No More Learning

Fearing to be chronicled as the king who signed away territory,
Mindon would not accept Dalhousie's treaty, but he recalled his
troops and respected the new frontier. In 1854 he sent envoys asking
Dalhousie to restore Pegu as it was not he, but his discredited pre-
decessor who had made war; Dalhousie said to Phayre, who inter-
preted, “Tell the envoys that so long as the sun shines, which they
see, those territories will never be restored. . . . We did not go to war
with the king but with the nation". Subsequently Mindon, thinking
that as his clergy had great influence with his government, Christian
clergy must have influence with their governments, sent his sons to the
Anglican Dr Marks's mission school at Mandalay and cultivated the
acquaintance of the French Catholic bishop Bigandet; when he found
that they would not urge Queen Victoria to restore Pegu, he thought
missionaries very ungrateful people, and dropped them. For years he
kept a reserve of officers to administer Pegu when the English should
restore it, either as a mark of appreciation or during some European
crisis. But he discountenanced the Pegu dacoits who for decades
claimed to hold his commission; and when the Pegu garrison was
depleted to supply the needs of the Indian Mutiny, he rejected his
court's advice to march, saying it was unworthy to strike a friend in
distress.
1 Cf. vol. v, p. 562, supra.


## p. 433 (#473) ############################################

KING MINDON
433
As a new king was expected to change the capital, Mindon in 1857
abandoned Amarapura and built a new city at Mandalay near by,
but he abrogated the custom of burying human victims at the founda-
tion. Probably his most cherished achievement was the Fifth Buddhist
Council and its memorial, the presentation of a new spire to the
Shwedagon Pagoda, Rangoon. The Fourth Council had been held in
Ceylon nineteen centuries previously; in 1871 Mindon summoned
2400 clergy to Mandalay, where, after they had recited the Buddhist
scriptures, a definitive text was engraved on marble; although only
Burmese clergy had been invited, Mindon styled himself “Convener
of the Fifth Council". The erection of a spire on a major pagoda was
the prerogative of a king in his own dominions, but the English agreed,
provided he did not come himself; coated with gold, studded with
jewels, and worth £62,000, it was erected by his envoys in 1871 and
is still in place; the population of Rangoon was temporarily doubled,
yet crime ceased, and unprotected women were able to wear their
jewels in public throughout the festivities. Mindon's reign was a
happy period, for the Burmese simultaneously enjoyed English ad-
ministration and soothed their pride by the thought that their king
still sat on his throne in the Golden Palace at Mandalay. Beloved
though he was, travellers were struck by the contrast between the
down-trodden bearing, the sullen faces, the coarse clothes, of the
Burmese in his territory, and the laughter, the free bearing, the silken
clothes of the Burmese in English territory. From 1857 onwards, even
before the opening of the Suez Canal, an appreciable number of his
subjects, disobeying his veto, annually migrated to Pegu; the 1881
census shows 8. 4 per cent. of the population of British Burma as born
in Upper Burma.
Abandoning the traditional seclusion of his predecessors, Mindon
employed Europeans, and sent missions to Europe; among the envoys
was the Kinwunmingyi. The failure of the mission to Queen Victoria
to secure direct negotiations was a severe disappointment, for to
Mindon, as to every other Burman, then as now, it was humiliating
to deal with a mere viceroy; however, he swallowed his chagrin, made
no difficulty over dealing with the viceroy, and never failed to receive
English officers courteously. The residency, re-established in 1862,
was raised from the 3rd to the 2nd class in 1875; its incumbents were
Dr Williams (1862-4), Captain (later Sir Edward) Sladen (1864-9),
Major MacMahon (1869–72), Captain Strover (1872-5), Colonel
Duncan (1875-8), Mr Shaw (1878-9), Colonel Horace Browne (1879),
Mr St Barbe (1879). An assistant political agent was maintained at
Bhamo: Captain Strover (1869-72), Captain Spearman (1872-3),
Captain Cooke (1873–7), Mr Cooper (1877–8), Mr St Barbe (1878-9).
Chambers of commerce in England credited Yunnan with an
enormous population and an unlimited capacity for purchasing
Manchester goods; the shortest route from England lay along the
CHIV
28


## p. 434 (#474) ############################################

434 THE CONQUEST OF UPPER BURMA
Irawadi River. Trade treaties made in 1862 and 1867 between the
king of Burma and the Government of India opened Upper Burma to
trade. English steamers ran regularly from Rangoon to Mandalay
after 1868 and reached Bhamo in 1869. English officers from Rangoon
visited Yunnan in 1868, 1875, 1877; those of 1875 turned back when
Margary of the Chinese consular service, who had travelled overland
from Shanghai and met them in Bhamo, was murdered by a Chinese
rabble. Mindon did everything possible to foster trade with Yunnan,
even removing a governor of Bhamo for obstructing English officers,
but the wild tribes north of Bhamo were subject to neither Burmese
nor Chinese rule; furthermore, from 1855 to 1873, the Yunnan market
ceased to exist in the anarchy of the Panthay rebellion. Trade in
Burma itself was hampered by Mindon, who not only enforced the
usual royal monopolies but was also the largest dealer in all kinds
of produce in his dominions. Even so, at the end of his reign,
whereas the annual value of English trade across land frontiers in
India was £5,145,000, with Upper Burma and Yunnan it was
£3,225,000.
The raiders of Karenni carried off Burmans and Shans into slavery,
bartering them for cattle with the Siamese. Mindon's troops entered
Karenni; but when the English objected, he received the viceroy's
envoy, Sir Douglas Forsyth, in 1875
and concluded a treaty whereby
Karenni was recognised as independent. Hence, unlike the Shan
States, to which it is culturally inferior, Karenni is not part of British
India to-day.
When dictating the treaty of 1826 to a vanquished court, the
English had omitted to insist that envoys should neither remove their
shoes nor kneel in the presence. Successive residents, chief commis-
sioners, and Sir Douglas Forsyth, knelt unshod. In 1876 the viceroy
said that this might have been permissible in the days before Burmans
had gone abroad, but now they had visited European courts and seen
that at all there was only one method of receiving ambassadors, irre-
spective of a court's indigenous ceremonial; he himself received
Burmese envoys not only retaining their head-dress but also wearing
shoes and sitting on chairs, and in future the resident would neither
remove his shoes nor kneel. The Kinwunmingyi, who realised the
force of the argument, appears to have tried to state it to Mindon.
Although to yield meant losing face with his people, Mindon's
prestige was such that he could have carried them with him; but he
exclaimed, “I did not fight to recover a province, but I will, sooner
than yield on etiquette". The Government of India was ill-requiting
a harmless old man, the one king of Burma who maintained correct
relations. Thereafter no resident was admitted to the palace, and
English influence declined.
One more reign like Mindon's should have given the thoughtful
minority at court time to grow, so that, like the kindred realm of Siam,
i


