Originally composed for Spring 2019 Boston Baptist College History Seminar. Boston Curmudgeon Coalition, 2019 – 1 – The First Anglo-Burmese War was the longest, most devastating, and most disastrous war waged in the history of British India.1 Thomas Campbell Robertson, Civil Commissioner of Burma, observes that the war received little attention when it was fought. Instead, in the years leading up to the Second Anglo-Burmese War (1852) “the leading Journals of the day reserve[d] a prominent place in their columns for intelligence from the banks of the Irrawaddy.”2 Despite this interest, the war has faded into relative obscurity over the last two centuries. The war itself was incredibly well documented from the British side: several British officers published narratives of the war, including J. J. Snodgrass, F. B. Doveton, Sir Henry Havelock, and Thomas Abercrombie Trant. Civil officers and ambassadors, like Thomas Campbell Robertson, John Crawfurd, Sir Henry Yule, Sir Arthur P. Phayre, Michael Symes, and Hiram Cox also provide valuable insight into the war, its causes, and effects. Henry Gouger, a British merchant, provides a unique perspective in the account of his imprisonment in Ava during the war. Both Adoniram and Ann Judson, American Baptist missionaries to Burma, have useful perspectives of the war – due to both their disinterest in promoting either side and in their close connections with the Court of Ava – which coincided with Adoniram’s own imprisonment at Oung-pen-la.3 The Baptist Missionary Magazine frequently provides updates on the war because of their concern for the Baptist missionaries in Burma, namely the Judsons.4 A few British historians, namely G. E. Harvey and D. G. E. Hall have also taken interest in the conflict; Hall himself published a study in the historical relations between Europe and Burma. The war also inspired G. A. Henty’s novel On the Irrawaddy: A Story of the First Burmese War. Most of the Burmese literature concerning the war is found in epistolary, poetry, and plays; much of which remains untranslated from the original Burmese.5 The official Burmese account of the war, The Glass Palace Chronicle of the Kings of Burma, is only partially translated into English. Thus, several histories and accounts of the war heavily rely on the Anglo-American accounts and interpretations. For instance, Courtney Anderson’s6 and Rosalie Hall Hunt’s7 biographies of Adoniram Judson both only consult Anglo- American sources concerning the war. Oddly enough, one American Baptist narrative – F. D. Phinney’s – was only published in Burmese. In the last fifty years, though, Burmese scholars such as Maung Htin Aung and Thant Myint-U have published histories of Burma using sources largely unavailable to the English-speaking world. 1 Thant Myint-U, The River of Lost Footsteps: Histories of Burma (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006), 113. 2 Thomas Campbell Robertson, Political Incidents of the First Burmese War (London: Richard Bentley, New Burlington Street, 1853), v. 3 Francis Wayland, A Memoir of the Life and Labors Rev. Adoniram Judson, D.D., 2 vols. (Boston: Phillips, Sampson, and Company, 1853), 1: 356. 4 See The Baptist Missionary Magazine, Baptist General Convention (Boston: James Loring, and Lincoln & Eerdmans, 1817-1909, 89 vols.), 4: 456. (From here on, cited as BMM). 5 Maung Htin Aung, A History of Burma (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), 230. 6 Courtney Anderson, To the Golden Shore: The Life of Adoniram Judson (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1956), 509. 7 Rosalie Hall Hunt, Bless God and Take Courage: The Judson History and Legacy (Valley Forge: Judson Press, 2005), 387. – 2 – The First Anglo-Burmese War is important for two reasons: 1). it was the longest and most devastating war in the history of British India and 2). it marks the beginning of the British seizure of Burma.8 The two years the war waged on (1824-1826) were not due as much to the military genius of the Burmese as much as to the ineptitude of the Governor-General of India, Lord Amherst: a “man of mediocre abilities”9 and “a man of no imagination and very limited intelligence, faced by a situation which he frankly admitted was beyond his grasp.”10 Robertson also relays a story of the British officers arrogantly ignoring advice on Burma if it were not relayed to them by a friend or a fellow officer.11 Major J. J. Snodgrass also admits that the British had little accurate intelligence on Burma from the start: “Beyond the invisible line which circumscribed our position, all was mystery or vague conjecture.”12 This combined ineptitude, arrogance, and ignorance cost the British dearly: 15,000 men of the 40,000 sent to Burma died between 1824 and 1826 – only 3.5% of these losses actually occurred in battle. Nearly half of the British troops and Sepoys perished from disease, especially during