Recent scholarship on the British colonization of Burma points to an absence of critical research into what was arguably one of the bloodiest and most repressive campaigns in British colonial South Asia. As scholars have pointed out, popular histories of Burma largely center on the Japanese invasion of 1941-42 and on the modern history of Myanmar’s independence with its repressive military dictatorships of Ne Win and Saw Maung. Compared to critical histories, documentations and discourse on the colonial experience of India, there is a conspicuous absence of critical analysis and archival studies on the hundred-and-twenty years in which the British waged three brutal wars and pursued violent and repressive order in Burma.
One of the common and likely arguments accounting for an absence of early documentation is that during the British colonial period, Burma was considered a backwater where few journalists or scholars ventured. George Orwell, who was born in the Bengal region, was one of the rare writers who chose to return to that edge of the empire, employed as a police officer for the British raj. Orwell’s essays and his novel Burmese Days stand out as some of the few insights into the brutalities of the colonial experience in Burma.
Another argument put forth for the dearth of colonial and post-colonial scholarship in Burma relates to the repressive nature of the modern military dictatorship and the fact that for nearly thirty years, modern Myanmar was a closed society, making it difficult to pursue oral histories, investigate archives and to conduct field research. It has also been argued that from the British or Western perspective, Burma was largely seen as a province of India, and events there were written in to India’s colonial history. But rationales aside, the fact remains that the archives of the British colonial rule in Burma remain largely untapped and the violence of the British efforts to annex Burma and to maintain rule there, is only recently becoming researched and documented. In a few rare studies, the broader experience of what has traditionally been referred to as the British “pacification” of Burma is finally being examined with consideration to what constituted that “pacification,” namely a hundred-and-twenty year history of Burmese opposition, dissent and violent resistance to British colonization.
One of the most important themes in Orwell’s essay “Shooting an Elephant” is the resent that the Burmese people had for their colonizers and for the “white man” in general. In describing this atmosphere of resent, Orwell makes an important note of the ridicule on the part of the Burmese Buddhist priests. He describes the priest’s resent as being the most acute, persistent and personally aggravating. One recent article by Jordan Carlyle Winfield on “Buddhism and Insurrection in Burma 1886-1890” provides relevant background for Orwell’s otherwise unexplained observation. In his article, Winfield uncovers vital archives, detailing the central role of Buddhism in opposition to British rule after the British abolished the Burmese monarchy in 1886 and attempted to brutally repress any semblance of Burmese national identity in the broader society. By showing the intricate connection between Buddhism and Burmese national identity prior to British rule, Winfield sheds light on the integral position of Buddhism in resistance to British colonialism.
Other recent works are further beginning to uncover that nature and experience of pre-colonial Burmese identity. Still, there are so far only a few scholarly works, such as Michael Aung-Thwin’s “British Pacification of Burma: Order without Meaning,” that work to uncover the British Empire’s involved and bloody process of repressing Burmese identity.
Works Cited
Aung-Thwin, Michael. “The British "Pacification" of Burma: Order without Meaning” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies Vol. 16, No. 2 Sep., 1985, pp. 245-26. Cambridge UP Winfield, Jordan Carlyle. “Buddhism and Insurrection in Burma, 1886–1890” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society V:3 July, 2010, pp. 345-367. Cambridge UP
