A REBELLION IN BURMA:

THE SAGAING UPRISING OF 1910

S. R. ASHTON

It is of course difficult to obtain the candid view of Burmans on our policy andadministration, but whenever they are obtained there is no disguising of the fact thatthe removal of their King, the representative of their nation and the head of theirreligion, is resented even by those who have been for years the subjects of the BritishGovernment, and there is a strong belief among the common people that sooner orlater there will be a restoration of the Kingdom. The history of Burma is the historyof a succession of revolutions and wars in which strange changes come about. Thecharacter of the people is still the same.

G. J. S. Hodgkinson^ Commissioner of the Pegu Division, ^o August 1888^

T H I S paper examines the British reaction to a rebellion which took place in the Sagaingdistrict of Upper Burma in November 1910. This occurred twenty-five years afterthe British annexation of the kingdom of Upper Burma and the deposition of KingThibaw, the last monarch of the Konbaung dynasty. It was led by a minlaung^ apretender or would-be king. About 800 men were said to have been involved in therebellion which took the form of an abortive attack on a police post at Myinmu, atownship in the Sagaing district. The paper is based on two principal sources withinthe records of the India Office: firstly, the police reports of the rebellion which appearin the Confidential Home Department Proceedings of the Government of Burma;^secondly, transcripts of the trial judgements which were passed by the Sessions Courtand the Judicial Commissioner for Upper Burma in the cases of those who were arrestedby the British and charged with being the main conspirators in the rebellion. Copiesof these transcripts were forwarded to London by the Government of India and arenow deposited on a Public and Judicial Department file within the India Office Records.^The paper begins by examining the precedents, proceeds to describe the rebellion andthe trials and concludes with a discussion of the repercussions.

T H E P R E C E D E N T S

It is not the intention in this section to dwell at length on the phenomenon whichis a recurrent one in Burmese history of a minlaung or would-be king leading a rebellion

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with the aim of usurping the throne.* Instead, reference will be made to twocomparatively minor incidents which occurred under British rule in the 1890s. In thefirst, which occurred in March 1894, a doctor from Lower Burma assumed the titleNyaungyan Prince^ and led an attack on a police post at Chaungu in the Sagaingdistrict. Guns and ammunition were stolen and three people, including a child, werekilled. Seventeen people were said to have planned the attack, although more werereported as having joined in, and five monks were subsequently arrested and chargedwith harbouring the rebels and concealing arms in the monasteries.*^ The second incidentoccurred in October 1897 when a monk attacked the palace at Mandalay (fig. i) withabout fifteen or twenty followers. The monk intended to rally wider support by seatinghimself on the Golden Throne and he was even said to have chosen a queen to sharehis throne with him. A European soldier was killed in the attack.'' Feelings ran highover this second incident and Sir Frederick Fryer, the Acting Chief Commissioner, hadto overrule demands for a public execution of those convicted.^ Twelve individualswere sentenced to death. Two had their sentences commuted by Fryer. In two furthercases, both involving old men aged seventy-two and sixty-five. Fryer contemplatedexercising clemency but then decided that they had played prominent roles in the attackand so deserved their fate. The Acting Chief Commissioner summed up his feelings ina letter to the Viceroy, Lord Elgin: 'It was a lamentable business, and, considering thenature of the Burmans and the danger of the recurrence of such risings, I think thatmercy might have been misplaced.'^

These incidents at Chaungu in 1894 and Mandalay in 1897 were by no meansexceptional. The years immediately following the annexation witnessed several abortiveinsurrections. ° However, the incidents were significant for two reasons. First, theywere seen by the British as precedents for the much larger uprising which took placeat Sagaing in 1910. During the trial proceedings which followed the Sagaing uprising,the court used the Chaungu and Mandalay incidents as points of reference from whichto^etermine both the nature of the offences which had been committed and the natureof the sentences which should be imposed. Secondly, both incidents reveal somethingof the British mentality when confronted by continuing manifestations of nationalistresistance. They in part explain why British officials in Burma were so sensitive aboutthe movements abroad of members of the deposed royal family. In June 1894, justthree months after the incident at Chaungu, the Government of Burma reacted sharplyto a proposal made in a demi-official letter from the Foreign Department of theGovernment of India to the effect that ex-King Thibaw was likely to be transferredfrom Ratnagiri in Bombay to Madras. In a letter to Lord Elgin, Sir AlexanderMackenzie, who had returned to his post as Chief Commissioner in place of Fryer,confessed himself ^startled' that the suggestion should have been made in so casual amanner without prior consultation. 'Thibaw in Madras', wrote Mackenzie to Elgin,'means trouble in Burma'. He continued: Trom every part of Burma just now I learnthat the minds of the people are in a curious state of unrest, and the Province requirescareful watching'.^^ Emphasizing the same point in his next letter, Mackenzie warned

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that constant rumours were being circulated throughout Burma about the coming of aTrince'.^^ The Government of Burma submitted an official reply which pointed outthat Thibaw's presence so close to Burma would constitute a 'disturbing' influence. Itwould stimulate intrigue and afford an opportunity for the mother of ex-Queen Supayalatto indulge in mischief The Government of Burma argued that if Thibaw had to bemoved at all, the Punjab or the North Western Provinces of India, even Bengal, wouldbe better than Madras. ^ In the event he remained at Ratnagiri. Lord Elgin elaboratedon his theme and revealed more of the British mentality in a letter to Lord GeorgeHamilton, the Secretary of State for India, in November 1898. Sir Frederick Fryer wasnow Burma's first Lieutenant-Governor. Elgin's letter was written while he was on tourin Upper Burma and he explained to Hamilton:

