Many historical causes have been used to explain the why and, more recently, the how, of European imperialism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Historical investigation has moved from arguments about the necessity for Great Power Status, to Marxism's focus on the Western Europe's need for new markets both as suppliers of raw materials and purchasers of finished products, to postmodernism's emphasis on the hugely varied experiences of the colonised, in an attempt to explain the multiple forms of resistance and identity that have been found in twentieth century resistance to colonialism. Equally important as these theories, however, is the effect that colonial rule had in shaping the post-colonial existence of states that gained independence from colonial rule.
There is comparatively little written or known about Burma's colonial past (in the UK at least); apart from the occasional news item about Aung San Suu Kyi, it is out of sight and out of mind. Compared with its neighbour India, and despite sharing many similarities in terms of the effect of British colonial rule in both India and Sri Lanka, Burma barely enters the consciousness.

The British colonial intervention in Burma began in earnest in the nineteenth century, initially as an outgrowth of concern for the security of India's eastern border in Bengal. As the nineteenth century progressed, however, Burma became more important to the British. The potential of Burmese raw materials became established, including its cotton trade with China and its teak and mineral wealth. The possibility of an overland trade route to the supposed wealth of a massive internal Chinese market became increasingly important, in view of the threat of the French to achieve a similar overland route through newly-acquired Vietnam. While trade through the East India Company provided much of the primary impetus, attempts at political hegemony arrived as a corollary. D.R. SarDesai points out that the nineteenth century in the Burmese court was a site of continued internal and external struggle. While the British attempted to subordinate the Burmese monarchy to the level of the subordinate Indian rajahs, whose semi-autonomous states were subject to British dominance, successive Burmese monarchs attempted to maintain the difficult and sometimes fatal balancing act of asserting their independence from Britain and keeping the hardliners within their court satisfied.

The nineteenth century was the scene for three Anglo-Burma wars. The first (1824-26) which Britain won using its Indian army, led to the Treaty of Yandobo, by which the provinces of Arakan and Tenasserim were ceded to Britain, a British resident was placed at the court in Rangoon and a £1 million indemnity was paid by Burma to Britain. As a result of the territorial foothold, Britain was to develop rice cultivation from the 1830's in Arakan, with the new port of Moulmein in Tenasserim being used to export Burmese teak and rice around the empire. The second war took place in 1852 over the increasing export of goods from Yangon, which had become an important trading link to British India. Tension between Britain and Burma had been growing throughout the 1840's: King Therawaddy had declared a government monopoly over teak, and British merchants were complaining about Burmese taxes and exporting bullion in contravention of the Yandobo treaty. The military intervention, when it came, ended in the annexation of Pegu with the effect of landlocking Burma. At the same time, Therawaddy was replaced by hardliners headed by new monarch Mindon Min, with the British taking advantage of the situation by advancing their newly acquired border 50 miles, to include the teak forests of Toungou. The last straw came during the period of colonial expansion in the 1880's. Over the course of 15 days in November 1885, the British captured Mandalay, gave King Thebaw under an hour to pack and exiled him and his family to Ratnagiri in Western India, an experience captured in Amitav Ghosh's excellent novel The Glass Palace. In short, Burma was annexed, although it took 5 years of 'pacification' and 30,000 men to accomplish this fully.

What happened next follows a pattern familiar to any student of colonialism in India. Vast amounts of land were brought under rice cultivation, integrating the Burmese agricultural economy with the world market through massive increases in rice exports. The gains, however, went to the British firms and Indian moneylenders as crops and land were mortgaged at exorbitant interest rates; land alienation, prohibited under Burmese law swiftly followed causing a "tremendous insecurity and restlessness" that "pervaded the peasants" (Sardesai, 1997, p. 176). Oil, zinc, tin, lead and teak were extracted and exported by new railroads and shipping with the capital and labour being mostly provided from British and Indian sources. The effect of this commercialisation of the economy was most keenly felt during the worldwide depression in the 1930's when rice prices dropped to a third of previous levels leading to an increase in land alienation, unemployment (by the end of the 1930's, Indian moneylenders (Chettiars) owned ¼ of the land in the rice delta) and rises in the crime rate. Rebellion, however, was quickly suppressed. The revolt by a Buddhist monk, Saya Sen in the 1930's, calling for the restoration of the Burmese monarchy was put down over 5 years and Saya Sen was executed.

In the leadership and administration of Burma, there was a preference for Indian and tribal minority Karens, many of whom converted to Christianity at the expense of Burmans, in classic divide and rule tactics. (Sri Lanka is perhaps the best example of this under colonial rule; the majority Sinhalese population were overlooked in the British preference for Tamil administrators contributing greatly to the tension that has pervaded Sri Lanka since.) The Karens also formed a part of the British Army in Burma. The Burman majority was excluded from political power until 1935, when the Government of India Act granted provincial autonomy to Burma. Burma was split in two on ethnic grounds between the lowlands and the hill areas, giving rise to many of the ethnic divides that have continued in Burma's post-colonial history.

The early twentieth century Burmese response to colonialism was a revival of Buddhist sanghas (associations) that provided education and also a meeting place for growing nationalism, which built into a political movement under the General Council of Buddhist Associations. Student activism occurred and Marxism flourished in its traditional form and also in a strain much influenced by Buddhism. Political parties, the Sinyetha and Thakin being the most well known, were formed and came to power in the elections following the 1935 devolution.

In a move mirroring that of the Indian National Congress, the political parties refused to support Britain's unilateral declaration of war against Germany on behalf of India and Burma in 1939, and were, predictably, arrested. However, World War Two brought changes: occupation by Japan and the rise of the Japanese trained Burma Independence Army, which grew to 23,000, were followed by general revolt in 1945. The British withdrawal from Burma during the Second World War is infamous for the abandonment of the Indian immigrants in am everyone-for-themselves free-for-all, as British and Indians alike attempted to flee to India and the destruction of much of the infrastructure of Burma. Full independence was achieved on the 4th of January 1948. However, as a result of the effects of colonial rule, the transition was not smooth. The Karen National Union rejected the new state out of fears of political domination by the Burman majority and a Karen revolt followed, armied by those who had fought for the British.

While the causes of colonial rule are contested, the effects are unarguable: the distortion and destruction of traditional bases of power and their subordination to first British and then Nationalist goals, the alienation of many of the population from their land, and divide and rule tactics leading to increased tension and division within Burma's population.

* The majority of the history contained in this piece is taken from D.R. SarDesai, South East Asia: Past and Present 4th Edition (Basingstoke, 1997), which provides an overview of Burma's history in comparison with Thailand and Vietnam, and http://asiatours.net/burma/info/history03.html.