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Mapping ethnicity in nineteenth-century Burma: When ‘categories of people’ (lumyo) became ‘nations’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2019

Aurore Candier
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Abstract

Successive wars and the establishment of a border between the kingdom of Burma and British India in the nineteenth century challenged Burmese conceptions of sovereignty and political space. This essay investigates how European, and more specifically Anglo-American, notions of race, nation, and consular protection to nationals, progressively informed the Burmese concepts of ‘categories of people’ (lumyo) and ‘subject’ (kyun). First, I present the semantic evolution of these concepts in the 1820s–1830s, following the annexation of the western Burmese province of Arakan by British India in 1824. Then, I argue that the Burmese concept of lumyo was progressively associated with the European concept of ‘nations’ in the 1850s–1860s, following the annexation of Lower Burma in 1852. Finally, I uncover developments in the 1870s, when British consular protection extended to several freshly categorised ‘nations’, such as Shan, Karenni, and Kachin.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 50 , Issue 3 , September 2019 , pp. 347 - 364
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 2019 

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Footnotes

This article is a reworking of a paper read at the 8th EuroSEAS Conference, 11–14 Aug. 2015, Vienna. I wish to thank my co-panellists for their support, and particularly Patrick McCormick for his valuable comments and suggestions.

References

1 See Candier, Aurore, ‘Conjuncture and reform in the late Konbaung period: How prophecies, omens and rumors motivated political action from 1866 to 1869’, Journal of Burma Studies 15, 3 (2011): 231–62CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Candier, Aurore, ‘A norm of Burmese kingship? The concept of Raza-dhamma through five Konbaung period texts’, Journal of Burma Studies 11 (2007): 5–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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3 I understand ‘technologies’ in the sense given by Foucault to different types of techniques and practices, each a matrix of practical rationality, experimented on and used by human beings to understand themselves. See for example, Martin, Luther H., Gutman, Huck and Hutton, Patrick H., eds., Technologies of the self: A seminar with Michel Foucault (Amherst: University of Massachussets, 1988), pp. 16–49Google Scholar.

4 There is a vast literature on the concept of ‘nation’. In medieval Europe, calling a people a ‘nation’ carried no particular political significance, but was simply a reference to common origins. However, this changed in the early modern era when questions of sovereignty began to turn to appeals to the rights of the ‘people’ after the English Civil War, and the American and French Revolutions. Whether expressed as ‘nation’ or ‘people’, reference to some bounded and internally integrated population became integral to modern notions of popular will and public opinion. See Calhoun, Craig, Nationalism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), pp. 69–71Google Scholar.

5 This hierarchy is inspired by the Vedic cosmogonist myth (Manava dharmaśāstra), which narrates that the four varṇa were born from the sacrifice of the Great Man (mahā purusa): The Brahmins from his mouth, the warriors from his arms, the rich from his thighs, and the poor from his feet. However, Buddhist texts systematically range the warriors before the Brahmins, as shown by Renou, Louis, La Civilisation de l'Inde ancienne (Paris: Flammarion, 1981), pp. 54–8Google Scholar, and Tambiah, Stanley J., World conqueror and world renouncer: A study of Buddhism and polity in Thailand against a historical background (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976), pp. 10–20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 The Great Royal Chronicle draws on earlier chronicles, such as the Celebrated Chronicle (Shin Thilawuntha, 16th century), and is a major piece of the Burmese historical literature, according to Kirichenko, Alexey, ‘From Ava to Mandalay: Towards charting the development of Burmese yazawin traditions’, Journal of Burma Studies 13 (2009): 19–23CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Lieberman, Victor B., ‘How reliable is U Kala's Burmese chronicle? Some new comparisons’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 17, 2 (1986): 236–55CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Amyo means ‘kind’, ‘category’, or ‘sort’ in reference to anything, not just people.

