A HISTORY OF SOUTH-EAST ASIA

A HISTORY OF

SOUTH-EAST ASIA
BY.

D. G. E, HALL
Professor Emeritus of the History of South-East Asia
University of London

SECOND EDITION

LONDON
MACMILLAN & CO LTD
NEW YORK ST M A R T I N ' S PRESS

1964

PREFACE T O T H E F I R S T E D I T I O N
T H E present work, large and detailed though it may appear to the
reader unfamiliar with the subject, is a bare outline, perilously compressed and oversimplified in many parts. As an introduction to
South-East Asian history, designed as much for the non-specialist
reader as for the student intending to pursue the subject further, its
story is told with as few distracting footnotes as possible. Special care,
however, has been bestowed upon the selection and arrangement of
titles for the bibliography. The available literature, it may be remarked, is immense, running to many thousands of books, articles
and collections of printed documents. For the earlier periods there
are thousands of inscriptions and a great mass of local chronicles still
inadequately explored. For the later periods the contemporary
accounts, documents and memoirs listed in Section III of the bibliography are of quite unusual interest.
So much research work is in progress, by European scholars and,
happily, an ever-increasing number of Asian ones, that it is difficult
to keep pace with the progress of discovery and interpretation over
the whole field. Hence the treatment of many subjects, especially in
the very important pre-European period, must be regarded as provisional only. For instance, Burma's wealth of inscriptionsand she
is incomparably richer in this respect than any other region of SouthEast Asiais likely soon to yield results of no little importance as a
result of the devoted labours of Gordon Luce over many years. These
will certainly lead to modifications in the account of the Pagan period
given here. Then, also, research by both Dutch and Indonesian
scholars during the past twenty years or so is likely to lead to considerable revision of N. J. Krom's version of Old Javanese history. An
attempt has been made here to indicate the importance of C. C. Berg's
recent series of attacks upon accepted notions regarding the story of
Airlangga's division of his kingdom, the reign of Kertanagara and the
early Majapahit period. A final pronouncement on these matters is at
present impossible, and it is well to take into account the prudent
assessment of the situation by J. G. de Casparis in his valuable ' Twintig jaar studie van de oudere geschiedenis van Indonesie'.^
' Orientatie, no. 46, 1954, pp. 638-41.

vi

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

The early chapters of this book owe much to George Coedes's Les
tats hindouises d'Indochine et d'Indonesie, to which the highest tribute
must be paid, not only as a work of rare scholarship but also for presenting for the first time the early history of South-East Asia as a
whole. Previously the history of the individual states had been treated
so much in isolation that the significance of their many parallel developments was hardly realized. The attention drawn to them by Coedes
has been immensely stimulating to thought and research.
The work that has been done by European scholars in the discovery
of South-East Asian history is beyond praise. Krom's monumental
Hindoe-Javaansche Geschiedenis, indeed, takes its place among the great
works of pioneer research. There are^ however, today signs of dissatisfaction on the part of European scholars themselves with their
previous approach to the subject, which, it is felt, has been too much
influenced by certain preconceptions inherent in their own training
and outlook. De Casparis applies the epithet 'Europe-centric' to.this
approach, and contends that it shows itself clearly in F. W. Stapel's
ponderous five-volume Geschiedenis van Nederlandsch Indie, in which
the 'Hindu period' of Indonesian history is treated as if it were a sort
of prelude or introduction to the history of Dutch activities. Similarly,
Indian writers, who largely through the work of the French and the
Dutch have come to discover 'Greater India', may be accused oi an
India-centric approach. The revolutionary change that has come over
South-East Asia since the Second World War has inevitably led to
much re-examination of the older conceptions of its history, and to
attempts at a reorientation of outlook.
It is in this respect that Berg's work assumes special significance.
For not only has he made a lifelong study of Indonesian historical
literature, but he has laid down also a method of approach to its interpretation which, though admittedly imposing a hea^y task on the
historian, is the only one which he believes is capable of giving trustworthy results. He explains it as the need to see a people's historywriting as an element in its culture pattern, which is not isolated,
either structurally or in its evolutionary and dynamic aspect, from the
remainder. The literatures of the peoples of South-East Asia abound
in writings which are either in chronicle form or connected with
historical events. Their number is legion; some are of great length.
Relatively few have as yet been used by historical writers. The great
majority still await exploration and comparative study. The significance of Berg's challenge therefore extends far beyond his own field
of research.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

Vll

This book is in the main based upon lecture courses delivered to

university classes in London, Rangoon and Singapore. Parts of it have
been used in lectures delivered in the University of Indonesia at
Djakarta and the Chulalongkorn University at Bangkok. It was as a
result of the experience gained vs^hile conducting these classes, and
through contacts with students and teachers in Squth-East Asia, that
the author came to realize the need for some such book as the present
one. It represents, therefore, a survey of work already published in,
one form or another. He has, however, incorporated in several chaptersthose dealing with Arakan, the background to Singapore and
the reign of Bodawpaya of Burmathe results of his own recent researches, not as yet published.
'
The completely objective history has never been produced, nor are
one man's knowledge and judgement adequate for a fully satisfactory
treatment of so vast a subject as the present one. What is attempted
here is first and foremost to present South-East Asia historically as an
area worthy of consideration in its own right, and not merely, when
brought into contact with China, India or the West. Its history cannot
be safely viewed irom any other perspective until seen from its pwn.
With the available literature for its present study this is not at all
easy, particularly in the case of the period after 1511, the history of
which in European writings tends to .be rather that of European activities in South-East Asia than of South-East Asia itself. T o many of
themthough not allide Casparis's epithet 'Europe-centric' applies
with special force.
T h e extent to which this book manages to achieve its declared object
is a matter over which opinions may differ, but the writer hopes that
the sources of its inspirationthe delight he has had in his long
association with Squth-East Asian students, and the friendship and
kindness they have always shown himhave made it possible for him
to treat the history of their peoples with sympathy and understanding,
and to convey some sense of the intellectual stimulus and illumination'
to be derived from its study.
The spelling of proper names has presented many problems.
Various systems of romanization have been used by European writers.
These are discussed on pages 99-104 of the author's section on South-,:
East Asia in C. H. Philips's Handbook of Oriental History (Royal Hist.
Soc, 1951). Writers of history have tended to vary these according
to taste, and usually with the object of avoiding the excessive use of
^ Notable exceptions are the histories of Burma by A. P. Phayre and G. E. Harvey
respectively, and W. A. R. Wood's History of Siam.

