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The British Administrator in Burma: A New View

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 April 2011

Edith L. Piness
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Extract

The Anglo-Burmese administrator, ostensibly another Anglo-Indian administrator and traditionally perceived as such, must be viewed as a special case. He served Company and Crown in a milieu and under circumstances that differed sharply from those known to his counterparts in the subcontinent. Burma was in a unique position in that it was a part of both the Indian and British Empires. The administrator in Burma found himself at the end of a chain of command that extended from London via Calcutta to Rangoon. London tended to view the remote province with an eye to diplomatic and mercantile considerations. Calcutta concentrated on local priorities and imposed a rigid economy that accorded with Indian priorities. Little attempt was made to understand the alien culture with its differing needs. To the Anglo-Burmese administrator fell the difficult task of governing the ancient land under the aegis of Calcutta and the eyes of London.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , September 1983 , pp. 372 - 378
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1983

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References

1 Colonel W.F.B. Laurie includes Sir Arthur Phayre, the first Commissioner of Lower Burma, in his list of distinguished Anglo-Indian administrators; Sketches of Some Distinguished Anglo-Indians (London: W. H. Allen, 1887). Philip Woodruff counts Phayre among the Guardians inGoogle ScholarThe Men Who Ruled India; Vol. II The Guardians (London: Jonathan Cape, 1963)Google Scholar.

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11 Literary examples of the spirit of the new imperial age are to be found in the novels of Haggard, H. Rider and Henty, G. A. and the poems of Rudyard Kipling. Contemporary works on the subject include: Charles Wentworth Dilke, Greater Britain: A Record of Travel in English-Speaking Countries during 1866 and 1867 (3rd. ed.; London: Macmillan & Co., 1869)Google Scholar; Froude, James Anthony, Oceana or England and her Colonies (London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1866)Google Scholar; Seeley, J. R., The Expansion of England, Classics of British Historical Literature, ed. Gross, John (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971)Google Scholar.

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