The people, as might be expected, look prosperous and contented; but I have been struck bythe unanimity with which all officials from the Lieutenant-Governor downwards declare that inUpper Burma the people would undoubtedly turn us out in favour of a ruler of their own, ifthey could. They do not anticipate any trouble, for the people have no leaders and no organisation,but they say the feeling is there. Fryer adds that he thinks it will die out when the generationwhich remembers the ancient regime disappears, and that then there need be no more feelingagainst us in Upper than there is now in Lower Burma; but it illustrates the present positionthat one gentleman of a cynical turn of mind declared that it would be a good thing if the Palaceat Mandalay was burnt down, so as to remove this outward sign of a former independence.^'*

Elgin dissociated himself from this uncompromising attitude, expressing in the sameletter his sense of 'sadness and shame' at the extent to which the palace at Mandalayhad been desecrated already. But the mentality of the British official in Burma remainedunchanged. He met resistance with fierce repression and remained confident that theproblem of opposition to British rule in Upper Burma would resolve itself with thepassing of the generation which remembered the Burmese monarchy.

THE SAGAING U P R I S I N G

The leader of the Sagaing uprising was Maung Po Than, a villager from Pegu in theSagaing district. His age was estimated at somewhere between nineteen and twenty-one. His fame as a minlaung began during the winter months of December 1909 andJanuary 1910. Returning to his village one day during this period, the sleeve of hisjacket accidentally caught fire from a cheroot which he had put into his pocket. Smokebegan to rise from his arm. Unaware at first of what had happened, Po Than dampeddown his smouldering sleeve when it was pointed out to him by a fellow villager. Theincident caused momentary amusement and nothing more was said until, about a monthlater, another villager ran through the streets of Pegu one night shouting: 'It is truethat fire comes out from Maung Po Than's arm; lightning will strike those who do notbelieve and tigers will devour them'. In succeeding months, between February andApril 1910, villagers from surrounding districts kept coming to Pegu where Po Thanremained. It was widely rumoured that a minlaung had appeared in Pegu.

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According to the police reports, these rumours were based on a combination of legendand prophecy.15 i^ ^^s said that Po Than had visited Shwebo where he heard that agirl had had her pawa (silk handkerchief) carried away by a kite. This apparently wasa sign that the girl would become a queen. It was also said that with the girl Po Thanhad found an old ring believed to have been buried for a future king of Burma. Shwebowas known as the king-making district of Burma. The town was also known zsyangyi-aung, literally 'the victorious'. To use it as a base for military operations was thoughtto be a guarantee of success. Three Konbaung monarchs—Alaungpaya (1752-60), thefounder of the dynasty, Tharawaddy (1837-46) and Mindon (1853-78)—had seized thethrone at the head of forces drawn from Shwebo. According to legend, seven kings ofBurma would come from Shwebo. Six had done so already and it was said that theseventh would make himself known after four minlaungs and a white elephant hadappeared. The capture of a white elephant at the same time that the rumours began tospread about Po Than's powers of sending out flames was regarded as an omen. Sir GeorgeScott's Gazetteer of Upper Burma tells of a tradition concerning Mahadammayaza-Dipati(1733 52), the last king of the Toungoo dynasty which had ruled Burma since 1531.Mahadammayaza-Dipati was overthrown in 1752 when the Mons destroyed his capitalat Ava. The deposed king was captured and imprisoned at Pegu in Lower Burma.According to the Gazetteer, he was later beheaded at the Shwedagon Pagoda. Beforehis execution he was asked to interpret a dream in which the Mon king had seen a fishwithout a head but with a tail which shook vigorously. Mahadammayaza-Dipatiidentified himself with the missing head and his people with the tail. He said that hispeople would rise up against their conquerors and he remembered an old prophecy thatone of three bohs (military officers) would send out flames as a sign. * That heat orflames had been emitted from his right arm was said to have established Alaungpayaas someone who was destined to become a great king. Finally, in Po Than's case, astory was put about in May 1910 that the Shweyinna Pagoda about five miles fromPegu had been miraculously gilded. People began fiocking to it before the DeputyCommissioner of Sagaing put it out of bounds on health grounds. The pagoda itselfhad no significance but it was built by Kyanzittha, who ruled as King of Pagan from1084 to 1113. It was now rumoured that Po Than was the minlaung of Pegu and alsothat he was the reincarnation of King Kyanzittha.

The growth of these rumours brought the name of Maung Po Than to the attentionof the local authorities in Sagaing. Remembering the circumstances of the attack on thepolice station at Chaungu in 1898, Maung Po Te, the Subdivisional Officer at Myinmu,had Po Than watched. He was brought in for questioning and sent before John Doyle,the Acting Deputy Commissioner for Sagaing. Unable to find any evidence againsthim, Doyle gave Po Than, and a number of his companions who had been brought inwith him, six rupees and sent them all back to their village. Po Than was still keptunder surveillance. The police questioned him again and threatened him with deportationif he were arrested. Because of this harassment Po Than left Pegu at the end of May1910. His father. Tun Bo, left with him.

