three unpublished papers by harvey ......schoolmates at the rangoon high school, and how on learning...

JBRS, LVIII, i, Oct., 1975.Copyright© 1998- Myanmar Book Centre & Book Promotion & Service Ltd., Bangkok, Thailand.

THREE UNPUBLISHED PAPERS BY HARVEY

INTRODUCED, EXPLAINED AND

COMMENTED UPON

by

MAUNG HTIN AUNG

* Maung Htin Aung, LL.M. (London), LL.B. (Cambridge), B.C.L. (Oxford), Ph.D., LL.D.(Dublin), Hony. LL.D (Johns Hopkins). LL.D. (Rangoon), D.Litt. (Vidyodaya-Ceylon),D.H.L. (Wake Forest) is a past-president of the Burma Research Society; was formerlyRector Vice-Chancellor of the University of Rangoon and Burmese Ambassador to Ceylon.


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The author is deeply grateful to the Warden Mr. A.R.M. Carr,Library Fellow and Chairman of the Far Eastern Seminar Mr.G.R. Storry, the Dean Dr. Theodore Zeldin and other Fellowsof St. Antony's College, Oxford for permission to publish thethree Papers by G.E. Harvey.


Contents

I. Introduction. G.E. Harvey: Imperialist of Historian? 1

II. G.E. Harvey: Burma 1885 7

III. G.E. Harvey: Monsieur Hass and the AnnexationOf Upper Burma 1885 14

IV. G.E. Harvey: A Letter to his Colleague 29

V. Commentary: G.E. Harvey as an older Orwell 47

VI. Bibliography 52


1

G.E. Harvey: Imperialist or Historian?

Introduction

Since the publication of my twobooks, The stricken Peacock (1965) and AHistory of Burma (1967), I have been accused,not only by some European historians ofBurma, but also by a few younger Burmesescholars, of attempting to revise Burmesehistory so as to white-wash King Theebaw andhis people. However more tolerant of mycritics have described me as the founder-leader of the Nationalist School of Burmesehistorians, in opposition to the ImperialistSchool, founded by Harvey and later followedby Professors D.G.E. Hall and John F. Cady.

A few British scholars have placed meside by side with Harvey perhaps because theythink me worthy, or perhaps merely becauseHarvey's Outline of Burmese History (1924)and my History (1967) are the only books inEnglish which deal with the history of Burmaas a whole. A British diplomat, who studiedunder Harvey at Oxford and later served inBurma as a member of the Indian CivilService stated at a meeting (1959), "Harveyand Htin Aung are poles apart, yet both aresincere historians. Therefore, the truth lieshalf-way between the two." Professor O.N.K.Spate, who was a lecturer in geography at theUniversity of Rangoon before the war, andwho now heads a Research Institute at theAustralian National University comments onus: -

The country's future lay on theseacoast' (Harvey, 1924, p.193): whosecountry's future? That of the Burmese, orof the Bombay Burma Trading Companyand the other great British mercantilehouses? If Burmese historians such as

Htin Aung Sometimes wear rose-colouredspectacles, Harvey usually wear darkglasses of the deepest dye: reading hisbook, with all its scholarship, it isimpossible not to feel that its subconsciousin that was to teach the Burmese that thebest of all worlds was a British-ruledworld. "Who could say that the Burmeseempire would have lasted longer had thecapital been moved to Syriam? Itdoubtless would have become a centre ofinternational commerce, but equallydoubtless it would have become also acentre of international intrigue" (HtinAung, 1967, p.145). If Bangkok wascloser to the sea, it was also a lot fartherfrom the bases of British power in India;and had the Burmese capital been atRangoon or Syriam, there might havebeen no Kingdom of Ava to survive thesecond war with the British (1852) or eventhe first (1824), in both of which Rangoonwas taken-from the sea."

(Institute of British GeographersTransactions and Papers, 1968,Publication No. 44, p.163.)

Harvey died in 1965, and his papers,all torn, jumbled and thrown into cardboardboxes by his landlady, were rescued by hisdaughter, who gave them to St. Antony'sCollege, Oxford. In 1968, the late Guy Wint,the great historian of British Rule in India, andother Fellows graciously chose me to takecharge of the Harvey papers. G.E. Harveyserved in Burma form 1912 to 1932, and wasLecturer in Burmese Histyory and BurmeseLaw to Civil Service Probationers at Oxfordfrom 1936 to 1942. After the war, he livedin retirement at Oxford, but continuing his


2researches and giving occasional lectures. Thepurpose of this introduction is to contrastHarvey the Imperialist before the war withHarvey the Historian after the war, andtherefor is not meant to be a biography.However, it will be necessary to notice somespecial aspects of his life. Both by birth andeducation, he was a liberal. His father'srelations had taken active parts in the Irishmovement for freedom and his mother wasclosely connected with the suffragettemovement for women's rights in England.Although he could not take a Universitydegree because of a lung ailment, he becameproficient in Greek and French, and obtained ahigh position in the results of his Indian CivilService competitive examination. After arrivalin Burma, like Professor Luce, and unlikeProfessors Hall and Cady, he becameproficient in Burmese and could therefore readthe Burmese sources of history. Although, ashe wrote to a friend in 1932, every day of hislife in Burma was a day of physical sufferingfor him because of his lung ailment, he was anefficient administrator and a keen student ofBurmese institutions. In 1920, he combined asick leave with study leave, went back toOxford, and wrote a history of Burma forwhich he received a B.Litt. degree in 1922.The thesis was well worth a Ph.D., but hecould not spend a third year at Oxford asrequired by the regulations. His thesis waslater published by Longman's in 1925. Soonafter getting his degree, he had to goSwitzerland and spend some time at aSanatorium there to cure, or at least check, hislung ailment. He returned to Burma in 1923.

The History of Burma published byLongman's in 1925 stopped at the point where,in 1824, the British frigates stormed intoRangoon harbour, thus ushering in the Britishperiod of Burmese history. Apparently hesubmitted as his thesis only half of his

manuscript, for towards the end of 1924, theresuddenly appeared in Burma a text book ofBurmese history for use by Burmese studentsby G.E. Harvey, and published by the IndianBranch of Longman's, and it contained notonly that portion to be published in London afew months later, but also a history of theentire British period from 1824 to 1920. Justas John Milton in Paradise Lost justified theways of God to man, in the text book Harveyattempted to justify both the British conquestand British rule over Burma. Even in the 1925history, the general impression given was thatBurmese Kings were stupid, and the Burmesepeople, wayward. The book portrayedBodawpaya as a cowardly and cruel buffoon,and asserted that the Burmese as a nation in1824 were arrogant, boastful and ignorant,forcing Bagyidaw to go to war against theBritish. Admittedly Bodawpaya's treatment ofthe Arakanese will remain forever a blot onthe page of the history of his region, and insome ways, the First Anglo-Burmese Warrepresented a clash of two imperialism Britishand Burmese, but both Bodawpaya andBagyidaw wanted to avoid war if there couldbe a peace with honour.

Harvey used the Burmese Chroniclesas his main source and had some words ofpraise for them, but he did untold harm to theprestige of the Chronicles by quoting apassage from the Report of Crawfurd, Britishenvoy to the defeated Burmese King, whichgave an amusing account of how the courthistorian distorted the true facts of the war bynoting in the Chronicle that "White strangerscame into the country and reached Yandabo,but as they were in great distress, the BurmeseKing, out of piety, paid them large sums ofmoney, and asked them to leave the country".1

This envoy hated and despised the Burmeseand their King; the story was a deliberate andmalicious lie, and his successor as envoy,

1 history of Burma, p. xx


3Burney, definitely wrote that this story wasabsolutely untrue, but Harvey ignoredBurney's rebuttal. 1

In about 1934 or 1935, Harveycontributed the chapters on Burma to theCambridge History of Modern India, Whichwas published in 1937, and in those chaptersHarvey became an absolute imperialist andceased to be a historian. He sounded angry andbitter, and even described Theebaw as a " gin-sodden" King, whose massacres, badgovernment and extravagant ways broughtchaos to the country and whose alliance withFrance threatened British interests; all thesefactors forced the British to annex the country.

Harvey never mentioned twoimportant facts: first, the British authoritiesmisled the Burmese people into thinking thatthe purpose of the expeditionary force wasmerely to replace King Theebaw by PrinceNyaungyan, or Prince Nyaung Ok, who wererefugees in British territory, or even by PrinceMyingun, a refugee in French territory(unknown to the Burmese, Nyaungyan haddied only a few weeks before); and second,when the Burmese discovered that the Britishhad duped them and took to arms, acts ofterror and violence were perpetrated by theBritish on the Burmese patriots, describingthem as rebels and dacoits. Harvey knew ofthese facts but suppressed them deliberately,drawing a veil over the dark doings of this so-called Pacification of Burma, and Hall andCady followed suit. But I took the opportunityof tearing apart and ripping as under thisheavy veil of secrecy by giving full details inThe Stricken Peacock and A History of Burma.In the same book, I described how as theBritish ships in November 1885 stood poisedat Thayetmyo for the assault on Mandalay, myfather discovered that the prince surroundedby countries on the prow of the leading shipwas a bogus one, being merely one of hisschoolmates at the Rangoon High School, andhow on learning of this, my maternal

grandfather went up-stream to warn theBurmese troops of the deception, only to die inthe desperate defense of the Minhla fort. Mycritics had described this account as an " oldwives' tale". As there were so many shipsfollowing the first, it could be that there weretwo or three bogus princes. I came acrosscopies of correspondence exchanged betweenHarvey and Professor John Moonie ofMandalay University in 1953. Apparently,Professor Moonie's father had with him amanuscript giving an account of the Britishexpedition to Mandalay, written by an Indiansepoy, in which was mentioned that a woodenfigure of a prince dressed in full regalia wasput on the prow of the sepoy's particular ship.Harvey wrote the U May Oung had told himabout a bogus prince standing on the prow ofthe leading ship as the British flotilla sailedinto Burmese territory. Although the letter waswritten only in 1953, Harvey must have heardthe story earlier, for U May Oung died in1926.

