Ghosts of Empire

by Kwasi Kwarteng

  The Burmese King did not represent the only obstacle in Britain’s path to riches in South-east Asia. There were obviously colonial rivals whose interests had to be considered. Most notably, the French were eager to be players in that region, where they had traditionally been a check on British schemes to develop relations with the native kingdoms. Colonel Edward Sladen, Commissioner of Arakan in the far west of the country, wrote an assessment of the political situation in Burma in 1885 in which he observed that it was ‘somewhat strange that our own first political intercourse with the Burmese Court commenced . . . with an attempt to thwart and anticipate French interests’; in 1795, Captain Michael Symes had been sent by the East India Company to Upper Burma to strengthen ‘our commercial relations’ and prevent ‘the French from gaining a footing in the country’.14 The French were now consolidating their hold over Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, causing the British to fear that their rivals would now make their influence felt in Upper Burma.

  It was against this background of colonial rivalry and commercial ambition that Mindon, now in his late sixties, entered what would be his final years of illness. In October 1877 his German doctor, Dr Marfels, diagnosed that the old King was suffering from dysentery. His condition was critical, the doctor said, but there was no heir apparent, as Mindon’s younger brother, who had been groomed for the succession, had been assassinated in 1866. After this botched palace coup, in which he had been lucky to escape with his life, Mindon was understandably reluctant to identify any one prince as his successor. Of course, he had more than forty sons, of widely different ages, none of whom had been educated in the role of king. The sheer number of sons and wives obviously meant that the situation would become very confused when he died. Various factions, as was often the case in courts with this type of harem structure, would coalesce around different princes and make the court a fraught place, full of intrigue and suspicion. Mindon’s favourite queen, the woman he had married earliest, had died in 1872. They had been married for thirty-six years, but she had failed to give him any children. He was grief-stricken by her death, which left Hsinbyumashin, the Middle Palace Queen, as the most senior of all Mindon’s wives. She had no sons, but she had daughters, and her plan was to marry one of them to a son of King Mindon by another woman, as it was customary for members of the Burmese royal family to marry their half-siblings, rather like the Ancient Egyptian royal family, or the ruling families of the Incas. The Middle Palace Queen needed to find a suitable prince to succeed Mindon, one who would be pliable and could be easily persuaded to marry her daughter.

  The Burmese council of ministers, the Hlutdaw, was also scheming in those months towards the end of 1877 and through 1878. Its members would choose Mindon’s successor, and they were resolved not to give the throne to any of his three eldest sons; they too wanted a pliant prince they could control. The Prince whom the Middle Palace Queen wanted also suited the council, and the twenty-year-old Thibaw was chosen by her to be the instrument of their joint ambition. There were rumours about his paternity, but they were widely assumed to be tales told by the supporters of rival princes. Thibaw’s mother had been the only one of Mindon’s wives who had ever been convicted of infidelity. She had been expelled from the palace thirteen years previously, in 1864, and had scandalously continued her affair with a Buddhist monk.15 Thibaw himself had been educated in the traditions of the Buddhist priesthood, as well as being introduced to British culture at Dr Marks’s Anglican School, where he enjoyed playing cricket. He was remembered for being a terrible loser who used ‘unprincely language’ when he was bowled out.16

  Supayalat, the second of the Middle Queen’s daughters, was the designated wife of Thibaw. She was a year younger, but, at only nineteen, she was already a forceful personality. She was described only a few years later as being a ‘very violent and passionate woman, governed entirely by impulse and caprice’. She was also intensely jealous and ambitious. She duly married Thibaw and took good care of him, but if he ‘looked at another woman, woe betide that unfortunate creature’.17 Dr John Marks, the schoolteacher at whose Anglican establishment Thibaw received part of his education, remembered Supayalat as a wayward girl:As a child I had known her to be cruel and vindictive. Her mother knew of her weakness, and instead of correcting it she condoned it. Talking to me one day about her, she said: ‘Yes, she is a bad boy. She has always been a bad boy,’ using the masculine gender as a term of endearment. As far as I was able to judge, it seemed to me that the mother’s idea was that by encouraging her in her badness her daughter would acquire ‘authority’ (awza).

