Jaffna in the context of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam

The Northern Province (Tamil: வட மாகாணம் Vaṭa Mākāṇam; Sinhala: උතුරු පළාත Uturu Paḷāta) is one of the nine provinces of Sri Lanka. The province has an area of 8,884 km, making it the 3rd largest province by area, and a population of 1,150,148 making it the least populated province. Jaffna is the capital city of the province.

Between 1988 and 2006, the province was temporarily merged with the Eastern Province into one province, the North Eastern Province. Due to its large Tamil population, the Northern Province is sometimes referred to as "Sri Lanka's Tamil country". The majority of the fighting in the Sri Lankan Civil War took place in the Northern province.

The Jaffna Kingdom (Tamil: யாழ்ப்பாண அரசு, Sinhala: යාපනය රාජධානිය; 1215–1619 CE), also known as Kingdom of Aryachakravarti, was a historical kingdom of what today is northern Sri Lanka. It came into existence around the town of Jaffna on the Jaffna peninsula and was traditionally thought to have been established after the invasion of Kalinga Magha from Kalinga in India. Established as a powerful force in the north, northeast and west of the island, it eventually became a tribute-paying feudatory of the Pandyan Empire in modern South India in 1258, gaining independence when the last Pandyan ruler of Madurai was defeated and expelled in 1323 by Malik Kafur, the army general of the Delhi Sultanate. For a brief period in the early to mid-14th century it was an ascendant power in the island of Sri Lanka, to which all regional kingdoms accepted subordination. However, the kingdom was overpowered by the rival Kotte kingdom around 1450 when it was invaded by Prince Sapumal under the orders of Parakramabahu VI.

It gained independence from kingdom of Kotte control in 1467 after Kanakasooriya Cinkaiariyan and his two son's returned from Madurai with mercenaries to wrest the Jaffna Kingdom from Kotte's over lordship. and its subsequent rulers directed their energies towards consolidating its economic potential by maximising revenue from pearls, elephant exports and land revenue. It was less feudal than most of the other regional kingdoms on the island of Sri Lanka of the period. During this period, important local Tamil literature was produced and Hindu temples were built, including an academy for language advancement. The Sinhalese Nampota dated in its present form to the 14th or 15th century CE suggests that the whole of the Jaffna kingdom, including parts of the modern Trincomalee District, was recognised as a Tamil region by the name Demala-pattanama (Tamil city). In this work, a number of villages that are now situated in the Jaffna, Mullaitivu and Trincomalee districts are mentioned as places in Demala-pattanama.

The Vanni chieftaincies or Vanni tribes was a region between Anuradhapura and Jaffna, but also extending to along the eastern coast to Panama and Yala, during the Transitional and Kandyan periods of Sri Lanka. The heavily forested land was a collection of chieftaincies of principalities that were a collective buffer zone between the Jaffna Kingdom, in the north of Sri Lanka, and the Sinhalese kingdoms in the south. Traditionally the forest regions were ruled by Vedda rulers. Later on, the emergence of these chieftaincies was a direct result of the breakdown of central authority and the collapse of the Kingdom of Polonnaruwa in the 13th century, as well as the establishment of the Jaffna Kingdom in the Jaffna Peninsula. Control of this area was taken over by dispossessed Sinhalese nobles and chiefs of the South Indian military of Māgha of Kalinga (1215–1236), whose 1215 invasion of Polonnaruwa led to the kingdom's downfall. Sinhalese chieftaincies would lay on the northern border of the Sinhalese kingdom while the Tamil chieftaincies would border the Jaffna Kingdom and the remoter areas of the eastern coast, north western coast outside of the control of either kingdom.

The chieftains, who were known as Vanniars, would function like feudal lords in their territories. During much of the Transitional period when the island was politically unstable, depending on the situation at the time, the chieftains would owe their allegiance to one or the other kingdom. They offered military protection to those who came under their authority. Vanniars referred to a broad category of people who could have been appointees of the Sinhalese kings, who administered outlying districts or autonomous rulers of large, sparsely populated and undeveloped lands. The Vanniars in general paid tribute to the Kingdom of Kotte and later to the Kingdom of Kandy, apart from Confederation of Northern Tamil Vanniars paid tribute to the Jaffna Kingdom until it collapsed.