History of Burma (Myanmar) to 1886

Rick Schellen

            Not a lot is known about the prehistory of Burma (now known as Myanmar), given a lack of any documentation about the area prior to about 1000 AD. What is known is the constant struggle for dominance of three groups of people, a trend that has persisted to this very day.

It is believed that the Mons (also known as Talaings) may have been the first of three groups that worked their way gradually into Burma, settling in the central regions along the Thaniowin and Sittoung rivers, as well as along the eastern coast along the Bay of Bengal.  They emanated out of what is now Cambodia in central Asia, possibly as early as 3000 BC, but certainly no later than about 500 BC. They spoke a dialect of the Mon-Khmer language family related to many languages spoken in present day Cambodia, and were the first to introduce Buddhism and writing to Burma.

            By about 573 AD, the Mon kingdom of Hongsavatoi had been founded by brothers, Princes Samala and Wimala in the area around what is modern Pegu. Irrigation systems were put in place on the rich and fertile lands. The Mons traded with the Indians, both culturally and commercially, as well as with their Mon neighbours who occupied parts of Siam (Thailand). In addition, they had a high level of much sought after architectural and artistic ingenuity, evidenced by their stupa and temples and their religious artifacts that have been uncovered in areas in which they occupied.

The Mons were obviously not to remain the sole occupants of Burma for long, if indeed they ever were. Another group, speaking a Tibeto-Burman dialect of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages and calling themselves Pyu, entered Burma from the eastern Himalayas of Tibet, probably in the first millennium before Christ, working their way down and occupying areas along the Upper Irrawaddy River (Ayeyarwaddy). Some sources suggest the Pyus were actually the first to enter Burma; indeed there is evidence, albeit scanty, to suggest that they may have founded the ancient city of Sri Kshetra as early as 2000 BC. They settled in the Irrawaddy or delta valley regions and also in Arakan (Rakhine), founding a capital called Hanlin in 628 AD near what is now Prome.

            The Pyus had much contact with the Chinese, who in their court chronicles, referred to them as devout Buddhists. Theirs was a brick-based culture that enabled the creation of many great temples. They also produced many great sculptural artifacts, an art-form they most likely acquired from their contact with India. Their settlements were said to extend up to as far north as Tagaung, close to the Chinese Nanchao kingdom, which was later to invade and absorb them.

            The third group to enter Burma were the Thai people called the Shan who migrated from Northern Thailand and China in the 9^th to 11th centuries, fleeing the onslaught of the mighty Mongol invaders in that country. They settled in the hill regions that characterize the border between Burma and modern-day Thailand.

In AD 835, Nanchao of Yunnan invaded Burma, sacking the Pyu capital of Hanlin as well as any villages in their path. Nanchao had enlisted help from many of the tribal groups from the northernmost fringes of Burma to help achieve his goals. Both Pyu and Mon villages were absorbed by the invaders and their inhabitants were enslaved.

One of the tribes whose help Nanchao enlisted, the Mien (the ancestors of the  Burmans or Bamars), saw the destruction of the Pyu and Mon villages and towns as a means to migrate into the central plains of Burma and set up their own colonies. Thus, there was an influx of Bamars into the regions that had been previously been occupied by the Pyus. Given that the Bamars spoke a language that was related to that of the Pyus and that their religion had aspects that bore a striking resemblance to that of the Pyus, it is possible that they didn’t actually enter from the Himalayas but were in fact the descendants of earlier defeated Pyus.

The Bamars founded the town of Pagan (sometimes written as Bagan) in 849 AD along the Irrawaddy, about 500 kilometres inland north of its mouth, close to Mount Popa, a mystical centre of Nat (Spirit) worship. This was the beginning of the Pagan dynasty and precipitated the first occurrence of a unified Burma in its long history.

            In 1044 one of the most important eras in the Burma saga commenced with the ascent of King Anawrahta (sometimes written Anawratha) to the throne of the Pagan realm.  In 1056, A monk by the name of Shin Arahan from the Mon court of Thaton, succeeded in converting King Anawrahta to Buddhism. Within a year, the king had set about constructing the Shwezigon temple and laying siege to the Mon town of Bago (Pegu) in order to procure the most holiest of Mon Buddhist scripts, known as the Tripitaka. It took him a few months to achieve his aim, but eventually the Mon king Manuha surrendered. This resulted in the subsequent destruction of the town by the Bamar conquerors and the capture of an alleged 30,000 Mons, who were taken as prisoners back to Pagan along with the trophy, the Tripitaka. The Mon king Manuha, was forced to be a temple slave in the main Pagan pagoda Shwezigon soon thereafter.