Rudyard Kipling wrote a number ofpoems dealing with some incidents whichhappened during the so-called pacification,and his details were usually authentic, becausehis informants were British tommies, who hadactually taken part in the " pacification". In thepoem entitled " The Grave of the HundredHeads", Kipling narrated:

There's a widow in sleepy Chester Whoweeps for her only son; There's a graveon the Pabeng River,

A grave that the Burmans shun; Andthere's Subadar Prag Tewarri Who tellshow the work was done.

A Snider squibbed in the jungleSomebody laughed and fled, And themen of the First Shikaris Picked up theirSubaltern dead, With a big blue mark inhis fore-head.

1 Maung Htin Aung: Burmese History before 1287. A Defense of the Chronicles. pp. 1-2.


4And the back blown out of his head.Subabar Prag Tewarri,Jemadar Hira Lal,Took command of the party,Twenty rifles in all,Marched them down to the riverAs the day was beginning to fall.........................................Sutader Prag Tewarri,Bidding them load with ball,Halted a dozen riflesUnder the village wall;Sent out a flanking partyWith Jemadar Hira Lal.The men of the First ShikarisShouted and smote and slew,Turning the grinning jingalOn to the howling crew.The Jemadar's flanking-PartyButchered the folk who flew.Long was the morn of slaughter,Long was the list of slain,Five score heads were taken,Five score heads and twain;And the men of the First ShikarisWent back to their grave again,Each man bearing a basketRed as his palms that day,Red as the blazing village-The village of Pabengmay.And the "drip-drip-drip" from the basketsReddened the grass by the way.They made a pile of their trophiesHigh as a tall man's chin,Head upon head distorted,Set in a sightless grin,Anger and pain and terrorStamped on the smoke-scorched skin.Subadar Prag TewarriPut the head of the BohOn the top of the mound of triumph,The head of his son below-With the sword and the peacock-bannerThat the world might behold and know.

I am sorry I have to quote this fearfulpoem, but I have to prove that Harveydeliberately refrained from giving details ofthat darkest period in Anglo-Burmese history1886 to 1890. In the letter written to theDeputy Commissioner of Bassein, dated 7th.November 1926, Harvey revealed that with thehelp of one Captain Lennox of the survey ofIndia, he had identified the unfortunatevillage as Pebinmaw village at the confluenceof Pebin Chaung with Ngawun river andobtained a sworn statement from an old man:

"There was a village there onceamong those trees and old pagodas. When theEnglish conquered the country the Burmesefought them there. The English attacked thevillage and an English officer was killed whilerallying his sepoys in the attack. The sepoysthere-upon saw red. The English had somecannons which played on the village. As thevillagers ran away down a nulla, sepoyswaiting there fell on them and killed them to aman, sparing only women and children. Theypiled the heads of the dead on their officer'sgrave."

Harvey's text book of BurmeseHistory was highly successful in its purpose of" spreading the Imperial Idea" (a phrase usedin educational reports of the period 1920-1934). It replaced the text book previously inuse, which was by an Inspector of Schools, S.W. Cocks, and which contained such crudeimperialist propaganda that even an eighthstandard boy could see through it. ButHarvey's text book, which, like a wolf on thefold, came down on the matriculation studentsof 1923-241 was well-written, scholarly andcontained attractive illustrations. It was in usein all the schools of Burma for full twenty fiveyears, and it moulded the minds of generationafter generation of Burmese students so far asthe history of their country was concerned.Although U Po Kyar and U Ba Than madevaliant efforts to correct the picture bypublishing their own text books of Burmese

1 I was one of them.


5history, but as the books were written inBurmese and used only in National Schoolsand as the two authors themselves could notquit escape from Harvey's sway, in the mindsof the Burmese intelligentsia, there developeda guilt- complex. As for Hall and Cady, theymade a field day out of it all, and lashed KingTheebaw and poor Monsieur Haas with theirbitter words of disdain.

Hall published his Burma in 1950; hischapters on Burma in his A History of South-east Asia first published in 1955 merelyincorporated his account of Burmese historygiven in this earlier book; and Cady publishedhis Modern Burma in 1958. By that time,unknown to them their master Harvey wasabandoning his theories regarding the Britishannexation of 1885. In fact, although from1934 when he was appointed Lecturer to theIndian Civil Service probationers until about1936, he was fiercely upholding those theoriesbefore his students, from 1936 onwards hebegan to mellow and was obviouslyreconsidering his previous findings .1

In 1946 Harvey published anotherbook, British Rule in Burma 1824-42. TheBritish empire by then had started todisintegrate, but Harvey's aim was still tojustify the British annexation. In the book hedid criticise certain short-comings of theBritish authorities, but his criticism wasalways mild. His brief chapter on the historyof the country clearly showed thatnotwithstanding the quiet years as an Oxforddon, Harvey, like the leopard, had not changedhis spots, and he still put the blame onTheebaw's misgovernment and intrigues withFrance. At page 13 the liberal in him came tothe surface and he gave this generousassessment of the Burmese character:

There is, in Burmese life, not only abeauty that delights the eye but also adignity that makes one proud of thehuman race. The praise was so sincere

that the reader could forgive the unfairremarks that immediately followed. Allin all the book was obviously the swansong of and old imperialist.

With the passing of empire andmellowness of age the liberal Harvey was nowswiftly emerging. His presidential address tothe Oxford University AnthropologicalSociety, given on November 23, 1949contained the following remarks which at onestroke disposed many of his earliercontentions regarding the Third Anglo-Burmese War:

You are often told we intervened becauseof the Burmese King's misgovernment.But that had nothing to do with it. It istrue some years previously the king,Thibaw, had massacred several dozen ofhis blood relations in order to safeguardhis position on the throne; people overhere were naturally shocked. But theBritish Government refused to doanything saying it was an internal affair, amatter for the Burmese themselves, and inany case it and been exaggerated by thenewspapers.

The real reason we intervened severalyears later in 1885 was ...... the progressthe French were making alarmed us andthen, just when they drew backtemporarily, for reasons of domesticpolitics, king Thibaw foolishly presentedus with a first class grievance. He setabout extorting a quarter million poundsfrom a British timber firm imprisoning itsemployees.

So we marched in, deposed him, andannexed the country..... It seemed a pity toannex the one surviving Buddhistkingdom in India, it was not onlypictures but contented. The sort of palace

1 I obtained this information from some of his students, who were formerly in my classes atRangoon University; e.g. U San Lin, The late Mr. J. Van Wyck.


6massacre Thibaw perpetrated onlyhappened once in a generation, they didnot affect the people at large and theywere mild compared with some of thethings going on in the world even then,let alone the things we ourselves havelived to witness, However, it was afashion to annex colonies just then, justas nowadays it is a fashion to grantindependence all around. And in anycase the decision was taken oninternational grounds as I have said,rather than on the merits of the case.

It will be noticed that Harvey stillmaintained that it was the fear of the Frenchthat prompted the annexation. But he buriedthe French bogy in a letter of confession andrestitution addressed to Professor Jean JosephSeznec, Professor of French Literature atOxford, dated 9th March 1954: Harvey wrote:

I think I may be able to demolish thehitherto accepted idea that it was Frenchintervention in Burma that forced us toannex the country in 1885.

The idea is aptly supported by ourarchives (Government) and I helped toestablish it further in my contribution tothe Cambridge History of India Vol. VI..... It over- looks the fact ..... that theone thing the French desired, in theirown interest, was to avoid antagonizingus; they regarded Burma as entirelywithin the English sphere of

interest.....Moreover...... I have recentlyfound indications that Hass:

(a) repeatedly warned the Burmese not toprovoke annexation by confiscating theforest firm's property;

(b) neither sought nor obtained anyconcessions whatever .....

Harvey brooded over Monsieur Haas,and continued his research about him. In themeantime Dr. Maung Maung's book came outand Harvey wrote a charming letter ofcongratulations for presenting the Burmeseside of the picture. Finally in 1957 he went toFrance on a fellowship to work in the libraryof the French Foreign Office. And in 1963 hegave at St. Antony's College a lecture entitled"Monsieur Hass and the Annexation of UpperBurma, 1885" in which he demolishedcompletely the story of French intrigues atTheebaw's 1 Court which he himself hadhelped to build some forty years before.

Whether Harvey was a historian orimperialist must always remain a subject ofcontroversy. But no one can question hisgreatness as a pioneer of Burmese historicalresearch. The scholarship behind his Historyof Burma was immense and its list of sourcesenabled other scholars to check its findingsand continue its research. Under the red cloakof imperial pride, there lurked a true scholar-historian. With his Promethean fire of learningand intellectual curiosity, he lit a torch whichstill burns brightly and guides all historians ofBurma through the dim corridors of time.