via

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

diacritical signs. Moreover, there is no uniformity of practice as between the different states today, so that in a work such as this absolute
consistency in the representation of sounds 'is impossible. Here the
method followed has been to simplify spellings and avoid inconsistencies wherever possible. The result may iaot please the language
scholar, but it has seemed the best way out of the difficulty. The
following points are a useful guide to pronunciation:
(i) Vowels have Italian values; consonants generally English ones.
(ii) In Burmese words a consonant is aspirated by placing ' h ' before
it; in Tai words by placing the ' h ' after it. But since this may
cause confusion in the cases o f t ' and ' p ' , the method used here
is to show the aspirated forms by the use of an apostrophe after
these letters, except in the case of the word 'Thailand', which is
the form officially adopted by that country.
(iii) Special cases.' g ' is hard, but the Burmese 'gy' is pronounced ' j ' ;
initial 'ky' is pronounced ' c h ' ;
final ' n ' in Burmese represents a nazalization of the preceding
vowel;
i n i t i a l ' n g ' i s pronounced like the
final'ng'in'sing';
' s ' in Sanskrit words, e.g. Srivijaya, is pronounced ' s h ' ;
' o u ' is normally pronounced 'oo', but in 'Toungoo', an older
form of speUing, it represents 'ow' as in 'plow'.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My special thanks are due to Professor Wl Ph. Coolhaas, Professor C. H.
Philips, Mr. A. H. Christie and Mr. C. D. Cowan, who read portions of my
script before it went to the press, and to Mr. H. R. Klieheberger of the Library
staff of the School of Oriental and African.Studies for checking the entries in
the bibliography. Dr. Coolhaas's detailed notes on my treatment of Dutch
activities were of much help, and if we were unable to agree on a number of
matters, I am none the less deeply grateful to him for his help.
I must also thank the various institutions and individuals who have kindly
allowed me to reproduce illustrations of which they hold the copyright. Their
names are recorded in the list of illustrations on pp. xiii-xv. To Mr.
A. H. Christie 1 am specially indebted for permission to use his map of the
Prehistory of Eastern Asia, and much help in the preparation of other maps.
My wife has given unstinted help in the preparation of the typescript, and
in proof-reading and indexing; and even more in the patience she has shown
during many months when all my spare time was devoted to the writing of this
book.
D.G.E.H.

PREFACE T O T H E SECOND E D I T I O N
M Y very grateful thanks must be expressed to Dr. J. G. de Casparis,
Professor C. D. Cowaln and Dr. O. W. Wblters for the valuable help
they have given me in preparing the new niaterial for this edition. The
exciting reconstruction of the early history of Sumatra provided by
Dr. Wolters comes from his as yet unpublished woxk Early Indonesian
Commerce and the Origins of ^rivijaya^ v/hich. throws entirely fresh
light upon South-East Asian proto-history.
'D.G.E.H:

CONTENTS
PAGE

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

viii

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

ix
XV

LIST OF MAPS

'xvii

ABBREVIATIONS

xviii
PART I

T O T H E BEGINNIIsfG OF T H E SIXTEENTH CENTURY

CHAPTER

1.

T H E PEOPLING OF SOUTH-EAST ASIA

2. ; SOUTH-EAST ASIAN PROTO-HISTORY

,J2^

- (a) The spread of Indian influence

(6) The earUest states; Funan, the Lin-yi
(c) The period of the earUest inscriptions
3.

T H ^ ISLAND EMPIRES ( I )

-.

41

^d) The emergence of Srivijaya; the SailendraS

' (5) The greatness and decHne of Srivijaya
4.

T H E ISLAND EMPIRES (2)

63 "

(a) Java to the Mongol invasion of 1293

(Z>) Majapahit, 1293-c. 1520
ft

5.

T H E KHMERS AND ANGKOR .

(a)
{b)
\c)
(</)
6.

96,

The Khmer kingdom of Cambodia to looi

From lOOi to the abandonment of Angkor in 1432
The economic basis of Khmer civihzation
Cambodia from 1432 to the Siamese conquest in 1594

BURMA AND ARAKAN

(a) The pre-Pagan period

' (J) The empire of Pagan, 1044-1287
(c) From the Mongol conquest of Pagan (1287) to the
Shan sack of Ava (1527)

. 1 3 2

CONTENTS

xu

PAGE

CHAPTER

7.
. 8.
9.
10.
11.

T H E T'AIS AND THE KINGDOM OF AYUT'IA

158

T H E KINGDOM OF CHAMPA,

173

ANNAM AND TONGKING

183

MALACCA AND THE SPREAD OF ISLAM

190

205

T H E COMING OF THE EUROPEAN .

PART II
SOUTH-EAST ASIA DURING T H E EARLIER PHASE
OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION
12.