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Shan States (Rangoon, 1900), Pt. I, Vol. II, map of'Upper Burma'

The next reported sighting of Po Than was in June 1910. William Wallace, theDeputy Commissioner at Shwebo, informed William St J. Leeds, the Commissioner ofSagaing, that Po Than was attempting to raise followers in Shwebo district. Wallace'sinformation came from the headman of the small village of Halin who told him thatPo Than was staying at Hmetti, a small salt-boiling centre near Halin. The headmansaid that he had found Po Than with some of his followers but that he had been unableto arrest them because they were armed with dahs or swords. Wallace gave orders thatPo Than should be arrested and shot if necessary. An unsuccessful attempt was madeto capture Po Than at Hmetti but three of his companions were caught. Pursued bythe Shwebo police, Po Than returned to Pegu where he narrowly escaped anotherattempt to arrest him. He then disappeared. Unknown to the authorities in Sagaing,he went into hiding in Lower Burma, finding shelter at the village of Byinnya in theDanubyu township of Maubin district. Here there were about ten or fifteen families

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LDw£ Rc Hin avtns nHD sav/eao

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Sagaing Division, as part of his report on the rebellion. IOR: P/8628, p. 23

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from Pegu, including that of Aung Do, one of Po Than's uncles. He stayed at the houseof Aung Do and worked for him in the fields. From Shwebo, Wallace reported that PoThan's career to date had been *a series of comic adventures in the shape of makingvillagers pay him homage, promising to execute the Deputy Commissioner and place aBurman in his stead, boasting that he would kill off all the officers of the Britishregiment here and then call upon the leaderless soldiery to come under his standard.'^^Wallace added that he was now being 'laughed at by the villagers themselves' and thathe had lost all credit in Sagaing. At the same time, however, Wallace admitted that therumours about him had spread and that they had reached as far south as Bassein. Thislast assessment was perhaps closer to the truth. Far from being a comic figure, PoThanhs success in evading the attempts to capture him had enhanced his reputation asa minlaung. For this reason Po Than's three companions who had been arrested atShwebo were not prosecuted because it was realized that this would make Po Than'seventual capture still more difficult.

Po Than was next heard of again in the middle of October 1910, nearly four monthsafter his flight from Pegu. Maung Po Te, the Subdivisional Officer at Myinmu whohad brought Po Than in for questioning in May, visited Pegu in October to check thethathameda or household tax rolls. Upon the basis of information supplied by Po Hmi,the Pegu headman, Maung Po Te brought Ya Baw, another Pegu villager, in forquestioning. Ya Baw was Po Than's uncle by marriage. When questioned by the policeat Myinmu he said that Po Than had returned from Lower Burma and that he was inthe Lower Chindwin district at Agandaung near the Powindaung hills. Ya Baw offeredto take Maung Po Te to where Po Than was staying. Permission was given and thepolice at Monywa, the headquarters town of the Lower Chindwin district, wereinformed. The journey, however, proved fruitless. The countryside was hilly and thehuts of the villagers scattered. Maung Po Te returned but allowed Ya Baw to continuethe search with Po Hmi, the Pegu headman, on the understanding that he would bringdefinite information about Po Than's whereabouts as soon as he could.

Thereafter events moved so swiftly that the British civil and police authorities werecaught almost unawares. On 6 November 1910, Charles Pennell, the OfficiatingCommissioner for Sagaing who was deputizing in St J. Leeds's absence, received twotelegrams. The first, from the Township Officer at Myinmu, reported that a party of300 men had marched through the village of Kin in the north of the Myinmu Subdivisionnear the Monywa boundary to join Po Than at Agandaung. The information had beensupplied by the headman of Kin. The same telegram stated: 'Ya Baw informed that PoThan will attack Myinmu and Chaungu tonight.'^^ The second telegram, from theDeputy Commissioner at Monywa, reported that Po Than, with a gathering of fortymen and ten ponies, had been seen on 4 November at Maletha, a village on the LowerChindwin side of the Lower Chindwin-Sagaing district boundary. A party of policehad been sent to Maletha and the telegram asked Pennell to take action in theneighbourhood of Pegu. Pennell decided to act upon the first of these two telegrams.He ordered John Dobson, the District Superintendent of Police at Sagaing, to proceed

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to Myinmu immediately. Dobson travelled by train alone; reinforcements, in the shapeof twenty-five Military Police armed with 2000 rounds of ammunition were sent onafter him. At the same time, the Deputy Commissioner at Monywa made arrangementsto defend Chaungu.

The details of what happened next were supplied by Maung Po Ka, a Deputy ForestRanger who had been captured by Po Than's men, and by Dobson, the police officerordered to Myinmu. Together with his servant and another Forest Guard, Maung PoKa had been taken prisoner at Maletha on 5 November. All three were mistaken forcivil police because of their khaki uniforms. Their uniforms were cut up and thedocuments they had with them were burned. They escaped during the confusionsurrounding the attack on the police post at Myinmu and Po Ka became a keyprosecution witness during the subsequent trials. He testified that they were taken firstto Po Than's camp at Agandaung. Po Than said little to them, merely asking if theywere Buddhists and then he ordered that they should be bound. On 6 November PoThan and his followers visited a monastery in the morning and then moved on to Peguin the afternoon. Here they were fed by the villagers and Po Than was presented witha cap pistol, the only firearm the so-called rebels possessed. At Pegu, Po Ka estimatedthat Po Than's army was about 500 strong. They left Pegu in the early hours of7 November and set off for Myinmu. On the way Po Ka and his companions learnedthat the intention was to seize the guns at Myinmu police station, murder the officials,march one mile to Myinmu railway station, rip up the line and cut the telegraph wiresand then march to Monywa. As they marched they were joined by more men from thevillages through which they passed. Po Ka estimated that their numbers had swollento about 1000.

