HISTORY
POST-COLONIAL BURMA
300
1866
Mindon’s sons
conspire against
the heir apparent –
beheading him in the
palace – prompting
Mindon to pick Thibaw,
who showed no
interest in the throne,
as his successor.1885
The Third Anglo–
Burmese War results
in the end of the
Burmese monarchy,
as Britain conquers
Mandalay, sending
Thibaw and his family
into exile in India.1886
Burma becomes
an administrative
province of British-
ruled India, with its
capital at Rangoon;
it takes several years
for the British to
successfully suppress
local resistance.1920
Students across
Burma strike in
protest against the
new University Act,
seen as helping to
perpetuate colonial
rule; the strike is
celebrated today by
National Day.led by U Saw, took three. (U Saw was Burma’s prime minister between
1939 and 1942, and was exiled to Uganda for the rest of WWII for se-
cretly communicating with the Japanese following a failed attempt to
gain British agreement to Burmese home rule.) The remaining 69 seats
were split between ethnic minorities, including four seats for the Anglo-
Burman community.
On 19 July 1947, the 32-year-old Aung San and six aides were gunned
down in a plot ascribed to U Saw. Some speculate that the military was
involved, due to Aung San’s plans to demilitarise the government. Appar-
ently U Saw thought he’d walk into the prime minister’s role with Aung
San gone; instead he took the noose, when the British had him hanged
for the murders in 1948.U Nu & Early Wo e s
While Myanmar mourned the death of a hero, Prime Minister Attlee
and Aung San’s protégé, U Nu, signed an agreement for the transfer
of power in October 1947. On 4 January 1948, at an auspicious middle-
of-the-night hour, Burma became independent and left the British
Commonwealth.MIXED FEELINGS ABOUT THE TATMADAW‘Born of the people and one with the people’: that’s how former Senior General Than
Shwe describes Myanmar’s army, the Tatmadaw. Other commentators, including the
academic and former diplomat Andrew Selth, author of Burma’s Armed Forces: Power
Without Glory, call it a ‘state within a state’.
From a small and disunited force at the time of independence, the army has grown to
nearly half a million soldiers. It takes care of its troops and their dependants by provid-
ing subsidised housing and access to special schools and hospitals. The military also
owns two giant corporations – the Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings (UMEH) and
Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC) – whose dealings extend into nearly every cor-
ner of the economy.
Small wonder that for many families, having a son (it’s rarely a daughter, although
there are some roles for women in the army) who is a solider results in much apprecia-
tion for the fi nancial security it brings. Many other people in Myanmar live in fear of the
army, but there are others who continue to respect the institution for the role it origi-
nally played in securing independence for the nation.
Summing up such divided feelings is none other than Aung San Suu Kyi who, in an
interview for the Financial Times said, 'I was brought up to be fond of the military, to
believe that everybody in military uniform was, in some way or other, my father’s son.
This is not something that you can just get rid of. It stays with you.'As many as
250,000 people
of Indian and
Chinese descent
left Burma in the
1960s. Anti-
Chinese riots in
Yangon in 1967
also resulted
in hundreds of
Chinese deaths.