Virtually nothing is known of Myanmar's prehistoric
inhabitants, though archaeological evidence suggests the
area has been inhabited since at least 2500 BC. It may
originally have been sparsely populated by Negritos or
proto_Malays who are thought to have inhabited the lowland
and coastal areas of Myanmar (Burma), Thailand and Malaysia.
The remnants of this race appear today in only a few
isolated pockets in the interior of the Thai-Malay Peninsula
and on a sprinkling of islands in the Andaman Sea. If these
Negritos were indeed Myanmar's original inhabitants, one
theory holds that they were displaced by peoples who
migrated into the area from other parts of South-East Asia.
At any rate, Myanmar's nation-building history really begins
with the struggle for supremacy between the various peoples
who inhabited different regions of the country around a
thousand years ago.
A group knowns as the Pyu --- possibly hailing from the
Tibeto-Burman plateau or from India - created city-states in
Central Myanmar at Beikthano, Hanlin and Thayekhittaya (Sir
Ksetra) during the second Christian millennium. Little is
known about these people; the arts and architecture they
left behind indicate they practised Theravada and Mahayana
Buddhism mixed with Hinduism, and that they had their own
alphabet. The Pyu were dispersed or enslaved by Yunnanese
invaders during the 10th century AD, leaving Central Myanmar
without any clear political succession.
Around the 6th century the Mon - who may have originated in
eastern India or who may have originated in eastern India or
who may have been indigenous to mainland South - East Asia -
settled the fertile lowlands stretching from the Ayeyarwady
(Irrawaddy) River delta across Thailand (then Siam) to
Western Cambodia. Inscriptions left behind by the
civilisation they developed referred to this area as
Suvannabhumi (Golden Land). According to official Burmese
history, the Mon capital occupied the area around Thaton in
present-day Myanmar, though outside scholars argue more
convincingly that Suvannabhumi was centred in Thailand's
Nakhon Pathom.
Enter the Bamar, or Burmans, who came south into Myanmar
from somewhere in the eastern Himalays around the 8th or 9th
century. Once the Pyu were vanquished by the Yunnanese, the
Bamar supplanted the Pyu in Central Myanmar, a region that
has since been the true cultural heartland of Myanmar.
Shortly after they took over the central region, the Bamar
came into conflict with the Mon in a long and complicated
struggle for control of the whole country.By the time the
Bamar had irrevocably ended up on top, the Mon had largely
merged with Bamar culture or, bearing in mind Mon culture
the Bamar had absorbed, vice versa.
Great Kings of Bagan
(Pagan)
It is thought that Bagan (Pagan) was actually founded on
the banks of the Ayeyarwady River in 849, but it entered its
golden period 200 years later when Anawrahta ascended the
throne in 1044. Anawrahta consolidated the kingdom, drawing
several regions around it into satellite or vassal status
and creating the first centralised government the country
now called Myanmar had ever known. Virtually all written
history pertaining to Myanmar begins with this era;
legendary Bagan kings from the 2nd century AD are probably
no more than invented personages.
Initially animist, the Bamar had picked up a hybrid form of
Buddhism - part Tantric, part Mahayana - in their migration
to Myanmar. When the Mon king Manuha of Thaton, to the
south, would not cooperate willingly with Anawrahta's
request for their Tripitaka (the holy canon of Theravada
Buddhism), Anawrahta marched south and conquered Thaton in
1057). He took back not just the Bddhist scriptures, but
also the king and most of his court. This injection of Mon
culture inspired a phenomenal burst of energy from the Bamar,
Bagan quickly became a city of glorious temples and the
capital of the first Burmese kingdom to encompass virtually
all of present-day Myanmar. What we today identify as
'Burmese' is really a fusion of Mon and Bamar cultures that
came about at the height of the Bagan era .
Anawrahta was accidentally killed by a wild buffalo in 1077.
None of his successors had his vision or energy, and Bagan's
power declined slowly but steadily. Kyanzittha (1084-1113)
attempted to unify Myanmar's disparate peoples, and later
kings like Alaungsithu and Htilominlo built beautiful
shrines, but essentially Bagan reached its peak with
Anawratha.
Bagan's decline coincided with the rise to power of Kublai
Khan and his Tartars in the north. They invaded Myanmar from
Yunnan in China in 1287 and Bagan's rule collapsed before
the onslaught. Shan tribes from the hills to the east -
closely related to the Siamese - took the opportunity to
attack and grab a piece of the low country, while in the
south the Mon broke free of Bamar control to establish their
own kingdom once again.
