Lunds Universitet
Historiska Institutionen
HISK37
Författare: Samuel Lipiäinen
Examinator: Dick Harrison
Handledare: Klas-Göran Karlsson
Datum: 15:15-17:00 01/06/2022
Drilled Automatons or Living Organisms?
A study of colonial attitudes among the British Imperial Civil Service in Burma
1
Index
1 - Introduction p.2
1.1 - Purpose and Thesis Statement p.2
1.2 - Historical Background p.3
1.3 - Previous Research p.4
1.4 - Theoretical Perspective p.6
1.5 - Source Material and Methodology p.7
2 - Research and Analysis p.8
2.1 - Profiling Four Selected Members of the ICS p.8
2.2 - Profile of James George Scott p.9
2.3 - Profile of Bernard Houghton p.10
2.4 - Profile of Reginald Henry Craddock p.12
2.5 - Profile Maurice Stewart Collis p.13
2.6 - Analysis of Sources by James George Scott (1911) p.15
2.7 - Analysis of Sources by Bernard Houghton (1913, 1920, 1922) p.21
2.8 - Analysis of Sources by Reginald Henry Craddock (1919, 1929, 1935) p.28
2.9 - Analysis of Sources by Maurice Stewart Collis (1938) p.37
3 - Summary and Conclusions p.42
4 - Bibliography p.46
4.1 - Digital Sources p.46
4.2 - Digital Literature p.47
4.3 - Printed Literature p.48
2
1.Introduction
The land of Burma, known today as Myanmar, was one of the last colonial conquests made
by the British Empire. After three Anglo-Burmese Wars, the old feudal order in the region
was toppled in favour of a British colonial government that was initially administered by the
neighbouring British Raj in India. This late conquest gave birth to an ad-hoc civil service,
unprepared for the cultural clash it would soon encounter when met with the Burmese people
and their traditional ways of life. The administrators of the British Raj had mostly ruled over
Hindus and Muslims, but here was a land with a Buddhist majority population. A land that
proved to be both geographically and culturally isolated from India, holding little in common
with its western neighbour. Burma perplexed and intrigued British orientalists, explorers and
anthropologists, it became an enigma they were determined to solve.
At the heart of this stood the Imperial Civil Service, or ICS, the elite and almost exclusively
white institution which administered both India and Burma. Members of the civil service
often painted themselves to be scholar-bureaucrats, simultaneously studying and governing
their colonial subjects, while penning countless first-hand sources about what life was like in
this part of the British Empire. The purpose of this essay will be to examine several notable
members of the Imperial Civil Service, who were posted in Burma and later left behind a
literary legacy containing their views on Burma and the Burmese people.
1.1 Purpose and Thesis Statement
Though British rule in India and Burma has been studied extensively by historians, a lot of
this research I personally encountered has been done into the inner workings of the colonial
system and how the Civil Service saw itself as an institution. Much ink has been spilled over
the how’s and the why’s of British colonial policy in Burma, but there’s some topics that go
less remarked upon. For the purposes of this essay, I do not wish to focus on the legal or the
governmental aspects of colonialism, but rather on the “attitudes” of the members of the
administrative apparatus in the colony of Burma. Not the administration as an institution, but
rather on its individual components, the men who filled the ranks of the ICS and who set foot
in Burma with the intention of ruling it in the name of King and Country. What did these men
think of the Burmese people, and of Burma itself as a cultural and national concept?
As this is a broad topic, I’ve chosen to limit myself to key questions that can be answered
through my method of analysis:
● What can be discerned as the key elements of these individual’s personal views on
issues such as race, culture, religion and political agency, among the Burmese people?
● How did they define what “Burmese” or “Burma” is to them, as a concept, and what
traits did they see as inherent to the Burmese and to Burma?
● What similarities and/or differences are there between the outlook of members of the
Imperial Civil Service of different government ranks, different ideological outlooks,
or who presented their views in different types of sources?
3
The purpose of this essay is not to define what it means to Burmese on any level beyond
falling within geographic boundaries of the colony, nor will it be to define what it means to
be British for that matter. Rather, the point is to study how these members of the colonial
government in Burma described the people they ruled over, through their own very subjective
lenses and by the means they chose to express those views in written text.
1.2 Historical Background
At the start of the 19th century, the nation we today known as Myanmar was a Kingdom ruled
by the Konbaung dynasty, the latest in a long cycle of feudal lords who had risen and fallen in
the region. Though their position initially looked secure in the face of Chinese, Siamese and
British political pressure, the British would eventually begin to pursue a series of aggressive
military campaigns against the Konbaungs in order to wrest control over disputed territories
on the border with British India, as well as to secure the valuable trade routes along the South
Asian coast. By the end of the century, three Anglo-Burmese wars had concluded, with each
ending in a crushing defeat for the Konbaungs. Eventually, in 1885, the Burmese monarchy
was wiped off the map and its territories subsumed into the British Raj in India. It was the
culmination of a nearly century-long concentrated effort by Britain to consolidate control
over a neighbouring state that had always occupied the periphery of their sphere of influence.
Burma was thereafter incorporated as a province of the British Raj, to be administered by a
Lieutenant-Governor who answered to the Viceroy of India.1 At the governor’s behest stood
the Imperial Civil Service, also known as the Indian Civil Service, or the ICS, which filled
the ranks of the British administration and carried out duties such as tax collection, education
and settling disputes among the natives. Members of this civil service were instilled with a
seemingly contradictory ideology, on the one hand promoting a sense of paternalistic duty
towards the subjects they governed, resembling the idea of the White Man’s Burden, while
also fostering anti-Asian prejudice and demanding a policy of cultural and racial segregation
between those who ruled the colony and those who were ruled.2
Burma was the latest conquest by an empire which had centuries of experience in colonial
governance, particularly in Asia. Despite this, the administration in Burma became a very
ad-hoc affair where individual officers who were part of the Imperial Civil Service wielded
more personal influence on the ground than in the rest of the empire. There were also intense
political disagreements and often sudden shifts in what official government policy on Burma
should and would be, due to disputes both in the Colonial Office in London as well as in the
Viceroy of India’s Council in Calcutta, resulting in political inconsistencies and power
vacuums that local officers easily filled. British rule over Burma was also marked by how it
was enforced from India, using the Raj’s methods of colonial governance, which made no
effort to accommodate themselves towards Burma and instead expected the Burmese to
conform themselves to act like colonial subjects had done in India. A perfect example of this
is how rather than attempt to integrate the civil bureaucracy of the Burmese monarchy, the
1
2
Tarling, Nicholas, “Cambridge History of Southeast Asia” 2008 p.202-217
Tarling, Nicholas, 2008 p.109-111
4
British tore up several centuries old Burmese institutions and replaced them with a colonial
bureaucracy imported from India, that native Burmans had no idea how to interface with or
navigate. In addition to importing Indian methods of governance, the British also imported
educated Indian peoples to fill the ranks of this civil service, as the Burmese middle classes
could not be expected to run a system they did not understand.3 This in turn bred not only
resentment by the native Burmese, but also resentment by colonial officials who began to see
the cracks in the system and voiced their complaints, empowered by the aforementioned more
“personalist” approach they were able to take to governing Burma.4 This contributed to a
wealth of sources, in the form of political proposals, commentaries, memoirs etc, where we
can see not just what the British officials thought of the colonial system but also what they
thought of Burma as a concept and the Burmese people as a distinct race and/or culture.
1.3 Previous Research
My overall thesis statement relates to the study of the attitudes of members of the Imperial
Civil Service, something which I have not seen featured in most prior research. The vast
majority of studies into Burmese colonial history are either into the nature of Burma itself
and usually about its nationalistic independence movement, or they are specific biographies
and studies of individual members of the Imperial Civil Service. Some works may focus on
analysing the civil service as an institution and state actor in the governance of Burma, but
precious little makes qualitative analysis of members of the civil service’s attitudes towards
Burma and its peoples. As such, I have chosen to introduce the later analysis segment of my
essay with a quick presentation on each author that I am examining, where I will go through
what prior research has been done about them specifically. The focus on this portion of the
essay however, will focus on prior research done that fits within the mould of my own thesis
statement about studying the attitudes of members of the civil service.
The first researcher, chronologically I’ve found who’s framing resembles mine is the late
Professor Nicholas Tarling who wrote both the“The Fourth Anglo-Burmese War: Britain and
the Independence of Burma” in 1987 and later contributed to the 1992 “Cambridge History
of Southeast Asia”. The first book is quite provocatively named and paints the Burmese
independence movement’s conflict with the British colonial authority as being another
“Anglo-Burmese war”, employing a detailed analysis of the Civil Service as one of the many
parties in this colonial conflict spanning both the realm of politics, intellectual discourse and
military struggle. I’m not familiar with the rest of Tarling’s books though they appear to focus
mainly on other countries in Southeast Asia beyond Burma. Unfortunately, I have not been
able to attain a copy of the “Fourth Anglo-Burmese War”, so my understanding of it is based
on the very detailed description of the book given by Professor Robin Winks in the “Oxford
History of the British Empire: Volume V: Historiography” which devotes an entire chapter
towards Tarling’s works.5 I did obtain a copy of the “Cambridge History of Southeast Asia”,
namely a 2008 reprint that contains the collected volumes and I have utilised it for this essay.
3
Tarling, Nicholas, 2008 p.280-281
Aung-Thwin, Maitri, Return of the Galon King” 2011 p.12-16
5
Winks, Robin “Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume V: Historiography” 2001 p.403-415
4
5
This book focuses mainly on how the Imperial Civil Service was established and how it first
instilled a specific colonial attitude among its members, then perpetuated that attitude within
the institution as well as within laws and administrative norms that reinforced the overarching
colonial attitude. Because of the broad focus of his book, Tarling chooses to approach Burma
as merely one limb of the wider British Empire, highlighting the more unique aspects of its
administration and what social norms were like among administrators there, as well as what
top down policies affected Burma in comparison to other colonies, such as Malaya or India.6
There is also Maitrii Aung-Thwin, an Associate Professor of Southeast Asian History and the
author of the 2011 book “Return of the Galon King” as well as contributor to the 2011 book
“New Perspectives on the History and Historiography of Southeast Asia” by Kenneth R Hall
and Michael Aung-Thwin, where he wrote a chapter entitled “The limping monk and the deaf
king: peasant politics, subaltern agency, and the postcolonial predicament in colonial
Burma”. Both of Maitrii Aung-Thwin’s works revolve primarily around colonial law and the
relationship between colonial lawmakers and colonial subjects, but he focuses extensively on
studying how these lawmakers and other officials who were meant to enforce laws viewed
the Burmese people. Similar to Tarling, there is a large focus on how a colonial attitude is
created, perpetuated, and may possibly alter over time. Return of the Galon King was the
principle inspiration behind this essay, as I find Maitrii Aung-Thwin’s ideas about “criminal
ethnology”, the act of racializing and attributing inherently criminal traits to a people, to be a
very fascinating theory in this academic context. Aung-Thwin has also written in great detail
in “Return of the Galon King” about the former Commissioner of Saigang District, Bertram
S. Carey's influence on colonial Burma and his own seminal work "Hints to the Guidance of
Civil Officers in the Event of Outbreak of Disturbance in Burma". According to Aung-Thwin,
this book had emerged as the de-facto guidelines for how British officers should respond to
the threat of native unrest or insurgency in Burma throughout the early 20th century, making
it an excellent first hand source.7 Unfortunately, I was unable to obtain a copy of it, otherwise
it would have been one of the main focal points of my analysis in this essay. I’ve nevertheless
hoped to utilise Aung-Thwin’s works to provide much needed representation of a Burmese
intellectual’s view on the issues discussed within my analysis.
There have been other modern historians who have touched on the topic of the Imperial Civil
Service’s attitudes both in Burma and towards Burma, though usually through a much more
narrow lens. Take for example the 2005 book “Finding George Orwell in Burma” by Emma
Larkin, an American journalist who employs a popular historical approach to the Imperial
Civil Service in Burma and uses the famed British author George Orwell, aka Eric Blair, as
the focal point of her analysis. I will not be covering Orwell/Blair in this essay, and as there
was little overlap between him and those authors I am examining, me and Larkin are mainly
working in two different circles of colonial studies. She is worth acknowledging however, for
employing a very similar methodology in her research, even if it is a microhistory focused on
just one man’s views on Burma. There are also the works of Stephen Keck, an Associate
6
7
Tarling, Nicholas, 2008, p.30-37
Aung-Thwin, Maitri, 2011 p.58-71
6
Professor of History and noted Burma scholar who wrote the book “British Burma in the
New Century” in 2015, which focuses on Burmese colonial history between 1895 and 1918
with a very direct focus on the Civil Service and the first generations of “Burmophiles”
within their ranks, as well as what political legacy they left behind in the Civil Service, which
Keck characterises as a romanticised, oriental paternalistic view of the Burmese people and
the more “authentic” pre-colonial “old burma”. It is a good analysis of colonial attitudes,
romanticised history and cultural clashes, tracking how these elements of colonial authorship
changed with the turn of the years and as different generations of the Civil Service came and
went. Though Keck does mainly focus on the years 1895-1918, he also writes a lot about the
20s, 30s and 40s, and how the legacy of the “Burmophiles” held on.
As an addendum, I would also like to include the fact that there are some texts I’ve found that
use a similar framework to my essay, but were not written with the intention to be historical
research. One of them is the 1959 book “Burma’s Constitution” by the future president of
Burma, Maung Maung, who was at the time a Legum Doctor studying colonial law. The book
is a work of political science that employs a broad look at the Imperial Civil Service and the
views it held of the people it governed. I would personally characterise it more as a study of
the Civil Service as an institution, with Maung Maung characterising individual members of
the Civil Service with specific views as being outliers, not representatives of the broader
colonial attitude. I will nevertheless highlight Maung Maung because in his analysis he
touches on many of the same individuals who I have chosen to use in this essay as my source.
His book is still a piece of political analysis meant to study colonial law, as well as the past of
Burmese nationalism and the future of where he saw Burma as being headed. The influence
of the colonial civil service and its members' attitudes on both the past and the future of
Burma was not the key focus of Maung Maung’s book, but rather incidental to how he
structured his own analysis of Burmese politics. In Maung Maung’s own words, he was not a
historian and he did not intend the book as being a work on Burmese or colonial history8, but
I find it useful to include here as he provides a very succinct analysis of the Civil Service
within the limitations of his own academic goals, focusing mainly on the interactions between
Burmans and British officers, as well as what the social norms of the time were between the
two.9 This book by Maung Maung will be one of the supplementary pieces of literature that
I’ve chosen to use to strengthen and complement my own analysis, with the hope of
managing to cover a few areas in my capacity as a historian that Maung Maung did not
choose to pursue, and to include a broader Burmese perspective on the issues of this essay.
1.4 Theoretical Perspective
I have chosen to employ an actor perspective, as I am studying four individual subjects by
means of a qualitative method, focusing on their individual views and how these views are
expressed in the sources I’ve examined. Though these four subjects naturally embody the
broader structures and institutions of colonial governance in Burma, I am focusing on how
they as individual actors expressed their views, not how those broader structures affected
8
9
Maung Maung “Burma’s Constitution” 2002 p.5
Maung Maung “Burma’s Constitution” 2002 p.14-15
7
them or how they affected the broader structures. I would characterise my essay as being a
postcolonial study, as I am examining elements of both colonial ideology, economics, race,
law and governance. My intention is to highlight the role of the Burmese people themselves
in regards to how my four subjects expressed views about Burma, so as to retain some degree
of agency and respect for the colonial subjects in this scenario. I will not be taking the words
written by these four men of the early 20th century at face value, instead I will attempt to
provide context for what can be characterised as prejudiced and racist views expressed in my
sources, analysing what motivated these views as well as what challenged them.
As a general guide, I have consulted Professor Justin D. Edwards’s book “The Cambridge
Companion to Postcolonial Travel Writing”, published in 2018, as well as to a lesser extent
used Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin’s 2002 work “The Empire Writes Back:
Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures” in order to get a better understanding of
how to how to avoid falling into pitfalls of eurocentric models of colonial studies, as well as
how to interpret and problematise issues of “authenticity”, “agency” and “race”, which are
recurring themes in my essay. These two books are not sources or literature I’ve used for the
actual analysis, but more so style guides in order to better understand postcolonial theory.
