Ghosts of Empire

by Kwasi Kwarteng

  The ‘men on the ground’ like Bernard and the Viceroy, Lord Ripon, were measured, cool pragmatists. The real sabre-rattlers were found among the merchant community in Rangoon, where rice-traders, like the Glasgow-born Steel brothers, were already beginning to make large fortunes. Other ardent imperialists were the adventurers and journalists, who often had less actual experience of Asian and Indian affairs. There were men like Archibald Colquhoun, a former ICS engineer and now a Times correspondent, who, in books and pamphlets, raised the war-cry in favour of imperial expansion. To men like Colquhoun, war and trade were inevitably linked. In his crude worldview, there were only two languages in the world, war and commerce. The British ‘begin with trade and we progress to war’. On the other hand the French ‘begin with war, and never get beyond it’. To Colquhoun, Burma was the ‘best unopened market in the world’.

  Colquhoun, a bachelor in his mid-thirties, enjoyed the swashbuckling side of empire. Fond of champagne, powerfully built and sporting a walrus moustache, he was a copybook imperialist and an ‘explorer of the first rank’, who in 1881–2 had travelled from Canton to Bhamo in northern Burma.41 He also indulged in lofty thinking about strategy and geopolitics. The average civil servant, stationed in Rangoon or Simla, often did not have the time to meditate on such matters. Colquhoun believed that ‘the theatre of European jealousies and rivalries has been extended from Turkey and the Levant to the China seas’, which meant that the ‘eastern problem of the future for England is Russia on the west and France on the east, closing in on her Indian frontiers’.42 Trying to move public opinion in England in favour of conquering Burma, he now resuscitated the old story about Thibaw and the massacres. ‘The present King of Burmah has become infamous through his many massacres,’ he wrote, but even Colquhoun understood that the ‘monopolies granted by the king’ were a ‘standing grievance to our merchants in British Burma’. This, Colquhoun saw, was an even ‘more formidable indictment’ against Thibaw than the ‘constantly recurring massacres’, which he luridly described. He played on the old themes of the China market and the nightmare of Burma ‘still coquetting with France’.43

  Thibaw thought that he understood European politics. He believed that he could play the British against other European powers. In Mandalay, once the English had departed in 1879, there remained ‘a numerous colony of French and Italian’ adventurers.44 An anonymous pamphlet from 1884 expressed alarm that ‘France’s ambition to become a great colonial power has risen to an amazing height.’45 The paranoia about the French grew during the early 1880s. One British army major, in a book describing the conquest of Burma, revealed that he had visited Paris in the spring of 1880 and had attended a meeting of what was called ‘la société de Cochin-Chine’, Cochin-China being a region in the southern part of what is now Vietnam. This meeting was not well attended. The Englishman spoke bad French but he could understand, so he claimed, that the role of the society was to act as a ‘sort of private Intelligence Department not ostensibly supported by Government’. Eight years after the meeting, from his desk in London, Major Edmond Browne chronicled the ‘feebly supported attempt to establish French influence at Mandalay’. The French, by the time Major Browne was writing, had failed in their attempt to extend their influence in Burma, and their failure induced a feeling of jingoism in Browne, who crowed that the ‘French Government, when faced in a frank and conciliatory spirit by John Bull, were obliged to admit that his interests in Burma far exceeded their own’.46

  In Burma’s affairs, the tone in the early 1880s was more combative than it had been a decade before. This change of tone matched a change in personnel and mood. The relatively relaxed, if eccentric, Liberal Lord Ripon had been replaced as viceroy of India in 1884 by Lord Dufferin, an aristocrat of a traditional mould. Dufferin was a dreamer and a romantic. Although he had served in Gladstone’s first government in 1868, he had accepted the highly desirable ambassadorship to Russia from Disraeli, the Conservative Prime Minister. As an Irish landowner, who lived well beyond his means, he was very sceptical of tenants’ rights and yet, in the 1870s, Gladstone was now championing the tenants in Ireland, as a prelude to Home Rule. Dufferin, in modern terms, was an apolitical career diplomat. He had style and polish. His mother, he often boasted, had been only eighteen when he was born in 1826, and he used to say, as if to explain his eccentricities, ‘You see, my mother and I were young together in the reign of George IV. We shared our youth.’ This statement involved some poetic licence, as George IV had died only a week after Lord Dufferin’s fourth birthday, but it is true he had a close relationship with his mother, though this was strained when she married a man who, fifteen years her junior, was only three years older than Lord Dufferin.