Burma’s monsoon seasons. The officer corps – comprised exclusively of British natives – was hit the hardest: Over one-third of British officers were wiped out.13 The Indian Commissariat dragged its feat victualing the troops, wrongly believing that some of the natives would provide the invaders with materiel and food.14 The British muskets were also often rendered ineffective due to the Burmese rains.15 The British, though, still had superior materiel compared to the outdated arms of the Burmese.16 The land forces benefited being under the command of a hardened veteran of the Peninsular War, having served under the Duke of Wellington: General Sir Archibald Campbell.17 8 Thomas Campbell Robertson, Political Incidents of the First Burmese War (London: Richard Bentley, New Burlington Street, 1853), v. 9 R. C. Majumdar, H. C. Raychaudhuri, Datta Kalikinkar, “Expansion of the British Dominion Beyond the Brahmaputra and the Sutlej, 1824-1856,” An Advanced History of India (London: MacMillan & Co., Ltd., 1963), 732. 10 D. G. E. Hall, Europe and Burma: A Study of European Relations with Burma to the Annexation of Thibaw’s Kingdom, 1886 (London: Oxford University Press, 1945), 119. 11 Thomas Campbell Robertson, Political Incidents of the First Burmese War (London: Richard Bentley, New Burlington Street, 1853), 127. 12 John James Snodgrass, Narrative of the Burmese War: Detailing the Operations of Major-General Sir Archibald Campbell, 1st Baronet's Army, From its landing at Rangoon in May 1824, to the conclusion of a Treaty of Peace at Yandaboo in February 1826, 2nd ed. (London: John Murray, Albemarle-Street, 1827), 16. 13 Thomas Campbell Robertson, Political Incidents of the First Burmese War (London: Richard Bentley, New Burlington Street, 1853), 252; D. G. E. Hall, Europe and Burma: A Study of European Relations with Burma to the Annexation of Thibaw’s Kingdom, 1886 (London: Oxford University Press, 1945), 119. 14 Thomas Campbell Robertson, Political Incidents of the First Burmese War (London: Richard Bentley, New Burlington Street, 1853), 228; John James Snodgrass, Narrative of the Burmese War: Detailing the Operations of Major-General Sir Archibald Campbell, 1st Baronet's Army, From its landing at Rangoon in May 1824, to the conclusion of a Treaty of Peace at Yandaboo in February 1826, 2nd ed. (London: John Murray, Albemarle-Street, 1827), 17. 15 Ibid., 30. 16 Maung Htin Aung, A History of Burma (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), 213. 17 Thant Myint-U, The River of Lost Footsteps: Histories of Burma (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006), 113. – 3 – The war proved even more of a disaster for the Burmese. Burma had been an aggressively imperialistic nation up to the First Anglo-Burmese War. Snodgrass reports that Burma’s wars have been for many years a series of conquests: every late attempt of the neighbouring nations to check their victorious career had failed, and the Burmese government, at the time of our landing in Rangoon, had subdued and incorporated into their overgrown empire all the petty states by which it was surrounded, and stood confessedly feared and respected even by the Chinese, as a powerful and warlike nation.18 But with the end of the war the Burmese, in the words of D. G. E. Hall, “had been shattered once and for all.”19 The entire nature of the Burmese nation changed after the war. Their bellicosity understandably shifted into timidity. Towards the end of his narrative, Snodgrass remarks that “the King of Ava… can have neither interest nor motive in troubling us again” – and truly he never would.20 After 1826, Burma no longer played the aggressor with Calcutta.21 No records indicate the precise number of Burmese casualties, but one may infer that they were high. Calculating Burmese casualties is even more difficult since the records concerning the size of Bandula’s army are in conflict. Htin Aung22 indicates that 30,000 marched on Rangoon while Hall23 and Majumdar24 both maintain that he had 60,000. Regardless, 4,000 British soldiers and Sepoys were able to repel Bandula’s forces in two weeks with the help of naval support. Myint- U observes that “nearly an entire generation” of Burmese men died during the entire conflict.25 If that were not enough, the Treaty of Yandabo proved an utter embarrassment to Burma. Calcutta received virtually all of the Burmese coastline after the war.26 The indemnity the British placed 18 John James Snodgrass, Narrative of the Burmese War: Detailing the Operations of Major-General Sir Archibald Campbell, 1st Baronet's Army, From its landing at Rangoon in May 1824, to the conclusion of a Treaty of Peace at Yandaboo in February 1826, 2nd ed. (London: John Murray, Albemarle-Street, 1827), 21. 19 D. G. E. Hall, Europe and Burma: A Study of European Relations with Burma to the Annexation of Thibaw’s Kingdom, 1886 (London: Oxford University Press, 1945), 121.