1 Harvey spelt Thibaw whereas the author prefers Theebaw for the same king. Ed.


7

G.E. Harvey: Burma 1885

[This lecture was given as aPresidential address before the OxfordUniversity Anthropological Society at 2:30p.m. on Wednesday, 23 November, 1949 atthe University Museum. The manuscript waswritten in a bold and clear hand, and it wouldseem that Harvey read it out as a paper; I findit unnecessary to edit it.

As was noticed in the Introduction, inthe lecture Harvey concedes that it was a pityto annex such "a picturesque and contentedBuddhist Kingdom" and the decision to annexit "was based not on the merits of the case buton international grounds;" the French hadwithdrawn, but, Harvey maintains, onlytemporarily and the Bombay Burma TradingCorporation case gave the British thegrievance and the pretext to intervene.

Harvey retired and left Burma in1933, in an atmosphere of bitterness andsuspicion between the Burmese and the Britishas a result of the Peasant's Rebellion (SayaSan's Rebellion) of 1931-1933, and naturally,in the lecture he takes the imperialist view thatit was not a rebellion by peasants, but a mereinsurrection led by charlatans and bogusmonks.

Unlike in this earlier publishedwritings, criticism, although mild, of theignorance of the British rulers of Burma isexpressed in this lecture.]

When annexing Upper Burma in 1885we abolished the monarchy, regarding it aseffect. In 1931 we needed a division of troopsto cope with a rebellion which lasted eighteenmonths. Royalist symbols were openly used inpreparing the rebellion but we had forgottentheir meaning, and the leaders weredisreputable Buddhist clergy who should havebeen unfrocked but when destroying themonarchy we had destroyed the one authoritywith power to unfrock.

As you've just heard, this is the 467thmeeting of the society. It was founded in

January 1909. We must be one of the oldestsocieties in Oxford. I wonder what ourfounders, our beloved founders, Henry Balfourand Dr. Marett, if they could return to earth,would think of Anthropology to-day. They'dbe glad at one thing, the appointments theColonial Office if creating, the recognitionColonial Governments are giving the subject. Ican't say what it will do out there, that's in thefuture. I can only give an instance of what itmight have saved us in the past.

Not that a pure science ought to doanything: as the toast says "Here's to the healthof Pure Sciences: may they flourish foreverand never be the slightest use to anybody."And Anthropology is pure than most: whereasTheology, an enquiry into the nature of God,also wishes to show men the way of salvation:and whereas Medicine, an enquiry into themysteries of the human body, also wishes toheal it: Anthropology, on the other hand, issimply all about Man, and even SocialAnthropology, merely observes his behaviourin society, it doesn't want to do anything aboutit. But unless you know how and why thehuman herd behaves as it does, you'll never beable to help the poor thing. So I'll give aninstance where a little knowledge would havedone no harm. My instance is Burma: I hopeyou won't find it all too historical.

We annexed the Burmese Kingdom in1885, to prevent the French getting it. TheFrench had an expansionist policy in Indo-China then, and even later. But afterestablishing their advance agents in Burma inthe early months of 1885, they drew back for atime, and we took advantage of the lull tointervene.

You're often told that we intervenedbecause of the Burmese King'smisgovernment, But that had nothing to do


8with it. It's true some years previously theking, Thibaw, had massacred several dozen ofhis blood relations in order to safeguard hisposition on the throne; people over here werenaturally shocked. But the British Governmentrefused to do anything, saying it was aninternal affair, and matter for the Burmesethemselves, and in any case it had beenexaggerated by the newspapers.

The real reason we intervened severalyears later, in 1885, was, we didn't particularlywant the county, but the progress the Frenchwere making alarmed us and then: just whenthey drew back, temporarily, for reasons ofdomestic politics: King Thibaw foolishlypresented us with a first class grievance; he setabout extorting £ ¼ million from a Britishtimber firm, imprisoning it employees. 1

So we marched in, deposed him andannexed the country, rather against the adviceof our own officers who, although they agreeda brief expedition was necessary to bringThibaw to this senses, were againstannexation. It seemed a pity to annex the onesurviving Buddhist kingdom in India, whichwas not only picturesque but contented. Thesort of palace massacres Thibaw perpetratedonly happened once in a generation, they didnot affect the people at large, and they weremild compared with some of the things goingon in the world even then, let alone what weour-selves have lived to witness. However, itwas the fashion to annex colonies just then,just as nowadays it is the fashion to grantindependence all around. And in any case thedecision was taken on international grounds,as I've said, rather than one the merits of thecase.

So the Burmese throne disappeared,and quite a number of things disappearedalong with it: for instance, OATH WATER.The Burmese used to swear allegiance to theirKing by drinking the oath in holy water, a

method found in many parts of the world. Inthe Old Testament, Book of Numbers, ch. V.v 23, when a woman swears her innocence,the oath is written on paper, washed into thewater, and she drinks it; if she isn't innocent,the water causes her body to swell and rot. Inthe Burmese Oath of Allegiance swords andspears are dipped into the water, causing youto die by sword and spear if you fail in yourallegiance. The custom died out after 1885,died out so completely that I never met andEnglish officer who'd even heard of it.

I never heard of it myself, I only readof it in faded manuscripts, some historicalresearch I was doing. Subsequently, to mysurprise, I found it still existed, I saw it withmy own eyes. But this was not in BurmaProper, the area of the Burmese Kingdom weannexed. It was much deeper in the interior, inthe great highland areas we added to thekingdom, nearly doubling its size.2 The peoplethere aren't Burmese, many of them are tribesthe Burmese never saw. Others are little hillKingdoms, still ruled by their own princes,and it was up there, in the little ShanKingdoms, that I saw the Oath Water beingdrunk. But that was only because I had theunusual luck of being posted to duty there.Very few of our officers ever went there.

And it wasn't only English officers inBurma Proper, even the anglicised classesamong the Burmese themselves hardly knewthese things. The monarchy was a discreditedinstitution, and the younger generation, whenthey became politically conscious, regardedkingship as quite out of date, their idealbecame increasingly parliamentary andrepublican. Not so the mass to he people: whatthey loved, you could see on the village stage,the Burmese drama, almost untouched bywestern influence. In small towns and villages,

1 The allegation of extortion was mere imperialist propaganda, and there were no imprisonmentor even arrests.

2 A Surprising Statement. Those highland " Kingdoms" were tributary states of the Burmeseempire.


9where most people live, it's a semi-amateurstage, immensely popular; at certain seasonsof the year people spend more time seeingplays than our crowds do in cinemas. And theone scene that draws a house is the king on histhrone. There's nothing political in it, it's not ahistoric king, at lest not in dated history, onlya semi-legendary king, a variation of someancient story everyone knows, the eternaldrama of joy and sorrow, love and hate, goodand evil. The king is seated aloft, clad inshining robes, surrounded by beautiful queensand wise ministers; sometimes he's the centralfigure throughout, and even when he isn't, he'sa wise and noble figure.

Now before turning to the nextsubject, let's recapitulate the facts about OathWater; they'll help you towards the end of thelecture. It ceased in 1885; English officersnever heard of it; the anglicised classes whowere associated with us, first in education andadministration, and subsequently in politics,even if they knew about Oath Water,dismissed it as antiquated nonsense, like mostother things connected with the monarchy. Butthe mass of the people remember themonarchy and the palace customs kept aliveon the stage; and far away in the hills, at thecourts of the Shan princes, Oath Watersurvived not as a mere nostalgic memory, butas part of the actual mechanism ofgovernment.

My next is the EcclesiasticalCommission, another of the palace institutionsthat disappeared in 1885. The EcclesiasticalCommission was the King's contribution to thenational religion. To show what a contributionit was, I must mention the religion.

Burmese Buddhism has a cleanerrecord than most religious. The clergy havenever been a wealthy powerful priesthood.Indeed it might be objected that, thoughPossessed of great moral influence, they havebeen too quietest, too other worldly: thereoccasions when they might well have given

more of a lead to public life. Also they haveno central organisation: there's no hierarchywith powers to unfrock and unworthy priest.The Burmese say Buddha's own words makeall priests equal, it would be unscriptural tohave a hierarchy. And the curious thing is, itworks well enough as a rule: public sentimentand the influence of the older clergy in theneighborhood usually suffice to make anunworthy priest face his conscience and leavethe Church, abandon the yellow robe, the robeof the priesthood. But not it he is toughenough to stand up to them; so it's just theworst cases the real scoundrels, that theycannot deal with. They can only deal with aman who still has a conscience left and admitshis guilt. If he denies his guilt, nothing can bedone, because, being a priest, bound by hisordination vows to speak the truth, he ispresumed to be incapable of lying, and nolayman will continue to testify against him,such is the reverence for the robe.

In any country in the world, it doesn'tmatter what the religion is, Mohammedan,Buddhist, Christian, Catholic or Protestant: ifthe public are the simple public, ignorant andsuperstitious, the clergy are regarded asintermediaries between God and man, in touchwith the unseen world, mystery men. It doesn'tmatter that Buddhism repudiates the very ideaof mediation, that in theory the Burmeseclergy, though celibate, dwelling apart, aloof,are not priests: even princes genuflect, kneelto them: on great occasions men as well aswomen let down their ling hair - both sexeshave long hair lie flat one their faces one eachside of the path for the clergy to walk over. Allthis adulation may not affect the greaterminds, the finer spirits among the clergy, theyremain singularly unaffected: but it goes to thehead of the weaker ones.