## p. 435 (#475) ############################################

THIBAW'S ACCESSION
435
Burma might have been so prudently administered as to render
annexation inconceivable. By the irony of fate it was Minaon himself
who prevented his successor from being a person worthy of him, and
it was the very steps taken by the thoughtful minority to ensure reform
which caused obscurantism to triumph.
To keep the royal blood pure, a Burmese king's chief queen was his
own half-sister; yet her son seldom succeeded to the throne, as the
king nominated any prince, whether brother or son; many a king
avoided the decision, leaving things to settle themselves at his death.
Mindon had fifty-three recognised wives, forty-eight sons, sixty-two
daughters. He nominated his brother; in 1866 two of his sons tried
to assassinate him, and assassinated the brother. Thereupon Sladen,
the resident, urged him to select a capable son and proclaim him heir,
so that the kingdom might become accustomed to an accomplished
fact; Mindon refused, saying he had so many sons, that to nominate
any one of them would be equivalent to signing the boy's death
warrant. On his death-bed he appointed his three best sons to succeed
as joint kings, each with a third of the kingdom. Realising that this
meant civil war, and wishing to have a nonentity as king so that they
could introduce cabinet government, the ministers approved the plot
of the queen dowager, whose daughter Supayalat was married to
Thibaw, a junior son of Mindon's; they suppressed the order, im-
prisoned the remaining princes and princesses, proclaimed Thibaw
king, and substituted for the immemorial oath of allegiance to the
king a new oath to the king acting with his ministers.
Although the king's orders had always been subject to the con-
currence of the Hluttaw (the council of the ministers), that could
refuse only at peril, and in the last resort the king alone could claim
obedience. The resident saw in the new oath, and in the character of
the ministers, hope for progress. But no paper oath could avail against
the sycophancy of the palace. Thibaw's mother, a junior queen, had
been expelled from the harem for adultery with a monk; he himself,
aged twenty, weak-minded, addicted to gin, was dominated by his
feline wife Supayalat; by a process of mutual attraction the couple
were soon surrounded by the vilest characters in the palace, who
superseded the better officers and took command of the troops.
Through fcar of Supayalat, Thibaw further outraged convention by
not marrying the four major queens and numerous lesser queens
necessary to a Burmese king. The Kinwunmingyi usually acquiesced,
but only to retain office in hope of better days, and finally Thibaw,
fearing to be overthrown in favour of ce of the imprisoned princes,
enforced the “Massacre of the Kinsmen”: on 15-17 February, 1879,
nearly eighty princes and princesses of all ages were-since royal blood
was taboostrangled or clubbed by intoxicated ruffians and fung,
dead or alive, into a trench the earth over which was trampled by
elephants.
28-2


## p. 436 (#476) ############################################

436
THE CONQUEST OF UPPER BURMA
The Hluttaw was not implicated. The household staff arranged the
massacre; it had not been enforced for four reigns, and it now took
place in the age of the telegraph and newspaper; but even the de
fective chronicles of Burma contain seven instances since 1287, and
Thibaw's court seems to have been surprised at the horror aroused
in the outer world. It was the Kinwunmingyi himself who drafted
the curt reply to the resident's protest, that Burma was a sovereign
power, that her government was the sole judge of what the exigencies
of state required, and that the massacre was strictly in accordance
with precedent. A Burmese officer of humane character subsequently
said to an English commissioner:
We had no alternative. It has taken you English five years to crush dacoits
led by a few sham princes. How long would it have taken you had they been led
by seventy real princes? That was the risk we had to face, and we had none of
your resources. By taking those seventv lives we saved seventy thousand.
>
The chief commissioner recommended immediate withdrawal of
the resident, saying that this would secure the collapse of Thibaw's
unsteady throne. The Government of India refused, and covered their
indecision by saying that his presence would prevent further massacres
-as if whatever moral influence he possessed were not forfeited by his
continuing at such a court. Executions never ceased, and culminated
in the “Jail Massacre” of September, 1884; perhaps the Kin-
wunmingyi himself owed his immunity to the fact that he already
held the ancient title Thettawshe, “he to whom the king grants long
life”, signifying that he alone, of all mortals, could not be executed
out of hand. The residency, a collection of bamboo huts surrounded
by a fence, was virtually blockaded, and no Burman dared be seen
entering. Yet the Government of India withdrew it in October, 1879,
only because reports that Thibaw contemplated exterminating it
coincided with the outcry at Cavagnari's murder in Kabul.
Four of Thibaw's brothers had fled the country--Myingun and
Myingundaing in 1866, after assassinating Mindon's uncle; Nyaun-
gyan and Nyaungok shortly before the “Massacre of the Kinsmen”.
In 1868 Myingun escaped from internment at Rangoon, tried to raise
a rebellion in Upper Burma, was reinterned, and in 1882 escaped into
French territory. In 1880 Nyaungok escaped from internment at
Calcutta, raised a brief rebellion in Upper Burma, and was reinterned.
One or another of the four princes would have succeeded in ousting
Thibaw had not the French and English interned them; Nyaungyan
in particular, Mindon's favourite son, whom he had nominated one
of his three joint successors, inherited his father's character and charm,
and was deservedly popular.
Opinion among non-officials in British Burma was unanimous that
Upper Burma must be annexed. In 1884 English and Chinese mer-
chants joined in sending money to Myingun at Pondichery, asking