T H E PORTUGUESE AND SPANIARDS IN SOUTH-EAST ASIA

217

(a) The Portuguese

(6) The Spaniards in the PhiUppines
(c) Spanish intervention in Cambodia
13.

BURMA AND THE

CENTURY
.

T'AI
.

KINGDOMS
.
.

IN THE SIXTEENTH
.
.
.
.

238

(a) To 1570
{b) From 1570 to 1599
14.

INDONESIA FROM THE PASSING OF MAJAPAHIT TO THE RISE

OF MATARAM .

1516.
17-

ig.

T H E ZENITH AND DECLINE OF THE V . O . C ,

-255

290

1684-1799

304

T H E MALAY POWERS FROM THE FALL OF MALACCA (151 I )

,TO THE END OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
. .
.

321

SLAM AND THE EUROPEAN POWERS I N THE SEVENTEENTH

CENTURY
.
.
.
.
.
.
'
.
.
.

335

BURMA UNDER THE RESTORED TOUNGOO DYNASTY, 1600-

.'

. 3 5 3

T H E RISE AND FALL OF THE KINGDOM OF MROHAUNG IN

ARAKAN .

21.

(a) The Indonesian States

(b) The Anglo-Dutch assault on the ' ring fence'
{c) The Anglo-Dutch struggle for the spice trade
MATARAM AND THE EXPANSION OF THE V . O . C , 1623-84

1752
20.

366

T H E BEGINNINGS OF THE KONBAUNG DYNASTY IN BURMA,

1752-82

381

CONTENTS

Xlll

CHAPTER

22.

PAGE

A N N A M AND T O N G K I N G , 1620-1820

393

(a) T h e struggle of T r i n h a n d Nguyen, 1620-1777

(b) T h e establishment of t h e Nguyen empire of Cochin
China, Annarfi and Tongking, 1777-1820
23.

T H E K I N G D O M OF LAOS, 1591-1836

24.

SlAM FROM 1688 TO' 1851

..

'.

414

424

PART I I I
T H E PERIOD
25.

O F EUROPEAN

'OF RAFFLES, 1799-1816

'26.

BRITISH

BEGINNINGS

SINGAPORE
'27.

TERRITORIAL

EXPANSION

INDONESIA FROM THE FALL OF THE V . O . e . TO,THE RECALL

IN

."

.'

MALAYA:

.'

BACKGROUND-

. '

T H E STRAITS SETTLEMENTS AND BORNEO, I 786-1867

'.
TO

T H E RESTORED D U T C H

,'

459

' 472

(a) F r o m t h e acquisition of Penang t o t h e Anglo-Dutch

. T r e a t y of 1824
(6) T h e Straits Settlements from 1824 to 1867
(c) Borneo to 1839
(<f) Piracy and t h e work of Raja James Brooke
28.

443

-j
.:

R E G I M E , I N . INDONESIA AND T H E

CULTURE SYSTEM, 1816-48

. .

509

29.

T H E B R I T I S H FORWARD M O V E M E N T I N MALAYA AND BORNEO

521

30.

T H E D U T C H FORWARD M O V E M E N T I N INDONESIA

31.

T H E REIGN

OF BODAWPAYA

." .

AND T H E F I R S T

BURMESE W A R , 1782-1826

ANGLO-

32.

BURMA FROM THE TREATY O F YANDABO T O T H E CREATION

33.

T H E L A S T D A Y S OF THE K O N B A U N G DYNASTY AT M A N -

34.

V I E T N A M AND T H E BEGINNINGS O F F R E N C H EXPANSION I N

OF T H E P R O V I N C E , O F B R I T I S H BURMA, 1826-62

DALAY, 1862-85

.-

I N D O - C H I N A , 1820-70
35.

T H E SECOND

STAGE

C H I N A , I870-1900

.
.

OF F R E N C H

.
.

.
.

EXPANSION

542
, ,

554
571

588
608

IN INDO-

'620

36.

S I A M UNDER M O N G K U T AND CHULALONGKORN, 1851-1910

63d r

37.

B R I T A I N , FRANCE AND T H E SIAMESE QUESTION

643

(a) L u a n g Prabang
(b) T h e Mekong question
(c) Paknam a n d after

'

XIV

CONTENTS

PART IV

NATIONALISM AND THE CHALLENGE TO

EUROPEAN DOMINATION
38.
3940.
41.

PAGE

CHAPTER

667
687
692

T H E PHILIPPINES TO THE E N D OF SPANISH RULE .

T H E RESURGENCE OF SOUTH-EAST ASIA

BRITISH BURMA, I 886-1942 .

T H E DUTCH ' N E W COURSE'' AND NATIONALISM IN INDO-

NESIA, 1900-42

705

42.

FRENCH ADMINISTRATION AND NATIONALISM IN INDOCHINA

.
.
.
.
.

4344-

T H E UNITED STATES AND FiLiPiNo NATIONALISM .

714
721

T H E ECONOMIC ASPECT OF EUROPEAN DOMINATION

735

(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)

British Burma
French Indo-China
The Netherlands Indies
Malaya

SIAM IN TRANSITION,

1910-42

4546.

T H E JAPANESE IMPACT

47-

AFTER THE WAR, 1945-50

(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
(e)
(/)
48.
>

. ,

758
769
784

Malaya
Burma
French Indo-China
Indonesia
Siam
T h e Philippines

General Questions
Vietnam, Cambedia and Laos
Malaya and Singapore
Indonesia
The Union of Burma
Thailand
The Philippines
APPENDIX:
Dynastic
lists. with
governors-general

820

INDEPENDENCE

(a)
(b)
(c)
(d)
(e)
(/)
(g)

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX

governors

and
863
897
931

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
CHANDI

MENDUT

54

Copyright, Tan Tathin Studio, Jogjakarta

CHANDI

MENDUT

(INTERIOR)

.'

