The River of Lost Footsteps: A Personal History of Burma

by Thant Myint-U

  For much of the preceding Ming dynasty, the southwestern region of Yunnan, next to Burma, was only somewhat integrated into the imperial administration. In the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the region became a sort of freewheeling frontier province, with tens of thousands of fortune-hunting migrants from elsewhere in China attracted to its vast and lucrative silver mines. There were few, if any, remnants of the old Dali kingdom, and instead Kunming and the other big towns took on a sort of pan-China character, with Mandarin Chinese acting as a lingua franca between the patchwork of peoples who now called Yunnan home.

  In the southwest of the province many small chieftainships and principalities were keen to preserve at least a de facto independence, both from Kunming and from the Burmese kingdom to their other side. With Alaungpaya’s rise to power and his determination to assert his control as far into the Shan uplands as possible, many of these chiefs and princes reckoned that a closer relationship with China was their best strategy. In the 1760s Myedu continued his father’s aggressive policies and quickly became embroiled in several conflicts along the eastern border.

  The Burmese chronicles say that the war began when a Chinese merchant was killed in a barroom brawl in Kengtung, a semiautonomous principality not far from the Mekong. Burmese and Chinese troops had already clashed in the Pu’er Prefecture (famous for its tea), and the Chinese had been utterly defeated. The governor of Yunnan at the time, Liu Zao, was known as an upright and honest man, but in his embarrassment first tried to conceal what had happened. When the emperor became suspicious, he ordered Liu’s immediate recall and demotion, but instead of complying, the humiliated Liu committed suicide by slicing his throat with a stationery knife, writing as the blood was pouring from his neck: “[T]here is no way to pay back the emperor’s favour; I deserve death with my crime.”13 This sort of suicide in the face of bureaucratic failure was apparently no unusual thing in Manchu China, but it enraged Qianlong nonetheless. Sorting out the Mien (the Chinese word for “Burmese”) was now a matter of imperial prestige, and the new man to address the Burma problem knew that he would be closely watched and expected to deliver. And so the real war began.

  The new man was Yang Yingju, an experienced border satrap with long service in the northwest as well as in Canton. When he arrived in the summer of 1766, he confidently launched a sizable offensive into the Shan hills, only to find his army decimated and chased back into Chinese territory. Unknown to him, Myedu had laid a trap: Bala Mindin, the Burmese commander in the field, had been ordered to give up the town of Bhamo near the border without much of a fight so as to lure in the Chinese and then surround them with two other Burmese armies. What Yang did realize, as would many others after him (including the British a few decades later), was that there were two enemies in Burma, the troops of the Burmese king and disease, and of these two enemies, disease was far the more terrible foe. There are no clear statistics, but there is no doubt that cholera and dysentery and malaria struck down the Chinese soldiers by the thousands. Qianlong was skeptical and dismissed as “unbelievable” a report from the field stating that eight hundred out of a thousand soldiers in one garrison had died of disease and that another hundred were ill. Yang also began resorting to lies. But rather than wait this time for Yang to commit suicide, the emperor dismissed him from command, brought him back to Peking, and ordered him to kill himself.

  THE BANNERMEN TAKR CHARGE

  For the emperor, it was now time for the Manchus themselves to come into the picture. He had always doubted the battle-worthiness of his Chinese Green Standard armies. The Manchus saw themselves as a warlike and conquering race and the Chinese as an occupied people. It was surprising that the Burmese were able to resist the Green Standard troops, but they would surely be outclassed by his elite Manchu Bannermen. He appointed the veteran Manchu commander Mingrui as governor-general of Yunnan and Guizhou and head of the Burma campaign. Mingrui had seen battle against the Turks in the northwest and was in command of the strategically key post of Ili (in present-day Kazakhstan); his appointment meant that this was no longer a border dispute but a full-fledged imperial war. Troops were rushed down from North China and Manchuria. Provinces throughout China were mobilized to provide supplies. As a precaution against illness (which Peking now took seriously) the campaign was planned for the winter months, when diseases were believed to be less prevalent. The Burmese now had the world’s biggest empire mobilized against them.

