Four Years in Upper Burma

Four Years in Upper Burma by W.R. Winston

Four Years in Upper Burma presents W. R. Winston’s account of Burma after the British annexation of Upper Burma in 1886, combining political commentary, travel narrative, missionary purpose, descriptions of peoples and religions, and arguments for British administrative reform. He portrays Burma as a fertile and resource-rich country, rich in rice, teak, minerals, oil, jade, amber, and river trade, but thinly populated relative to its territory. The Irrawaddy and Chindwin are depicted as major commercial routes, served by Burmese vessels and the steamers of the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company. Winston recounts the successive Burmese wars and justifies, though not without stated reservations about empire and war, the annexation that followed the 1885 conflict. He presents the British case against King Theebaw’s government: alleged insults to British subjects, trade restrictions, the dispute with the Bombay-Burma Trading Corporation, rejection of an ultimatum, and the king’s call to resist foreign invaders. Mandalay is quickly occupied, Theebaw is removed to India, and Upper Burma is annexed. Winston emphasizes reports of court intrigue, massacres, oppression, corruption, and dacoity under the former monarchy, arguing that British rule brought security and opportunity. In 1887 Winston and the Rev. J. Brown travel from Calcutta to Rangoon and then by rail and river steamer to Mandalay to consider founding a mission. Their journey passes Thayetmyo, Minhla, and Pagân, whose immense field of pagodas Winston sees as an expression of Buddhist merit-seeking. In Mandalay they lodge first in a Buddhist monastery occupied alongside British troops, then choose the city as the future mission headquarters. They use Buddhist religious buildings for military church services, meetings, temperance work, and evangelism. Mandalay is described as a city of striking contrasts: magnificent pagodas, monasteries, palace buildings, carved teak, gold leaf, and sacred images stand amid bamboo houses, poor roads, dust, fire risk, pariah dogs, and social disorder. Winston surveys the Incomparable Pagoda, the Ku-tho-daw inscriptions, the giant marble Buddha, the walled royal city later made into Fort Dufferin, the palace, the Hloot Daw, and the ceremonial status of the Lord White Elephant. He also traces the nearby abandoned capitals of Amarapoora, Ava, and Sagaing, interpreting their remains as evidence of royal extravagance and superstition. The author depicts Mandalay as cosmopolitan, containing Burmans, Shans, English officials, Eurasians, Armenians, Parsees, Zarabadees, Kathays, Ponnâs, Suratees, Marwarees, Moguls, Jews, Chetties, many Indian communities, and Chinese settlers. He describes their occupations, dress, languages, trade, and social functions, while repeatedly contrasting their industry with what he regards as the easy-going habits of Burmans. He credits the end of Burmese sumptuary laws and the security of British government with stimulating building, migration, trade, and investment. A major section concerns the violent pacification of Upper Burma. Winston explains dacoity as gang robbery often accompanied by murder and cruelty, rooted in weak former government, jungle terrain, local loyalties, and official corruption. He recounts military and police campaigns, encounters with dacoit bands, the execution or surrender of leaders, pardons for lesser offenders, and the replacement of the Hloot Daw by British administration. He depicts British force as regrettable but necessary to establish security. The same paternal logic informs his account of the Shan States, where British expeditions confirm sawbwas in office, prohibit inter-state warfare, regulate tribute, build roads, plan railways, and impose rudimentary judicial and financial rules. He also notes frontier operations against Kachins, Chinese raiders, Red Karens, and Chins. Winston praises the new administration’s rising revenue, courts, land registration, surveys, experimental agriculture, roads, irrigation, public buildings, railways, telegraph, post, telephone, police, and municipalities. He presents representative municipal government as a gradual training in self-government. Yet he sharply condemns British excise policy. Burma’s Buddhist prohibition on intoxicants and opium, he argues, was undermined when liquor and opium shops were licensed ostensibly for foreigners and Chinese but in practice supplied Burmans. He cites official reports and witnesses to argue that opium and alcohol were spreading ruin, crime, poverty, and social decline, especially in Lower Burma. He calls for complete prohibition and denounces the Government’s profit from opium. The work also examines Burma’s peoples and religions. Winston celebrates the American Baptist mission among the Karens, portraying their conversion, literacy, schools, churches, social advancement, and loyalty as exceptional missionary success. He contrasts their receptiveness with the greater difficulty of evangelizing Buddhists, whose religion he regards as intellectually elaborate, socially entrenched, and sustained by monasteries, literature, ritual, and popular devotion. He describes Kachins and Chin tribes as spirit-worshippers who propitiate nats through sacrifice, observe omens, drink rice beer, practise shifting cultivation, raid neighbouring villages, and maintain distinctive customs such as the facial tattooing of Chin women. Buddhism is presented through Winston’s Christian critique. He outlines Gautama’s life, the Buddhist commandments, transmigration, karma, Nirvana, and the pursuit of merit through alms, pagodas, offerings, animal release, wells, bridges, monasteries, and other public works. He argues that Buddhism lacks a Creator, Saviour, prayer, pardon, and divine grace, while acknowledging its moral precepts and its influence on Burmese reverence for life. He describes monks, monasteries, elementary education, pagoda worship, the Wah, the festival of lights, the Water Feast, and great shrines including the Shwê Dagohn Pagoda and Mengohn Pagoda. The closing portion turns to the Burman people themselves: their Mongolian appearance, absence of caste, language, honorific speech, literature, bamboo dwellings, vulnerability to destructive fires, sumptuary laws, royal ideology, and the absolute power of Burmese kings. Winston characterizes the former system as one in which royal favourites and officials extracted revenue from the population, while the king’s authority was shadowed by insecurity, palace rivalry, and fear of assassination.

By W.R. Winston · First published 1892 · Genre: Travel Literature, Missionary Memoir, Colonial Memoir · 20 chapters · 90,683 words

First lines

The annexation of Upper Burma on January 1st, 1886, opened up to England a large and valuable addition to her foreign possessions, whilst it perceptibly widened the ever-increasing area of her responsibilities, both political and moral. Including the Shan States tributary to the kingdom of Burma, the annexation added to Lower or, as it was then called, British Burma, a territory as large as France, thus making all Burma a compact province of our Indian Empire, as large as France and Great Britain together, and bringing British India right up to the frontiers of China.

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Upper Burma · British Burma · British colonialism · annexation of Burma · Third Anglo-Burmese War · 1880s Burma · Victorian travel writing · missionary travel narrative · Wesleyan missionary enterprise · Mandalay · Irrawaddy River · Rangoon

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