1.5 Source Material and Methodology
I have chosen to employ a qualitative textual analysis, making a deep dive into a smaller
number of sources where I attempt to answer my thesis statement by reading the works of
four members of the colonial Civil Service. I initially began work on this essay with a wider
array of sources in mind, though a qualitative textual analysis was always the goal. As time
went on, I hit several roadblocks in terms of actually getting my hands on these sources in a
timely manner, or procuring legible copies from online archives. I have thus resolved to limit
the scope of my research to just four individuals, with roughly ten first hand sources between
them, which I nevertheless believe provide a reliable sample size from different personages
who were active in Colonial Burma at different points in time, held different ranks within the
colonial hierarchy, and who interacted with Burma and the Burmese people in different ways
based on different preconceived or summarily developed ideological notions. The sources I
have chosen to examine also exhibit variety in what kinds of material they are, such as for
example guidebooks, memoirs or political commentaries. Some of the sources are intended
towards popular audiences, others are aimed at the British intelligentsia in the colonies and
the metropole, while others still are aimed at the decision makers of the wider British Empire.
The four subjects I have chosen and the sources by them are as follows:
● Burma, a handbook of practical information (1911), by James George Scott
(1851-1935)
● “Burma” by James George Scott, in the 1911 Edition of Encyclopædia Britannica
(1911)
8
● Bureaucratic government; a study in Indian polity (1913), by Bernard Houghton
(1864-1933)
● “Seditious Contributions to the Burma Newspapers (the Burma Observer) and (New
Burma) by Bernard Houghton”, from the National Archives of India (Contains five
articles from 1920)
● The Mind of the Indian Government (1922), by Bernard Houghton
● Speech by Sir Reginald Craddock, Lieutenant-Governor of Burma, 19th April, 1919,
(Extract), from the Online Burma Library
● The Dilemma in India (1929), by Reginald Henry Craddock (1864-1937)
● The Parliamentary Records of Reginald Henry Craddock, from the Hansard of the
British Parliament, Year 1935, Volume 302
● Trials in Burma (1938), by Maurice Stewart Collis (1889-1973)
The sources cover a period between 1911 and 1938, representing the modern age of British
rule in Burma. All sources before 1937 were written at a time when Burma was still governed
as a Province of the British Raj in India. Trials in Burma was written following the separation
of Burma into a distinct Crown Colony. The issue of analysing colonial views and attitudes is
of course that it is a very broad question, and can be difficult to surmise without establishing
certain boundaries. Due to the limited amount of sources I am working with, this analysis will
only represent the colonial outlook as expressed by certain key representatives of the ICS in
Burma. It does not represent the broader British Empire or even the Empire’s specific views
on Asia. It is also not a definitive analysis of the ICS in Burma, but just a selected portion of
some of the institution’s most notable historical members.
2.Research and Analysis
2.1 Profiling Four Selected Members of the ICS
For the purposes of this essay, I have chosen four sources made up of prominent figures from
the 20th century British colonial bureaucracy in Burma. They were members of the Imperial
Civil Service who were deployed to Burma, where most held positions as Commissioners or
Magistrates, but I will also be using sources from one Lieutenant-Governor who administered
the whole colony. Throughout the essay, I will be using various descriptors for them such as
“officer”, “official”, “administrator”, “bureaucrat” and “civil servant” interchangeably, as the
exact ranks and the exact governing positions these authors held varied over the decades.
Their specific ranks are also less important to the topic at hand, than the fact of their mutual
backgrounds in the civil service as white Europeans governing native Burmans. Though some
of these men held ranks which superseded others, I am not focusing on how they viewed
British colleagues, subordinates or superiors, unless it explicitly relates to my topic of how
these men viewed colonial Burma and the colonised, Burmese people. Likewise, I will be
9
using the term “Imperial Civil Service”, “Civil Service” and “ICS” interchangeably, unless I
am referring to any one specific branch within or outside of this institution.
For my analysis I will first be presenting a short summary of each of these four men, as well
what they contribute to both my analysis as well as my theoretical framework, and lastly in
what ways my analysis of them may have been constrained, either by intentionally limiting
myself to some of their works or by other factors such as being unable to get my hands on
various sources. The subsequent descriptions will be based on the accompanying literature
used for this essay. After that, I will move on to the main analysis of the sources associated
with each of these individual members of the Imperial Civil Service.
2.2 Profile of James George Scott
Scott began his career in the colonies as a journalist and amateur anthropologist, in the years
before the Third Anglo-Burmese War, which subsequently led to the subjugation of Burma by
Britain. Scott’s early work was primarily focused on anthropology, best exemplified by his
1882 book “The Burman: his life and notions” which was written under a Burmese
pseudonym. Scott held no formal role in the colonial civil service until 1886, but nevertheless
cultivated a significant following among academics and colonial bureaucrats. Upon being
given a formal position in the civil service, Scott initially served in Rangoon and Mandalay,
before being appointed as Deputy Commissioner in the Shan States, at the time a series of
autonomous princedoms populated by the Shan ethnic minority who were given the right to
govern themselves as British protectorates. As a consequence, Scott’s actual work trended
towards observing and reporting back to his superiors in Rangoon and Calcutta what was
going on in the Shan States, as well as assisting the Chief Commissioner. He did not involve
himself too much in the day to day matters of Burmese governance and instead crafted an
image of himself as a colonial scholar-bureaucrat, continuing to write books and articles
about the Burmese people, their lands and their history.10
Stephen Keck considers Scott’s most significant contributions to this field of Burmese studies
and to the British perception of Burma firstly his distinctions between the more “authentic”
Burmese of the rural countryside, where he himself was based, contrasted with the more
westernised cities, and secondly his work in spearheading “Burmophilia” among British
academics as a distinct orientalist current. It is worth clarifying that Scott did not consider
rural Burma to be the more authentic Burma, but rather as the cultural home of the more
authentic Burmese peoples. In this, he also later drew a dichotomy between the British
observer who views the Burmese people “more authentically” by interacting with its rural
peoples, contrasted with the British observer who sees them less authentically by simply
visiting the cities or by viewing rural Burma from the coach of a train or the deck of a
steamboat. Scott’s descriptions of the countryside and its people were however, highly
exoticised and even go as far as being commercialised, with some aspects of his works
reading more like tourist guides than the anthropological observations he passed them off as.
10
Buckland, C. E. “Dictionary of Indian Biography” 1971 p.379
10
Keck notes that among Scott’s accomplishments, this work within journalism and
anthropology is much more closely studied and more extensively written about than his
formal service in the colonial bureaucracy, and as such it is also much more closely
scrutinised. Keck himself primarily focuses his analysis on Scott’s work on various colonial
“Gazetteers” published at the turn of the 20th century. In 1906 Scott published a “Burma: a
handbook of practical information”, which was his first major work written after officially
becoming a member of the colonial civil service. Keck observes this book has not been as
thoroughly studied compared to “The Burman: his life and notions” and in many cases even
been conflated with it, nor has it been examined as much as the colonial Gazetteers (though it
has sometimes been compared to them, such as in Keck’s own work). As such, the “practical
handbook” will serve as my main source for analysing Scott’s writings and his outlook as a
colonial officer. It was meant to provide, as the title implies, “practical” information, but the
book was aimed at both junior civil servants and as I had noted before, also British tourists. It
was however not a travelogue and only somewhat of a tourist guide, resembling more a
compilation of Scott’s detailed views about the Burmese nation, the Burmese people, and
how Britons should approach these two entities as colonial subjects. As such, it perfectly
befits my overarching thesis statement. Note that I am using a digital copy of the book, which
has been archived from the 1911 publication by Alexander Moring Ltd, who also published
the 1906 edition. I am not aware of any major differences between the two versions. Before
moving on I would also like to qualify the academic and cultural context surrounding the
book and some of Scott’s other works.11
Beyond these previously mentioned works, Scott dedicated a great deal of his time in Burma
towards interacting with and studying the ethnic minorities on the periphery of the country,
once again seeing these people as more “authentically” Burmese than minorities who lived in
the cities. This is reflected well in his contributions to the 1911 edition of Encyclopædia
Britannica, where the vast majority of his articles are about rural Burmese towns and tribal
groups. I will only be referencing Scott’s entry defining “Burma”, in its entirety, as part of my
analysis, as I aim to analyse the broad strokes of what these authors saw as their own
contemporary “Burma” and not their views on specific minority ethnic groups or individual
locations in the colony.12 I mainly intend to use this to compare and contrast to “Burma: a
handbook of practical information”, written just a few years prior. I will also not be using
Scott’s writings about the history of Anglo-Burmese interactions, as while they contain some
fascinating remarks on the Burma of the past and how it ties into his contemporary present,
the books are incredibly long and only small segments of them are dedicated towards 20th
century colonial Burma. The majority of them focus instead on the history of Anglo-Burmese
diplomatic interactions, from the 15th century to the 19th century, whilst a self-governing
Burmese state was still extant. I’ve read David George and Edward Hall’s summation of
these of Scott’s works, in their book “Early English Intercourse with Burma, 1587-1743 and
the Tragedy of Negrais” and I find they do not fit the mould of my essay.13
11
Keck, Stephen “British Burma in the New Century, 1895–1918” 2015 p.19-31
Contributions by Scott, James George, to “Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition”, 1911, p.838-846
13
George, David and Hall, Edward “Early English Intercourse with Burma, 1587-1743 and the
Tragedy of Negrais” 2012 p.247-252
12
11
2.3 Profile of Bernard Houghton
Active within the Indian civil service in Burma from 1886 till 1912, Bernard Houghton is an
often overlooked figure of the British colonial project in Burma, who has received relatively
little attention in older historiography of Burma. This was despite his very genuine influence
as a former member of the colonial bureaucracy who grew to become a professed, radical
anti-imperialist and leveraged his former position as a means to strengthen his arguments
against the British Empire’s exploitation of Asia and Africa. Andrew Huxley’s 2011 article
”Mr Houghton and Dr Führer: a scholarly vendetta and its consequences” provides a good
overview of Houghton’s academic, colonial and political careers, focusing initially on his
involvement in the fields of Burmese history, linguistics and archeology, his membership in
the Royal Asiatic Society, as well as his relationship with his to his peers. 14 There are
however disputes if Houghton ever had a clear “road to Damascus moment”, where after a
career most renowned for his work analysing antique Gupta inscriptions, he one day decided
to become an anti-imperialist firebrand. Some claim Houghton was motivated by shifting
currents in the colonial British system, as many “liberal” officers were, whilst others claim he
always had convictions of opposing imperialism. I will summarise this discourse below.
The earliest mention of a political analysis of Houghton that I could find is in Surendra
Prasad Singh’s 1980 work “Growth of Nationalism in Burma, 1900-1942” which portrays
Houghton as a man who had become disillusioned by the imperial project’s recent failures in
the 1910s and 20s. It mainly focuses on the time following his retirement in 1913, criticising
the authoritarianism of Lieutenant-Governor of Burma Spencer Harcourt Butler, the Rowlatt
Act of 1919 and Butler’s formal successor Reginald Henry Craddock, which Singh uses to
exemplify Houghton as a more romanticist and down-to-earth colonial administrator who was
watching his old role be filled by a class of detached, emotionally and often physically distant
administrators pursuing a new agenda in Burma, replacing the peace and goodwill from the
old-fashioned and romanticist officers with a new, cold, analytical view from men who hated
Burma and its people, focusing solely on what their instructions from London and Calcutta
said.15 This is not an uncommon view of more liberal Burmese officers, and I will return to
this subject when discussing Maurice Collis. It is also not an unreasonable framing of
Houghton himself, but it is contested by Huxley, as well as by Jonathan Saha in the latter’s
own 2013 article “Burma’s Anti-Colonial Imperialist”.16 Though they definitely acknowledge
Houghton’s hatred of the new bureaucracy that embodied the turn of the century in colonial
India and Burma, they argue that Houghton had already harboured anti-imperialist views and
was simply unable to express them for fear of reprisal while serving in the colonial civil
service. Huxley and Saha make the case that any and all disillusionment with colonialism did
not radicalise Houghton just because he saw one way of colonialism be replaced by another,
cruller kind. It radicalised him because he saw the full excesses and abuses of colonialism of
many different stripes and a fundamental injustice in the system. They cite Houghton’s early
14
Huxley, Andrews. ”Mr Houghton and Dr Führer: a scholarly vendetta and its consequences” South
East Asia Research, MARCH 2011, Vol. 19, No. 1 (MARCH 2011), pp. 59-82
15
Singh, Surendra Prasad “Growth of Nationalism in Burma, 1900-1942” p.44-45
16
Saha, Jonathan “Burma’s Anti-Colonial Imperialist” 2013
12
involvement with socialist movements and his use of anti-capitalist rhetoric as more proof of
this. Huxley goes as far as to outright compare Houghton’s definition of imperialism and its
relationship with capitalism as similar to Vladimir Lenin’s famed definition of imperialism as
the highest form of capitalism.
I will clarify Houghton's inclusion among my materials, going forward. I do not intend to use
my analysis in this essay to advance the cause of studies around Houghton as an individual,
rather I believe he functions well as a representative of both colonial administrators from the
1900s and 1910s like George Scott, but also a representative of those officials who harboured
sympathies to the Burmese subjects of Empire, as well as critical views on imperialism as a
whole. These kinds of figures are often painted as outliers, unique “class traitors” who turned
on their old employers, but I believe including Houghton in this essay can help to provide a
much broader approach to liberal opposition within the colonial bureaucracy. Especially that
of a renegade within the colonial system who held an ideological opposition to imperialism,
not just a romantic, orientalist sentiment towards Burma. Houghton’s words and deeds, as
they are depicted in the sources I will be using, can be compared to that of other colonial
officials and put into the necessary context of the political zeitgeist of the time. He can be
further analysed through the lens of being a part of imperialism himself, the post-colonial
trend that internal resistance and infighting among the ruling and bureaucratic class is not a
fault of empire, but a component of how it is structured. Houghton’s own theories about
imperialism can be applied here, even to himself, as part of this postcolonial analysis, and I
intend to use it to analyse the broader colonial bureaucratic class and their outlooks.
For this essay I will be focusing on Houghton’s later work, published after 1913, which deals
with issues of contemporary politics and social issues. I will not be using his prior work, that
as I noted was primarily about archeology, ancient history and linguistics. Some, like Huxley,
have interpreted these early works through a political sense, but I could not easily get my
hands on them and I also did find there to be enough source material to work with. I feared
that they might range too far into the realm of the speculative and not suit my overall thesis
statement. The majority of Houghton’s work is scattered across independent articles he wrote
for British and Burmese newspapers, as well as political pamphlets, but these have been well
preserved and archived.
2.4 Profile of Reginald Henry Craddock
I have noticed that studies surrounding Craddock can generally be lumped into two distinct
categories. There are those that focus on his time in India and his relationship to India,
initially as an official within the Central Provinces and Berar, then as a Home Minister on the
Viceroy of India’s executive council and later still as an advisor at the infamous Cellular Jail
on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. His tenure as Lieutenant-Governor in Burma is often
given relatively little attention, and in some cases even skipped over. These Indian studies
resume their analysis of Craddock when he retired from the colonial service and pursued a
career in the British parliament, campaigning for harsher measures to perpetuate British rule
in India. They make no real attempt to build a connection or to find continuity between
13
Craddock’s views as Lieutenant-Governor, compared to his previous and later relationship to
British imperial ideology. The same goes for the other category I found: Burmese studies that
focus mainly, if not overwhelmingly on Craddock’s term as Lieutenant-Governor and his
unique authoritarian tendencies in Burma, in the context of the wider Burmese colonial
system. Indian historian Pum Khan Pau is a rare exception to this trend I have found, as he
focuses specifically on the history of the Indian-Burman frontier during colonial rule and in
the Second World War. 17 Naturally different scholars will each have different areas of focus
and their works may be limited to a particular region, but I was surprised by just how little
overlap there was in the literature I examined. I had assumed that studies of Craddock’s in
India would compare and contrast this period of his life with his rule in Burma, and for the
Burmese studies, vice versa. This is despite the fact that over the course of Craddock’s entire
career from 1882 to 1922 in the civil service, India and Burma were the same colonial entity.
