A History of Southeast Asia by Reid Anthony; Moore Robert;

Author:Reid, Anthony; Moore, Robert;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated
Published: 2015-05-18T00:00:00+00:00

Konbaung Burma – a Doomed Modernization

Turning from the Chao Phraya to the equally Theravada Buddhist Irrawaddy valley, one immediately notes the different balance between upriver and delta. Bama kings, we saw in Chapter 8, withdrew their capital from the ethnically mixed, commercially connected but vulnerable delta in the seventeenth century, to build a more culturally coherent identity around the key rice baskets of Upper Burma – what we may call a “heartland” strategy. From there they periodically subdued and devastated the troublesome coastal zone. Siam, with the advantage of its commercial connection with an unthreatening China, was able not only to retain control of the Chao Phraya outlet to the sea, but eventually to gain the upper hand from there in rivalry with the many upriver muang of the Thai-speaking world. The geography of the Chao Phraya watershed permitted an alternative “gateway” strategy, shared with many Malay negeri, which made possible the transition from Chinese to Europeans as the principal external partners. By contrast, the Bama kings, like their Viet and Javanese counterparts, gained advantages of cultural coherence through their “heartland” strategy, but lost control of the most commercial and cosmopolitan coastal regions piecemeal to the Europeans.

The collapse of Bama kingship in the 1740s was the first of the Mainland’s eighteenth-century crises, and its militarist re-emergence was also the first of the three modern transformations. The Konbaung Dynasty’s founder, Alaungpaya (1752–60), and his sons and brothers, culminating in Bodawpaya (1782–1819), galvanized and reorganized the Bama heartland after its invasion by Mon, Shan, and Manipur forces, and used its demographic advantage to punish the Mons ferociously. They were in control of the ports of the delta by 1757, and systematically required arms of all incoming ships until an estimated 60% of the large Burma army had flintlocks. By reorganizing society on a new military basis, the Konbaung armies were able to devastate Siam but also those who resisted in the Mon country of Lower Burma and in Arakan, Manipur (in modern India), among the muang of Shan, Lao, and Kachin territories in the north and east, and even into what is modern Yunnan province of China. Conflicts with the other rising military powers of the period, British India and Manchu China, were inevitable. The Burmese armies managed to defeat four increasingly massive Chinese invasions in the 1760s. The mountainous frontier areas had remained tense until in 1790 local authorities restored diplomatic relations by misleading both Ava and Beijing courts into believing their demands had been met. British India proved more problematic, especially after 1813 when the king decreed an invasion of India to restore Buddhism to its homeland. The army obliged in 1817 by entering the Bhramaputra valley in Assam.

The unprecedented degree of control and even cultural integration over this vast region was achieved by military means, supplying manpower to the central zone with tens of thousands of captive slaves, and terrorizing those who thought of resisting. John Crawfurd admired the body of laws assembled by scholars but seldom referred to, and the capacity of people of low birth to rise to administrative and military eminence.

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