Po Than rode in front wearing a red turban, a white jacket and yellow paso(waistcloth). He was armed with a sword which had a pinchbeck handle and a silverscabbard and an ebony-handled dagger. The story was then taken up by Dobson whoarrived at Myinmu in the early evening of 6 November. To defend the police stationhe had with him one Indian officer, three NCOs, twenty-six sepoys or military policeand ten armed civil police. Throughout the night Dobson received reports that PoThan's army was drawing closer and that it was growing larger all the time. The attacktook place at 5.30 in the morning of 7 November.^^ The numbers involved were smallerthan Dobson had been led to believe—about 150 mounted on ponies and 600 on foot.The fighting was little more than a skirmish. The insurgents advanced on the policestation and then fell back and retreated as the police fired into them. This manoeuvrewas repeated on several occasions until the insurgents dispersed and fled back towardsthe town. Dobson and eight of his men went after them. They found that the townhad not been damaged, nor had any property been stolen. The inhabitants gave no helpto the police; as Dobson wrote in his report, they were all on the side of Po Than.There were three casualties during the attack. Dobson's men found the bodies of tworebels and one pony, believed to be that upon which Po Than had ridden. The attackat Chaungu never materialized. Over the next few days the police mounted a mopping

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up operation. They descended on several villages and made a large number of arrests.In total about 250 were arrested. At first Po Than could not be found. The Commissionerof Sagaing offered a reward of 1000 rupees (£66) for his arrest. Smaller rewards, of upto 200 rupees (£13) each, were offered for the arrest of the other rebel leaders. Po Thanescaped to Rangoon where he was arrested at the beginning of December 1910. 0

St J. Leeds, the Commissioner of Sagaing, was required to submit a report to theGovernment of Burma explaining what had happened. His descriptive narrative ofevents was followed by two general observations about the nature of the uprising. Hisfirst observation raised the question of taking action against the villages which hadsupported Po Than. He wrote:

There is no reason to believe that the villagers are seriously disaffected, but the large numberthat joined the Minlaung with apparently very little persuasion, and the fact that headmen gaveno assistance in arresting him and must have actively helped him are unsatisfactory features ofthe occurrence and it is necessary to consider whether, besides the prosecution of offenders, theimposition of punitive police will be necessary. I am inclined to think that the assemblage of solarge a body of rebels was due to the inclination of the police to rely too much on villageheadmen for information. The serious consequence of this becomes apparent when thugyis(village headmen) are disloyal or incompetent.^^

In his second observation, St J. Leeds put forward a rather bizarre suggestion on themeans to prevent a recurrence of such outbreaks in the future. He wrote again:

The lesson that the rising appears to teach is that legislation is necessary to make it an offencepunishable under the Indian Penal Code to lay claim to supernatural powers with a view toinciting persons to wage war against the king or to commit any other offence. With a people socredulous as the Burmans, the danger is being repeatedly exemplified, and twenty-five years ofBritish rule in Upper Burma seem to have effected little in the way of opening the eyes of thepopulace to the fact that they cannot be made bullet-proof or receive the assistance of enchantedponies or tigers. In the present rising the Minlaung's followers were supplied with white clothsused as flags, turbans, etc; which appear to have been believed to render the wearer invulnerable.The cloths also no doubt served as a species of uniform or distinguishing badge.^^

Sir Harvey Adamson, the Lieutenant-Governor of Burma, found much to criticize inSt J. Leeds's report. He believed that the police and the Subdivisional and TownshipOfficers in the Lower Chindwin and Sagaing districts were at fault in failing to obtainearlier information about Po Than's whereabouts which might have prevented theattack at Myinmu. Adamson requested further information before sanctioning thequartering of punitive police on villages but dismissed the suggestion that legislationwas required to make it an offence to lay claim to supernatural powers with a view tosubverting the King's authority. The Lieutenant-Governor believed that the law wasquite adequate as it stood. The ringleaders would be charged under Sections 121, 121Aand 122 of the Indian Penal Code. The charge would be one of treason, on the groundsof waging war against the King-Emperor, and the penalty would be the maximum oneof death.

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THE TRIALS AND THE PUNISHMENTS

A specially appointed Sessions Judge sat at the Sagaing courthouse (fig. 4) duringthe first six months of 1911 to hear the evidence against thirty-seven individuals whowere charged and brought to court. All thirty-seven were found guilty. Appeals werelodged and considered by the Judicial Commissioner for Upper Burma.^^ The verdictsof the Sessions Judge and the Judicial Commissioner throw further light on the natureof the rebellion but only add to the mystery surrounding the role of Maung Po Thanin leading it.

Prosecution witnesses, mainly villagers and village headmen, testified to the fact thatPo Than's following was not a rabble but a disciplined army organized along militarylines. The main army (tat) was divided into smaller regiments, each of which took itsname from the village which had provided the men. The regiments were commandedby officers (boks) and Po Than had a staff of senior officers known as bohmins or bogyis.The army pitched camp (sakan cha), marched (tat chee) from its camps, and the soldierswore bands of white cloth on their heads and necks or around their waists.^