54

Copyright, Tan Tathin Studio, Jogjakarta

BURIAL

IMAGE

OF K I N G

AIRLANGGA

F R O M BELAHAI'^

(now in Mojbkerto Museum, Java)

J. B. Walters' Uiigeversmaatschappij
BURIAL

I M A G E ^ O F KERTANAGARA

N.V., Groninge"
80

Photographic Archives of the Koninklijk Instituut vjd Tropen

BALINESE

. 83

TEMPLE

Photographic Archives of the Koninklijk Instituut vjd ^^"t'^'^

Photo, School of Oriental and African Studies, Lond^"
THE

BUDDHA

WITH

SNAKE BACKGROUND

TO H E A D ,

ioo

ANGKOR

Copyright, Musee Guimet, Paris

BANTEAY

SREI:

NORTH

LIBRARY

AND

CENTRAL

103

PRA^^"^

from A. H. Brodrick, Little Vehicle, Hutchinson

RELIEF

F R O M T H E BANTEAY

SREL.

. .

107

109

Copyright, Musee Guimet, Paris

ANGKOR

WAT

from A. H. Brodrick, Little Vehicle, Hutchinson

ANGKOR

THOM:

THE

PINNACLES

OF THE

"5,

BAYON
f

from A. H. Brodrick, Little Vehicle, Hutchinson

TEN-ARMED

BODHISATTAVA,

ANGKOR

Copyright, Musee Guimet, Paris

THE

SORABA

GATE

IN O L D

>38

PAGAN

Union of Burma Ministry of Information photograph

ANANDA

TEMPLE,

118

PAGAN

142

from R, Le May, The Culture of South-East Asia, ^ " ""'' ^"'

KHMER

TOWERS

AT L O P B U R I ,

SIAMTHE

P H R A P<*ANG

SAM

YOT

Photo, R. Bunnag, 1017 Silorn Road, Bangkok

CHAM

DANCER,

C. SEVENTH

CENTURY

;i74

(now in the Tourane Museum)

Copyright, Musee Guimet, Paris
PORTUGUESE

MALACCA

IN THE

SEVENTEENTH

'

214
.

274

Survey Department, Federation of Malaya

TERNATE

'

CENTURY

from Valentijn, Oud en Nieuw Oost Indien

Photo, School of Oriental and African Studies, Lona""

XVI

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE

BATAVIA

IN THE

SEVENTEENTH

CENTURY

306

from Valentijn, Oud en Nieuw Oost Indien

I

SIAMESE

DANCING

336

(from a book on Buddhist cosmology, Ayut'ia c. 1550)

Copyright, National Culture Institute, Bangkok
SEVENTEENTH

CENTURY

AYUT'IA

346

(from La Loubere, Du Royaume de Siam, Paris}. 1691)

Photo, School of Oriental and African Studies, London
KAUNGHMUDAW

PAGODA

NEAR

SAGAING

363

Union of Burma Ministry of Information photograph

MROHAUNG

IN THE

SEVENTEENTH

CENTURY

374

from Maurice Collis, Land of the Great Image, Faber and Faber
GATEWAY

AND A N C I E N T

CITY

WALL

AT

420

KORAT

Photo, E. H. S. Simmonds
RUINS

OF P H R A M O N G K H O N B O P I T ,

429

AYUT'IA

Photo, E. H. S. Simmonds
SIAMESE

SHADOW

PUPPET

Copyright, the National Culture Institute,

THE

ROYAL

BALLET,

PHNOM

PENH,

431

Bangkok

434

CAMBODIA

from A. H. Brodrick, Little Vehicle, Hutchinson

A

RONGGENG

OR D A N C I N G

GIRL

452

from Raffles, History of Java

Photo, School of Oriental and African Studies, London
RECEPTION

OF BRITISH

ENVOY

AT T H E P A L A C E

AT A M A R A P U R A

. "

558

592

from Michael Symes, Mission to Aya, London, 1800

Photo, School of Oriental and African Studies, London
QUEEN'S

GOLDEN

MONASTERY,

MANDALAY

Copyright, Archaeological Department, Union of Burma

THE

SHWE

DAGON

PAGODA,

RANGOON

597

Union of Burma Ministry of Information photograph

THE

GOLDEN

VERANDAH,
RAMA

IV

PALACE,

MANDALAY

MANDALAY
(KING

PALACE

MONGKUT)

OF S I A M

.
.

.
.

603

.
.

606
.

632

from Dr. Malcolm Smith, A Physician at the Court of Siam, Country Life, Ltd.
WAT

BENCHAMA

BOPHIT,

BANGKOK

.^

639

Photo, R. Bunnag, 1017 Silom Road, Bangkok

RADEN

ADJENG

KARTINI

707

Photographic Archives of the Koninklijk Instituut vjd Tropen

{Reproduced by J. Giel)
RICE

CULTIVATION

I N JAVA

746

Photographic Archives of the Koninklijk Instituut vjd Tropen

(Reproduced by P. Salultema)
GENERAL

AUNG

SAN

795

Copyright, Keystone Press Agency, Ltd.

INDEPENDENCE

MONUMENT,

RANGOON

Union of Burma Ministry of Information photograph

797

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PANDIT NEHRU AND U N u

^^^^
PAGE

. .

798

. Copyright, fZeystone Press Agency, Ltd.

BAO D A I AT THE H U E PALACE

Copyright, E.N.A. .
Ho C H I M I N H

..

. 8 0 1

'
. " . . - . . . .