## p. 437 (#477) ############################################

THE FRANCO-BURUESE TREATY
437
him to invade Burma through Siam. Dr Marks inveighed from his
Rangoon pulpit and led the firms in public meetings which demanded
immediate annexation in the interests of humanity, and trade; they
claimed that these meetings represented every race, but in reality
Burmese British subjects, though they deplored. Thibaw's misrule,
would not attend. The chief commissioner-Bernard, nephew to
Henry Lawrence who deprecated annexing the Panjab-advised that
annexation would infuriate the Burmese, alarm the princes of India,
and entail years of trouble; that we were not free from moral responsi-
bility for Thibaw's misrule, as Nyaungyan would long before have
ousted him but for our veto; that the Burmese would welcome
Nyaungyan even if imposed by us, and he would prove a friendly and
enlightened ruler. The Government of India, saying that internal
misgovernment did not justify intervention, and that statistics did not
support the contention that Thibaw's misrule diminished trade, would
neither act nor even protest against the later massacres.
What forced the English to act was that France, having won an
empire in Indo-China, now tried to dominate Upper Burma by
peaceful penetration. For a decade the Burmese, anxious for their
independence, had vaguely striven for an alliance with some first-class
power; France refused to ratify the trade treaty of 1873 because the
Burmese insisted oa inserting provisions for the import of arms and for
a full alliance. But in 1873 France had only Cochin China, whereas
in 1884 she had Tonkin and was advancing towards Upper Burma.
When, therefore, in January, 1885, Ferry, the French foreign minister,
signed a public treaty for trade, he gave the Burmese envoys at Paris
a secret letter promising to permit the import of arms through
Tonkin when order was restored there; it was not a cordial letter, for
the French, like the English, found the Burmese unsatisfactory to deal
with; moreover the public treaty did not secure French nationals the
safeguards (e. g. consular jurisdiction) desired by Ferry, and French
officers in Tonkin disliked the distribution of arms. While the treaty
was pending, Lyons, the English ambassador in Paris, warned Ferry
that England had special interests in Upper Burma; in his last inter-
view before signing the treaty Ferry assured Lyons that he would never
permit the import of arms, so ardently desired by the Burmese; in the
interview announcing signature, Ferry told Lyons it was a harmless
trade treaty, and he avoided mentioning arms. In July, 1885, how-
ever, the secret letter was seen in the Mandalay palace by an underling
friendly to the chief commissioner, and the viceroy telegraphed it
verbatim to London.
France followed up the treaty by stationing a consul, Haas, at
Mandalay. A quiet scholarly man, ignorant of the language and
country, Haas suffered in health and disliked Mandalay. With him,
and with a Burmese envoy in Paris, French concessionaires negotiated
the establishment of a bank at Mandalay, the construction of a railway


## p. 438 (#478) ############################################

438
THE CONQUEST OF UPPER BURMA
from Mandalay to the railhead in British Burma, and the manage-
ment of the royal monopolies, capital and interest to be secured on
the revenues of the kingdom. None of these grandiose schemes was
sound, and few advanced beyond the draft stage, but they would have
left the kingdom permanently in French control. Failing to collect
his revenue, Thibaw pawned the harem jewels, and, in defiance of
his father's memory, established state lotteries which, however, dis-
appointed expectation; unable to wait till the French bank materialised,
he turned to the Bombay-Burma Trading Corporation, an English
firm which extracted timber over half his kingdom. They lent him
£100,000, and when they refused a further £220,000 early in 1885,
they found themselves arraigned before the Hluttaw, sitting as a High
Court, for failing to pay their employees and defrauding the Burmese
crown of royalties in the Ningyan (Yamethin) forests. Sufficient
particulars survive for any magistrate to recognise the accusation as
typical of the false cases from the bazaar which come before him to-day.
On hearing that a French syndicate would take over the forests if the
corporation were evicted, the Hluttaw passed judgment ex parte, con-
demning the corporation to pay £230,000.
Though alarmed, England could not act against Thibaw for
negotiating with a friendly power, but the corporation case compelled
actionon unexceptionablegrounds. And at thisjuncture France, having
suffered reverses in Tonkin which delayed her westward advance,
withdrew from Upper Burma: her ambassador in London repudiated
Haas's acts, 6 October, 1885. Th: Burmese refusal to submit the
corporation case to the viceroy's arbitration reached Rangoon
13 October, and was reported to India the same day. The draft
ultimatum was approved in London and received back in Rangoon
on 19 October; it directed the Burmese to receive a permanent
resident, giving him free access to the king without humiliating
ceremonies, to submit the corporation case to the viceroy's arbitration,
to submit their foreign relations to English control, and to assist the
through trade with Yunnan. On 9 November Thibaw's rejection of
the ultimatum reached Rangoon, and he issued a proclamation com-
manding his army to drive the infidel English into the sea. On
28 November he was a prisoner in his palace, under a British infantry
guard.
Public opinion in England, shocked at Thibaw's atrocities, desired
annexation. The Government of India disliked it save as a last resort,
and the ultimatum meant what it said that Upper Burma could
continue independent if its court would accept the slight restraint
which experience showed to be the irreducible minimum. The
Burmese having rejected this offer of a protectorate, annexation
followed, for the English were not in a position to appoint a successor
to Thibaw; his massacres had left so few claimants alive that there
was no field for selection; the only claimant known to possess character,
a


## p. 439 (#479) ############################################

ANNEXATION
439
Nyaungyan, had died in June, 1885; Myingun, believed to possess
character, was under French influence.
Dalhousie in 1852, Bernard in 1884, prophesied that, whereas
Arakan, Tenasserim, and Pegu, the outlying territories of the Burmese,
had been quickly conquered, the kingdom of Upper Burma, the
Burmese homeland, would offer prolonged resistance; in 1879 the
general commanding at Rangoon said he could take Mandalay with
500 men but would need 5000 to take Upper Burma. And so it
proved, for the loosely knit state bristled with village stockades and
evinced in defeat the tenacious vitality of the lower organisms.
Dacoity, always endemic, had become chronic under Thibaw; his
new ministers protected dacoits, shared their booty, and left district
governors unsupported; villages submitted to the exactions of their
youthful braves in return for protection against the braves of other
villages; in 1884 Kachins captured Bhamo and carried fire and sword
half-way down to Mandalay. The troops who had been massed against
the English scarcely fired a shot, as Thibaw's proclamation was not
followed by definite orders to his men, and many, not knowing
Nyaungyan was dead, at first believed the English came to set him
on the throne; but now, in the hour of the monarchy's dissolution,
they went home with their arms and joined the dacoits. They could
not combine, they plundered each other, and their fellow-country-
men, of whom the majority, sickened by their cruelty, ended by
welcoming the English, called them not patriots but dacoits. Although
they could seldom be brought to action, and the invaders' battle
deaths were only sixty-two in eight months, it took five years to dispose
of them; Sir George White, Sir George Wolseley, and the commander-
in-chief in India, Sir Frederick Roberts, were present; at one time
no fewer than 32,000 troops were employed.
And the area pacified in 1885-90 was only the kingdom of Upper
Burma, i. e. barely half of Upper Burma. The greater half consisted of
tribal areas where Burmese rule had either, as in the Chin hills, never
penetrated, or, as in the Shan States, been ineffective. The remotest
Shan state submitted in 1890 when Mr (later Sir George) Scott took
forty sepoys, rode boldly into Kengtung, a mediaeval city with five
miles of battlemented wall, and received the surrender of the
wavering chief. Fighting against the Chins lasted till 1896.
Neither Sir Charles Crosthwaite, the masterful chief commissioner
of the pacification, nor J. E. Bridges, his best officer in knowledge of
the people, had any illusions about the Burmese, yet both regretted
the annexation; Crosthwaite said it extinguished the good as well as
the evil of the only surviving Buddhist state in India, and Bridges said,
“It was a pity. They would have learnt in time”. Indirect adminis-
tration, giving the benefits of annexation without its defects, would
have yielded little revenue; morcover, native institutions, shaken
under Thibaw, were overthrown by the mere process of pacification,