8 See Tin, Pe Maung and Soe, Pwa Khin, eds., U Kala yetathaw mahayazawingyi [The Great Royal Chronicle written by U Kala], vol. 1 (Yangon: Hanthawaddy, 1960), p. 14Google Scholar. The poor literally ‘have a little personal power, resulting from a low accumulation of past good deeds’.

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10 Renou, La Civilisation, p. 64.

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13 Gravers, ‘Introduction: Ethnicity against state’, pp. 11–13 ; Leach, Edmund R., ‘The frontiers of Burma’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 3, 1 (1960): 49–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar ; James C. Scott, ‘Hill–valley relations in Mainland Southeast Asia, especially Burma: Why civilizations can't climb hills’ (Keynote address, Burma Studies Conference, Gothenburg, Sweden, 2002). Beyond this city/upland forest dwellers distinction, there were other kinds of cultural differentiation in the region based on cultural practices, degree of cosmopolitanism, and social and religious practices, as discussed by Lieberman, Victor in Strange parallels: Southeast Asia in global context, c.800–1830, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Adoniram Judson, who was the first Anglo-American to record the Burmese language, translated ayaing as ‘uncultivated, rude, wild, unpolished, unlearned’, in A dictionary of the Burman Language (Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1826), p. 314Google Scholar. Exclusion from the civilised world and rejection into the ‘wild’ category of people not living in accordance with the dominant social rules is common to almost all social groups, as shown by Bonte, Pierre and Izard, Michel, eds., Dictionnaire de l'ethnologie et de l'anthropologie (Paris: PUF, 2002), p. 247Google Scholar. Hence, Scott, James, in The art of not being governed: An anarchist history of upland Southeast Asia (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009)Google ScholarPubMed, demonstrates that Mainland Southeast Asian states associated wilderness with the Zomia people.

15 Thwin, Michael Aung, ‘Hierarchy and order in pre-colonial Burma’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 15, 2 (1984): 224–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lieberman, Burmese administrative cycles, pp. 96–109; Koenig, The Burmese polity, pp. 107–15; Leider, Jacques P., Le Royaume d'Arakan, Birmanie: son histoire politique entre le début du XVème et la fin du XVIIème siècle (Paris: EFEO, 2004), pp. 386–91, 436–9Google Scholar.

16 For a detailed analysis of the category of ‘good person’ in nīti and dhammathat literature, see Dietrich Christian Lammerts, ‘Buddhism and written law: Dhammasattha manuscripts and texts in premodern Burma’ (PhD diss., Cornell University, 2010), pp. 480–87.

17 Than Tun, The royal orders of Burma, vol. 7, pp. 304–5.

18 Toshikatsu, Ito, ‘Karens and the Konbaung polity in Myanmar’, Acta Asiatica 92 (2007): 89–108Google Scholar.

19 Watanabe, Yoshinari, ‘Ethnic policy towards various “peoples” in the Early Konbaung dynasty: Ethnic awareness in eighteenth to nineteenth century Burma’, in The changing self image of Southeast Asian society during the 19th and 20th centuries, ed. Ishii, Yoneo (Tokyo: Toyo Bunko, 2009), pp. 29–34Google Scholar. For a detailed analysis of the term Kala, see de Mersan, Alexandra, ‘How Muslims in Arakan became Arakan's foreigners’, in Current Myanmar Studies, Aung San Suu Kyi, Muslims in Arakan, and economic insecurity, ed. Winterberger, Georg and Tenberg, Esther (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019), pp. 59–98Google Scholar.

20 The original Burmese version of the treaty, which Judson prepared, can be found in Than Tun, The royal orders of Burma, vol. 8, pp. 444–5. For the official English translation, see Cooke, Crawfurd B., The British Burma manual, vol. 1 (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink and Co., 1879), pp. 1–6Google Scholar.

21 Judson, Dictionary of the Burman language, p. 212. In the second edition of his Burmese–English dictionary, A Dictionary, Burmese and English (Moulmein: American Mission Press, 1852), pp. 65, 409Google Scholar, Judson translates amyo as ‘race’ and associates it with the idea of lineage.

