Warring Societies of Pre-Colonial Southeast Asia_ Local Cultures of Conflict Within a Regional Context

Warring Societies of Pre-colonial Southeast Asia

has observed, “Ayutthaya required skilled technicians, new military
strategies, and fortifications able to withstand the new artillery.”^44
In terms of how warfare looked, how it was fought, and how it was un-
derstood on the ground, it is necessary to ask if the kind of rural warfare
that local warriors brought with them to royal campaigning was comple-
mented by additional resources, technologies, and soldiers supplied by
the court. Although the answer to this question is certainly affirmative,
this does not argue against the overall thesis of the present examination.
For much of the pre-colonial period, the Burmese court isolated certain
kinds of military technology to specialists drawn from and formed out
of foreign war captives. Captive communities of Portuguese and other
Europeans and Eurasians became the hereditary artillerymen of the
Burmese court, supplemented for specific campaigns with hired foreign
gunners (and not by recruiting and training indigenous gunners).^45 Other
captives, such as captured Mons in the 1740–1756 civil war in Burma,
Shans captured in border conflicts afterward, and Manipuris taken in
1759 and after were also formed into units that specialized in certain
kinds of weapons or function.^46 From the last half of the eighteenth cen-
tury, for example, much of the court’s cavalry were drawn from Manipur,
formed into what Europeans referred to as the Cathay Horse. On the
other hand, we also see from the late eighteenth century the formation of
regular regiments of the royal army, some of them drawn from amongst

44. Florentino Rodao, “The Castillians Discover Siam: Changing Visions and Self-
    discovery”, Journal of the Siam Society 95 (2007): 8.


45. Victor B. Lieberman, Burmese Administrative Cycles: Anarchy and Conquest, c. 1580–
    1760 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984): 126; Wil O. Dijk, Seventeenth-
    Century Burma and the Dutch East India Company, 1634–1680 (Singapore: National
    University of Singapore Press, 2006): 153; Michael W. Charney, “Arakan, Min
    Yazagyi, and the Portuguese: the Relationship Between the Growth of Arakanese
    Imperial Power and Portuguese Mercenaries on the Fringe of Mainland Southeast
    Asia 1517–1617” (Masters thesis, Ohio University, 1993); Rev. Father Sangermano,
    A Description of the Burmese Empire the Burmese Empire Compiled Chiefly from Native
    Documents, William Tandy (tr.) (Rome: Joseph Salviucci & Son, 1833): 52, 76.


46. Ù Tin, Myan-ma-mìn Ok-chok-pon sa-dàn (Rangoon: Superintendent, Government
    Printing and Stationery, Burma. 1931–1933): 3.19; Burma Gazetteer: Kyaukse
    District, vol. A, (Rangoon: Superintendent, Government Printing and Stationery,
    1925): 32; J. P. Hardiman (comp.), Burma Gazetteer: Lower Chindwin District,
    Volume A (Rangoon: Superintendent of Government Printing and Stationery,
    1912): 156.