The River of Lost Footsteps: A Personal History of Burma (25 page)

Then one day a new king took the throne in a bloody coup, and soon U Mya Yit and his sons and their families and indeed the entire Court of Ava, in their white and pink silk headdresses and velvet slippers, were told to gather their belongings and with tens of thousands of others, on oxcarts, ponies, and elephant back, journey upriver, to a brand-new capital, Mandalay.

Notes – 6: WAR

1
. Myint-U,
The Making of Modern Burma
, 13–15.

2
. On the Manipur and Assam campaigns, see Gangmumei Kabui,
History of Manipur,
vol. 1,
Precolonial Period
(New Delhi, 1991), 194–291; S. L. Baruah, A
Comprehensive History of Assam
(New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 1985), 220–369.

3
. Quoted in Dorothy Woodman,
The Making of Burma
(London: Cresset Press, 1962), 64.

4
. Political and Secret Correspondence with India, Bengal: Secret and Political (341), India Office Records, the British Library, 5 August 1826.

5
. On the First Anglo-Burmese War, see especially J. J. Snodgrass,
The Burmese War
(London: J. Murray, 1827); see also Anna Allott,
The End of the First Anglo-Burmese War: The Burmese Chronicle Account of How the 1826 Treaty of Yandabo Was Negotiated
(Bangkok: Chulalongkorn University Press, 1994); George Ludgate Bruce,
The Burma Wars 1824–1884
(London: Hart Davis, MacGibbon, 1973); W. S. Desai, “Events at the Court and Capital of Ava During the First Anglo-Burmese War,”
Journal of the Burma Research Society
27:1 (1937), 1–14; C. M. Enriquez, “Bandula—A Burmese Soldier,”
Journal of the Burma Research
Society
11 (1921), 158–62.

6
. Chris Bayly,
Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), chapter 3.

7
. Snodgrass,
The Burmese War
, 16.

8
. Ibid., 102–103.

9
. Maj. Enriquez, “Bandula—A Burmese Soldier,” 158–62.

10
.
The Lonely Planet Guide to Myanmar (Burma)
(Victoria, Australia: Lonely Planet Publications, 2002), 245.

11
. Yule,
Narrative of the Mission to the Court of Ava
, 151. He was referring to Amarapura a few years later, but as the entire population was moved from Ava to the new royal city, the Muslim population, which he estimated at around nine thousand in Amarapura, must have been generally the same.

12
. V. C. Scott O’Connor,
Mandalay and Other Cities of the Past in Burma
(London: Hutchinson & Co., 1907), 110.

SEVEN

MANDALAY

Burma’s last kings in the middle decades of the nineteenth century design ambitious plans to reform their governments and preserve the country’s independence

L
ike Sarmarkand or Zanzibar, Mandalay is one of those names that evoke a sense of far-flung exoticism, of a climate different from Europe, outlandish dress, strange smells, and unchanging customs. Most people are then surprised to learn that Mandalay is not very old, that it is in fact quite young, having been built in the same year that Macy’s department store first opened its doors to customers in downtown Manhattan.

In a way the connection of Mandalay with something old is not altogether wrong. Mandalay conformed to a pattern, and that pattern was set a long time ago. The descriptions we have of cities in the Irrawaddy Valley from early medieval times would have seemed remarkably familiar to visitors to Mandalay in the later part of the nineteenth century: the high square walls, the Buddhist monasteries, the palace buildings at the very center. Recent aerial photography
¹
shows evidence of dozens of little walled cities like this—some with names recognizable in Burmese legend—now lost underground or in thick jungle but once the domain of elaborately costumed chiefs aspiring to conform to a certain type and live in the prescribed style.

By the time the first Europeans arrived in Burma, the model had been cast, and in this way Mandalay was a replica or at least a subtle variant of past royal citadels, the same twelve gates, the same nine-tiered roofs of the principal throne hall. When there was a change, like the oblong rather than square shape of Pegu, it was a conscious attempt
to veer from the norm rather than a misunderstanding of what was expected.

Even the buildings and building materials were the same, meaning that they were not only the same type or design, but the actual same thing, moved from capital to new capital. One imagines that the same incredibly long and straight teak beams today at Mandalay once served the same function at Amarapura and even at Ava long ago. The British saw a nomadic spirit in all this; this was an exaggeration, but the taking apart of the dark wooden palaces, moving them by men and animals over dusty roads, and setting them back up just as they were before, is perhaps not altogether unlike the folding and unfolding of the great tent cities of desert khans.

In another way it is the newness of Mandalay that is important to note. The Burmese like new things. One can travel the length and breadth of the country and be hard pressed to find a single nonreligious structure more than a hundred years old. To a large extent this is of course the result of war and weather. But there is also no special value in living in an old house with some history or aristocratic connections; the pukka house is a brand-new house and not a refurbished one. Most dwellings are (and were) simple constructions. They are generally made of some wood, bamboo, and thatch, and people would tear down their homes and reconstruct them every few years so that they looked as recently made as possible. This inclination, deeply held, extended later on to more solid structures as well. Whereas in the West shop owners will take pride in a sign proclaiming the age of their building (
BUILT IN
1791), in Burma the opposite is often true. The original dates on a colonial-era building (
BUILT IN
1921) will be hidden under coats of white paint, and a new sign might instead proclaim the year of the most recent repair.

