‘On the Road to Mandalay’: The Development of Railways in British Burma, 1870–1900

ABSTRACT

This article examines the history of railway development in British Burma between 1870 until 1900. In particular, it focuses on how railways and public works projects became a key site of contestation about Burma’s prospects, value, and future during the late nineteenth century, as well as how a litany of agents – both official and non-official – influenced the path of railway development in the colony. This article not only reveals the difficulties and disputes that impacted railway construction in Burma, but also how these debates led to the eventual privatisation of Burma’s railway system in the 1890s. In doing so, this article demonstrates how myriad agents with often competing aims affected the colony’s social and economic development, as well as how the results of these debates and the subsequent construction of railways produced a new geography of occupation in British Burma.

KEYWORDS:

• Modern Britain
• Burma
• empire
• colonialism
• railways
• economic development

Introduction

In the months surrounding the British invasion and annexation of Upper Burma in 1885 and 1886, there was a surge of interest in Britain about the new colony. As Lower Burma’s capital city of Rangoon grew larger and Mandalay – formerly outside of British jurisdiction – became the centre of British commerce in Upper Burma, capitalists saw in the region an untouched wealth of resources awaiting development and exploitation. With sensational titles such as ‘The Best Unopened Market in the World,’ major newspapers throughout Britain published a rush of articles about Burma at the time, outlining the colony’s future economic potential alongside their ruminations on the ‘despotic’ King Thebaw and the need to keep India’s northeast frontier secure.¹ With its ‘brave, loyal, and desirable subjects,’ these commentators thought that Burma’s frontier regions offered unlimited wealth to the shrewd investor willing to invest his capital in what was seen as a lost ‘El Dorado.’² As the British official in Burma, James G. Scott, would say, ‘everything conspires to show that Burma is the most valuable addition to our empire made for many years.’³

The rising interest among British officials and capitalists about Burma’s economic potential presaged a transformation in Burma’s political, social, and economic landscape over the next few decades. Whether through the rapid growth of Lower Burma’s rice industry or the emergence and expansion of the oil and mining industries in Burma’s north, Burma changed dramatically from the 1870s until the turn of the twentieth century.⁴ In 1901, the colonial official John Nisbet argued that Burma had ‘already’ become ‘one of the brightest jewels in the Imperial diadem of India,’ adding that its ‘lustre’ will only ‘increase in proportion as inducements are offered for the influx of the capital and labour necessary for more rapid development.’⁵ According to Stephen Keck, the period between 1895 and 1918 – or ‘Burma’s New Century’ – witnessed the consolidation of British rule in the colony and was ‘when some of the key realities of colonisation became fully manifest.’ Prior to the emergence of a large-scale anti-colonial nationalist movement and, ultimately, decolonisation, Keck labels this period the ‘apogee’ of British rule in Burma.⁶

Keck’s insights have reoriented the periodisation of British colonialism in Burma, but the vision of a ‘New Century’ Burma was actually crafted and began to develop well before the turn of the twentieth century. To disentangle this history, this paper examines debates about Burma during the late nineteenth century through the prism of a single, but singularly important, case study: the expansion of Burma’s railway system. A study of Burma’s railway system is important for a variety of reasons. First, and unlike in neighbouring India or elsewhere in the British Empire at this time, the history of Burma’s railways has received relatively little scholarly attention, despite their centrality to Burma’s development during the colonial period and their continued significance in the post-colonial world.⁷ The economic impact of railways, however, was only one way that they were important. As Manu Goswami suggests, railways were both ‘metonyms of a colonial modernising project’ and ‘key sites for the institution of the colonial political economy of difference.’⁸ Railways not only influenced how people and goods circulated in a given territory, but they also had dramatic material affects on the social life of its inhabitants and the spatiality – or ‘shape’ – of the colonial occupation. Railways simultaneously acted as a state-making tool for colonial powers as well as a nation-building site of contestation for colonised populations.⁹ The construction of railways, in short, had profound economic, social, and political consequences in colonial territories, Burma included.

This paper focuses on debates about railway construction in Burma in order to reveal how railways and public works projects became a key site of contestation about the colony’s prospects during the late nineteenth century. In the 1870s and 1880s, colonial officials, businessmen, and journalists across the British imperial landscape engaged in heated discussions about Burma’s social and political future, as well as the economic potential of the region. Many of these disputes were framed around Burma’s nascent railway system. These debates, which would ultimately colour the British decision to invade and annex Upper Burma in the 1880s, included not only officials in Burma, India, and Britain, but also members of the commercial community, all of whom had their own priorities and ideas about how to properly develop the colony. The debates about Burma’s railways were ultimately critical to Burma’s development. Not only did they fashion the policies, ideas, and interest groups that would remain influential in the colony into the late colonial period, but they also shaped the subsequent construction and path of Burma’s railway network.

Nevertheless, the success of efforts to build railways in Burma proved questionable. Owing to a variety of factors, including a lack of capital and endless disagreements about the viability of certain railway schemes, the construction of Burma’s railway system was slow and fraught with difficulties, even after the eventual privatisation of the colony’s railways in the 1890s. In the end, the construction of railways in Burma never produced the economic triumph that colonial officials, businessmen, and planners imagined for the colony. However, the debates about railways in Burma reveal how a litany of agents – from colonial officials in Rangoon, Calcutta, and London to foreign capitalists located around the globe – influenced the path and nature of economic development in the colony, while also showing how and why Burma’s railway system developed the way that it did during the late nineteenth century.

The Development of Burma’s Railway System

The emergence of Burma’s railway system occurred against the backdrop of vast political changes in the country. Prior to the annexation of 1886, Burma was divided between Upper and Lower Burma. Following wars in the 1820s and 1850s, British forces occupied and annexed Lower Burma – which included the city of Rangoon – and incorporated the territory as a province within the government of British India. Upper Burma – also known as the ‘Kingdom of Ava’ or, more simply, Burma’ – remained independent and under the rule of a Burmese King. Although the two powers enjoyed a tepid political and economic relationship in the 1860s and early 1870s, their relationship eventually soured.¹⁰ In 1875, a tense standoff between Burma’s King Mindon and the British Indian government over the so-called ‘shoe question’ led to the termination of diplomatic relations between the two countries.¹¹ Following the death of Mindon in 1878 and the accession of King Thebaw, this policy remained in place, and tension only increased between the two countries.¹² Ultimately, in 1885, British forces invaded Mandalay, exiled King Thebaw to India, and incorporated the whole of Burma into the British Empire.¹³

Prior to the political upheavals of the 1870s, inland transportation in Burma was completely reliant on water transport on the Irrawaddy River. In 1864, the Irrawaddy Flotilla and Steam Navigation Company, founded by the Scotsman Todd Findlay, brokered a deal with the British Burma government to provide steamer services on the river. This deal came as a result of a commercial treaty enacted between British Burma and independent Burma in 1862, when it was agreed that the two countries would protect foreign agents – particularly traders – who entered their respective territories and that fixed trade duties. The British, particularly interested in the trade to China, were also allowed to send a survey mission through Upper Burma into Yunnan. Led by Arthur Phayre, Burma’s first Chief Commissioner, the British government believed that contracting out to a private company would cut down costs and provide a more efficient service on the Irrawaddy, and Findlay’s bid was accepted.¹⁴ The 1862 Treaty would later be revised in 1867, reducing the duties that British agents had to pay on both imports and exports. It was at this time that regular steamer services began operating between Lower and Upper Burma, launching a weekly service from Rangoon to Mandalay and a monthly service to Bhamo on the Chinese border. These routes would be expanded in the 1870s to account for increased traffic.¹⁵