            With the fall of the Mon capital Thaton, King Anawrahta set about unifying Burma as one state, thus creating the First Burmese Empire. Having already conquered the Mons, he then defeated the Shans in the north and the kingdom of Arakan in the south. Burma was united as one kingdom for the first time. King Anawrahta adopted the Mon form of Buddhism, known as Theravada Buddhism for his subjects.

            King Anawrahta was killed by a wild buffalo in 1077 and succeeded by his son Sawlu, who continued his father’s aggressive expansion of the empire. Sawlu was later killed by the Mons in 1084, as they rebelled against their Bamar oppressors. The Bamars, under the lead of General Kyanzittha (or Kyansitta) were quick to regain control over the Mons, quashing their rebellion. Kyanzittha assumed power and ascended to the Pagan throne in 1084, thus marking the beginning of what is often referred to Pagan’s golden age, a period during which it was rather optimistically referred to as the “city of 4 million pagodas”.

Over the next 2 hundred years, the Pagan Empire flourished and prospered greatly. The Bamars built a complex system of irrigation, thus creating the capacity for abundant rice cultivation, which supported their kingdom. The influence of the defeated Mons is particularly evident in the newly created unified state. The Bamars built many pagodas in the Mon style and even adopted the Mon language and script. The earliest known Burmese script was carved on stone by Prince Yarza Komer in 1100. During this time, Pagan became a major centre of Buddhist philosophy, art and expression, due, no doubt in part, to the construction of up to 3000 pagodas throughout the Pagan plains.

            This wasn’t to last. In the 13^th century, the Mongols appeared on the scene, under the leadership of Kublai Khan and with perhaps the most powerful military force on the planet at that time. The Burmese king Narathihapati defiantly refused to honour their demands for tribute and consequently hordes of Mongolian horsemen invaded Burma in 1287, sacking Pagan and showing little mercy at all for those in their path. With this, the Bagan Empire came to a violent and undignified end, recorded in the diaries of none other than Marco Polo when he visited the Chinese 5 years later.

            Narathihapati fled to the port town of Bassein, where he remained in exile for 5 months. Evidently, he didn’t like being dubbed Tarakpyenrin (meaning “The King who fled from the Chinese”), a title he was given soon after his fleeing, because he then attempted to return to Pagan to recapture it. He only got as far as Prome. Narathihapati’s eldest son, who was stationed there as governor, forced his father to drink poison and seized the throne, after battling his two brothers for supremacy. He was not to enjoy it for long. He lost the Pagan kingdom to the Tartars in 1287 in a particularly bloody battle at Vochan and was later deposed in 1298.

With the ending of the Anawrahta Dynasty, Burma thenceforth entered into a period of chaos for about 250 years, marked by internecine conflict and lack of stability for all kingdoms therein. It was during this time that Shan princes held the greater power in the Irrawaddy rice growing areas of Upper Burma, founding Ava (Innwa) in 1364 as their capital, near modern Mandalay; they even extended their kingdom into present day Kachin state and along the Chindwin River. The Shans did not consolidate their kingdom by unifying as one state, but remained split as small kingdoms that often bickered and feuded with each other, as well as with the Bamars and Mons.

The Bamars and Mons thus retreated to the south to avoid Shan domination, founding Taungu (Toungoo) in about 1280 AD as a Bamar chieftenate and re-founding Bago (which was to become modern Pegu) as the Mon capital. Having set up their kingdom in the south, the Mons started to prosper, trading with both Malaysia and India in rice exports.

Due to internal bickering and conflict that typified this period, the appearance of Europeans on the scene went relatively unnoticed and had little effect on the existing kingdoms. The first European to stumble onto Burma was a Venetian by the name of Nicoto di Conti, who stayed in Bago for four months in 1435. Other Europeans also appeared and traded with the Burmans, notably Vasco de Gama and Anthony Correa who made trade agreements in Martaban in 1519 with the viceroy of that town.

            After a long period of internal conflict and chaos, the ascent to the throne of King Minkyino in 1486 in the Bamar town of Taungu was to mark a resurgence of Bamar national spirit and eventual reunification of the country. The Taungu Dynasty was founded. King Minkyino’s son, 16-year-old Tabengshweti (or Tabinshwete) took over the throne in 1530 after his father’s death and immediately set about restoring the Pagan Empire to its previous glory and prestige. Over the course of the next ten years or so, Tabengshweti’s armies achieved a series of victories over the Mon, first of all conquering the port town of Bassein in 1535 and then, after three attempts, Bago itself in 1539. After this, having already taken Bassein and Bago, he had little trouble in also capturing Prome.