## p. 440 (#480) ############################################

440 THE CONQUEST OF UPPER BURMA
as half the territorial families were in the field against us. But the real
reason for imposing direct administration was that it was the fashion
of the age, and modern standards of efficiency were the only standards
intelligible to the men who entered Upper Burma. Few of them spoke
the language, and those who did, came with preconceptions gained
in Lower Burma. When overrunning Lower Burma, the Burmese had
devastated and depopulated the country; our administration led to
the return of refugees and to Indian immigration, but this hybrid
population grew up without traditions or hereditary institutions.
Hence Englishmen came to regard the Burmese as one dead level of
peasants, without class distinctions or hereditary institutions, their
government as unsystematised despotism, and Upper Burma as a
tabula rasa whereon to erect an administration of the approved Anglo-
Indian type.
These preconceptions are largely invalidated by research. Burmese
society was honeycombed with class distinctions, and the sumptuary
laws rendered it possible to tell a man's rank and occupation by a
glance at his dress. Even now, after the 1885 révolution, there are
village headmen who can trace their pedigrees for two and a half
centuries. The king did not proclaim himself, he was proclaimed
by the will of the nobles. He took no coronation oath, yet he was
bound by immemorial custom and by religious awe. He could not
issue a single order till it had been registered by the Hluttaw, the
Council of the Ministers—the four “Great Burdens", the four “Arms
and Shoulders of the State”--for, as the French noted independently,
the races of Indo-China abhor the rule of an individual. He had no
parliament: but thrice a year he had to face his lieges, as every office-
bearer, down to the humblest village headman, attended the three
great “Homage Days”, when the king, having worshipped his
ancestors, was in turn worshipped first by his family and then by the
assembled court. He might be a haughty and murderous tyrant, but
if the lowliest cleric in the realm entered, he must leave his throne,
kniel, and, at the holy man's bidding, recall. the death sentence he
had just uttered. There was in Upper Burma a complete social,
religious and political system of appreciable vitality, and two instances
(divorce and clerical discipline) will show what the annexation swept
away.
Burmese divorce is by mutual consent, but under native rule it
required the concurrence of the village headman, who imposed delays
and levied fees; under English rule these formed no part of his duties,
and already in 1850 Phayre, noting the deplorable increase in divorce,
attributed it to the removal of these checks.
The king was head of the Buddhist Church. His chaplain was a
primate who prevented schism, managed church lands, and adminis-
tered clerical discipline, through an ecclesiastical commission ap-
pointed and paid by the king. The primate prepared the annual clergy


## p. 441 (#481) ############################################

THE BURMESE KINGDOM
441
list, giving particulars of age and ordination, district by district, and
any person who claimed to be a cleric and was not in the list was
punished. A district governor was precluded by benefit of clergy from
passing judgment on a criminous cleric, but he framed the trial record
and submitted it to the palace; the primate passed orders, unfrocking
the cleric and handing him over to secular justice. In January, 1887,
the primate and thirteen bishops met the commander-in-chief, Sir
Frederick Roberts, offering to preach submission to the English in
every village throughout the land, if their jurisdiction was confirmed.
The staff trained by the English in Lower Burma for two generations
included Burmese Buddhist extra assistant commissioners who could
have represented the chief commissioner on the primate's board. But
English administrators, being citizens of the modern secularist state,
did not even consider the primate's proposal; they merely expressed
polite benevolence, and the ecclesiastical commission lapsed. To-day
schism is rife, any charlatan can dress as a cleric and swindle the
faithful, and criminals often wear the robe and live in a monastery
to elude the police. As Sir Edward Sladen, one of the few Englishmen
who had seen native institutions as they really were, said, the English
non-possumus was not neutrality but interference in religion.
>
THE PROVINCE OF BURMA, 1852-1918
Lower Burma, embracing the three commissionerships, Pegu,
Tenasserim, Arakan (which were mutually independent and corre-
sponded,Pegu and Tenasserim with the Government of India, Arakan
with the government of Bengal), in 1862 was formed into a single
province, British Burma, with headquarters at Rangoon. Upper
Burma was, after annexation in 1885, combined with Lower and
styled the province of Burma, with headquarters at Rangoon. Its
head was a chief commissioner (1862-97); thereafter a lieutenant-
governor: General Sir Arthur Phayre (1862–7), General Fytche
(1867–71), Mr Ashley Eden (1871-5), Mr Rivers Thompson (1875-8),
Mr Charles Aitchison (1878–80), Mr Charles Bernard (1880–7),
Mr Charles Crosthwaite (1887-90), Sir Alexander Mackenzie
(1890-4), Sir Frederick Fryer (1895–1903), Sir Hugh Barnes (1903–5),
Sir Herbert White (1905-10), Sir Harvey Adamson (1910-15), Sir
Harcourt Butler (1915-17), Sir Reginald Craddock (1917-22); of
these fourteen, eleven were appointed from India without previous
experience of the province. Legislative power was reserved to the
Government of India until 1897, when the Burma Legislative Council
was constituted, a small body with an official majority and limited
powers.
Until 1886 the head of the province had one secretary and disposed
of all non-judicial work through district officers. He now has three
secretaries, a financial commissioner (1888) as chief revenue authority,


