Burma
History
Britain conquered
Burma over a period of 62 years (1824-1886) and
incorporated it into its Indian Empire. Burma was
administered as a province of India until 1937 when it
became a separate, self-governing colony; independence
from the Commonwealth was attained in 1948. Gen. NE WIN
dominated the government from 1962 to 1988, first as
military ruler, then as self-appointed president, and
later as political kingpin. In September 1988, the
military deposed NE WIN and established a new ruling
junta. Despite multiparty legislative elections in 1990
that resulted in the main opposition party - the
National League for Democracy (NLD) - winning a
landslide victory, the junta refused to hand over power.
NLD leader and Nobel Peace Prize recipient AUNG SAN SUU
KYI, who was under house arrest from 1989 to 1995 and
2000 to 2002, was imprisoned in May 2003 and
subsequently transferred to house arrest. She was
finally released in November 2010. After the ruling
junta in August 2007 unexpectedly increased fuel prices,
tens of thousands of Burmese marched in protest, led by
prodemocracy activists and Buddhist monks. In late
September 2007, the government brutally suppressed the
protests, killing at least 13 people and arresting
thousands for participating in the demonstrations. Since
then, the regime has continued to raid homes and
monasteries and arrest persons suspected of
participating in the pro-democracy protests. Burma in
early May 2008 was struck by Cyclone Nargis which
official estimates claimed left over 80,000 dead and
50,000 injured. Despite this tragedy, the junta
proceeded with its May constitutional referendum, the
first vote in Burma since 1990. Parliamentary elections
held in November 2010, considered flawed by many in the
international community, saw the junta's Union
Solidarity and Development Party garnering over 70
percent of the seats. Parliament is constitutionally
mandated to convene within 90 days of the election; the
president, two vice presidents, and ministers will be
selected at that time.
After the First Burmese War, the Ava kingdom ceded the
provinces of Manipur, Tenassarim, and Arakan to the
British. Rangoon and southern Burma were incorporated into
British India in 1853. All of Burma came directly or
indirectly under British India in 1886 after the Third
Burmese War and the fall of Mandalay. Burma was
administered as a province of British India until 1937
when it became a separate, self-governing colony. The
country became independent from the United Kingdom on 4
January 1948, as the "Union of Burma".
It became the "Socialist Republic of the Union
of Burma" on 4 January 1974, before reverting to
the "Union of Burma" on 23 September
1988. On 18 June 1989, the State Law and Order Restoration
Council (SLORC) adopted the name "Union of
Myanmar" for English transliteration. This
controversial name change in English, while accepted in
the UN and in many countries, is not recognised by the
Burmese democracy movement and by nations such as Canada,
the United Kingdom and the United States.
Early
history
Archaeological evidence suggests that civilisation in
the region which now forms Burma is quite old. The oldest
archaeological find was of cave paintings and a Holocene
assemblage in a hunter-gatherer cave site in Padah Lin in
Shan State.
The Mon people are thought to be the earliest group to
migrate into the lower Ayeyarwady valley, and by the
mid-10th century BC were dominant in southern Burma.
The Tibeto-Burman speaking Pyu arrived later in the 1st
century BC, and established several city states of
which Sri Ksetra was the most powerful in central
Ayeyarwady valley. The Mon and Pyu kingdoms were an active
overland trade route between India and China. The Pyu
kingdoms entered a period of rapid decline in early 9th
century AD when the powerful kingdom of Nanzhao (in
present-day Yunnan) invaded the Ayeyarwady valley several
times.
Bagan
(10441287)
Tibeto-Burman speaking Burmans, or the Bamar, began
migrating to the Ayeyarwady valley from present-day
Yunnan's Nanzhao kingdom starting in 7th century AD.
Filling the power gap left by the Pyu, the Burmans
established a small kingdom centred in Bagan in 849. But
it was not until the reign of King Anawrahta (10441077)
that Bagan's influence expanded throughout much of
present-day Burma.
After Anawrahta's capture of the Mon capital of Thaton
in 1057, the Burmans adopted Theravada Buddhism from the
Mons. The Burmese script was created, based on the Mon
script, during the reign of King Kyanzittha (10841112).
