British Colonial Periode

Burma, British Colonial Periode

The Third Burmese Empire The Mon conquest of Ava was short-lived. The
Southerners were unpopular and within a year of taking the city, they had
a revolt on their hands. Alaungpaya, a local official from the nearby town
of Shwebo, refused to swear allegiance to the Mons and with the help of a
large following he recaptured Ava in 1753. Within 4 years, Pegu had also
fallen to Alaungpaya's forces; the Mon fled to the small town of Dagon, to
the SW. Three years later, Alaungpaya sacked the town, renaming it Yangon
-'the end of war'. But it was not the end of war, having conquered the
Mons, Alaungpaya attacked Ayutthaya. He was fatally wounded in the
process, in 1760. But in his few short years as King of Burma, he had
founded the Konbaug Dynasty, and with it, the Third (and final) Burmese
Empire. The dynasty lasted for over a century (1752-1865), during which
time the capital - which was first at Shwebo - shifted between Ava
(1765-1783, 1823-1837) and Amarapura (1783-1823, 1837-1857) before moving
to Mandalay in 1857.
Alaungpaya's second son, Hsinbyushin, came to the throne after a short
reign by his elder brother, Naungdawgyi (1760-1763). He continued his
father's expansionist policy and finally took Ayufthaya in 1767, after 7
years of fighting. He returned to Ava with Siamese artists, dancers,
musicians and craftsmen who gave fresh cultural impetus to Burma. The Mons
had been crushed and the Shan Sawbwas (feudal lords) were made to pay
tribute to the Burmese. The kingdom's NE borders came under threat from
the Chinese - they invaded 4 times between 1765 and 1769 but were repulsed
on each occasion. In 1769 King Hsinbyushin forced them to make peace and
the 2 sides signed a treaty. Europeans began to set up trading posts in
the Irrawaddy delta region at this time; the French struck deals with the
Mon while the English made agreements with the Burmese.
Bodawpaya, Alaungpaya's 5th son, came to the throne in 1782. He
founded Amarapura, moving his capital from Ava. Bodawpaya conquered
Arakan in 1784 and recovered all the Burman treasures taken by the
Arakanese 2 centuries before, including the Mahamuni image. Burmese
control over Arakan resulted in protracted wrangles with the
British, who by then were firmly ensconsed in Bengal. Relations with
the British deteriorated further when Bodawpaya pursued Arakanese
rebels seeking refuge, across the border - this was not to be the
last time refugees flooded over the border. Conflict ensued; the
British wanted a demarcated border while the Burmese were content to
have a zone of overlapping influence. to add to their annoyance,
British merchants complained about being badly treated by the king's
officials in Rangoon. The British decided enough was enough and
diplomatic relations were severed in 1811. Bodawpaya turned his
attention to the administration of his empire. He investigated the
existing tax systems and revoked exemptions for religious
establishments which incurred the wrath of the monk hood - as did
his claim to be a Bodhisattva.

Bodawpaya died in 1819 at the age of 75 and was succeeded by King
Bagyidaw. The Maharajah of Manipur (a princely state in the W hills to the
S of Nagaland) who previously paid tribute to the Burmese crown, did not
attend Bagyidaw's coronation. This resulted in the subsequent expedition
that took the Burmese into British India.

The expansion of the British into Burma This intrusion was used by the
British as a pretext for launching the First Anglo-Burmese War. The
British took Rangoon in 1824 and then advanced on Ava. In 1826, the
Burmese agreed to the British peace terms and the Treaty of Yandabo was
signed. This ceded the Arakan and Tenasserim regions to the British -which
were ruled from Calcutta, headquarters of the British East India Company.
Manipur also became part of British India.
But the peace treaty did little to ease relations between the British and
Burmese. The Burmese kings felt insulted at having to deal with the
viceroy of India instead of British royalty In 1837 King Bagyidaw's
brother, Tharrawaddy, seized the throne and had the queen, her brother,
Bagyidaw's only son, his family and ministers all executed. He made no
attempt to improve relations with Britain, and neither did his successor
to the Lion Throne, Pagan Min, who became king in 1846. He executed
thousands - some history books say as many as 6,000 - of his wealthier and
more influential subjects on trumped-up charges. During his reign,
relations with the British became increasingly strained. In 1852, the
Second Anglo-Burmese War broke out after 2 British shipmasters complained
about unfair treatment. They had been imprisoned having been charged with
murder and were forced to pay a large 'ransom' for their release. British
military action was short and sharp and within a year they had taken
control of Rangoon and Prome and announced their annexation of Lower
Burma. Early in 1853, hostilities ceased, leaving the British in full
control of trade on the Irrawaddy. The same year - to the great relief of
both the Burmese and the British - Pagan Min was succeeded by his younger
brother, the progressive Mindon Min.