New States Arise
For the next 250 years Myanmar remained in chaos. In the
south the Mon kingdom remained relatively stable, but in the
north there was continuous strife. Between the two, a weaker
Bamar kingdom was established at Taungoo, east of Pyay (Prome),
and it retained its independence by playing off one major
power against the other.
At first the Mon established their new capital close to the
present Thai border at Mottama (Martaban) near Mawlamyaing (Moulmein),
but after a series of skirmishes with the Siamese it was
shifted to Bago (Pegu), near Yangon (Rangoon) and the Mon
country became known as the kingdom of Hanthawady. Around
this time Myanmar received its first known European visitor.
Venetian trader Nicolo di Conti, who travelled along the
coast in 1435 and left behind brief accounts of Tanintharyi
(Tenasserim) and Rakhaing (Arakan).
In 1472 Dhammazedi, considered the greatest of the Bago
kings, came to the throne. A major Buddist revival took
place and the first diplomatic contact with Europeans was
made. During this time the great Shwedagon Paya in Yangon
began to assume itsw present form.
Meanwhile the Shan took over Upper Myanmar once again and
founded the Kingdom of Inwa (mistakenly called Ava by the
British) near present-day Mandaly in 1364. Along the western
coast the Rakhaing (a people living near the Indian border)
established Mrauk U (Myohaung), a Buddhist kingdom with
fields of temples to rival Bagan. Surprisingly, it was not
the establishment of Bago, Inwa or Mrauk U that was to prove
the catalyst for the reunification of Myanmar, but tiny
Taungoo, which had been founded by Bamar refugees from the
new Shan kingdoms.
In the 16th century a series of Taungoo kings extended their
power north, nearly to Inwa, then south, taking the Mon
kingdom and shifting their own capital to Bago. Their hold
was initially fragile, but in 1550 Bayinnaung came to the
throne, reunified all of Myanmar and defeated the
neighbouring Siamese so convincingly that it was many years
before the long-running friction between the Burmese and
Siamese re-emerged. Burmese historians sometimes refer to
this era as the Second Burmese Empire.
With Bayinnaung's death in 1581, this new Burmese kingdom
immediately went into Burmese kingdom immediately went into
decline; and when, in 1636, the capital was shifted north
from Bago to Inwa, the idea of a kingdom taking in all of
Myanmar was effectively renounced. Inwa was the capital of
Myanmar, but it was a long ay from the sea, so it was
effectively cut off from communication with the outside
world. This isolation eventually contributed to the conflict
with the British.
Final Kings of
Mandalay
In the 18th century the decline became serious as hill
tribes once more started to raid Central Myanmar, and the
Mon again broke away and established their own kingdom in
Bago. In 1752 the Mon took Inwa, but in the same year
Alaungpaya came to power in Shwebo, 80km north of Inwa,and
spent the next eight years rushing back and forth across
Myanmar - conquering, defeating and destroying all who
opposed him. He was the founder of the last Burmese dynasty
and it was his near-invincibility that later deluded the
Burmese into thinking they could take on the British.
Alaungpaya's son, Hsinbyushin, charged into Thailand for
good measure, and so thoroughly leveled the capital of
Ayuthaya thar the Siamese were forced to move south to their
present capital of Bangkok.Bodawpaya, who came to power in
1782, was also a son of Alaungpaya and managed to bring
Rakhaing (Arakan) back under Bamar control. This was to be
the direct cause of the first Anglo_Burmese conflict.
Rakhaing, the eastern coastal region of the Bay of Bengal,
had long been a border region between Myanmar and India its
people were a blend of Bamar and Indian races. Refugees from
Rakhaing fled into British India and from there planned to
recapture their country. This so irritated the Burmese that
they, in return, mounted raids across the border into
British territory. This did not make the officials of the
British Raj very happy.
At this time the British, Dutch and French were all vying
for power in the East, and all had established at least some
sort of contact with the Burmese. However, the Burmese
showed little interest in dealing with European foreigners
commercially. The British, increasingly worried about the
threat posed by French interests in the region, sought to
shore up their possessions in India by gaining some sort of
control or influence of the eastern side of the Bay of
Bengal. Border incidents in Rakhaing and Assam soon gave the
British the excuse they needed.