Prosperous from trade, Bagan kings built many magnificent
temples and pagodas throughout the country many of
which can still be seen today.
Bagan's power slowly waned in 13th century. Kublai
Khan's Mongol forces invaded northern Burma starting in
1277, and sacked Bagan city itself in 1287. Bagan's over
two century reign of Ayeyarwady valley and its periphery
was over.
Small
kingdoms (12871531)
The Mongols could not stay for long in the searing
Ayeyarwady valley. But the Tai-Shan people from Yunnan who
came down with the Mongols fanned out to the Ayeyarwady
valley, Shan states, Laos, Siam and Assam, and became
powerful players in Southeast Asia.
The Bagan empire was irreparably broken up into several
small kingdoms:
- The Burman kingdom of Ava or Innwa (13641555),
the successor state to three smaller kingdoms founded
by Burmanised Shan kings, controlling Upper Burma
(without the Shan states)
- The Mon kingdom of Hanthawady Pegu or Bago
(12871540), founded by a Mon-ised Shan King Wareru
(12871306), controlling Lower Burma (without
Taninthayi).
- The Rakhine kingdom of Mrauk U (14341784), in the
west.
- Several Shan states in the Shan hills in the east
and the Kachin Hills in the north while the
north-western frontier of present Chin hills still
disconnected yet.
This period was characterised by constant warfare
between Ava and Bago, and to a lesser extent, Ava and the
Shans. Ava briefly controlled Rakhine (13791430) and
came close to defeating Bago a few times, but could never
quite reassemble the lost empire. Nevertheless, Burmese
culture entered a golden age. Hanthawady Bago prospered.
Bago's Queen Shin Saw Bu (14531472) raised the gilded
Shwedagon Pagoda to its present height.
By the late-15th century, constant warfare had left Ava
greatly weakened. Its peripheral areas became either
independent or autonomous. In 1486, King Minkyinyo
(14861531) of Taungoo broke away from Ava and
established a small independent kingdom. In 1527, Mohnyin
(Shan: Mong Yang) Shans finally captured Ava, upsetting
the delicate power balance that had existed for nearly two
centuries. The Shans would rule Upper Burma until 1555.
Taungoo
(15311752)
Reinforced by fleeing Burmans from Ava, the minor
Burman kingdom of Taungoo under its young, ambitious king
Tabinshwehti (15311551) defeated the more powerful Mon
kingdom at Bago, reunifying all of Lower Burma by 1540.
Tabinshwehti's successor King Bayinnaung (15511581)
would go on to conquer Manipur (1556), Shan states (1557),
Chiang Mai (1557), Ayutthaya (1564, 1569) and Lan Xang
(1574), bringing most of western South East Asia under his
rule. Preparing to invade Rakhine, a maritime power
controlling the entire coastline west of Rakhine Yoma, up
to Chittagong province in Bengal.
Bayinnaung's massive empire unravelled soon after his
death in 1581. Ayutthaya Siamese had driven out the
Burmese by 1593 and went on to take Tanintharyi. In 1599,
Rakhine forces aided by Portuguese mercenaries sacked the
kingdom's capital Bago. Chief Portuguese mercenary Filipe
de Brito e Nicote (Burmese: Nga Zinga) promptly
rebelled against his Rakhine masters and established
Portuguese rule in Thanlyin (Syriam), then the most
important seaport in Burma. The country was in chaos.
The Burmese under King Anaukpetlun (16051628)
regrouped and defeated the Portuguese in 1611. Anaukpetlun
reestablished a smaller reconstituted kingdom based in Ava
covering Upper Burma, Lower Burma and Shan states (but
without Rakhine or Taninthayi). After the reign of King
Thalun (16291648), who rebuilt the war-torn country,
the kingdom experienced a slow and steady decline for the
next 100 years. The Mons successfully rebelled starting in
1740 with French help and Siamese encouragement, broke
away Lower Burma by 1747, and finally put an end to the
House of Taungoo in 1752 when they took Ava.
Konbaung
(17521885)
King Alaungpaya (17521760), established the Konbaung
Dynasty in Shwebo in 1752. He founded Yangon in 1755. By
his death in 1760, Alaungpaya had reunified the country.
