BY SIR CHARLES CROSTHWAITE, K.C.S.I. CHIEF COMMISSIONER OF BURMA, 1887-1890 MEMBER OF THE COUNCIL OF INDIA, ETC., ETC. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS   LONDON EDWARD ARNOLD 1912 ( All rights reserved )...

Upper Burma was invaded and annexed in the year 1885. The work hardly occupied a month. In the following year the subjugation of the people by the destruction of all formidable armed resistance was effected; lastly, the pacification of the country, including the establishment of an orderly government with peace and security, occupied four years. As head of the civil administration, I was mainly concerned with this last phase. It would be a difficult task to give a continuous history of the milit

Nothing has been said as yet about roads and communications, the most powerful of all aids in pacifying a disturbed country. The plains of India in most provinces lend themselves to military operations, and for the greater part of the year an army can move about at will. In Burma the long and heavy rains, the numerous streams, and the extensive and dense forests and jungles, make campaigning very difficult. The country, in Sir George White's words, quoted before, "is one huge military obstacle."

The beginning of 1888 saw the civil administration in a position to wage a systematic campaign against all disturbers of the peace. Lower Burma had been reduced almost to its normal condition. The late Mr. Todd Naylor in the Tharrawaddy district had thoroughly extirpated the gangs which had troubled it and brought it to a state of quiet which it had not enjoyed for a very long time. The disarmament of the whole province had been systematically taken in hand; the Village Regulation had become law

The narrative in the last chapter took the history down to the end of June, 1887, when comparative peace had been established in the Southern States. The Northern States up to this time had not come under the influence of the Superintendent at Fort Stedman. The Chief Commissioner had decided that no expedition should be sent into those States until after the rains of 1887, unless it became absolutely necessary for the support of the friendly Sawbwa of Hsipaw. The chief had been able, as has been

It has been told how Mr. Scott was on his way to Mawkmai, when Twet Nga Lu's enterprise caused him to turn his course to Möngnai. He now returned to the original object of his expedition, namely, the expulsion of the Karennis from Mawkmai and the restoration of the Sawbwa Hkun Hmon, whom they had expelled. He reached Mawkmai with the force under Colonel Sartorius on the 16th of May, 1888, and found that the Karennis had not awaited his coming. Mawkmai was occupied, and Sawbwa Hkun Hmon reinstate

The seventeenth chapter told the story of the Sawlapaw expedition, which covered the time from the spring 1888 to the second month of 1889. The western frontier of the province was the scene of equally interesting and much more difficult operations during the same period. When Upper Burma was annexed it is doubtful whether the difficulties, that might arise from the wild tribes which would become our neighbours, received much consideration. The Burmese Government thought very little of raids and