Abstract
Given its place in the Indian Ocean and in the history of the empire, the need for the recovery of British Burma is surprising. This subject has not really been studied systematically or comprehensively by either students devoted to the study of modern Burmese history or those whose focus is the British empire.1 In fact, what studies do exist are scattered, and in recent years the literature on the subject appears to have been dominated by regional and country specialists.2 Evidence of British presence in Myanmar abounds, even if some scholars would prefer not to see it.3 Nonetheless, it has been regional and national scholars who have laboured to make Burma’s key historical trajectories comprehensible. Yet they have almost exclusively done so without more than a passing reference to ways in which the country’s history fit into the broader themes of British and imperial history. It might be noted that the tendency of regional specialists to ignore the broader themes of imperial history is not confined to students of Southeast Asia or the British empire.4
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Notes
To provide one recent example: a wide ranging and highly significant study of the British Empire mentions Burma just once in 798 pages. See John Darwin, The Empire Project: The Rise and Fall of the British World System 1830–1970 (Cambridge, 2009)
and Michael Aung-Thwin and Maitrii Aung Thwin, A History of Myanmar Since Ancient Times: Traditions and Transformations (London, 2012).
For a different perception see: Michael W. Charney, A History of Modern Burma (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p.1.
See the observations by historians of the Ottoman empire: Jane Hathaway, The Arab Lands Under Ottoman Rule (Harlow, England, 2008), pp. 244–7;
Suraiya Faroqui, Subjects of the Sultan (London: I.B. Tauris, 2010), pp. 37–40.
Guy Lubeigt attributes this passage to Ni Ni Myint: Guy Lubeigt, “Introduction of Western Culture in Myanmar in the 19th century: from Civilian Acceptance to Religious Resistance” in Essays in Commemoration of the Golden Jubilee of The Myanmar Historical Commission (Yangon: Myanmar Historical Commission, 2005), p. 381.
Alicia Turner, Saving Buddhism: The Impermanence of Religion in Colonial Burma (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2014), pp. 120–33, 138.
Su Lin Lewis, “Between Orientalism and Nationalism: The Learned Society and the Making of Southeast Asia”, Modern Intellectual History, 10, 2 (2013), p. 354.
Neil A. Englehart, “Liberal Leviathan or Imperial Outpost? J.S. Furnivall on Colonial Rule in Burma”, Modern Asian Studies, 45, 4 (July 2011).
Helen G. Trager, Burma Through Alien Eyes (Bombay: Asian Publishing House, 1966).
John Nisbet, Burma Under British Rule—and Before. 2 vols. (Westminster: Archibald Constable and Company, 1901), v.
Thant Myint U, Where China Meets India: Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia (London: Faber and Faber, 2011), pp. 15–16.
Alleyne Ireland, The Province of Burma. 2 vols. (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin and Company, 1907).
Jonathan Saha, Law, Disorder and the Colonial State: Corruption in Burma c. 1900 (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), p. 25.
Scholarly attention might be well served by collecting polemics directed against ‘globetrotting’ because it might prove to be its own unique strand of travel writing. Anti-globetrotting meant more than ‘going off the beaten path’ because it implied a level of expertise about a place, which might be informed not only by direct experience, but by related reading and study. See James Buzard, The Beaten Track: European Tourism and the Ways to ‘Culture’ 1800–1918 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993)
and Stephen Keck, “Travel Writing About Hong Kong and Singapore” in Carmen Andras (ed.) New Directions in Travel Writing and Travel Studies (Aachen, 2010), pp. 154–68.
Gwendolen Trench Gascoigne, Among Pagodas and Fair Ladies: An Account of a Tour Through Burma (London: A.D. Innes & Co., 1896), p. 10.
Anon., A Dog’s Life, Told by the Dog (London: Henry J. Drane, 1909), p. 40.
Arjun Appadurai, “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Economy” in Theory, Culture and Society, 7 (1990), p. 296.
R.F. Johnston, From Peking to Mandalay: A Journey from North China to Burma through Tibetan Ssuch’uan and Yunnan (Originally published in 1908. Reprinted. Bangkok: White Lotus Press, 2001).
Andrew Marshall, The Trouser People: A Story of Burma In the Shadow of Empire (Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint, 2002), p. 53.
Sir James George Scott, Gazetteer of Upper Burma and the Shan States, 5 vols. (Rangoon: Government Printing, 1900).
Harold Fielding-Hall, The Soul of a People (London: Macmillan and Company, 1898); Thibaw’s Queen (London and New York: Harper and Brothers, 1899); Burmese Palace Tales (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1900); A People at School (London: Macmillan and Company, 1906).
Stephen L. Keck, “Another Look at ‘Thibaw’s Queen’: A Challenge To Colonial Historiography”, Essays in Commemoration of the Golden Jubilee of The Myanmar Historical Commission (Yangon: Myanmar Historical Commission, 2005), pp. 357–77.
V.C. Scott O’Connor, The Silken East. 2 vols. (London: Hutchison and Co., 1904)
and V.C. Scott O’Connor, Mandalay and Other Cities of the Past in Burma. (Originally published 1907. Reprinted. Bangkok: White Lotus Press, 1996).
Capt. C.M. Enriquez, F.R.G.S, A Burmese Enchantment (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink and Company, 1916)
and Capt. C.M. Enriquez, F.R.G.S., Burma, The Southern Shan States and Keng Tung (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink and Company, 1918).
Leslie Milne, Shans at Home: Burma’s Shan States in the Early 1900s (Originally published in 1910. Reprint. Bangkok: White Lotus Press, 2001)
and Leslie Milne, The Home of an Eastern Clan: A Study of the Palaungs of the Shan States (Originally published 1924. Reprinted. Bangkok: White Lotus Press, 2004).
Colonel Pollock and W.S. Thom, Wild Sports of Burma and Assam (London: Hurst and Blackett, Limited, 1900).
Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain: Epistemic Anxieties and Colonial Common Sense (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2010).
The following works which have appeared in this decade are indicative of the growing trend towards studying Myanmar’s colonial past: Atsuko Naono, State of Vaccination: The Fight Against Smallpox in Colonial Burma (Hyderabad: Orient Black Swan, 2009);
Maitrii Aung-Thwin, The Return of the Galon King: History, Law, and Rebellion in Colonial Burma (Athens, Ohio and Singapore: Ohio University Press and NUS Press, 2011);
Chie Ikeya, Refiguring Women, Colonialism, and Modernity in Burma (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2011);
Jonathan Saha, Law, Disorder and the Colonial State: Corruption in Burma c.1900 (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013);
Ashley Wright, Opium and Empire in Southeast Asia: Regulating Consumption in British Burma (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
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Keck, S.L. (2015). Introduction. In: British Burma in the New Century, 1895–1918. Britain and the World. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137364333_1
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