No More Learning

• Granville to Thornton, 9 May, 1885 (F. 0. 65-1242).
• Meyendorff, op. cit. 1, 215.
Fitzmaurice, op. cit. 11, 442.
? Cf. Meyendorff, op. cit. 1, 211.
8 Idem, 1, 2:6-19, 222-4.
• Idem, I, 260
10 Cf. idem, I, 237.
.
1,
11 Pari. Papers, 1884-5, LXXXVII, 239
13 Idem, LXXXVII, 242.
11 Idem.
'14 Idem.


## p. 426 (#466) ############################################

426
CENTRAL ASIA, 1858–1918
>
1878. But the Russians had attacked, the English mission had hur-
riedly withdrawn, Great Britain had not declared war on Russia,
Though Abd-ur-rahman “was not a man to get excited, and therefore
took the matter calmly as a lesson for the future”, it must have been
clear to him that neither empire was ever likely to fight on behalf of
Afghan interests, and that it would be wholly wrong to base his policy
on such expectations.
In the following year, 1886, the Afghan boundary from the Oxus
westwards to Zulfikar was at last formally laid down. This was
followed by six years of comparative quiet, until the revival of dis-
putes regarding the Pamirs. British officers were arrested in territory
which they averred was not Russian. Russian agents visited Chitral;
and Russian detachments entered territory in the actual occupation
of the Afghans. In the middle of 1892 the Russian Foreign Office and
War Office agreed to seek to establish Russian dominion over the
whole of the Pamirs. The appointment of a commission of delimita-
tion had already been proposed, and discussions were going forward.
These were therefore deliberately slackened off, mainly in consequence
of the demands of the Russian War Office, 5 and no agreement was
reached till 1895, when on 11 March an agreement was signed by
which Afghanistan was to surrender territory north of the Panjah
while Bokhara surrendered that part of Darwaz lying south of the
Oxus.
This settlement left no further room for disputes concerning the
Afghan boundaries, and the years that followed were marked by a
gradual relaxation of the Anglo-Russian tension, though this was
more perceptible in Europe than in Asia, and was accompanied by
spasms of vehement distrust at Tashkent and Calcutta. The far-
Eastern ambitions which Russia now displayed did not provoke in
English minds the intimate alarm which had been created by her
earlier activity in Central Asia, so that the clashes of policy revealed
in connection with the Treaty of Simonoseki, the Russo-Japanese
War, and the Anglo-Japanese alliance, hardly carried those possi-
bilities of war which had been implicit in the incident of Panjdeh.
Nevertheless, the representatives of both nations in Central Asia long
continued to believe the worst of the other's designs and vehemently
strove to counteract them.
Relations with Kashmir, with Tibet, and with Afghanistan therefore
still provided ready, but less serious, subjects of contention. Of
Kashmir what can usefully be said has been given elsewhere; but
Tibet afforded ground for an animated struggle between the home
and Indian governments, regarding the proper action to be taken
1 Abd-ur-rahman, op. cit. I, 243:
: Holdich, The Indian Borderland, pp. 169 599.
• Meyendorff, op. cit. 11, 157; Abd-ur-rahman, op. cit. 1, 285; Roberts, op. cit. 11, 446.
• Meyendorff, op. cit. 11, 176.
6 Idem, 11, 209, 224.
. Parl. Papers, 1895, cix, 159; 1905, LVII, 457.


