TABLE of CONTENTS Preface Vii a Note on the Text and Translation Of
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1 TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface vii A Note on the Text and Translation of Kinwan Mingyi's Diaries 1 Chapter I Kinwan Mingyi and his Companions 4 Chapter II The Embassy to London 13 i. Introduction 13 ii. London Diary, March 2 to August 13, 1872 17 iii. Commentary 66 Chapter III The Chambers of Commerce 69 i. Introduction 69 ii. London Diary, August 14 to November 14, 1872 70 iii. Commentary 89 Chapter IV The Commercial Treaty with France 91 i. Introduction 91 ii. London Diary, November 15, 1872 to February 16, 1873 92 iii. Commentary 116 Chapter V The Journey Homewards 118 i. Introduction 118 ii. London Diary, February 17 to May 2, 1873 118 iii. Commentary 141 Chapter VI The Embassy to France 146 i. Introduction 146 ii. Paris Diary, March 7, 1874 to October 11, 1874 149 iii. Commentary 191 Bibliography 197 Copyright© 1998 - Myanmar Book Centre & Book Promotion g Service Ltd., Bangkok, Thailand. 2 PREFACE Kinwun Mingyi led two missions to Europe. The first, in March 1872, was to England and its purpose was to obtain for Burma recognition as a fully sovereign state, notwithstanding the fact that Lower Burma was already in British hands. Failing to obtain that recognition from England, Kinwun Mingyi crossed over to France and entered into a commercial treaty with the Republic, thus demonstrating the sovereign treaty-making power of the Kingdom of Burma. But on return to Mandalay in May 1873, Kinwun Mingyi found the Burmese court unenthusiastic over the treaty, and when a French embassy arrived some months later to exchange ratification, the King suggested amendments and additions. To obtain the approval of the French government for the King's changes in the text of the treaty, Kinwun Mingyi, in February 1874, again led a mission to France. The French government courteously but firmly refused to accord approval, and Kinwun Mingyi arrived back at Mandalay, again empty-handed, in the following October. In spite of their lack of success, Kinwun Mingyi's two missions were of the utmost historical and political significance. First, they constituted a desperate effort on the part of the Burmese to save their kingdom from extinction, and second, the commercial treaty, lying unratified and dormant since 1874, was suddenly revived in 1885, which gave the British the opportunity and the excuse to shout "Wolf" at the French government and annex the Burmese kingdom before the year was out. From Europe Kinwun Mingyi sent to his King detailed comments and reports of his negotiations with the courts at St. James's and Versailles. But they were confidential and were not recorded in his London and Paris Diaries. The Diaries were written for a different audience and with a different purpose. He wanted to give his countrymen a wonder tale of his interesting and exciting Grand Tour of Europe. Consequently, to the present-day reader the Diaries are mere travelogues, full of trivia. However, as the official reports that he wrote were lost in November 1885 in the looting of the Golden Palace during the interregnum of some 18 hours between the fall of the old government and the establishment of the new, one has to guess and glean for historical and political data from the Diaries themselves. I have, however, been able to trace the relevant records in the India Office Library in London and in the library of the French Foreign Office in Paris and obtain from them some of the details regarding the negotiations not given in the Diaries. It was as long ago as 1928 that I first planned to translate Kinwun Mingyi's Diaries. I was then in my final year at the University College, Rangoon, and there was a great interest among my classmates in the Diaries, recently published under the editorship of our Professor of Oriental Studies, U Pe Maung Tin. I consulted my father, U Pein, who knew Kinwun Mingyi and Myotha Wundauk, who was Deputy Foreign Minister under Kinwun Mingyi during the closing years of King Theebaw's reign. But, as with many of my youthful dreams, it was soon abandoned and forgotten. European scholars of Burmese history became interested in the Diaries when Dr. Maung Maung in his Burma in the Family of Nations made one or two references to the London Diary. So in 1967 when The Asia Society of New York offered me a research grant to translate the Diaries, I accepted with alacrity. After I had started the work, I came to the conclusion that a mere translation without an explanation of the political background would be of no real value and, accordingly, I went over to England to study the relevant India Office records. JBRS, LVII, i & ii, Dec., 1974. Copyright© 1998 - Myanmar Book Centre & Book Promotion g Service Ltd., Bangkok, Thailand. 