22 For an overview of the role of republican ideas in modern politics, see Calhoun, Nationalism, pp. 66–85; Pocock, John G.A., The Macchiavellian moment: Florentine political thought and the Atlantic republican tradition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975)Google Scholar.

23 Judson, Dictionary of the Burman language, p. 84.

24 Burney, Henry, The journal of Henry Burney in the capital of Burma 1830–1832, with an introduction by Nicholas Tarling (Auckland: University of Auckland, New Zealand Asia Institute, 1995), p. 40Google Scholar. In the translation he did of a letter from the Governor General to Bagyidaw in 1830, Judson translated ‘prisoner’ as kyun. However, the Burmese ministers dissuaded him from doing so and he had to modify the letter before handing it over to the King.

25 University Historical Research Centre (Yangon), Microfilm 309 (Fort William 5 Aug. 1826): Commercial agreement with Ava, 5 June 1826.

26 For the Burmese version of the commercial agreement, see Than Tun, The royal orders of Burma, vol. 8, pp. 497–8, and for the English version, see Cooke, British Burma Manual, vol. 1, pp. 6–7.

27 Hall, D.G.E., Henry Burney: A political biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974), p. 188Google Scholar; Desai, W.S., History of the British Residency in Burma, 1820–1840 (Farnborough: Gregg International, 1972), p. 33Google Scholar.

28 Hluttaw parabaik ahmat atha atogauk hmatpoun [Abridged records of the parliament], vol. 1 (Rangoon: Government Press, 1901), p. 26Google Scholar.

29 Ibid., p. 29.

30 Ibid., pp. 26–8.

31 Ibid., p. 49, 103. The translation of tha as ‘child’ — its etymological meaning — can be surprising for modern Burmese speakers. They would tend to translate tha as ‘person’ or ‘individual’, the meaning it carries in the present-day conception of amyotha. Modern speakers also consider tha a person of a male gender, as opposed to thu, a female person, such as in naingngantha (a male national) and naingnganthu (a female national), but this sharp gender distinction was not systematic in the 1830s.

32 India Office (London), F/4/1711 69091: letter from Blundell to Princeps (Moulmein, 7 Jan. 1838); report from Bayfield (Rangoon, 13 Jan. 1838).

33 Thant Myint-U, The making of modern Burma, p. 106.

34 For the Burmese version of the treaty, see manuscript no. 673 (National Library, Yangon: Kinwun Mingyi collection), 1862, and for the English version see Cooke, The British Burma Manual, vol. 1, pp. 10–12.

35 Hluttaw parabaik, vol. 1, p. 122.

36 University Historical Research Centre (Yangon), Microfilm 1 (Dec. 1864): Letters from Phayre to Durant, Rangoon, 22 July 1864, 4 Aug. 1864; (May 1865): Williams's diary, Mandalay, 8 and 28 Aug. 1864.

37 Thant Myint-U, The making of modern Burma, p. 140.

38 Hluttaw parabaik, vol. 1, pp. 96–9.

39 Jane Ferguson, ‘Who's counting ?’, pp. 5–6. On the same process in Thailand, see Winichakul, Thongchai, Siam mapped: A history of the geo-body of a nation (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1994)Google Scholar.

40 In the Burmese representation of 101 lumyo, the eastern and northern peripheral regions were populated with ‘thirty categories of Shan’ including, amongst others, the Shan lumyo (some court records divide them into northern, eastern, southern and western Shan), the Kayin lumyo, Kachin lumyo, Danu lumyo, Tayouk (Chinese) lumyo, Palaung lumyo, Kathay lumyo, and Chin. For further details, and to see how the people included changed over time, see Tin, Myanmamin outchoutpon sadan, vol. 2, pp. 24–6.