## p. 427 (#467) ############################################

TIBET
427
a
upon the alleged Russian intrigue. At the close of the nineteenth
century the internal position of Tibet was unstable. The chief
authority of the state (a nominal dependency of China) was vested
in the Darai Lama of Lhasa, but for a prolonged period no Dalai
Lama had reached years of maturity, each in turn perishing at a
convenient age which permitted the Council of Regency to continue
unbroken the exercise of its temporary powers. At last, however,
a Dalai Lama, under the artful guidance of a Russian subject, a Buriat
named Dorjieff, succeeded in growing up and assuming the tradi.
tional
powers
of his office. This revolution demanded external support
for its maintenance. In 1898, 1900 and 1901 Dorjieff was sent on
special missions to Russia, ostensibly to collect money from the
Buddhists of that empire, but probably with political designs as well;
and though the Russian foreign minister denied Dorjieff's diplo-
matic character, he was received in audience by the emperor as an
envoy extraordinary. In the following year stories spread abroad
that a treaty had been signed by which China ceded to Russia her
rights over Tibet. " These reports were the more alarming because the
Government of India had no means of testing their accuracy. The
Tibetans were preventing all intercourse, both diplomatic and com-
mercial, with India. In 1890 and 1893 a convention and regulations
had been negotiated with the Chinese authorities; but the Tibetans
had blocked the road leading to the place which had been selected
as a trading-post. Direct negotiations had beer tried, but the governor-
general's letters had been returned unread. 3 In 1902, therefore, the
Government of India, under Lord Curzon, was eager for definite
action in order to clear up the position. The home authorities seem
to have hung back until, on a report that a military expedition was
about to set out, the Russian ambassador produced a memorandum,
stating that such an expedition "would force the imperial government
to take measures to protect its interests in those regions”. ! Lord
Lansdowne, then at the Foreign Office, replied firmly to what he
called a gratuitous complaint, and it was agreed that a mission under
a
Colonel Younghusband should be sent into Tibetan territory, to
Khamba Jong, and if no envoys appeared there to Gyangtse, to oblige
the Tibetans to come to an agreement. After a nine-months' pause
at Khamba Jong, the mission began to advance in March, 1904. In
a vain attempt to check it the Tibetans lost 600 men killed and
wounded. ? Further attacks were made upon the mission at Gyangtse,
and so the advance was continued to Lhasa which was reached on
3 August. Finally an agreement was signed at Lhasa, by which marts
for the exchange of goods were to be opened, an indemnity, greatly
1 Pari. Papers, 1904, C. 1920, pp. 113, 116, 117, 140-1.
· Idem, pp. 7, 22-3.
: Idem, pp. 74, 99, 118, 125.
• Idem, p. 178.
s Idem, p. 180.
• Idem, pp. 198, 209, 213. ' Idem, 1904, C. 2054, p. 11.
* Idem, 1905, C. 2370, pp. 3, 32, 49.


## p. 428 (#468) ############################################

428
CENTRAL ASIA, 1858–1918
reduced by the home government, to be paid, and the Chumbi
valley occupied for three years as a temporary pledge.
These events in themselves had small importance. But they illus-
trate the ever-growing interaction of policy. As St John Brodrick
declared, "the course of affairs on the Indian frontiers cannot be
decided without reference to imperial exigencies elsewhere”. 2 The
improvement of British relations with Russia was already under
consideration. It was difficult to deny the force of the Russian con-
tention that the establishment of British supremacy at Lhasa would
alter the position in Central Asia at the very moment when Russia
seemed disposed amicably to discuss the questions about which the
two empires had been quarrelling 3 Lansdowne therefore became
more conciliatory. On 2 June, 1904, he assured the Russian ambassa-
dor that, so long as no other European power intervened, Great
Britain would neither annex Tibet, nor establish a protectorate over
it, nor attempt to control its internal affairs. Hence the limitation
of the demands made upon Tibet when the settlement was reached.
With Afghanistan during the same period—1898–1904—Indian
policy pursued a similar course. In this direction the Russian
successes of 1884-5 had been followed by an active railway policy
which at last united the Trans-Caspian and the Orenburg-Tashkent
lines at Kuskh on the Afghan frontier. In 1900 the Russians demanded
that the governor-general of Turkestan should be placed in direct
communication with the authorities of Kabul. In 1902 Count
Lamsdorff observed “that he had never quite understood why the
external relations of Afghanistan were in the exclusive charge of His
Majesty's Government”. In 1903 the demand for direct communica-
tion was repeated, in language which the British Government
deeply resented”. 5 Russian failures against Japan in Manchuria led
to a disposition noticed at the close of 1904 to recover the lost Russian
prestige by a campaign in Central Asia. s
In 1901 the old amir, Abd-ur-rahman, had died and been suc-
ceeded by his elder son Habib-ullah. The relations of the old amir
with India had not latterly been very cordial, even though Durand
had settled the Indo-Afghan boundary. ? Abd-ur-rahman had been
specially anxious to be admitted to direct relations with the govern-
ment in London; but the proposal, which was put forward when
Nasr-ullah, his second son, visited England in 1895, was refused. 8
The new amir, though milder and more amiable than his father, was
at first hardly more tractable. Disputes arose over the treaty with
Abd-ur-rahman, which the Government of India claimed (in ac-
cordance with Oriental use) had been personal to the late amir and
i Parl. Papers, 1905, C. 2370, pp. 77 599.
• Idell. , p. 46.
• Idem, 1904, C. 1920, pp. 298-9.
• Idem, 1905, C. 2370, p. 15; cf. Gooch and Temperley, op. cit. iv, 320.
6 Gooch and Temperley, op. cit. iv, 512 599. , 621, 186.
6 Idem, p. 34
? Vide p. 462, infra. & Abd-ur-rahman, op. cit. 11, 139.
.