In 1819 Bagyidaw came to the throne in Myanmar. A hot
pursuit across the Assam border by Burmese court at Inwa
contributed to this disastrous (for the Burmese) war; but
there is little doubt that the British were more motivated
by geopolitical considerations than by concern for Assamese
refugees. After an inept, mismanaged campaign lasting two
years, the British finally forced the Burmese to surrender,
and imposed the Treaty of Yadanabon upon them. Under its
terms, Britain gained control of Rakhaing (Arakan) and
Tanintharyi (Tenasserim), and Myanmar had to pay alarge
reparation in silver to the British and accept a British
'resident' at Inwa. Within a few years, however, several
British residents managed to form reasonable relations with
Bagyidaw.
Unfortunately, Bagyidaw was followed by the much less
reasonable Tharawaddy Min, and he in turn by his even
crazier son, Bagan Min. It had long been the custom for a
new king to massacre all possible pretenders to the throne,
but Bagan Min took this policy to new extremes. In the first
two years of his reign 6000 people were executed. The
British resident had been forced to withdraw during
Tharawaddy's brief reign, and frontier incidents began to
flare up again. The British seized upon an extortion
incident in Yangon in 1852, during which two British ship
captains had allegedly been kidnapped by Burmese government
officials, in order to open hostilities in the Second Anglo
- Burmese War.
In fact, it's possible that this incident never actually
took place, and that the British were again motivated by the
necessity of protecting their Indian possessions. In any
case, most historians agree that this war was started on the
basis of a grossly exaggerated pretext by the British. It's
more likely that they realised what a bad deal they had made
in taking over Rakhaing and Tanintharyi, which were of
little practical or commercial use. Rather, they sought the
use of a suitable port, such as Yangon.
The British quickly took over Yangon, Mottama and Pathein (Bassein),
and marched north to Pyay. Unlike the first war, the British
conducted this campaign with stern efficiency, and
disorganised Burmese forces. After a series of skirmishes
and one sided battles, the war was over - this time, the
British annexed all of Lower Myanmar, which became a
province of India.
Bagan Min, now extremely unpopular, was deposed and Mindon
Min became king of Myanmar, or at least what remained of it,
in 1853. Mindon proved to be a wise realist who eventually
came to amicable terms with the British, yet cleverly
balanced their influence with that of other European (and
American) powers. During this period the industrial
revolution came to full flower in Europe, and Lower Myanmar
became an important and profitable part of the British
Empire due to its enormous teak resources and vast potential
for growing rice.
Unhappily for the Burmese, Mindon made one important mistake
- he did not adequately provide for a successor. When he
died in 1878, the new king, Thibaw Min, was propelled into
power by his ruthless wife and scheming mother-in-law.
Thibaw was so far down the list of possible successors that
the 'massacre of kinsmen' reached unheard-of heights, and in
the new age of the telegraph and steamship, the news soon
reached Europe in lurid detail. Thus European and British
attitudes towards the new king were tarnished from the
start.
Thibaw proved to be a totally ineffective ruler. Upper
Myanmar soon became a sorry scene as armed gangs and
ruthless officials vied with each other to extort money from
the hapless peasants. Enormous numbers of Burmese fled to
the stability of British Lower Myanmar, where tthere also
happened to be a great demand for labour for the new rice
trade.
Finally, in 1885, another Anglo-Burmese conflict flared up.
The British resident had again withdrawn from Mandalay, and
a petty dispute over the exploits of the Bombay Burmah
Trading Company was the excuse the British needed to send
gunborts north to Mandalay. In two weeks it was all over the
money Thibaw had thought was going into defence had actually
gone into corrupt officials pockets and the British took
Mandalay after only the most token resistance.
In order to stamp their authority upon Upper Myanmar, the
British undertook a brutal two year military campaign
throughout the region. Similar in execution to the Highland
Clearances of Scotland approximately a century earlier,
British forces ruthlessly crushed any signs of opposition,
killing many innocent civilians and destroying numerous
village.
British Period
Once again Myanmar was united, but this time with the
British as masters. To the British, Myanmar was just another
chunk of Asia that now had good fortune to be part of the
Raj. To the Burmese, the situation was not nearly so
pleasant: Upper Myanmar may have been only part of the whole
country, but it was the heartland of Myanmar; Thibaw might
have been a bad king, but he was a Burmese king.