41 Hluttaw parabaik, vol. 1, pp. 94–6.

42 University Historical Research Centre (Yangon), Microfilm 1 (Jan. 1865): Letter from Fytche to Phayre, 5 July 1864; Microfilm 41 (May 1860): Letter from the Reverend Mason to Phayre, 3 Mar. 1860, and letter from Phayre to Grey, Rangoon. For a further analysis of the concept of minlaung, see Aung-Thwin, Maitrii, The return of the Galon King: History, law, and rebellion in colonial Burma (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2011)Google Scholar.

43 University Historical Research Centre (Yangon), Microfilm 1 (June 1864): Letter from Nelson Davis to Durant, Shwegyin, 20 Apr. 1864.

44 Maung Maung Tin, Konbaungzet mahayazawindawgyi [The great royal chronicle of the Konbaung dynasty], vol. 3 (Rangoon : Ledi Mandaing, 1967), p. 313; Hluttaw parabaik, vol. 1, pp. 111–12.

45 University Historical Research Centre (Yangon), Microfilm 1 (Dec. 1864): Letter from Phayre to Durant, Rangoon, 22 July 1864; reply from Durant to Phayre, Calcutta, 30 Aug. 1864.

46 Maung Maung Tin, Konbaungzet, vol. 3, pp. 333–7; Blackmore, Thaung, ‘Dilemma of the British representative to the Burmese court after the outbreak of a palace revolution in 1866’, Journal of Southeast Asian History 10 (1969): 236–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 Myingun fled Rangoon and took refuge in the Shan state in February 1867 (University Historical Research Centre [Yangon], Microfilm 2 [Mar. 1867]: Letter from Nelson Davis to the Secretary of the Government of India, Rangoon, 21 Feb. 1867). In March, there were reports about an alliance between Myingun, Kye Bho Gyi and Kye Bho Galay (Hluttaw parabaik, vol. 1, p. 148). Troops left Mandalay in June to fight the coalition (Maung Maung Tin, Konbaungzet, vol. 3, p. 362).

48 University Historical Research Centre (Yangon), Microfilm 4 (Aug. 1868): Telegram from Fytche to the Secretary of the Government of India; Microfilm 5 (Jan. 1869): Letter from the Secretary of the Government of India to Fytche, Calcutta, 3 Dec. 1868; Maung Maung Tin, Konbaungzet, vol. 3, p. 370; Hluttaw parabaik, vol. 1, p. 180. Myingun was finally sent to Calcutta in October 1868. On the exile of Prince Myingun, see the work of Ba, Vivian, ‘Prince Myngoon's Odyssey’, Journal of Burma Research Society 54, 1, 1 (1971): 31–58Google Scholar, and of Edwards, Penny, ‘Watching the detectives: The elusive exile of Prince Myngoon of Burma’, in Exile in colonial Asia: Kings, convicts, commemoration, ed. Ricci, Ronit (Honolulu: Hawai‘i University Press, 2016), pp. 248–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

49 University Historical Research Centre (Yangon), Microfilm 10 (Jan. 1874): Strover's diary, Mandalay, 14 Oct. 1873, 6 Nov. 1873; Hluttaw parabaik, vol. 1, p. 422.

50 University Historical Research Centre (Yangon), Microfilm 10 (Mar. 1874): Letter from the Commissioner of Pegu to the Secretary of the Government of India, Rangoon, 9 Jan. 1874, 7 Feb. 1874; (Sept. 1874): Letter from Strover the Commissioner of Pegu, Mandalay, 30 Mar. 1874; Letter from Duncan to the Secretary of the Government of India, Rangoon, 28 May 1874; Microfilm 12 (Oct. 1876): Letter from the Secretary of the Government of India to the Commissioner of Pegu, Calcutta, 6 June 1876; Hluttaw parabaik, vol. 1, pp. 423–4.

