Armed Rural Folkof traditional lowland warrior culture was hardly acceptable. This war-
rior heritage thus became an inconvenient truth in the emerging colonial
context in Upper Burma as the British preferred the Burmans to be passive
cultivators rather than warriors. Burman resistance to British rule had to
be criminalized into dacoity for such reasons as well.
Just as damaging to the historical record has been the impact of na-
tionalist reinterpretations of Burmese reactions to the British conquest.
After World War I, the late 1880s “dacoits” were valorised for their resist-
ance to British rule and, as mentioned above, transformed into Burmese
nationalists. Since the British had put down the pre-colonial court, then
these nationalists must have been fighting for that court or, in some
indigenous historiography, were fighting on behalf of the nation.^23 This
view was created by Burmese nationalists of the interwar period and was
fanned by many of the same men during the Japanese occupation period
through the republication of some of the court’s Sanskrit treatises on war
with cover illustrations that clearly connected the Konbaung Dynasty’s
royal soldiers with the Burma Defence Army soldiers.^24 Vernacular
Burmese historiography during the period of military rule in the country
accepted the models of Sanskrit treatises and the martial culture of the
palace as the core sources for understanding what pre-colonial Burmese
warfare was really like.^25 More recent literature in the West, sympa-
thetic to the Burmese, has only reinforced this view.^26 As “nationalists”
or “patriots”, the rebels have been looped in with more modern forms
of insurgency. Other literature suggests that by pushing state space to
incorporate rural settlements, the British broke the bond that had existed
- For the latter take see Daw Nyi Nyi Myint, Myanma Lut-lab-ye-kyo-ban-hmu
Thamaing Vol. 1 (1885–1895) (Rangoon: Rangoon University, 1988); Pantanaw
Win Thein, “Burning Torch of Nationalism & Patriotism”, Guardian Magazine
16.5 (May 1969): 26–28; Anonymous, “Bo Ottama and His Freedom Fighters”,
Forward 4.10 (1 January 1966): 6–11. - Letwe Thondara, Senanga Vyuha Sit-Thamaing & Vyuha Cakki Pyo (Rangoon:
Hanthawaddy Press, 1943). - See, for example, Maymyo Mo-kyi, Myanma Sit-binnya (Rangoon: Hanthwaddy
Press, 1963); Nat-mauk Boun-kyaw, Shei-ket Myanma Tatmadaw-hmat-mya
(Rangoon: Sarpay Biman, 1965); Myo Myint, “The Literature of War and Tactics
in Pre-Colonial Burma: A Study of Two Eighteenth Century Texts”, (BA Thesis:
Monash University, 1978). - For an account based on English-language newspapers and other reports, which
arguably relies on a state-centred framework, see Terence Blackburn, Executions by
the Half Dozen: Pacification of Burma (New Delhi: APH Publishing, 2011).