  Supayalat, as a child, used to catch birds and then tear them limb from limb in mere wanton cruelty. It was her way of enjoying herself.18

  The marriage between Supayalat and Thibaw was potentially disastrous–Supayalat was violent and unstable, while Thibaw was pliable and inexperienced. As 1878 progressed, confusion grew. On 18 September, James Colbeck, an Anglican missionary, was uncertain about what was happening in Mandalay: ‘We did not know whether the King was alive or dead, and expected to hear a wild outburst of confusion every moment. I stayed up till the next morning at 3, and then turned in till 6 o’clock–nothing happened.’ On the 28th there was yet more uncertainty. ‘We are still kept in annoying suspense and do not really know for certain whether the old King is alive or dead; we believe he is dead, but the Burmese Ministers declare he is still alive and improving, and will give a Royal Reception at the end of the Burmese Lent, that is, in about fourteen days.’19 During this time the plotting and counter-plotting continued.

  On 1 October, Mindon finally died. His three eldest sons and their families had been arrested, and then released, on the dying King’s orders. The funeral of the old man was stately and elaborate, and was followed by seven days of mourning. The former King Pagan led the funeral procession. He had survived his elder half-brother and was now well into his sixties. Other male members of the extended royal family escorted him, all dressed in brilliant white, the colour of sovereignty in Burma; it was also the colour of death.20 Foreigners were now allowed to see the King’s body, lying in state. They would have been impressed by the splendour of the royal palace at Mandalay. Built only in 1857, Mandalay was a new city, a profoundly Buddhist town where one man in five was a monk.21 The palace had various ‘buildings of wood, completely gilded, and with huge pillars of red lacquered wood, of various sorts, sizes, and shapes’. Visitors would have passed by the throne, in the centre of the palace, under ‘a splendid canopy of glittering roofs tapering up like a card house, and having on its top a golden umbrella very elegantly wrought’.22

  Mindon’s death was followed by Thibaw’s accession to the Peacock Throne. The Middle Queen had got what she had always wanted, and now her daughter was queen of Burma. Like any new rulers, the royal couple were keen to get a firmer grip on power. They knew that Thibaw, who had not been the first choice as successor of the dying King, was not widely known among the people. On 28 September, James Colbeck reported that ‘a very large part of the people are in favour of the Nyaung Yan Prince–and it is also said that many of the officials favour him too’. More ominously, he also reported that ‘between 60 and 70 Princes and their relatives are now in chains, badly treated and in terror of their lives’.23 The Nyoung Yan Prince, who was nineteen years old, had escaped from the palace and was now living in the compound of the British Resident. By November, Thibaw was behaving erratically. He started to throw spears at people who offended him. It was perhaps now that he began the drinking for which he would become famous. In alcoholic matters, it appears, he had refined taste, preferring brands like Hennessy or Exshaw to cruder Burmese spirits.24 He was, by now, a prisoner in the royal palace, as his ministers, the Hlutdaw, were watching over him, and no one was allowed to see him.25 It was an eerie atmosphere in Mandalay, as the new year of 1879 arrived. The town itself, abounding with ‘pagodas and monasteries’, had never looked more impressive. The countryside around the walled city seemed at peace. From one end of the
country to the other, ‘every hill-top, every plain, every grove of trees, every garden, has its graceful building, in white or gold’.26

  The calm, of course, was deceptive. The court around the King was isolated and divided. Many of the royal princes and princesses, perhaps a majority of Mindon’s 110 children, were still being held captive. No one knew what would happen to them, though some suspected the worst. At the beginning of February, a firm decision was reached. The court acted quickly; between the 14th and 16th of that month, all the imprisoned princes and princesses were executed. It was taboo to spill royal blood, so the method devised was at least scrupulous. The victims were blindfolded and strangled or clubbed to death by criminals who had been released from jail expressly for this purpose. The bodies were then thrown into a ditch and trampled on by elephants to make sure they were really dead. On the night of the 16th, a Sunday, eight carts were seen carrying the bodies of the slain, which were then thrown unceremoniously into the Irrawaddy river. Altogether, thirty-one out of forty-eight of Mindon’s sons and nine out of sixty-two of his daughters had been killed.27 The number of slaughtered among Mindon’s grandchildren has never been accurately established.