In court, the thirty-seven accused denied that they had participated in the attack onthe police post at Myinmu voluntarily. They each claimed that they had acted undercompulsion. This was also Maung Po Than's defence. At the end of his trial Po Thanmade a statement in which he claimed that it was unlikely that he, a common cultivator,would aspire to be a king.^^ He also alleged that the moving spirits throughout hadbeen two of his uncles—Ya Baw, his uncle by marriage, and Maung Hmyaw his uncleby blood. Ya Baw, it will be recalled, had given information to the police when he wasbrought in for questioning in October 1910 about Po Than's whereabouts and he hadalso sent a message to the Deputy Commissioner at Sagaing through the TownshipOfficer at Myinmu that an attack on the police station was imminent. In his statementat his trial, Po Than claimed that he had become an object of hatred to his unclesbecause he had failed to fulfil their expectations. He alleged that it was his uncles whohad spread the rumours about his powers of sending out flames from his arm and thatit was they who persuaded him to abscond from Pegu in May 1910. They were said tohave told him that he would be executed if arrested. Po Than also alleged that he knewnothing of the aims of the conspirators until he returned from Lower Burma in October1910. At Agandaung he was told by his staff officers that men and guns would beforthcoming. Po Than claimed that he never wanted to become involved but thatpressure brought to bear by men much older than himself had been too great towithstand. The court refused to accept this story, pointing out that Po Than could, atany time, have surrendered himself to the police. Nor did the court accept Ya Baw'sversion of his own role in the rebellion, namely that he had acted throughout as a policespy.26 An incriminating piece of evidence produced in court was a copy of a royal orderor proclamation said to have been written by Ya Baw and posted with a white flagbeside it at a pagoda on 6 November 1910. The proclamation called upon all servantsof the English government to resign their office on pain of being burned alive with

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their relatives and it promised that such persons of the Buddhist faith as would^ fightand destroy the foreign heretics would be rewarded with high official positions.^ It isdifficult to determine precisely who instigated the Sagaing uprising of 1910. There canbe little doubt that Po Than led the attack at Myinmu. Whether he did so as a reluctantfigurehead or as the conscious centre of a rebellion remains uncertam.

No such uncertainty surrounds the severity of the sentences which were inflicted bythe court. Alexander Macgregor, the Sessions Judge, believed that the nature of theoffences and the recurrence of such uprisings called for the stiffest possible sentencesas a warning to others. He wrote in one of his judgements: *The fact that this is notthe first rising of its kind in these parts, and that Maung Than was able to mature hisplans and preparations without information reaching the authorities till the last moment,require the passing of sentences which will bring home the gravity of the offence to thecommon mind.'^^

That the only casualties during the attack at Myinmu were two of the insurgentsand Po Than's pony did not deter Macgregor. Of the thirty-seven ringleaders broughtbefore him he sentenced no less than twelve to death. Four of the accused weresentenced to death merely for having procured a pony with the intention of handing itover to Po Than's army.^^ Some of these death sentences were commuted on appeal.Five, including the four convicted of the pony offence, were reduced by the JudicialCommissioner to transportation for life and forfeiture of property and a further twowere similarly commuted by Adamson, the Lieutenant-Governor. The final tally ofsentences read as follows: five were sentenced to death, of which two also forfeited alltheir property; twenty-two were sentenced to transportation for life and forfeiture oftheir property; seven to transportation for life; one to transportation for ten years; oneto rigorous imprisonment for five years; and one to rigorous imprisonment for twoyears. In one case a retrial was ordered but it was never held. Death sentences werecarried out on Po Than, his uncles Ya Baw and Maung Hmyaw, and two of his bohsor staff officers, Shwe Dok and Kan Bwin. Po Than was hanged at Rangoon on9 September 1911.

Both in the Sessions Court and in the Court of Appeal, account was sometimes takenof the age of the accused, in particular whether they were young or very old. In PoThan's case, his comparative youth was not enough to save him. In dismissing PoThan's appeal, the Judicial Commissioner recorded the opinion: 'As regards his age, itmust be recollected that in nearly all these cases "the Minlaung''^ who is selected to playthe part of a "future king" is a young man. A young man is chosen because he is stillyoung and has not yet developed his full powers. Maung Po Than, however, is oldenough to fully understand what he was doing.'^° Po Than was not the youngest to bebrought to court. The youngest was Sein Myin who was sixteen. His sentence of deathin the Sessions Court was commuted on appeal to transportation for life. The averageage of those convicted was just under forty. The oldest, Maung Kywe, was seventy-five. He joined the army at Agandaung, marched with it to Pegu but did not take partin the attack at Myinmu. Convicted on the grounds that he had been 'a sympathiser

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with and associate o f Po Than, he was sentenced to transportation for life and theforfeiture of his property. Macgregor, the Sessions Judge, and Herbert Eales, theJudicial Commissioner, took different views of the significance of Maung Kywe's age.Macgregor wrote: T h e case is clearly not one which calls for the capital sentence. Theaccused is a very old man, and the first 50 years of his Ufe were spent under Burmeserule. It was not until he was about 50 that he was called on to pay allegience to thenew Government. Nothing is alleged against his behaviour hitherto. There is nothingto show that he took more than a quite minor part in the rising, and it does not appearthat he was at the attack on Myinmu.'^^ Macgregor even went so far as to suggest thatmercy should be shown to Maung Kywe on appeal and said that he would bring arecommendation to this effect to the notice of the Lieutenant-Governor. But Eales, theJudicial Commissioner, rejected this plea for clemency when he considered the appeal.A more senior and more experienced official than Macgregor (his experience of Burmadated from 1879, before the annexation; Macgregor's from 1898), Eales declared:

