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Governing the Chinese in Multi‑Ethnic Colonial Burma Between the 1890S and 1920S

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Governing the Chinese in Multi‑Ethnic Colonial Burma Between the 1890S and 1920S This document is downloaded from DR‑NTU (https://dr.ntu.edu.sg) Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Governing the Chinese in multi‑ethnic colonial Burma between the 1890s and 1920s Li, Yi 2016 Li, Y. (2016). Governing the Chinese in multi‑ethnic colonial Burma between the 1890s and 1920s. South East Asia Research, 24(1), 135‑154. https://hdl.handle.net/10356/81498 https://doi.org/10.5367/sear.2016.0292 © 2016 IP Publishing Ltd. This paper was published in South East Asia Research and is made available as an electronic reprint (preprint) with permission of IP Publishing Ltd. The published version is available at: [http://dx.doi.org/10.5367/sear.2016.0292]. One print or electronic copy may be made for personal use only. Systematic or multiple reproduction, distribution to multiple locations via electronic or other means, duplication of any material in this paper for a fee or for commercial purposes, or modification of the content of the paper is prohibited and is subject to penalties under law. Downloaded on 27 Sep 2021 04:25:23 SGT Governing the Chinese in multi-ethnic colonial Burma between the 1890s and 1920s1 Yi Li Abstract: This article analyses the development of the governing mechanism in British Burma relating to one particular ethnic group, the Chinese, between the 1890s and 1920s. Recognizing its limited knowledge of China and the Chi- nese, British Burma relied in the early days on experiences from other colonies to govern its Chinese immigrants and to handle Sino-Burmese border issues. The transfer of colonial knowledge, however, proved insufficient when the state witnessed increasing localization at the turn of the twentieth century. Inter- locutors and communal elites therefore replaced imperial expatriates to form the main governing body, and in turn to some extent undermined and recon- structed colonial knowledge, as well as practice. Keywords: colonialism; migration; overseas Chinese; Burma; British India Author details: At the time of writing, Yi Li was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the His- tory Programme, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. She is now based in London. E-mail: [email protected]. After three Anglo-Burmese Wars (1824–26, 1852 and 1885), the Kingdom of Burma was annexed. It became a province of British India in 1886, and its multi-ethnic indigenous and migrating populace became the subjects of the British monarchy. Like other contemporary European colonies in South East Asia, colonial Burma was a destination for Chinese emigrants. Chinese connections with what was to be British Burma arguably started at least two millennia before.2 The frontier between northern Burma and south-west China, situated at the heart of ‘Zomia’ with ‘dis- tinct social configurations’ and ‘transnational flows’,3 has witnessed multi-ethnic 1 Much of the research for this article was conducted during my PhD studies at SOAS between 2007 and 2012. I thank Michael Charney for his supervision and encouragement. I also thank two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions. 2 According to Han Shu, in circa 129 BCE, a Han envoy to Central Asia found south-west Chinese products – cloth and bamboo sticks – in local markets, which had been imported from India. Ban Gu (1962), Han Shu, 61: Zhangqian Liguangli Zhuan [Book of Han, Vol 61: Biographies of Zhang Qian and Li Guangli], Zhonghua Shuju, Beijing. This suggests the existence of an over- land trade route linking India and China, very possibly via Burma. Sino-Burmese interaction was not confined to the frontier, and excavations of Chinese ceramics of the second millennium along the southern ports and coastal towns attest to the maritime connection between China and south- ern Burma. See, for instance, Maurice Collis (1935–36), ‘Fresh light on the route taken by export porcelains from China to India and the Near East during the Ming period’, Transactions of the Oriental Ceramics Society, Vol 13, pp 9–29; Pamela Gutman (2001), ‘The Martaban trade: an examination of the literature from the seventh century until the eighteenth century’, Asian Per- spectives, Vol 40, No 1, pp 108–118. 3 Willem van Schendel (2002), ‘Geographies of knowing, geographies of ignorance: jumping scale in Southeast Asia’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, Vol 20, pp 647–668. South East Asia Research, 24, 1, pp 135–154 doi: 10.5367/sear.2016.0292 136 South East Asia Research interactions ever since.4 However, it was not until the mid-nineteenth century, when the region of South East Asia (including British Burma) was brought under European colonial rule, that it experienced significant waves of Chinese immigra- tion (mainly from present-day Fujian and Guandong provinces along the southern coast) to Nanyang (the ‘South Sea’ in Chinese). Despite being located at the west- ern periphery of Nanyang, the Chinese migrant community in Burma provides a distinctive case for our understanding of