## p. 442 (#482) ############################################

442 THE CONQUEST OF UPPER BURMA
a commissioner of settlements and land records (1900) as head of the
settlement department created in 1873, an excise commissioner (1906),
a registrar of co-operative societies (1904), and a director of agricul-
ture (1906). The creation of the great centralised departments has
resulted in the execution of work which the district officer left undone;
the belief that his power has diminished will not bear examination.
By 1862, the year in which subdivisions were created and assistant
commissioners first stationed outside district headquarters, the district
officer was styled deputy-commissioner, and the distinction between
circle headman and township officer had crystallised; the circle head-
man remained a vernacular villager with only revenue powers, the
township officer became a salaried civil servant with
both judicial and
revenue powers, and he began to learn English. Two-thirds of the
Burma Commission were Indian civilians, one-third soldiers and
uncovenanted.
The deputy-commissioner was in direct charge of the police until
1861 when an inspector-general of police was created, with a super-
intendent of police in each district. Till 1887 the force was inefficient
and expensive, because the village community had been destroyed
and its headman deprived of police powers, and because early super-
intendents, being subalterns from the Indian Army, did not speak the
language and filled the ranks with Indians. In 1887 the village head-
man was given police powers, and the police were divided into two:
the civil police, consisting of Burmans, undertakes detection; the
military police, consisting of Indians, garrisons outposts and guards
treasuries. The creation of an excise department in 1902 relieved the
police of excise duties. English policy is to discourage intoxicants by
making them expensive, and incidentally to raise revenue. Native
policy was prohibitionist in theory, but drink and opium were not
uncommon in practice. Burmese opinion is that indulgence has
greatly increased and produces so large a revenue that the English
wish it to be so. In reality the excise department has prevented
an increase in the use of opium and has kept the increase of drink
within bounds. English officers have only legal powers, whereas
under native rule high officials were leaders of society, nor had the
influx of immigrants, many of whom belong to drinking races, taken
place.
The local regiments—Arakan Local Battalion, Pegu Light Infantry,
Pegu Sapper Battalion-were disbanded on the creation of the police
service in 1861. Save for the corps d'élite, a Burmese company of
Sappers and Miners raised in 1887, no further recruiting occurred till
the great war, when 8500 men were formed into rifle battalions,
mechanical transport, and labour corps, and, with the sappers, served
overseas. The rifle units were recruited chiefly from the tribal areas;
few Burmans joined, and fewer stood the discipline. Yet in pre-British
times the race had a fighting record, and in the first generation of


## p. 443 (#483) ############################################

JUDICIAL ADMINISTRATION
443
English rule regimental officers thought well of the Burmese sepoys
they led against insurgents and frontier tribes—their marksmanship,
courage, initiative, endurance, and a cheerfulness which increased
with hardship. But since the post-Mutiny reorganisation the Indian
Army avoids small racial units speaking obscure languages.
In 1862 the chief commissioner, himself constituting a Chief Court,
a
had three commissioners, who were sessions and divisional judges,
trying murder cases and second civil appeals; twelve deputy-com-
missioners, who were district magistrates and district judges, trying
cases not requiring over seven years' imprisonment, major civil suits,
and first civil appeals; and a hundred subordinate executive officers,
mostly natives, trying minor criminal and most civil original cases.
Recorders existed in Rangoon (1864-1900) and Moulmein (1864-72);
a recorder was an English barrister district and sessions judge subject
to the Calcutta High Court. A judicial commissioner, appointed
in 1872 with Chief Court powers (save over the recorder), relieved the
chief commissioner of all judicial functions. In 1890 a judicial com-
missioner was appointed for Upper Burma. In 1900 the judicial
commissioner, Lower Burma, and recorder, Rangoon, were abolished
and a Chief Court for Lower Burma constituted. The first general
step towards separation of judiciary and executive occurred in 1905
in Lower Burma, where population and work are greatest: a separate
judicial service was created, commissioners ceased to exercise judicial
functions and deputy-commissioners and their executive assistants
tried only major criminal cases. In Upper Burma commissioners and
deputy-commissioners still try most criminal and some civil cases.
Although in some respects Western legal training unfits a man to
administer justice among backward Eastern peoples, and few of the
judiciary know sufficient English to master a voluminous legal litera-
ture, the tendency is for judicial administration to become increasingly
complex and for case-law to swamp the codes. The system has helped
to create a class of denationalised native lawyer who shows little skill
save in raising obstructions and procuring perjury. For long it was
usual to appoint as judges men who had failed as executive officers.
Sir Charles Bernard said there were no High Courts in the British
Empire where the atmosphere was so unreal; in successive annual
pronouncements he condemned frequent interference in appeal as
showing perfunctory appellate work, which encouraged frivolous
appeals and increased crime. In Upper Burma, a man could be
tortured to death on summary trial, until the day of the annexation;
almost from the day after, he could not even be fined without a
prolonged trial and appeals, and Sir Charles Crosthwaite was dis-
mayed at the appointment of a judicial commissioner to Mandalay
while fighting was still in progress. The dacoit leader Nga Ya Nyun
pounded infants in rice mortars under their mothers' eyes, roasted
old women between the legs, and ate his prisoners alive; in 1890 he


## p. 444 (#484) ############################################

444 THE CONQUEST OF UPPER BURMA
was sentenced to death at Myingyan on evidence which would have
satisfied a home judge and jury in twenty minutes, but the judicial
commissioner in appeal was with difficulty induced, after prolonged
quibbling, to imprison him. The belief that appellate interference was
less common in the old days is contrary to facts: confirmations rose
from 54 per cent. in 1864 to 68 per cent. in 1918.
Public works officers had always existed in the garrison engineers
of important districts, but by 1862 there was a complete civil cadre
under a chief engineer; relying partly on jail labour, they laid out
Rangoon; in 1864-83 they built the great delta embankments, and
after 1885 they extended the native irrigation system of Upper Burma.
The single railway line from Rangoon reached Prome in 1877,
Toungoo in 1885, Mandalay in 1889, Myitkyina in 1898, Lashio in
1902, Moulmein in 1907. But there is no railway communication
with India or Siam; there are still barely 2000 miles of metalled road,
less than in a London suburb, in a province twice the area of the
British Isles; and anywhere, after a century of English rule, one can
ride for days—in the dry season, for in the rains one cannot ride a
furlong-without meeting a road or a bridge.
The huge lead-silver
mines of the Northern Shan States are near a railway; the oil-fields
of Yenangyaung are on the Irawadi River; the wolfram mines of
Tavoy are near the sea; but elsewhere minerals lie untouched, and
agricultural development is hampered for lack of communications.
As each conquest (1826, 1852, 1885) was an overseas operation, the
cost of which was not recovered for a generation, the Government of
India had to recoup itself by seizing the surplus revenues of Burma,
which would have been ample to provide communications, although
population was scarce and labour cost thrice ordinary Indian rates.
It was an a reference from McClelland, superintendent of forests,
Pegu, that Dalhousie in 1855 enunciated the forest policy of India.
And it was in Pegu that Sir Dietrich Brandis, arriving in 1856, lạid
the foundations of the Indian forest department, in the teeth of
European firms' opposition, and trained his great successor, Sir
William Schlich. The forests of Burma are among the finest in the
world; thanks to state ownership they remain one of her principal
assets and provide much of her revenue; one-fourth of the Indian
forest service is concentrated in Burma.
In 1865 Phayre said that the true line of educational advance lay
not in Anglo-vernacular schools but in improving vernacular schools,
of which the Buddhist clergy had spread a network over the country
-save among the wild tribes, every village in Burma has its cleric,
and his monastery is the village school, so that for centuries, though
learning has been rare, most men and many women have been able
to read and even to write. In 1866 a director of public instruction was
appointed to execute Phayre's scheme; but the director spoke little
Burmese, the clergy spoke no English; the director had no staff, the
a