Copyright, E.N.A.
PRESIDENT SUKARNO (with Haji Agus Salim in the b^'^'^g'^'^^)
Picture Post Library

L I S T O F MAPS
PREHISTORY OF EASTERN ASIA

::
.

802

85

'

Copyright, A. H. Christie

SOUTH-EAST ASIA, INDIA AND CHINA

f<icing page 13

(to illustrate early contacts)

PLAN OF THE ANGKOR GROUP

MAINLAND MONARCHIES

T H E SPREAD OF ISLAM

- 1 1 4
. 1 6 2

.192

Adapted from H. J. de Graaf's "Geschiedenis van I^donesie" JV. V. Uitgeverij

W. Van Hoeve^'s-Gravenhage, 1949
T H E LINSCHOTEN M A P , 1599

268

DUTCH EXPANSION IN JAVA

305

35'

^S^

L A LOUBERE'S M A P OF SIAM, 1691

',

{from Du Royaume de Siam)

Photo, School of Oriental and African Studies
T H E FRANCO-SIAMESE QUESTION, 1893

SOUTH-EAST ASIA

at end of volume

ABBREVIATIONS
BEFEO
BKI

Bulletin de I'Ecole Fran9aise d'Extreme Orient (Hanoi).

Bijdragen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor de Taal-Land-en
Volkenkunde ('s-Gravenhage).
BSEI
Bulletin de la Societe des Etudes Indochinoises de Saigon.
BSOAS
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies
(London).
CEFEO
Cahiers de I'Ecole Franfaise d'Extreme Orient (Hanoi).
DNB
Dictionary of National Biography (London).
FEQ
Far Eastern Quarterly (Ithaca, N.Y.).
FES
Far Eastern Survey (New.York).
JA
Journal Asiatique.
J.Am.O.Soc. Journal of the American Oriental Society (Newhaven, Conn.)
JBRS
Journal of the Burma Research Society (Rangoon).
JGIS
Journal of the Greater India Society (Calcutta).
JRAS
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (London).
JRASMB
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Malayan Branch (Singapore).
JSS
Journal of the Siam Society (Bangkok).
RAA
Revue des Arts Asiatiques (Paris).
TBG
Tijdschrift van het Bataviaasch Genootschap van Kunsten en
Wetenschappen (Batavia, now Jakarta).

PART I
TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

CHAPTER I

T H E PEOPLING OF SOUTH-EAST ASIA

is a term which came into general use during the
Second World War to describe the territories of the eastern Asiatic
mainland forming the Indo-Chinese peninsula and the immense archipelago which includes Indonesia'and the Philippines. In using the term
American writers have standardized the form 'Southeast' and have
been followed by Victor PurcelU and E. H. G. Dobby.^ But there
seems to be no valid reason for coining a new form in preference to
either 'South-East' or 'South East', both of which have the sanction of
long usage. The Royal Navy uses the hyphen. During the war SEAC
used the unhyphenated form, but the Mountbatten Report* reverts
to the use of the hyphen; Like all terms applied to a large area for the
sake of convenience, it is open to a,number.of objections. Discussion
of these here, is unnecessary, since our use of the term is dictated
'solely by convenience.
The area with which the present work J s concerned includes the
mainland states of Burma, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, North and South
Vietnam and Malaya together with the two great island groups comprised in the Republic of Indonesia and the Republic of the Philippines.
The Philippines, however, do not come clearly into South-East Asian
history until their conquest by Spain late in the sixteenth century.
And as Spain linked them up closely with Mexico, and the United States
of America acquired them at the end of the nineteenth century, their
part in South-East Asian history was slight, especially after the middle
of the seventeenth century, when Dutch efforts to wrest them from Spain
finally broke down. The rest of this vast area is one upon which from
very early times Chinese and Indian influences have been brought
to bear, and in one part of which, Annam and Cochin China, there was
for many centuries an intense struggle between them for supremacy.
Its cultural history is of marked interest, therefore, especially during
the period of the Middle Ages in Europe, when, under the stimulus
SOUTH-EAST ASIA

' The Chinese in Southeast Asia, 1951.

^ Southeast Asia, 1950.
'' Report-to the Combined Chiefs of Staff by the Supreme Allied Commander
Asia, 1951.

South-East

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. 1

of Indian influences, art and architecture developed to a pitch which

bears comparison with anything the rest of the world can show.
By the end of the Middle Ages, when the Portuguese appeared on
the scene, South-East Asia was divided into two main cultural areas:
one called by the French scholars I'lnde exterieure, where Indian
influences predominated, and the other, consisting of Tongking,
Annam and. Cochin China, where, with the fall of the 'Hinduized'
kingdom of Champa in the fifteenth century, Chinese influences had
the mastery.
The reader must be warned, however, against the insidious tendency
to overstress the part played by the imported cultures and to underrate the importance of the indigenous ones of the area. The use of
such terms as-'Further India', 'Greater India' or 'Little China' is to
be highly deprecated. Even such well-worn terms as 'Indo-China'.
and ' Indonesia' are open to serious objections, since they obscure the
fact that the areas involved are not mere cultural appendages of India
or China but have their own strongly-marked individuality. The art
and architecture which blossomed so gorgeously in Angkor, Pagan,
central Java and the old kingdom of Champa are strangely different
from that of Hindu and Buddhist India. For the real key to its understanding one has to study the indigenous cultures of the peoples who
produced it. And all of them, it must be realized, have developed on
markedly individualistic lines.
Indian influence, which, unlike. Chinese, had no political implications, was, in the process of absorption by the native societies in SouthEast Asia, transformed just as much as, for example, that of ancient
Greece was in its impact upon western Europe. For the peoples who
felt the'stimulus of Indian culture were, as George Coedes puts it^
not 'wild men' but communities with, a.relatively high civilization ot
their own. And even the Vietnamese, who were under Chinese, rule
from I I I B.C. to A.p. 939, and under the flan were subjected to intensive sinization, developed a culture which, while owing an immense
amount to China, nevertheless preserved its own identity, with its
roots going back to a pre-Chinese past.
The main reason for this failure to pay due regard to the indigenous
culture of the peoples of our region is easy to see. Both politically and
culturally, South-East Asia has been overshadowed by India and
China, which were great powers with established civilizations long
before her own historical period begins. And it was only through the
fertilizing impact of their cultures that her jown began to develop and
' Les tats hindouises d'Indochine et djllndonesie, 1948, p. 27.