  At first, everything went according to plan, and Mingrui led a victorious Manchu force down into the Irrawaddy Valley, throwing Ava into panic as he crossed the Gokteik Gorge and seized the town of Singu, only thirty miles or a three-day march from the capital. But Myedu himself didn’t panic and led his men personally toward the front line, saying that he and his brother princes, sons of Alaungpaya, would fight the Chinese single-handed if they had to. He then sent a second army to Hsenwi in the hills, despite the threat to the capital, overpowering the Manchu garrison there after fierce fighting and effectively blocking the advance of a second invasion force under the Manchu general E’erdeng’e. Battle-hardened Burmese reinforcements from Siam also soon arrived, led by Maha Thiha Thura.

  Mingrui had overstretched himself, and the Burmese under their overall commander Maha Sithu took every advantage, cutting his supply and communications lines and surrounding and pummeling his forces from several directions. Before long, thousands of the elite Bannermen, felt-booted nomadic tribesmen from the freezing grasslands along the Russian border, began dying of malaria, as well as Burmese attacks, in the furnacelike hot weather of central Burma, with temperatures soaring to over a hundred degrees. Mingrui gave up all hope of proceeding toward Ava and instead tried to break the Burmese encirclement and make it back to Yunnan with as many of his soldiers as possible. In early 1768, after months of grueling combat, and just as he was about to cross the border, Mingrui was himself severely wounded in battle. He cut off his queue and hanged himself on a tree. Of the army of more than ten thousand Manchu troops that had first entered Burma, only a few dozen returned.

  The Qianlong emperor had sent Mingrui and his Bannermen assuming an easy victory. Indeed, he had begun dreaming about how he would administer his newest territory. For weeks Peking had heard nothing, and then the news finally came. The emperor was shocked and ordered an immediate halt to all military actions until he could decide what next to do. Generals returning from the front cautioned that there was no way Burma could be conquered. But there was no real choice but to press on. Imperial prestige was at stake.

  At this point the emperor turned to one of his most trusted advisers, the chief grand councillor Fuheng. He had a reputation for steeling the emperor’s will at times like these. Back in the 1750s he had been one of the very few senior officials who had fully backed Qianlong’s decision to eliminate the Dzungars at a time when most believed war was too risky. And so, on 14 April 1768, the imperial court announced the death of Mingrui and the appointment of Fuheng as the new chief commander of the Burma campaign. Manchu generals Agui, Aligun, and Suhede were appointed as his deputies; the top rung of the Qing military establishment prepared for a final showdown with the Burmese.

  Even before any fighting resumed, some on the Chinese side were beginning to send out peace feelers to the Court of Ava. The Burmese also sent signals that they would like to give diplomacy a chance, given their preoccupations in Siam. But the emperor, with Fuheng’s encouragement, made it more than clear that no compromise with the Mien could be made. The dignity of the state demanded a full surrender.

  Fuheng arrived in Yunnan in the late spring of 1769. His aim was no less than to establish direct Qing rule over all of Myedu’s possessions. Emissaries were sent to Siam and the Lao states informing them of the Chinese ambition and seeking an alliance. He wanted to proceed by three routes from Yunnan to Ava and sought advice on the passages taken a century before by the great Ming general Wu Sangui. Taking another page from history, Fuheng also sought to copy the thirteenthcentury
Mongol army that apparently used the Irrawaddy River to good effect; thousands of sailors from the Fujian Navy were brought to the front lines, and hundreds of boats were built. An enormous fortress was constructed at the little border village of Nyaungshwebin. The emperor was pleased: “[O]nly Fuheng is moving forward courageously,” he said. More ominously, he also decided to ignore the pleadings of his officers and began the campaign at the height of the rainy season, to the surprise of the Burmese, hoping that the “miasma would not be everywhere.” 14

  The king of Burma also prepared. One army was sent north to Mogaung on the upper Irrawaddy in the last week of September under Thihathu. A second army under Maha Thiha Thura moved upriver by boat toward Bhamo. And a final army, including elephants and cavalry and French musketeers under Pierre de Millard, now the myoza of Tabe, marched up the east bank of the Irrawaddy under the command of the prince of Mongmit. An enormous earthquake had recently shaken much of the country, and many at Ava took this as a bad omen. And so great treasures—hundreds of gold and silver images—were lavished on the Shwezigon Pagoda at Pagan and the Shwedagon Pagoda at Rangoon in the hope of propitiating the spirits on the eve of the threatened devastation.