In 1767, King Hsinbyushin (17631777) sacked Ayutthya.
The Qing Dynasty of China invaded four times from 1765 to
1769 without success. The Chinese invasions allowed the
new Siamese kingdom based in Bangkok to repel the Burmese
out of Siam by the late 1770s.
King Bodawpaya (17821819) failed repeatedly to
reconquer Siam in 1780s and 1790s. Bodawpaya did manage to
capture the western kingdom of Rakhine, which had been
largely independent since the fall of Bagan, in 1784.
Bodawpaya also formally annexed Manipur, a rebellion-prone
protectorate, in 1813.
King Bagyidaw's (18191837) general Maha Bandula put
down a rebellion in Manipur in 1819 and captured then
independent kingdom of Assam in 1819 (again in 1821). The
new conquests brought the Burmese adjacent to the British
India. The British defeated the Burmese in the First
Anglo-Burmese War (18241826). Burma had to cede Assam,
Manipur, Rakhine (Arakan) and Tanintharyi (Tenessarim).
In 1852, the British attacked a much weakened Burma
during a Burmese palace power struggle. After the Second
Anglo-Burmese War, which lasted 3 months, the British had
captured the remaining coastal provinces: Ayeyarwady,
Yangon and Bago, naming the territories as Lower Burma.
King Mindon (18531878) founded Mandalay in 1859 and
made it his capital. He skilfully navigated the growing
threats posed by the competing interests of Britain and
France. In the process, Mindon had to renounce Kayah (Karenni)
states in 1875. His successor, King Thibaw (18781885),
was largely ineffectual. In 1885, the British, alarmed by
the French conquest of neighbouring Laos, occupied Upper
Burma. The Third Anglo-Burmese War (1885) lasted a mere
one month insofar as capturing the capital Mandalay was
concerned. The Burmese royal family was exiled to , India.
British forces spent at least another four years pacifying
the country not only in the Burmese heartland but also
in the Shan, Chin and Kachin hill areas. By some accounts,
minor insurrections did not end until 1896.
Colonial
era (18861948)
The British conquest of Burma began in 1824 in response
to a Burmese attempt to invade India. By 1886, and after
two further wars, Britain had incorporated the entire
country into the British Raj. Burma was administered as a
province of British India until 1937 when it became a
separate, self-governing colony. To stimulate trade and
facilitate changes, the British brought in Indians and
Chinese, who quickly displaced the Burmese in urban areas.
To this day Rangoon and Mandalay have large ethnic Indian
populations. Railways and schools were built, as well as a
large number of prisons, including the infamous Insein
Prison, then and now used for political prisoners. Burmese
resentment was strong and was vented in violent riots that
paralysed Yangon on occasion all the way until the 1930s.
Much of the discontent was caused by a disrespect for
Burmese culture and traditions, for example, what the
British termed the Shoe Question: the colonisers' refusal
to remove their shoes upon entering Buddhist temples or
other holy places. In October 1919, Eindawya Pagoda in
Mandalay was the scene of violence when tempers flared
after scandalised Buddhist monks attempted to physically
expel a group of shoe-wearing British visitors. The leader
of the monks was later sentenced to life imprisonment for
attempted murder. Such incidents inspired the Burmese
resistance to use Buddhism as a rallying point for their
cause. Buddhist monks became the vanguards of the
independence movement, and many died while protesting. One
monk-turned-martyr was U Wisara, who died in prison after
a 166-day hunger strike to protest a rule that forbade him
from wearing his Buddhist robes while imprisoned.
Eric Blair (George Orwell) served in the Indian
Imperial Police in Burma for five years; his experience
yielded the novel Burmese Days (1934) and the
essays "A Hanging" (1931) and "Shooting an
Elephant" (1936). An earlier writer with the same
expansive career path was Saki. During the colonial
period, intermarriage between European male settlers and
Burmese women, as well as between Anglo-Indians (who
arrived with the British) and Burmese caused the birth of
the Anglo-Burmese community. This influential community
was to dominate the country during colonial rule and
through the mid-1960s.
