Myanmar Modern History

By | January 23, 2022

Mongol invasion

The Toung dynasty

In 1287 the kingdom of Pagan falls under the Tartar or Mongol hordes of Kublai Khan, who invade Burma from the Yunnan region of China.

Previously, in 1277 the Burmese had attacked the Mongol vassal state of Kaungai and they sent a first expedition of Tartars who defeated the Shes pagans in a battle described by Marco Polo in the Book of Wonders.

Six years later, Kublai Khan’s forces took Pagan and King Narathihapate fled to Bassein, present-day Pathein. From there the king tried to sign an agreement with the Mongols that would establish a Chinese protectorate in Pagan, but was poisoned in 1287 by one of his sons on his way to seal the agreement in Pagan. Another son of the former king, Kyawswa, ascended the throne in Pagan. but in reality, more than a puppet king of the Mongols, he became practically a governor of a province of the Chinese Empire.

According to physicscat, the third Toung monarch, Bayinnaung (1551 – 1581), Tabinshwehti’s brother-in-law, succeeded in establishing a more or less unified state of some power. Between 1556 and 1559, he took the northern region from the Thais to Bhamo and from the east to Luang Prabang (Laos) and Chiang Mai (Thailand), a city that would remain a vassal of the Burmese until the end of the 18th century.

King Thalun moved the capital in 1635 from Pegu to Ava, near Mandalay, resulting in commercial and diplomatic isolation from the Burmese court. From the end of the 17th century, mountain tribes of different ethnic groups frequently plundered the central plain of the country.

Dynasties

Pyu

It existed in the Central Plain from the first centuries of this Era. Its first capital, until the 5th century, was Beikhtano near Magwe]], followed by Hanlin (3rd – 9th century and Thayekhittaya, near Pyay, until the 10th century.

Mon

Emerged around the Ayeyarwady delta, to expand south to Thailand and Cambodia. From the first centuries of the Ristiana era until the 10th its capital was Thaton and until the 16th, Hanthawady.

Burmese

It appears in the middle of the 9th century from the foothills of the Himalayas. Their capitals were: Bagan, Sagaing, Inwa, Taungoo, Prome (Pyay) ([[Toung Dynasty, 16th century), Shwebo (18th century), Konbaung (18th-19th century), Mandalay (19th century).

Arakan

He reigned on the west coast, in present-day Rakhine in three different periods: Dhannavati, from centuries before ne and the fourth century. Vesali, from the middle of the 4th century to the middle of the 8th century. Mrauk U, between 1430 and 1785.

Shan

Between 1364 and 1555, with capital in Ava.

Wars with the British Empire

At the beginning of the 19th century, the province of Arakan, on the border with Bengal, started an independence movement that suffocated the Burmese leader Baha Mandula in the territory of the current Indian state of Assam, which led to the intervention of the English and the outbreak of the First War. Anglo-Burmese.

This conflict lasted between 1824 and 1826 and made it easier for the British to control the areas of Arakan and Tenasserim, on both sides of the Yangon Delta.

In 1852 the Second Anglo-Burmese War occurred and resulted in the annexation by the English of the rest of the delta]]. Finally, in 1885 Mandalay also fell into the clutches of the British Empire, which was taking over the entire country after using pretexts based on false attacks by the Burmese army on its troops.

Colonial period

With the conquest of the entire country, Myanmar was baptized Burma by the invaders and became part of British India. The colonial authorities imported thousands of workers from the Indian subcontinent, most of whom settled in the Yangon and Delta area and whose descendants can be seen today in the same constituency.

In the thirty years of the twentieth century to the heat of the pro- independence nationalism Indian began to emerge in Burma moves anticolonial such as Young Buddhists Association, and in 1937 the British were forced to create a colonial administration to Burma, as they called it, separate from India.

The Second World War

In the years before the outbreak of World War II, Burma had already become the world’s leading rice exporter, with 3 million tons per year. At the same time, out of the nationalist movement had emerged the Burmese Independence Army (BIA), which supported the Japanese invasion in 1942.

Faced with the Japanese advance, the Anglo-Indian and Chinese troops had to withdraw quickly to their respective territories and Japan declared Burma’s independence, while sponsoring the creation of the Burmese National Army (BNA) under the leadership of Bogyoke Aung San., father of independence and of the Nobel Peace Prize arrested many years later by the military government.

However, this movement quickly turned against the Japanese and morphed into the Anti-Fascist League of People’s Freedom.

Myanmar Modern History