And see what it leads to if a priest isinclined to mystery and magic. Here's a typicalcase, a type you can trace back for centuries.

Ø 2 U.P. - N.75-1,100-9-10-75. B.S.


10An ignorant jungle priest went in for

magic. He conjured up visions revealing hisdestiny, and although the earlier visions onlyshowed he was to be spiritual messiah, laterones, after he had secured a numerousfollowing, showed he was to be an earthlykind: not hat he let the public know. Thegeneral public only knew him as such a goodman, he was converting many young people,causing them to lead new and godly lives. Hewas so pure, so holy, it was even said he couldwork miracles, but he wouldn't talk about it.He only gave demonstrations to his innercircle, really faithful disciples who drank hisOath Water and swore to follow his teachingto the end. Finally, when he'd won a reallylarge following, he revealed his secret and ledthem in armed rebellion against the throne,with tragic consequences.

Now you see why the king had to dosomething about it. He was officially styledDefender of the Faith, but he wasn't only theleading layman in the land, the Father of thepeople: he wasn't concerned only with familymorals. He was the government; in selfdefense he had to control the clergy. He did itthrough a aboard of control, the EcclesiasticalCommission.

He appointed his private chaplainchairman of the Commission, and the othermembers are also his own nominees, mostlyeminent clergy, but some were senior civilservants who arranged the agenda and saw theclerical members did the work properly. Thecommission was in touch with senior clergy inevery district throughout the country, andtogether with these local clergy it constituted ahierarchy. For the scriptural reasons I'vealready given you, the clergy couldn't have setup this hierarchy themselves but they didn'tmind the king's doing it, they liked it.

The Commission maintained a clergylist giving every priest's personal history, whowas responsible for him, in what monastery he

had been educated, who had ordained him, andso forth. If he moved from one district toanother, the new district could thus makeenquiries about him: if he deserved it, eitherthe governor of the district, or the local clergy,or both, could hand him up to the place, to beunfrocked by the Ecclesiastical Commission.And the one thing they were down on wasmystery and magic, not only because it led torebellion but also it was one of the CardinalSins for which a priest must be unfrocked.Every priest at his ordination is told it's a sinfor which there is no absolution, even if it isn'tdiscovered he knows in his heart he is nolonger a priest, he has cut himself from thebody of the Church. Buddha himself wasdefinite on the point: Buddha regardedspiritualism, mystery and magic not as vainsuperstition but as terrible reality, and heforbade it absolutely. One of the most solemnvows a priest takes at ordination is againsthaving anything to do with magic or claimingsupernatural powers.

Well, in 1885 when we annexed thekingdom, the Ecclesiastical Commission dieda natural death, it was a palace institutionsupervised by the King himself. There's beennobody to perform its functions, they've notbeen performed since 1885. Please don't bebored if I recapitulate them: I shan't be able tomention the Ecclesiastical Commission lateron, when, towards the end of the lecture, yourattention is keeping pace with the events Idescribe, and you'll have to remember forourselves that its two functions were:

1. UNFROCKING THE CLERGY:unfrocking them for magic equally withunchastity; both equally against theirordination vows.

2. MAINTAINING A CLERGY LIST:maintaining a clergy list in a centraloffice to which you could report bogusclergy. 1

1 A detailed account of the Ecclesiastical Commission is given in Maung Htin Aung: BurmeseMonk's Tales.


11To return to 1885: The Ecclesiastical

Commission faded out, we didn't abolish it, wesimply extended to Burma the highlydeveloped administrative system that hadgown up in India, and there was no room for itin the system. Also it seemed unnecessary, theBurmese were so charming, their Buddhismsuch a fine religion, the clergy so gentle andwell behaved. And our experience of religionin India, the bitter Hindu-Mohammedancontroversies, had rather put us off religion.As for rebellions, we knew they were often ledby priest magicians, but they were probablybogus priests, decent Burmese wouldn'ttolerate them. You had to expect a certainamount of superstition in a country like that, itwould die out in time with the spread ofeducation and enlightenment: and with therealisation of our strength: we were so muchstronger and more efficient than a nativemonarchy-mumbo jumbo rebellions wouldsoon be a thing of the past.

And so for a long time, it seemed. Theannexation had a hypnotic effect: the Burmesewere dazzled by our superiority, they were theeasiest people in the world to administer. Andby the time the effect wore off, they werebecoming politically responsible, getting fullparliamentary government under their ownministers, a Burmese cabinet.

But was it really all right, even inthose quiet years when nothing even seemedto happen? What about the effect on society,family life? Let me give you a glimpse of whatwas going on under the surface, a priest Iknew when I was a young officer before theFirst World War. He had and imposingpresence, a fine command of language,attractive manners. At first even the localclergy accepted him at his face value. He wasall things to all men; to people troubled withdreams, he was a wonderful interpreter ofdreams; for old people and invalids mortallyafraid of dying, he had, provided they werewell off, the very thing, the elixir of life. Hewas great with ladies, getting money out of

wealthy old women and seducing young ones.Actually he had never been ordained: hewasn't a priest at all, he had no right to wearthe yellow robe: he was a common swindlerand should have been dealt with by the policeunder the ordinary criminal law. But just asthe clergy were powerless, so the police wereeven more powerless, the laity, even thevictims themselves, partly from reverence forthe robe, partly from shame, especially thewomen, simply would not give evidence inopen court. So all he had to do, when theneighborhood grew tired of him and he couldget no more out of them, was to disappear,leaving no address, and continue his game in anew district where nobody knew him. Therewas no way of following him up, no hierarchy,no central office with a clergy list to whichyou could report him. When next I met him,several years later, he had passed through halfa dozen districts and was still getting awaywith it.

Now for the 1931 rebellion, therebellion lasted 18 months and we had to use10 or 11 thousand men, troops and armedpolice battalions. Not that there was muchactual fighting: you could hardly bring therebels to action, they scattered and dispersedas soon as they heard troops wereapproaching: the only reason we had to use somany troops was to cover so large an area.Our casualties were next to nothing, only 39killed, 39 in the whole 18 months. The rebelssoon gave up attacking us, they attacked thegeneral public, their own fellow countrymen,for not supplying them with food and money,or for giving us information against them. Itwasn't even a single rebellion: the originalrebellion covered only a few districts, but onceit got a foothold, the infection spread, all theyoung hooligans everywhere joining in thefun, and ordinary criminals taking advantageof the general disorder to go in for robbery anddacoity. Altogether it spread to 12 out of the40 districts in Burma, 12 out of 30 We took nofewer than 9000 prisoners, sending many of


12them to trail by the judges who sentenced1100, 1100 to long imprisonment and hanged128: we hanged 128: A pretty grim business,to say nothing of the unfortunate generalpublic whom the rebels looted and killed, asour troops couldn't be everywhere to protectthem.

It wasn't a political rebellion. Therewas political discontent, the westernisedclassed demanding Dominion Status at anearly date. But these people, the politicallyconscious classes had nothing to do with therebellion. The rebels were country folk, didn'tknow English, hadn't heard of DominionStatus, weren't interested in politics: theyaimed at setting up a king, and in the first fewweeks, when they'd overrun half a district,they actually did so, crowning their leaderking in a palace, a palace made of bamboo andtinsel paper, in a royal city consisting of hutson a jungle hilltop.

The Burmese parliament was only tooglad to use the rebellion as a debating point, tojeer at the government's incompetence inallowing it to happen; they gave us no helpwhatever, indeed their continual oppositionwasted a good deal of our time. Listening tothe debates, you'd think the army wasincompetent, the police tyrannical, weourselves were nincompoops, the rebelsmisguided heroes, misunderstood. But thiswas mere politics. Actually they hated therebellion even more than we did: beingBurmese themselves, they were much nearerto the horror: we high officials were never inany danger, we had the troops: the politicianswere mostly little men, unprotected: like therest of the public they lived in fear of rebelatrocities, some of their friends and relativeshad actually been killed. They might havegiven us more help during the rebellion. Butthen they hadn't even warned us it wascoming. They didn't know: they knew littlemore than we did: indeed they knew less thansome of our Burmese officers.

Oath Water had been drunk for awhole year before the rebellion broke out, but

it was very secret, so even our Burmese policesubordinates didn't hear of it for a long time,and then they felt embarrassed: how to telltheir English superiors, how to explain a sillysuperstition, by their own people too, toeducated English gentlemen? The EnglishCommissioner of police they told was a friendof mine, not only a finer officer but a goodfellow with whom they felt at ease, and he wasreally interested, it was such a new idea, he'dnever heard it before. He understood it easilyenough but only intellectually, notemotionally, he hadn't the necessarybackground, the historical background, therather dreadful associations of the idea: itdidn't link up with anything in his mind: orwith anything that was going on just then, itwasn't urgent, just a curious isolated fact: therewas evidently something weird going on, butit didn't some within the law, he didn't want tobe hard on a lot of silly villagers, harmlesslittle people, So he did nothing till two monthslater, when things began to happen. By then itwas too late. As he says himself, if only he'dseen it from the first, and acted then, he mighthave nipped the rebellion in the bud, before itstarted.

