Colonial Burma Research Articles

Seeking ‘A Fair Field’ for Women in the Legal Profession: Pioneering Women Lawyers from Burma of 1924-1935

The enactment of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act in 1919 tore down a significant gender barrier and opened doors of the once exclusively male legal profession in the United Kingdom. This article focuses on its early beneficiaries in Burma, a less studied colony of the Empire in the late 1920s and early 1930s. It traces the first four women barristers from colonial Burma, and their odyssey to gain tradecraft and skills through seeking legal education at the Inns of Court in London. It evaluates their performances at the Bar Examination and explores the challenges they faced as they beat a path into the traditionally male-dominated legal profession. Finally, the paper shows how these pioneering women barristers were able to utilise the fruits of their legal education to further the cause of promoting gender equality upon their return to Burma. However, their professional success also reveals the persistence of gender and racial hierarchies across the Empire despite ongoing legal reformation and political activism, as they were subjected to confrontations and discriminations throughout their career.

Partners in Empire? Co-colonialism and the Rise of Anti-Indian Nationalism in Burma, 1930–1938

ABSTRACT On 28 July 1938, anti-Indian, Islamophobic riots broke out countrywide in colonial Burma for the first time. Scholars have argued that the rapid, extensive, and non-assimilationist nature of Indian immigration to Burma led to anti-Indian prejudice, but this approach does not explain why freeing Burma from India seemed to be more important to Burmese nationalists in the 1930s than freeing Burma from Britain. In this essay, I argue that Indian elites were acting as colonisers, or ‘co-colonialists,’ in Burma. Unlike in any other colony in the British Empire, it was Indian elites that controlled the majority of the capital and land in Burma and they used their administrative power to ensure that it remained that way by appropriating racialised language from Europeans. However, right-wing Burmese nationalists used the entire Indian immigrant community as a scapegoat, leading to working class Indians being wrongly targeted for political and economic issues caused by the elites. This argument demonstrates how anti-immigrant nationalism serves only to divide by race rather than to challenge systemic power. It shows how anti-Indian Islamophobia became a fundamental part of Burmese nationalism in light of the present-day Rohingya crisis. It also reshapes the way historians view colonialism by demonstrating that non-white elites could sometimes work within empire to become colonisers themselves.

Imperialist shame and indigenous guilt: George Orwell’s writings on Burma

ABSTRACTIn literary studies, the concepts of ‘shame’ and ‘guilt’ are often associated with sentimentalism, passive agency or politics of victimhood. By drawing upon the recent ‘affective turn’ in cultural theory, this essay uncovers the unavoidable collusion and complicity between what I call ‘imperialist shame’ and ‘indigenous guilt’ in George Orwell’s writings on Burma – ‘Shooting an Elephant’, ‘A Hanging’ and Burmese Days – that sustain the relationships of dominance and subservience in colonial Burma. Existing readings of Orwell’s writings on Burma have tended to emphasise its pseudo-critical treatment of imperialism, and its liminal positioning between imperialism and anti-colonialism. This essay contends that shame, guilt and their micro-political trajectories such as ‘narcissistic shame’, ‘residual guilt’ and ‘shameless guilt’ serve as the affective triggers of Orwell’s ambivalence towards imperialism.

Prome, Burma—How a Village in Colonial Burma Became the Global Epicenter of Scientific Forestry and Impacted the Founding of the United States Forest Service

Prome, Burma—How a Village in Colonial Burma Became the Global Epicenter of Scientific Forestry and Impacted the Founding of the United States Forest Service

Historical Geography of Forestry and Forest Culture in Sub-Himalayan West Bengal, 1757-2015