## p. 445 (#485) ############################################

EDUCATION
445
clergy had no central authority; most were either apathetic, or dis-
trustful of new-fangled methods proposed by alien infidels, nor might
a cleric take instructions from a mere layman, who must, indeed,
address him in an attitude of adoration. The director could not spend
even the limited funds at his disposal, and in 1871 the chief commis-
sioner, regretting that he had no power to appoint a central authority,
consisting of clergy, to restore ecclesiastical discipline and improve
education, abandoned Phayre's plan and instituted lay vernacular
schools. Since 1875, when he received his first inspector, the director
has developed a staff
, but his energies are concentrated upon Anglo-
vernacular schools, and there is a complete break in continuity
between the atmosphere of the home and the school, between the
traditions of the race and the only progressive education in the country.
Yet it is the people themselves who insist on the teaching of English.
In the very year of their foundation the earliest lay vernacular schools
were found to be surreptitiously teaching English, and English officers
who prevented this were regarded as reactionaries. Although a back-
ward agricultural country provided no employment for Anglo-
vernacular youths save in government offices, the growing complexity
of English administration could for long more than absorb the whole
product of the schools; in 1869 the chief commissioner said he did not
wish to reserve office to the product of mission schools, but nowhere
else could he get qualified candidates. Rangoon Government High
School, a secular school founded in 1873, produced its first graduate
and developed into Rangoon College, affiliated to Calcutta University,
in 1884.
Minor operations continued after the annexation of Pegu in 1852
because, though Talaings and Karens welcomed the English, the
Burmese were doubtful, and the higher strata of society-district
governors, circle headmen-ceased to exist. In 1826 these had thrown
in their lot with the English and suffered terrible vengeance when the
incredible happened and the English withdrew. Consequently in
1852 their successors remained loyal to their king and retreated before
the English, taking many of the people with them to Upper Burma.
Simultaneously the anarchic forces in society broke loose, forming
powerful dacoit gangs, who became popular heroes now that govern-
ment was foreign; their atrocities finally alienated support, but several
survived till 1868, and in 1875 a gang, having visited Mandalay
palace, gave out that it had received royal recognition, harried Pegu
subdivision, and killed the inspector-general of police in action.
Pegu, a thinly populated area of swamp and forest in 1852, is now
one of the principal rice-exporting areas of the world. The clearance
of its malarious jungles was the achievement of Burmese pioneers,
many of them Upper Burmans; they were aided by temporary
seasonal migration from India, especially south India, which rose
from 60,000 in 1868 to 300,000 in 1918, making Rangoon second only


## p. 446 (#486) ############################################

446
THE CONQUEST OF UPPER BURMA
to New York as an immigrant port. The population of Pegu rose from
700,000 in 1852 to 1,500,000 in 1867, and the opening of the Suez
Canal in 1869 provided a further stimulus; Syriam district grew
400,000 acres of rice in 1869, 700,000 in 1874, and the total rice-area
in Lower Burma rose from one and a half million acres in 1869 to
nine million to-day. Rangoon, with a population of 25,000 in 1852,
had 330,000 in 1918 and is rapidly challenging Calcutta as second
port in India. Development on such a scale would have been im-
possible under native rule, and although Europeans made fortunes,
most of the monetary wealth thus created went into native pockets.
But, as England found during the Industrial Revolution, unchecked
individualist development tends to become anti-social; and whereas
in sovereign countries the tendency is checked by the conservative
forces in society, in subject countries these forces have been overthrown.
The Irawadi Delta, where two-thirds of the crop is exported, and
the population consists largely of homeless coolies, leaderless men,
provides Burma with most of her crime. In England highway robbery,
the nearest approach to the mediaeval crime of dacoity, disappeared
a century ago, and all crime has decreased for generations; the annual
incidence of murder (including infanticide) decreased from 5-7 per
million people in 1857–66 to 4:3 in 1908–12. In Burma the annual
incidence of murder (including murder by robbers and dacoits), and
of dacoity, per million people, is
. . . . . . . . . 26. 5. .
1881-5
Murder
Dacoity
1871-5
19. 4
1876-80.
II. 6
354
20. 6
1886-90 war (Upper Burma) and rebellion (Lower)
1891-5
30:1
29. 2
1896-1900.
. 24. 8. . . .
9:5
1901-05
26. 5
6. 3
1906-10. . . . ·32. 0. . . .
9:4
1911-15
390
14:6
1916-18.
. 39. 7. . .
16. 0
. . . . . . .
Caste, purdah, Hinduism and Muhammadanism, with their para-
lysing strife, are unknown in Burma. But, though nine of her thirteen
million inhabitants are Burmese Buddhists, fourteen indigenous lan-
guages are spoken, and a sixth of her inhabitants, covering a third of
her area (chiefly in the hills), are Shans, Chins, Kachins, Karens, etc. ,
who have immemorial feuds with the Burmese. In these areas Burmans
will not serve, the staff is European, and the administration has often
the forms, and sometimes the spirit, of indirect rule; thus, major
chieftains in the Shan States retain powers of life and death, and
administer their native customary law, not the English codes. Slavery
and human sacrifice survive in unadministered areas west of Myitkyina
and east of Lashio.


## p. 447 (#487) ############################################

BURMESE PROBLEMS
447
a
As for the Burmese themselves, what differentiates Burma from
most of India is that the peoples of India have been commingled by
repeated invasion, whereas the Burmese, inhabiting a geographical
backwater, invaded seldom, and only by kindred races, developed
what may fairly be called a nation state, and possess a national con-
sciousness. The Anglo-Indian conquerors found in Burma a language
and society unlike anything to which they were accustomed, and
Western education was non-existent. Having to construct an adminis-
tration at short notice, they brought over their subordinate Indian
staff; and, finding Lower Burma largely an unoccupied waste, they
encouraged Indian coolie immigration, paying shipowners, until 1884,
a capitation fee on each Indian immigrant. Burmese resentment is
acute, and successive lieutenant-governors now insist on the employ-
ment of Burmans. Indians still bulk large in subordinate medical and
engineering staffs, but have been eliminated from general adminis-
tration. As for European employment, the incidence of imperial
service officers (all departments) rose from one in 26,000 people in
1850 to one in 20,000 in 1900, a year moreover when, of 142 police
inspectors (on Rs. 150 monthly) outside Rangoon, eighty-two were
-European. A Burman first became a subdivisional magistrate in 1880,
a deputy-commissioner in 1908, a chief court judge in 1917. Muni-
cipalities, created in 1875, have no vitality outside Rangoon; Ripon's
scheme of rural autonomy could not be applied, owing to the paucity
of the English-speaking public, and district boards have never existed.
The administrative machine is a modern machine, needing modern
minds to work it, and down to 1918 Burma has produced only 400
graduates.
Tribal rebellions in the Chin hills (1917-19), precipitated by
recruiting, occupied 5000 troops. Otherwise the late war left Burma
so unruffed that after Thibaw died in 1916, a state prisoner near
Bombay, Supayalat was allowed to return to Burma. Burma's war
contribution was not men but raw material-wolfram, and the three
staples (rice, teak, petroleum). The forest department supplied the
Admiralty direct, and in its need of food the home market offered
such prices that no rice would have been left in the province had not
government prohibited its export, save under official control for the
benefit of the Food Ministry.
.