On 1 April 1937, Burma became a separately administered
territory, independent of the Indian administration. The
vote for keeping Burma in India, or as a separate colony
"khwe-yay-twe-yay" divided the populace, and
laid the groundwork for the insurgencies to come after
independence. In the 1940s, the Thirty Comrades, commanded
by Aung San, founded the Burma Independence Army. The
Thirty Comrades received training in Japan.
During World War II, Burma became a major front-line in
the Southeast Asian Theatre. The British administration
collapsed ahead of the advancing Japanese troops, jails
and asylums were opened and Rangoon was deserted except
for the many Anglo-Burmese and Indians who remained at
their posts. A stream of some 300,000 refugees fled across
the jungles into India; known as 'The Trek', all but
30,000 of those 300,000 arrived in India. Initially the
Japanese-led Burma Campaign succeeded and the British were
expelled from most of Burma, but the British
counter-attacked using primarily troops of the British
Indian Army. By July 1945, the British had retaken the
country.
Although many Burmese fought initially for the
Japanese, some Burmese, mostly from the ethnic minorities,
also served in the British Burma Army. In 1943, the Chin
Levies and Kachin Levies were formed in the border
districts of Burma still under British administration. The
Burma Rifles fought as part of the Chindits under General
Orde Wingate from 1943 to 1945. Later in the war, the
Americans created American-Kachin Rangers who also fought
against the Japanese. Many others fought with the British
Special Operations Executive. The Burma Independence Army
under the command of Aung San and the Arakan National Army
fought with the Japanese from 19421944, but switched
allegiance to the Allied side in 1945.
British soldiers waged a guerrilla war against Japanese
forces in Burma. Chindits were formed into long range
penetration groups trained to operate deep behind Japanese
lines. A similar American unit, Merrill's Marauders,
followed the Chindits into the jungle in 1943. Although
roughly 150,000 Japanese were to be killed in Burma, only
1,700 were taken prisoner, of whom only 400 could be
described as physically fit.
In 1947, Aung San became Deputy Chairman of the
Executive Council of Burma, a transitional government. But
in July 1947, political rivals assassinated Aung San and
several cabinet members.
Democratic
republic (19481962)
On 4 January 1948, the nation became an independent
republic, named the Union of Burma, with Sao Shwe
Thaik as its first President and U Nu as its first Prime
Minister. Unlike most other former British colonies and
overseas territories, it did not become a member of the
Commonwealth. A bicameral parliament was formed,
consisting of a Chamber of Deputies and a Chamber of
Nationalities, and multi-party elections were held in
19511952, 1956 and 1960.
The geographical area Burma encompasses today can be
traced to the Panglong Agreement, which combined Burma
Proper, which consisted of Lower Burma and Upper Burma,
and the Frontier Areas, which had been administered
separately by the British.
In 1961, U Thant, then the Union of Burma's Permanent
Representative to the United Nations and former Secretary
to the Prime Minister, was elected Secretary-General of
the United Nations; he was the first non-Westerner to head
any international organisation and would serve as UN
Secretary-General for ten years. Among the Burmese to work
at the UN when he was Secretary-General was a young Aung
San Suu Kyi, who went on to become winner of the 1991
Nobel Peace Prize.
Rule
by military junta (1962present)
Ne
Win year
Democratic rule ended in 1962 when General Ne Win led a
military coup d'ιtat. He ruled for nearly 26 years and
pursued policies under the rubric of the Burmese Way to
Socialism. Between 1962 and 1974, Burma was ruled by a
revolutionary council headed by the general, and almost
all aspects of society (business, media, production) were
nationalized or brought under government control (even the
Boy Scouts). In an effort to consolidate power, Ne Win and
many other top generals resigned from the military and
took civilian posts and, from 1974, instituted elections
in a one-party system.
Between 1974 and 1988, Burma was effectively ruled by
Ne Win through the Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP),
which from 1964 until 1988 was the sole political party.
During this period, Burma became one of the world's most
impoverished countries. The Burmese Way to Socialism
combined Soviet-style nationalisation and central planning
with the governmental implementation of superstitious
beliefs. Criticism was scathing, such as an article
published in a February 1974 issue of Newsweek
magazine describing the Burmese Way to Socialism as 'an
amalgam of Buddhist and Marxist illogic'.