  The people of Mandalay were outraged. The Europeans in the city were worried that they might be the next victims. Thibaw’s unpredictable nature was the subject of intense worry and speculation. At first no one knew how many had been killed in the general massacre of the royal princes, with figures ranging from 60 to 250, the ‘former being nearer the mark’. Colbeck himself admitted to having had a ‘terrible time’, but he thanked God that all the Europeans were ‘safe and untouched’.28 The massacres produced a ‘wave of revulsion in Rangoon’.29 People became increasingly resolved to do something about Burma and its mad king. By June, apart from those who lived in the compound of the British Residency, there were only two Englishmen in Mandalay: Colbeck, the chaplain and missionary, and a retired British army officer, Major Halstead, who was described as being ‘of weak intellect’.30

  There have been many theories about the massacre itself, which Thibaw consistently denied having instigated. The council of ministers must have had something to do with the final order, but some of them even denied their part in the crime. One interesting theory, bizarre and rather implausible, was that the massacre had been conceived to cover up another crime. This explanation, coming from a memorandum of the Burmese Minister of the Interior, looks like a false alibi, but it claimed that a minor prince had ‘misbehaved’ with some of the princesses and had planned the ‘death and destruction of the Princes and Princesses’ to get rid of ‘all proof of his misconduct’. According to this theory, the Prince had influenced Thibaw and urged the execution of potential rivals to Thibaw’s throne, as well as the various princesses he had secretly seduced.31 A more plausible culprit was the King’s mother-in-law, who was eager to consolidate the position of her daughter. Queen Supayalat still maintained her hold over Thibaw, a fact illustrated by his reluctance to acquire additional wives. To take wives and beget ‘a bewildering number of children’ was ‘an unwritten task of the Burmese monarch’.32 It had been customary for the King of Burma to have more wives, at least to make the ‘mystic number of four Queens–of the North, South, East, and West’, in addition to a number of secondary wives. One of the princes, called the Yanoung Prince, a close friend of Thibaw, encouraged the King to take three additional wives to make up the magic four. Thibaw, it appears, followed his friend’s suggestion, but the Prince was promptly arrested and strangled, on the orders of Thibaw’s mother-in-law. Thibaw was informed that the Prince had committed suicide with a pair of scissors. The unfortunate wives all died within a year or two. The King was told that ‘one of these ladies had died of cholic, another of fever, and that a third had been found dead from violence, but that no one knew who had killed her’.33 The court at Mandalay increasingly resembled a madhouse.

  The received wisdom among historians is that the British Empire in 1879 was engaged in other disputes and crises, allowing Thibaw to pursue his lunatic career for another few years. It is true that Afghanistan and South Africa were areas of great concern during that year. As James Colbeck wrote on 11 May, if ‘the Afghan war and Zulu campaign had not tied the hands of Government I suppose we should have had to move before this’.34 Colbeck was expecting war very soon. Yet it never came. Thibaw was allowed to remain king, and, although the British would later use the massacre of the royal princes and princesses as a pretext for annexing his country, as late as the early 1880s the matter was still undecided.