  Later in his career, Dufferin served as ambassador in Paris, where Bertrand Russell, the British mathematician and philosopher who had just graduated from Cambridge, stayed with him in 1894. Dufferin, Russell remembered years later, was a ‘delicious man–so perfect and well-rounded’. He retired in 1896, aged seventy. His contemporaries never found him so ‘delicious’.47 He was charming, they all agreed, but very spoilt. In contrast to the unusually independent-minded and home-schooled Lord Ripon, Lord Dufferin had gone through the traditional aristocratic treadmill, Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, where he never finished his degree, leaving after only two years, though he served a term as president of the Union. He had spent some years travelling, including a notable trip to Iceland and Norway, when still in his twenties. It was this trip which provided the material for his successful book Letters from High Altitudes, a collection of letters ostensibly written to his mother.48

  A romantic like Dufferin was drawn to the exoticism of empire, and even though he was initially not that enthusiastic about annexing Burma, he had no real ideological opposition to expanding Britain’s reach, unlike some Liberals. It was important that, when the final reckoning with Thibaw came, a man who really believed in the imperial mission should hold the reins in India. The individual temper, character and interests of the people in charge determined policy almost entirely throughout the British Empire. There simply was no master plan. There were different moods, different styles of government. Individuals had different interests; centralizing forces were often dissipated by individuals on the ground, even when powerful characters, sitting in Whitehall, were trying to shape events in the empire. More often than not, there was very little central direction from London. The nature of parliamentary government ensured that ministries came and went; policies shifted and changed, often thanks to the verdict of the ballot box, or even because of a minor Cabinet reshuffle.

  The circumstances surrounding the final annexation of Burma illustrate the role that chance, the vagaries of the electoral cycle and the idiosyncrasies of personality all played in the extinction of the Burmese monarchy. By 1885, the French were keenly involved in the affairs of Upper Burma. An urgent letter that July from the secretary of the Chief Commissioner of Lower Burma to the Viceroy’s government in India gave details of the scale of that French involvement. The French, it seemed, were going to build a railway financed by their government and by a company that would be set up for that purpose. The railway, the British learned, would take seven years to build and would be constructed from Mandalay down to Lower Burma. The concession would be seventy years, so it was hoped that the Burmese would finally own the railway in 1955. The second plan the French had conceived was the establishment of a bank. This bank, it was planned, which was to be called the Royal Bank of Burma, would receive capital from the French government and would be incorporated as a company, which would then raise further capital. Its function would be to lend to the Burmese King and to merchants and it would have offices in Paris, London and Mandalay. It was agreed that this august institution would lend to normal Burmese merchants at 15 per cent, while the King would get a preferential rate of 10 per cent.49 This was a reasonably high rate even for the time (the British government could borrow at less than 4 per cent from its own lenders), but then a
gain, Thibaw, who everyone believed had massacred more than fifty members of his own family, was not the most reliable credit risk.

  The French agents in Mandalay had been busy. The British were afraid that, if both the railway and the bank went ahead, the French would then have firm control over the trade and commerce of Upper Burma and would also control the only railway line in that region. These consequences would be ‘disastrous to British interests in lower Burma’. More frustratingly, the French would then be able to open up the Irrawaddy river to all international ships ‘on some such footing as the Danube now is’. Something had to be done. Even Charles Bernard, the Chief Commissioner of Lower Burma, cast aside his liberal ideas of non-intervention, stating that if Thibaw’s government ‘threw themselves into the arms of a foreign power’ the British government would be compelled to abandon the policy of non-intervention. He was pragmatic enough to realize that putting another king in Thibaw’s place might not work, as the French could always influence Thibaw’s successor.