The learned Sessions Judge is perhaps unaware that even in 1885, 1886 and 1887, the mostdangerous men that we had to deal with, the men who showed the greatest courage and greatestorganisation, and who were most stiffnecked in resisting us were the men of the older generationborn before the second war against Burma. Each successive war against Burma, attended as itwas with ill success to the Burmese army, has tended to lessen the courage of the Burmanpeople, and my experience is that the men most to be feared are the older men who have beenaccustomed to be called on to serve in the Burmese time. . . . What we have to deal with now,is whether the accused was a willing participant in the endeavour to wage a rebellion againstthe King-Emperor, and whether he was able-bodied enough to carry arms, and whether he wasof sufficient intelligence to understand what part he was playing. The accused is an old man nodoubt and it is the older men who are the most dangerous in these risings. It is their presence,their experience of warfare, and their authority that makes these rebellions dangerous.^^

The Sagaing rebeUion did not end with the trials and convictions of those who hadbeen arrested. The suggestion made first by St J. Leeds, the Commissioner of Sagaing,to the effect that the villages which had supported the rebellion and provided the menshould be punished, was implemented in June 1911. In that month the Lieutenant-Governor authorized the quartering of an additional force of Military Police (threeofficers, six NCOs and sixty sepoys) on forty-seven villages in the Sagaing, LowerChindwin and Shwebo districts for a period of two years at a cost of nearly 60,000rupees (^£4,000). The cost of this force was to be borne by the villages concerned. Thismeasure was implemented under Section 15 of the Indian Police Act which empowereda provincial government to take action when an area was considered in a dangerous ordisturbed state or when the conduct of the inhabitants was said to make it necessary toincrease the police. Military Police were chosen in this case in preference to Civil Policefor three reasons: firstly, that it would not interfere with existing police jurisdictions;secondly, that the ignorance professed by the local police of a plot which it was assumedmust have been widely known made it undesirable to pay them money taken fromvillagers by way of punishment; and finally, that the imposition of a force of Military

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Police was more likely to make an impression as a punishment. In this latter respect,the point was also made that the fining of villages after the Chaungu rising of 1894 hadhad little f f ^ ^

THE REPERCUSSIONS

At the level of correspondence between Harvey Adamson, the Lieutenant-Governor,and Lord Hardinge, the Viceroy, the Sagaing rebellion was deemed to be of littleconsequence. Informing Hardinge of the occurrence in a letter at the beginning ofDecember 1910, Adamson described Burma as 'the land of abortive insurrections' whosepeople were 'so credulous that anyone who pretends to be a Prince and to havesupernatural powers can gather a following'. The Lieutenant-Governor thought it spoke'volumes for the thoroughness of the disarmament of the country' that nearly 1000 menstarting to wage war had been able to procure only one firearm. In the same letter,Adamson reflected on how peaceful Burma was. He described Burma's interests as'parochial' which therefore attracted little interest 'on the other side of the bay' inBengal. 'Things move along quietly', he wrote, 'there are no agitators and no oratorsand little of a press'.^ In reply, Hardinge commented: 'I wish that the whole of Indiawere as quiet and peaceful as your province.'^^ The Viceroy had just taken over fromLord Minto whose administration over the previous five years had borne the brunt ofan anti-British agitation which had taken a radical turn and embraced terrorism. InIndia at this time the British were being harassed by the western educated Indianmiddle classes, men who occupied influential positions in the liberal professions of lawand journalism and who were becoming increasingly vocal in their demands for politicalreform. Such manifestations of nationalist unrest had yet to make inroads into Burmaand Hardinge commented: 'I suppose the day will come when agitators will disturb thepeaceful content that reigns in Burma, but I hope that that time will still be fardistant.'^^

At another level, that of the local British official in Upper Burma, the rebellion mademore of an impact, if only because these were the men who were called upon to dealwith such outbreaks and who were blamed if things were seen to get out of hand. InOctober 1914, the new Commissioner of Sagaing, Bertram Carey, wrote a pamphletentitled Hints for the Guidance of Civil Officers in the event of the Outbreak of Disturbancesin Burma.^"^ Carey identified two types of disturbance: an attempted rebellion led by apretender, and dacoity or banditry. In the case of the first he warned: 'We must expectrebellions from time to time. The Burman is by nature a restless subject. He is extremelycredulous and, moreover, his history is a record of sudden rebellions resulting in theseizure of the throne. Furthermore, there are many prophecies which are generally andfully credited throughout Upper Burma that the throne of the King of Burma will bewon again.' Amongst the many pieces of advice outlined in Carey's pamphlet, one stoodout in particular—under no cirumstances should rumours of supernatural happeningsbe dismissed as flights of fancy. Carey used the Sagaing rebellion to illustrate the

8s

danger. He pointed out: *Had any initial success been gained, it appeared probable thatno less than five districts would have been sent considerable contingents to the rebelranks, and, as it was, three districts were involved.'