CH. I

THE PEOPLING OF SOUTH-EAST ASIA

5,

achieve greatness. For obvious reasons also, when European scholars

became aware of it their attention was concentrated upon rulers,
Courts and temples, where the external influences were strongest^
while their approach had necessarily to be made in the first instance
through Chinese or Sanskrit writings.
The evidence of the life of the common people has been much
harder to come by, and so far all too little has been discovered. What
does exist, however, points indubitably to the fact that in the so-called
'Hinduized' states the great mass of the people was for long either
untouched by Indian culture or in absorbing it changed it by bringing
it into line with indigenous ideas and practices. Thus the structure of
society was largely unaffected by Indian influences. The caste system,
which is fundamental to Hinduism, has had notably little influence,
and woman has largely rhaintained the high place accorded her before
the earliest impact of Indian culture, a far higher one than she has
ever occupied in India during recorded history. Moreover, after the
introduction of Hinduism and Buddhism the religious ideas and
practices of earlier times persisted with immense vitality, and in coming
to terms with them both religions were profoundly changed.
South-East Asia today is an anthropologist's paradise. In its mounr
tains and jungles live the remnants of a great variety of peoples representing early stages of its ethnological history: pigmy Negritos living
as primitive nomads, peoples akin to the Australian aborigines, and
others that would appear to be Indonesians in. more backward stages
of development. There has obviously been a great deal of inteYmixture between the earlier inhabitants and later comers. The whole
area, indeed, has been described as a chaos of races and languages.
Traces of extremely early human types have been discovered in
Java. Eugene Dubois's Pithecanthropus erectus axi& von Kpenigswald's
even earlier Homo modjokertensis belong to the early pleistocene age,
and were once thought to form a race apart in human history. The
late pleistocene age has yielded eleven skulls, found at Ngaiidong in
the" Solo valley, which are of a more advanced human type, but with a
reasonably close affinity to the pithecanthropoid type. Then there are
the Wadjak skulls of late pleistocene or post-pleistocene age, which
appear to be related to proto-australoid man.
Homo modjokertensis and Pithecanthropus erectus have been showri
to be closely related with Sinanthropus or Peking Man, and their artefacts, like his, are akin to those of the Soan culture of north-west India
and the Anyathian of Burma. On the basis of the evidence so far
examined two hypotheses of outstanding interest have been formulated:

TO THE^BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

'

PT. I

(a) that the mongoloid peoples ^re ultimately derived from this
stem, and {b) that a clear line may be traced linking Pithecanthropus
erectus through Homo soloensis (i.e. the Ngandong skulls) with Homo
australicus. If this should turn out to be true, {a) the mongoloid features
that are so widespread today over our area, were not, as was once
thought, introduced for the first time by neolithic or bronze-age
immigrants; {b) a branch of Homo sapiens must have evolved in SouthEast Asia, since there is no evidence of its having done so in Australia;
and (c) the theory that the mesolithic Veddoid; peoples were the
original inhabitants of South-East Asia is exploded.
The traces of a mesolithic culture are widespread. It has been
named Bacsono-Hoabinhian from the regions where the greatest
number of its artefacts has been found, the provinces of Bacson and
Hoabinh in Tongking. The distinguishing feature of its stone implements is that they are worked on one side only. With them have been
found bone utensils and pottery. The human remains have been
interpreted to indicate a dark-skinned race of small stature and of
Australoid-Veddoid type. Traces of a Melanesoid type have been
found in Indo-China. Artefacts of these peoples have been found in
northern Annam, Luang Prabang, Siam, Malaya, and on the east coast
of Sumatra. Anthropologists have classified these people as Veddoid
after the Vedda tribes of Ceylon, and assign to this group the Senoi
and Sakai hill-tribes of Malaya, and other backward peoples of south
Celebes and on the Engano and Mentawei Islands off the west coast
of Sumatra.
They practised ritual cannibalism. The men were hunters, fishermen
and collectors; the women in some cases used a primitive mattock for
cultivating the soil. Canoes made out of hoUowed-out tree trunks were
in use. There has been much speculation; as to the possible connection
of this culture with the neolithic, which succeeded it. Von HeineGeldern, for instance, has ventured the theory, challenged by other
scholars,; that the neolithic oval-axe culture found in -northern Burma,
among the Nagas of Assam, in Cambodia and in the eastern islands of
the Archipelago, is connected with the use of a plank-built canoe, and
that both represent a development of mesQlithic culture.
Two other forms of celt come from the neolithic period: the
shouldered axe found in many places from the Ganges to Japan, but
not south of a line drawn through the middle of the Malay Peninsula,
and, most widespread of all, the rectangular axe, found in the river
valleys of the Hoang-Ho, Yangtse, Mekong, Salween, Irrawaddy and
Brahmaputra, as well as throughout Indonesia. As it is found in its

