The British “Pacification” of Burma: Order Without Meaning

Abstract

One of the most frequently made remarks concerning British colonialism, both in print and in informal settings, has been the British role in bringing “law and order” to the colonies. Although serious scholarship has successfully questioned this assertion for some areas of the world, particularly India, for Burma, very little has been done. The reasons for proposing that Britain brought law, and especially order to Burma seem to stem from at least two factors. First, the study of Burmese law in the West is at best in its infancy, despite recent efforts by Burmese historians. Second, and more importantly, historians by and large have tended to ignore Burmese criteria for defining order, and have therefore misinterpreted as simple lawlessness what were on many important occasions traditional forms of expressing dissent and symptoms of social dysfunction, as well as cultural and psychological ambivalence of identity, especially amongst certain new classes created by colonialism itself. Thus what often appeared on the surface as order after so-called “pacification” and in general throughout the colonial period is an incomplete picture, for it was almost certainly as well, if not more so, the political, military, and psychological inability of the Burmese to present a united front against a technologically superior power. But because the entire colonial period cannot be dealt with here—although I suspect it would only further support the major thesis of this essay—and because the British concept of “pacification” (and as a result the literature on the subject) had established the intellectual framework and parameters for evaluating the subsequent colonial and post-independence periods, I feel it is adequate to have centered my arguments around the so-called period of “pacification” only. I intend to approach this topic by first describing briefly what we might call indigenous methods of pacification, contrast it to the general pacification policies and methods pursued by the British, observe the significance of the differences, and then conclude by showing how the coup of 1962 could be interpreted more as a resurrection than a true revolution.