Steam navigation on the Irrawaddy provided a new outlet for trade between Upper and Lower Burma but the construction of railways dramatically altered the economic potential of the colony. Despite this, development proceeded slowly in the pre-annexation years. In 1877, the first railway in Burma – called the Rangoon and Irrawaddy Valley State Railway – was opened, connecting Rangoon with Prome and totalling 161 miles.¹⁶ Another railway that linked Rangoon and Toungoo, which at the time was located on the border of Upper Burma, was completed in 1885, just months before the British invasion. This line reduced travel time to the frontier from around twenty-five days to only a half-day.¹⁷ Called the Rangoon and Sittang Valley State Railway and totalling 166 miles, the addition of this railway meant that on the eve of annexation, British Burma had a total of 333 miles of railway constructed in the country.¹⁸ Following the war, the Rangoon and Sittang Valley State Railway would be extended another 220 miles to Mandalay, connecting the territories of Upper and Lower Burma through an overland rail service for the first time.¹⁹ Even still, and despite its profound importance to British interests in Burma, railway construction would remain a fraught enterprise in the colony.

In the 1940s, J.S. Furnivall, a former official in Burma, commented that ‘in justifying their claim to exercise to dominion,’ colonial powers point to public works ‘as proof of their beneficent activities.’²⁰ This was certainly the case in Burma, where for colonial officials, the construction of railways pointed to the solidity of British rule. As early as 1873, when dialogue about the first railway in the country was underway, Burma’s Chief Commissioner, Ashley Eden, noted that the railway’s ‘chief effect morally will be in the idea conveyed to the minds of the mass of the population of the permanency of our occupation of the country.’ At a time when ‘silly rumours floated about’ of Britain’s intentions to restore their territories back to the Burmese Crown, Eden thought that the railway would dispel such notions. Furthermore, because the Toungoo Railway would extend to Upper Burma’s border, it potentially had significant political advantages. Through the ‘free interchange of ideas and communications between our own territories and Upper Burma,’ Eden argued, the railway would benefit both countries. And with the added efficiency the railway would provide for the movement of police and troops, it also meant Britain could keep a closer eye on its neighbours to the north in case of any disturbances.²¹

The social and political motives for railway construction that Eden described in the 1870s provide insight into how British officials stationed in Burma saw economic development in the colony at the time. In considering the estimated cost of constructing the Rangoon-Prome Railway, Eden’s Officiating Chief Engineer and Secretary, W.S. Oliphant, noted that despite high costs, the railway would prove remunerative. According to Oliphant, all estimates ‘may turn out fallacious however moderately they may be framed, but as bearing upon a young country like Burma which has hitherto progressed and is still progressing with such rapid strides as regards population, trade and material wealth,’ that ‘it is almost impossible to over-estimate the advantages likely to accrue from the construction of a railway, although the immediate money returns may not be so great as anticipated.’²² For Eden and his local officials, the construction of a railway symbolised progress for the colony, both economically and socially. A railway would not only improve the economic prospects of the colony but it would also filter down to colonised populations and improve their material and social well being. The railway, for these officials, was an ameliorative device as well as it was a technological one.

The idea that railways were a civilising tool echoed the language that British officials used in neighbouring India, but it was also attached to a vision of Burma that became prominent during the 1870s: the belief that if developed properly and treated fairly by the British Indian Government, Burma’s capacity to grow was limitless.²³ For Eden, criticisms of the railway based on financial concerns were founded on ‘a very fallacious view of the real question at issue.’ The Chief Commissioner instead argued that the question in Burma was ‘not to provide means of transport for such trade as now exists,’ but ‘rather to endeavour by a judicious outlay to stimulate and develop the trade of a young and rising province by means of a Railway, and to increase our production by the facilities of transport which that Railway will afford.’ The sum of money that the Government of India provided was not designed to support existing traffic but ‘for creating fresh traffic.’ ‘All we have to do,’ Eden added, ‘is to shew that there is sufficient existing traffic to warrant the belief, that with increased facilities that traffic will increase proportionately and pay a fair return while this development is going on.’²⁴ The goal was not to provide an infrastructure for Burma as it was, but instead, for a vision of what it could be in the future.

Eden’s comments about railway development demonstrate how a specific, Anglo-Burmese set of interests emerged during the pre-annexation years, and how these interests existed in isolation from those originating in Calcutta or London. This was particularly the case regarding budgetary concerns. What the Chief Commissioner’s office was considering in its support of the Rangoon-Prome Railway was the financial estimates and remunerative potential of the railway, not merely for Burma but for the greater imperial good. Eden noted that when ‘taking into consideration the large annual surplus withdrawn from this Province for the General Administration of the Empire and the fact that this surplus is likely to increase annually,’ that he had ‘no hesitation in affirming that British Burma has a very strong moral claim to the return of a portion of the very large amount it has contributed to the Imperial Exchequer during the last ten years’ for the ‘construction of a line of railway.’ In addition, the Chief Commissioner pointed out that ‘the tax payers of Burma contribute their share annually to the funds set apart for meeting the interest on the Guaranteed and State Railways but receive nothing whatever in return.’ Providing a surplus to the imperial coffers as well as containing a population of tax-payers who deserved to see the fruits of their public contributions, Eden argued that it was time for the Government of India ‘to sanction this important work immediately.’ If not, he noted, Eden hoped that a private company might fulfil such needs.²⁵

Although the Indian Government ultimately sanctioned the construction of the Rangoon-Prome railway in 1874, Eden continued to lobby for the expansion of Burma’s railway system. When a private company, the Burma Company Limited, petitioned the government to construct a light railway from Rangoon to Toungoo, Eden urged the government to take control. In Eden’s opinion, by ‘opening out the fine valley of the Sittang to settlement and cultivation, Government, as landlord of the whole country, would reap all the direct and indirect advantages resulting from the construction of a Railway.’ This included land tax that would be acquired from the newly cultivated land, capitation tax on those who would move there, customs duties on exports and imports from Europe, and ‘advantages in a military and administrative point of view.’ Because transit times would go down, trade with the Karenne and Shan States would also be developed, and the country around China and Laos would be opened up by land for the first time.²⁶ Eden once again threatened that a private enterprise could be utilised if state funds were not forthcoming, but the government responded that ‘the Government of India is opposed to any private enterprise to construct railways in India.’ Instead, the Indian Government noted that there was ‘good reason’ to construct the Toungoo railway and sent a survey to the area.²⁷

These debates over railway construction highlight the precarious position British Burma found itself in during the pre-annexation years. Although visitors to the country noted how different Burma was from India economically, socially, and culturally, Lower Burma during this time was officially a province within the Government of India.²⁸ Because of this, Burma was subject to Indian legislation, contributed to an Indian central budget, and most often, was ruled by officials trained or previously stationed in India itself.²⁹ Railways lines, along with any kind of public expenditure, required approval from Indian authorities, regardless of scale. Railway construction was an expensive and time-intensive activity, requiring vast sums of fixed capital, cheap labour, and safe, dependable routes. Because Burma was only just developing economically as a province, British officials in Burma had to persuade their superiors in Calcutta and London that a railway would bring progress and growth where none had previously existed. Because of that, official government correspondence about railways from the period reads much like a travel brochure meant to lure explorers with promises of vast riches: investing in Burma’s future meant investing in the Empire’s future. The goal of Anglo-Burmese officials was to make that investment seem like a sure thing.