Now contrast that with the ShanStates. One day the ministers of a Shan Princecame to see me: I was Political Officer inthose parts. They were called ministers, andthey really were ministers, good ones too; butthey lived on 4 or 5 hundred £ a year, and theirprince, as decent and dutiful a prince as youcould find anywhere, wasn't so very muchbetter off himself. They came suddenlywithout warning, and I shall never forget thelook on their faces. They said "The people, thepeople are drinking Oath Water: tow wholevillages are drinking." I said, "What? towhom?" They said, "We simply don't know,we only heard of it this morning: but we'vearrested every man jack of them, everyonewho's drunk it." You see the difference? Theswift instinctive reaction: they realised at


13once, they aced within the hour. And theyweren't harsh: the villagers were only ignorantdupes, and they were released in a few days,they went home quite happily, after a fatherlytalk from the little prince himself.

And down in Burma Proper, who werethe rebel leaders? Who was behind the greatrebellion the kept us and our troops on thestretch for 18 months? They were all,everyone of them, priest-magicians.

They had attracted followers,thousands of followers, promising themsuccess, making them invulnerable by meansof charms and incantations. Not only did themagic turn our bullets into water, it madesome of the rebels invisible, able to leap 50feet high over the treetops, flying invisiblythrough the air; and of course all of them wereinvulnerable, our weapons could never woundthem. This was actually proved in practicebecause, as I told you, often our troopscouldn’t close with the rebels, or ourmarksmanship wasn't very good. But notalways: for instance, we once noticed a groupof villagers sitting under a tree, watching askirmish between our men and the rebels;those villagers were on the point of beingconverted by the priest-magicians when wearrived, so they looked on, and when they sawthe rebels falling dead under our bullets, theythough better of it.

The leading magician, the man I toldyou was crowned king in a bamboo place on

jungle hilltop, was a priest. Or rather he saidhe was, he wore the robe: actually he'd neverbeen ordained, you couldn't have found him inthe claergy list had there been a clergy list. Hisdeputies, a round dozen of his principallieutenants, were genuine priests whosebehaviour had begun to scandalise respectablepeople even before the rebellion: they ought tohave been unfrocked at once, for practicingmagic.1

And all this happened in period ofprogress and enlightenment, 1931, when all ofus, public men and officials, Burmese as wellas British, were discussing the next step, whatproposals were really practicable, DominionStatus and so forth: modern realities, notancient history. It wasn't an Englishman, but arising Burmese politician an enlightenedperson, who told me what happened in 1885could have no possible bearing on the politicaland above all the economic problems of to-day: what use had all those old kings been,anyway? When distinguished visitors arrivedwe showed them the gilded throne, carefullypreserved in the great empty palace, apicturesque but rather meaningless relic of aforgotten past. We didn't know one of thosegreat empty room had once been an office, theboard-room of a permanent commission, anEcclesiastical Commission.

I did once hear Anthropologymentioned: "Anthropology why, of course it'sabout the sexual life of savages."

1 The leader had been a properly ordained monk, but he left the Order voluntarily before he tookup politics; only tow or three of his followers, certainly not "a round dozen" had been ordainedpriests.


14

G.E. Harvey: Monsieur Haas and theAnnexation of Upper Burma 1885

[Harvey gave this lecture to the FarEastern Seminar of St. Antony's College,Oxford on Tuesday, 12 June 1962 at 5 p.m.with the late Mr. G.F. Hudson in the Chair.Although Mr. Hudson invited Harvey tosubmit the lecture for publication in the St.Antony's College Papers, Harvey never gavethe typescript, although he did submit thetypescript of his previous lecture on the WeStates which was duly published. Themanuscript found among his paper wasobviously a draft, which he use while givingthe lecture. The greater part of the manuscriptwas hand-written, but in contrast to themanuscript of Burma 1885 it was not verylegible in places; two or three pages weretype-written.

I have not altered the punctuation, thesyntax or even the old fashioned "shew".However, when some words are obviouslymissing, I have filled in the gap, but my wordsare given in italics so as to show that they arenot Harvey's . Harvey also left some blankspaces after sub-headings, and I have filled upthe space with my notes. As to the footnotes,except for one, they are by me.

The lecture begins with a remarkableindictment of the British Chief Commissioner,Fytche and Sladen, the British Resident atMandalay and equally remarkable defence ofKing Mindon, betrayed by the British. As hasbeen noted in the Introduction, Harvey heremaintains that there was no French intrigue atthe Burmese Court, the French were notinterested in Burma which they fullyrecognised as being within the British sphereof influence, and Monsieur Haas far frombeing the villain, was almost the hero in thetragic drama of the Burmese Kingdom. Whilelashing the British, he dose not spare theBurmese either, and he does not hide his

disapproval of Theebaw and his Court. But hedoes not repeat his accusations of drunkennessand tyranny which he leveled against the Kingsome forty years before, and he plays downthe Bombay Burma Case.

Thus he clearly finds that the chargeof misrule against King Theebaw and theaccusation of intrigue against the French weremere allegations and therefore could not havebeen the real causes of the Third Anglo-Burmese War. Then , why did the Britishannex Burma? Harvey fails to give asatisfactory answer and the last paragraph ofhis lecture is unsatisfactory and illogical. Hadhe not died in 1965 I am sure that with hismeticulous scholarship and painstakingresearch, he would have discovered that it wasthe will and Pleasure of one single official, theSecretary of State for India, Lord RandolphChurchill which destroyed the BurmeseKingdom.]

The search for a route to China lastedfor decades, a whole generation. Neither theBritish nor the French Governments weregreatly interested, save spasmodically thepressure, especially in England, came fromChambers of Commerce. Our governmentresisted it on financial and political grounds.Quite early, even before maps existed, we hadreasons to believe an overland routeimpracticable for geographical reasons; in1863 our officials at Rangoon got theGovernment of India to allow a survey only byexplaining it was the only way of showing theChambers of Commerce what the country wasreally like and that there was no route. As forpolitical difficulty: any route lay through thekingdom of Burma's tribal or tributaryterritories where the mere appearance of oursurvey party led the chieftains to appeal to us


15against the king of Burma - and we didn't wantto offend him.1

However, national rivalry, Franco-British rivalry, stirred us to action: in 1868 theGovernment of India, a fortnight after refusingto allow an expedition as too expensive andlikely to offend the King of Burma, only afortnight later made a complete volte face andsanctioned an expedition which cost more andgave greater offence the all other expeditionsput together. The reason is, they suddenlyheard that the French expedition consisting of

1/2 a dozen senior French officers2 dozen French Subordinates100 sepoys,magnificently equipped,

travelling in great style, was exploring theMekong River and about to visit the King ofBurma at Mandalay. This is a good example ofthe wild exaggerations the time news takes totravel in these countries: Siam, Laos,Tonguing, look near to Burma on the map, buteven to-day there is little contact with Burma,and in those days, before roads, telegraphs,there was no contact with Burma

The French expedition had alreadybeen 13 months, on the march, 13 monthswhen the English at Rangoon first heard of it.It was the famous Doudart de Lagree-Garnierexpedition but it didn't travel in style, it hadn't100 sepoys, it had simply

6 French naval officers3 French subordinateswith whatever number of local nativeguides, coolies they could get atsuccessive stages in their 6000 milemarch, sometimes 30 or 60 men,sometimes only 4 or 5.

The King of Burma wanted them tovisit Mandalay but they wouldn't go; theirdiary gives the reasons-

"Too far off the line of march and all of itWest of the Mekong River Where anysurveys must be left to the English, notour affair." "Burma is in the British sphereof interest. Our going there would onlyencourage the King to go on imaginingthings-he's already been foolish enough totry and get sympathy from ourgovernment at Paris and they are tired ofhim."

The French ended up in rags, halfstarving. 2 of the 6 officers died of hardship,one of them the leader: but they succeeded;they were the first to reach the Yangtse fromthe southern coast, only 1300 direct miles,1300, 6000 route miles, 6000: theirachievement rivalled Livingstone's. Garnier,who became leader after Doudart de Legree'sdeath, was given the Royal GeographicalSociety's Queen Victoria gold medal, and in1871 he and Living-stone were bracketedalone in the hors concouir award of the FirstInternational Congress of Geography.Curiously enough they also died in the sameyear 1873, Livingstone on the march in Africa,Garnier killed in action at the siege of Hanoi:he was only 34 years old. His expeditionproved, what was hitherto unknown, that theMekong River is unnavigable.

I told you how, earlier, the news of hisexpedition had led to an English one. It wasunder Sladen, much larger and better equippedthan the French incidentally it included 50sepoys-but, for reasons I'll give you later inconnection with King Mindon, it had to turnback after getting only 70 miles into China upto Tengyueh so it brought back noinformation. Or rather, it gave misinformation.Sladen had not a critical mind and, even in ourthen state of ignorance, it was a mistake toinsist, in his report , that the first 70 mileswere the real obstacle and the rest of the routeup to Tail was easy.

1 Harvey was not quite correct. It was British officers like Colonel Sladen who presented thechieftains with guns and encouraged them to rebel against the king. See Maung Htin AungThe stricken Peacock. P. 62.


