BOOKS OF THE DAY
The Burmese
AMONG the virtues of Dr. Hall's book is timeliness ; there are many people who want to know more about Burma. Nevertheless, it would be wrong to expect anything here that has peculiar relevance to contemporary discussions between that country and Britain. Its theme is the attempts of European powers to establish commercial and diplomatic relations with the Kings of Burma so long as this seemed possible, and finally the British decision that the Burmese power must be ended. In all except the finale, the record is of failures—in the earlier case because the European agents were, with some conspicuous exceptions, a sorry lot, though their courage in facing discomforts and personal insults that they could not oppose compels respect ; in the later because they were in conflict with the expansionist policies of kings, some of whom were afflicted by inherited madness. The final harvest of this long diplomacy was effectively nothing. Has this any relevance for today? A major conclusion from this latest narrative is how little Burmese thought and institutions were affected by contact with the West before our own day. The Christian missions had a modest success, mainly among the Karens, but the stream of Burmese life was not deflected by foreign huckstering with profiteering kings. The Burmese official class in narrative after narrative covering four cen- turies appears to learn nothing • and one wonders if anywhere in the world rulers so overestimated themselves and so underestimated the powers of the West as Alaungpaya and his peers.
But the Burmese that we know are, in fact, new Burmese. The westernisation of Burma has gone at an astounding rate within a single generation. They have mastered our language ; they think many of our thoughts ; they successfully operated some of our social and political institutions. They were quoted in the early twenties of this century as showing ability to make the reformed constitution a success. A new race of leaders has grown up, and the surviving statesmen of the early Reform days are generally discredited. But this appreciation of good, honest administration is a warrant of hopeful anticipation.
Unreliability in the keeping of agreements is the theme of chapter after chapter of this book, but Dr. Hall's defence of the Burmese attitude is sound enough. He has many stories to tell of maltreat- ment, but he gives equally authentic examples of Burmese for- bearance and generosity. This is not a history of Burma but the story of the European powers' attempts to establish themselves. Hence this unreliability is much more in the centre of the picture than it is in Sir Arthur Phayre's sober narrative or in the more fully informed, sometimes brilliant and always adventurous History of Burma by 1Cir. Geoffrey Harvey. Dr. Hall's witnesses are the disappointed seekers of benefits. A corrective is needed which is hard to come by. A history of Burma reflecting the judgements of the Burmese people does not exist. The first move towards this
is the digesting and interpreting of the great mass of inscriptions collected by the University of Rangoon to which Dr. Hall refers. Burmese records written on palm leaf have been short-lived ; the chronicles are sometimes good reading, but the accepted critical analysis is still far off. For the last century or so there are some British records, but almost inevitably these miss the details that would reconstruct for us the life and thought of the past. There is nothing so impartial or informed on Burma's past and present as Coupland's valuable contribution to the unravelling of the Indian tangle. The situation in Burma is no doubt simpler. Prejudices
on both sides are less deep-rooted; there is that fascination that Burma has had for most Englishmen who have lived there for any length of time.
But the book is more than a record of failures and a warning to negotiators. Many of the early stories that Dr. Hall quotes are picturesque ; some are exciting. His quotations, for instance, from Hickock's translation of Cxsar Frederique's story, taken from Hakluyt, shine of their own light. Frederique's sober condemnation of Burma might be extended in a modern application. " There might be great store of Sugar made in the Country, for that they have abundance of Canes, but they give them to Elephants to eate, and the people consume great store for food, and many more do they consume in vaine things." Dalhousie's letters, as Dr. Hall's earlier edition of them showed, are still alive. The book is good value even as a restricted anthology of travel literature.
D. J. SLoss.
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