Now Myanmar just a part of British India - and what was
worse, Indians, whom the Burmese had traditionally looked
down on, came flooding in with the British. As the swampy
delta of the south was turned into rice paddies, it was the
Indians who supplied the money to improve the land, and
those same Indians who came to own it when the less
commercially experienced Burmese proved unable to make it
pay or to pay for it. By 1930 half of Yangon's population
was Indian. As Myanmar's national income grew, the country
became increasingly dependent upon imports, and the profits
from rice cultivation were whisked out of the country to pay
for more and more imported goods.
The British applied direct rule only to the areas in which
Bamar were the majority Central Myanmar, Rakhaing and
Tanintharyi. The hill states belonging to the Chin, Kachin,
Shan, Kayin, Kayah were permitted to remain largely
autonomous, though officially part of the Raj. This
difference between direct and indirect rule has haunted
Myanmar's political history ever since.
Burmese nationalism grew, although it remained a shadow of
the movement in India, and in the 1920s and 1930s the
British were eventually forced to make a number of
concessions towards Myanmar's self-government. In 1937
Myanmar was separated from India, but internally the country
was torn by a struggle between opposing Burmese political
parties. There had also been a peasants uprising earlier in
the 1930s and sporadic outbursts of anti-Indian and
anti-Chinese violence.
WWII
Japanese-Burmese contact had been made well before Japan
entered WWII. Indeed Bogyoke Aung San, who had first made
his name through university-level political action and was
later to become the father figure of independent Burma, had
fled to the Japanese in 1940, following his arrest for
participation in the Burmese Communist Party (BCP). Aided by
the Burmese Independence Army (BIA), the Japanese army
marched into Myanmar within weeks of Pearl Habour and by
mid-1942 had driven the retreating British-Indian forces,
along with the Chinese Kuomintang (KMT) forces (which had
come to their aid), out of most of Myanmar. Japan declared
Myanmar an independent country and allowed Aung San and his
' 30 comrades' to create the Burma National Army (BNA). One
of the 30 was a Sino - Burmese native of Paungdale (near
Pyay) named Shu Maung, who took the nom de guerre Ne Win,
meaning Brilliant Like The Sun, Aung San took the position
of defence minister; Ne Win became chief of staff of the
BNA.
The Japanese were able to maintain Burmese political support
for only a short time before their harsh and arrogant
conduct managed to alienate The Burmese. Aung San expressed
his bitterness during his stay at Japan's 15th Army
headquarters in Maymyo (now Pyin Oo Lwin): I went to Japan
to save my people who were struggling like bullocks under
the British. But, now we are treated like dogs. We are far
from our hope of reaching the human stage, and even to get
back to the bullocks stage we need to struggle more.
The imaginative 'Chindit' anti-Japanese operation, mounted
by the Allies with air supplied troops behind enemy lines,
also encouraged further anti-Japanese feeling. Soon an
internal resistance movement sprang up, and towards the end
of the war the BNA hastily switched sides to the British.
The Allies prevailed at a cost of approximately 27,000
casualties; nearly 200,000 Japanese perished in the fierce,
protracted battles.
Independence
That Myanmar was heading rapidly towards independence
after the war was all too clear, but who should manage this
process was a different question. On 27 January 1947 British
Prime Minister Clement Attlee and General Aung San signed an
agreement on behalf of the UK and Burma respectively. The
Aung San - Attlee agreement stipulated that a constituent
assembly would be elected in April by, and consisting of,
Burma nationals only; that certain matters which had
previously been formally reserved for the British governor
would in future be brought before an executive council that
would function as an interim government; that the Burmese
army would come under the control of the interim government;
and that Burma would receive an interest-free loan of
approximately 8 million pounds sterling from the UK.
The executive council in consultation with non- Bamar
representatives, was to nominate a Frontier Areas Committee
composed of an equal number of members from Ministerial
Burma (British-dominated Burma) and the border states which
had had some degree of autonomy under the British. This
committee would determine ways for frontier peoples to
participate in the drafting of a constitution.
In February 1947 Aung San met with leaders from the Shan,
Chin and Kachin communities in Panglong, a township in the
Shan State. Together, they signed the famous Panglong
Agreement, guaranteeing Burma's ethnic minorities the
freedom to choose their own political destiny. Although
representatives from the Kayin, Kayah, Mon, Rakhaing and
many other ethnicities were noticeably absent from the
meeting, the agreement was broadly interpreted to mean that
it would apply to all ethnic communities in what the British
called the Frontier Areas.