## p. 448 (#488) ############################################

CHAPTER XXV
>
THE NORTH-WEST FRONTIER, 1843-1918
The conquest of Sind in 1843 and the annexation of the Panjab in
1849, by advancing the British administrative boundary across the
Indus, made it coterminous with the territories of the Baluch and
Pathan tribes, and eventually brought the Government of India into
closer contact with the khan of Kalat and the amir of Afghanistan.
Thus there grew up two distinct schools of frontier administration,
the Sind and the Panjab. The policy adopted in Sind can be roughly
described as an uncompromising repression of outrages by a strong
military force; the success of the Panjab system depended to a very
large extent upon an efficient political management of the tribes.
Having crushed the power of the amirs, Sir Charles Napier imme-
diately set to work to place Sind under a military administration,
selecting his subordinates not from the ranks of the civil service but
from the soldiers who had helped him in the conquest of the country,
This arrangement naturally had its disadvantages, and, like the con-
quest of Sind, became the subject of embittered controversy. The most
exposed part of the Sind frontier stretched for a distance of about
150 miles from Kasmore to the northern spurs of the Hala mountains,
but, at first, no troops were stationed here, neither was it thought
necessary to place anyone in charge of it. This immediately led to
marauding incursions by Bugtis from the Kachhi hills and Dombkis
and Jakranis from the Kachhi plain, who entered Sind in bands of
five hundred or more, plundering and burning villages far inside the
British borders. An attempt was therefore made to grapple with the
problem by building forts and posting detachments of troops at
certain points, and by appointing an officer to command this vul-
nerable part of the border. But these measures did not prove effective.
Disorder reigned supreme. On several occasions British troops were
signally defeated by these robber bands and once about sixty of the
local inhabitants, who had turned out in a body to protect their
homes, were mistaken for robbers and put to death by the 6th Bengal
Irregular Cavalry, the very force which had been posted there for
their protection. Eventually, in 1845, Sir Charles Napier led an
expedition against these disturbers of the peace, but it was only a
qualified success. The Bugtis were by no me ns crushed, for, on
10 December, 1846, about 1500 of these freebooters marched into
Sind, where they remained for twenty-four hours before returning to.
their hills, seventy-five miles away, with 15,000 head of cattle. It can
1 Records of Scinde Irregular Horse, 1, 275.


## p. 449 (#489) ############################################

JACOB IN SIND
449
be safely stated that, until the arrival of Major John Jacob and the
Scinde Irregular Horse, in January, 1847, no efficient protection had
been afforded to British subjects along this exposed frontier.
According to Jacob, the fact that the inhabitants of the British
border districts were allowed to carry arms was chiefly responsible
for the prevailing unrest, for they too were in the habit of proceeding
on predatory excursions. Some of the worst offenders were the Baluch
tribes from the Kachhi side, who had been settled in Sind by Napier
in 1845. Strange to relate, the marauders from across the border
disposed of most of their loot in Sind where the banias supplied them
with food and the necessary information to ensure the success of their
raids. What was worse, the military detachments stationed at Shahpur
and other places remained entirely on the defensive, prisoners within
the walls of their own forts, for no attempt was made at patrolling the
frontier. In 1848, Major, afterwards General, John Jacob was ap-
pointed to sole political power on the Upper Sind frontier where he
completely revolutionised Napier's system. Under Jacob's vigorous
and capable administration, lands which had lain waste for over half
a century were cultivated once more, and the people, who had lived
in constant dread of Baluch inroads, moved about everywhere un-
armed and in perfect safety. All British subjects were disarmed in
order to prevent them taking the law into their own hands, but, as
the possession of arms in a man's own house was not forbidden, the
people were not left so entirely defenceless as is sometimes supposed. "
No new forts were built and existing ones were dismantled, for Jacob
believed that the depredations of Baluch robbers could be best checked
by vigilant patrolling, to which the desert fringe of Sind was admirably
adapted. In other words, mobility was the system of defence. At first
Jacob advocated that the political boundary should coincide with the
geographical. His contention was based on the supposed permanency
of the latter, but the gradual disappearance of the desert as a result
of increased cultivation caused him to alter his opinion. Although
Jacob, in his military capacity, commanded all troops on this frontier
and was responsible to no one but the commander-in-chief, his duties
did not cease here. Not only was he the sole political agent, but he
was in addition superintendent of police, chief magistrate, engineer,
and revenue officer.
It is now generally accepted that Jacob's methods were inapplicable
to the Panjab where frontier administrators were faced by a much
more formidable problem. The first colossal mistake on the Panjab
frontier was the initial step, the taking over of the frontier districts
from the Sikhs, and the acceptance of an ill-defined administrative
boundary. Indeed, it was extremely unfortunate for the British that
the Sikhs had been their immediate predecessors in the Panjat, for
i Records of Scinde Irregular Horse, 11, 243.
· Views and opinions of General John Jacob (ed. Pelly), p. 74.
CHIVI
29