Almost from the beginning, there were sporadic protests
against the military rule, many of which were organised by
students, and these were almost always violently
suppressed by the government. On 7 July 1962, the
government broke up demonstrations at Rangoon University,
killing 15 students. In 1974, the military violently
suppressed anti-government protests at the funeral of U
Thant. Student protests in 1975, 1976 and 1977 were
quickly suppressed by overwhelming force.
Ne Win's rise to power in 1962 and his relentless
persecution of "resident aliens" (immigrant
groups not recognised as citizens of the Union of Burma)
led to an exodus/expulsion of some 300,000 Burmese
Indians. They migrated to escape racial discrimination and
wholesale nationalisation of private enterprise a few
years later in 1964.The Anglo-Burmese at this time either
fled the country or changed their names and blended in
with the broader Burmese society.
A new constitution of the Socialist Republic of the
Union of Burma was adopted in 1974.
Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims fled Burma
and many refugees inundated neighbouring Bangladesh
including 200,000 in 1978 as a result of the King Dragon
operation in Arakan.
Uprising
of 1988 and the SPDC
In 1988, unrest over economic mismanagement and
political oppression by the government led to widespread
pro-democracy demonstrations throughout the country known
as the 8888 Uprising. Security forces killed thousands of
demonstrators, and General Saw Maung staged a coup d'ιtat
and formed the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC).
In 1989, SLORC declared martial law after widespread
protests. The military government finalised plans for
People's Assembly elections on 31 May 1989. SLORC changed
the country's official English name from the
"Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma" to
the "Union of Myanmar" in 1989.
In May 1990, the government held free elections for the
first time in almost 30 years. The National League for
Democracy (NLD), the party of Aung San Suu Kyi, won 392
out of a total 489 seats(i.e., 80% of the seats), but the
election results were annulled by SLORC, which refused to
step down. Led by Than Shwe since 1992, the military
regime has made cease-fire agreements with most ethnic
guerilla groups. In 1992, SLORC unveiled plans to create a
new constitution through the National Convention, which
began 9 January 1993. In 1997, the State Law and Order
Restoration Council was renamed the State Peace and
Development Council (SPDC).
On 23 June 1997, Burma was admitted into the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The
National Convention continues to convene and adjourn. Many
major political parties, particularly the NLD, have been
absent or excluded, and little progress has been made. On
27 March 2006, the military junta, which had moved the
national capital from Yangon to a site near Pyinmana in
November 2005, officially named the new capital Naypyidaw,
meaning "city of the kings". The CIA World
Factbook, however, still considers the capital to be
Rangoon.
In November 2006, the International Labour Organization
(ILO) announced it will be seeking at the International
Criminal Court "to prosecute members of the ruling
Myanmar junta for crimes against humanity" over the
continuous forced labour of its citizens by the military.
According to the ILO, an estimated 800,000 people are
subject to forced labour in Myanmar.
The 2007 Burmese anti-government protests were a series
of anti-government protests that started in Burma on 15
August 2007. The immediate cause of the protests was
mainly the unannounced decision of the ruling junta, the
State Peace and Development Council, to remove fuel
subsidies which caused the price of diesel and petrol to
suddenly rise as much as double, and the price of
compressed natural gas for buses to increase fivefold in
less than a week. The protest demonstrations were at first
dealt with quickly and harshly by the junta, with dozens
of protesters arrested and detained. Starting 18
September, the protests were led by thousands of Buddhist
monks, and those protests were allowed to proceed until a
renewed government crackdown on September 26. During the
crack-down, there were rumours of disagreement within the
Burmese armed forces, but none were confirmed. Some news
reports referred to the protests as the Saffron
Revolution.
During the 2007 anti-government protests a significant
role was played by Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the
opposition to the Burmese military government. Aung San
Suu Kyi was under periods of house arrest from 1989-2010.
In September 2007, hundreds of monks paid respects to her
at the gate of her home, which was the first time in four
years that people were able to see her in public. She was
then given a second public appearance on 29 September,
when she was allowed to leave house arrest briefly and
meet with a UN envoy trying to persuade the junta to ease
its crackdown against a pro-democracy uprising, to which
the Myanmar government reluctantly agreed.
