Colonial Wars: How Britain Annexed Burma in the 19th Century

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

The reasons for the Anglo-Burmese War were essentially the same as those of the Opium Wars. Burmese officials disdained British subjects, considered them and insulted them in every possible way. Naturally, the British could not leave this without a response.

At the beginning of 1852, the Governor-General of India, Lord Dalhousie, wrote to London that the government of India, that is, his own, could not. Simply put, it was a sanction to resolve issues by force. Already on March 15, 1852, the same Lord Dalhousie sent an ultimatum to the King of Burma, and on April 14, British troops stormed Rangoon.

The Burmese, however, were not going to surrender so easily to the British, and in the same Rangoon stubborn street battles unfolded, the epicenter of which was in the vicinity of the luxurious Shwedagon Pagoda, famous for its golden domes. However, in the end, Burmese troops were driven out of the capital and retreated north. In December of the same 1852, Dalhousie officially notified the King of Burma that he intended to annex the province of Pegu (Lower Burma), and if he was foolish enough to object to this, the British would seize the whole country.

On January 20, 1853, Pegu Province officially came under British rule and became part of British India. This was the end of that short war, although armed clashes between Burmese and English soldiers broke out until the end of the 19th century.

Among the officers who arrived in Burma in search of military glory was young Garnet Walsley (1833 - 1913) - he was appointed a few months after the annexation, so he was late for official hostilities, much to his chagrin. The Walsley family was poor and could not afford to acquire an officer's patent for their son, however, his father and grandfather had well-deserved military careers behind them, so they asked for the young man before the Duke of Wellington himself, and he promoted the young man to an officer at the age of 18.

Arriving in Burma and learning that the war, in general, was over, the young man was seriously upset, however, as subsequent events showed, he was clearly saddened ahead of schedule. The king accepted the terms of the British side, but there were many "field commanders" who continued to wage a guerrilla war against the British. The most famous of them was a certain Myat Tun, a successful military leader who managed to inflict a series of painful defeats on the British troops. The British command, in which Myat was already in the liver, prepared a military expedition under the command of Brigadier General Sir John Chip of the Bengal Corps of Engineers to eliminate him. This small detachment of just over a thousand people consisted of approximately equal parts of European soldiers and sepoys.

Although the East India Company army had several regiments of white European soldiers, most of the non-native units in Asia were so-called "Queen's soldiers" -that is, units of the British regular army under the operational control of the Indian government. The officers of the royal regiments, as a rule, looked down on the officers of the troops of the East India Company and emphasized their superiority in every possible way. Garnet Walsley subsequently described this:.

Dressed so gaudy, General Chip's troops set out from Rangoon in early March 1853, river steamers sank, and moved up the Ayeyarwaddy. The journey turned out to be unpleasant - the soldiers huddled on the decks like herring in a barrel, soaked under tropical showers and were constantly raided by huge clouds of mosquitoes. But, as time has shown, these were not the worst things that the British had to meet on the river. Small bamboo rafts floated majestically through the murky waters parallel to the movement of the ships, revealing the bloated, rotting bodies of Myat Tun's enemies tied to them.

A few days later, the British detachment landed on the shore and moved towards the enemy's lair. On the way, the British ran into an ambush, there was a short skirmish, and young Garnet Walsley saw the corpse of an enemy killed in battle for the first time:.

Towards the evening of their first day on the shore, the British set up a bivouac near the stream, to which fighters from the "Madras Sappers" immediately went to make several rafts. On the other side of the stream, the Myat Tun partisans lurked, who, barely seeing the enemy, immediately opened fire. The sounds of gunfire could be heard well in the English camp, and Walsley went to the stream, wanting to test himself and find out how he would feel when he was under enemy fire. Running to the scene, he found such a picture - a group of British missilemen opened fire on the Burmese from their side of the stream, but the oxen, loaded with sapper equipment, were scared to death by the sound of the rockets and rushed scatteringly. Walsley, finding himself in such a mess for the first time, dashed for cover, hiding behind the boxes. The old soldier, who was watching his maneuver, shouted to him, wanting to cheer the young officer:.

For twelve long and grueling days, the British walked through the jungle, stoically fighting mosquitoes and cholera. Finally, they reached the Myat Tun fortress, which was a well fortified village. The order was given to attack, but the sepoys of the 67th Bengal Indigenous Regiment fell to the ground instead of storming the fortification. A furious Walsley, filled with such a youthful fuse, struck one of the Bengali officers as he ran past him. The Sikhs from the 4th Native Regiment, on the contrary, demonstrated enviable stamina and discipline - having conquered their state, the British soberly judged that it would be unheard of foolishness to scatter such valuable personnel, and began to actively recruit the warlike Sikhs into the army of British India. According to Walsley, Sikhs.

Yet the first attack on the Myat Tun position failed. When Chip gave the order to prepare for the assault, Walsley and another young officer stepped forward and volunteered to lead the soldiers into the assault. Later, the young officer wrote in his diary:. Years later, when Garnett Walsley becomes a merited veteran with gray hair, he will be asked if he was afraid when he went into battle. He answered:.

Gathering soldiers around him, Walsley led them to storm the enemy fortifications - the Burmese fired at the advancing British and poured curses at them. Walsley was literally bursting with delight, but soon he was forced to return to sinful earth, and - in the literal sense of the word. Leading the soldier on the assault, he did not notice a pit-trap, neatly covered from above, and plunged into it right on the run. The blow was strong, and the young officer briefly lost consciousness, and when he regained consciousness and managed to get out, he found that the attack was drowned, and the soldiers returned to their original positions. The failed triumphant had no choice but to drag his head back to his own people.

When they began to prepare a second assault, he again volunteered to lead it. Much later, forty years later, he recalled that day:.

This time the attack was successful, but Garnet Walsley was not destined to get out of it unharmed - an enemy bullet hit him in the left thigh and went right through, forcing the young officer to fall to the ground. Realizing that he could no longer get up, Walsley continued, sitting on the ground, encouraging his soldiers, shouting and swinging his saber. Soon the village was taken. This battle was the last in Burma for Walsley - he was sent home to heal the wound, and next time he will take part in hostilities already in Crimea, but that will be another story.