When elections for a constiuent assembly were held on 9
April 1947, Aung San's Anit-Fascist People's Freedom League
(AFPEL) won an overwhelming 172 seats out of 255. The BCP
took seven seats, while the Bamar opposition led by U Saw
took three seats. Twenty-four seats were allotted to the
Kayin community, four seats to the Anglo-Burman community
and 45 seats to the Frontier Areas.
The British wanted a gradual transition, allowing time to
rebuild the shattered economy and political system before
the handover. Bogyoke Aung San wanted indepindence
immediately, because if given time, other political parties
could gain ground on his strong position at the close of the
war. He also wanted to establish a democratic, civilian
government :
We must make democracy the popular creed. We must try to
build up a free Burma in accordance with such a creed. If we
should fail to do this, our people are bound to suffer. If
democracy should fail the world cannot stand back and just
look on, and therefore Burma would one day, like Japan and
Germany, be despised. Democracy is the only ideology which
is consistent with freedom. It is also an ideology that
promotes and strengthens peace. It is therefore the only
ideology we should aim for.
However, Aung San's incredibly prophetic views didn't win
over his political opponents, and in late 1945 he made
another prediction:
How long do national heroes last? Not long in this country:
I do not give myself more than another eighteen months of
life.
Eighteen months and six says later, in July 1947,
32-year-old Aung San and six of his assistants were
assassinated in a plot ascribed to U Saw, a pre-war
political leader who had refused to sign the Aung San-Attlee
agreement that was to usher in Burmese independence. A few
conspiracy theorists speculate that General Ne Win may have
ordered the assassination, due to Aung San's plans to
demilitarise the government. However, Aung San's main source
of political support had been the BNA and Ne Win, and U Saw
- who favoured British-style capitalism and Bamar domination
rather than the national socialism and ethnic autonomy
espoused by Aung San - had more motive than anyone else in
the ongoing power conflict between Aung San and his various
political opponents.
U Saw apparently believed that his position as prime
minister in pre-WWII Myanmar would be reinstated if Aung San
and the AFPEL could be successfully thwarted.
While the world mourned a hero's death, Prime Minister
Attlee and Aung San's protege U Nu signed an agreement for
the transfer of power in October 1947. On 4 January 1948, at
an auspicious middle-of-the-night hour, Myanmar became
independent and left the British Commonwealth. As Aung San
had promised, the national presidency was given to a
representative from n ethnic minority group, and Sao Shwe
Thaike, a Shan leader, became the first president of the
Union of Burma.
Almost immediately, the new government was faced with the
complete disintegration of Myanmar. The hill tribe people,
who had supported the British and fought against the
Japanese throughout the war, were distrustful of the Bamar
majiority and went into armed opposition. The communists
withdrew from the government and attacked it. Muslims from
the Rakhaing area also opposed the new government. The Mon,
long thought to be totally integrated with the Burmese,
revolted. Assorted factions, private armies, WWII resistance
groups and plain mutineers further confused the picture.
In early 1949 almost the entire country was in the hands of
one rebel group or another, and even Yangon suffered
fighting in its suburbs. At one stage the government was on
the point of surrendering to the communist forces, but
gradually, and with particularly valuable assistance from
loyal hill tribe contingents, the government fought back,
and through 1950 and 1951 regained much of the country.
Although much of Myanmar was now at least tenuously under
government control, a new problem sprang up for the battered
Burmese. With the collapse of Chiang KaiShek's KMT forces
before Mao Zedong, the tattered remnants of his army
withdrew into Myanmar and mounted raids from Northern
Myanmar into Yunnan, the bordering Chinese communists, the
KMT decided to crave their own little fiefdom out of Burmese
territory. The Burmese government now found itself fighting
not only a mixed bag of rebels, communists, and gangs of
out-and-out brigands and dacoits (highwaymen), but also a
US-supported, anticommunist Chinese army. Amazing as it may
seem, while operating an embassy in Yangon and espousing
friendly relations with the new Burmese government, the USA
was also flying in supplies to the Chinese forces encamped
within Myanmar's borders; forces whose main source of income
was the cultivation of opium poppies for the production of
heroin!
