No More Learning

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.
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
.