## p. 429 (#469) ############################################

ANGLO-RUSSIAN ENTENTE
429
therefore stood in need of revival, but which Habib-ullah claimed to
be still in full force. Not until 1904 would he agree to receive a
mission, and at last on 21 March, 1905, Sir Louis Dane signed a
treaty at Kabul renewing all the engagements between the Govern-
ment of India and his father. At one time Curzon had thought him
on the verge of throwing himself into the arms of Russia, and when,
in 1906, he visited Curzon's successor, Lord Minto, in India, he was
reported on good authority to have written to the governor-general
of Turkestan, explaining that there would be no political discussions,
and adding, "if the British government. . . attempt to introduce their
influence into Afghanistan, the Afghans will resist and in that case
would look to the emperor of Russia for help”. 3
These Russian leanings seem to have been the result of circum-
stances rather than inclination. Habib-ullah himself was disposed
to social reform. He dressed, and made his wives dress, in European
fashion; his palace was filled with European furniture; he ate with
knife and fork instead of his God-given fingers. He was, therefore,
suspect amidst an orthodox, fanatical people. Nasr-ullah, his brother,
“a religious bigot of the narrowest type and violently anti-British",
had a much stronger hold on Afghan affections. Though Habib-ullah
was personally well disposed to the Government of India, he could not
afford to offend his northern neighbours, lest their intrigues should
strengthen the position of his brother.
In March, 1906, Morley raised the question of what guarantees
would be advisable should an agreement be framed with Russia. 5
Minto and his advisers felt strongly that the whole proposal was full
of danger. Minto especially deprecated three points in the scheme as
originally communicated to him. One was that Russia and Great
Britain should suspend railway construction for ten years. He pointed
out that the Russian system already was complete and would not in
any case be extended except into Afghanistan in the event of war.
Another was the concession of direct communication between Russia
and Afghanistan. “We are”, he wrote, “to open a very dangerous
door to intrigue and to sacrifice the power which the amir has agreed
with us to exercise to check such intrigue. "? The third was that the
proposed agreement should not be signed without a previous arrange-
ment with Afghanistan.
The present situation has been agreed on between the amir and ourselves, and
. . . we are not entitled to cancel it without his consent. . . . To me it seems infinitely
more important to keep on friendly and controlling terms with him than to enter
into any bargain with Russia which might lessen our influence with him or alienate
him from us.
· Parl. Papers, 1905, LVII, 459.
· Ronaldshay, Life of Curzon, 11, 266, 267.
• Encl. in Minto to Morley, 16 January, 1907 (unpub. ).
• Minto to Morley, 17 October, 1907, and 19 March, 1908 (unpub. ); cf. Abdul Ghani,
Political Situation in Asia.
Morley, Recollections, 11, 167.
• Minto to Morley, 12 June, 1906 (Buchan, Lord Minto, p. 226).
1 Idem.
6
& Idem.