On 7 February 2008, SPDC announced that a referendum
for the Constitution would be held and Elections by 2010.
The Burmese constitutional referendum, 2008 was held on 10
May and promised a "discipline-flourishing
democracy" for the country in the future.
World governments remain divided on how to deal with
the military junta. Calls for further sanctions by Canada,
the United Kingdom, the United States and France are
opposed by neighbouring countries; in particular, China
has stated its belief that "sanctions or pressure
will not help to solve the issue". There is some
disagreement over whether sanctions are the most effective
approach to dealing with the junta, such as from a Cato
Institute study and from prominent Burmese such as Thant
Myint-U (a former senior UN official and Cambridge
historian), who have opined that sanctions may have caused
more harm than good to the Burmese people.
In 1950, the Karen became the largest of 20 minority
groups participating in an insurgency against the
government of Burma. The conflict continues as of 2009.
In 2004, the BBC, citing aid agencies,
estimates that up to 200,000 Karen have been driven from
their homes during decades of war, with 120,000 more
refugees from Burma, mostly Karen, living in refugee camps
on the Thai side of the border. Many accuse the military
government of Burma of ethnic cleansing. As a result of
the ongoing war in minority group areas, more than two
million people have fled Burma to Thailand.
On 3 May 2008, Cyclone Nargis devastated the country
when winds of up to 215 km/h (135 mph) touched
land in the densely populated, rice-farming delta of the
Irrawaddy Division. It was the worst natural disaster in
Burmese history. Reports estimated that more than 200,000
people were dead or missing, and damage totaled to 10
billion dollars (USD). The World Food Programme reported,
"Some villages have been almost totally eradicated
and vast rice-growing areas are wiped out."The United
Nations projects that as many as 1 million were left
homeless; and the World Health Organization "has
received reports of malaria outbreaks in the
worst-affected area." Yet in the critical days
following this disaster, Burma's isolationist regime
hindered recovery efforts by delaying the entry of United
Nations planes delivering medicine, food, and other
supplies. The government's action was described by the
United Nations as "unprecedented."
On 4 May 2009, an American, John Yettaw, allegedly swam
across the lake uninvited to the house of Aung San Suu Kyi
and remained there for two nights, resulting in the arrest
of Yettaw and Suu Kyi, who were held in Insein Prison near
Yangon. As a result, Suu Kyi is being charged with
violating the terms of her house arrest, and faces a
sentence of up to five years. Suu Kyi's house arrest was
due to end on 27 May 2009. On 11 August 2009, Suu Kyi was
sentenced to an additional 18 months of house arrest
following conviction on charges of violating the terms of
her previous incarceration. British Prime Minister Gordon
Brown stated, "This is a purely political sentence
designed to prevent her from taking part in the regime's
planned elections next year." On August 12, 2009,
U.S. Senator Jim Webb negotiated Yettaw's release on
humanitarian grounds because of Yettaw's health. Myanmar
authorities commuted Yettaw's sentence in half, suspending
the remaining three-and-a-half years upon Yettaw's
deportation. On August 14, Senator Webb flew with Yettaw
to Thailand.
In early August 2009, a conflict known as the Kokang
incident broke out in Shan State in northern Burma. For
several weeks, junta troops fought against ethnic
minorities including the Han Chinese, Va, and Kachin. From
812 August, the first days of the conflict, as many as
10,000 Burmese civilians fled to Yunnan province in
neighbouring China.
On 13 August 2010, Junta announces the election date
for 2010 is 7 November.
In October, 2010, a new flag was adopted and the
official name of the country changed to "Republic of
the Union of Myanmar", replacing the old "Union
of Myanmar" from 1989.
On November 9, 2010, Myanmar's ruling junta stated that
the Union Solidarity and Development Party won 80% of the
votes. This claim is widely disputed by pro-democracy
opposition groups, asserting that the military regime
engaged in rampant fraud to achieve its result.
On November 13, 2010 the military authorities in Burma
released the pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.
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