  It had not yet been decided to take the drastic step of annexing the country to the British Empire. The French, after subtle British diplomacy, were beginning to relent. As late as October 1885, Bernard’s office informed the Viceroy’s government that, although annexation had seemed like a good idea in July, the French had now been involved in ‘friendly action’ towards the British; it was now ‘quite possible to stop short of annexation’. E. S. Symes, Bernard’s secretary, argued that the ‘retention of a feudatory Prince at Mandalay would have advantages over annexation’. It would, Bernard believed, be more popular with the ‘Burmese race’, in both Lower and Upper Burma. Keeping a feudatory prince would also be cheaper.50 Dufferin, the Viceroy, was equally unsure about annexation and, in November, he wrote to General Sir Henry Ponsonby, Queen Victoria’s private secretary, averring that the ‘Empire is certainly large enough, and nothing would have induced me to have extended our territories if it could have been avoided’.51 On 30 October Bernard’s office received a curt and authoritative telegram from the Indian government: ‘you will be informed directly it is settled, whether country is to be annexed or not’. Edward Sladen, the Burmese expert, who was fluent in the language, was convinced that annexation was the only answer. In his report on the political situation in Burma, written in September, he suggested that only annexation would provide ‘real security against the periodical scares and uncertainties’ which were so common a feature of Burmese politics. Even he recognized that this step was a last resort; annexation would not take place without ‘exhausting every other course of action’. Sladen was only too conscious that the Burmese people were ‘imbued with an almost superstitious veneration for the Royal Family’. He even conceded that a protectorate on the ‘Hyderabad system might succeed’, if, he added, ‘accompanied by a military occupation of the country by British troops’.52

  Meanwhile a campaign was being prepared. It was now obvious to British officials that the French had to be prevented from spreading their influence and that Thibaw’s intention of ‘coquetting with the French’ had to be thwarted. What remained unclear was the outcome. Thibaw had to be removed, but the fate of the monarchy was still in the balance. It was, as so often happens, a case of ‘fight now, think about the future later’. A suitable pretext for the war had arisen in the summer of 1885, when the Burmese council of ministers had imposed a large fine on the Bombay Burma Trading Corporation for illegally exporting timber from Upper Burma without paying the proper royalties to Thibaw. On 22 October an ultimatum was sent to the Burmese government which stated, among other things, that the fine should go to arbitration, and that a British resident should be received at Mandalay with ‘a proper guard of honour and a steamer’. Burma in effect would be reduced to a puppet state. The Burmese refused the conditions, giving the British the excuse they wanted to begin the military campaign.53

  The campaign itself was one of those one-sided colonial wars which have all the air of a tragicomedy. The man in charge of the expedition, Harry Prendergast, was another son of empire, having been born in India. His Burma Field Force, of which Colonel Sladen was appointed chief political officer, consisted of 10,000 troops. On 2 November, as a thunderstorm broke over Madras, a lavish dinner was held to celebrate the arrival of General Prendergast and the coming campaign. Even though it was certain that Thibaw would be crushed by the might of the British forces, the end, when it came, was sudden and unexpected. Thibaw had utterly misjudged the British. On 7 November he issued a proclamation calling for a ‘holy war’ against ‘the English’, in which he eloquently denounced ‘the English Kala barbarians’ who were planning to ‘bring about the impairment and destruction of our religion’ and the ‘violation of our national traditions and customs’.54 Subsequent history suggests that he may have been justified in his concerns about the future of his country, but the high-flown rhetoric could not save him. In late October, Sladen had been in Rangoon playing the newly invented game of lawn tennis nearly every day and going to dinner parties in the evenings. He confided in his diary on the 29th that he expected ‘strenuous opposition and real hard fighting’. Some things in the history of the empire never changed. On 7 November, as Thibaw was breathing fire against the English, Sladen calmly noted in his diary that ‘33 years ago I was much in the same position with my regiment on board HMS Sphynx prior to the second Burmese War’. He noted hopefully that this would be ‘the third and last struggle with Burmese arrogance’.55