## p. 430 (#470) ############################################

430
CENTRAL ASIA, 1858-1918
The first of these points seems to have been abandoned without
further discussion. The second occasioned long arguments at St Peters-
burg,' but was at last abandoned. On the third, although opinion
at the Foreign Office favoured Minto's view, Morley insisted that, as
the agreement would involve no departure from the Afghan Treaty
of 1905, the terms should only be communicated to the amir as a
settled thing.
The convention with Russia was therefore signed on 31 August,
1907. As regarded Afghanistan Great Britain declared that she had
no intention of modifying the amir's political status, while Russia
recognised the country as beyond her sphere of influence and declared
she would conduct her relations with the amir through the British
Government, but Russian and Afghan frontier officials might settle
matters of a local and non-political character. As regarded Tibet both
parties agreed to conduct their political relations through China, not
to send agents to Lhasa, and not to seek concessions in Tibetan
territory.
The clauses concerning Afghanistan were to take effect when the
amir signified his assent. When it was sought, the coercive attitude
which Morley had assumed despite Minto's warnings proved its folly.
On being warned by the Foreign Office that Russia might ignore the
convention unless the amir acceded to it, Morley told Minto to put
the screw on him. But it could not be done. The amir evidently felt
that his acceptance would imperil his position in Afghanistan, and
never could be brought to agree. It was humiliating “to admit that
although we decline to permit Russia to have any direct relations
with the amir, we are ourselves incapable of exercising any effective
influence over that potentate”.
5 But that was due to Morley's refusal
to allow Minto to begin his discussions at the proper time. Nor after
all did the amir's refusal matter much. So long as the entente between
his neighbours lasted, neither he nor his people could venture far.
This was shown clearly by the events of the war. Various German
agents at Kabul strove to provoke Habib-ullah into breaking with the
Government of India; but without success. The Russian revolution,
however, transformed the situation. The Anglo-Russian alliance
vanished. The orthodox party, enemies alike of Habib-ullah and of
Great Britain, no longer found themselves hemmed in on either side.
They gained in strength and daring. At last on 20 February, 1919,
the amir was murdered in camp near Jalalabad, and the new amir,
Habib-ullah's son, Aman-ullah, soon found himself thrust into the
attack on India which led to the third Afghan War. By the treaty
1 Cf. Gooch and Temperley, op. cit. iv, 527, 549.
Morley to Minto, 13 June, 1907 (unpub. ).
: Parl. Papers, 1907, cxxv, 478.
• Morley to Minto, 30 April, 1908 (unpub. ).
5 Gooch and Temperley, op. cit. IV, 275.
• Cf. Moral and Material Progress Report, 1919, pp. 7 599.


## p. 431 (#471) ############################################

AMAN-ULLAH
431
concluded in 1921, the Afghan kingdom resumed its freedom of
managing its external affairs. The logic of events has demanded this
brief excursion beyond the chronological limits of the volume. The
situation as it stood in 1921 closely resembled that which existed
before the second Afghan War. Bolshevik, like imperial, Russia once
more aimed at striking Great Britain through India. The weapons of
the new empire were keener and more subtle than those of the old-
propaganda in place of intrigue; but the purpose and the policy which
they served were little changed from those of the days of Alexander
and Nicholas; while Afghanistan itself, divided between the old world
and the new, was once more precariously balanced between India
and Turkestan.
i India in 1921-2, pp. 319 599.


## p. 432 (#472) ############################################

CHAPTER XXIV
THE CONQUEST OF UPPER BURMA
The KINGDOM OF UPPER BURMA, 1852–1885
KING PAGAN'S brother Mindon, fearing for his life, fled from
court in December, 1852, and after several weeks' petty fighting
deposed Pagan, keeping him in captivity for the rest of his life.
King Mindon (1853-78) was a complete contrast to his four mur-
derous and insane predecessors. Although so shocked at a map of the
world, which showed the size of Burma, that the bystanders had to
vow the map was wrong, he was erudite according to native stan-
dards; he would gaze at English visitors near his throne through opera
glasses, feeling that these added to his impressiveness, yet he was of
truly royal presence; his economic measures were obscurantist, but
he possessed real business aptitude, and would have made a successful
broker; his piety was ostentatious, and his humanitarianism was
rendered possible by the speed with which his ministers carried out
executions before he could intervene, yet he sincerely loved his
fellow-men.
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.