Re-examining a range of archival data and information regarding colonial forestry in the state of West Bengal, India, it has been found that the colonial period was the clear-cut turning point of the forest landscape in terms of environmental changes of the state. In West Bengal, the British colonial rulers were in a highly dominating position; and they had implemented one single model of forest management throughout the Indian subcontinent including the Bengal Presidency. The primary objective of the present study is to understand the changing nature of colonial forest landscape through plantation (Sal, Tea, and Cinchona) activities and the establishment of forest villages through Taungya process in the sub-Himalayan West Bengal from 1757 to 1947. In particular, this study aims to examine as to how the colonial plantation activities changed the forest landscape of this particular region. It also examines civil society movement based on forest resource rights and problems in the implementation of the Forest Right Act (2006) in the sub-Himalayan West Bengal till 2015, since independence. The colonial forest management authority was more interested in the plantation and cultivation of trees with high timber values compared to the natural forest. For this purpose, the saplings of Teak, Mahogany, Sisso were supplied to different parts of Bengal province to increase the timber productions. In 1886, for the first time in the Indian forest history, an area of about 15,5,399.29 sq.km was demarcated as Reserved Forest which included the whole western Dooars region located on the right bank of the river Teesta in the northern part of West Bengal. It was the starting point of 'scientific' forest management in the then Bengal Presidency or present West Bengal. The Taungya system of scientific forest management was first initiated in the Bengal Presidency in colonial India after colonial Burma (Myanmar). The system has changed the traditional cultivation practice within the forest land. Due to the Taungya system, 168 forest villages were established in the Himalayan foothills of Bengal. And since India’s independence in 1947, West Bengal has witnessed a number of civil society movements linked to the welfare of poor forest villagers demanding the forest resources rights, for example, the Jangal Mahal movement. The Forest Right Act (2007) has also created conflicts in different parts of the study area. In a nutshell, rapid exploitation of forest resources along with trading monopoly of forest management by the state Forest Department has done historical injustice to the people of sub-Himalayan West Bengal.

Metamorphosis: The Rice Boom, Environmental Transformation, and the Problem of Truncation in Colonial Lower Burma, 1850–1940

Metamorphosis: The Rice Boom, Environmental Transformation, and the Problem of Truncation in Colonial Lower Burma, 1850–1940

Chinese in Colonial Burma: A Migrant Community in a Multiethnic State

Chinese in Colonial Burma: A Migrant Community in a Multiethnic State

‘The Great White Chief’: the abolition of slavery in colonial Burma, 1826–1935

ABSTRACTThis article looks at the history of British anti-slavery thought and public policy in colonial Burma from the 1820s until the abolition of slavery in Burma’s highland regions in the 1920s. It argues that abolition in Burma during the 1920s can only be understood by examining the ways in which British definitions of indigenous slavery and colonial territoriality evolved over the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The article demonstrates that while anti-slavery thought and imperial expansion were entangled during the modern period, questions about security and territory were also critical to how British officials considered and enacted abolition.

Adulteration of pure native blood by aliens? mixed race kapya in colonial and post-Colonial Myanmar

ABSTRACTColonization may be viewed not only as loss of sovereignty and territory but also of ‘purity’ of a native race to an alien power. After the British colonized Burma in the late nineteenth century, they brought in Chinese and Indians to the sparsely populated colony as labour for new administrative and economic activities. Intermarriage, mainly between native Burmese women and men of alien races – British, European, Chinese and Indian – was thus inevitable. Mixed-race peoples – kapya in Burmese – were then born out of these relationships, and their identities became a key political issue in colonial Burma. Importantly, all natives, foreigners, and kapya were British subjects at that time. Independent Burma from 1948 through 1962 was not expressly anti-foreigner/kapya; working to naturalize those who had overstayed or remained. However, the Ne Win government from 1962 through 1988 was openly against ex-foreigner and kapya citizens, passing a new citizenship act in 1982 to downgrade their citizenship to a second class tier. The Myanmar Citizenship Law (1982), which remains in force, has downgraded the legal, political and social stature of ex-foreigner and kapya citizens. A more problematic and racist term thway-nhaw or ‘adulterated’ race has come to the fore, being used in official law-like language in recent years and highlighting the racist roots of the Myanmar Citizenship Law.