The Anglo-Burmese Lobby

By the 1880s, British officials in India had warmed to the vision that Anglo-Burmese officials and businessmen promoted regarding the expansion of Burma’s railway system. In 1881, Colonel W.S. Trevor, Director General of Railways in India, noted how India had opened 9,235 miles of railway to traffic at the time, and that following Lord Lawrence’s proposals in 1869 to extend railways, it was widely believed in the colony that railway construction was ‘a necessity towards the development of the resources of India.’³⁰ Speaking on Burma, Trevor argued that the proposed Sittang Valley Line, which had vexed Burma’s Chief Commissioner Ashley Eden in the 1870s, would ‘open up a land-locked country, at present thinly peopled it is true, but possessing indefinite capabilities of development.’ Burma, which at the time contained only 161 of the 9,235 miles of railway active in India, would finally emerge from the isolation in which officials there found themselves.³¹ Such optimism, though, did not hold up in official policy. Construction on the Toungoo line would not begin for another four years, around the time British and Indian troops occupied Upper Burma. In the interim, battles between Anglo-Burmese officials, European businessmen in Burma, and the Government of India waged on about how to economically develop the colony. These disputes would colour the eventual decision to invade and annex the country, as well as the post-annexation consensus about how to structure finances in the colony.

In 1881, at the same time that Trevor was commenting positively on the prospects of the Toungoo line, local businessmen in Burma became highly involved in negotiations to expand the railway system. In April 1881, Leon Hernandez, head of the firm L. Hernandez and Company, petitioned the government along with Sir Charles Forbes and Company to form a business to construct the railway.³² A few months later, in January 1882, another proposal led by W. Strang Steel of London and John Muir of Glasgow, two of Burma’s most important businessmen at the time, was sent to the Chief Commissioner asking to take over and complete Burma’s railway system.³³ While Hernandez’s petition was quickly dismissed, officials in Burma considered Steel and Muir’s proposal carefully, likely owing to the stature and reputation of the petitioners in the Anglo-Indian community.³⁴ W. Strang Steel’s firm, Steel Brothers, was one of the largest mill owners and rice exporters in Burma, and held a place of prominence in Burma’s Chamber of Commerce.³⁵ John Muir, on the other hand, was best known in India, where his firm Finlay, Muir and Co. was involved in the tea and cotton industry.³⁶ Together, these were two of the principal names in the Anglo-Indian merchant community during the late nineteenth century. Ultimately, however, the government turned down their proposal.

Although some businessmen in Burma sought to take control of the colony’s railway system, local commercial interests were far more interested, as a whole, to lobby the government to expand railways using state funds. The Rangoon Chamber of Commerce represented these interests, actively petitioning the British colonial government to reform the colony to secure their welfare. These petitions were particularly marked in the years preceding the annexation of 1886. In 1884, for instance, the Chamber of Commerce petitioned the government numerous times about the need for public works.³⁷ In one ‘Special Meeting’ called on 29 February 1884, W.Q. Rowett, one of Burma’s leading rice merchants, pointed out ‘the injustice with which this province is treated in being made to contribute over a crore of rupees annually towards the imperial revenue, while the crying needs of the province are left unsupplied for want of funds.’ Rowett believed that the colony’s ill treatment by the Government of India was potential grounds for separation. The Chamber responded by creating a special sub-committee to fight the curtailment of local funds, arguing ‘that a much larger proportion of the revenue should be spent in the province.’ For the Committee, ‘the natural development of the country is retarded by the insufficiency of its means of intercommunication,’ and ‘one of the chiefs wants of the province is numerous feeder roads for the railways already in existence, and a further development of the railway system.’³⁸ In the opinion of government, local merchants were ‘strongly and clearly’ … ’in favour of Burma railways being retained as State lines.’³⁹

A few weeks later, Chief Commissioner Charles Bernard spoke to the Chamber of Commerce about Burma’s economy. While Bernard tried to assure the Chamber that nothing would go unfinished and left to waste because of reducing the budget, ‘at the same time,’ it was noted, ‘the Chief Commissioner would submit that he entirely agrees in the view taken by the Chamber that the progress of the province will be retarded and its prosperity jeopardised by a great and continued reduction in the grant for public works.’ Bernard, while agreeing with the Chamber, also had to remain diplomatic in his statements, owing to his position as Chief Commissioner. Speaking to the Chamber, Bernard observed that ‘the Government of India are most fully aware of the circumstances of Burma, namely, that the province contributes a larger taxation and a larger net surplus per head of the population than any other province of India.’ Bernard further noted ‘that until recent years very little was spent on roads and communications in Burma; that wages and the cost of work are two or three times as high in Burma as in other provinces; that the prosperity of the province depends mainly on the rice-merchants and the trade they have created and maintain,’ and furthermore, ‘that for the due progress of that prosperity the extension of improved roads and means of communication are most necessary.’ Even still, Bernard understood that if the Indian government remained reluctant to help Burma, he ‘hope[d] that private capitalists might be found who believe in the paying capacities of Burma,’ and who ‘would undertake’ the construction of railways ‘if only a temporary and limited guarantee were given upon the capital.’ Privatisation, seen as undesirable by top Anglo-Burmese officials only a decade before, began to look appealing for those in power on the eve of annexation.⁴⁰

Officials considered railways crucial to the eventual expansion of economic interests in the country, but railway extension was not only of interest to those businessmen operating in Burma itself. The rhetoric about Burma’s capacity for economic and social progress influenced another group of lobbyists who proved influential in the ultimate decision to annex the country: the China-Burma railway interest group. Archibald Colquhoun, a colonial official in Burma who on occasion reported for The Times, as well as the former official, Holt Hallett, led this movement. Beginning in the early 1880s, these two promoters utilised knowledge that they gained as colonial officials to lobby the government for the construction of a railway to open up the ‘great undeveloped markets’ that existed in Southwestern China.⁴¹ Although early visitors to the country – from the explorers Dr. Richardson and Captain McLeod in the 1830s to the influential Chief Commissioner, Sir Arthur Phayre, in the 1860s – noted Burma’s potential importance as a route to Chinese markets, it was in this later moment that economic development in Burma became a discussion worthy of comment in British metropolitan circles.⁴² From the Manchester Chamber of Commerce to the confines of Whitehall, conversations about Colquhoun and Hallett’s scheme would have a lasting effect on development in the country, despite their ultimate failure.