51 University Historical Research Centre (Yangon), Microfilm 2 (Feb. 1868): Letter from Fytche to the Secretary of the Government of India, Rangoon, 11 Nov. 1867; Hluttaw parabaik, vol. 1, p. 157. Both Burmese and British primary sources refer to the Panthay Rebellion. For a further analysis of the Hui ethnicity and the Panthay Rebellion, see Atwill, D.G., ‘Blinkered vision: Islamic identity, Hui ethnicity and the Panthay Rebellion in southwest China 1856–1873’, Journal of Asian Studies 62, 4 (2003): 1079–108CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

52 University Historical Research Centre (Yangon), Microfilm 4 (Oct. 1868): Letter from Sladen to Fytche, Bhamo, 5 Sept. 1868; Microfilm 8 (May 1872): Strover's diary, Mandalay, 17 Feb. 1872; Stewart, A.T.Q., The pagoda war (London: Faber and Faber, 1972), pp. 53–4Google Scholar. In 1872, an official Panthay delegation was sent to Strover, the British diplomatic agent in Mandalay, and from there it went on to Rangoon, Calcutta and finally London.

53 University Historical Research Centre (Yangon), Microfilm 10 (Sept. 1874), Cooke's diary, Bhamo, 13 June 1874, 22 June 1874; (Oct. 1874), Strover's diary, Mandalay, 23 Aug. 1874, 24 Sept. 1874.

54 University Historical Research Centre (Yangon), Microfilm 10 (Nov. 1874): Letter from Strover to the Commissioner of Pegu, Mandalay, 1 Oct. 1874; Cooke's diary, Bhamo, 28 Oct. 1874.

55 University Historical Research Centre (Yangon), Microfilm 11 (Apr. 1875): Letter from Browne to Duncan, Rangoon, 12 Mar. 1875; Strover's diary, Mandalay, 2 to 15 Mar. 1875; Letter from the Commissioner of Pegu to the Secretary of the Government of India, Rangoon, 20 Mar. 1875; Stewart, The pagoda war, p. 58.

56 Hluttaw parabaik, vol. 2, pp. 157–8; University Historical Research Centre (Yangon), Microfilm 13 (Jan. 1877): Letter from Duncan to the Secretary of the Government of India, Mandalay, 26 Feb. 1876; (Jan. 1877): Letter from the Secretary of the Government of India to the Commissioner of Pegu, Calcutta, 15 Sept. 1876.

57 University Historical Research Centre (Yangon), Microfilm 11 (June 1875): Cooke's diary, Bhamo, 30 Mar. 1875, and 5, 14, and 16 Apr. 1875; Hluttaw parabaik, vol. 2, p. 76.

58 University Historical Research Centre (Yangon), Microfilm 11 (June 1875): Cooke's diary, Bhamo, 5 and 15 Apr. 1875; Strover's diary, Mandalay, 10, 11 and 21 Apr. 1875; (Oct. 1875): Letter from the Chief Commissioner to the Government of India, Rangoon, 15 July 1875; Hluttaw parabaik, vol. 2, p. 96.

59 Hluttaw parabaik, vol. 2, p. 151; University Historical Research Centre (Yangon), Microfilm 13 (Mar. 1877): Cooke's diary, Bhamo, 31 Jan. 1877; (Dec. 1877): Letter from Duncan to the Government of India, Mandalay, 8 Oct. 1877; Microfilm 14 (Aug. 1878): Sainte-Barbe's diary, Bhamo, 24 May 1878.

60 University Historical Research Centre (Yangon), Microfilm 14 (May 1878): Duncan's diary, Mandalay, 29 Jan. 1878; Hluttaw parabaik, vol. 2, p. 287, 305; Maung Maung Tin, Konbaungzet, vol. 3, pp. 471, 488–9; Hall, Europe, p. 166.

61 On nationalism as a discursive formation, through the use of terms like nations, nationalism, nation-state, nationality, see Calhoun, Nationalism, chap. 1.

62 Tin, Myanmamin outchoutpon sadan, vol. 2, part 3, section 4, sub-section 11.