Burma was governed as a province of the British Raj in India. Even most of Craddock’s
writings were written and published during this period of Burmese history, as Burma did not
become a separate crown colony until 1937. Many even claim that Craddock had a role in
influencing this change in administrative system, with his eponymous “Craddock Plan” that
hoped to divide and conquer the disparate ethnic groups within Burma.18
My goal with this segment is to offer context into Craddock and why I have chosen to use
material by him in this essay. Though I will attempt to make an unbiased analysis of him,
Craddock’s writing style and political attitudes were highly personal and it seems difficult to
divorce the man’s own prejudices from the way he governed Burma as well as the way the
governance of Burma. Joseph McQuade gives a good summary of Craddock’s attitudes in his
book “A Genealogy of Terrorism: Colonial Law and the Origins of an Idea”, which recounts
how these attitudes affected Craddock’s methods of administering the colony.19 This segment
will be brief, as I’ve found relatively little other prior research done into Craddock beyond his
role as governor. Few authors I could find touched on Craddock’s writings, likely due to how
rare these sources are outside of his most famous work “The Dilemma in India”. Andrew
Dalby is arguably an exception as in his book “Prince Charoon et al: South East Asia”, which
interprets the history of South Asia through the lens of Thai foreign policy and interactions
with its neighbours, does use Craddock as a source but he doesn’t talk about him in the text.20
2.5 Profile of Maurice Stewart Collis:
Maurice Stewart Collis was a colonial administrator active in British Burma between 1911
and 1934, where he emerged as a prolific and popular colonial author who wrote and
published numerous works of fiction and nonfiction set within the historical past and
contemporary present of the British colony. His fictional work can loosely be compared to
George Orwell’s fictionalised accounts of life in Burma, such as “Burmese Days” and
17
Pau, Pum Khan “Indo-Burma Frontier and the Making of the Chin Hills: Empire and Resistance”
2019 p.25-27
18
Prior, Katherine “Craddock, Sir Reginald Henry, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography”, 2012
19
McQuade, Joseph “A Genealogy of Terrorism: Colonial Law and the Origins of an Idea” 2020
p.133-152
20
Dalby, Andrew “Prince Charoon et al: South East Asia” 2011 p.40-66
14
“Shooting an Elephant”. Keck shares this interpretation and places Stewart in the same
category of Anglo-Burmese intellectuals as George Orwell as well as John Furnivall, another
one of my subjects who I will cover further down. In Keck’s words, these are writers who
represent a “much larger and systematic exploration of Burma” than their predecessors.21
Collis has been commonly viewed by both native and western Burma scholars as one of the
most outspoken Burma-sympathetic members of the Civil Service, but this has largely been
based on anecdotes about his time spent in the colony told secondhand by his colleagues, as
well as Collis own views that he described in his many autobiographical retrospectives on
British rule in Burma, most notably “Last and First in Burma” published in 1956. At the
time it came out, the nation of Burma had been independent from the British Empire for
nearly a decade and the decolonisation of Britain’s holdings on the Indian subcontinent had
emerged as a dominant political current pursued by Britain’s post-war Labour governments.
While there is no reason to suspect that Collis himself was not genuinely sympathetic to the
Burmese people, the majority of the sources pointing to this were written in a very different
political zeitgeist than the 1930s, and with the explicit benefit of hindsight. Ian Brown in his
2013 book “Burma's Economy in the Twentieth Century” examined several of Collis’ various
autobiographies, from ”Trials in Burma”, to ”Last and First in Burma”, as well as the 1953
book “Into Hidden Burma”, to explain social relations between colonisers and the colonised
in Burma during the early 1900s. He examines Collis' claims about how British officers were
perceived by their white colleagues, if they socialised too much with the native population,
though Collis never uses this to describe what his own status or reputation was in the civil
service. Even though this degree of socialising was seen as “lowering British prestige”, it
does not appear to be as uncommon as Collis himself makes it out to be.22 Brown’s work is
however a study into Economic History and his analysis of social relations in the colony are
founded in that model. Academic and future president of Burma, Maung Maung wrote fondly
of Collis in his 1959 work “Burma’s Constitution”. He used Collis as one of many examples
to describe how: “The British bureaucracy was not, therefore, completely devoid of human
warmth. Many of the officials gave more to the country than their official duties demanded;
they were perhaps romantics or eccentrics, but they were not a whittle less British for loving
Burma, for they did not forsake Britain for Burma, never went native, but shared with the
Burmese the joys and benefits of the wisdom and art and new thinking of old Britain." The
importance we can discern here is that Collis should not be viewed as a “bleeding-heart” with
an unusually progressive outlook on colonialism. The prior research paints a portrait of a man
who, while perhaps not ideologically anti-imperialist, viewed the Burmese people fondly and
treated them with respect, but in a manner that conformed to the social cliques of his time.23
In my own analysis, I will compare these popular depictions of Collis and reexaminations of
him with the man’s own words and ideas, as he espoused them in his 1938 work “Trials in
Burma”, one of the lengthier works that Collis wrote contemporaneously to his service within
Burma and later published while the Colony of Burma was still ruled by Britain. As Collis
later works have been studied in great depth, I will defer to the aforementioned literature in
21
Keck, 2015, p.74-75
Brown, Ian “Burma's Economy in the Twentieth Century” 2013 p.57-81
23
Maung Maung, 2002, p.14-15
22
15
order to illustrate the views expressed later in life. I do not claim that my analysis is a more
“true” depiction of Collis as a person, but I believe it may better shine a light on how Collis
wrote about and described Burma to a colonial British audience. Not to a Burmese audience,
or to a post-colonial British audience as he did with his later books, but explicitly what Collis
wrote of the colonisation of Burma at a time when he himself had been actively helping to
perpetuate it in a small part as a bureaucrat and arguably, through writing “Trials in Burma”,
as a propagandist for colonialism. I will be relying on the historian Maitri Aung-Thwin’s
extensive revisions and reexaminations of Collis as a source in Burmese colonial history,
which debunks many key myths around the man and helps elaborate on the embellishments
contained within his works, as a means to strengthen my source’s reliability.24 It is of some
interest that Collis is an author so widely examined by native Burmese scholars, compared to
the others I have listed in my analysis. I found references to further studies done about Collis
by a Burmese scholar named Aung Kyaw, who translated “Trials in Burma” into Burmese in
1984, but there was little to no information about him available in English.25
2.6 Analysis of Sources by James George Scott (1911)
As previously noted, Scott’s self-evidently named “Burma: a handbook of practical
information” doubles as both a travel guide and an encyclopaedia about the colony. In Scott’s
own words from his preface: “There have been many books written about Burma lately, but
the publishers think there is room for one more. Of those existing, some are too sumptuous for
the traveller, and others are too bulky ; some are too emotional, and some too sketchy; some
ignore the fact that Burma has any geography, and others are mere inadequate guidebooks.”
It has a rather staggering length of over 600 pages, which I cannot cover adequately in this
essay, or else I would not have room to examine any other sources that I can compare and
contrast to Scott’s writing. Because of Scott’s own admission that he seeks to correct the
record where most Burma guides have failed, the book covers a vast amount of different
topics, only some of which are relevant to my essay. I have been able to narrow my focus on
chapters about the Burmese people and colonial governance in Burma, skipping past those
parts of the book about the fish, flora and fauna of Burma, as well as other topics that are
irrelevant to my analysis. I will primarily be working with the following segment: “The races
of Burma” from Part 1 - “The Country and Climate”, the entirety of Part 2 - “Government”,
portions of Part 4 - “Archeology, Architecture, Art, Music”, Part 5 - “Religion”, as well as
some of the Appendixes about Burma’s cultural and ethnic groups. As a reminder, I am using
a 1911 publication of the book, which to my knowledge does not differ in any meaningful
way from the 1906 version.
Beginning with Scott’s anthropological, etymological and paleoanthropology presentation
about Burma’s “races”, he is quick to begin dividing the people of the colony into different
groups based on their perceived ancestry. The main element that Scott emphasises is tracking
the origins and routes of migration of the various people which settled in Burma, as well as
describing what other people across Asia they are related to. This is retold in a rather flowery
24
25
Aung-Thwin, 2011 p.162-183
Myanmar Library Association Newsletter, May 2018
16
and romanticised language, as if Scott is presenting a creation myth of these peoples. Take for
instance his description of the Selung people: “Their language shows affinities with that of
the Tsiam, or Cham, the aborigines of Cambodia ; it also appears to have relationship with
the language of the Aetas, or Negritos, the aborigines of the Philippine Islands. It seems
probable, therefore, that they were the inhabitants of the coast when Thaton was on the sea
and Pegu was a mere speck of sand on the waste of waters, on which Henthas—golden
geese—preened their feathers.” Scott repeatedly stresses the shared Indo-Chinese ancestry of
most Burmese ethnic groups, mostly as a means to delineate not just what constitutes the
individual ethnic subgroups, but also what constitutes the broad definition of the “Burmese
people”, the latter of which he problematizes as a very controversial topic. When he sets out
to describe the then-current state of the “Burmese people”, Scott relies on two major surveys
that had been conducted during his time in the colony. These were carried out in 1891 and
1901, though Scott also talks of the methods that are planned to be used for the next survey
set to be carried out in 1911. Scott reports the results of these surveys mostly uncritically,
though he does highlight some discrepancies between the two and notes some of the data
gathered may be unreliable. He generally also cites the works of other, contemporary
researchers, with the intention of forging his own definitions of several contested issues about
Burmese anthropology. Scott argues against contemporaneous views on the history of the
Burmese language and its local dialects, believing they can’t adequately be lumped together
as having a shared “Burmese” heritage. He uses this to highlight the cultural and linguistic
subdivisions of the country, in just one of many examples of presenting Burma as a melting
pot and broadly disunited colony. To Scott, there appears to be no real cultural or linguistic
“Burmese people”, beyond their shared ethnic Indo-Chinese ancestry.26
Instead, he emphasises their shared geographic location and religious beliefs as the unifying
factor in delineating what is “Burma” and what are the “Burmese people”. He also repeatedly
reinforces the claim that the current Burma is a distinct entity from many of its neighbours,
even if it has ethnic ties to them. The one he dedicates the most attention to is China, which
had long been a suzerain over Burma before British rule. Scott frames this as arguing against
a “Burmese presence in China”. As a former tributary to the Chinese emperors, there was
naturally a Chinese presence in Burma, but not vice-versa, pointing to what Scott claims is a
degree of separation in “racial traditions”.27 He also claims to be arguing against the “queer”
attitudes of “Chinese partisans”, though he never directly cites any individual Chinese scholar
that he is opposed to.28
I am unable to adequately surmise Scott’s views on every single ethnic group in the colony,
as he lists over a dozen, but there are some which he refers to with what is either intentional
or unintentionally derogatory language. In one instance, he calls both the Kadu and Hpön
tribes “ethnic dregs”, likening the former to a “dish-cloth, which retains traces of everything
it has been rubbed against” and the latter to residue left in an empty wine barrel, as well as
speculating that the Hpön are descendants of a race of criminals. Others are given more
26
Scott, “Burma: a handbook of practical information”, 1911, p.64
Scott, 1911, p.65-66
28
Scott, 1911 p.75
27
17
flattering descriptions, such as Scott highlighting the beauty of ethnically Wa women, or the
intelligence and piety of the P'iao people. When he speaks of the Bamar ethnic group, the
dominant one in all of Burma, Scott chooses to liken their sporadic cultural evolution to the
“the wriggling of mites in a cheese, or to the gyrations of animal life in a globule of water
under a microscope.”. Some of these descriptions are so odd I genuinely cannot discern if
they are meant to be derogatory, some kind of way to make the text more enticing and
understandable to the reader, or if they are just a product of Scott’s unique writing style. The
recurring trend here however is that Scott wants to highlight the subdivisions and minorities
of Burma as distinct groups, which can be easily racialised and categorised, instead of being
lumped together as “Burmese”. He occasionally refers to the Bamar as “the Burmese”, but it
is clear he is referring to the individual ethnic group and not to the entirety of the people of
the colony.29
Later, Scott attempts to frame what the shared racial “traits” of the Burmans are, in terms of
their national character, culture, appearance, and other racialized elements. He likens their
“charm” and “eagerness” to the Japanese, calling them unrefined in comparison but also more
appealing than the Japanese, because Scott views the Burmese people’s less “polished” and
“inauthentic” aspects as endearing. He favourably likens them to a bull-dog, saying that they
are friendly even though they may not seem that way. The use of likening humans to dogs is
not exactly unusual in racial studies of this period. Scott also claims that the Burmese people
are more matriarchal and that women are less subservient to their husbands than among other
Asian cultures. This is also written in a manner to imply Burmese are women inherently
blessed with “witchery” and seductiveness, though Scott seems to frame this more as how a
Burmese woman acts in her own household and among her own people, as opposed to
claiming they are some sort of oriental beguiler who draws in white men. Even when Scott
goes on to summarise what he sees as the racial “faults” of the Burmese, he is cautiously
positive about them, generally noting that for every supposed fault the Burmese people have
“natural good breeding which make him conspicuous even among Orientals”, continuing the
trend of using the Japanese or other East Asian ethnicities as an unfavourable comparison to
the Burmese. He also blames many of their supposed faults on the simple nature that they are
“Orientals”, and not any specific issue unique to the Burmese people’s genetic or cultural
heritage. Rather, they are treated as sharing the flaws that Scott indicates he believes all
people of East Asia suffer from, such as a compulsiveness to gamble and adherence to
superstition.30 This pattern continues in Scott’s contributions to the 1911 edition
Encyclopaedia Britannica, but instead of using Japanese as his base comparison, Scott there
chooses to compare the Burmans to the people of India. The same basic tenets as his previous
comparison remain though, Burmans are a more relaxed and less refined people, compared to
their well-polished and practical peers, showing an interest in living life to the fullest instead
of performing according to high standards or labouring intensively. Interestingly, in his
Encyclopaedia entry Scott also uses these traits to compare the Burmese to the Irish, a rare
comparison between a “white” and an “oriental” people in his writings. The ties between the
29
30
Scott, 1911, p.66-75
Scott, 1911 p.76-77
18
Irish and the Burmese are fascinating, especially in regards to discussions about the Irish’
status as a colonised people, but I do not have the time to cover them in this essay.31
Though Scott frames the Burmese people in the “Handbook” as having once been violent,
particularly in their conduct of war against their Thai neighbours, he does not indicate that
this violence is in any way ingrained into the Burmese character. Scott applauds the Burmese
conduct here during the Anglo-Burmese Wars and the subsequent British “pacification” of
Burma, where the natives used guerilla warfare to fight back against the technologically
superior forces of the British Empire. Scott was himself a witness to both the last of the three
Anglo-Burmese Wars as well as to the campaign of pacification, showing quite a high degree
of respect to his former enemies. He even goes as far as to defend the Burmese people from
allegations of “cowardice”, because of the way they fought, noting the double standard at
play here. White people who used guerilla tactics, such as the Boers in South Africa, were not
labelled as cowards in the same way that colonised people were. He also frames resistance to
colonialism as a rational action, not one driven by misguided foolishness or blind racial
hatred. Scott paints Britain as the aggressor and the Burmese people as just defending their
own nation, at least in this source.32 By comparison, his contributions to the Encyclopaedia
Britannica do not address the issue with such detail and introspection about Britain’s
imperialist endeavours. He briefly mentions the guerilla war that Britain fought in Northern
Burma in an unbiased manner, not making any moral judgement about its combatants one
way or another. This piece of Scott’s writing focuses much more on the past history of Burma
and does not shy away from accusing its feudal rulers of tyranny and Barbarism, as well as
blaming the Anglo-Burmese wars on the Burmese monarchs being too stubborn and ignorant,
whereas “Handbook” gave this much less attention and generally avoided making such
statements about the old feudal rulers. I find it intriguing that he lays so much blame on the
ruling classes, exempting the broader Burmese people from blame in the wars.
I will not beleaguer the sections where Scott summarises the nature of the Burmese language,
as well as some Burmese folk traditions, as he recounts these in a generally unbiased way and
does not provide the same colour commentary or greater political introspection that we see in
the previous segments. Scott also seems more interested in the material elements of Burmese
culture, such as writing extensively about what materials they sew their clothes from, and
what ink they use for their tattoos, instead of explaining the cultural significance of Burmese
clothing or traditional tattoos. Scott also avoids speculating about why the Burmese harbour
certain traditions, and he appears to keep his text focused on elements of Burmese culture that
can actually be corroborated, instead of just reprinting rumours he had heard about it. This
will become a contrast with several later authors that we will examine.
Much as he praised Burma’s adoption of guerilla warfare in their struggle against Britain,
Scott is quick to highlight other elements of Burmese culture that he views as positive. He is
candidly favourable to how Burmese marriages are carried out, noting that they are more akin
to civil contracts than religious rituals. He also claims that most Burmans choose to marry for
31
32
Contributions by Scott, James George, to “Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition”, 1911, p.838-846
Scott, 1911, p.76-77
19
love, instead of partaking in arranged marriages, describing that “The Burmese do not marry
for money, they marry to make money”, emphasising both how Burmese marriages build up
families’ political and economic influence, as well as how women are generally granted
autonomy and are not expected to just sit around the house. Instead, Scott calls them the main
“money-makers” of Burmese families and applaud their fiscal sensibility and initiative. Scott
also claims that divorce is a relatively simple process in Burma, concluding with the overall
statement that “No women in the East are freer, or are more safeguarded against adventurers,
or drones, than the Burmese.”. Unfortunately this segment, nor the book as a whole as best I
can tell, has no mention of interracial and interfaith marriages between Burmese people and
white Europeans. Scott was writing at a time when an “Anglo-Burmese” culture, as well as
consensual relations between British men and Burmese women were both becoming more
commonplace, but he devotes his focus exclusively to the traditional culture of the Burmese
countryside and poorer parts of the urban cities. Scott does mention interracial marriages
between Burmese women and men from India, China or the Middle East. Scott frames these
relations as a racial degeneration among the Burmese people, calling the children of such
marriages “usually contemptible, and frequently useless”. Scott shows an irrational hatred of
these mixed-race Burmans who are not Eurasian, calling women from these groups fat and
sexually loose, while the men are supposedly prone to crime. He also notes that they do not
share the same ethos as “Pure” Burmans, but throughout all of this he only focuses on mixed
race people who were born from a union between two Asian parents, not any children born
with a white parent. This absence of acknowledging Anglo-Burmese culture echoes what
Keck wrote of Scott’s ideas about “authenticity”, noting that Scott and many other British
authors effectively did not even consider westernised Burmans to be Burmans any longer, but
rather some whole other type of people, or a sort of less “authentic” Burman. Anglo-Burmese
people are thus not even labelled as a “degeneration” of the Burmese race, like the children of
Indians, Arabs or Chinese, but they’re separated altogether from the core of Burmese culture.