Beginning in the 1880s, Colquhoun and Hallett began to pressure government agents to help survey and finance a railway through Burma to China.⁴³ Colquhoun first outlined his proposals in his two-volume book, Across Chrysê, which outlined his travels through Yunnan, Siam, and the Shan States.⁴⁴ Colquhoun believed that a railway to China, along with neighbouring Siam, would accomplish a variety of tasks, which included providing a check to French interests in Siam and the opening up of Chinese markets to British merchants.⁴⁵ These ideas found favour among the commercial community back in Britain. Between 1883 and 1890, Colqhoun and Hallet toured throughout Britain to spark interest in their schemes, speaking at a variety of locations including at the London, Liverpool, Manchester, and Leeds Chambers of Commerce.⁴⁶ Drawn by the prospects of an untapped market in Southwest China that awaited the goods of an industrial Britain, these groups petitioned the government to allow for the expansion of railways in Burma.⁴⁷ For these metropolitan interests, Burma was considered a bridge to Southeast and East Asia, an intermediate point between the British Indian Empire and the large population centres to the east. Railway construction in Burma became more than just a local concern, but one that inspired the commercial community back in Britain to look beyond the empire’s frontiers.

Colqohoun and Hallett, though, were doing more than just publishing their views and hoping that the onslaught of public opinion would sway the government to intervene. Privately, the two former officials were actively lobbying top government officials in Britain to support their schemes, including the Secretary of State for India, Randolph Churchill. In July 1885, as British administrators were considering the occupation and annexation of Burma, Colquhoun sent Churchill a full report on his railway scheme, statements that Churchill was ‘much impressed’ with.⁴⁸ In the report, however, it was noted that the Government of India was reluctant to build such a railway owing to a ‘want of money,’ with early estimates reaching as high as £1,000,000 to construct the railway.⁴⁹ Despite this, as late as September 1885, Churchill was still pushing Lord Dufferin, the Viceroy of India and the architect of Britain’s invasion of Burma, to push forward such a scheme. ‘Am I wrong in supposing,’ Churchill wrote, ‘that it might be worth your while to spend a good deal of money now on all those various methods of railway and telegraph development which might have for their result the doubling and trebling of trade between India and China?’⁵⁰ As a number of British Chamber’s of Commerce pressed Churchill privately, and with the weight of a re-election campaign waging against John Bright, the Secretary of State for India saw in Burma an opportunity to boost his public credibility and continue his political career. In October 1885, Churchill publically announced that he supported invading and annexing Upper Burma, arguing that the ‘Burmah enterprise will be a most remunerative investment.’⁵¹ But while the official could find solace in the invasion of Burma that would occur in the ensuing months, his time to celebrate would be short lived. By the end of 1885, Churchill was out of a job.⁵²

Colquhoun and Hallett’s Burma-China railways scheme would ultimately not come to fruition. The British occupation not only proved to be more costly than the Indian government hoped, but a counter-insurgency campaign in the Shan States that followed annexation redirected the attention of administrators.⁵³ Despite these issues, the annexation of Upper Burma brought increased attention to the economic potential of Burma’s northern areas. The Shan States, in particular, became a new site of interest for capitalists and officials, including those who wanted to expand Burma’s nascent railway system. With its plethora of fertile land and mineral deposits, and owing to its geographical location near China, railway debates in the colony became refocused around the Shan States and the potential of this area to spur economic growth. It was on the road to the Shan States that the next wave of debates about Burma’s future lay.

The Road to the Shan States

Railway development in Burma during the late nineteenth century gradually encompassed large areas of the country within a network that ended in the port city and colonial capital of Rangoon, where commodities extracted in the colony would be sent to the rest of the world. What began as a single rail service in the 1870s that connected Rangoon with Upper and Lower Burma’s border area soon became the foundation to a much larger system. Following Upper Burma’s annexation in the 1880s, the Rangoon railway was extended to Mandalay, linking Lower and Upper Burma by rail for the first time. While these expansions compressed space and time in the colony, they were not without controversy. As the previous sections have demonstrated, debates between Anglo-Burmese and Anglo-Indian officials about railway development in Burma were fierce, with concerns over budgets and traffic preventing railway expansion in the colony. By the 1890s, these debates would take on both familiar and new forms, as officials in British Burma became increasingly disillusioned with the slow pace of state-funded development and sought new ways to spark progress in the colony. While this would ultimately lead to a renewed push to privatise Burma’s railway system, it was to Burma’s frontier areas, including the Shan States, where officials first turned their attention.

The Shan States began to attract the attention of western businessmen during the 1880s, particularly following the annexation of Upper Burma. Archibald Colquhoun and Holt Hallett, the primary architects of the Burma-China railway scheme, saw the development of the Shan States as central to their plan of opening up the market between Burma and China through rail services, the construction of which would have to pass through the Northern Shan States. More than just a way station, however, Colquhoun and Hallett argued that the Shan States offered a great opportunity for colonial interests, including a source of cheap and reliable labour, untapped agricultural wealth, and rich mineral resource reserves.⁵⁴ Colquhoun, in particular, noted that while Yunnan offered an abundance of mining prospecting sites that remained undeveloped, the ‘Shan countries to the south are as rich in minerals as Yünnan itself’ and that there ‘is now no suzerain power to prevent their being worked.’ ‘There is no doubt,’ Colquhoun continued, ‘that the opening up of these states will be far more profitable than Eastern Yünnan could ever be,’ adding that for ‘the pioneer in commerce,’ the Shan States and Western Yunnan offered endless opportunities.⁵⁵ These opportunities, however, would have to wait in the years following Britain’s occupation of the region.

Despite existing within the territorial unit of Burma on British maps, the Shan States presented a problem for British officials following the annexation of 1886. On Burma’s eastern frontier with China and Siam, the Shan States were not an easily legible extension of Burma, but instead, a collection of unique states that had a diverse ethnic population, each with their own historical relationships with both the Burmese and Chinese states. Some states, for instance, had long-standing agreements to levy tributes to the Burmese crown in return for government protection, while other states either remained hostile to the Burmese government or were linked politically to China.⁵⁶ Although British officials had visited the region throughout the pre-colonial period, information about it was limited. Following the annexation, however, the government began a process of accumulating knowledge about the Shan States in order to construct an official policy, and a number of armed expeditions were sent to the area in order to gather information.⁵⁷ Despite this, such knowledge gathering expeditions soon stalled.

With the British military occupying Mandalay and its surrounding areas, many Burmese people loyal to the exiled crown fled to the Shan States in order to organise a counter-insurgency campaign, a process that local Shan chiefs aided because of their desire to remain independent. The hostilities, which would continue for over three years, convinced British officials that in order to maintain peace on the Indian Empire’s geopolitically important border with China, they would have to uphold existing agreements between the Shan States and the government, which included the limited interference of outside powers.⁵⁸ The ‘pacification’ of the Shan States, as the future Chief Commissioner Charles Crosthwaite named it, was a significant moment for the voicing of the Shan States’ self-determination, and allowed for a nominal independence from British occupation until the late colonial period.⁵⁹ Even at the peak of violence in the region, though, British officials had begun the process of elucidating the economic viability of the Shan States, along with its future as a colony.