Tabengshweti strongly disapproved of the trade agreements the viceroy of Martaban had made with the Portuguese, so he also attacked and took control of Martaban in 1541. It is interesting to note that there were actually about 700 Portuguese fighting alongside of the Bamars against other Portuguese Loyalists.  The Portuguese in Martaban were forced to retreat to Arakan and ally themselves with the Myohuang monarchy of that region.

            While all of this was happening in the south, the Shans were expanding their kingdom in the north. Having ousted the corrupt Shan king of Ava (who had become very disliked due his constant harassment of monks and plundering of their pagodas), they united as one force and subsequently captured Prome, before setting their sights on Myohuang (Mrauk U), the heavily fortified capital of Arakan. This was to be their undoing, as they had attempted to expand their kingdom too quickly and couldn’t possibly protect such a vast territory from Siamese invasions from the east. Thus, their kingdom began to decrease in size just as quickly as it had expanded.

            King Tabengshweti died in 1550 and was succeeded by his son-in-law, Bayinnaung (or Bhueng Noreng according to Thai sources) who managed to reestablish control over most of Lower Burma after having to re-conquer most of the towns that his father-in-law had previously taken. First on his list was Bago, which he took in 1553, forcing the Mon to flee to Prome, which he then starved into surrender not long after. Ava was taken in 1555. Thus Bayinnaung succeeded in destroying the power of the Shans, and creating the Second Burmese Empire.

Bayinnaung was not content with just reunifying Burma. In 1564 he captured Chian Mai in neighbouring Siam after a fabricated border dispute provided him with supposed justification to invade. He then laid siege to Ayuddhaya, and was soon triumphant, breaking the power of the previously troublesome Siamese. He returned to Burma with some of the Siamese royal family and four highly coveted white elephants which were thought to symbolise an earlier incarnation of the Buddha. 

            Bayinnaung, purely out of sympathy, then made the grave mistake of allowing some of the Siamese royal family to return to Siam in response to the death of the youngest son of the deposed Siamese king. This proved to be a costly mistake.  The heir to the Siamese throne who had been left to govern in Siam as a tributary king, subsequently refused to play tributary to the Burmese any longer. Bayinnaung was therefore forced to lay siege to Ayuddhaya once again in 1569. Not unexpectedly, he was successful anew, but this time after seven grueling months of siege and the loss of many of the 200,000 men he took with him.

            Still not satiated by his military successes and the level of growth of the empire, Bayinnaung then attacked Ventiane in Laos, leaving Taungu relatively unguarded. For this reason, Taungu was attacked in his absence by King Razagyri of Arakan and the four prized elephants were taken back to Arakan.

            Although he had managed to reunite Burma for only the second time in its history by conquering its many kingdoms, Bayinnaung failed to set up stable administration in the areas he conquered. When he died in 1581, his son Nandaung (one of a reputed 97 offspring of the great king) took over the throne but obviously lacked the skills that had enabled his father to achieve so much. Over a period of about 18 years, King Nandaung lost control over most of the kingdoms that his father had previously conquered. Siam declared its independence again in 1584, and campaigns by the Bamars up until 1592 to enforce otherwise, proved totally unfruitful, resulting in the breaking up of the Second Burmese Empire and the gradual disintegration of the Taungu Dynasty.

            In 1600 Arakan sacked Bago after a series of feuds. At the same time, Portuguese Philip de Brito, a former cabin-boy, took a job with the king of Arakan. After a trip to Goa, De Brito returned to Burma with an army and weapons and conquered it, setting up an independent Portuguese state of Syriam, which he ruled for 13 years as its king. During his rule, De Brito set about destroying Buddhist temples, a move that couldn’t have done much to improve his popularity with the locals. They revolted against him and laid siege to his fortress. After the fall of his fortress and personal kingdom, De Brito was executed slowly and agonizingly over 3 days by being skewered on a wooden stake.

            Although De Brito’s Portuguese kingdom had fallen, other European countries had also set up their own colonies in Burma by the middle of the 17^th century, namely the French, the British and the Dutch.