CH. I

- THE PEOPLING OF SOUTH-EAST ASIA

purest form on the Malay Peninsula and in middle and south Sumatra,
this has been taken to have been the route by which it reached
Indonesia.
Discussion has centred round the possible relationship between the
. shouldered axe and the rectangular axe, and the connection of both
with the spread of the Austro-Asiatic languages. Von Heine-Geldern
identifies the shouldered axe with the culture of the Mon-Khmer
peoples of the mainland, and thinks that the neolithic peoples who
brought the rectangular axe culture spread also the Austronesian
languages. Van Heekeren, on the other hand, rightly warns against
identifying culture waves or migrations with the spread of a language,
and points to the lack of archaeological confirmation for von HeineGeldern's theories.^
The distribution of the rectangular axe culture does coincide roughly
with that of the Austronesian languages, and it is noteworthy that its
influences are found not only throughout Indonesia but also in places
as far apart as Madagascar in the west and Easter Island in the east.
It is of great interest also because of the great developments in the arts
achieved by the immigrants bringing it. They were Malays, or Indonesians, as some scholars prefer to call them. Both terms are open to
objection;' Indonesian' suggests the boundaries of the present Republic,
while to many readers 'Malay' suggests the population of Malaya or
the coastal Malays in many parts of the Archipelago. Actually, however,
ever since F. and P. E. Sarasin made their study of the racial composition
of Indonesia^ the word 'Malay' has had a wide ethnic significance.
Their migration into South-East Asia occupied several centuries before
the beginning of the Christian era, and although opinion today does
not favour the Sarasins' theory of two main waves, the first, of ' ProtoMalays' bringing an advanced neolithic culture, and the second, of
'Deutero-Malays' bringing a bronze-iron one, it is still impossible to
be precise about what happened. Hendrik Kern, the pioneer of research
into the origin of the Indonesian languages, thought that the liguistic
evidence pointed to the region of Champa, Cochin-China and Cambodia
as the birthplace of the neolithic culture. Von Heine-Geldern traces
the original home of the people, who introduced it, farther back to the
region in western China where the great rivers of east and south-east
Asia have their origin. Their tools show them to have been excellent
wood-workers. They decorated their wooden houses with beautiful
carving, produced pottery and are thought to have made woven fabrics.
' H. R. van Heekeren, The Stone Age of Indonesia, 1957, p. 131.
' P. E. Sarasin, Reisen in Celebes, 1905.

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

There seems to be evidence also that prior to their arrival in the islands
they knew how to cultivate rice.^
There is no evidence in support of the theory that metal-culture was
introduced by a new wave of immigrants. Duyvendak, indeed, not
only denies categorically that there were ,two migrations of Malay
peoples into South-East Asia, but asserts that a knowledge of metals
was brought to elements of the coastal population through trading
contacts with foreigners. The culture originated in China and Tongking in about 300 B.C., and in the Chinese Ch'ien Han Shu there is
authentic evidence of the coastal barter through which it came to the
lands to the south. ^
This culture cannot be strictly characterized as bronze since iron
was also worked at the same time. The name Dong-Son has been applied
to it from the village in Tongking where the most striking evidence of
it has been found. Bronze work of a very high order was produced,
a notable feature of which were the kettle-drums of various types and
sizes used for ritual purposes throughout the whole area of South-East
Asia.* The peoples of this culture developed high skill in navigation
and boat-building; they were hardy seafarers with some knowledge of
astronomy. They travelled far and wide as merchants, and it is interesting to note that some of their trade names for weights and measures are
still used in India and China.
Another marked characteristic was the association of megaliths with
their religion. These monuments comprise images, usually of ancestors, grinding stones with a magical significance, troughs in which
skulls were preserved, menhirs which may have been phallic symbols,
dolmens at burial places, burial chambers of long flat stones and terrace graves. Von Hein^-Geldern thinks' that, while most of this culture
belongs to the bronze-iron age, - some goes back ' to the neolithic
period. The earlier he characterizes as monumental and symbolic,
the later as more graphic and ornamental. Van Heekeren, however,
has pointed out that while neolithic megaliths' of this kind occur
in eastern Polynesia none has yet been discovered in Indonesia or the
Indo-Chinese peninsula.*
Thus when South-East Asia felt the earliest impact of Indian
culture, it possessed a civilization of its own. Coedes^ sums up its
' van Heekeren, op. cit., p. 131.
^ J. Ph. Duyvendak, Inleiding tot de Ethnologic van de Indonesische Archipel, 1946.
' H. R. van Heekeren, 'Bronzen Keteltrommen', Orientatie, no. 46, Jan. 1954, pp.
615-25. See also Bibliography, iv, s.v. Goloubew, von Heine-Geldem, van der Hoop,
L^vy, Mansuy, and Tweedie.
* The Stone Age of Indonesia, p. 131.
' Op. cit., pp. 25-6.