The British were amazed at life in the Burmese court: the strict rules of
protocol prompted much debate, particularly 'the shoe question”. The
British where indignant at having to take off their shoes on entering
pagodas and while having an audience with the king. They were amused by
the ritual quandary surrounding the decision of which umbrella the king
should use, but nothing bemused them more than the status accorded the
white elephant. The 'Lord White Elephant'- or Sinbyudaw- commanded social
status second only to the king in the hierarchy of the royal court.
Sinbyudaw were treated with reverence and had white parasols held over
them wherever they went. Young white elephants were even suckled by women
in the royal court who considered it a great honour to feed the elephant
with their own milk.


A new king moved the capital to Amarapura and then to his new city of
Mandalay. The move was designed to fulfill a prophesy of the Buddha that a
great city would one day be built on the site. Court astrologers also
calculated that Mandalay was the centre of the universe - not Amarapura.
King Mindon attempted to bring Burma into greater contact with the outside
world: he improved the administrative structure of the state, introducing
a new income tax; he built new roads and commissioned a telegraph system;
he set up modern factories using European machinery and European managers.
He also sent some of his sons to study with an Anglican missionary and did
all he could to repair relations with Britain. A commercial treaty was
signed with the British, who sent a Resident to Mandalay. King Mindon
hosted the Fifth Great Buddhist Synod in 1872 at Mandalay. In these ways
he gained the respect of the British and the admiration of his own people.


The Burmese found the foreign presence in Mandalay hard to tolerate and
with the death of Mindon, the atmosphere thickened. King Mindon died
before he could name a successor, and Thibaw, a lesser prince, was
manoeuvred onto the throne by one of King Mindon's queens and her
daughter, Supayalat. (In his poem The Road to Mandalay, Rudyard Kipling
remarks that the British soldiers referred to her as 'Soup-plate'.) In
true Burmese style, the new King Thibaw proceeded, under Supayalat's
direction, to massacre all likely contenders to the throne. His inhumanity
outraged British public opinion. London was becoming increasingly worried
by French intentions to build a railway between Mandalay and the French
colonial port of Haiphong in Annam (N Vietnam). When Thibaw provoked a
dispute with a British timber company, the British had the pretext they
needed to invade Upper Burma. In 1886 they took Mandalay and imposed
colonial rule throughout Burma; Thibawand Supayalat were deposed and
exiled to Madras in S India. Supayalat was eventually buried at the foot
of the Shwedagon pagoda in Rangoon as the British feared nationalist
rebellion if the funeral took place in Mandalay.


British colonial rule Burma was known as 'Further India' and was run on
the principle of 'divide and rule'. The colonial administration relied
heavily on Indian bureaucrats and by 1930 - to the resentment of the
Burmese - Indian immigrants comprised 1/2 the population of Rangoon. The
British permitted the country's many racial minorities to exercise limited
autonomy. Burma was divided into 2 regions: Burma proper, where Burmans
were in a majority - which included Arakan and Tenasserim - and the hill
areas, inhabited by other minorities. The Burmese heartland was
administered by direct rule. The hill areas - which included the Shan
states, the Karen states, and the tribal groups in the Kachin, Chin and
Naga hills - retained their traditional leadership, although they were
under British supervision. These policies gave rise to tensions that
continue to plague today's government.
The colonial government built roads and railways, and river steamers,
belonging to the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company, operated between Rangoon and
Mandalay. The British brought electricity to Rangoon, improved urban
sanitation, built hospitals and redesigned the capital on a grid system.
While the British set about building and modernizing, they benefited
greatly from an economic boom in the Irrawaddy delta region. When they
first arrived in Burma, much of the delta was swampland. But under the
British, Burmese farmers began to settle in the delta and clear land for
rice cultivation. In 1855, paddy fields covered 400,000 ha; by 1873 the
forests had been cleared sufficiently to double the productive area. Land
under rice cultivation increased by another 400,000 ha roughly every 7
years, reaching 4 million ha in 1930. Population in the area - which was
about 1.5 million in the rnid-1 9th century- increased more than 5-fold.
Initially the rice paddies were farmed by Burmese smallholders but as rice
prices rose, larger holdings were bought up and large tracts of land
cleared by pioneers from central Burma. The agricultural economy in the
delta region was dependent on complex credit facilities, run by Indian
Chettiars - S Indian money-lenders - who extended credit to farmers at
much lower rates than Burmese money-lenders. The Chettiars grew into a
very prosperous community. Land rents had risen dramatically during the
boom years and when the world economic depression set in in the 1930s,
rice prices slumped and small-holders went bust. Between 1930 and 1935,
the amount of land owned by the Chettiars trebled in size due to
foreclosures, leaving them with well over a 1/4 of the delta's prime land.
The agrarian crisis triggered anti-Indian riots, which started in Rangoon
in May 1930 and then spread to the countryside.