161868-75 were crucial years from our

geographical knowledge of a route throughYunnan. In 1868 Cooper, sent up the yangtseby British merchants at Shanghai via the upperYangtse to Calcutta, reached the Tibet borderand saw enough of the Himalayas to knowthere was no route. By 1871 Sir Henry Yule,the leading geography student in England, feltthese overland routes must be chimeras. In1872 the German traveller von Richthofenfound in the west part of Yunnan what theDoudart de Lagree-Garnier expedition hadfound in the eastern. By 1875 the facts wereavailable all over Europe- Yunnan consists ofmountain ranges running north to south or NWto SE, running down from Tibet; even whenthey taper down they're still 8 or 9000 feetridges, the valleys between them, just whereany route must cross. more like crevasses thanvalleys. As Richthofen side of the very areaSladen thought would be easy, the Mekongand Salween valleys alone would require 3 or4 St. Gotthard tunnels, railways. It was therailway age; everyone, whatever their politicalopinions, knew that railways were the panaceafor all progress. From the first, the Burmaroute was to be a railway, and its apostle wasSprye. Poor little Captain Sprye had served inthe 1824-26 Burma war and remained there asa military works buildings officer till retiringin 1831. He was down in Moulmein and neverwent inland but he got the idea from theChinese mule caravans that came fromSzemao through the Burmese tributary, ShanStates to Moulmein. Just before retiring toEngland in 1831 he memorialised LordBentinck, the Viceroy of India recommendinga tram-way to Szemao. In 1852 he beganmemorialising the London Government: 1852was only the beginning: in this first decade,after counting more than 100 memorials orletters over his own signature, I gave upcounting, He was still at it a couple of years

before his death at the age of 80 in 1878.These are only documents he signed himself:he was also behind the flood of Chamber ofCommerce memorials for nearly 3 decades. 1

After the Tientsin and Peking treaties the firstseven years alone, 1860-67, there were 46memorials, 46, from Chambers of Commercein Britain. Look at Szemao: a wood and thatchvillage of a few hundred inhabitants swollen inthe few weeks of the mule caravan season to 4or 5000, 5000. In the Chamber of Commercememorials it became a great emporium, aminor Liverpool or Manchester: and similarlyYunnan was a thickly populated prosperouscountry, full of great cities connected by highroads and navigable rivers. Why did thebureaucratic government of India stand in theway of all progress, wasting public money onvain-glorious annexations unnecessary armieson the Northwest Frontier, Afghanistan? Ifonly practical business men were put incharge, there'd be a Burma-China railway inless than no time, at no cost: business menwanted no government help, they 'd find themoney themselves, they wanted nothing; onlya guaranteed interest and just ordinarypeaceful conditions along the line. Bureaucratslacked imagination - they did indeed, but theyknew enough to retort; in all Yunnan there areonly two places you could call cities, andthey're unconnected by road: the country hadno roads or navigable rivers, it's poor andthinly populated, only 51 people to the squaremile, 51, their mule caravans down throughthe Burma Shan States don't amount to much,all the real stuff goes down the Yangtse: itwon't go by enormously expensive railwaythrough the mountains to Rangoon when italready slips easily down the Yangtse withcrowded market towns all along the bankswaiting to buy it, and finally Shanghai a muchgreater port than Rangoon.

1 An account of Kinwun Mingyi's experience and confrontation with the chambers ofCommerce is given in First Burmese Mission. PP. 69-89.


17As for the annexations you dislike,

you can't have a railway through bandit-riddencountry without extra-territorial Jurisdictionalong the line, indeed experience shows if youbegin by building a railway, you only toooften end by having to annex the country .Mere facts like these had little effect; man willnot believe what they don't want to believe.The stream of memorials continued, dwindlingonly for a time in the 70s. Sprye's argumentswere revived in a new, more unscrupulousform towards the end of my period, in 1883 asI'll tell you later.

One reason why they dwindled in the70s was not only Sprye's death but theIrrawaddy Flotilla Company extended itssteamer service, very large steamers like theMississippi showboats you see on the films,from Mandalay to Bhamo on the Yunnanfrontier, 980 river miles from the sea, 980miles. The Irrawaddy Flotilla was a Glasgowcompany, so the Glasgow Chamber ofCommerce became converted to this riverroute and no longer supported Sprye's railwayscheme.

Mindon's 4 grievances against us

(1) Pegu[After the heading "Pegu" Harvey left a

blank space in his manuscript, obviouslyintending to fill in the gap later. The richprovince of Pegu was occupied and thenannexed by the British in the SecondAnglo-Burmese war of 1852 after a displayof gunboat diplomacy. Prince Mindon, asthe leader of the peace party at the Burmesecourt, deposed his brother Pagan Min, andas the new king, he opened negotiationswith the British for the return of theprovince to him, but the British wereadamant. According to G.F. Hudson,Fellow of the St. Antony's College who, ashas been stated above, was the chairman ofthe seminar. Harvey would not concedethat it was a war of aggression on the part

of the British, insisting that the Burmeseprovoked he war, but he expressedsympathy for King Mindon's peacefulefforts to get back the territory; Harvey alsogave the opinion that a part of the provinceshould have been returned to the king as agesture of goodwill.]

(2) ARMS. The treaty of 1867 contained aclause allowing Mindon to import armssubject to English approval At the finalmeeting the Burmese refused to sing unlessthis clause was modified, so Fytche gave thema letter promising the approval would never bewithheld; when reporting to the Governmentof India he included the letter, they agreed andit thus became part of the treaty. For the nexttwo years they allowed Mindon's arms importsbut in 1870 when he wanted to import 100Large cannon they refused and confrontedwith the letter, said it was not binding. Worsestill, the Secretary of State in London rejectedthe draft put up by his distinguished advisor, adraft telling them they bound by the letter,they must honour their promise, and refused tointervene. It was a clear breach of faith, longremembered by Mindon.

The English were not simply "keeping natives in their places." All Europeangovernments discouraged the arms traffic:there were terrible instances at this time ofuncivilised tribes using cheap firearms literallyto exterminate each other: and Asian princeswere sometimes careless letting their arms fallinto dacoit hands. But Burma, thoughbackward, was civilised; her governmentmight be ineffective in some ways but not asregards arms: her Kings kept them heavilyguarded in the palace arsenal and it is unlikelythat they ever fell into dacoit hands.

Mindon wanted the latest arms fromEurope; these were expensive and experiencehad shown them to be unserviceable in Indiabut it was his own affair if he wasted money.As the Secretary of State's advisor said,Mindon would never make war and even if


18he had a successor foolish enough to do so,such arms could be no danger; the morecomplicated the arms Burma had the moreuseless they would by as she had not the mento maintain them. In practice Mindon wasprobably allowed all the arms he needed andalso saved much money, to the relief of hisfinance minister. But the English werebehaving like a nursery governess. 1

(3) Mindon's third grievance wasSladen. You remember Sladen, in hisexpedition, got only 70 miles into China andbrought back only misinformation. If that wasall, it wouldn’t have mattered. It was Sladen'sBehaviour. I know it's cheap to crab orpredecessors: one's made many bloomersoneself. Reading old records, our predecessor'sinnumerable mistakes, they were generallyordinary decent men, limited but not cads.Sladen's case is different: Mindon had trustedhim, accepted him the first British Resident tobe received at his Court; overridden hidministers, made himself unpopular with themby accepting Sladen's advice. He and Sladenwere good friends. During an attempted palacerevolution when Mindon's beloved brother,virtually a Joint King was killed and Mindonhimself escaped by a hair's breadth-assassinscutting down every one within reach, blood allover the palace floors, courtiers panic-stricken,running like rabbits. Mindon handed Sladenhis own jewelled sword as a symbol ofauthority: " I'll see to this lot here. You go outinto the courtyard and take charge of that lotthere." Sladen did no more than any decentman would have done but Mindonremembered it and didn't mind the rubbishtalked, printed in Rangoon newspapers, aboutSladen saving the King's life at the risk of hisown, the poor oriental King ever thereafterfeeding out of his hand, accepting the

guidance of the strong silent white man: youknow the sort of stuff. Mindon didn't mindthat: what stuck in his throat was theexpedition, the reasons Sladen gave for itfailure.

Mindon was just as keen as Sladen onthe expedition: he did a lot of state tradehimself with Yannan, he wanted to find theland route on his won account, gave theexpedition every possible help, sending it,Sladen and all, on his own royal steamer toBhamo, shared their expectation of going rightthrough all the 200 miles, 200, to Tali; he wasbitterly disappointed when they turned backafter only 70 miles; the reason was, all thisarea was Kachin, Kachin tribes, slave raiders,blackmailers over whom neither Burmese norChinese had any control. The Kachins let theChinese mule caravans through to Bhamounder an old established system of blackmail:naturally they wouldn't let a newcomer likeSladen through: they impeded his every step,night and day, cut off his supplies. Of coursehe could have pushed trough-he had 50 sepoysand the Kachins would have had the shock oftheir lives: they'd never experienced rifle fire-but just then, for various reasons, we didn'twant bloodshed.