Though Scott does not state it outright, it is also possible that he views the separation of these
mixed-race Burmans from the Buddhist religion, as one cause for their supposed moral decay,
as the Indains and Chinese often practice Hinduism or Islam.33
In terms of Scott’s writings about Burmese religion, both the traditional religious traditions
which predate Buddhism proselytising as well as the currently hegemonic Buddhist faith, he
seems more interested in how and why these religions have sprung up and grown influential
in Burma, as well as describe how their religious ceremonies are carried out, than he is in
recounting what the religion actually means to the Burmese. He is also very interested in its
ties to Burmese architecture, declaring that “There are practically no archaeological or
architectural remains, or any buildings of any interest, in Burma except those connected with
religion”. Despite this broad analysis, religion seems to serve as something of a cornerstone
in Scott’s attempts to summarise Burmese culture and identity. As he generally doesn’t
attribute racial traits as being the most important influence on the people’s culture (beyond a
cause of cultural decline), and also prefers to focus on a material analysis of how geography
and natural resources in Burma have shaped the people’s habits, it is religion that makes up
33
Scott, 1911, p.82-88
20
the core of what we could today call a “superstructure” of Burmese identity to Scott. It is
religion, not racial traits or any kind of inherent “temperament” or “spirit” of the Burmese
character, that reinforces and perpetuates their culture. To Scott, this is not just a metaphorical
religious influence which hangs over the country, his focus on Burma’s religion also notes
how religious mythos have been deeply ingrained into Burmese social values, pointing
towards the common use of religious morals and aesops. This is a recurring theme among
colonial authors in Burma, as I will return to later, though it should be noted that Scott uses
this talk about Buddhism being subsumed into the broader culture and made more
“simplified” as a means to praise Burmese culture for sticking to its values.
Beyond this, Scott’s writings on Buddhism are mostly focused on the Buddhist faith itself or
on its origins in India, not as much on how the Burmese practice Buddhism according to their
own cultural norms. He does write some details about how the British colonial administration
in Burma sought to control and reorganise the local monkshood and old religious hierarchies
that they inherited after the dissolution of the last Burmese kingdom. There is unfortunately
little of relevance here to my essay, once again Scott focuses more on universal aspects of
Buddhist communal life and traditional laws than anything with a uniquely Burmese flair to
it. This in depth explanation of Buddhism does make sense however, given the nature of the
book as an introduction to early 20th century Burma for an Anglophone reader. Burma is one
of the very few colonies that Britain ruled where Buddhism was a majority religion, even a
reader acqauinted with the religions of the British Raj would probably be more familiar with
Hinduism and Islam than Buddhism, so the explanation does not feel out of place. Eventually
Scott does write a few pages about the Burmese folk religions, which have long since been
syncretised with Buddhism. He does not highlight them as a uniquely Burmese form of faith
or religious expression, using them more as an example of how the Buddhist religion often
syncretized with local faiths. Interestingly enough, Scott also frames the Burmese traditional
folk religions as more a manifestation of a universal set of “pagan” beliefs among the people
of the world, trying to liken what mythical spirits and folk heroes best resemble characters
from Greek or Norse mythology, as well as comparing the worship of individual spirits to the
Christian veneration of saints. This is notable that Scott only employs these comparisons in
so far as when he discusses Burmese folk religion, and not the Buddhist faith as a whole.34
Lastly I wish to conclude with the observation that while Scott paints the Burmese people as
superstitious and religiously devoted, he does not frame them as being irrational. When he
describes both Buddhism and local folk religions, he always emphasises the religion's role as
a social phenomena and tradition, never claiming that the Burmese people are stupid for what
they choose to believe in. He does recount tales of Burmese people trying to use their religion
to accomplish supernatural deeds, even going so far as to attempt to debunk claims that the
people of Burma do rain dances to ensure good harvest, or otherwise try to physically affect
the world around them through force of belief. Scott does retell a popular tradition in Burma
of people using charms or tattoos that are said to ward off injuries, in most cases this is told in
British colonial literature as the Burmese thinking they had magic tattoos that made them
34
Scott, 1911, p.380-384
21
immune to gunfire. Scott merely references these tattoos and charms as symbols of good luck
and notes how sometimes they’ve been brought up in eccelestical courts as evidence, when
they’ve been crafted monks who have breached their monastic vows either by hawking such
charms onto others, or flaunting the objects themselves.35
2.7 Analysis of sources by Bernhard Houghton (1913, 1920, 1922)
Beyond Houghton’s ideological convictions, though they may definitely have played an
influence here, Bureaucratic government; a study in Indian polity is unique in that it employs
a very direct actor perspective on the political events which have transpired in India and
Burma over the course of the late 19th and early 20th century. Houghton describes the book
as a commentary on the “events in India and the forces that have inspired them”, in the
foreword, going on to also surmise that to understand India and Burma’s political turmoil it is
necessary to understand the people responsible for the creation of its current political system.
Houghton never writes as if colonialism and imperialism is a natural state in the world, least
of all a natural state in the colonised world, he explicitly identifies it as the creation of
particular actors with certain material interests as motivation. Houghton claims the political
situation in the India and Burma of the 1910s is one that is fundamentally incomparable to
when Britain first began to subjugate the subcontinent. This is coached in an orientalist and
idealised view of the region’s past, as Houghton focuses on how British rule initially did not
affect the “native reverence” he sees the local people as having held for their kings and
nobility. In Houghton’s own words, Britain had originally sought to ensure that their
governance over India and Burma was a “change of rulers rather than a change of system”,
maintaining the traditional ruling classes as vassals and protectorates. I find it difficult to
make a judgement about Houghton’s perspective here, as while his text is initially coached in
what appears to be outright racist language about the native populations of Asia having been
moulded by “many centuries of submission” to worship those who ruled over them, he seems
to paint it more as a trait of the human condition than as a deficit that is unique to the people
of Asia. 36 The view that centuries of feudalism affected how decolonial movements, or the
lack thereof manifested is also not an really an antiquated way of looking at things. Tarling
uses it in “History of Southeast Asia”, with a special focus on how religious institutions and
dogma bred “submissiveness” even in times of crisis.37
Houghton quotes from Stuart Mills to explain how this same dynamic of power has also
historically played out in Europe, and while he does seem to attribute aspects of how it has
manifested in India and Burma to the “race, language and religious belief” there, it is not
written in a tone of condescension. Houghton gives the people of India agency as actors and
individuals, making particular note of the peasantry and the labourers who he claims could
have resisted the British if the British had overstepped their boundaries and their obligations
to their subjects during their initial conquests. This creates an image of a more idealised
colonialism which respected its subjects, but Houghton does not necessarily consider this to
35
Scott, 1911 p.384-385
Houghton, “Bureaucratic Government” 1913, p.4-5
37
Tarling, 2008, p.184-186
36
22
be a positive state of affairs. Overall, his views seem ambiguous, he does not present Britain’s
presence in India as being in any way natural or imbued with greater purpose, but he does see
it as a military conquest. Here Houghton draws a distinction between the feudal rulers of
India and Burma, who had within the context of local political norms on the subcontinent
“won their possessions at the point of the sword” versus the recent colonial forces that had
upended this traditional power structure by virtue of their overpowering firepower. Britain’s
conquest was a regional aberration, but it was a military conquest like any other. Houghton
even claims that the initial method of governance employed by Britain in this part of Asia,
which he dubs “autocracy”, did not differ too much from the old feudal order. Yet in time,
this government and the colonial system that upheld it transitioned towards “bureaucracy”.
Houghton presents this as a bad thing, and that the situation in India and Burma has gotten
worse for the local people, without claiming that they used to be uniquely good back when
the natives ran themselves, or when Britain employed “autocratic” governance. With wording
such as “Apart from their common ground of autocracy, the English and native Governments
resembled each other in their revenue system and other principal features.” It strikes me
once more that Houghton is painting a broad description of power dynamics and the human
condition in general, not making a judgement on any power dynamics that he claims are
uniquely Asiatic or uniquely European, nor a unique result of East and West in conflict with
one another. This is, as I remarked earlier, a unique perspective on the situation in India and it
appears to conform to prior research surrounding Houghton’s ideological outlook.38
I do not wish to present this as implying that Houghton’s work is free of bigotry, stereotypes
or canards, though they are not often directed at the Burmese. He occasionally employs
racialised metaphors, such as calling the continuity in tax codes between the old feudal and
new colonial governments akin to “the old Chinese tailor who, when given an old coat as a
pattern, produced with pride an exact replica - rents, patches, and all.”39 and in another
example, attributing some inherent negative traits to the entire populations of Asia. One
instance sees him dismiss the Burmese as having an “excessive veneration” of authority, with
no real clarification for what this means. In the context, Houghton is talking about a comment
by another British official, which Houghton views as ironic due to this supposed trait of the
Burmans, but he never goes on to explain why or even reference back to his prior comments
about “many centuries of submission” having become integral to the native culture by the
prevalence of feudalism.40 Likewise, Houghton does not touch on the potential influence of
religion here, as Tarling does. This claim about submission appears to initially be an off-hand
comment but eventually becomes a recurring theme when Houghton starts to talk about how
“In nature the Burmese are docile, obedient to authority, and kindly, presenting an ideally
plastic material to the hand of the bureaucratic potter.” in the next chapter.41 Another similar
example takes place on the page immediately after the “excessive veneration” comment, with
a more detailed descriptions on the negative aspects of “the Bengali race”, though in this case
38
Houghton, 1913 p.4-19
Houghton, 1913 p.8
40
Houghton, 1913 p.114
41
Houghton, 1913 p.131
39
23
he attributes it to a supposed quote from a Bengali intellectual talking about his own people
(Houghton however, does not include a citation for this or tell us who the intellectual was).42
The book is divided into an introduction, followed by six chapters, but this analysis will
primarily be focusing on the 5th and 6th chapters, “Provincial Government” and “Towards
Democracy” respectively. These concern Houghton’s views on the current state of affairs in
Burma, in 1913. While the other chapters lead up to his commentary, they mainly consist of
Houghton analysing the history of India, with only a handful of asides concerning Burma.
There is also a great deal written by Houghton about his perception of the colonial civil
service as an institution and on concepts such as hero worship within the British Empire, as
well as martyrdom and idealism, but these segments are written only about white Britons and
not Burmese. He does not touch much on native officers, or even on mixed race populations,
meaning these segments are unfortunately irrelevant to my thesis statement. There is some
limited material here which I will be utilising later, where Houghton compares the white
Briton of the civil service to the native Burman, but he does not touch on native Burmans
serving within the civil service. He also writes a short segment describing what the common
outlook of a British official is on the people he is governing, using Burma as an example of
one of the regions where Houghton believes greater “sympathy” is needed to be expressed by
the colonial rulers for the people they govern.43
Chapter 5 and 6 are somewhat complicated by the fact that Houghton uses them both to
highlight Burma as an example of the flaws in the current “Provincial Governments” of the
British Raj, but also as a general platform to expound upon Burma and the Burmese. For his
part, Houghton himself appears to acknowledge that the writing leans more towards the latter,
even qualifying his use of Burma as an example in a wider political context by saying it may
not appear to be a good choice of example. I find some of Houghton’s comments further into
the chapter to be questionable, as he often makes note of a supposed ethnic homogeneity of
Burma in comparison to India.44 Yet Burma is a nation with many different ethnic groups and
the dominant “Bamar” ethnic group has historically usually only made up about half to two
thirds of the total population. Even more puzzlingly, Houghton references several of these
ethnic groups by name, such as the Kachin of Northern Burma, so he is not oblivious to their
existence or to their activities. He may be simply dismissing all of the ethnic groups of
Burma to be similar to one another, but he never really illustrates why this would be the case,
and his aforementioned commentary on the Kachin makes note of several unique elements of
their culture that stand out from the Bamar.45 Though Houghton does make note of religion in
Burma being less of a sectarian concern than in India, he explicitly divides this commentary
up into notes on the religion of Burma and the “people” of Burma. His views on homogeneity
are in the text explicitly referring to “people”, however one wants to interpret that. He may
just be referring to the Bamar, but his language is quite vague and seems to indicate he is
either wittingly or unwittingly making sweeping generalisations about the Burmese.
42
Houghton, 1913n p.115
Houghton, 1913, p.189
44
Houghton, 1913, p.130
45
Houghton, 1913, p.150-151
43
24
Houghton goes on to describe Burma and its people as a blank slate for the bureaucratisation
of British colonialism to mould however they feel like. He repeatedly, throughout the book
uses the concept of “welding” the British Empire to Asia, as a term for expressing this. He
often points towards the British Raj’s origins in the British East India company and draws a
distinction between “autocracy” being a product of state governance, whilst “bureaucracy” is
a product of corporate governance and the capitalist systems. He attributes acts of brutality by
the colonising powers and government inefficiencies as having been driven by corporations
influential within colonial trade, likening the various corporations that are active in Burma to
the “Rand Lords” of South Africa, a notorious set of oligarchs who held political sway within
Transvaal. The most direct illustration of this is how Houghton frames the consequences of
British rules in Burma by what symbols have been imposed upon it. The most notable one to
Houghton is the Bungalow, which he views as a building synonymous with colonial rule in
Burma. It is not a native architectural style to the region, but one that has been appropriated
by the British from the Indians, and used across the empire as an effective form of luxurious
residence in colonial nations. To Houghton, the Bungalow represents both empire as well as
“apartness”, it is a unique residence where only the highest members of the Civil Service
reside. Thus it becomes both a physical landmark and abstract symbol of imperialism and
inequality.46 A great deal of Chapter 5 is dedicated towards Houghton arguing against
corporate oligarchs in Burma, citing practices such as abusive work conditions in mines,
deforestation and a loss of quality of life among the natives as having been directly caused by
corporations. He brings up various counterarguments against this in attempts to debunk them,
often citing the perceived threat of foreign intrigue and domination as having been a misused
justification for authoritarian policies. This is a somewhat obtuse portion of the book, as
Houghton strives to argue both for the Burmans who suffer under corporate colonial
influence, but he is also writing in general about capitalism and the capitalist class, noting
their pervasive influence over other aspects of the British Empire. In Houghton’s own words:
“Thus do financiers pervert to their will high-minded statesmen, and sway the destiny of
nations.”47 This portrayal of corporate influence as being a negative effect on both the native
Burmans but also on the Empire’s rulers is interesting and we’ll return to it further down.
Houghton’s views on the Burmese people are also intriguing, if we contrast “Bureaucratic
Government” with several of his later writings. Within the book, he repeatedly emphasises
that the Burmese people do not possess an organised nationalist movement, or even a
“national spirit”. This is little surprise, as this movement was in its infancy around this time.
Houghton unfavourably compares the Burmese to the Chinese, noting that while governance
in China is far worse, the Chinese people possess a greater sense of purpose and unity.
Houghton even goes so far as to depict China as eventually being able to eclipse Britain as a
resurgent nation, because of this national spirit, and draws a multi-layer distinction between
how China compares to the Burmese on their own, to the Burmese governed by Britons, and
lastly to Britain itself.48 This helps to elucidate that a lot of Houghon’s views around Burma
46
Houghton, 1913, p.90-91
Houghton, 1913, p.132-134
48
Houghton, 1913, p.163-164
47
25
conform to the idea of the White Man’s Burden, but he does not deprive the Burmese of their
agency altogether, he merely views it as squandered on their own and stifled under British
rule. Resolving this fault Houghton claims to have diagnosed with the Burmese national spirit
would become a key part of his future writing. Houghton also still views and portrays the
people of Burma as human beings, not just conquered subjects. He explicitly denounces the
sadism and cruelty that comes inherent with colonial “autocracy”, as well as the emotionless
exploitation that comes with “colonial bureaucracy”, at one point remarking: “In reference to
the annexation of Upper Burma, the Lieutenant-Governor once gravely informed the natives
of that country that “Burma as a whole acquired the proud privilege of becoming a part of
the British Empire." There is no reason to suppose that in uttering this betise he was aiming a
sardonic taunt at a conquered people ; it merely signalises the total ignorance of human
feelings that marks the true bureaucrat, particularly the Imperialist variety of the species.
