Patrick O'Sullivan. Trade itself was not as important as self-sufficient agriculture, but the country's position on major trade routes from India to China, meant that it did gain a fair amount of money from foreign trade passing through. [11] There were further strikes and anti-tax protests in the later 1920s led by the Wunthanu athins. This massive move towards foreign trade hurt the Burmese economy initially because suddenly a large amount of their resources was being exported for Britain's benefit, thereby taking with it a lot of the resources needed by the Burmese natives to continue living their lives as they had before colonisation. +. "Myanmar." King Mindon tried to readjust to the thrust of imperialism. [Hugh Tinker, The Union of Burma, Oxford University Press 1937, ch.XII. Burma was declared a province of India in November 1885 on the orders of the Secretary of State for India, Lord Randolph Churchill,[7] with its capital at Rangoon, a move that ushered in a new period of economic growth. This prompted the Third Anglo-Burmese War in 1885. Born on October 24, 1876, Saya San was a native of Shwebo, a center of nationalist-monarchist sentiment in north-central Myanmar that was the birthplace of the Konbaung (or Alaungpaya) dynasty, which controlled Myanmar from 1752 until the British annexation in 1886. [Source: Lonely Planet], Indian immigration to Burma was a nationwide phenomenon, not just restricted to Arakan—the region of Burma that bordered India. [11], Then a momentous event stunned the nation on 19 July 1947. Upon arrival many went to their boat cabins and wept with shock and prayed for strength after seeing throngs of sweaty Indians naked except for their loincloths. Though the country prospered, the Burmese people failed to reap the rewards. They were administered separately by the British, and were united with Burma proper to form Myanmar's geographic composition today. George Orwell served in the Indian Imperial Police in Burma for five years, an experience that was the inspiration for his 1934 novel “Burmese Days.”, Divisions of British Burma: The province of Burma, after 1885 was administered as follows: 1) Ministerial Burma (Burma proper); 2) Tenasserim Division (Toungoo, Thaton, Amherst, Salween, Tavoy, and Mergui Districts); 3) Arakan Division (Akyab, Northern Arakan or Arakan Hill Tracts, Kyaukpyu and Sandoway Districts); 4) Pegu Division (Rangoon City, Hanthawaddy, Pegu, Tharrawaddy and Prome Districts); 5) Irrawaddy Division (Bassein, Henzada, Thayetmyo, Maubin, Myaungmya and Pyapon Districts); 6) Scheduled Areas (Frontier Areas); 7) Shan States; 8) Chin Hills; 9) Kachin tracts. Various portions of Burmese territories, including Arakan, Tenasserim were annexed by the British after their victory in the First Anglo-Burmese War; Lower Burma was annexed in 1852 after the Second Anglo-Burmese War. in order to prepare the new land for cultivation. The Straits Times commented on March 2, 1916, how “[a]t the Pegu Club in Rangoon you can meet lots of men who will tell you that if we had not made the usual mess in diplomacy and frontier dilimitation a considerable portion of Yunnan would be under the Union Jack”. Rance calmed the situation by meeting with Aung San and convincing him to join the Governor's Executive Council along with other members of the AFPFL. Moreover the Burmese, like all the other peoples of India, remain under the rule of the British Empire for purely military considerations. Burma was made an independently administered colony in 1937. The hill stations began as sanatoriums and convalescent centers, but it wasn’t long before they became places where healthy upper class people went to escape the heat of the lowland plains. Shooting an Elephant Burma under British Colonial Rule: A Repressed History. The annexed territories were designated the minor province (a Chief Commissionership), British Burma, of British India in 1862. In other words, the Burmese see the British colonial regime’s separate administration of ‘frontier areas’ from the lowland (central Burma plain), and granting minority groups the right to secession under the 1947 Panglong agreement (and the 1947 constitution) as colonial plots and … Aung San Suu Kyi's long and courageous campaign for democracy can be properly understood only against the backdrop of Burma's fractured past: three Anglo-Burmese wars, a century of exploitative British colonial rule, a brutal Japanese invasion, a remarkably peaceful transition to independence and a brief, unforgotten period of prosperity. The king was the chief executive with final say on all matters but he couldn’t make laws and could only issue administrative edicts. After the opening of the Suez Canal, the demand for Burmese rice grew and vast tracts of land were opened up for cultivation. Most of the hill stations were located above 6,000 feet because that seemed to be the ceiling of malaria-carrying mosquitos. [Source: Wikipedia +], The British controlled their new province through direct rule, making many changes to the previous governmental structure. The ambivalent feelings of the protagonist in "Shooting an Elephant" … He wrote: the British Empire “was about antiquity and anachronism, tradition and honor, order and subordination; about glory and chivalry, horses and elephants, knights and peers, processions and ceremony, plumed hats and ermine robes; about chiefs and emirs, sultans and nawabs, viceroys and proconsuls; about thrones and crowns, dominion and hierarchy, ostentation and ornamentalism.”. In theory the king was in charge of all of the Hluttaw but none of his orders got put into place until the Hluttaw approved them, thus checking his power. The guerillas fought hard against the foreigners, but were often captured and punished harshly. (One of the main thoroughfares in Yangon is named after U Wisara.) <. ), After Britain took over Burma, they maintained the sending of tribute to China, putting themselves in a lower status than in their previous relations. The delta region including Rangoon (Lower Burma) was annexed in 1852 after the Second Anglo-Burmese War. This close contact led to the first Anglo-Burmese War (1824–26), which the British won with the aid of the Siamese. 4 March 2010. Social activities went on almost around the clock and status and rank was rigidly defined. This massive move towards foreign trade hurt the Burmese economy initially because suddenly a large amount of their resources were being exported for Britain’s benefit, thereby taking with it the resources needed by the Burmese natives to continue living their lives as they had before colonisation. Britain in part used Burma as a buffer zone between India and the rest of Asia. Rice, which was in high demand in Europe, especially after the building of the Suez Canal in 1869, was the main crop grown in and exported out of Myanmar. While the Burmese economy grew all the power and wealth was in the hands of several British firms and the Burmese people did not reap the rewards. Photographer: Hooper, Willoughby Wallace (1837–1912), Photograph of Royal Lake in Dalhousie Park, Rangoon, 1895. In the eighteenth century it was not Burma's isolationism but her almost manic imperialism, ruthlessly asserted against her neighbours and in the end suicidally over-extended, that brought her up against the East India Company. The second university students strike in 1936 was triggered by the expulsion of Aung San and Ko Nu, leaders of the Rangoon University Students Union (RUSU), for refusing to reveal the name of the author who had written an article in their university magazine, making a scathing attack on one of the senior university officials. When the British began their imperial take on Burma, the colony was immediately thrown into a world of exportation in which they had not ever been exposed to before colonisation by the British. Soon after settling in Burma, the British realized that the valleys of Arakan were quite fertile and had great agricultural potential. The British "imperial tongue" stumbled over Myanmar and adopted Burma, reportedly similar to the name Birmania given to the country by Portuguese traders. The strike, starting in September 1946, then spread from the police to government employees and came close to becoming a general strike. +, The Saya San rebellion gave the Thakin their chance. The Galon army rebels, like the Boxers of China, carried charms and tattoos to make themselves invulnerable to British bullets. Upper Burma fell to the British and the Mandalay-based peacock throne was toppled after the Third Anglo-Burmese War in 1885. 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