Chinese in Colonial Burma: A Migrant Community in A Multiethnic State, written by Li Yi

Chinese in Colonial Burma: A Migrant Community in A Multiethnic State, written by Li Yi

Pali Scholarship “in Its Truest Sense” in Burma: The Multiple Trajectories in Colonial Deployments of Religion

Why are histories of colonialism and religious transformation in Southeast Asia so often told as inextricably interrelated? Why were Buddhist movements identified as both the locus for resistance to colonialism and the central means of constructing colonial modernity? Part of the reason lies in how religion served as both a European technique of colonial governmentality and a local repository of techniques for comprehending and responding to change. More than this, religion seems to have offered a multivalent medium for a variety of innovations. Pali examinations were central to Buddhist reform in colonial Burma at the turn of the twentieth century but also fomented conflicts between the colonial state and monastic factions over the purpose of language study. However, beyond such conflicts, Pali examinations proved fertile grounds for Buddhist laypeople to experiment with multiple interpretations of what Buddhist modernity might mean in Burma.

Chinese in Colonial Burma: A Migrant Community in a Multiethnic State by Yi Li

Chinese in Colonial Burma: A Migrant Community in a Multiethnic State by Yi Li

Whiteness, Masculinity and the Ambivalent Embodiment of ‘British Justice’ in Colonial Burma

When British judges in colonial South Asia attempted to perform their duties with detached objectivity they were also performatively enacting a particular construction of imperial white masculinity. This was an ambivalent embodied enactment. When the figure of the objective judge was confronted by critics as white and male, its claims to be objective were under threat. As a result of this ambivalence, it was an imperial white masculinity that could not name itself. Instead, it was a white masculinity constructed through a differentiation that was made with feminised, non-white bodies that were deemed partial.

Book Review: Alicia Turner, Saving Buddhism: The Impermanence of Religion in Colonial Burma

Book Review: Alicia Turner, <i>Saving Buddhism: The Impermanence of Religion in Colonial Burma</i>

Editor's Note

Editor's Note Jane M Ferguson It is an incredible honour to receive the editorship baton for the Journal of Burma Studies. I feel tremendous gratitude to the previous and inspiring editors: Alicia Turner and Lilian Handlin, for their amazing work, skill, and leadership in operating the Journal. They have been crucial in making The Journal an integral component in my own education, as surely as that of countless others. With this baton, I know my colleagues fully expect me to run with it. As such, and in dedication to the Journal's interdisciplinary scope and long-standing commitment to grounded, empirical research, I am pleased to introduce the research articles in this December issue: the articles comprise a tour d'horizon of disarmament, war retreat, railways and supernatural power in the region, particularly engaged with material from Chin, Karen, and Tai places and perspectives. In his article, "Disarmament and Resistance in Colonial Burma: A Case Study of the Chin Hills" Pum Khan Pau offers an historically embedded examination of the tensions involved in colonial programs to divest Chin people of their guns. With a nuanced approach to the ethnic diversity in the region, Pau presents ethnographic detail regarding the social and symbolic value that Chin people attached to these weapons. Of interest as well are the technical aspects regarding the flint-lock, local manufacture of ammunition, and the ability of Chins to repair and maintain their weapons. As we learn, the guns were an important technology for hunting, warfare, as well as cultural practices. Because of this symbolic role, disarmament programs could be interpreted as a threat to autonomy, dignity and masculinity. Turning to a different, yet still complex military relationship between the British and another one of Burma's ethnic nationalities, the Karen, Giulia Garbagni offers new insights in her article, "'The Friends of the Burma Hill People': Lt. Col. John Cromarty Tulloch and the British Support of the Karen Independence Movement, 1947-1952." Making use of data [End Page i] from recently de-classified personnel files and wartime memoirs, Garbagni argues that political relations embedded in and manifest by colonial mindsets should be taken into consideration when understanding the motives of John Cromarty Tulloch and his formation of the clandestine network, "The Friends of the Burma Hill People." Whereas other discussions have tended chalk his motives up to facile Cold War anti-communism, this new evidence suggests there is more to Tulloch's motives, his own bravado and idiosyncrasies notwithstanding. Tracking colonial developments to the present, Lindsay Stubbs' article "Railways in Shan State" offers readers a detailed description and analysis of four railway lines in Southern Shan State. Importantly, the author describes their current states of use, disuse, as well as the ways in which the former SPDC government had sought to promote railway development. Physical evidence shows poor follow-through on these plans. In meticulous detail, we learn, too, of how despite poor ballasting and low-quality tracks, railway operators continue to use the lines by driving the trains slowly; evidence of local resilience in the face of inadequate infrastructure. Also, we learn about the challenges of the Shan State, but through the lens of railway development; trains cannot operate on certain high gradients, and steep terrain requires multiple switchbacks. The focus on railways offers an opportunity to consider not only the economic role of the vehicles of infrastructure, but their relationship with the political history and future of the region. From Stubbs' discussion of the potential material power of railways, we switch to supernatural power imbued in material textiles. Susan Conway's article takes readers to another area of Shan/Thailand. We visit with specialised craftspeople, srā in numerous locations, including Taunggyi and Kengtung in the Shan State, and across the border into former Lan Na Kingdoms in Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai. We learn how different srā infuse cloth (and skin) with supernatural power, which can carry a positive or negative charge, as it were. Images of these mystical materials indicate letters, animals, [End Page ii] as well as phonetic exclamations and animal calls. The discussion of the creation and transfer of supernatural power to these material patterns is complemented by an array of...