You have conquered us, and you have cut us off from amongst the nations, and have humbled
us into the dust, and yet you expect us to be proud of the fact.”.49 Houghton portrays Burma’s
people in “Bureaucratic Government” as still having agency, even if he is condescending
about how little they seem to use this agency to organise themselves. Though as noted, he did
himself describe the Burmese as being docile, he appears to view this docility with pity, not
disgust. Even if he saw them as a docile mass that colonial bureaucracy could easily reshape
and subjugate, Houghton does not present the end result of such an endeavour as being in any
way desirable: For Burma, England still stands a menacing conqueror, armed to the teeth,
not a torch-bearer of knowledge, a kindly guide to a higher civilization. The pity of it all ! So
superb, so incomparably free and untrammelled was the work of redemption that lay ready to
our hands, so halting and pitiable has been the per- formance. Will a bureaucracy ever learn
that mechanical accuracy is not life, that a drilled automaton is no substitute for the life and
spirit of a living organism?”50.
Comparing this to prior research, it raises the question of how radical these views actually
were. Whilst Houghton is undeniably ideological in his writing, this degree of paternalistic
colonial sympathy for the Burmese is not an outlier among colonial authors and likely not
have endangered his career, as authors like Andrews Huxley speculate. It may instead be that
Houghton was more concerned about office politics that could be affected by his critical view
on the British bureaucracy and colonial civil service, rather than being accused of any sort of
treacherous sympathy to the Burmese. In many ways the text appears to conform to Surendra
Prasad Singh’s early interpretation of Houghton as just another liberal intellectual within the
colonial civil service, but there are elements of Houghton’s later writing which lead me to
wonder if Singh’s interpretation was defined solely by reading “Bureaucratic Governance”.
Further speculation of this subject falls outside the range of this essay however, as does the
question of what drove Houghton’s political motivations behind the book, but I don’t think
that the issue should be wholly discounted when Houghton’s political and academic career,
especially considering his later work, which I will examine in detail.
49
50
Houghton, 1913, p.161-162
Houghton, 1913, p.157
26
Next, I will move on to carrying out a comparison between “Bureaucratic Government” and
five articles that Houghton went on to write in the mid 1910s and early 1920s, most of which
were published both within Burma, India and Britain. The articles consist of “For Freedom”,
“Make Burma Safe For Democracy”,“Glad Tidings from England”,“Labour Moves” and
“The Cant of Cooperation”. All five were provided to me by the Indian National Archives
from a collection of Houghton’s works that had faced British government scrutiny. I have not
been able to find any information about a British government response to “Bureaucratic
Government”, but it seems if there was one it was not as severe as the reaction to the five
articles by Houghton, as implied in a 1920 letter from the colonial official H. McPherson to
the Secretary of State for India and to the British Home Office preserved in the previously
mentioned archive collection51 The letter describes Houghton’s articles as being “Seditious
Contributions to the Burma Newspapers” and urges the “the Secretary of State to Restrain
the Mischievous Writings of that Gentlemen”, referring to Houghton.“Bureaucratic
Government” is not included on the list of items H. McPherson expresses concern over, but
he may simply not have been familiar with the work as it was published seven years prior.
The National Archives of India also provided me with digital copies of a set of letters
exchanged by the Secretary of State for India and the Viceroy of India in 1923, dealing
primarily with how to respond to Houghton’s continued agitation. Unfortunately this second
piece of archive material is not as beneficial to me, as it references several other letters and
materials which were either not preserved, or have not yet been digitised. This leaves me with
only a portion of the full context behind the conversation, and I do not wish to fill that void
with any more speculation.52 I only bring this up to acknowledge the growing government
response to Houghton’s actions, writing the articles listed below:
“For Freedom”, published the 10th of September 1920 in the newspaper New Burma marks a
shift in rhetoric for Houghton’s writing and his views on the Burmese people. To summarise
the article, it is a criticism of how slowly the British Empire has gone about granting political
autonomy and self-rule to Burma compared to India, despite promises from Secretary of State
for India, Edwin Montagu. Houghton describes the wishes of the Burmese people as "Now to
all Burmans, comes a cry, the cry of their Motherland. Burma speaks in their ears: ‘Behold
me, I am not free. I am bound in chains, compelled to act at the will of others, forbidden to
shape my own steps, balked of my dearest desires. Whilst Indians march forward to the happy
land of freedom, I am fettered, ensnared, held back. Come, free me. Rescue me from
thraldom. Cut the cords that tie me down.’". This is a rather stark contrast from the ways that
Houghton described Burmese nationalist sentiment, just seven years prior. No more is Burma
and its people “docile, obedient to authority, and kindly, presenting an ideally plastic
material to the hand of the bureaucratic potter.” Now they are described as clamouring for
freedom and willing to rise up to take it by force. Houghton also emphasises the Burmans
status as proletariat in the article, instead of merely a featureless mass of humanity. There are
51
National Archives of India, 1920 “Seditious Contributions to the Burma Newspapers (the Burma
Observer) and ( New Burma ) by Bernard Houghton a Retired ICS Member of Burma Suggestion to
the Secretary of State to Restrain the Mischievous Writings of that Gentlemen”
52
National Archives of India, 1920 “Question of Publishing Bernard Houghton'S Apolofy of and
Explanation for the Violent Articles Contributed by Him to the Burmese Press” [sic]
27
some portions of the text that seem to condescend against the Burmese people, blaming them
for not having organised themselves into a nationalist movement sooner, which fits with the
criticisms Houghton labelled at Burmese nationalism in “Bureaucratic Government”, but the
article is still a radical change in tone and explicitly aimed towards Burmese people to rouse
them into political struggle. The wording is also quite similar to ways that the Burmese would
motivate each other to resist British imperialism, particularly the Burmans of the late 1890s
and early 1900s, the era that Houghton would probably be most familiar with. Comparing his
way to describe the Burmese struggle for independence, with the way that Tarling discusses
the political mobilisation among those Burmans still clinging to the old feudal and theocratic
order, it seems that Houghton is trying to repurpose old language for a modern purpose. He
may be making presumptions here about how Burmans themselves would actually think to
describe a more modern struggle, but he also intersperses it with talks of class war and a more
updated form of anti-imperialist theory than what feudal nobles and monks were expressing
in the last few decades.53
“Make Burma Safe For Democracy”, published September 11th, 1920 in the newspaper The
Burma Observer continues the spirit of the previous article. Houghton claims that the official
policy of Britain is that the Burmese are “unfit to govern themselves”, because of their “lack
of experience with democratic institutions”. The article is notable because Houghton goes on
to formally identify his political beliefs as “Reformism”, in a colonial context, arguing that
the British have continued to use this policy of suppressing Burmese self-rule, but never gone
through the effort of trying to actually teach the Burmese how to govern themselves. It also
reiterates several parts of “Bureaucratic Government”, such as Houghton’s conviction that
Burma is a unique example that can be used to illustrate the wider nature of colonial
governance.54 He also reiterates his criticism of colonial bureaucrats as political actors in the
British Empire and the social traits one exhibits. Much like in “For Freedom”, Houghton’s
attitude towards the Burmese people appears different from in “Bureaucratic Government”,
allotting them more political agency in their own right. He does not blame Burma’s supposed
inexperience with democratic institutions on the Burmese people themselves being inherently
ignorant of it, nor on them being unfit or unmotivated to learn. He instead blames the British
for not educating the Burmans, citing the disproportionate amount of money spent on the
military, the police and the salaries of colonial officials, compared to cultural and educational
sectors in the colony. Houghton does not clarify however, whether he thinks Burma “needs”
to be educated in how to govern itself, he merely seeks to argue against what he dubs the
official British policy. This makes it a bit more difficult to discern his views on the Burmese
population as a political entity, but considering his previous comments that there is now a
dedicated national spirit among them, it appears to have changed to be more sympathetic.
I will be skipping over the articles “Glad Tidings from England”,“Labour Moves” and “The
Cant of Cooperation”, that focus on the then recent electoral wins of the British Labour Party
and what that meant for Burma, as the articles are aimed more towards explaining British
53
54
Tarling, 2008, p.216-217
Houghton, 1913, p.130
28
politics and society to a Burmese audience. It does however have Houghton explicitly
identify himself as a supporter of Labour and as a socialist, which will be useful both going
forward and in viewing several of his previous statements with hindsight. The next and final
piece of Houghton’s writings that I wish to examine is a medium length pamphlet which he
published in 1922 named “The Mind of the Indian Government”. India in this context does
not refer to the modern state of India, but rather to the British Raj, which controlled Burma as
a province. The pamphlet can broadly be construed as a synthesis of Houghton’s early
critique of colonial bureaucracy, with his latter pivot towards demagogic political agitation.
The text also strives to portray a psychological and spiritual explanation for colonialism, as
well as decolonial movements among the colonised, a break from Houghton’s previously
materialistic leanings where apart from when describing esoteric terms such as the “national
spirit” of the Burmese people, he generally employed purely material analysis when tackling
the nature of imperialism and colonial governance. It is also rather unusual among colonial
authors of the time, especially in using western ideas of psychology in non-racialized ways to
describe colonised subjects. I would go so far as to call it prescient of modern postcolonial
studies. Even so, the pamphlet is not long enough to explore these ideas in detail and
Houghton only goes as far as to attempt to disprove what he sees as a common argument
against Burmese self-rule, that the Burmese nationalists are simply driven by a “blind hatred
against the British”. Houghton repeatedly focuses in the text on double-standards among the
British ruling class and the proponents of colonialism, which is continues the arguments he
laid out in “Make Burma Safe for Democracy”, that the British Empire is hypocritical to
expect the Burmese to be able to govern themselves according to western norms, whilst
simultaneously not doing anything to teach the Burmese these western norms. Beyond this,
however, the pamphlet is too narrowly focused on psychoanalysing the ruling classes and
power dynamics to really say much about Houghton’s view on the Burmese people. I do find,
however, that the text somewhat rhymes with my initial findings about Houghton’s preface to
“Bureaucratic Government”, where he approached the conquest of India and Burma as not
being civilizational conflicts between East and West, or a product of any particular virtue
among the British people, nor any sort of inherent defect among the peoples of Asia.
2.8 Analysis of Sources by Reginald Craddock (1919, 1929, 1935)
The Dilemma in India is a similar critique of British colonial bureaucracy to Houghton’s own
works that we just covered, but it is written by someone from a different background within
the administrative hierarchy of the British Empire, as well as someone with a vastly different
opinion on the merits of imperialism. Houghton was a Commissioner within the civil service,
and none of the areas he ever administered exceeded a size of 35,000 square kilometres.55 In
comparison, Craddock was Lieutenant-Governor of Burma, administering the whole of what
is today the country of Myanmar, covering roughly 676,000 square kilometres. Following the
end of his tenure, he pursued a career in the British parliament for the Tory Party and became
associated with hardline imperialists, as shown in his parliamentary records. I will be utilising
some of Craddock’s parliamentary records to help illustrate the ideas he espouses in this book
55
Yustina, Rina “The Red House in Katha – former home of Burma's deputy commissioner and
reformist” Myanmar Times, 2020
29
as well as to provide further context into his pro-imperialist views. I’ve also decided to use an
extract of a speech by Craddock, from 1919, provided to me by the Online Burma Library as
part of a broader collection of “Proposals of the Government of India for a New Constitution
for Burma”. I plan to use an excerpt of this speech as a means to analyse some of Craddock’s
earlier views on the Burmese people. In my research, it was also brought to my attention that
in 1922 Craddock published a paper dubbed “Note… on the Threatened Extinction of the
European Services in India”, which I suspect could be a useful companion piece to the 1919
speech and “The Dilemma in India”, but I was unable to find a copy of this paper. I do wish
to acknowledge however that it exists, and could perhaps be used to further research into
Craddock’s writings. As I noted previously, India in the context of these works’ titles refers to
the British Raj, which governed Burma at the time Craddock was Lieutenant-Governor as
well as when he published this book. “The Dilemma in India” is however divided into a more
generalised discussion of the greater Raj and its bureaucracy, as well as a chapter dedicated
solely to “the separate problem of Burma”. As such I will be analysing the former sections in
a more broad overview and the latter in greater detail.
Craddock opens the book by describing that he writes to white European audience and also
professes himself to not be an expert on the matter of India. He does not seem to draw any
distinction between having more knowledge of Burma due to his period governing it, so I
think it is safe to assume he refers to both Burma and India in this sentence.56 Much as I’ve
done in this essay he focuses on the scale of Burma as a means to convey the challenge of
governing it. He emphasises the disunity of the provinces of India by comparing their size to
that of European countries, estimating Burma to be on par with Sweden, Denmark or Norway
in terms of surface area. With this comparison he paints the provinces and the administrative
entities within the British Raj as separate countries that just so happen to be under British
rule, rather than components of a united British Empire.57 When Craddock describes the
religions of Asia, he tries to relate them to European religious practices, emphasising the
communal nature and scholastic traditions of Islam and Buddhism in Burma as being similar
to Catholicism, as well as by using the term “Buddhist Church” to refer the monkshoods in
Burma.58 Overall, Burma is pointed to as being unique in the overall analysis of his book,
with Craddock frequently having to discount it from his demographics or overviews of the
political, social and economic situations in the British Raj, for fear of it skewing his data.
This uniqueness of Burma is attributed to the prevalence of the Buddhist religion, and also as
something that is inherent to the Burmese social hierarchies and the Burmese “race”, in one
instance Craddock describes it as follows: “We cannot see a true picture of the illiteracy of
the Indian masses unless we eliminate Burma, where the monastic system has produced
special results, and also those races and classes which, for various and particular reasons,
have enjoyed a greater advance in literacy than all the other elements in the population.”59
He does not view the Burmese people as a productive social organism, however, deriding
them in both the text and most noticeably in a parliamentary statement several years later,
56
Craddock, “The Dilemma in India”, 1929 p.19
Craddock, 1929 p.6
58
Craddock, 1929 p.40
59
Craddock, 1929 p.42
57
30
where he likens the native population of the British Raj to the builders of the Tower of
Babylon, in terms of their ignorance. In his statement, Craddock claims this ignorance is
omnipresent, reaching even “parts of certain Provinces” that would normally be seen as
uplifted. Though he does not refer to Burma by name, he nevertheless appears to include it,
as he also makes no attempt to exempt the province’s population from this statement.60
The Dilemma in India is very respectful to the native upper classes, particularly those who
have maintained their “traditional” culture and rejected western political ideas. Craddock
appears to harbour a respect for the “conservativeness” of these elites, tolerating that even
though many don’t speak English, they generally support British rule and do not stir up
trouble. In many ways, he ties this conservativeness to their traditional cultural values and
thus considers them to be more “genuinely” Burmese than the more westernised or western
taught and politically active elites. This is not an uncommon idea among the sources that I
have examined and will continue to analyse further into the essay, many of them view the
westernisation of the Burmese as making Burmese people less genuinely Burmese, but here
Craddock is the first to explicitly tie it to wealth and social class as a symbol of genuineness.