            The Bamar sphere of influence continued to decline and in 1636, their capital was moved from Taungu to Ava in the north. The Mon kingdom however, was beginning to revive again, with the reestablishment of its capital Bago in the south. Over the next hundred years they grew in strength and prosperity. In 1752 and with a little aid from the French, Ava was sacked by the Mon and it was declared their capital.

            The Bamars were not to remain defeated for long in Ava. They reunited in 1753 under an official called Alaungpaya (Alaungsaya) from the nearby town of Shwebo who refused to give allegiance to the unpopular Mons. They drove the Mons back down into the south, recapturing their capital Ava. By 1757, Bago had also been captured and the Mons were driven back to the small southwestern town of Dagon.

            Thus under the new King Alaungpaya, the Konebaung (or Konbaug) Dynasty was born, and with it the Third Burmese Empire (which was to be the last). King Alaungpaya also drove out the British and French for a short time, extending the empire to the Bay of Bengal. The Konbaung Dynasty was founded in 1755. In 1757, he attacked Dagon in the southwest, sacking it and renaming it quite un-prophetically to Yangoon (Rangoon) meaning "the end of war". Alaungpaya then set about re-capturing Ayuddhaya but was killed in the ensuing conflict in 1760.

            He was succeeded for a short while by his eldest son Naungdawgyi, and then by his second son Hsinbyushin, who finally succeeded in defeating the Siamese at Ayuddhaya in 1767 after 14 months of siege. Many Siamese prisoners were taken back to Burma including those skilled in the various arts, adding to the melting pot that was Burma. For a while, Burma prospered once again, trading with the Europeans and even repelling Chinese invaders in the northeast on four occasions. King Hsinbyushin signed a peace treaty with the Chinese in 1769.

            Alaungpaya's 5th son Bodawpaya, ascended to the throne in 1782 and immediately founded Amarapura, which he declared the new capital. In addition he set about recovering Bamar treasures which had been stolen by the Arakanese king Razagyri during the reign of Bayinnaung two centuries earlier. This he did by conquering the Arakanese in 1784. It was here that friction began with the neighbouring British, who were fully entrenched and controlling Bengal. A series of border fracases occurred which soured relations with the British, who severed diplomatic relations in 1811.

            Bodawpaya was 75 years old when he died in 1819. He was succeeded by King Bagyidaw who made the error of an expedition into British India after the Maharajah of Manipur failed to attend his coronation. The ambitiously imperialistic British needed no more justification than that to retaliate. They invaded in 1824, beginning the first of three Anglo-Burmese wars and soon had captured Yangoon. Although The Treaty of Yandabo (1826) was reached between the British and the Burmese in 1826, which essentially handed over Arakan, Tenasserim and Manipur to the British as part of British India, relations between the two countries did not improve.

            Bagyidaw's brother Tharrawaddy, seized the throne in 1837 and had his brother's entire family and certain ministers executed. During his reign, he made little attempt to reconcile with the British. His successor, Pagan Min who became king in 1846, made just as few attempts at reconciliation as his predecessor, concentrating rather, on eradicating any threat to the throne. By some estimates, as many as 6000 of his subjects were executed after being found guilty of some crime against the state, usually as a result of fabricated charges and evidence.

            The British invaded again in 1852 after two British captains were arrested and ransomed for money by the Burmese services, thus initiating the Second Anglo-Burmese war. They eventually gained control over all of Lower Burma by 1853, the same year in which Mindon Min succeeded Pagan Min to the throne. King Mindon was a little more practical and certainly more progressive than his brother.  He attempted to improve Burma's lot by greater contact with the outside world, in particular the British, with whom he tried to repair previously soured relations. Mindon was thus admired and respected by both his own people and the British.

            When King Mindon died, the throne was seized by Thibaw, one of the lesser princes, manipulated probably in part by one of the queens of the recently deceased King Mindon, and her daughter Supayalat. Thibaw turned out to be rather inhumane ruler, massacring any other possible contenders to the throne, something which utterly appalled the neighbouring British. Relations between the two countries deteriorated to a new low.

            The British had had enough of the atrocities in Burma. They also feared a growing French presence in the area as there had been talk of a French railroad crossing the country, something the British did not want. They consequently used the minor dispute between the two counties as a pretext to begin the Third Anglo-Burmese war. They invaded Burma again in 1886, for the third time in less than a century. This time, after a relatively short campaign by the British, the whole of Burma was annexed as part of British India. For the first time in its history, Burma found itself totally under a foreign yoke.