In 1886, and within days of the British annexation of Upper Burma, the colonial administration began to craft a plan to economically develop their new territories. In January 1886, the government considered proposals to construct a railway to Mandalay – thought to be the centre at ‘which produce will be sold, exchanged, and distributed throughout the whole of Upper Burma’ – and by September, officials had already mapped and estimated the path of a 222 mile railway connecting Mandalay with Rangoon.⁶⁰ In 1887, and with construction on the Mandalay line already proceeding apace, officials also began to explore the possibility of extending the railway system through the Mu Valley to the north of Mandalay. Along with ‘open[ing] out a large tract of fertile country’ filled with ‘rich paddy plains’ and ‘rich forests,’ officials were attracted to the region because ‘it would reach the headquarters of the large India-rubber and jade stone trade and an important distributing centre of salt, all of which are trades known to be capable of great development.’ Charles Crosthwaite, the new Chief Commissioner of Burma, urged the Government of India of the ‘great importance of opening out the newly acquired territory in Upper Burma with good means of communication,’ adding that he was ‘certain that the provision of easy access to all part of it will do more towards its speedy settlement than anything else.’⁶¹ With British forces only beginning to establish their presence in Upper Burma, railways would not only prove remunerative for the administration, but they would also ensure the solidity of British rule in the undeveloped north. Before long, this vision would expand to the east of Mandalay and into the Shan States, where a violent struggle between British and indigenous forces continued to wage on.

The movement to expand Burma’s railway system into the Shan States began in October 1889, when the Secretary to the Chief Commissioner, Lieutenant-Colonel W.G. Cumming, sent a letter to the home government pressing them to consider such an opportunity. Cumming, who had been engaged in ‘pacification’ efforts in the region, thought that building a railway to Kunlon Ferry – situated on the border with China – would fulfil Colquhoun and Hallett’s vision of connecting Burma with China, and ensured ‘that British merchandise would then command the market of Southern China.’ Even more importantly, however, were the economic advantages a railway bestowed on the Shan States. Because a railway would put an end to the ‘anarchy’ that had existed in the region since Thebaw’s reign, Cumming thought, ‘the people and their riches will rapidly increase,’ particularly as the region was ‘universally’ known to contain ‘excellent land’ and was ‘capable of producing almost any crop.’ Furthermore, a railway also allowed for the permanent British occupation of Shan lands, which were politically advantageous to the administration. Noting that ‘at present the extremities of the Empire’ were weak, and understanding that it is ‘not impossible’ that ‘direct administration of the Shan country may be forced upon us,’ Cumming considered a railway to be expedient for political, social, and economic purposes.⁶² With ‘dacoits’ – or bandits – still fighting British forces across the Shan States, a railway would calm tensions and persuade locals of the beneficence of British rule.⁶³

The British administration acted quickly on Cumming’s recommendations, and over the ensuing months, officials began preparations for the construction of a railway linking Mandalay with Kunlon Ferry. In December, only two months after Cumming’s proposal, a survey party was sent to the region to estimate the cost and path of the Shan States railway, with support from the new Superintendent of the Shan States, A.H. Hildebrand.⁶⁴ The following cold season, F.R. Bagley, the Executive Engineer of the Shan Hills Survey Division, submitted his full report on the potential railway to the Chief Commissioner after travelling through the area, and outlined in detail his proposal to build the 235-mile railway as soon as possible.⁶⁵ Similar to what had occurred during the 1870s, however, officials with the Government of India balked at such an outlay of capital. In September 1890, the Indian government informed Charles Crosthwaite that all work on the Shan States railway should be postponed ‘for two or three years’ owing to a lack of capital, incensing Burma’s Chief Commissioner. Crosthwaite, in response, hoped that such a decision ‘may be re-considered,’ arguing that the matter ‘is one which not only greatly concerns the development of trade and the economical and efficient administration of the Shan country, but also materially affects the safety of the frontier.’ More than just an issue ‘of mere departmental convenience,’ the need for a railway through the Shan States was said to be critical to ‘the future prosperity of Burma.’⁶⁶ Nevertheless, the construction of a railway would wait until the late 1890s.

Like the railway debates of the 1870s, the lobbying efforts of Anglo-Burmese officials to expand Burma’s railway system in the Shan States during the 1890s became centred on the region’s economic potential. Critical to these efforts was knowledge accumulation. Beginning in the late 1880s, the British administration in Burma appointed two superintendents to the Shan States – A.H. Hildebrand in the Southern Shan States and J.G. Scott in the Northern Shan States – who were tasked not only with assuaging relations between local Shan leaders and the British state and collecting tributes, but who were also engaged in cataloging information about the area’s people and natural resources. This included conducting agricultural experiments in order to determine if and how industries like wheat production and sheep and cattle grazing might work in a climate more amenable to that which existed in Lower Burma.⁶⁷ J.G. Scott, in particular, became well known throughout the colony, particularly owing to his travels in the Wa States along the Chinese border and his regularly published accounts of life in the Shan States.⁶⁸ Scott, who also represented the British government in border negotiations with both the Siamese and Chinese during this period, would later publish an account of the Shan States, the Gazetteer of Upper Burma and the Shan States, at the turn of the century.⁶⁹ The Gazetteer, published in five volumes and with the assistance of J.P. Hardiman, became the de-facto British narrative of the region, providing detailed knowledge about the area’s cultural, social, political, and geological life that would inform imperial public policy in the Shan States until Burmese independence.

Although efforts to build a railway through the region stalled in 1890, Scott and Hildebrand’s reports provided a new base of knowledge about the region that Anglo-Burmese lobbyists could lean on with their petitions to the government. Beginning in the mid-1890s, efforts to expand the railway system into the Northern Shan States were renewed, but they used a new language focusing on the region’s economic viability as opposed to its relationship with the markets of China. In December 1893, the Rangoon Gazette published two editorials arguing that ‘it is not the transfrontier trade that should be our chief objective’ but that ‘our main object in the Kunlon railway should be the local trade.’⁷⁰ This belief was reinforced in official circles. In 1894, British Burma’s Financial Commissioner noted that the establishment of railway communication and a ‘very large reduction in cost of transit’ would ‘operate to greatly increase the volume of the present outward and inward trade’ between Mandalay and the Shan States. The construction, however, relied on a variety of important developments in the region, which included the creation of a hill station along the line at Maymyo, an expansion in trade by ‘European enterprise directed towards stock and sheep raising,’ as well as ‘the production of minerals.’⁷¹ After nearly a decade of discussion on the topic, the realisation of the Shan States railway hinged on how the region’s economic future was produced and represented in the imperial imagination.

In 1895, these lobbying efforts came to fruition when the government sanctioned plans for the construction of a Northern Shan States railway. With multiple proposals on the table, including Colquhoun and Hallett’s line through the Southern Shan States and Bagley’s to Kunlon Ferry, the Secretary of State for India sided with the latter, demonstrating the importance that government saw in the opening out of the Shan States. Although ‘critics’ would ‘no doubt, find fault’ with the decision, the Rangoon Gazette argued, ‘the Shan Hills railway will run its whole length through British territory, through a country that every traveller describes as highly fertile,’ and that has a ‘healthy climate.’⁷² With the Colquhoun-Hallett scheme considered ‘at an end,’ administrators could focus on establishing the viability of the line, which included the formation of Maymyo as a British hill station as well as the construction of a bridge to span the length of the Gokteik Gorge in the far north.⁷³ The news would also inspire a surge of interest regarding the region’s mineral resources, an industry that would grow rapidly over the ensuing decade.