These powerful and conservative native elites are more genuine because they reject western
ideas and support, as well as benefit from, continued British rule. As such, Craddock implies
that to support British rule is thus more genuinely Burman, whilst parroting western ideas of
nationalism and liberty is an aberration of Burmese culture. Though he claims to speak for
these elites and to echo their own sentiments, he never includes quotes from them, or even
citations. Instead, as this quote will illustrate, Craddock projects his own views upon the
elites and uses the opportunity to flatter the British Empire, whilst also claiming these views
are what means to be Burman: “Again, there are among the landed aristocracy and the
ancient ruling families thousands of men with little or no English who regard the rant of the
English-speaking agitator as an unmixed nuisance to the peace of the country. And these
wonder in amazement at the ridiculous tolerance (as they regard it) by which a great and
mighty Government allows itself to be abused and bullied by a number of nobodies (as they
would term them), who if the lion only roared would scamper away into hiding. And there are
highly-polished and highly-respected bankers and traders whose treasure chests and
commercial prosperity depend upon the stability of credit secured by British rule. It is all
these who make up the old and indigenous intelligentsia of the country.”61
Craddock’s description of “English-speaking agitators” opposing British rule contradicts his
1919 speech, recorded during deliberations about strengthening Burmese autonomy. In this
speech, Craddock explicitly claims that British rule is “well received by all classes” and that
criticism against it is “directed against the details” rather than “the principles” of British rule,
whereas the aforementioned quote paints a broader picture of an ideological or even cultural
conflict between Britain and Burmese nationalists. As this speech was given roughly a decade
before Craddock published The Dilemma in India, and was also made in direct reference to
the then ongoing political reforms, it possible that the context is quite a bit different and that
60
61
Parliament.uk “HC Deb 04 June 1935 Vol.302 Col.1818”
Craddock, 1929 p.56
31
Craddock’s opinions on the Burmese people as a whole and on the English-speaking agitators
in particular has changed with the benefit of hindsight. We know from Houghton’s writings
that I analysed previously in this essay that the Burmese nationalist movement of the 1910s
was dismissed as ineffectual and disorganised. Craddock’s speech also makes the claim that
the Burmese people have no experience with “rural self rule”, though the exact nature of what
Craddock meant by this is not explained in any greater detail. Nevertheless, it points towards
a continued dismissal of the Burmese people’s political agency, dividing them into the vast
uneducated masses, the civilised and conservative social elites, and lastly the traitorous
English-speaking agitators. This view particularly of the “masses” is not entirely unlike the
way Craddock described them in his 1935 speech in the British parliament where he
highlighted their “ignorance”. Lastly, the 1919 speech treats Burma more as a part of the
broader British Raj and Craddock even proposes a greater degree of cooperation between the
central rule of the Viceroy of India and the Lieutenant-Governor of Burma, a contrast from
how he later came to depict Burma and its people as a separate nation compared to India.62
Next, I will move on to the separate chapter of The Dilemma in India, covering Craddock’s
thoughts specifically on Burma. Craddock begins the chapter with a provocative statement:
“Never was a country and its people more untimely ripped from the womb of political future
progress than Burma and the Burmese, when Mr, Montagu, with his magical midwifery
across the Bay of Bengal, started to disturb them from their placid contentment. What a
country, what a history, what a people!” This lays the blame of political unrest in Burma, the
eponymous “Separate Problem” that Craddock wishes to address, at the hands of colonial
reforms and bureaucratisation. It brings to mind Houghton’s similar, initial description of the
Burmese where he also referred to them as a “docile” people, who lack agency of their own
and are instead “moulded” by colonial circumstances. Craddock writes at length about his
view on Burmese history, where we again see him project his own imperialist values onto the
country. I struggled how to best summarise this quote, so take heed that the abridged version
may not do it justice. I shortened some of the descriptors of Burma’s geography and natural
resources, as well as some of the more graphic descriptors of supposed Burmese barbarity:
“A country beautiful and varied, rich in its potentialities not yet fully explored, varied in its
mountains and its valleys and its plateaus, its mighty rivers, its teeming deltas drenched with
torrential rainfalls… A history, tragic, despotic, sinister, murderous, with its tortures, its
outrages, its cruelties, its sieges, its forcible conscription, its forced depopulations, and its
forced colonisations… put to the sword—men, women, children, and holy monks, or crammed
into wooden cages and burnt alive. Yet amongst all these horrors the creed of the peaceful
contemplative Buddha was diluting animistic passions and gross superstitions… Such was the
history of Burma from the time of William the Conqueror and before, and almost down to the
Jubilee of Queen Victoria. From all these centuries of misery and rapine, and kings who
interlarded cruel despotism with pious pagoda building… there has emerged a people of
indolent men and industrious women… furiously addicted to gambling and wagers; loving
their pony races and their canoe races; never tired of watching their all-night plays…”63
62
Government of India via His Majesty’s Stationary Office “PROPOSALS OF THE GOVERNMENT
OF INDIA FOR A NEW CONSTITUTION FOR BURMA.” 1920 p.51-53
63
Craddock, 1929 p.109-110
32
This is the most blatant use of colonial stereotypes and canards that I have seen in any of the
sources I examined, blending an orientalisation of Burma’s environment and cultural legacy
with a disdain and exotisation of its people. Craddock lists supposed crimes and barbarities
that the people of Burma have carried out throughout their history, attempting to highlight
some kind of inherent contradiction of the Burmese character, which will become a repeat
theme throughout his text. Craddock directly compares this to British history, with the
implication that the British are more civilised and thus did not engage with the kinds of
barbaric and torturous acts that he lists throughout Burmese history. Notably, he also claims
this barbarism stopped at “the Jubilee of Queen Victoria”, right around when the Kingdom of
Burma subjugated and colonised. In other words, Britain was according to Craddock a
civilising force bringing an end to the debasement and barbarism propagated within Burma,
as well as by Burma to other peoples. Even under the current colonial system, however,
Craddock seems to imply that these same faults of the Burmese people persist. They are
depicted as primitive, addled by addictions, hedonistic and impulsive. There is no comparison
in this paragraph to the British people, no implication that the white members of the Imperial
Civil Service may themselves, to paraphrase, partake in a “furious addictions to gambling” or
may “tirelessly watch all-night plays”. Craddock returns to the theme of Burmese
“criminality” and violence later on in the chapter, but chooses to cite from colonial
government reports, which appear more unbiased. This introduction presents Craddock’s
personal views of the Burmese inclination towards violence, whilst later sections present a
detached, analytic view on Burma as the “most criminal province” of the British Empire64
The rest of the introduction goes on to present more of Craddock’s personal observations and
musings on the Burmese people, covering several pages and being far too numerous to
recount here in their entirety. I will highlight a few key phrases however that caught my eye
and I think help illustrate Craddock’s, and by proxy a broader British colonial view on the
Burmese people when presented through a more personalised, moral judgement. “They are
literate, but with the elementary teaching of the monastic school, filled up with the musty but
honourable precepts of old, which they cannot interpret in their daily lives” This marks the
first outright dismissal of the Buddhist religion by Craddock. Whilst the previous quote I
highlighted about Burmese barbarism appeared to illustrate Craddock’s view of a contrast
between the supposed peace and piety espoused by the Buddhist faith, and what he saw as the
reality of a violent people, this sentence calls Buddhist teachings “elementary” and claims the
average Burman “cannot interpret” the honourable aspects of it “in their daily lives”.65 This
brings to mind some of Scott’s writings about how Buddhist religion was ingrained into the
Burmese culture as moral fables and aesops, but in Craddock’s case he views this dilution of
Buddhist religion into simple precepts as a sign of Burma’s faults. I speculate that Craddock
is still viewing this matter as a contradiction of the Burmese people and not as a fault of their
religion. He may be implying that the average Burman is not as intelligent or scholastic as the
faith they profess should demand, but it also comes across as dismissing Buddhism as a
whole to be a primitive religion. This contrasts from Craddock’s more flattering descriptions
64
65
Craddock, 1929, p.123-124
Craddock, 1929, p.110-115
33
of it earlier in the book, where he was likening Buddhism to the Catholic Church. This may
be a discrepancy between how Craddock views the institutions of Buddhism, or the ideas of
it, versus how he views it as being practised by the Burmese people and interpreted by them.
Another phrase worth highlighting goes as follows: “In spite of their Buddhism, fearful of
evil spirits and “nats,” tattooing themselves against bullets or as charms and mascots to
secure to them prowess and victory; torn in a moment with gusts of violent passion, using the
Dah on the smallest pretence, attracted by the novelty of the hour, and then throwing it away
like a discarded toy.” Dah in this context refers to a traditional type of Burmese sword. We
once again see Craddock attempt to paint a contrast between the supposed peacefulness of
Buddhism and what he sees as the violence of the Burmese people, emphasising them to be
impulsive just as he did before. Craddock also sees a contrast between Buddhist religion and
the traditions of Burmese folklore and paganism, apparently unaware or willfully ignorant of
the history of syncretism between Buddhism and the native faiths of those lands it has spread
to. When I first saw Craddock liken Buddhism to Catholicism, I had presumed that the shared
traditions of syncretism between the two faiths was one of his reasons for doing so, but here
he seems vehemently opposed to the idea that Buddhism should mix with any “pagan” faiths.
The last phrase I wish to highlight is: “despising the foreigner, yet imitating his vices, so
attractive yet lacking all ballast, so capable of combination and yet so unstable; tolerant of
their own and each other’s sins, no one trying to be his brother’s keeper.” Particularly how
Craddock describes the Burmese as despising foreigners yet imitation their vices, this at least
points towards some fault among the people of the west with bringing vice to Burma, or some
fault in partaking of it themselves, though it is once again portrayed as being some kind of a
hypocrisy or contradiction of the Burmese character. Craddock dismissing the Burmans as
also not having anyone “trying to be his brother’s keeper”, pointing towards some sort of lack
of solidarity among them, fits in line with previous comments we have seen by these authors
in dismissing the efficiency of Burmese political organising, though Craddock may also be
highlighting it as a symptom of a larger social malaise.66
Moving further into the chapter, Craddock gives a brief overview of the history of Britain’s
colonisation of Burma. Initially, this portion is only notable to me because Craddock goes on
to describe this history with similar prejudice as I made note of before: “After the annexation
of Upper Burma, in 1886, there were some five years of dacoities and guerilla warfare, for
Burmese soldiers had always been predatory conscripts, living on the spoils of the land
through which they had marched and on the loot of the conquered city, if haply it fell. And
after these five years the peace of the country was disturbed only by dacoities, the heritage of
the old instincts of plunder,in which the young village bloods often join just to win the hand of
a sweetheart, for there are yet girls who will not look at the suit of a young man who has not
won his spurs as a dashing dacoit.” The sheer detail he puts into such a scenario, a
conception of Burmese resistance against colonial rule being driven not by any political
inspirations or a desire for sovereignty, but instead by a romanticised idea of oriental tales of
love and danger, fits well into the exoticisation of the native population and particular of
66
Craddock, 1929, p.110
34
native resistance. It is a topic that other writers, such as Maitrii Aung-Thwin, have covered
extensively, but I find it intriguing how important Craddock seems to consider this to the
history of British rule in the region. These kinds of tales, which go unsourced and uncited
with no hint of evidence to suggest what rumours or scant records they may have been
extrapolated from, are construed as something of a founding myth for the colonial repression
practised by the Imperial Civil Service. It is a myth of ever present banditry, not just an
inherent savagery among the people they are meant to police, but a conspiracy of a network
of social banditry, supported by many sectors of Burmese culture and society. Once again,
Maitrii Aung-Thwin has written in great detail about this subject, so to avoid going beyond
the scope of this essay, I want to focus on instead of this “romanticised” aspect of social
banditry in the colony, the “rationalisation” of colonial repression. Further down the page,
Craddock writes: “During these last thirty years also the only other events to disturb
tranquillity were revolts among the tribes on the frontier, and the pathetic, almost comic
opera, risings in the name of some exiled princelet, or someone claiming to be a reincarnated
hero who tattooed a small following to secure immunity from bullets and marched out with
high hopes of conquering the country. The first body of military police that they came across
the tattoo failed, and the rising was at an end.” Here Burmese superstitions and traditions are
portrayed as inherently flawed. The theme of impulsiveness returns, with the implication of
some sort of ingrained attachment to violence among the Burmese people. Craddock depicts
them however as being effortlessly cowed when faced with the technologically and culturally
superior British military power.67 Colonial repression is depicted as a rationalising force that
restrains the overly emotional and impulse driven Burmese people, similar to how Houghton
depicted the repression wrought by colonial bureaucracy as moulding the Burmese people.
We can also compare this to how Craddock saw the apolitical conservative attitudes of the
Burmese social elites as more “authentically” Burman.
The vast majority of Craddock’s chapter about Burma is mainly focused on political issues of
colonial governance, devoting most of the text to discussing colonial paternalism, what the
British Empire’s duties in Burma are and how they should be fulfilled. Craddock focuses
extensively on describing and analysing the dyarchy in Burma, the limited form of self rule
and democratic representation that had been implemented in the British Raj at this time. For
the remainder of the chapter there is very little actual description given of Burma, or of its
people, beyond some short summaries on the various ethnic minorities of the country. There
are only mentions of how the Burmese people react to diarchy, with Craddock calling them
“40 years behind India” in terms of political development and their readiness to govern
themselves. There is anecdote that Craddock includes to describe the ignorance of Burmese
voters, in order to illustrate just how foreign of an idea political self rule was to them: “The
Burmese deputation returned back to Burma in triumph, having won for Burma the same
reforms as for India, and expected to be crowned with laurels as victors at a public meeting
convened to welcome them. But alas for their hopes! They were looked coldly upon,for the
demand had now risen for something much better than despised India had been given, in fact
for complete Home Rule. At the meeting this motion was carried with amazing enthusiasm by
67
Craddock, 1929, p.112-115
35
a hall packed with women, monks, students, and schoolboys, to 95 per cent, for whom the
terms “Dyarchy” and “Home Rule” might just as well have been Hebrew words. “Ho Ru”
became Burmese word and was passed round the villages, with their mushroom associations,
so that at the first elections under the new reforms a voter wanted to record his vote for
“Maung Ho Ru”, for the intelligent fellow thought that the man to vote for at the election was
Mr. Ho Ru, and that this ticket was a cheap passage to a millennium.” Notably, Craddock
attributes this ignorance and supposed misconception to be so popular that “95%” of
Burmans had no idea what the Dyarchy reforms meant. He includes the intelligentsia and the
monkshood within this 95%, once again showing disdain for the Buddhist monks. Craddock
does not include the feudal, conservative elites, which he has already expressed sympathy for,
among the ignorant Burmese of this coalition. I can only speculate whether Craddock
considered the social elites of Burma to be above political ideas of self-rule, though I suspect
if he had any deeper thoughts about their views on the Dyarchy, he would have held them up
as an example for other Burmans to follow. As I noted before, Craddock considers
subjugation and obedience to colonialism to be the best way of life for the Burmese. I find the
last sentence of this quote to also be fascinating, as it depicts the British colonial
administration as being burdened with and practically forced to go along with ceding limited
self-rule to a people who Craddock repeatedly wants to portray as completely unready to
govern themselves. It brings to mind his previous comments about how Burmese nationalist
agitators “bullied” the social elites and the British, villanising these agitators and members of
the Burmese deputations within the British metropole as a hindrance to Burma’s prosperity.
Craddock later goes on to frame this as the Burman people betraying the British’s trust,
noting that: “The people were so attractive that the Europeans loved them in spite of their
faults, and minimised their deficiencies. For, indeed, Burmans have always been the spoilt
children of the East.”68 Which frames the acts of nationalist agitation as ungratefulness.
When he aims to describe what Burmese self rule has resulted with in practice, Craddock
focuses mainly on the influence of more palatable minorities in the country, such as Burmese
Christians or Chinese immigrants, instead of any representatives from a major ethnic or
religious bloc in the country. What praise he gives and trust he places in Burmans of the
indigenous ethnic groups is exclusively delegated to the conservative feudal elite and the
urban mercantile elite, attributing a certain aptitude to self rule among these social classes to
the fact that they have a vested interest in their own wealth and continued prosperity.
The last parts of the chapter have a curious framing, returning Craddock’s early summaries of
the Burmese as being very communal in nature, particularly because of the Buddhist religion.
The Burmese bourgeoise is depicted as bucking this trend and adopting individualist views
which he views much more favourably. I believe this marks a difference in how Craddock
portrays the political agency of an individual, or a social class, versus the agency of a shared
people.69 The Burmese bourgeois and conservative elites are praised for exceeding the
limitations of their supposed integral cultural flaws by accepting British rule and benefiting
from it, acting with individual consciousness and class consciousness. Craddock does not
68
69
Craddock, 1929, p.120
Craddock, 1929 p.122-125
36
associate them with the violence, tribalistic communal groupthink or impulsiveness that he
attributes to the broader Burmese people. They are Burmans who have gone beyond being
Burmans, but because of this, they have also become more authentically Burman. A more
refined type of Burmese people, who have been uplifted by colonialism. Though Craddock
does not state this outright, I surmise that this is what he ultimately views as the goal of
British colonialism in Burma. Creating a people who are “uplifted” from their supposed
primitive nature, without westernising them, for to westernise them would be to put the tools
of modern government in the hands of a people Craddock does not consider ready to rule
themselves. The ideal Burman in his eyes is not one who is taught to govern himself with
western tools, it is a Burman who is taught to be dependent and to find ways to benefit from
the continuation of British rule in the colony, thus creating a cultural superstructure meant to
perpetuate colonialism indefinitely. It effectively squares the circle of “uplifting” the people
of Burma without ever ceding political and economic power to them, which would endanger
the future of colonial exploitation and profit. I believe this is reinforced by the paragraph that
Craddock ends the chapter with: “The Burmese proper have a strong national feeling. There
is no country with less marked extremes of poverty and wealth. The poorest can rise to the
highest positions. There is no hereditary aristocracy. Birth is of little account. Surely here
was ideal ground for democracy ; and yet Burma, beautiful Burma, with all her cheerful
people, so radiant in gaiety, so feckless in purpose, taking no thought for the future, must be
born again before she can enter even the Dominion of Home Rule. The explanation lies in the
want of moral fibre, and Acts of Parliament are powerless to supply it. It must be a plant of
local growth.”70 Here he shifts the blame and the responsibility of “uplifting” entirely onto
the Burmese, qualifying each of their supposed virtues with debilitating flaws that render
British presence in the colony unequivocal until the Burmese can take matters into their own
hands. Yet by Craddock’s own admissions earlier, he doesn’t seem to view that as ever being
likely to happen. If I had more time to pursue these elements of Craddock’s writings, I
definitely would, but it goes beyond the scope of this essay. It unfortunately leaves me with
an open, unanswerable question that can only be subject to interpretation. Does Craddock
even want the Burmese to govern themselves? Or does he perhaps just view them governing
themselves as impossible to begin with, so he has already dismissed it outright?