From the beginning of the colonial period, the British stressed the
benefits of education, and formal Western-style schooling replaced the
traditional monastic education system. Rangoon University was founded in
1920 and a new urban 61ite evolved. They attempted to bridge the gap
between old and new Burma by calling for the reform of traditional
Buddhist beliefs and practices. In 1906, the Young Men's Buddhist
Association was established in an effort to assert Burmese cultural
identity and remain distinct from their colonizers. In 1916, the YMBA
objected to the fact that Europeans persisted in wearing shoes inside
religious buildings, which was considered disdainful. After demonstrations
in over 50 towns, the government ruled that abbots should have the right
to determine how visitors should dress in their monasteries - a ruling
hailed as a victory for the YMBA.
Following the introduction of greater self-government in India and the
spread of Marxism, the YMBA renamed itself the General Council of Burmese
Associations and demanded more autonomy for Burma. A strike was organized
at Rangoon University the year it was founded, and this spread across the
country as schools were boycotted. The most serious uprising was initiated
by a monk called Saya San; it represented the first concerted effort to
expel the British by force. From 1930-1932, during what became known as
the Saya San Rebellion, 3,000 of his men were massacred and 9,000 taken
prisoner, while the government suffered casualties of only 138. Saya San
was hanged in 1937. The underground nationalist movement also gained
momentum in the 1930s and at the University of Rangoon the All-Burma
Student Movement emerged. The colonial regime was clearly shaken by the
extent of the unrest and the level of violence and in 1935 the Government
of Burma Act finally granted Burma autonomy. In 1936, the groups' leaders
- Thakin Aung San and Thakin Nu - led another strike at the university.
They called themselves Thakin as it was previously an honorific only used
to address Europeans. In 1937 Burma was formally separated from British
India. It received its own constitution, an elected legislature and 4
popular governments served until the Japanese occupation.

During World War 2 Japan invaded Burma in 1942, helped by the new burmese
independence army (BIA) - a band of men secretly trained by the Japanese
before the war and led by Aung San, who had emerged as one of the
outstanding leaders during the student riots in Rangoon. The BIA grew in
number from 30 to 23,000 as Japan advanced through Lower Burma. The
Burmese saw the Japanese occupation as a way to expel the British
colonialists and to gain independence. The British were quickly
overwhelmed by the rapid advance of the Japanese 15th Army and fled to
India. Their scorched earth policy - which involved torching everything of
value and sabotaging the infrastructure they had built up over decades -
left total devastation in their wake. Fierce guerrilla warfare erupted
between the British and the Japanese and BIA, in which casualties were
high - as many as 27,000 may have died. Many of the British and Allied
troops who died - most in the hand-to-hand combat - are buried at the
Htaukkyan cemetery near Rangoon.
The war produced many heroes. Stilwell, an American, having retreated
through the jungle into India with 114 men, retraced his steps (through
Assam, across the Chindwin River to Myitkyina, and down the Irrawaddy to
Mandalay) and helped recapture Rangoon in May 1945. Wingate, a British
war-hero, used guerrilla tactics to successfully penetrate the Japanese
lines. His men were known as the Chindits - after the mythological
Chinthes, the undefeatable temple lions. Chennault was another hero, who
led the airborn division - nicknamed 'the Flying Tigers' - who were feared
by the Japanese. US ground forces in Burma were known as 'Merrill's
Marauders' and consisted of about 3,000 men, of which all but a handful
were killed.

The 800 km-long Ledo Road -from Assam to Mong Yo, where it joins the Burma
Road (see page 368) - was built during the war by 35,000 Burmese and
several thousand engineers, to enable a land force to enter Burma from
India.

But on 19 July, a few months before Burma was to be granted full
independence, Aung San and 5 of his ministers were assassinated while
attending a meeting in the Secretariat in Rangoon. U-Saw, a right-wing
prime minister in the pre-war colonial government was convicted of
hatching the plot, and executed; he had hoped to create a leadership role
for himself. It was a tragedy for Burma as Aung San seemed best equipped
to unite the many different factions and minorities; had he lived,
post-war Burmese history may have taken a very different course.