However, the sharpest reaction to the rebellion, if not to the event itself then to themanner in which it had been handled, occurred not in India or Burma but in London,both in the House of Commons and at the India Office. The Government of India,through whom the Government of Burma corresponded with London, did not regardthe rebellion of sufficient importance to warrant informing the India Office. The matterwas brought to the attention of the India Office by means of a parliamentary questionput down in the House of Commons in July 1911 by a Radical M.P., Sir William Byles.Byles wanted information about the quartering of Military Police on the villages and,in accordance with parliamentary convention, he served advance notice of his intentionto ask his question.^^ The India Office was taken by surprise and sought clarificationfrom the Government of India, receiving a telegram in reply which merely stated thata raid had taken place at Myinmu and that Military Police were being quartered onvillages in accordance with the provisions of the Indian Police Act. Byles was clearlynot satisfied when the gist of this reply was conveyed to him in the Commons on 11July 1911 by Edwin Montagu, the Under-Secretary of State for India. The M.P. wantedto know what offence had been committed and whether sedition had been shown. Healso pointed out that the villages were presumably very poor. How, therefore, wouldthey be able to pay nearly 60,000 rupees?^^ The India Office had no answers to thesequestions and was thus obliged to seek further information from India. As the detailsbegan to filter through in a series of telegrams, the India Office became increasinglycritical. One official thought the quartering of Military Police vindictive and illegalalthough the Secretary of State's Legal Advisor confirmed that it was lawful within theprovisions of Section 15 of the Indian Police Act.'*^ When the transcripts of thejudgements of the Sessions Court and of the Judicial Commissioner on Appeal arrivedin London, the reaction at the India Office was one of shock. Sir Steyning Edgerley, asenior member of the Secretary of State's India Council, minuted at the beginning of1912: These sentences seem to me brutal if they are really to be carried out. I hopethey may be reconsidered as soon as they have had their moral effect.' ^ In anotherminute written at the same time, Edgerley commented:

No doubt it may have been necessary to deal roughly with this sort of superstitious credulityin Burma. But all that must have been exploded with the hanging of the five chief culprits. Itseems to me that in a year or two's time all these heavy sentences will have taught all the moralthey can teach and these unfortunate and deluded villagers might be safely released. They arepractically children and ought to be so treated.*^

Edgerley's views were unanimously endorsed by the Judicial and Public Committee ofthe Secretary of State's Council. The Committee concluded that this was a case for theexercise of the clemency of the Crown on a suitable occasion. Those in transportationfor life had in fact already received remissions of one month for each year of their

86

sentence upon the occasion of the Coronation Durbar in 1911. The Judicial and PublicCommittee had in mind a greater degree of clemency than this and it was agreed inFebruary 1912 that the matter should be raised, informally, with the Government ofIndia. A private letter was sent to Sir James du Boulay, Hardinge's Private Secretary,'^but no reply has been traced, either in the records of the India Office or in Hardinge'sviceregal papers now deposited in the University Library at Cambridge. The final fateof the Sagaing prisoners remains a mystery.

C O N C L U S I O N

The British clearly did not create the conditions in which a minlaung could stake aclaim to the throne. The tradition of minlaung was one which predated the Britishoccupation of Burma. But the British certainly enlarged the scope within which apotential minlaung could operate. By abolishing the monarchy, the British reinforcedthe sense of expectation that a new king would emerge. The new rulers of Burma couldnever acquire the sanction of legitimacy in the eyes of their subjects. Unable to fulfilthe religious duties associated with the Burmese concept of kingship, the British leftthe field open for a potential minlaung to stake a claim as defender of the faith andchampion of Buddhism. Rebellions such as the uprising at Sagaing were dismissed byBritish officials as evidence that the Burmese were backward and superstitious. Andyet, to a greater extent than they themselves appreciated, the British had become partyto a tradition upon which they poured scorn and for which they had little understanding.In pre-British times, Burmese kings were acutely aware that the claimants of specialmagical powers represented potential threats to the throne. The new rulers of Burmanow found themselves in a similar position, as Carey's pamphlet warning againstpotential pretenders demonstrated. Moreover, unable to claim any religious sanction,the British were rather more vulnerable than their monarchical predecessors. The oldschool of British officials in Burma, those who remembered the annexation, were clearlywrong when they maintained that 'royalist' agitation would die out when the oldergeneration who identified with the monarchy had disappeared.'*^ It was equally clearthat retribution, in the form of death sentences, transportations and the punishment ofvillages would not act as deterrents. Shwe Dok, one of Po Than's staff officers who waswounded in the attack at Myinmu, was evidence of this. His arm had been shatteredby a bullet. He had been led to believe that the sepoy's bullets would be turned bymagic into water. Under sentence of death he denounced Po Than as a fraud but hisbelief that a minlaung would eventually recapture the throne remained unshaken. Hemerely concluded that he had been following the wrong man. Sustained by an implicitfaith in Burmese culture, history and religion, insurrections such as that at Sagaing in1910 kept alive the spirit of Burma's independence. They also serve as a necessarycorrective to the official British view, publicly stated in the Imperial Gazetteer of Indiain 1908, to the effect that, 'So far as Burma proper is concerned . . . the acceptance bythe people of the British as their undisputed rulers is now full and unhesitating'.'^^

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An earlier version of this paper was read at RangoonUniversity on 5 January 1987 during the course ofthe author's consultancy visit to advise the HistoryDepartment on the location and cataloguing ofhistorical sources relating to Burma.

1 India Office Records (IOR), P/3119, Govern-ment of Burma, Home (Judicial) DepartmentProceedings, no. 6, September 1888, pp. 53-4.Crown copyright material in the India OfficeRecords is quoted by permission of theComptroller of Her Majesty's Stationery Office.