Conclusion

Debates about the Northern Shan States railway not only reveal how colonial officials and businessmen in Burma, India, and Britain remained at odds regarding the expansion of public works in the colony, but also how a vision of Burma’s economic potential was paramount to shaping official policy on the subject. In order to convince British Indian officials to sanction the construction of railways, officials and commercial agents in Burma had to persuade the imperial government that such outlays of expenditure would both solve concerns about the region’s frontier security as well as provide monetary returns well into the future. The 1890s, however, also witnessed a transformation in how such discussions would proceed. It was in the 1890s that the British government in Burma considered new sources of capital to stimulate economic development, looking outside of India’s boundaries to infuse the colony with a new spirit of entrepreneurship. This soon resulted in the privatisation of Burma’s railway system.

At the same time that officials debated the merits of a Northern Shan States railway, the topic of privatisation re-entered official policy discussions about Burma’s railway system. In 1893, with the government still unwilling to sell the Burma State Railways to a private enterprise, one local in Burma noted that while there were plenty of reasons for and against the privatisation of this colony’s railways, the Indian government’s response had been misleading: the lack of railway extension in Burma was not the result of ‘want of pluck and enterprise’ but instead to the ‘dog-in-the-manger spirit of the Government of India’ who was ‘in a chronic struggle with an unfavourable budget.’⁷⁴ Despite this, when the Viceroy of India, Lord Lansdowne, visited Burma in November 1893, the mainstream press as well as the Rangoon Chamber of Commerce acknowledged that Burma had been treated more liberally after the annexation. ‘Revenue was taken away in sums out of all proportion to the small province’ during the pre-annexation years, the Rangoon Gazette argued, but considering all the ‘accessories of civilised government’ that were expanded in the intervening years – including jails, hospitals, school, and most importantly, roads and railways – it could not be said that Burma had been treated illiberally.⁷⁵ Nevertheless, the newspaper was already behind the times. In September, the Indian government agreed to negotiate the future of India’s railways, opening up the possibility of privatising public works in Burma.⁷⁶ While the paper remained cautious about such a proposal, believing that privatisation would lead to the formation of ‘railway kings’ bent on personal aggrandisement like in the United States, their opinion did not represent the views of the state or for many in the business community.⁷⁷ Regardless, within three years, the situation would change.

In 1896, following a protracted debate, the Rothschilds formed a company to take over management of the Burma State Railways. The new company, with capital of £2 million and on a contract set for twenty-five years, was named the Burma Railways Company. The Rothschilds, whose interests in Indian railways had begun as early as the 1830s, saw railway development in Burma as an opportunity to expand development in an area that the colonial state was reluctant to invest in, despite the well-known failure of their venture with the Burma Ruby Mines Company.⁷⁸ In Burma, the change was met with a mixed reception among businessmen. As rumours of the sale were discussed within Rangoon circles in July 1896, the Chamber of Commerce petitioned the government to make the terms of the sale public ‘so that those largely interested in carrying arrangements of the country may have an opportunity of seeing that the trade will not be unduly effected by what appears to be the granting of a strict monopoly to a private syndicate.’⁷⁹ Rangoon’s businessmen, who had been lobbying the government to take over the lines themselves for decades, were likely annoyed that an outsider like the Rothschilds, unfamiliar with Burma’s needs and holding too much power for their tastes, would be allowed to take over an enterprise seen as critical to the advancement of their interests and profits.⁸⁰ In response, the government notified the Chamber of Commerce that it was ‘not the first time that a State Railway has been handed over to a private company, and the authorities are not likely to give any private company such unreserved powers that the public will be at its mercy,’ adding that ‘this was only to be expected.’⁸¹

The privatisation of Burma’s railway system marked a new moment in the colony’s history, but such an eventuality emerged from over two decades of debate about how to economically develop Burma. Success, however, remained precarious. Although by the turn of the twentieth century, railways connected Rangoon with a litany of inland locations across the territorial unit of Burma, the railway system never became the pathway of economic success that both colonial officials and foreign businessmen expected, and some of Burma’s most important commercial industries – including in rice and timber – remained uncommitted to using the colony’s railways.⁸² In 1904, at a ‘Budget Debate’ in the Imperial Legislative Council, the former minister of Public Works in India, Sir A.T. Arundel, noted how railway construction in Burma remained at a ‘standstill’ under the Rothschilds direction, and that ‘enormous sums’ of money had been wasted on lines that should have been ‘remuneratively expended elsewhere.’⁸³ Even with privatisation, debates about railway construction in Burma remained as divisive and fraught as ever before. By the late 1920s, and with the Burma Railway Company’s lease expiring, the lines were handed back over to the colonial government.⁸⁴

Although some industries would develop and thrive in the early twentieth century because of Burma’s new railway system, the grandiose visions that colonial officials and foreign capitalists held about the potential of railway construction never materialised.⁸⁵ Even still, railways and the debates about railways in Burma reveal how public works and communications projects were a crucial site of dialogue about Burma’s prospects, value, and future during the early colonial period, while also showing how myriad agents with often competing aims affected the colony’s social and economic development. Nevertheless, while railway development may have been an uneven and divisive process in Burma, the conversations and political debates that occurred about railways ultimately shaped the creation and material path of the colony’s rail lines. In other words, despite the failure of Burma’s railways to deliver on the potential that some officials and businessmen saw in it, the construction of Burma’s railways produced a new geography of occupation in Burma, connecting Rangoon with vast areas of Burma’s interior by rail and solidifying British power in the region. These lines, many of which are still in use today, created a new map of British Burma, one that retains its significance in the post-colonial world.⁸⁶

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

Part of the research for this paper was made possible through the COTCA Project and therefore received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant Number 682081)

Notes

1 On “The Best Unopened Market in the World,” see Pall Mall Gazette, 5 February 1885. For a sample of these articles, see the Pall Mall Gazette, 15 October 1885, 31 August 1886; The Standard, 1 January 1886; St. James’s Gazette, 5 January 1886, 2 January 1886, 1 January 1886, 12 December 1885, 7 November 1885; The Graphic, 23 May 1885, 31 October 1885, 14 November 1885; Indian Daily News, 31 December 1885, 10 November 1885, 30 October 1885; Manchester Guardian, 3 November 1885, 18 November 1885, 30 October 1885.

2 Writing in 1913, Taw Sein Ko noted that Burma “is still the El Dorado of Europeans” who “come here to shake the pagoda tree.” Ko, Burmese Sketches.

3 Quoted in St. James’s Gazette, 31 March 1886. See also, Scott, Burma.

4 For key texts on Burma’s rice industry, see Siok-Hwa, The Rice Industry of Burma, 1852–1940; Adas, The Burma Delta. On oil and petroleum, see Corley, A History of the Burmah Oil Company, 1886–1924; Longmuir, Oil in Burma.