  Charles Bernard was made chief commissioner of British Burma, based in Rangoon, in 1880. Born in Bristol in 1837, he had been educated at Rugby School, from where he had gone into the civil service. He was a moderate, a liberal who ‘put great faith in the civilizing nature of British ideals of law and order’.35 He was in constant correspondence with the Viceroy, Lord Ripon, about the situation in Burma from 1880, but he never felt that a campaign against Thibaw would be appropriate. In July 1880, barely eighteen months after Thibaw had outraged the ‘civilized world’ with the massacre, Bernard was playing the cool, pragmatic official, so often influential in Her Britannic Majesty’s empire. Thibaw was ‘indeed a barbarian and a half mad barbarian’, but the ‘total value of our trade with Upper Burma is now four millions sterling a year’. Bernard quoted the ‘decided belief ’ of his predecessor as chief commissioner in British Burma, Sir Charles Aitchison, that ‘the Mandalay Court are extremely desirous to avoid an actual rupture with the British’. This belief was also shared ‘by the Rangoon merchants’. Trade and the need to keep the status quo were uppermost in Bernard’s mind. The next week he gleefully reported to another official in the Indian government service that ‘trade with Upper Burma is going on more briskly almost than ever’. Later in the month, he told the same official that the new Liberal government in London was ‘quite disposed to renew friendly relations with the Burmese Government’.36 Gladstone’s new Liberal administration, which had been formed in April 1880, was decidedly non-committal in imperial affairs. The Marquess of Ripon, the Viceroy, a Liberal who was described as being on the left of his party, wrote to Bernard from Simla, the summer capital of India, expressing his pleasure that ‘there is little danger of an actual rupture with the Mandalay government at present’.

  Ripon, who had been appointed viceroy by Gladstone in 1880, had been a unique child. He was born in 10 Downing Street in October 1827, when his father Viscount Goderich was prime minister. Unlike virtually every other leading politician of the day, Ripon had not been educated at an elite boarding school or at Oxford or Cambridge, so he had the luxury, some said, of being able to think for himself. In his forties, in 1874, he had converted to Roman Catholicism, whereupon he gave up being grand master of the Freemasons. More controversially, as viceroy he introduced the Ilbert Bill in India, which, if it had passed in its original form, would have allowed Indian judges to sit in judgement over Europeans. A storm of protest from the English merchant community in India ensured that it was watered down. Ripon was easy-going and progressive for the times in which he lived. This natural tolerance was expressed in very flexible politics, as Bernard, reflecting his master’s tone, wrote in September 1880: ‘Whatever may be King Thebaw’s bad points, trade with Upper Burma flourishes much under his rule.’ Again in December of that year, Bernard could complacently suggest that Thibaw appeared to ‘be as peaceably inclined as ever’.37

  What annoyed the British about Thibaw was not his mad behaviour, nor his propensity to massacre his family members; it was his threat to trade, and, more specifically, his attempt to have dealings with other colonial powers, in particular the French. In 1881, Bernard complained to Lord Ripon that Thibaw’s government had established two monopolies, one of sugar and one of salt, which were ‘causing disturbances of trade and loss to our merchants’.38 Colonel Sladen gave an excellent summary of the situation in his report on the state of affairs in Burma in 1885. Thibaw had refused a treaty the British
had offered him in 1882. He had then had the temerity to form ‘alliances with European States, which have no interests in Burma, and whose presence on the scene, is intended . . . to menace our positions in British Burma’.39 His attempt to secure monopolies for himself and his parasites outraged the British merchants in Rangoon and its surrounding areas. Yet in 1882 Charles Bernard was still relaxed about the prospect of war with Thibaw, and denied that the British government would ‘be justified in making war’ in order to ‘compel a neighbouring country to reform what we think wrong in their commercial system’. He was very reluctant to fight for trade, though he acknowledged that his pacific views were not shared by the merchants in Rangoon: ‘most–but not all–the merchants . . . consider that we might . . . go to war or threaten war in order to enforce observance of the treaty clause regarding trade and monopolies’. He was clear that the ‘British Government does not wish to interfere with the internal government of the kingdom of Ava’. What Britain wanted was simply ‘freedom of trade between and for the benefit of the two countries’. Trade between Britain and Burma, Bernard kept repeating, was ‘about 4 millions sterling a year’, and, as a consequence, ‘any serious blow or any permanent blow to that trade would be felt in Glasgow, Liverpool and London as well as in Mandalay and Rangoon’. Even if war came, he could say that the British government ‘did not intend to annex Upper Burma or to subvert the Native Government there’. That would only infuriate the Indian princes and the King of Nepal, he thought; all Bernard wanted was the ‘abolition of the monopolies’.40