the Chinese diaspora in South East Asia as well as of colonial policies and imperial advances in Asia. Unfortunately, scholars have yet to pay due attention to the colonial experience of the Burmese Chinese, apart from a small and fragmentary body of works by post-war researchers.5 This has remained a missing link for historians of Burma, of the British Empire and of modern South East Asia, as well as for other social scientists who are interested in migration, diaspora and ethnicity; and last but not least, for scholars of Chinese overseas studies. My intention in this paper is to initiate an improvement in the current situation and pave the way for future investigations in this under-studied field. The paper also calls for a better recognition of, and a fuller examination of, primary sources in Burmese, Chinese and English languages, now scattered in British, Myanmar and Chinese archives. The Burma case provides several unique insights, thanks to the country’s geo- graphical location at the junction of South, East and South East Asia. Throughout the colonial era, Chinese immigrants had been overwhelmingly outnumbered by their Indian counterparts because of the easy access from Bengal, the Coromandel coast and other South Asian ports to Burma, and the administrative framework that situated Burma under the India Office. Census data between 1891 and 1911 show that about half of the population of Rangoon was born in India. Of the entire population in Burma in the same period, about 4% were born in India and be- tween 0.3% and 0.6% in China.6 This was in sharp contrast to the situation in British Malaya, the Straits Settlements, Dutch East India and Siam, where the Chinese were an absolutely dominating force commercially, if not demographi- cally. Furthermore, the millennium-long caravan routes and a long border with south-west China meant that the Chinese in Burma, together with their counter- parts in French Indochina, could maintain an overland connection. The Burmese Chinese thus had an opportunity to assume both overseas and overland links reaching 4 For the region’s multi-ethnic dynamics in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, see C. Patterson Giersch (2006), Asian Borderlands: The Transformation of Qing China’s Yunnan Frontier, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA. 5 One of the earliest studies is Victor Purcell (1965), The Chinese in Southeast Asia, 2 ed, Oxford University Press, London. It has one chapter dedicated to Burma. Notable studies on this subject by post-war Myanmar and Chinese scholars, often with a specific focus, include Chen Yi-Sein (1966), ‘The Chinese in Rangoon during the 18th and 19th centuries’, Artibus Asiae, Supplementum, Vol 23; ‘Essays Offered to G.H. Luce by His Colleagues and Friends in Honour of His Seventy- Fifth Birthday’, Vol 1: Papers on Asian Religion, Languages, Literature, Music Folklore, and Anthropology, pp 107–111; U Thaw Kaung (2004), ‘Preliminary survey of Penang–Myanmar relations from mid-19th to mid-20th centuries’, in Selected Writings of U Thaw Kaung, Historical Commission, Yangon, pp 163–186; Yin Wenhe (2003), Yunnan Heshun Qiaoxiangshi Gaishu [A Brief History of Yunnan Heshun Village as Homeland of the Overseas Chinese], Yunnan Meishu Chubanshe, Kunming. 6 Government of India (1892), Government of India Census 1891, IX, Burma Report, Government Printing, Rangoon; Government of India (1902), Census of India, 1901, XII, Burma, Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, Rangoon; Government of India (1912), Census of India, 1911, IX, Burma, Office of the Superintendent of Government Printing, Rangoon. Governing the Chinese in colonial Burma 137 out into three major Asian regions, which had been strategic sites of European colonial expansion from at least the eighteenth century onwards. This article examines the development of British Burma’s governance over the migrating Chinese,7 an ethnic minority and non-indigenous community, in a multi- ethnic colonial state in nineteenth and twentieth century South East Asia. It investigates a period between the 1890s – when colonial rule had recently been established and power was still under consolidation – and the 1920s, when the Diarchy, an India-initiated political reform programme encouraging local partici- pation, was applied in Burma. This 30-year period, between the final annexation and the height of the Burmese nationalist movements, was a period when the colonial government, by and large, enjoyed sufficient resources and domestic sta- bility to concentrate on the governance of its multi-ethnic subjects. Over these three decades, the official position went through three distinct phases involving: the Adviser on Chinese Affairs, whose office-bearer was a British expatriate with considerable experience in China; the Examiner in Chinese, whose office-bearer was familiar with Burmese, Chinese and English cultural protocols but could hardly claim a true belonging to any; and a Chinese Advisory Board that was made up of elite Chinese merchants and professionals in Rangoon, the centre of the Chinese community in Burma, hence representing the Burmese Chinese in general.
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