5 Nisbet, Burma Under British Rule – And Before, 453.

6 Keck, British Burma in the New Century, 1895–1918, 2.

7 The literature on Indian railways is vast, but for a few representative examples, see Prasad, Tracks of Change; Sarkar, Technology and Rural Change in Eastern India, 1830–1980; Arnold, Everyday Technology; Kerr, Building the Railways of the Raj. For a classic account of railways and empire, see Headrick, The Tools of Empire. For the lone monograph on Colonial Burma’s railway and public works system, published over a half century ago, see Shein, Burma’s Transport and Foreign Trade in Relation to the Economic Development of the Country (1885–1914).

8 Goswami, Producing India, 104.

9 Ibid., 103–31.

10 On the period between 1855 and the 1870s in Burma, see Myint-U, The Making of Modern Burma, 104–29.

11 In 1875, following a dispute between British officials – led by Sir Robert Forsythe – and King Mindon over the Karenni States, the British Indian Government informed the Burmese Court that British agents, including the Resident in Mandalay, would no longer remove their shoes when in the presence of the King. Mindon, who thought that a concession to the British over the “shoe question” (as it would become called) would destroy his legitimacy, refused Forsythe’s ultimatum and ended all official diplomatic relations between the two nations. Ibid., 140–2.

12 Although the British decision to invade Upper Burma in 1885 came after an economic dispute between Thebaw and the Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation, there were myriad reasons for increased tensions between the two powers, including geopolitical concerns about French interests in the region. See Webster, “Business and Empire”.

13 On the events leading up to the annexation, see Stewart, The Pagoda War.

14 Woodman, The Making of Burma, 175–6.

15 Shein, Burma’s Transport and Foreign Trade in Relation to the Economic Development of the Country, 29.

16 Ibid., 42. See also, British Library, India Office Papers and Public Records, P/795, Public Works Department, Burma, December 1876. Extension of R. & I.V.S. Railway from Prome to Allan-myo (hereafter “Proceedings”).

17 Furnivall, Colonial Policy and Practice, 78. See also Proceedings, P/1449, Public Works Department, Burma, February 1880. Rangoon and Sittang Valley State Railway.

18 Shein, Burma’s Transport and Foreign Trade in Relation to the Economic Development of the Country, 41, 44.

19 This section was called the “Toungoo-Mandalay Railway.” Ibid., 44. On the idea of this railway as a “peace-building” enterprise, see Proceedings, P/2664A, Public Works Department, Upper Burma, August 1886. Toungoo-Mandalay Railway.

20 Furnivall, Colonial Policy and Practice, 319.

21 Proceedings, P/11, Railways, Burma, March 1873. Note by Colonel W.S. Oliphant, R.E., Officiating Chief Engineer, on revised plans and estimate of the Rangoon and Prome Railway.

22 Ibid.

23 For instance, Edward Davidson, a British railway engineer in India, argued that railways in India would “reduce to a manageable extent the vast distances of the continent,” “strengthen the Government,” “bind races to each other,” and place “upon the country itself the broad and indelible stamp of England.” See Davidson, The Railways of India, 2–3.

24 Proceedings, P/11, Railways, Burma, January 1874. Minute by the Hon’ble Ashley Eden, Chief Commissioner of British Burma, on the proposed Rangoon and Prome Railway.

25 Proceedings, P/11, Railways, Burma, March 1873. Note by Colonel W.S. Oliphant, R.E., Officiating Chief Engineer, on revised plans and estimate of the Rangoon and Prome Railway.

26 Proceedings, P/11, Railways, Burma, January 1874. Minute by the Hon’ble Ashley Eden, Chief Commissioner of British Burma, on the proposed Rangoon and Prome Railway.

27 Proceedings, P/11, Railways, Burma, September 1874. From Colonel Drummond, Deputy Secretary to the Government of India to Eden, 17 August 1874.

28 In 1887, the Rangoon Gazette argued that India and Burma were geographically and ethnologically “as distinct and separate as any two countries can be.” Rangoon Gazette, 21 December 1887. For similar views on this subject, see Laurie, Ashé Pyee, The Super Country, 101.

29 Ashley Eden himself, for instance, was educated at the East India Company College in Haileybury and held a number of posts in India before become Chief Commissioner of British Burma. Following his tenure, he returned to India and became Lieutenant-Governor of Bengal. See Stephens, “Eden, Sir Ashley (1831–1887), Administrator in India”.

30 In 1869, under the direction of Lord Lawrence, the Indian government ended the private guarantee system of railway construction and all railways became state-owned. See Haque, Management of Indian Railways, 4.

31 British Library, India Office Papers and Public Records, IOR/V/24/3532, India Railway Board. Administrative Report on Railways in India for 1880–81 by Colonel W.S. Trevor, V.C., R.E., Director General of Railways.

32 Proceedings, P/1597, Public Works Department, Burma, May 1881. Proposal to Construct the R. & S.V.S. Railway by Private Enterprise.

33 Proceedings, P/1804, Public Works Department, Burma, January 1882. Proposals for taking over and conducting Railways in Burma by private enterprise.

34 It should be noted that Leon Hernandez was also highly involved in Burma’s commercial community at the time. In 1882, for instance, Hernandez acted as Consul for Belgium and Vice-Consul for France in Burma, despite having offices also located in London. Thacker’s Indian Directory, 1882, 777.

35 On Burma’s leading rice firms, see Brown, Burma’s Economy in the Twentieth Century, 9.

36 Finlay, Muir and Co., originally a subsidiary of James Finlay & Co. Ltd., was domiciled in Calcutta beginning in the 1870s. See Brogan, James Finlay & Company Limited: Manufacturers and East India Merchants, 1750–1950.

37 The committee at the time included representatives from Burma’s most important businesses, including J.G. Dickson, the chair of the Chamber of Commerce and partner for Gladstone, Wyllie, and Company; G.J. Swann, the general manager of the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company; C.W. Robinson, agent for Bulloch Brothers and Company; S.G. Jones, a managing director for the Bombay-Burma Trading Corporation; J. Thompson, from Arbuthnot, Gillanders and Company. Thacker’s Indian Directory, 1884.

38 Proceedings, P/2186, Public Works Department, Burma, March 1884. Minutes of a Special Meeting of the Chamber of Commerce, held on Friday, the 29 February 1884.

39 Proceedings, P/2432, Public Works Department, Burma, May 1885. From Colonel A.M. Lang, Secretary to the Chief Commissioner, British Burma, Public Works Department (Railway), to the Secretary to the Government of India, Public Works Department, Simla.

40 Proceedings, P/2186, Public Works Department, Burma, March 1884. Public Works provincial finances and railway extension in British Burma.

41 Hallett, A Thousand Miles on an Elephant in the Shan States, viii.

42 On Richardson and MacLeod, see Grabowsky and Turton, The Gold and Silver Road of Trade and Friendship. For Phayre, see Phayre, History of Burma Including Burma Proper, Pegu, Taungu, Tenasserim, and Arakan.

43 For an older narrative of these events, see Crozier, “Antecedents of the Burma Road”.

44 Colquhoun, Across Chrysê.

45 Also see Colquhoun, Amongst the Shans; Colquhoun, Overland to China; Colquhoun, Dan to Beersheba.

46 For some examples of these speeches, see Hallett, Address upon Burmah; Colquhoun and Hallett, Report on the Railway Connexion of Burmah and China.