## p. 450 (#490) ############################################

450
THE NORTH-WEST FRONTIER, 1843-1918
Sikh frontier administration had been of the loosest type. They pos-
sessed but little influence in the trans-Indus tracts, and what little
authority they had was confined to the plains. Even here they were
obeyed only in the immediate vicinity of their forts which studded the
country. Peshawar was under the stern rule of General Avitable
whose criminal code was blood for blood, whose object was the sacri-
fice of a victim rather than the punishment of a culprit. Hazara
groaned under the iron heel of General Hari Singh who was able to
collect revenue only by means of annual incursions into the hills.
Hence, on the Panjab frontier the British succeeded to a heritage of
anarchy, for the Sikhs had waged eternal war against the border
tribes and even against the inhabitants of the so-called settled districts.
The administration of the Panjab frontier was further complicated by
geographical conditions which offered every inducement to a ma-
rauding life. Not only was the frontier longer and therefore more
difficult to defend, but it was also extremely mountainous, whereas in
Sind a strip of desert intervened between British territory and the
haunts of the Baluch robbers, facilitating the employment of cavalry
and the use of advanced posts. In the Panjab rich harvests waved in
dangerous proximity to the intricate maze of nullahs and valleys
which gave access to the plains.
The aims of the Panjab authorities were to protect their subjects
from the attacks of marauding bands, to keep the trade-routes open,
and, as far as possible, to secure ihe tranquillity of the hitherto blood-
stained border. It was imperative to put a stop to the state of affairs
then in existence; and, in order to give the Pathans an impression of
their strength, the British were forced to resort to reprisals. There
could be no peace while raids were constantly taking place and
individual acts of fanaticism rendered the life of any government
servant unsafe. The evidence of Mr, afterwards Sir, Richard Temple,
one of Lawrence's assistants in the Panjab, points to the fact that the
tribes were absolutely incorrigible. He accuses them of giving asylum
to fugitives from justice, of violating British territory, of blackmail and
intrigue, of minor robberies, and of isolated murders of British sub-
jects. Finally he charges them with firing on British regular troops
and even with killing British officers within the limits of the Panjab. 1
On the other hand, the policy of Panjab administrators was one of
forbearance, for, although British officials were prevented from en-
tering tribal territory, the tribesmen were allowed to trade within the
British borders. It seems clear that for over twenty-five years no
official of the Panjab government crossed the border; they were
certainly discouraged from doing so. Whatever the merits of this
policy may have been, it was evidently a concession to the suscepti-
bilities of the tribesmen, and intended in the interests of peace. The
.
| Temple, Report showing relations of the British Government with the tribes of the N. -W. F.
1849-53, 1856, pp. 63-4.


## p. 451 (#491) ############################################

PANJAB POLICY
451
permission to trade and the provision of medical and other assistance
to tribesmen entering the Panjab were certainly attempts to promote
friendly relations. But the contumacious attitude of the tribesmen
themselves eventually drove the British to resort to reprisals and
resulted in a state of chronic warfare for many years. Of course it
could not be expected that they would immediately cease from
harassing the border: the customs and habits of centuries are not so
easily thrown on one side. Thus the first step of the Panjab authorities
was a defensive measure; the next was an attempt at conciliation, to
show the tribesmen how they would benefit by becoming friendly
neighbours.
Various conciliatory methods were adopted. The hated capitation
tax of Sikh days and all frontier duties were abolished; a system of
complete freedom of trade was instituted, and commercial intercourse
encouraged in every way. Steps were taken to protect and increase
the Powindah trade; fairs were held for the exchange of commodities;
roads were constructed from the passes to the nearest bazaars; and
steam communication was established on the upper Indus. Free
medical treatment was provided in the hospitals and dispensaries
established at various points along the frontier; tribal maliks and
jirgas were encouraged to enter British territory for the settlement of
their disputes; and attempts were made to colonise waste lands with
families from across the border. Lastly, the ranks of the army and
police were thrown open for all those desirous of entering British
service. 1
Because the Panjab frontier was too long and too mountainous to
admit of its being defended by the military alone, much depended
upon the political management of the tribes. At first there was no
special agency for dealing with the tribal tracts, and relations with
the tribesmen were conducted by the deputy-commissioners of the six
districts of Hazara, Peshawar, Kohat, Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan, and
Dera Ghazi Khan. In 1876 the three northern districts formed the
commissionership of Peshawar, the three southern ones that of the
Derajat. The system of political agencies was not adopted until 1878
when a special officer was appointed for the Khyber during the second
Afghan War. Kurram became an agency in 1892, while the three
remaining agencies of the Malakand, Tochi, and Wana were created
between 1895 and 1896. The Malakand was placed under the direct
control of the Government of India from the outset, all the other
agencies remaining under the Panjab government. This was the
arrangement until the creation of the Frontier Province in 1901.
To protect the frontier a chain of forts was erected along the British
borders, parallel to which a good military road was constructed.
A special force, the Panjab Frontier Force, was recruited from Sikhs,
Pathans, Gurkhas, and Panjabi Mussulmans, and was placed, not
· Panjab Administration Report, 1869–70, p. 21.
a
29-2


## p. 452 (#492) ############################################

452 THE NORTH-WEST FRONTIER, 1843-1918
under the commander-in-chief, but under the Board of Administra-
tion. It was not until 1886 that this force was amalgamated with the
regular army. In addition, the inhabitants of the frontier districts
were allowed to retain their arms, and were encouraged to defend
their homes.
Three methods of forcing the tribesmen to terms have been em-
ployed by the British: fines, blockades, and expeditions. The idea of
inflicting a fine was to get compensation for plundered property and
"blood-money" for lives lost. As a last resort the tribe was either
blockaded or a punitive force was marched against it. Unfortunately,
the cases in which a blockade can be successfully employed are
extremely limited. To be completely successful, the blockading power
must be in possession of the approaches to a country; it must be
able to sever the arteries of trade and supplies; and must have the
support or friendly co-operation of the surrounding tribes. From this
it becomes apparent that the success of a blockade is largely deter-
mined by geographical conditions. This is the reason why the Adam.
Khel Afridis are so susceptible to this form of coercion. Surrounded
by tribes with whom they have little in common; inhabiting hills
within easy reach of the military stations of Kohat and Peshawar;
and dependent upon their trade with British India for the necessaries
of life, they are soon forced to come to terms. The Panjab systein of
punitive expeditions has been most unfavourably criticised, but
chiefly by exponents of the Sind School, such as Sir Bartle Frere, who
condemned it because the whole tribe was punished for the offences
of a few malcontents. Frere, whose experience was confined to Sind,
failed to recognise that the intensely democratic constitution of the
majority of Pathan tribes rendered any distinction between the guilty
and the innocent extremely difficult. Lord Lytton in his memorable
minute of 22 April, 1877, condemned punitive expeditions as “a system
of semi-barbarous reprisals”, which had not always proved successful,
even in the most limited sense. 4 Sir E. C. Bayley, a member of the
viceroy's council, in his minute of dissent, pointed out that this attack
was extremely unfair, for, in its inception, this policy had been forced
upon the British as a natural consequence of Sikh misrule. Neverthe-
less, an examination of the causes leading up to frontier expeditions
should bring the impartial student to the conclusion that there have
been many occasions when the authorities in India have been only
too ready to resort to punitive measures.
The existence of two distinct systems in two widely separated parts
of the frontier, inhabited by tribes who differed considerably in
characteristics and constitution, was a necessity. But, in the Dera
· Panjab Administration Report, 1892–3, pp. 32-3; Confidential Frontier and Overseas, I, vi-vii.