Burma

   The home of a formidable empire in its own right in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and the site thereafter of chronic civil war until the eighteenth century. In the nineteenth century, it was increasingly under British control. Britain waged three Anglo-Burmese Wars, the last of which was prompted by a concern to secure all of Burma from competition after the French conquest of Tonkin to the East. In 1886, Burma was incorporated into British India, but during the next four years, Burmese resistance to British rule was fierce and British pacification of it brutal. Lowland peasants were jailed, beaten and shot; their villages were burned and livestock killed. Hill tribesmen, along with the help of troops brought in from India, were used by the British to help defeat resistance. The Burmese never accepted British rule and resented incorporation into India until 1937 when Burma was administratively separated from it.

   FURTHER READING:

    Aung, Maung Htin. A History of Burma. New York: Columbia University Press, 1967;

    Farwell, Byron. Queen Victoria ’ s Little Wars. New York: W. W. Norton, 1972;

    Thant Myint-U, The Making of Modern Burma. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

   CARL CAVANAGH HODGE