beautiful beaches, diving and other basic tropical island activities. Maldivian resorts are generally expensive, but of a high standard. They provide a launching point from which to enjoy the islands’ rich rewards, like their gorgeous underwater coral formations and abundance of sea creatures, including whales, turtles, manta rays and sharks.

The two main towns (they can hardly be called cities) are Malé and Seenu and these make for nice day trips. The British, Dutch and Muslim influences which have created the modern Maldivian culture are of some interest for the tourist. But really, the best idea is to just stick to the sand.

History of Maldives

Since very ancient times, the Maldives were ruled by kings (Radun) sultans and occasionally queens (Ranin) sultanas. Historically Maldives has had a strategic importance because of its location on the major marine routes of the Indian Ocean. Maldives’ nearest neighbors are Sri Lanka and India, both of which have had cultural and economic ties with Maldives for centuries. The Maldives provided the main source of cowrie shells, then used as a currency throughout Asia and parts of the East African coast.

Despite being omitted or just mentioned briefly in most history books, the 1,400 year-long Buddhist period has a foundational importance in the history of the Maldives. It was during this period, that the culture of the Maldives, as we now know it, both developed and flourished. Buddhism probably spread to the Maldives in the third century BC, at the time of the Mauryan emperor Aśoka the Great, when it extended to the regions of Afghanistan and Central Asia, beyond the Mauryas’ northwest border, as well as South to the island of Sri Lanka and the Maldive Islands.
The interest of Middle Eastern peoples in Maldives resulted from its strategic location and its abundant supply of cowrie shells, a form of currency that was widely used throughout Asia and parts of the East African coast since ancient times. Middle Eastern seafarers had just begun to take over the Indian Ocean trade routes in the tenth century A.D. and found Maldives to be an important link in those routes. The importance of the Arabs as traders in the Indian Ocean by the twelfth century A.D. may partly explain why the last Buddhist king of Maldives converted to Islam in the year 1153.

After the 16th century, when European colonial powers took over much of the trade in the Indian Ocean, first the Portuguese, and then the Dutch, and the French occasionally meddled with local politics. However, these interferences ended when the Maldive became a British Protectorate in the 19th century and the Maldivian monarchs were granted a good measure of self-governance.

Maldives gained total independence in 1965. However, the British, continued to maintain an air base on the island of Gan in the southernmost atoll until 1976. The British departure in 1976 at the height of the Cold War almost immediately triggered foreign speculation about the future of the air base. Apparently the Soviet Union made a move to request the use of the base, but the Maldives refused.
The greatest challenge facing the republic in the early 1990s was the need for rapid economic development and modernization, given the country’s limited resource base in fishing, agriculture and tourism. Concern was also evident over a projected long-term rise in sea level, which would prove disastrous to the low-lying coral islands.

Cities

• Male is the country’s capital and largest city.

Hithadhoo
GanFedu