  The Manchu invasion began in October 1769 at the height of the monsoons. And predictably, the Manchu soldiers and Chinese sailors fell ill and began to die in huge numbers. Fuheng himself was struck down by fever. At the Burmese fortress of Kaungton, not far from the border, the Burmese put up a remarkably tough defense, and even after four weeks the Qing emperor’s best troops were not able to break the spirited Burmese line. More died of disease as well as fighting, and finally both sides had had enough. Fuheng was probably too ill to protest the negotiations that followed. Maha Thiha Thura knew that peace was Burma’s best option. And so on a frosty 22 December 1769, against the blue green mountains of Yunnan, fourteen Burmese and thirteen Manchu officers signed a peace treaty. The Manchus were required to withdraw north of the Shweli Valley near the present frontier, prisoners of war were to be released, trade resumed, and an embassy between the two countries was to be sent every ten years. The Qing burned all their boats and melted their cannon and left Burma forever.

  *

  Not long after, the prince of Badon, the fourth son of Alaungpaya and then thirty-six years of age, ascended the throne in a river of blood. In addition to his nephew the ex-king, any possible challengers, including dozens of kinsmen and officials, were put to death. He assumed the somewhat lengthy title Sri Pawara Vijaya Nandayastri Bhuwanaditya Adipati Pandita Maha Dhama Rajadhiraja, but is better known to Burmese history as Bodawpaya, the “Grandfather King.” Like all but the last Burmese monarch, he would take many wives, but even by the standards of the Court of Ava he was particularly prolific, with no fewer than 207 queens and concubines, 62 sons, and 58 daughters, a little more than half of whom would survive the scourges of infancy and childhood. No one knows how many grandchildren the Grandfather King had but they included two future kings. They also included my own great-great-great-grandmother, descended from him (as were countless others in the early nineteenth century) through a minor concubine, the daughter of the border chief of Mwayyin.

  Bodawpaya’s reign marked the end of the early dynasty, when his father and elder brothers soldiered to create the kingdom, leading their men personally in distant campaigns, and the later dynasty, when the kings stayed at home, enjoying the softer trappings of monarchy, and busied themselves in the intramural, if no less vicious, affairs of the Court of Ava. This is not to say that Bodawpaya was a pacific man, only that he himself never took the field, and left it to his generals to wage wars of aggression against Arakan and Siam. He was keenly interested in religion, debating with monks and scholars, intervening in monastic disputes and at times tolerating and other times persecuting new and heretical sects. He was a man of great appetite as well as grand vision and personally supervised for a time (until he got bored and gave the job to his son) the construction of what would have been the largest pagoda in the world, five hundred feet high and rivaling the Pyramids of Giza. It was never finished, though the ruins of the enormous base are still there at Mingun, a day’s boat trip from Mandalay.15

  Under him the Court of Ava became fancier and perhaps more ostentatious, royal and noble titles longer and more impressive. It also became a more active patron of the arts and learning. The presence of captive princes, scholars, artists, and musicians from the extinguished and older courts of Mrauk-U and Ayutthaya enlivened the intellectual life of the still-young dynasty, prompting new debates on history and law and making possible a rebirth of Burmese theater and dance. Pundits from Arakan whetted royal interest in Sanskrit learning, and hurried efforts were made to bring court practice into line with proper Brahmanical standards.

  Burma and Burmese patriotism were now in full flight. Siam had been humiliated, and the entire might of imperial China had been repelled. The Burmese saw themselves now as an all-conquering race, destined to hold neighboring peoples in subjugation, an emerging equal of great powers everywhere. For the Mons and the Arakanese, this would be the end of centuries of independence and their own proud and in many ways more cosmopolitan traditions.

  As the dynasty settled in for what would be a hundred more years of rule, royal administration was tightened, as was supervision of the towns and villages of the countryside. Surveys reviewed, revised, and reinforced hereditary rights and obligations. Even a new capital was built nearby and named Amarapura, the “Immortal City,” and missions were sent west, sometimes only to bring more sacred water from the Ganges but also to see, a little nervously, just how far the flag of St. George was now flying over the middle kingdoms of India.