The Burmese Deputy Commissionerat Bhamo had died just before Sladen'sexpedition, his successor hadn't arrived, andduring the interregnum one of his clerks,bribed by the Chinese merchants at Tail whoran the mule caravans, wrote to the Kachinchiefs saying the expedition need not returnalive. Naturally, as trade rivals, the Chinesedidn't want the English, but it was none theless a stupid letter: even if we'd discovered aroute, they 'd have benefited even more thanwe did -no European business, howeverefficient, has even been able to compete with

1 A detailed account of the controversy over the arms clause of the treaty is given in MaungHtin Aung, The First Burmese Mission to the Court of St. James's .P. 14.The Advisor was Sir John Kaye and the Secretary of State, Duke of Argyll, The FirstBurmese Mission P. 142.Kay's successor as advisor, Major Burney held the same opinion as Harvey's; First BurmeseMission .P. 193.


19Chinese distributors in the interior. Anunnecessary letter: the Kachins would haveruined Sladen's expedition in any case;Probably it was only the sight of his 50 sepoysthat prevented their killing him; they didn'tneed any telling.

Any sensible man would have simplyleft that letter, with rest of the evidence, on thefile. Instead, Sladen talked. In Rangoon hewent about implying at semipublic meetings,that it had been instigated by Mindon'sgovernment -as if Mindon, or the sort of menhe selected as ministers, did that sort of things:it wasn't in keeping with their character.

In London Sladen told the RoyalGeographical Society, and the British Public,he'd been prevented from discovering anoverland route by the obstructive of Mindon'sgovernment. Mindon knew of all this at thetime from his Press reader, and soon he was tohave a whole book, a book issued by Fytche,Sladen's chief, the governor at Rangoon.

Of 18 successive service governors ofBurma, 18, Fytche stands out by himself. Heprinted 1000 copies of the book, containingthe entire correspondence, reports,confidential documents on the expedition, toshow the business world how unwilling andindifferent the government of India and Homegovernment were to progress, and how he hadto insist. Government never heard of this booktill Fytche was due to retire in any case, so allthey could do was to recall and destroy all thecopies they could get. The scandalous breachof the publication rules didn't really matter asall the higher level confidential stuff washarmless; what did matter were documents bySladen himself and one of his companions, aRangoon port surveyor hired for the occasionto examine river navigation near Bhamo, nodoubt a competent surveyor from some back

street in Glasgow, but his report is notconfined to technical matters: it says

"Our expedition was only ostensiblyallowed by the King of Burma, that arch-miscreant who had plotted to prevent ourreturning alive .........We should deal with thishalf-clothed savage, this so-called King, thebrutal despot whose only policy is theamassing of riches, he propagation ofabominable idolatrous superstitions and thegratification of sensual indulgences...... whenwill our weak-kneed Home government do itsChristian duty and free this tyrant's oppresedpeople from his grinding taxation, corruptionand cruelty-boys of tender years, infirm oldmean flogged to death in the streets orpublicly crucified with a barbarity that beggarsdescription and from his extortionatemonopolies subverting the legitimate channelsof trade so that no one can buy or sell in themarket place with out official permission........His people long for our rule, and daily theyask " when, when are the British coming?"

Sladen's report is of course less crudebut it calmly considers what trade routes willbe rendered possible by the annexation of theBurmese Kingdom and indeed of this part-Bhamo- Tengyueh- of Yunnan.

So now Mindon Knew what Sladenreally was: he'd nursed a viper in his bosom.He said , "That man! That man! I won't havehim here again. If your government sends himback here on his return from leave, I'll turn myguns on the steamer bringing him up theriver." So we didn't send him back.

The two extracts 1 I've read were noworse than what had been appearing in BritishIndian and Rangoon Press for at Least a dozenyears. One governor of Burma privatelywished he could hang all Editors; " the harmthey do to race relations.

1 Only one extract given in the manuscript.


20why can't they leave the king alone?"; andanother said of the British in Rangoon,"They've got Annexation on the brain, Soonerthan annex nothing, they'd annex Dante'sInferno." Hitherto we'd been able to tellMindon, quite truthfully, that we didn't controlthe press, it didn't represent our views. ButSladen's were in Official documents: Mindonnow knew we were two-faced.

Mindon's 4th grievance-the "Shihko"[After the heading "Shihko" Harvey

again left a space in the manuscript; "Shihko"meaning to " supplicate" refers to the BurmeseCourt etiquette which required persons havingan audience with the King to remove theirshoes and kneel before the throne. Accordingto Mr. G. F. Hudson, Harvey was in fullsympathy with Mindon and said that it wasvital for the King to maintain his prestige withhis people, to require a British envoy toconform to the Court etiquette, pointing outthat until late in Mindon's reign, the Britishhad never made an issue of it . King Mindonin the circumstances was in no position toaccede to the British request that their envoybe exempted from the customary requirement.As the government of India then instructed theBritish Resident at Mandalay not to seek anyfurther audience with the king, there was acomplete break down of diplomaticcommunication between the Burmese and theBritish, which must inevitably lead to war.Harvey felt that the British should have beenless rigid, so that a compromise could havebeen worked out. 1

I now come to Burma's Foreignrelations. She obtained only three treatiesbesides those with Britain; before dealing withthem, here are specimens of her activities

Burma's first treaty was with Italy(March) 1871, an accident- the king of Italy, anewly founded kingdom, waned to put his

country on the map; you'll remember how hehad advertised his existence by sending acontingent to the Crimea. He now sent acorvette on a 3 1/2 years cruise to Japan,showing the flag over the Far East , and tomake a treaty with a Sultan (Brunei) inBorneo. He happened to hear of Burma from afriend of Mindon's , an Italian missionary atMandalay , so he thought he might as wellhave a treaty with Burma. It was a simpletrade treaty, and Racchia, the corvettecommander found it quite easy till towards theend when the Burmese insisted on a clauseallowing them to import arms. He explainedarms aren't included in ordinary trade treaties,besides, it's unfriendly to your neighbour theEnglish. But that was precisely why theBurmese wanted it; he was struck by theirdetestation of the English- he uses a strongerterm, odio mortale, " undying hatred" - overthe loss of Pegu, their determination toreconquer Pegu. They said, it can be a secretclause; he said no, impossible. He held out forthree days and finally drafted a clause whichsatisfied the Burmese: it allowed them toimport arms subject to existing friendships:and as Italy was on friendly terms withEngland, that made it all right. 2

Mindon's second treaty was witFrance 1873, 1873 when at last he seemedsuccessful. His first envoy to Paris in 1854hadn’t been duly accredited; and a properlyconstituted embassy in 1856, 56, thoughcourteously received, was unsuccessful, forthe following reasons in the French ForeignOffice note, more contemptuous than anythingI've found in our own files: it says [Extractwas not given in the manuscript]

It was their attitude till 1873. He kepton writing to them, Some of his requests werereasonable: he wanted engineers, geologists,surveyors and the French went to considerabletrouble, recommending reliable men and

1 Queen Victoria made Kinwun Mingyi grovel on the floor in the audience chamber ofWindsor Castle in 1872, some years before the British made an issue of the Burmese courtceremonial, First Burmese Mission. P. 68

2 A detailed account of the treaty is given in First Burmese Mission. PP. 192-193.


21sending him estimates of the cost: whereuponthey heard no more. Most of his requests wereinadvisable he wanted French officers to trainhis army , and once he asked the FrenchAdmiralty for a small battleship, anarmourclad.

However, in 1873 their attitudechanged. Stung by their defeat in the Franco-Prussian war, there was a new spirit, forinstance a proliferation of geographicalsocieties, soon outnumbering those inGermany hitherto the most numerous inEurope. Neither now nor later were theyinterested in Burma, but she was in the samepart of the word as Tongking, and they werenow expanding in Tongking. So when in 1873the Burmese envoys, disappointed in London,came to Paris asking for treaty, any treaty, asimple trade treaty; the French thought itmight be interesting and at any rate could dono harm.

A year after the treaty's signature atParis, De Rochechouart took it to Mandalayfor ratification by Mindon. It had taken a yearbecause whereas in England treaties fall underthe prerogative and need not come beforeParliament, under the cumberous Frenchprocedure they had to pass throughParliament. De Rochechouart was on his wayto China to join his appointment as firstsecretary at the Peking Legation. He took withhim several junior officers nominally asattaches, merely to see the world. They stayedwith the Viceroy in India, with the Governorof British Burma in Rangoon, and went on tospend a few pleasant days, perhaps a week, atMandalay: they'd heard of the charm of theBurmese people, the picturesqueness of thePalace, the very real dignity and goodness ofKing Mindon. And it all came up toexpectation -until they got down to business:

they spent not one but eleven weeks, and leftfeeling reduced to pulp.

An office exchanging ratifications hasno power to discuss, let alone alter a dot orcomma in a treaty: he can only present hiscredentials, verify the texts and exchange thesignatures. De Rochechouart naturallythought, when the Burmese started talkingabout the treaty, that is was mere conversation.Before he knew where he was, he was in for it:Mindon would not sign without additionalclauses making the treaty a defensive alliance,a defensive alliance between France andBurma.

De Rochechouart was struck with theBurmese Court's powers of imagination. Heand the British Resident sometimes dinedtogether and exchanged informationunofficially. One day one of the ministers toldthe Resident, that Rochechouart was becomingquite reasonable, he was offering to send 500French officers to train the Burmese army.The Resident repeated this to DeRochechouart at dinner. Said Rochechouart,"Frenchmen to train these scallywags! Howlong have you been in this comic country?""Twenty years" said the Englishman. "Twentyyears!" said De Rochechouart, and you stillretain your sanity! I am going off my headalready. Why, when you English annexedPegu in 1852, didn't you annex the wholecountry?"