As a brief addendum to the section on “The Dilemma in India”, I should qualify that there are
several parts of the book later on when Craddock does bring up Burma, but he mainly just
describes issues of British Imperial policy that are independent of the Burmese people. He
talks about military brinkmanship with the Kingdom of Siam on the Burmese border, as well
as about the prison system of the British Raj where inmates were generally deported to the
Andaman Islands, but some proposals had been made to relocate them to Burma. There are
also personal musings by Craddock of his friendship with various British colonial officials in
Burma, but nothing here tells us much about Craddock’s views on the Imperial Civil Service
in relation to the Burmese people.
70
Craddock, 1929, p.129
37
2.9 Analysis of Sources by Maurice Stewart Collis (1938)
Unlike previous sources, “Trials in Burma” is at first glance not a political commentary on
the practices of colonialism, such as “Bureaucratic Governance” and “Dilemma in India”,
nor is it an instructional guidebook and encyclopaedia such as Scott’s “Practical handbook”.
The work does certainly approach such topics however and I believe it can easily be
interpreted as a source that falls under the respective descriptors, but Collis wrote it with the
intention for the work to be a set of memoirs and colour commentary on his own life in
Burma, as well as on the spirit of colonialism, not specifically on the nation of Burma or the
Burmese people but rather on more widely applicable elements of life in a colonial society. A
great example of this is the fact that Collis is the first author here who published his work
after Burma had become a separate colony, governed independently of the British Raj, but
there are enough generalisations about colonial life and governance that you could easily
believe that Burma is still a province governed by the same colonial structures all the other
sources I’ve used here wrote about. This may be also indicative of a lack of any real change
yet in the administration, or Collis simply not caring to highlight the changing government
structure and policies. The book also has a much more narrative structure than previous
sources, meaning I have chosen to analyse some aspects of Collis’ writing style and even how
the book is formatted, as I believe his choices on what to focus on in regards to his career in
the civil service and his personal interactions with Burma, vs what he does not focus on, is in
and of itself a an interesting (albeit perhaps unintentional) statement by Collis.
Because of its more narrative nature, the line between truth and falsehood blurs heavily in
Collis’ work. Many portions of the book are unreliable accounts of Burmese history based on
faulty sources, and share a degree of similarity with Collis’ fictional dramatic novels set in
the recent pre-colonial Burmese past. It is an interesting route that Collis’ career as an author
took, going from writing colonial fiction to fictionalising and embellishing himself as a figure
in this colonial world, through his autobiographies. Once again, refer to “Return of the Galon
King” by Maitri Aung-Thwin, who writes about the 1932 Burmese Rebellion. This was an
event which Collis witnessed and loosely retells in “Trials in Burma”, owing to his own role
in persecuting the perpetrators of the revolt. Aung-Thwin provides extensive explanations for
how Collis embellished the events of the rebellion and of his other activities in Burma, most
notably by pointing out repeated inconsistencies in his writing about if Collis was himself a
firsthand witness to events he claimed to have taken part in. Aung-Thwin also presents these
claims as more of an issue about problems with source authenticity and reliability, than a
problematization of latent bias in the mind of the author, Collis.71 In total, Collis penned four
autobiographical works, each covering different periods of his career as a colonial official,
but the one we will focus on for this segment is as previously mentioned “Trials in Burma”.
Collis was at the time of writing the book, briefly employed as a district magistrate in
Rangoon, but he also travelled across the British Raj and acted as a witness and consultant in
some very prominent colonial legal cases. In addition to what he recorded of his foray into
the colonial court system, Collis also includes several references and anecdotes centred on his
71
Aung-Thwin, 2011, p.162-183
38
past experiences holding various other duties within the broader administrative hierarchy of
the then-province of Burma. Though few of these postings offered Collis as direct a role in
shaping the outcome of legal trials as he could during his time as a magistrate, witness or a
consultant, they did offer him a chance to observe the proceedings of colonial courts that
were under his administrative watch and to later draw comparisons between different notable
trials held within British-ruled Burma at various points in time.
Collis is thus not a stranger to Burma and had worked there for quite a while when he wrote
the book, so he will frequently take some elements for granted and won’t elaborate on them
in too much detail. This also fits with his overall ethos that the book is not explicitly about
Burma and Burmeseness, but rather about colonialism as a whole. The focus is not so much
on trials specifically in Burma, but on colonial trials as a whole, as well as on Collis’ own life
as a member of the wider colonial service. Compare this t theo previous authors we have
examined who wrote with more explanations for their audience and were also more interested
in addressing the perceived uniqueness of Burma. Collis’ observations about the colony
focuses mainly on things that relate to his work within the British administration, but he has
attempted to avoid making this the sole focus of the book. This is something which he
clarifies in the preface, where he also explicitly denies casting himself as a protagonist or
hero in any kind of narrative. In the author’s own words, the central figure of the book is not
him, but the very ideal of colonialism, which Collis regards ambivalently as a once noble
pursuit that has degenerated into crass “smash and grab” policies. In many ways, Collis
portrays the policy of diarchy in British India, as well as the recent separation of Burma from
the Raj into a separate Crown Colony as a means to return to this idealised colonialism. He
makes particular note of how this could allow Burma greater political agency within the
British Empire and thus allow for a more harmonious, mutually beneficial relationship
between the colonial overlord and the colonial subject.72
The book is divided into multiple chapters, each with several subchapters that bear a short
title. Immediately, I wish to address a matter of the writing style. When describing the white
upper class society in Burma, or members thereof, Collis employs titles that are terse and not
particularly eye-catching. They usually contain the name of a British official that the
subchapter revolves around (“Sir Charles”, “Sir John”), or a short description of events
contained within (“The Trial Opens”, “The Dinner Party”). When a chapter title refers to a
Burmese subject, however, it is reduced to a descriptor that focuses on an unnatural, or
criminal aspect of them, usually giving the subject themself a title (“The Necromancer”, “The
Astrologer”, “The Princess”). Naturally, we could attribute this to the fact that Collis is much
more intimate with his British colleagues than the Burmese people he governs over, but
throughout the book he will frequently reduce the native Burmans he writes about to the
simplest, base descriptors. Their identities are obfuscated with titles or with adjectives,
usually with exotic connotations. This isn’t to preserve the anonymity of his subjects, Collis
admits to using pseudonyms for members of the white colonial upper class who end up on the
wrong side of the law, or in a state of embarrassment. Collis will sometimes include the name
72
Collis, 1938 p.11-12
39
of a native Burman, but always qualify it with some kind of inherent trait or descriptor that
otherises them. British figures are not subjected to the same treatment, beyond Collis noting
whatever military or governmental title a British man may have, usually with a flowery and
complimentative description. I find it fascinating that this thorough process of otherizing and
excoticizing the Burmese people begins as early as in the chapter titles.73
Beyond the focus on “trials”, the book also doubles as a travelogue, as Collis makes frequent
mentions of what life in Burma was like for him, as well as provides commentary on issues
that affected the colony. When the peasants of the Tharrawaddy region of Burma rose up in
the aforementioned rebellion of 1932, Collis was in the perfect role at the perfect time to take
note of how the rebellion’s leaders and participants were later prosecuted for their part in the
uprising, but he cannot help but to also include his own judgements about the character and
motivations of the rebels. He retells several exotic rumours about one prominent leader in the
rebellion, a Burmese mystic named Saya San who many British officials of the time saw as
the mastermind behind it, or at least the most fitting scapegoat. Collis does not question the
popular narrative of the time, that Saya San was a self-proclaimed “sorcerer king” who
appealed to the superstitions of the Burmese peasantry in order to motivate them to fight and
die for him. The political structure of the rebellion and the battles fought during it take on a
exoticised tone in Collis’ works, as he speculates about Saya San’s personal character, what
mystic arts or traditions the man may have practised, as well as what great wealth and power
he must have hoarded, which Collis believes consists of gold and a vast harem of women.74
Speculation is a recurring feature within Collis’ writing, almost any time he takes note of, or
meets a Burmese figure of some social prominence, he will begin to idly speculate about their
lives and often concoct wild stories of intrigue based on rumours he had heard. Another
example of this is his brief run in with Hteiktin Ma Lat, a princess of the deposed Burmese
royal family, who Collis is flattered by. Despite only meeting Collis once, in a professional
capacity to register her intent to get married, Collis writes up two pages of anecdotes he has
heard about the princess, such as her activities in exile in India and her cancelled marriage to
a Nepalese prince.75 There are plenty of other examples of this, due to the book’s structure.
Every entry will be about some particular incident during Collis’ life in Burma, which usually
involves either an encounter with Burmese people or with the British colonial bureaucracy.
As I mentioned previously, Collis’ generally paints the Burmese with a broad stroke and only
records the names of the people he spoke with, usually if they are of some higher social status
such as princess Hteiktin Ma Lat.
Like many other author’s we’ve covered, Collis is fond of comparisons, preferring to liken
the situation and society in Burma to that of Britain, or compare its national monuments and
history to other Asian nations. While this could very well be for the benefit of a reader less
familiar with Burma, it strips agency away from the Burmese people, as Collis refuses to let
them stand on their own merits. When Burma and the Burmese people are given more focus
as a distinct nation and culture, Collis nevertheless prefers to simplify them down to a few
73
Collis, “Trials in Burma”, p.11-14
Collis p.127-128 and p.273-283
75
Collis p,51-54
74
40
base traits, praising parts of their civilization, such as their traditional pagoda architecture,
while also implying these traditional pursuits are all these people excel at. It does come with
some humility too, as Collis makes notes of ways that the British have meddled with or
destroyed traditional aspects of Burmese aesthetics. One can’t help but to judge this by its
context, however, Collis speaks in an almost possessive ways about the colony and during
major events such as the Crown prince of Britain’s visit in 1934, he makes sure that the
colony will be displaying its full beauty “to do honour” to the visiting royal. When speaking
of craftsmanship or other subjects which the British also partake in, Collis is keen to argue
for his nation’s supremacy, as if it was self-evident. Whether it be through the simplest
description such as describing a British product as the best of its kind, or in a more in depth
summation of innate British excellence, Collis refuses to let a moment fleet by, unremarked
upon. In many respects Burma is continuously portrayed as an inferior to the United
Kingdom, both in its development, virtue and morality, the few traits where Collis describes
them as superior are things that does not relate to the Britain’s status as a white, European,
industrialised nation and can be portrayed as either polar opposites to it, or quaint subjects
that can be easily exoticised, such as foreign architecture or religious esotericism.76
In regards to Collis’ view of the Burmese own characteristics as a people or as a race, he not
only emphasises their superstitions but also their servilitud, especially in contrast to the more
“rebellious” Indians. That is not to say that Collis sees the Burmese as incapable of
resistance, but he characterises that there is a “Burmese” way to be rude, or to be rebellious,
which is depicted as more simpleminded and primitive than the Indians. Collis highlights the
example of Nehru as the embodiment of how Indians express colonial dissatisfaction; with
resolution and political organising. Burmans on the other hand, express it by the example of
“Bandaka”, a local folk hero and mystic from centuries ago.77 I will defer to the
anthropologist Gustaaf Houtman’s explanation of Bandaka in relation to Burmese national
identity and to rebelliousness, which actually argues that Bandaka as a more figure who
focused on using persuasion and guile to accomplish his goals, and he has thus become a
symbol of political wit, not political violence.78 Collis is trying to make a comparison
between the more eloquent Nehru of the Indians, vs this folk hero he has heard of from
Burma, but he has constructed his own idea of what this figure means to the Burmans and
framed it as a symbol of violence and solving things instantly by “magic”. It may be worth
comparing this to a previous observation I made about Houghton, where he used language
that resembled antiquated Burmese forms of expression to motivate anti-imperialist struggle,
seemingly based on his own interpretation of what would sound best. I will also remark that
the use of the word “race” or similar terms is a bit rarer here in Collis' book than in previous
sources we have covered. This could be indicative of Collis’ own views on the term, or a
product of the time the book was written. Instead, he prefers to employ this more sociological
approach, where he points towards certain elements of Burmese culture or mythology as the
main source of what drives the Burmans and builds the Burmese character. Compare this to,
for instance George Scott, who had similar ideas that religion, not race, was the main driving
76
Collis, 1938 p.18-27
Collis, 1938 p.34-45
78
Houtman, Gustaf “Mental culture in Burmese crisis politics”, 1999, p.252
77
41
force behind Burmese culture. When Collis does touch on race as a means to analyse and
ascribe traits, he employs it at a more local level, again very similar to what Scott did when
examining individual subgroups of Burmese culture. While he does identify the Burmans as a
distinct “race”, he describes them as being no worse or no better than any other race.79 Collis
is also willing to confront and denounce the ignorance and racism of many Britons in the
colony, but he directs this ire towards the common rank-and-file white soldiers, policemen,
trades and labourers, not the white administrators and the bureaucrats in the Civil Service. It
has a classist tone to it, that many lower class Britons are uneducated on matters of tolerance,
but Collis makes no real attempt to confront the upper classes’ prejudices. Even as he
describes the discrimination that is put in place in upper class society, preventing many
wealthy Burmans from mingling with wealthy white Britons, he does not lay the blame at the
men who wrote this policy, but at the men who uphold it by keeping the colonial system
running with force of violence and trade.80
This acknowledgement of inequality, but unwillingness to address it continues throughout the
book. Collis frequently appears to pity the acts and the consequences of British colonialism in
Burma, going so far as to refer to it as a “rape”. Yet once again, he carries with him a very
patronising view of this. Collis laments colonialism, while directly benefiting from it and
perpetuating it, appearing to show no discomfort for his own part in the system but rather
looking backwards at what led to the current state of the colonial system and how disturbing
the violence and exploitation of the past was. His desire to better the “smash and grab”
colonial system appears to be whiggish in nature, often praising his own and his peers’
contributions to a brighter future while making no acknowledgment of his own, or others
more negative actions in the present.81 I wouldn’t even interpret it as Collis believing the ends
justify the means, but rather that he seems to believe the current state of things by the early
1900s is simply the way things had to be, and now he alongside other elect individuals have
to make the best of it. Among the few things Collis genuinely laments is the destruction of
traditional Burmese culture through westernisation, often by being supplanted by British
culture, or an Anglo-Burmese mixture. This is treated with an oriental lens, a unique and
unusual aspect of the world and its people, being replaced by the blandness of western norms.
Collis does not mourn for the Burmese people losing touch with themselves, he mourns the
loss of an “authentic” Burma for Britons to observe. He also appears to declare the
Anglo-Burmese as not authentically Burman, once again irrespective of any opinions of the
actual Burmans. This fits the mould of what Stephen Keck wrote about the “Burmophiles” of
the Civil Service, most notably George Scott, and how Scott considered the less westernised
Burmese people to be more authentically Burmans. It also calls to mind the exclusion and
lack of acknowledgement about Anglo-Burmese culture that we’ve seen by other authors like
Scott. Scott was of course writing at a time when Burma had only recently been taken over by
the British and Anglo-Burmese culture had only just begun to coalesce into a distinct
“Eurasian” and westernised element of Burmese society, so it possible that it was not as
79
Collis, 1938 p.64-65
Collis, 1938 p.68-73
81
Collis, 1938 p.53-54
80
42
noticeable to him as a cultural shift.82 Collis on the other hand was writing at its heyday and
thus intentionally or not, robs the Burmans and the Anglo-Burmans of their own agency in so
far as they are not allowed to define themselves, but can only be defined by the white Britons.
3.Summary and Conclusions
By far the biggest question I’ve been able to answer throughout all the sources I examined
has been what these authors think makes Burma and the Burmese people “authentically”
Burmese. Scott wrote quite a bit about it, as Stephen Keck can tell us, but from my own
analysis of Scott’s work I did not see it crop up quite as much in a cultural context as it did in
a purely a racial one. Scott frames the intermixing of Burmese, Indian and Chinese people as
leading to a racial degeneration of the Burmese race, which in turn degenerates their culture
and makes them less “authentically” Burman. Scott also prided himself on being an
anthropologist and his goal with the “practical handbook” was aiming to describe Burmese
village life, which had remained relatively unchanged for centuries. This was as “authentic”
as you could get, it was not a matter of cultural decline to Scott but rather a romanticisation
of the rural life and the isolated villages, compared to the urban centres. Within this
framework, we can also see how foreign immigration into the cities, leading in Scott’s eye to
race mixing and racial degeneration, would also contribute to this rural favouritism and
nearly exclusive focus on the villages of Burma. A more concrete explanation could also be
found in the fact Scott was simply just posted to more rural and isolated locations than urban
ones, meaning that is what moulded his perception of Burma.