  The kingdom of Upper Burma was taken completely by surprise by the rapidity of the British advance. The Burmese had no time to collect and organize their forces to oppose it. On 16 November the Burmese defensive guns on both banks of the Irrawaddy were taken by a land attack, without any resistance. The next day, however, at Minhla, on the right bank of the river, the Burmese were gathered in considerable force. This position was attacked by a brigade of British Indian infantry on shore, covered by a bombardment from the river. The Burmese were decisively defeated with a loss of 170 killed and 276 taken prisoner, while many others were drowned attempting to escape by river. Harry Prendergast and his flotilla now approached Mandalay, where the General received the unconditional surrender of the Burmese government on 27 November, and the triumphant British forces entered Mandalay at three in the afternoon the following day. Thibaw was shocked by the collapse of his soldiers. Sladen walked into the palace and the council chamber where he sat down for a few minutes, while the King was informed of what had happened, after which Thibaw came to see Sladen in the council chamber. Thibaw’s queen and mother-in-law were also present. Thibaw then said, ‘I surrender myself and my country to you. All I ask is, don’t let me be taken away suddenly. Let me have a day or two to prepare.’56 Sladen insisted on an ‘immediate departure from his capital and country’. Thibaw and his wife were sent into exile in British India, where the ex-King died in 1916, at the age of fifty-nine.

  On Tuesday 8 December, less than two weeks after Thibaw had left Burma, his white elephant, the symbol of sovereignty, died. The animal had perished of ‘neglect’, as Sladen noted in his diary. Some, more romantically, attributed the cause of death to a broken heart. The British had ‘great trouble’ disposing of its corpse.57 The animal was dragged pathetically, ‘in full view of a shocked public, out of the palace gates’; this was distressing to the Burmese people, who had been brought up to believe in the elephant’s near-divine status. Mandalay, a centre of Buddhist culture, had been captured. A system of learning and religious instruction had collapsed overnight. What would the British do now? As Sladen himself observed in his meticulous diary, there had been a massive reversal of fortune. On 16 December, he noted ‘what ignorance and want of reason is shown in persons who expect a country just brought under a foreign yoke to settle down in a day!’ He observed that a monarchy ‘extending over a thousand years has been upset in a day–the whole framework of native government obliterated and brought to a sudden termination’.58 There was still no final resolution of Burma’s future. Thibaw was go
ne, but who, or what, would replace him remained uncertain.

  9

  The Road from Mandalay

  The fate of Burma was decided, as in so many cases in the empire, by chance and circumstance. It happened that the new secretary of state for India in the Conservative government was Lord Randolph Churchill, who is better known today as the father of Sir Winston. In the 1880s, however, he was a dynamic political force. Lord Randolph enjoyed one of those careers which shines brightly for an instant and then fizzles into nothingness. Yet, despite the fitful nature of his contribution to domestic British politics and the spasmodic nature of his moods and poses, his impact on the history of Burma was considerable.

  After the Indian Mutiny of 1857, it had been an established principle of the British Empire not to annex other countries directly. The favoured way of dealing with native kingdoms was to preserve the façade of native rule, and so maharajas, nawabs and feudal princes were flattered and made to feel important; they were also given appropriate salaries in accordance with their status. Even if Britain exercised the ultimate authority, the sensitivities of local populations were respected. In the case of Burma, Lord Mayo, then Viceroy of India, had effectively ruled annexation out as long ago as 1869. ‘The future annexation of Burmah, or any of its adjacent states, is not an event which I either contemplate or desire,’ he had declared in a letter written from the summer capital at Simla. Mayo, an orthodox Conservative, who had been appointed by Disraeli, viewed ‘with extreme regret any course of action which would impose on the British Government the necessity of occupation’. He did not believe that it would be expedient to incur the added cost of invading the country. Like the good Conservative he was, he simply wished that the ‘status quo as regards the relations’ between India ‘and the kingdom of Burmah should be maintained’.1