BURMAH. 



81 



ter and Minister of the Interior; Dr, Stransky, 

 Minister of Foreign Affairs ; Nachevich, Min- 

 ister of Finance; Mutknroff, Minister of War; 

 Zivkoff, Minister of Instruction; Stoiloff, Min- 

 ister of Justice. 



BURMAH, formerly the kingdom of Ava, in 

 Farther India, now a province of the Brit- 

 ish Empire, administered by a Chief Com- 

 missioner under the Viceroy of India. Lower 

 Bunnah, hitherto known as British Burmah, 

 comprises the provinces of Arakan, Irrawaddy, 

 Tenasserim, and Pegu, the first three of which 

 were conquered in 1824, and the last-named in 

 1852. Upper Burmah was formerly incorpo- 

 rated in the British Empire by the proclama- 

 tion of the Viceroy, on Jan. 1, 1886, after the 

 defeat of the King's forces on the Irrawaddy, 

 the capture of the capital, Mandalay, and the 

 deposition of Thebaw, the last King of Ava. 

 The area of Lower Burmah is 87,220 square 

 miles. Its population in 1881 was 3,736,771. 

 Upper Burmah has an area of about 210,000 

 square miles, and in the neighborhood of 

 4,000,000 inhabitants. 



The Subjugation of Bnrmah. Only about 10,- 

 000 troops composed the expeditionary force 

 that broke through Thebaw's river-defenses 

 with ease, captured the capital, and led the 

 King into captivity. The cost of the expedi- 

 tion did not exceed $750,000. For a month 

 after the British were seated in Mandalay the 

 country was tranquil, and the conquest was 

 generally regarded with complacency, because 

 it had rid the country of an incompetent and 

 unpopular monarch. The absence of all cen- 

 tral authority soon resulted in an increase of 

 village robberies and dakoity. The disbanded 

 soldiery of the King had no way of living ex- 

 cept by plunder. The disturbance and devasta- 

 tion of the invasion had reduced many of the 

 villagers to the same necessity. The Alaungpra 

 princes, who had been released from confine- 

 ment by the British, gathered small armies, 

 and attempted to set up their rule in parts of 

 the country that were not held by British 

 troops, appointing civil governors and collect- 

 ing taxes. The English civil commissioners, of 

 whom three were left, each with a small mili- 

 tary force, at different points on the Irrawaddy 

 below Mandalay, were successful at first in in- 

 troducing order in their districts and in secur- 

 ing the submission of the local Woons or gov- 

 ernors ; yet, as soon as the Alaungpra pretend- 

 ers appeared in the field, the allegiance of the 

 native officials was given to them, the British 

 were everywhere attacked, and the rule of the 

 district officers was circumscribed within the 

 cantonments of their soldiers, who now vied 

 with the Burmese marauders in ravaging the 

 country. At this point the Ming-woon, or cen- 

 tral council, was reinstated in authority at 

 Mandalay, and instantly there was a cessation 

 of disorder, but it soon broke out again when 

 the British still delayed appointing a successor 

 to Thebaw, the members of the Ming-woon 

 themselves secretly embracing the cause of one 

 VOL. xxvii. 6 A 



or the other of the pretenders. The policy 

 of hesitation had the effect of dividing the al- 

 legiance of the Burmans between the different 

 aspirants to the throne, each of whom hoped 

 by gaining a large following and establishing 

 his power over a wide district to induce the 

 conquerors to select him for the succession. 

 The abolition of their sacred monarchy, and 

 the subjection to a foreign yoke, did not enter 

 into the conception of the Burmans. When at 

 last British sovereignty was proclaimed, the 

 rival factions were unable to unite under the 

 standard of any one prince, and the English 

 were able to cope with the universal revolt by 

 attacking the leaders in their separate districts, 

 many of them weakened by intestine wars. 



In the valley of the Irrawaddy, below Manda- 

 lay, a robber chief named Bo-Swe or Boshway, 

 who had long been a source of annoyance to 

 the British on the river and along the frontier, 

 gathered the strongest body of insurgents. By 

 the end of August, 1886, he held the entire 

 country west of the Irrawaddy, except a small 

 strip on the river. The deputy commissioner 

 of the district, Mr. Phayre, was killed in action. 

 East of the Irrawaddy, bands of robbers in- 

 fested British as well as Upper Burmah. Naval 

 launches on the Sittang river was attacked, 

 villages were plundered, Englishmen killed, 

 and even in the large trading town of Ningyan 

 robberies were committed and houses burned 

 almost under the eyes of the British soldiers. 

 In the fertile and populous region between Ye- 

 methen and Mandalay, the Minzaing or Myen- 

 tsein prince, a brother of Thebaw, unfurled his 

 banner. Not only did the people in this dis- 

 trict, which has been called the garden of Bur- 

 mah, accept the rule of the youthful pretender, 

 and pay him tribute, but insurgent leaders in 

 other parts of the country fought in his name, 

 and he even counted among his adherents 

 members of the central council and the gov- 

 ernors of many districts. The chief, Boh-cho, 

 who received from the pretender the title of 

 governor of Pugan, contested with the English 

 deputy-commissioner the control of that dis- 

 trict, which had at first been most submissive 

 to the conquerors. He collected revenue from 

 many villages, and burned those that were 

 friendly to the English. A chief named Tok- 

 kyan, with a following of 2,000 men, carried 

 his raids into the same district, in which also a 

 marauder named Nga-kway, with a band of 

 1,500, also levied contributions, and another 

 leader named Aung-din practiced dakoity. In 

 the south of the district an area of 1,000 square 

 miles was held by Waya-byin, a partisan lead- 

 er, while on its borders hovered the Kanhle 

 prince with 2,500 fighting men. North of 

 Mandalay, in the country between the Chind- 

 win and the Irrawaddy, the brigand Hla-oo 

 held undisputed sway, except in some of the 

 towns, like Mingin, where the captive employes 

 of the Burmah and Bombay Trading Corpora- 

 tion were delivered up to the British by the 

 Woon. In the same region a number of Along- 



