SOAS Research Online

Abstract

This Thesis attempts to study the painstaking efforts made by the British to 'pacify' Upper Burma during the first five years of conquest (November 1885-December 1890) as well as the nature of Burmese unrest engendered by those efforts. While Chapter One is a brief account of the historical back-ground to the conquest of Upper Burma, Chapter Two deals with the course of events from 28 November 1885 to 15 December 1885, when the country was under a purely military rule, with special reference to the root causes of Burmese unrest which grew following King Thibaw's deportation. Chapter Three is devoted to British policy from 15 December 1885 to November 1886, when efforts, essentially conciliatory in nature, were made to build up a civil administration. These efforts having failed, military operations were undertaken from November 1886 to April 1887. Chapter Four is devoted to these operations. But these operations failed to produce the desired effects. So a new policy was formulated - that of dealing with the people by villages through a punitive village regulation. Chapter Five deals with the framing of this regulation from about the middle to the end of 1887, and Chapter Six with its operation from 1888 to 1890.