The Myanmar Mess

 To see the background of the current Myanmar play in the "Great Game," this video is really essential.

 

Some caveats (from the original publication in Naked Capitalism):

 

[Commenter]: Froghole August 12, 2024 at 9:52 am

I am afraid that I found the first half of this presentation to be less than satisfactory. I don’t have the time to go through it comprehensively, but would note:

The Burmese speaking population are not “Gurkha”, as seemed to be suggested at one point: they are likely an admixture of the original aboriginal population, Tibeto-Burman peoples, Yellow River peoples and other Austro-Asiatic elements.

The presence of the Islamic Rohingya in the Arakan long ante-dated British imperialism, and was attested in the mid-15th century. It seems that relatively more Indian migrants to Burma came from the Madras presidency than Bengal presidency, and Mr Kirk is surely correct to note that the intrusion of ‘kala’ (caste peoples) especially in the non-covenanted elements of the bureaucracy was a major spur to dacoity an the growth of Burmese nationalism. What he does not appear to mention is that stock British stratagems, such as the substitution of British Indian property systems (which were themselves highly complex) onto a country like Burma where much property was held in common, was disastrous. The virtual evisceration of the Burmese nobility also meant that the Raj was less insulated from unrest than in, say, Bengal – where the zamindari were lightning rods for much local disaffection.

The first Burmese war with the EIC (1824-26) was chiefly due to the consequences the Burmese invasion of the Arakan (1785), Manipur (1813) and Assam (1816). Fugitive Arakanese and Assamese launched raids from British India (without any state sanction), which provoked retaliation. Calcutta would not hand over the ring-leaders (who would have been liquidated). Bodawhpaya (king of Burma, 1782-1819) thought British rule needed to be extirpated from India, so launched an invasion of Bengal in 1823. That naturally provoked a reaction by Amherst (who had been warned by the home government not to increase the size of British territory – i.e., the costs to the EIC, after the manner of Wellesley and Hastings between 1798 and 1823). The war was certainly very expensive in men (most of whom died from disease) and money, and almost doubled the EIC debt, but it most certainly did not bankrupt Britain (since those debts were a charge to British Indian taxpayers) – as Mr Kirk appears to indicate – or the EIC, which lost its trading monopoly in 1834 largely for other reasons. The scale of the floating debt *might* have reinforced the determination of Fort William, the court of directors and board of control to resolve India’s debts with China through more aggressive means, starting in 1839.

Burma was not detached from India until 1937. Mr Kirk seems to suggest that it occurred in the late 19th century. The decision to include Burma in India was natural from an administrative perspective, when Burma was annexed in stages, but made ever less sense as time progressed owing to Burma’s rather different development under colonial rule. Drain theory has a long provenance (Naoroji and Dutt), but there was arguably a drain from Burma to India, insofar as Burmese taxpayers were underwriting the redemption of debts incurred by the EIC in advancing its rule across the Indian subcontinent through frequent warfare. The 1937 transfer had an ironic outcome. Prior to 1940 the full costs of the Indian Army were borne by Indian taxpayers; it was agreed in 1940 that its overseas deployments should be borne by taxpayers in Britain. The following year Japan conquered almost all of Burma, and the reconquest of Burma became largely a charge to the British taxpayer, and so accounted for a great part of the sterling balances which the UK owed to India after WW2. Had Burma remained within British India, Britain’s war debts would have been significantly lower, and the burden on independent India proportionately greater.

Churchill’s opposition to Burmese independence was all of a piece with his opposition to Indian independence, but it had more of an emotional edge because his father had been secretary of state for India at the time of the annexation of Upper Burma by Dufferin, and was therefore a major part of the reputation of his father which he tried to uphold (he was his father’s own biographer).

Tom Driberg’s role was, at best, marginal. There seems to have been an unwarranted amplification of the account provided in Francis Wheen’s 2001 biography (from which the salacious details may well have been drawn).

The account of Reginald Dorman-Smith’s restoration and his supercession by Hubert Rance seems somewhat about-face (Mr Kirk mentions Dorman-Smith at one point).

British rule was indeed oppressive for Burma, but mainly not for the reasons discussed. See here: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/burmas-economy-in-the-twentieth-century/366FDAAD6B54D933CB6A1CF36C2F0122 for a relatively recent discussion. Burma is, of course, rich in raw materials, which is why British predation was more pronounced than in some other colonies, but the cost of that predation was not commensurate with the cost of retention relative to: (i) the strength of the Patriotic Burmese Forces (and their adjuncts) relative, for example, to the Malayan Communist Party (Malaya’s rubber earnings being key to the sterling area in the period c. 1945-55); and (ii) the costs of reconstruction.
 

Froghole amends his initial post:
Sorry, I should have mentioned that Bodawhpaya did not launch an invasion (Bodawhpaya being dead!), but his heir Bagdiyaw did so in substantial continuance of his grandfather’s policy of rolling back British rule from the land of the Buddha’s birth and witness. There were, of course, a number of other contributory factors. It was therefore widely perceived as a defensive war, or at least to some extent.

Not so subsequent wars with Burma. The 1852 war was all of a piece with Dalhousie’s controversial expansionist policy (his ‘doctrine of lapse’ being a major factor in the explosion of 1857), and the 1887 war was partly a mop up, and partly – as Mr Kirk rightly notes – a defence of British interests in upper Burma against France.