3 viii I take this opportunity to thank The Asia Society for the research grant; Mrs. Bonnie R. Crown, Chairman of the Asian Literature Programme of The Asia Society for her encouragement; the Warden, the Bursar, Mr. G.F. Hudson, Mr. R. Storry, Dr. Theodore Zeldin, and other Fellows of St. Antony's College, Oxford, for electing me to an Associate Fellowship; the late Mr. Guy Wint, who recommended me to the college; the staff of the India Office Library, in particular Mr. M.I. Moir, and the officials in charge of the Archives of the Quai d'Orsay for their many courtesies; Mr. Robert Mackworth-Young, the Librarian, Windsor Castle for his generous help in identifying the personages present at Kinwun Mingyi's audience with Queen Victoria; Professor U E Maung and his wife (my sister) Daw Mya Mu, Professor Hla Pe of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and Professor Daw Than Swe for their kind suggestions; Maung Ohn Maung, B.A., Office of the Education Department, Mandalay, for tracing Kinwun Mingyi's tombstone on which was inscribed his biography; Nai Pan Hla, Department of Archaeology, Burma, for his great help with the proofs; and the Manager and the staff of the Universities Press, Rangoon. MAUNG HTIN AUNG* Bar Library, Rangoon, February 22, 1975. * Maung Htin Aung, LL.M. (London), LL.B. (Cambridge), B.C. L. (Oxford), Ph.D., LL.D. (Dublin), Hony. LL.D. (Johns Hopkins), LL.D. (Rangoon), D.Litt. (Vidyodaya-Ceylon), D.H.L. (Wake Forest) is a past-president of the Burma Research Society; was formerly Rector and Vice Chancellor of the University of Rangoon, and Burmese Ambassador to Ceylon. JBRS, LVII, i & ii, Dec., 1974. Copyright© 1998 - Myanmar Book Centre & Book Promotion g Service Ltd., Bangkok, Thailand. 1 A NOTE ON THE TEXT AND TRANSLATION OF KINWUN MINGYI'S DIARIES According to Myotha Wundauk Kadaw, started on never seen a his embassy, had wife of Myotha Wundauk, Deputy Foreign railway train and had always read at night by Minister at the time of the British annexation of the light of a flickering oil lamp. Yet in a few Burma in 1885, palm-leaf copies of Kinwun weeks, he was passing along the newly opened Mingyi's Diaries were in circulation among the Suez Canal in a slow Egyptian train, which, palace ladies in 1876. The London Diary and however, was so fast to him that for some the first 15 pages only of the Paris Diary were moments he could not focus his eyes on the printed and published at Rangoon in 1908 by U countryside through which the train was Ba Gunn, proprietor of the Burmese newspaper travelling; a few weeks, and he was living in a Myanmar Aswe. The standard editions are dazzling world of gas lights, underground London Diary, Volumes I and II, and Paris trains, and the pomp and glory of Queen Diary, edited by Professor U Pe Maung Tin, Victoria’s England. To Kinwun Mingyi then, M.A., B.Litt. (Oxon), and published by the his journey was as marvellous as that of Marco Government Press, Rangoon in 1926 and 1939 Polo to Cathay and as exciting as that of Nell respectively. In translating the Diaries, I Armstrong and Michael Collins to the moon. A followed U Pe Maung Tin's text. seasoned courtier used to speaking in elegant phrases, and a poet and writer of epistles of skill U Pe Maung Tin's edition of the Paris and repute, Kinwun Mingyi must have been Diary contains as an appendix letters written by tempted to write his Diaries in poetic prose, Kinwun Mingyi to the editor of a Burmese giving free rein to his poetic imagination, as he newspaper at Mandalay. In them, Kinwun did in the verses contained in the letters to the Mingyi gave in poetic prose and in verse an newspaper editor mentioned above. For account of his journey to Paris on his second example, the following verse recorded his mission. I have not included those letters in my departure from Rangoon with a wistfulness, for translation because, first, they did not form part Lower Burma with its Shwedagon Pagoda, the of the Paris Diary and, second, except for some rich province of Hanthawaddy (Pegu), and its eleven verses describing his emotional reaction charming people, was now under another's rule: to some of the sights he saw, the letters merely summarized what he had noted down in his Up and down, bobbing up and down, Paris Diary. Over the praying festoons of tree-tops and branches, Kinwun Mingyi as the head of the Burmese Appears the Golden Relic Chamber of the mission to the Court of St. James's, travelled Four Buddha; from Mandalay to London in point of space, but Washed by seven cubit tides, entwined and in point of time, he travelled from the middle robed by shadowy mists, ages to the period of the flowering of the There stands the mansion-like Hanthawaddy, Industrial Revolution.