47 See, for example, The Times, 6 November 1885; The Times, 8 November 1887; The Times, 10 November 1887.

48 British Library, India Office Papers and Public Records, Lord Dufferin Papers, MSS. EUR F.130/3, Lord Randolph Churchill to Dufferin, 28 August 1885 (hereafter “Dufferin Papers”).

49 University of Cambridge, Manuscripts and University Archives, Papers of Lord Randolph Churchill, Cambridge, Add. MS 9248/6.

50 Dufferin Papers, F.130/3, Churchill to Dufferin, 16 September 1885. Churchill also added that he “should like to see the eyes of the Government of India turned to the East more than the West, and a larger and bolder policy towards China, Siam, and Burmah recommended by the Indian Government than has been the case hitherto.”

51 Dufferin Papers, F.130/3, Churchill to Dufferin, 27 October 1885. See also The Times, 24 October 1885.

52 For a biography of Churchill, see Foster, Lord Randolph Churchill, A Political Life.

53 On the post-annexation counter-insurgency, see Crosthwaite, The Pacification of Burma. For a critique of Crosthwaite’s idea of “pacification,” see Aung-Thwin, “The British ‘Pacification’ of Burma”.

54 See Colquhoun, Across Chrysê, 236–7. See also, Hallett, Address upon Burmah; Colquhoun and Hallett, Report on the Railway Connexion of Burmah and China.

55 Colquhoun, Across Chrysê, vol. 2, 46.

56 For a history of the Shan States during this period, see Scott and Hardiman, Gazetteer of Upper Burma and the Shan States, 187–330; Mangrai, The Shan States and the British Annexation; Tun, History of the Shan State.

57 See, for example, Proceedings, P/2664A, Foreign Department, Upper Burma, October 1886. Expedition to the Shan States; Proceedings, P/2664A, Foreign Department, Upper Burma, December 1886. Report upon the subject of the proposed Military and Political Expedition into the Shan States; Proceedings, P/2888, Foreign Department, Burma, May 1887. Forms of Sanad to be Granted to the Sawbwas or Myosas of Shan States; Proceedings, P/3118, Home, Burma, July 1888. Note on the state of Upper Burma during the past 18 months.

58 These events are summarised in Mangrai, The Shan States and the British Annexation.

59 Crosthwaite, The Pacification of Burma.

60 Proceedings, P/2661, Public Works Department, British Burma, September 1886. Toungoo-Mandalay Railway.

61 Proceedings, P/2885, Public Works Department, Upper Burma, February 1887. Construction of roads, &c., in Upper Burma.

62 Proceedings, P/3355, Public Works Department, October 1889. Letter from Cumming Burma-China Railway and relationship to administering the Shan States.

63 On “dacoits,” see Keck, British Burma in the New Century, 1895–1918, 167–91.

64 Proceedings, P/3359, Foreign Department, Burma, December 1889. Lieutenant Daly’s proposed cold weather operations in 1889–90.

65 Proceedings, P/3579, Public Works Department, Burma, August 1890. Preliminary report on the Shan Hills Railway Survey.

66 Proceedings, P/3579, Public Works Department, Burma, September 1890. Shan Hills Railway Survey.

67 For examples of these agricultural experiments, see Proceedings, P/4046, Political Department, Burma, September 1892. Weekly reports by Hildebrand and Scott, plus an order on slavery among Kachin; Proceedings, P/4485, Revenue and Agricultural Department, Burma, January 1894. Review of the report on the Revenue Administration of Burma, 1892–3; Rangoon Gazette, 15 October 1892.

68 For biographies of Scott, see Mitton, Scott of the Shan Hills; Marshall, The Trouser People. Scott also published regularly in a number of newspapers and journals in Britain throughout his career, including St. James’s Gazette and Archibald Colquhoun’s United Empire. See, for just a few examples, St. James’s Gazette, 14 January 1886; St. James’s Gazette, 26 February 1886; Scott, “Burma the Cinderella”. On Scott’s expedition to the Wa States, see Proceedings, P/4280, Political Department, Burma, August 1893. Confidential: Report on an Expedition to Manglun and the Wild Wa country by J.G. Scott.

69 On Scott’s involvement with the Burma-China Boundary Commission, as well as a summary of the border dispute, see Woodman, The Making of Burma, 455–517.

70 This was in response to the Viceroy of India’s argument that the line was not tenable because shipping goods to and from China would not prove remunerative in the long term. Rangoon Gazette, 2 December 1893; Rangoon Gazette, 9 December 1893.

71 Proceedings, P/4483, Public Works Department, Burma, September 1894. On the Mandalay-Kunlon Railway.

72 Rangoon Gazette, 26 October 1895.

73 Rangoon Gazette, 7 December 1895. On the plans for Maymyo, see Proceedings, P/4884, Public Works Department, Burma, 1896. Hill Station. On the Gokteik Viaduct, see From Steelton to Mandalay.

74 Rangoon Gazette, 4 August 1893.

75 Rangoon Gazette, 25 November 1893.

76 According to the Rangoon Gazette, “the main inducements offered are the free use of land and of State surveys, the provision of rolling stock and the maintenance of new lines by the main line administrations, the carriage of stores and materials over the State lines at favourable rates, and assistance from the main lines’ earnings towards ensuring a 4 per cent dividend.” Rangoon Gazette, 23 September 1893. For the full terms of the Government of India’s proposals, see Rangoon Gazette, 30 September 1893.

77 Rangoon Gazette, 30 September 1893.

78 For a history of the Rothschilds investments in Indian railways, see Sweeney, “Indian Railroading”. On the Burma Ruby Mines, see Turrell, “Conquest and Concession”.

79 Quoted in Silverstein, “Politics and Railroads in Burma and India,” 20.

80 William Strang Steel and Co. and Finlay, Muir and Co. had, once again, attempted to purchase the Burma State Railways in the early 1890s but were rebuffed by Lord Kimberley in the Indian government as well as the local government in Burma. Rangoon Gazette, 4 August 1893.

81 Rangoon Gazette, 17 July 1896.

82 The railways, for example, transported a negligible amount of the colony’s timber and only from about one fifth to one third of the colony’s exported rice. On the capital returns of Burma’s railway system during this period, see Shein, Burma’s Transport and Foreign Trade in Relation to the Economic Development of the Country, 67–72.

83 Rangoon Gazette, 11 April 1904.

84 The colonial government took over from the Burma Railways Company on 1 January 1929. See Rangoon Gazette, 24 December 1928. For commentary on the takeover, much of which mirrored the conversations that occurred in the 1890s, see Rangoon Gazette, 28 March 1927.

85 The Bawdwin mine in the Northern Shan States, for example, became one of the worlds leading suppliers of silver, lead, and zinc by the 1920s, a fact that would not have been possible without the construction of the Northern Shan States railway. Although Chinese miners occupied the site since as early as the fifteenth century, western capitalists – led by Herbert Hoover – “discovered” the site at the turn of the twentieth century and began large-scale industrial operations prior to World War One. See Baillargeon, “A Burmese Wonderland,” 43–61.

86 On the legacies of Burma’s colonial railway system in the post-colonial and contemporary world, see Stubbs, “Railways in Shan State”.