And so Mandalay was also an attempt at freshness. It was in many respects a very modern project, an attempt to fit new ideas and new concepts into a purposely old form, in order to achieve a new beginning. It tried to say that custom and tradition were important but could be remade to serve in a new environment and that Burma’s past would help it engage with a very troubling future. When, on the muggy day of 16 July 1858, King Mindon was carried in a gem-encrusted palanquin by retainers, men of known blood and exact rank, in a grand procession clockwise around his new domain, then seated himself on his Lion
Throne to the sound of a distant orchestra, he was hoping that traditional Burma would find itself a place in the modern world.
²

*

When the idea of Mandalay was first coming to light in the middle years of the 1850s, the world was going through a period of far-reaching change and political restlessness. The decade saw considerable advances in science and technology. The production of steel was revolutionized by the Bessemer process, the first transatlantic cables were laid, and Charles Darwin published his
Origin of Species
to instant acclaim. Much of America was enjoying an era of sustained economic prosperity, as trains pulled west to the gold rush in California and as millions of hopeful Irish and German immigrants disembarked from famine and unrest in Europe.

For the British, long decades of Indian expansion were only momentarily checked by the Great Mutiny of 1857, a passionate rebellion across the northern plains that led first to the collapse of the Raj in Lucknow and Kanpur and then to a bloody and vengeful reconquest, the overthrow of the last Mughal king, and the replacement of the East India Company with direct administration from London. Atrocities on both sides were to leave lasting scars and new thinking about colonial relationships.

Earlier in the decade, in 1852, a second Anglo-Burmese War, briefer than the first, had led again to an unambiguous British victory and the loss of more Burmese territory. Whereas the first was the result of aggression by the Burmese as well as British expansion, in this one the blame was entirely with Calcutta. It started with an incident: The governor of Rangoon fined the captains of two British ships for alleged customs violations. And then there was an ultimatum in which Lord Dalhousie, the governor-general of India, demanded that the Burmese rescind the fine and sack the offending governor. The Burmese government, aware of what might be in store, quickly accepted. But then the British naval officer on the scene, Commodore George Lambert (the “Combustible Commodore”), went ahead and blockaded the entire coastline anyway, without any additional provocation.
³
Dalhousie, though furious with Lambert, then surmised that war was inevitable and decided to demand one million rupees, with the justification that this was the amount the British had already spent preparing for war. And finally,
without even waiting for a Burmese response, the British seized Rangoon and other port towns in the south.

The Burmese were drawn into a war they neither wanted nor were ready for. The army was led by the lord of Dabayin, son of the Maha Bandula and a career military man. But despite an energetic resistance at Pegu, thirty years of technological advance on the British side and few improvements on the Burmese side meant that the defenders had little hope.

The fighting dragged on and effectively ended only when a revolution at the Court of Ava overthrew the incumbent king and placed the prince of Mindon, a half brother of the king’s and the future builder of Mandalay, on the Konbaung throne. In the dark days of the second war, when defeat was again staring them in the face, those inclined to face reality banded together around the thirty-nine-year-old prince, earning him the animosity of the more conservative and militant faction then in charge. Rumors circulated, and as British troops pushed north, Mindon fled north to his ancestral home at Shwebo and raised the standard of revolt.

He was accompanied by his brother the prince of Kanaung as well as many armed retainers. More men were recruited and organized, and before long, along the banks of the Irrawaddy, they were able to smash the loyalist troops sent out against them. When they then appeared on the outskirts of Ava, at the head of their new army, their pennants flying against the low blue green hills in the clear November light, the nobility, not wishing for more bloodshed, changed sides. Two of the court’s most powerful ministers, the lords of Kyaukmaw and Yenangyaung, convinced the Household Guards to stand down. The gates were thrown open, and Mindon and Kanaung entered the great teak ramparts unopposed. It was more a coup than anything else, and now a new generation was in charge.

*

By 1853 the old men of the once sprawling Burmese empire had finally retired from the chambers of government and were being replaced by a younger generation that had grown up under the shadow of English power. The older men included military men like the accomplished general Mingyi Maha Minhla Mingkaung, a cavalry officer who had commanded all Burmese forces in Manipur and Assam in the 1810s
and had gone on to be a deputy of Bandula’s during the first English war. However much they may have tried, it would have been difficult for these men, fueled by memories of earlier conquests and martial pride, to grasp Burma’s new position.

But there were also others who did try to learn new things and who made possible the burst of reformist activity that would soon follow. The lord of Myawaddy, for example, best known in Burma today as a man of letters, was also famous in his own time for his beautiful works of music and drama and especially his translations of the Javanese epic
Enao
. He was a soldier as well and an all-around scholar-administrator, and he came from a line of courtiers more than two hundred years old. Schooled at the Parama Monastery near Ava, he rose to the rank of minister while at the same time making a name as both a distinguished artist and musician and a brave soldier. In the war against the English he had been the commander of the left on the Arakan frontier and had seen firsthand the destructive power and discipline of the East India Company’s army.