Read this blog at your own peril... it is a history lesson... I think it's great... odds are, you'll find it resembling a high-school textbook.
Joye and I are recovering from minor health issues... so our adventuring around Yangon has been at a sedate pace. Today's outing has been limited to a visit to the National Museum... where we attempted to cover Myanmar History 101. There is a lot to cover... staring with prehistoric bones that have yet to be finally dated... but are pointing to humanoids living in the area over a million years ago. Java Man and Peking Man were around in the very early days... but the Myanmar archaeologists are confident that their find will pre-date these finds.
But history of homosapians is complicated by the usual dimensions of race, ethnic groups, waves of invasions and the British.
The earliest archaeological evidence suggests that cultures existed in Burma as early as 11,000 BC. In what looks like remarkable symmetry, Burma's Stone Age existed at a time that parallels the lower and middle Paleolithic experience in Europe. No one bought civilisation to Myanmar... they invented their own. About 1500 BC, people in the region were turning copper into bronze, growing rice, and domesticating chickens and pigs; they were among the first people in the world to do so. By 500 BC, iron-working settlements emerged in an area south of present-day Mandalay. Bronze-decorated coffins and burial sites filled with earthenware remains have been excavated. Archaeological evidence at Samon Valley south of Mandalay suggests rice growing settlements that traded with China between 500 BC and 200 AD. We are taught that the fertile triangle of Persia is the home of Palaeolithic civilisation... perhaps, Myanmar could mount a competing claim.
History really got going when the Tibeto-Burman-speaking Pyu entered the Irrawaddy valley, in the 2nd century BC, and went on to found city states. The Pyu were the earliest inhabitants of Burma for whom records are extensive. During this period, Burma was part of an overland trade route from China to India. Trade with India brought Buddhism from southern India. By the 4th century, many in the Irrawaddy valley had converted to Buddhism. In March 638, the Pyu of Sri Ksetra launched a new calendar that later became the Burmese calendar.
Pya had a long-lasting civilization extending over nearly a millennium to early 9th century until a new group of "swift horsemen" from the north, the Mranma, (Burmans) entered the upper Irrawaddy valley. How many times have horses interrupted the course of human history!
The Pyu gradually were absorbed into the expanding Burman kingdom of Pagan in the next four centuries. The Pyu language still existed until the late 12th century. By the 13th century, the Pyu had assumed the Burman ethnicity. The histories/legends of the Pyu were also incorporated into those of the Burmans.
As early as 6th century, another people called the Mon began to enter the present-day Lower Burma from modern-day Thailand. By the mid 9th century, the Mon had founded at least two small kingdoms (or large city-states) centered around Pegu and Thaton. The kingdoms prospered from trade. The Kingdom of Thaton is widely considered to be the fabled kingdom of Suvarnabhumi (or Golden Land), referred to by the tradesmen of the Indian Ocean.
During the hundred years up to 1750, warring between princely states had Myanmar running around in circles... a bit like the dark-ages in Europe. Perhaps, this time, we cannot blame the little ice age for the misery Myanmar tribes inflicted on each other. From 1750, the Burmese tribes gained the ascendancy... successfully took on Thailand territory... and had a go at China. While the Burmese tribes were busy with their international adventures, the Mon tribes re-established their control over historic areas.
The advantage of lying on an important trade route is that you can generate wealth... the disadvantage is that you are continually the target for invasion and plunder. Myanmar has accumulated 17 ethnic groups that currently make up the nation... some groups have historians still scratching their heads wondering where they came from. The number of wars fought per hectare... on Myanmar soil... probably rates a place in the Guinness Book of Records. Everyone has had a go... even the Australians in an indirect way... courtesy of being prisoner of war inmates in Japanese railway building gangs.
The British added some stability to the war fields. They assumed control in 1886... although hostilities continued until 1890. The Suez Canal had been opened... and the demand for Burmese rice increased rapidly. Vast tracts of land were opened up for cultivation. However, in order to prepare the new land for cultivation, farmers were forced to borrow money from Indian moneylenders called chettiars at high interest rates and were often foreclosed on and evicted, losing land and livestock.
Most of the jobs also went to indentured Indian labourers, and whole villages became outlawed as they resorted to 'dacoity' (armed robbery). While the Burmese economy grew, all the power and wealth remained in the hands of several British firms, Anglo-Burmese and migrants from India. The civil service was largely staffed by the Anglo-Burmese community and Indians, and Burmese were excluded almost entirely from military service. Though the country prospered, the Burmese people failed to reap the rewards. (See George Orwell's novel Burmese Days for a fictional account of the British in Burma.) Throughout colonial rule through to the mid-1960s, the Anglo-Burmese were to dominate the country, causing discontent among the local populace.
The status of Burma during WWII is a complete book on its own. The Japanese manipulated Burmese politicians with promises of independence from Britain. After the war, on 27 January 1947, Aung San and the British Prime Minister Clement Attlee signed an agreement in London guaranteeing Burma's independence within a year.
A general election was held in April 1947. On 19 July 1947, a gang of armed paramilitaries broke into the Secretariat Building in downtown Rangoon and assassinated Aung San and six of his cabinet ministers.
Many mysteries still surround the assassination. There were rumours of a conspiracy involving the British—a variation on this theory was given new life in an influential, but sensationalist, documentary broadcast by the BBC on the 50th anniversary of the assassination in 1997.
Myanmar has earned is nationhood the hard way over milleniums of struggle. Australia freed itself from British domination with relative ease compared with all that Myanmar had to endure.
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