Americans and the First Anglo-Burmese War

Abstract

Under Alaungpaya (1752-1760) and his successors in the last dynasty of Burmese kings, the Burmese Empire expanded from Tenasserim to Assam. The Burmese became convinced that their arms and strategy were invincible. Merchant adventurers during this period and before gave exaggerated accounts of the power and wealth of Burma. This period of expansion was concurrent with the rise of British power in India. Thus British India, along its eastern frontiers, had as a neighbor a state powerful and ambitious, glorying in its recent conquest of Siam and its defeat of the Chinese invasion of 1769. By 1824 a series of acts of aggression by the Burmese along the Chittagong frontier between India and Burma resulted in a declaration of war between the two powers. This war was the first of three Anglo-Burmese wars in which Burmese independence was extinguished. At the outbreak of the war there were seven American citizens living in the territory of the Burmese king. A Mr. and Mrs. Wade and a Mr. and Mrs. Hough were in Rangoon, Doctor Jonathan Price and Mr. and Mrs. Adoniram Judson were in Ava. At this time there were probably more Americans than British-born subjects in Burma. All the Americans were in the employ of the American Baptist mission board. Though small in number, the character of the service performed by these Americans, acting as interpreters and peacemakers between the Burmese and the English, is of such importance that it would seem to justify a description of their activities. When the British transports sailed up the Rangoon River May 1o, 1834, after a rendezvous in Port Cornwallis in the