  Notes – 5: THE CONSEQUENCES OF PATRIOTISM

  1. Burma Gazetteer—Shwebo District, vol. A (Rangoon: Supt., Govt. Print. and Stationery, 1929), 1–10.

  2. On the early Konbaung dynasty, see Htin Aung, History of Burma, 157–93; William J. Koenig, The Burmese Polity, 1752–1819: Politics, Administration, and Social Organization in the Early Konbaung Period (Ann Arbor: Center for South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of Michigan, 1990); Harvey, History of Burma, 219–305.

  3. Proceedings of an Embassy to the King of Ava, Pegu & in 1757, Alexander Dalrymple, Oriental Repertory (London: W. Ballintine, 1808), quoted in SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research 3:1 (Spring 2005).

  4. Robert Lester, “Proceedings of an Embassy to the King of Ava, Pegu, &C. in 1757”; SOAS Bulletin of Burma Research 3:1 (2005).

  5. Though it was arguably not an ethnic Burmese v. ethnic Mon conflict, see Victor Lieberman, “Ethnic Politics in Eighteenth Century Burma,” Modern Asian Studies 12:3 (1978).

  6. D. G. E. Hall, Europe and Burma (London: Oxford University Press, 1945), 66–67.

  7. Negrais was later overrun and the English there massacred. See J. S. Furnivall, “The Tragedy of Negrais,” Journal of the Burma Research Society 21:3 (1931), 1–133.

  8. Harvey, History of Burma, 229–31.

  9. Sayadaw Athwa III, 148, quoted in Harvey, History of Burma, 235.

  10. Tin, Konbaungzet Maha Yazawindaw-gyi, vol. 1, 182.

  11. Spence, The Search for Modern China, 90–116.

  12. On the Qing invasions of the 1760s, I’ve relied on Yingcong Dai’s seminal study “A Disguised Defeat: The Myanmar Campaign of the Qing Dynasty,” Modern Asian Studies 38:1 (2004), 145–89; see also Harvey, History of Burma, 253–58, 355–56; Htin Aung, A History of Burma, 175–83.

  13. Quoted in Yingcong Dai, “A Disguised Defeat,” 157.

  14. Ibid., 166.

  15. On Bodawpaya’s reign, see Myint-U, The Making of Modern Burma, 13–17.

  *Modern Réunion, a department of France in the southern Indian Ocean.

  SIX

  WAR

  The Burmese kingdom and the East India Company fight an epic war for two years, with devastating consequences for the Court of Ava

  In the early years of the nineteenth century the generals and grandees of the Court of Ava, bri
mming with confidence and expectation from years of martial conquest, became convinced that the English and their East India Company were their principal adversaries. They dreamed of alliances against the English and worried about the English upsetting their own increasingly belligerent ambitions. They tried to learn more about the Company and assess their chances in an actual war. Few harbored illusions about the extent of English power. But the Court of Ava was riding a wave of military victories, and those factions that advised audacity gained the upper hand.

  These were new feelings. Ralph Fitch, a merchant of Elizabethan London, was the very first Englishman to arrive in Burmese lands (in the mid-sixteenth century), and he was followed, at varying intervals, by several other traders and fortune seekers, all hoping that the eastern shores of the Bay of Bengal, so close to bases in India, would somehow prove as lucrative as the Spice Islands, farther away. But the prospects for trade never really materialized, and the effort of developing a Burmese market seemed little worth the cost of dealing with a new and outlandish court and all manner of tropical disease. The Company had set up small stations at Syriam and Ava in the 1600s, but these were later closed for no reason other than being unprofitable. To the Burmese, though, these were all peripheral matters, and the English and English trade were not viewed as particularly significant.

  The English, to the extent that they were considered, were seen initially as just another group of people from the West. And for Burma the West began in Bengal. All the many and varied visitors and immigrants— Bengalis, Tamils, Singhalese, Afghans, Persians, Arabs, Armenians, Jews, Greeks, and Portuguese—were classified together under the single ethnic category of kala, an old word of no clear derivation. The newer kala from Europe were sometimes referred to as the bayingyi kala. Bayingyi was a Burmese corruption of the Arab feringhi or “Frank,” a term with wide circulation (and many different pronunciations) throughout the Indian Ocean world, a legacy of the Crusades in a country that had no knowledge of the Christian-Islamic wars of medieval times.