Houghton echoes some of the language about Burma losing its authenticity, but he mainly
frames it as more political and psychological than racial or cultural. Houghton’s principal
concern was how the Bureaucratisation of the British colonial administration was turning its
Burmese subjects into mere “drones” subservient to the government and losing their free will
and ways of free expression. Taking into account Houghton’s own background in the world
of British archeology and anthropology, as well as some Keck’s claims that the modernisation
of Colonial Burma was founded upon the idea of doing away with the “Old Burma”, which in
turn led to “Burmophilic” members of the civil service wanting to preserve elements of Old
Burma, I think it's fair to interpret Houghton’s line of thinking as having an undercurrent of
wanting to protect the authenticity of Burmese culture, but it is not the main element of it. It
is however a sign of continuity between my sources, however scant.
There is also the issue of what “authentic” Burmese actually is, what are the supposed traits
that are inherent to the Burmese people. I consciously avoided making my own judgements
of this, and instead simply sought to observe how the four individuals I researched each saw
the matter. We can divide this “Burmeseness” first into broad traits that the author attributes
to all peoples of Asiatic descent, such as an inherent charisma, equableness and a very
emotionally driven impulsiveness that usually makes them susceptible to vices like gambling.
Next, we can focus on what traits they attribute to the Burmese in particular. Both Scott and
82
Keck p.33-37 and p.50-52
43
Houghton highlight a meekness to the point of servilitude, but also qualify their statements
with some addendums, like Scott pointing out the Burmese’s bravery in battle and Houghton
blaming this servilitude in part on British oppression instead of labelling it an original trait
inherent to the Burmese. All the authors highlight the Burmese as being very sporadic and in
the case of Craddock, prone to violence because of this. Scott and Craddock, as previously
noted, also vest a great interest in Burma’s history of conquest against its neighbouring states,
using this to attribute a sort of inherent barbarity to the Burmese. With the exception of
Houghton, all the authors describe the Burmese people as a distinct “race” of people, though
Scott is also quite keen to employ subcategories of this supposed race. All other authors make
sweeping generalisations of what it means to be Burmese and what the categorisation of
Burmese is, which often excludes or denigrates foreign ethnicities that have migrated into
Burma, like the Chinese or the Indians. Only Houghton and to a limited extent Collis have
any positive views on these immigrants, though neither seem to consider them able to be
categorised under a much broader umbrella of being “Burmese”. All authors I have examined
choose to exclude the Anglo-Burmese from any description, giving little to no attention to the
Eurasian people in the colony.
Besides racialised traits, there is an underlying theme among all the authors’ works that
Buddhism is a core component of what it means to be Burmese, though in what manner this
binds the Burmese together differs, with Craddock being notable for describing Buddhist
values as having fallen into decline among the Burmese, as well as being in opposition to
many of the Burmese’ inherent racial and cultural traits. The matter of Burmese folk religion
crops up in a few of the sources, with only really Scott acknowledging it as a distinct current
of religious expression that has syncretized with Buddhism, whilst Collis and Craddock just
disregard it as a primitive superstition. Houghton, meanwhile, is silent on the topic. As one
more addition to this section about religion, the sources that I have examined also differ in
how to describe religion in Burma. Both Craddock and Scott liken it to Christianity, and Scott
also likens it to historical pagan faiths in Europe, such as Norse and Greek mythology. Collis
and Houghton make no real comparisons here, unless we lump religion under Houghton’s
wider musings about the human condition and structures of power, which is certainly a topic
that could be explored in more detail for another essay.
What do they see as the future of Burmese “authenticity”? The views are pessimistic among
most, with Houghton and Collis both believing that British Colonialism has fundamentally
disrupted, uprooted and now threatens to destroy what it is that makes the Burmese what they
are. Craddock on the other hand paints a very grim picture of the Burmese and sees British
guidance and modernisation as the only means to save them from themselves. In some
respects, other authors mirror his sentiments, such as Houghton initially writing that the
Burmese disorganised and incapable of governing themselves, but in time Houghton
appeared to have changed this views and made it clear that he did not view British guidance
as an ethical or optimal way for the people of Burma to embrace modernity and advance as a
nation. Craddock and Houghton are both keen to propose solutions to the Burmese’
backwardness, with Craddock favouring the view of hardline British rule and Houghton
favouring a mixture of radical anti-imperialism and the more pursuit of greater political
44
autonomy for the Burmese within the framework of the British Empire. Houghton and Collis
are both of the opinion that at the time of their writing, British rule in Burma continuing
down the path it had hitherto taken would suppress what it meant to be authentically
Burmese. Collis frames this though as British colonialism having once been a noble pursuit
that has been corrupted over time. Houghton initially held this view but in his later writings
we can see he came to reject it.
Lastly, in terms of the “agency” of the Burmese people, the authors I examined seem to be of
split opinion. Craddock is perhaps the most ambivalent on the matter, viewing the Burmese
as spontaneous and prone to violence, but also befitting to be ruled over. He does not deny
that the Burmese can act on their own, but he seems very selective about how they can act on
their own. In most cases, Craddock seems to define Burmese agency as the ability of the
masses to rebel against Britain, in acts driven by superstition and blind hatred. Yet Craddock
also acknowledges the existence of an organised Burmese nationalist movement, as much as
he tries to dismiss their influence. Of course, as we have established, Craddock considers the
Burmese nationalist movement to be categorised as mere Anglo-Burmese “English-speaking
agitators”, which fall outside the range of what most of these authors consider to be authentic
Burmese means of expression. When speaking of the Burmese masses, Craddock describes
them as having no experience with “rural self-rule”, as well as trying to find ways of
legitimising continued British rule by emphasising the mutually beneficial arrangements
between the British colonial government and the Burmese social elites. The way Craddock
characterises Burmese political agency is as if the Burmese lash out and spontaneously do
foolish things, and thus need to be entrusted with British guidance. A perfect example of this
is the previously mentioned anecdote Craddock tells of rural Burmans trying to vote for a
candidate named “Home Rule”, not even realising what this political policy was or meant to
them. In essence, Craddock believes rural Burmans did not have any form of agency beyond
the ability to blindly lash out, that elite Burmans did have agency but were better of directing
it towards collaboration with the British, and that nationalistic educated Burmans had agency
but that their education made them fundementally un-Burmese. Comparing this to Houghton
gives us a very different perspective. Houghton, as noted several times now, initially wholly
dismissed the Burmese capacity to organise and take political matters into their own hands,
claiming that they both lacked the “national spirit” and that the British administration was
well on its way towards moulding the Burmese into “drones”. When Houghton changed his
views on this, he did not side with the educated Burmans and divest his trust solely in them,
what he did was call for the organisation of a Burmese mass movement. The biggest factor is
his regard of Burmans as fellow proletariat, not as unprepared colonial masses or even as just
lumpenproletariat. Beyond signifying a contrast between pro and anti-imperialism between
Craddock and Houghton, this also points towards a fundamentally different analysis of where
political power is derived from in a society, particularly a stratified colonial society. There is
a wide range of studies I could advance this subject with, and it's one I’ve previously touched
on in my own work as a student, and I dearly hope it will be one I can continue to expand on.
I could not discern much in the ways that different classes and administrative positions may
have altered the men’s views on the Burmese, besides the correlation that Craddock, the man
45
with the highest governing position in the colony held an extremely prejudiced view against
them. This would require studying a broader sample size to reach any better conclusions
beyond mere speculation. Some of the authors such as Houghton and Collis analyse the class
character of the ICS, in the case of Houghton arguing that wielding colonial power detaches
the ruling class from their morals and ethics, whilst Collis acknowledges that racism in the
colony is perpetuated by those who enforce its racist laws, but he does not lay any blame at
the colonial elite who drafted the laws. There is nevertheless a degree of self-awareness
among these two. Craddock also displays a similar introspective acknowledgement, but in his
case uses it to argue for the merits of colonialism and the perpetuation of the status quo in the
colony. Scott, perhaps owing his background as an anthropologist, journalist and principally
an observer of government in action, has the least politically charged commentary. This could
be due to his line of work, or due to how he presents his book as a guidebook and not any sort
of polemic, or personal memoir. Once again, further research and a much wider sample size
would be needed to advance this line of thought.
In comparison to previous research, I believe that I appear to have reached roughly the same
conclusions as what other academics in the field have described colonial attitudes as, though I
may have gone about it in different ways. As noted previously, there’s some researchers such
as Keck who emphasised the cultural elements expressed by the subjects of his research, but
where he saw cultural posturing and orientalisation, I saw more directly racialised elements
of the sources. We both covered the same source material, but may have simply highlighted
different elements of it, or discerned different parts as resonating with one another. The same
for Tarling’s work, going into this essay I was broadly aware of how the ICS sought to instil a
particular colonial outlook in its members' minds, though I had not read much of how these
ideas were expressed by members of the ICS. Tarling has emphasised a more top down idea
of how the ICS as an institution, and the British Empire as a state actor has been responsible
for moulding these colonial attitudes and perpetuating them, whereas I have focused more on
the individual subjects’ way of expressing their views, and what motivated them to do so. As
with Keck, it appears we have both looked at the same sources but highlighted different parts
of them and utilised different theories. I would not say my research is in any way opposed to
or challenges major studies done in the past, with the sole exception that I believe that I have
made a more thorough analysis of what the members of the ICS saw as “authentic” Burmese
culture, as I’ve used sources such as the pro-imperialist Craddock and the anti-imperialist
Houghton to examine the question, whereas Keck and Tarling have generally sought to limit
themselves to studying the more ideologically ambivalent cliques of liberal “Burmophiles” in
the ICS. I was directly inspired by Maitri Aung-Thwin’s own attempt to revise and break this
common trend within this academic subject. I do also fear some of my research may have
conformed a bit too much to Aung-Thwin’s theories and methods, due to both conscious and
subconscious biases. As I noted, their work was the direct inspiration for this academic essay.
I am satisfied with having found answers to the questions I posed for this essay though, even
if they may not be particularly groundbreaking. The main limitation of my study ultimately
proved to be time and the rather small sample size. As I have noted several times throughout
the essay, there were many caveats that arose during my study, as I failed to get a hold of
46
some valuable sources that could definitely have benefited my analysis or at least provided a
broader context. I also chose to tackle a lot of books that were hundreds of pages long and
generally had narrow my focus on the most directly relevant segments of them. I think given
more time, academic resources, as well as the first-hand experience I’ve garnered in writing
essays such as this, I could definitely expand on this research down the line. Naturally other
researchers can also easily pick up the torch and fill in the blanks of what key sources I may
have not had access to, or overlooked. It could be beneficial both to either broaden or narrow
the time period being studied, depending on the method of analysis, in order to find more
corroborating evidence for the “key elements” I’ve discerned from the current sample size.
There’s also a few angles of the topic that could be interesting to tackle, though they fell
outside the scope of the essay. For instance, it could be enlightening to compare and contrast
the individual attitudes of the members of the Imperial Civil Service with the Civil Service
itself, as a broad institution and the sum of its own parts. I have tried to analyse trends and
overlapping beliefs between the four different subjects I studied, but it may be possible to
research what the overall “consensus” expressed by the whole of the Civil Service was, given
a broad enough sample size. Considering many members of the Civil Service ran in the same
social circles and directly interacted with one another, either as colleagues or as subordinates
and superiors, it would also be interesting to find out how that social group element may have
affected their views.
4.Bibliography
4.1 Digital Sources:
Archive.org
Bureaucratic government; a study in Indian polity by Houghton, Bernard
Original publisher, London: P.S. King (1913)
https://archive.org/details/bureaucraticgove00houguoft (retrieved 02/28/2022)
The Mind of the Indian Government by Houghton, Bernard
Original publisher, Madras: Ganesh (1922)
https://archive.org/details/mindofindiangove00houguoft (retrieved 02/28/2022)
The Dilemma in India by Craddock, Reginald Henry
Original publisher, London: Constable & Co (1929)
https://archive.org/details/dli.csl.7062 (retrieved 28/02/2022)
Trials in Burma by Collis, Maurice Stewart
Original publisher, London: Faber & Faber (1938)
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.524247 (retrieved 28/02/2022)
National Archives of India
47
Seditious Contributions to the Burma Newspapers (the Burma Observer) and ( New Burma )
by Bernard Houghton a Retired ICS Member of Burma Suggestion to the Secretary of State to
Restrain the Mischievous Writings of that Gentlemen
https://indianculture.gov.in/node/2689042 (retrieved 28/02/2022)
Question of Publishing Bernard Houghton'S Apolofy of and Explanation for the Violent
Articles Contributed by Him to the Burmese Press [sic]
https://indianculture.gov.in/archives/question-publishing-bernard-houghtons-apolofy-and-exp
lanation-violent-articles-contributed (retrieved 28/02/2022)
Online Burma Library
Speech by Sir Reginald Craddock, Lieutenant-Governor of Burma, 19th April, 1919,
(Extract)
Original publisher, London: His Majesty's Stationery Office (1920)
https://www.burmalibrary.org/en/proposals-of-the-government-of-india-for-a-new-constitutio
n-for-burma (retrieved 07/05/2022)
Scott, James George “BURMA: A Handbook of Practical Information”
Original publisher, London: Alexander Moring (1911)
https://www.burmalibrary.org/en/burma-a-handbook-of-practical-information (retrieved
12/05/2022)
Parliament.uk
Parliamentary records of Reginald Craddock, located under HC Deb 04 June 1935 Vol.302
Col.1818
https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1935/jun/04/government-of-india-bill#co
lumn_1713 (retrieved 05/05/2022)
Wikisource
“Burma” by James George Scott, in the 11th Edition of Encyclopædia Britannica
Original publisher, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1911)
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Burma (retrieved
11/04/2022)
4.2 Digital Literature:
Colonizing Animals
Saha, Jonathan, Burma’s Anti-Colonial Imperialist (2013)
https://colonizinganimals.blog/2013/02/26/burmas-anti-colonial-imperialist/ (retrieved
23/04/2022)
Myanmar Library Association
Myanmar Library Association Newsletter, May 2018
48
http://www.myanmarlibraryassociation.org/Newsletter/9262e886d12f43b8a00a4f28aa8b9e5f
_FINAL.pdf (retrieved 16/04/2022)
Myanmar Times
Yustina, Rina The Red House in Katha – former home of Burma's deputy commissioner and
reformist Myanmar Times (2020)
https://www.mmtimes.com/news/red-house-katha-former-home-burmas-deputy-commissione
r-and-reformist.html (retrieved 23/04/2022)
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
Craddock, Sir Reginald Henry by Prior, Katherine (2004)
https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198
614128-e-32606?rskey=owhDAv&result=1 (retrieved 16/04/2022)
JSTOR
Huxley, Andrews Mr Houghton and Dr Führer: a scholarly vendetta and its consequences
Original Publisher, Abingdon-on-Thames: Taylor & Francis, in South East Asia Research
Vol. 19, No. 1 (MARCH 2011)
https://www.jstor.org/stable/23750866 (retrieved 23/04/2022)
4.3 Printed Literature:
Ashcroft, Bill & Griffiths, Gareth & Tiffin, Helen The Empire Writes Back: Theory and
Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures London: Routledge (2002)
Aung-Thwing, Maitri The Return of the Galon King Ohio: Ohio University Press, (2011)
Brown, Ian Burma's Economy in the Twentieth Century Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press (2013)
Buckland, C. E. Dictionary of Indian Biography London: Ardent Media (1971)
Dalby, Andrew, Prince Charoon et al: South East Asia London: Haus Publishing (2011)
Edwards, Justin D The Cambridge Companion to Postcolonial Travel Writing Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press (2017)
George, David and Hall, Edward Early English Intercourse with Burma, 1587-1743 and the
Tragedy of Negrais London: Routledge (2012)
Houtman, Gustaf Mental culture in Burmese Crisis Politics Tokyo: Research Institute for
Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (1999)
49
Keck, Stephen British Burma in the New Century, 1895–1918 London: Palgrave Macmillan
(2015)
Maung, Maung Burma’s Constitution Berlin: Springer Science & Business Media (2012)
McQuade, Joseph A Genealogy of Terrorism: Colonial Law and the Origins of an Idea
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2020)
Pau, Pum Khan, Indo-Burma Frontier and the Making of the Chin Hills: Empire and
Resistance Abingdon-on-Thames: Taylor & Francis (2019)
Singh, Surendra Prasad, Growth of Nationalism in Burma, 1900-1942 Kolkata: Firma KLM
(1980)
Tarling, Nicholas The Cambridge History of Southeast Asia Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, (2008)
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