The God Girl

The God Girl Jacqueline Schaalje (bio) Keywords spirituality, fiction, Jacqueline Schaalje Her father handed her to us. "No kiss," he said, a few times. "No touch." The diminutive old man, bent from hard work, gave his daughter a stern look that I couldn't quite decipher except that it made me vaguely uncomfortable. However, the promise of no kissing was easy to give. "No kissing and no touching," I said solemnly. I gave the man a cash advance and said we'd start filming in another ten days. We would call on Laksmi on a Wednesday. The toothless mother kept out of the logrolling. She and her daughter were sitting on the porch, shelling peas on a sheet; a baby and a school notebook were lying abandoned on the other end. Laksmi bounded off the steps to accompany me to the car, where the driver was still listening to what sounded like weepy love songs. I had to be careful not to laugh at the girl's awkward way of walking, with her knees bent, and each time she put a step forward she would first lift her thigh and then put the leg forward. But if we didn't deviate from the script we would not film her walking. As my window was framing her and we said goodbye, I was all pleased with myself for finding such a beauty. Her long hennaed hair was combed back so her burning black eyes would shoot forward like a furious snake. Her face had stronger features than most Nepali beauties, with their bland round pouts. When we drove away, she threw her arms in the air, and in the falling dusk her silhouette turned black. I could still see her smile. It was gratifying, almost in a spiritual way, seeing someone so innocent and happy. Earlier that day we had run screen tests. While the camera circled her angled face in different kinds of light, we discovered she had just the right proud but not disdainful look that could easily be mistaken for old-fashioned ill comfort around Westerners. This was a look we needed for George Orwell's story "Shooting an Elephant" from 1936, which was set in colonial Burma, now Myanmar. Andy Gonzalez, our director, had decided he didn't want to film there because the locals there were already used to white people, and because prices had shot up. Nepal had [End Page 530] elephants, too, and was cheaper, not least because it was disaster-prone. Before we went to her house, I asked Laksmi whether her father was comfortable with her in a short movie. She nodded. Maybe he didn't like losing her out of sight for a few weeks, but they could use the money. I said she could invite him to the set whenever he wanted, if it was important to him. The parental permission was an essential element in a collaboration with a female actor, or any other kind of employee, as Nepali unmarried girls and women were the property of the father, and the fathers took this quite literally. I must add here that before we set up filming in Nepal, we had thoroughly informed ourselves about its pros and cons with Geraldine Bleeker, who had just finished shooting a documentary about female trafficking, albeit in the Kathmandu area (we were a little more to the south, in the wildlife park of Chitwan). And so we felt the local culture might hopefully hold fewer surprises for us. In the time I had left before filming began, and while the sets were prepared, I went on a relaxed trek around Dhulikhel, which seemed to be relatively risk-free. In the week since I had started working, in August, a landslide in another district had covered thirty-two people. Amazingly, the tiny mountain resort hadn't changed one bit since I was there in my twenties. I met the same stargazed hippies who rolled out of bed to meditate when the first sun rays kiss the Himalaya. The eateries and B and Bs were still primitive and dirt cheap, although one new luxury hotel had arisen and another one was on its way...

