History · Maldives

Maldives: The Low Country

A thousand coral islands on the Indian Ocean trade routes — Buddhist for a millennium, Muslim since 1153, a British protectorate, a tourism economy, and the lowest-lying nation on Earth facing a rising sea

By Globeway Editorial · 30 September 2026

An aerial view of a turquoise lagoon and a thin ring of palm-covered coral islands in deep ocean
A Maldivian atoll from the air. The country's roughly 1,200 islands are spread across 870 kilometres of the Indian Ocean, and almost none rise more than two metres above the sea. (Dr. Ondřej Havelka / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0)

A nation at sea level

The Maldives is a chain of about 1,200 coral islands grouped into 26 atolls, southwest of India, with roughly 520,000 people. Only a minority of the islands are inhabited, and well over a hundred more are given over to single-island resorts. The capital, Malé, is one of the most crowded places on Earth. The country has its own Indo-Aryan language and script, Sunni Islam as a constitutional condition of citizenship, and one inescapable physical fact: it is the lowest-lying country in the world, and its future is bound up with the level of the sea.

A short history

  1. c. 500 BCE–300 CE

    Settlement

    Peoples from Sri Lanka and southern India settle the islands.

  2. to 1153

    The Buddhist era

    Over a millennium of Buddhist kingdoms on the trade routes.

  3. 1153

    Conversion

    The last Buddhist king adopts Islam; a sultanate begins.

  4. 1340s

    Ibn Battuta

    The traveller serves as a judge in Malé.

  5. 1558–1573

    Portuguese Malé

    A brief, harsh occupation, ended by rebellion.

  6. 1887

    British protectorate

    Britain takes over defence and foreign affairs.

  7. 1965

    Independence

    The Maldives becomes fully sovereign.

  8. 1968

    The republic

    The sultanate is abolished.

  9. 1972

    Tourism begins

    The first resort opens.

  10. 2008

    Democracy

    The first multiparty election ends 30 years of one-man rule.

Buddhist islands on the trade routes

The Maldives were settled more than two thousand years ago, and were Buddhist for over a thousand years — the mounded ruins of stupas survive on many islands. The archipelago sat astride Indian Ocean shipping and supplied the wider world with cowrie shells, used as currency across Asia and Africa, along with coir rope and dried tuna.

A 1922 photograph of a low overgrown mound, the ruins of a Buddhist stupa on a Maldivian island
The ruins of a Buddhist dagaba on Fuvahmulah, photographed in 1922. Buddhism was the islands' religion for over a millennium before 1153. (H. C. P. Bell / Wikimedia Commons)

Sultanate

In 1153 the last Buddhist king converted to Islam, and the Maldives became a sultanate. Ibn Battuta visited in the 1340s and served as chief judge for about nine months, leaving a detailed account. The Portuguese, from Goa, occupied Malé from 1558 until a rebellion led by Muhammad Thakurufaanu drove them out in 1573 — an event still marked as National Day.

A large modern mosque in Malé with a gold dome and a tall minaret
The Grand Friday Mosque in Malé, named for Muhammad Thakurufaanu, who expelled the Portuguese. Sunni Islam is the state religion, and no other faith may be practised openly. (Rhalu7 / Wikimedia Commons)

The islands fell under loose Dutch and then British oversight, formalised in 1887 as a British protectorate; Britain built military bases on Gan, in the southernmost atoll, during and after the Second World War.

Independence, and one-man rule

The Maldives became independent on 26 July 1965, abolished the sultanate in 1968, and opened its first tourist resort in 1972 — the start of an industry that now provides more than a quarter of the economy. From 1978, Maumoon Abdul Gayoom ruled for 30 years, winning six consecutive referendums as the sole candidate, each with around 90 per cent of the vote or more. His government delivered real gains in health, education and income, and made the Maldives an early global voice on sea-level rise — but it was authoritarian, with no political parties until 2005, a rubber-stamp parliament, and the repeated jailing of dissidents.

A satellite view of the crowded island of Malé beside the airport island and the reclaimed island of Hulhumalé
Malé (centre) with the airport island and the reclaimed island of Hulhumalé (right), built partly as a response to rising seas. (European Space Agency / Wikimedia Commons)

Democracy, and the sea

A new constitution in 2008 brought the first multiparty election, won by Mohamed Nasheed, ending Gayoom's rule. Nasheed pushed climate diplomacy and reform, but was forced from office in 2012 in what he called a coup, and later jailed. In 2013 Gayoom's half-brother Abdulla Yameen was elected; he ruled repressively and pivoted the country toward China; he was defeated in 2018. Politics since has swung between leaders seen as pro-India and pro-China: Ibrahim Mohamed Solih (2018–23) was followed by Mohamed Muizzu, elected in 2023 on a campaign to reduce Indian influence, whose party and allies won a two-thirds majority in parliament in 2024.

Concrete tetrapod blocks forming a sea wall around the edge of Malé island
The sea wall around Malé. With average ground level about 1.5 metres, the Maldives relies on sea defences, raised reclaimed land, and adaptation projects — and remains a symbol of the risk climate change poses to low-lying states. (╚ DD╔ / Wikimedia Commons)

What the Maldives carries

The Maldives has always lived off the sea — the trade routes that made it a supplier of cowries and rope, the tuna that fed it, and now the reefs and lagoons that draw its tourists. That dependence is also its exposure. A country that spent a thousand years Buddhist and nine centuries Muslim, and that only became a democracy in 2008, now measures its long-term prospects in centimetres of sea level.

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