2 IOR, P/8628, Government of Burma, Home(Confidential Police) Department Proceedings,May 1911, Part A, pp. 1-34.

3 IOR, L/P&J/6/1097, File 2413/1911, TheSagaing Rising, Burma, November 1910.

4 For comment on the minlaung phenomenon,see Patricia Herbert, The Hsaya San RebellionU930-ig32) Reappraised^ Monash UniversityCentre of Southeast Asia Studies, Workingpaper No. 27 (Melbourne, 1982), pp. 4-6. Also,Melford E. Spiro, Buddhism and Society: AGreat Tradition and its Burmese Vicissitudes(London, 1971), pp. 171-4-

5 The real Nyaungyan Prince died at Calcutta in1885.

6 There is a brief account of the attack at Chaunguin a letter from C. H. E. Adamson, Com-missioner for the Central Division, to the ChiefSecretary to the Chief Commissioner of Burma,22 March 1894, which is enclosed with a letterfrom Fryer to Elgin, 24 March 1894. IOR, ElginCollection, MSS Eur F 84/64. More detail onthe attack appears in the Government of Burma,Home (Police) Department Part B Proceedings,March 1894. Part B Proceedings were notprinted in full when they were sent to theIndia Office in London. They were regarded as'Matters of Routine' and they were sent toLondon in the form of Tabular Statements ofthe principal documents. These summaries ofthe Chaungu incident are located in IOR,P/4482, Government of Burma, Home (Police)Department Proceedings, March 1894, Part B,pp. xii-xv.

7 Fryer reported the Mandalay incident in lettersto Elgin dated 14 October, 13 November and19 December 1897. IOR, Elgin Collection, MSSEur F 84/71. Further details are recordedin Upper Burma Rulings, i8gj-igo2. Criminal,vol. I (Rangoon, 1911). IOR: V/22/594, pp.252-8.

8 IOR, Elgin Collection, MSS Eur F 84/72, Fryerto Elgin, 9 January 1898.

9 Ibid.10 The most comprehensive study of the resistance

movement sparked by the annexation of UpperBurma is Ni Ni Myint, Burma''s Struggle againstBritish Imperialism i885-i8gs (Rangoon, 1983).

11 IOR, Elgin Collection, MSS Eur F 84/65,Mackenzie to Elgin, 24 June 1894. The proposalto move Thibaw from Ratnagiri arose becauseof friction which had developed between theformer king and the Bombay authorities overThibaw's insistence that he should be allowedto manage his personal affairs, particularly hisfinances. W. S. Desai, Deposed King Thibaw ofBurma in India i88s-igi6 (Bombay, 1967),

PP- 45-53-12 IOR, Elgin Collection, MSS Eur F 84/72,

Mackenzie to Elgin, 11 July 1894.13 A tabular summary of the Government of

Burma's reply is recorded in IOR, P/4489,Government of Burma, Political DepartmentProceedings, Part B, June 1984, p. iii.

14 IOR, Elgin Collection, MSS Eur F 84/16, Elginto Hamilton, 25 November 1898.

15 IOR, P/8628, Government of Burma, Home(Confidential Police) Department Proceedings,May 1911, Part A, pp. 1-2, 4-5.

16 J. George Scott, Gazetteer of Upper Burma andthe Shan States, Part II, vol. iii (Rangoon, 1901),pp. 143-4. The Burmese Mons are part of aMon-Khmer ethnolinguistic group the majorityof whom live further east in Thailand, Kampu-chea and Vietnam. In Burma the Mons areconcentrated along the estuaries of the Sittangand Salween rivers on either side of the Gulf ofMartaban. Once the most powerful group inBurma, they succumbed to Burmese supremacyduring the reign of Alaungpaya, the founder ofthe Konbaung dynasty. Although they continueto use their own distinct language, they arelargely assimilated in the mainstream of Burmeseculture.

17 IOR, P/8628, op. cit., p. 6.18 Ibid., p. 9.19 For Dobson's report on the attack, see ibid.,

pp. 15-16.20 See W. H. A. Webster, 'A Rebellion m Burma',

The Burma Police Journal, i (1938), pp. 158-66,for an account of the circumstances in which PoThan was captured.

21 IOR, P/8628, op. cit., p. 22.

22 Ibid.23 The judgements in the thirty-seven cases are

recorded in IOR, L/P&J/6/1097, File 2413/1911,The Sagaing Rising, Burma, November 1910.

24 Ibid., p. 128.25 Ibid., p. 335.26 Ibid., p. 194.27 Ibid., p. 203.28 Ibid., p. 140.29 Ibid., pp. 136-40.30 Ibid., p. 345.31 Ibid., p. 232.32 Ibid., pp. 236-7.33 The decision to impose a punitive police force

is recorded in IOR, P/8628, Government ofBurma, Home (Confidential Police) DepartmentProceedings, June 1911, Part A, pp. 30-64.

34 Cambridge, University Library, Hardinge Pa-pers, vol. 81, Adamson to Hardinge, 4 December1910.

35 Ibid., Hardinge to Adamson, 16 December 1910.36 Ibid.

37 A copy of Carey's pamphlet is in IOR,L/P&J/6/2020, File 7347/1930. which deals withthe Hysaya San rebellion.

38 Byles presumably obtained his information aboutthe rebellion from the Burmese newspapers(particularly the Rangoon Gazette), in which casehe was receiving copies much sooner than theIndia Office.

39 IOR, L/P&J/6/1097. p. 382.40 Ibid., pp. 356 and 361.41 Ibid., p. 78.42 Ibid., p. 90.43 Ibid., p. 70.44 Rumours and prophecies associated with another

min/aung, the hermit Banaka who was alsowidely believed to be a reincarnation of KingKyanzittha, led to a spate of rebel outbreaks inthe Lower Chindwin district of Upper Burmain 1927. Herbert, op. cit., p. 6.

45 Imperial Gazetteer of India, vol. ix (Oxford,1908), p. 129.