Disarmament and Resistance in Colonial Burma: A Case Study of the Chin Hills

The paper is an in-depth analysis of the disarmament policy carried out by the British in the Chin Hills in the late nineteenth century. Situated within the larger context of British colonial policy across the world, disarmament, from colonial perspective, was not only important but a desirable and feasible goal of the so-called 'pacification' process. However, the harsh measures often adopted by colonial rulers to achieve its goal remain highly questionable and in most cases, they backfired. The paper argues that the British disarmament policy in the Chin Hills backfired and was strongly resisted by the Chin people not simply because they wanted to save their guns, but it they saw it as a struggle against colonial expansion into the hill tract. It further argues that though the British had successfully confiscated guns from the Chins and regulated possession of guns through licensing, secret re-armament among the Chins clearly reveals that they had not reconciled to colonial administration.

Milk to Mandalay: dairy consumption, animal history and the political geography of colonial Burma

British imperial writers in Burma regularly moaned about milk. They complained about the difficulties they faced acquiring it in the colony. They were selfconscious about how their consumption of it might be viewed by the Burmese population, who predominantly did not drink cow's milk. And they worried about the quality of the supply provided by itinerant Indian dairymen, who they viewed as being neglectful and insanitary. Through these concerns the absence of milk became a marker of the colony's difference from the rest of the Raj. At the same time, the colonial government came to recognise the importance of locally-bred working cattle for Burmese agriculture. In their attempts to protect these valuable nonhuman labourers, Indian dairy herds were represented as a problem breed that threatened the indigenous stock. The threat from foreign cattle coalesced around epizootic disease and uncontrolled crossbreeding. These concerns were coterminous with official and nationalist anxieties about the Indian human population in the colony. Building on recent scholarship uncovering more-than-human geographies, this article reveals how colonial policies designed to improve the dairy industry and protect Burmese cattle contributed to the material and imaginative territorialisation of Burma, and its eventual separation from British India.

Governing the Chinese in Multi-Ethnic Colonial Burma between the 1890s and 1920s

This article analyses the development of the governing mechanism in British Burma relating to one particular ethnic group, the Chinese, between the 1890s and 1920s. Recognizing its limited knowledge of China and the Chinese, British Burma relied in the early days on experiences from other colonies to govern its Chinese immigrants and to handle Sino-Burmese border issues. The transfer of colonial knowledge, however, proved insufficient when the state witnessed increasing localization at the turn of the twentieth century. Interlocutors and communal elites therefore replaced imperial expatriates to form the main governing body, and in turn to some extent undermined and reconstructed colonial knowledge, as well as practice.

Revisiting the Nineteenth-Century Marketplace, and the Chinese Community in Moulmein

This article examines the Chinese community in Moulmein, a cosmopolitan center of a newly established British colony after the First Anglo-Burmese War (1824–26), in the nineteenth century, and investigates interchanges and influences facilitated by the first port city in colonial Burma. As Chinese merchants and workers established commercial, social and religious networks during the formative years of British Burma, they interacted with their multi-ethnic neighbors within and beyond colonial market places. However, if the early experience of these Chinese migrants suggests a porous ethnic boundary, the impression of China and the Chinese dominating the European public sphere in Moulmein indicates a gap between the real-life Moulmein Chinese, which was encountered every day, and the imaginary China as a potential market to an eastern-looking British Empire, especially during the Opium War (1839–42). Taking the Moulmein Chinese as a case study, this paper investigates the limitation of J.S. Furnivall’s “marketplace” where people “mix but do not combine.” Instead of a reflection of the colonial markets operating rigidly along ethnic lines, this paper argues, Furnivall’s mid-twentieth-century observation is a direct result of colonial discourse and policies emphasizing ethnic segregation and stereotypes, when the discrepancies between real-life and imaginary China and the Chinese were further enhanced and eventually dominated the later years of British rule in Burma.