The Burmese wanted not only adefensive alliance for the future, but here andnow a railway to Saigon-not even roads intheir own country-didn't seen to know whereSaigon was - independent tribes and hill statesin between, they didn't know. 1

De Rochechouart finally induced theBurmese to accept the following blanketclause to cover all their requests:-

1 A surprising observation; Laos and Chiengmai until recently, and Siam earlier, had beenunder- Burmese rule.


22"The French government, having the

interest of Burma at hear, will give its friendlyoffices when ever the Burmese governmentrequest them in writing." He showed this tothe British Resident, and to the governor atRangoon, saying "It's harmless enough." "No,"said they, " to the Burmese that's an alliance."Of course the French government wouldn'tlook at it, and the whole treaty was dead. 1

There was no Anglo-French frictionuntil the 1880s when changes in French tradepolicy began to make us alarmed at hercolonial expansion. Under Napoleon III shehad been free trade, (1860 Anglo-French "TheCobden Treaty" denounced in 1872)Cobdenite, but the German war indemnitydrove her to Protectionism. Our first warningcame in the Scramble for Africa: until 1881our Colonial Office thought French expansionwould help us as we would share the trade inthe new French areas. But in 1881 Frenchtreaties with the chiefs on the Upper Nigershowed us we wouldn’t: the treaties gaveFrench traders privileges denied to all others:we now knew our trade would be excludedwherever France went. The French Consulwho accompanied or followed the FrenchExplorer became Public Enemy No. I inEnglish eyes.

1881 was also the year when, notunknown to us at the time, the Parisgovernment first saw that their Tongkingfrontier would have to be the Mekong River.And 1882 saw our final failure to maintaincontact with Burma. After Mindon's death in1878 things went to pieces: his successorsreign was discreditable. Mindon was out of hisdepth in foreign affairs but internally he wasan admirable administrator: never for amoment would he have allowed the sort of

thins that went on under his successor Thibaw.The British Resident hadn't been much use forthe last tow years of his reign, in Thibaw's hewas no use at all, ostracised, shunned and inOctober 1879 we withdrew him. The Burmeseprobably thought it a good riddance. 2

But later in 1882, they welcomed ouroffer to discuss the renewal of relations. Buton new terms: they were tired of treaties withthe government of India: they nearly had onewith France, they actually had one with Italy.Why not with England? They'd be quitereasonable: they'd allow one with the Victoryof India, provided they had a treaty withQueen Victoria. So in 1882 the Burmese askedfor discussions with the Viceroy; he sent aship to bring the envoys and gave them warmclothes for Simla. They wanted a treaty withEngland and Queen Victoria was willing. Butwhen they said that although the Residentcould return he must follow former usage andanly Queen Victoria's representative would beallowed modern usage, they were told bothmust be treated alike. At the end of 3 monthsthey contrived to get a telegram fromMandalay recalling them "for furtherconsultation". By this time even Lord Riponhad had enough; he'd been at some pains to getQueen Victoria's consent for treaty with herand when bidding them au revoir he told them,in words of one syllable, the Queen's offer wasno longer open but he hoped to see them backto consider his own treaty. After some monthsconsideration, they sent us their basis forcontinuing negotiations: the Simla discussionsmight never have happened, Lord Ripon neverhave spoken: their basis was simply their twooriginal treaties - one with the Queen, herrepresentative allowed to stand; the other withthe Viceroy, his representative kneeling.

1 A detailed account of the treaty is given in First Burmese Mission. pp. 116, 118, 191 & 1932 Another strange observation. The Burmese Court, alarmed at the closing down of the

Residency at once dispatched a good-will mission to Calcutta, but it was stopped by theBritish authorities at the frontier town of Thayetmyo and was not permitted to proceed anyfurther. The Stricken Peacock. p. 72.


23The failure at Simla didn't worry the

Burmese much: they'd given up expectingmuch from the English. What did worry themwas something that happened soon after Simla- a prince and a comet. Long years ago PrinceMyingun, Mindon's son, having failed to killhis father, fled into British territory where hewas interned and forgotten. But now he wasremembered: Thibaw's misgovernment madehim so unpopular that some people wantedMyingun to replace him: even at the MandalayCourt there were persons in secretcommunication with Myingun: he kept onasking the government of India to put him onthe throne or at least let him get into Burmaand take his chance, but of course theywouldn’t. So he escaped to French territory,Pondicherry, he and his followers in Burmaimagining they'd had better luck with theFrench. The Mandalay Palace also imaginedit, and as there was a comet which seemed topredict his success, they sent an embassy toParis asking for his extradition: they thoughtrefusal to extradite political offenders was anEnglish peculiarity.

Myingun was once reported as beingon his way, with French help to Siam and the

Shan States where he'd march to Mandalay.The interesting thing is the way the Britishcommunity at Rangoon took this news: theythought the French were helping him becauseonce on the throne he'd exclude Britishmerchants and transfer the kingdom's tradefrom Rangoon to Saigon; Saigon would thenbeat Rangoon and become the great port. 1

As the French Consul at Rangoonnoted a the time; "the curious Press out burstmisses the whole point; if even we Frenchwere to intrigue on behalf of Myingun, itcouldn't be for the kingdom or its trade, whichare already irrevocably British, but for theinfluence he claims to have in the Shan Statesand the use he might be to us in staking outour claim against the English in undefinedparts of Mekong frontier."

That's what the French Consul atRangoon wrote in 1883. By this year 1883Colquhoun, Holt Hallett, George Scottcampaign was in full blast. 2

So when the French made their finaladvance into the interior of Tongking in 1883,

1 So it was the English merchants at Rangoon who were unaware of the existence of geographical, tribal,and political barriers that lay between Burma and Saigon. cf. p. 3 above.

2 Mr. A.R. Colquhoun of the India Public Works Department travelled, with the permission of theChinese Government but disguised as a Chinese for safety and accompanied only by a Chineseinterpreter, overland from Canton to Bhamo. He Left Canton in February 1882 and reached Bhamo inthe following July. His journey revived the demand by English merchants to build a railway to Yannan.His campaign for such a railway was supported by Holt Hallett and George Scott (latter Sir GeorgeScott, a supposed expert on Burma.), in their newspaper articles. They voiced the fear that Frenchexpansionist policy in Indo-China would result in their establishing a monopoly of the trade withYunnan. Any talk on a railway to Yunnan of French advances in Indo-China raised the topic of thealleged barbaric attitudes of the Burmese. The following extract from a speech given in Bombay at areception for Colquhoun reflected the fierceness of the campaign against Burma:-

"If Burma were governed by a civilised monarch instead of by a savage despot therecould not fail to be a repaid development of the country lying between Burma and China,and much of the trade which now flows westward and find an outlet by the Chinese portswould gravitate towards Burma. As matters now stand, however, the short-sighted andignorant Ruler of Burma is not likely to take advantage of the opening now presented tohim. I fear until some radical change takes place there this splendid opportunity will belost, and the fruits of Mr. Colquhoun's exertions will never be gathered," DorothyWoodman, pp. 199-200.


24Mindon's successor King Thibaw saw hisopportunity. A fresh Franco Burmancommercial treaty was being negotiated inParis 1 And the Burmese kept on insisting itshould include a clause to import arms. Thiswas the one thing the French had alwaysrefused to do, even in Mindon's time, partlybecause they didn't trust the Burmese, Partlybecause they didn't want to offend the English.Now that they were getting into the interior ofTongking they had an additional reason for notwanting to supply arms: a government likeKing Thibaw's government did not maintainsufficient discipline among the troops for thearms to be safe in their hands, the men andeven some of their officers were so slack theymight allow them to be stolen, occasionallythey deserted and took to dacoity. There werequite reasonable grounds for fearing that anyarms the French supplied might be usedagainst themselves, having been handed overto the insurgents in Tongkin: Tongkin was farfrom pacified.

Yet finally the French gave away.When the new commercial treaty was readyfor signature at Paris in 1885 at the very lastmoment when the pen was put into theBurmese Ambassador's hand, he refused pointblank to sign unless he was given at least somesort of promise about arms. So Jules Ferrygave him the following letter as the FrenchPrime Minister and Minister for Foreignaffairs.

To the Burmese AmbassadorParis, 15 January 1885

Your Excellency,With reference to your Excellency's oralrequest regarding the transport through theprovince of Tongkin to Burma of arms ofvarious Kinds, ammunition and militarystores generally: amicable arrangementswill be come to with the Burmese

government for the passage of the same,where peace and order prevail in Tongkin,and the officers stationed there aresatisfied that it is proper and that there isno danger.

sd. Jules FerryThere are four points to note about

this letter: 2

(i) it is not part of the public treaty, andthough written on the same day is noteven an annex to it: it is simply a secretassurance in writing;

(ii) it could be legitimately denied to 3rdparties, because it is what in Burma youwould call a Demi-Official Letter. Anofficial letter beginning " Sir" and ending" I have the honour to be Sir, your mostobedient servant" can be quoted, at leastas between different department, and if adressed to a member of the public it canbe quoted by the public. But a Demi-Official Letter beginning. "Dear Jones"and ending " Yours sincerely" is like aminute on the note string, an internalmemorandum which doesn't leave theoffice s

three unpublished papers by harvey ......schoolmates at the rangoon high school, and how on learning...

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