CH. I

THE PEOPLING OF SOUTH-EAST ASIA

characteristics thus: on the material side (i) the cultivation of irrigated

ricefields, (ii) the domestication of the ox and buffalo, (iii) a rudimentary use of metals, and (iv) skill in navigation; on its social side
(i) the importance of woman and of descent by the maternal line, and
(ii) the Organization resulting from irrigated cultivation; on its religious
side (i) animism, (ii) the worship of ancestors and of the god of the
soil, (iii) the location of shrines on high places, (iv) burial in jars or at
dolmensi and (v) a mythology imbued with a cosmological dualism of
mountain versus sea, winged beings versus water beings, men of the
mountain versus men of the sea-coast. Furthermore, its separate
languages have shown a remarkable faculty for derivation by way of
prefixes, suffixes and infixes. Peoples more or less impregnated with
this culture, though of much racial diversity, were to be found over
most of the area, living mainly in coastal districts and along river
valleys. Further inland, and in the mountains, were others, in various
degreesof backwardness.
Krom, from his study of Javanese civilization before the (joming of
Indian influence, adds to the list given by Coedes (i) the wayang, or
puppet shadow theatre, (ii) the gamelan orchestra, and (iii) batik work.^
In such a vast area there were naturally local diversities of culture. It
is significant, however, that the Chinese would seem to have had some
idea of the cultural unity of the region when they applied to its various
peoples and languages the name K'un-lun, if, indeed, those scholars
are correct who attribute so wide a meaning to the term.^ It may be
of some significance that I Tsing, writing in the late seventh century,
says that the term was applied to the people from the south who first
came to Tongking and Canton, presumably as traders. Thus it was
probably originally used for the maritime .peoples of the coast of IndoChina, and later extended to the population of Indonesia, i.e. all the
Malay-type peoples.
' .
There has been much scholarly discussion about the possible relationship between this culture and that of pre-Aryan India in attempts
to explain the evidence of tools and language indicating cultural
elements common to both regions. One theory is of ethnic waves,
originating in Indo-China or the islands, flowing into India before the
arrival of the Aryans. Another is of an exodus of aboriginal inhabitants
from India to South-East Asia resulting from the arrival of either the
Dravidians or the Aryans. They are, of course, purely speculative.
Pater Schmidt applied the term 'Austric' to the two great groups of
Hindoe-Javaansch Geschiedetiis, pp. 47-8,
^ Coedfes, op. cit., pp. 26-7, discusses this point.

lO

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

Austro-Asiatic and Austronesian languages found in the area stretching

from the Himalayas to Easter Island and from Madagascar to Hawaii
when attempting to demonstrate their underlying unity. Their relations
with the pre-Dravidian Munda languages of India, now for the most
part lost, were first traced by the Austrian philologist Franz Felix
Adalbert Kuhn, who died in 1886. Then Schmidt, having shown the
lexicographic relationship between the Austric and the Munda groups,
went on to formulate the theory that the peoples speaking them were
mutually related, culturally and anthropologically. So far, however,
solid evidence of this is completely lacking, and the tendency today is
to view with suspicion any attempt to identify culture waves or migrations of peoples with the spread of a language. One must bear in mind
that in the greater part of India as in South-East Asia, the monsoons
have exerted a dominant influence over human life: one would expectto find many features common to the way of life in both areas. It may
well be that the East Asian background of the early South-East Asian
cultures is the more important.
When Indian culture began to exert its influence the great prehistoric migrations had ended. In the islands the Indonesians, who
had established themselves there in neolithic times, formed the basis
of the populations. They were of two kinds: first of all those who had
preserved to some extent purity of race, such as the Bataks of Sumatra,
the Dyaks of Borneo, and the Alfurs of Celebes and the Moluccas;
and in the second place the Malays of the coasts, of many varieties and
mixtures, Malays of Sumatra, Sundanese, Javanese, Madurese and
Balinese, peoples impregnated more or less with Austro-Asiatic culture,
and referred to by the Chinese as K'un-lun and by the Indians as
Dvipantara, the'people, of the islands'.
On the mainland there were the Chains in what is today central and
southern Annam, the Khmers in the Mekong delta, Cambodia and the
middle Mekong region, the Mons, closely related to the Khmers, in
the Menam valley,and what is now called Lower Burma, the Pyus,
possibly the advance guard of the Tibeto-Burmans, in the Irrawaddy
and Sittang basins, and the Malays of the Peninsula. Thus many, but
not all, of the principal ethnic groups occupied to a large extent their
present habitat.
The chief historical changes were to take place on the mainland.
Thus we shall see the Chams ousted from central Annam by the Vietnamese, the Mons of the Menam overcome by the T'ais and those of
the Irrawaddy by the Burmese. The Pyus disappear completely. The
' push to the south' which characterizes the 'prehistoric period is to be

CH. I

THE PEOPLING OF SOUTH-EAST ASIA

-tj

seen again in the historic period. It explains the actual grouping in

Indo-China and to some extent in the islands today. Generally speaking, though there are notable exceptions, the migrations proceed by
the narrow valleys of the rivers starting from China and the borders of
Tibet, drawn on by the attraction of deltas and the sea.
But they are not migrations in the usually accepted meaning of the
term. They are very slow, long-drawn-out movements, with much
assimilation of conquerors and conquered, in the course of which the
older inhabitants adopt the language and customs of the immigrants.
There is rarely annihilation or eviction, hardly ever the displacement
of a great mass of people. Thus the basic element of the population
of the Indo-Chinese mainland today remains Indonesian. The history
of the T'ais in late historical times offers an excellent example of what
took place elsewhere in other periods. As Coed^s puts it: 'a warlike
"aristocracy succeeded in imposing its language which made oil-stains
among the other ethnic groups'.^
' Op. cit., p. 30.

CHAPTER 2

SOUTH-EAST ASIAN PROTO-HISTORY

(a) The spread of Indian influence
T H E term ' Hinduization' has been generally applied by scholars to
the impact of Indian culture upon South-East Asia. Ccedes goes so far
as to term the states which developed under its influence les etats
hindouises, in spite of the fact that Buddhism played an important role
in the movement, and Theravada Buddhism^ ultimately became the
dominant faith of Burma and Arakan, the Tai states and Cambodia.
And whereas Hinduism disappeared before Islam in the Malay .Peninsula and Indonesia at the end of the European Middle Ages, Buddhism
continued to receive the staunch allegiance of the countries it had
conquered.
The application of so extended a meaning to the word ' H i n d u ' is
not vnthout its dangers, since in the ordinary use of the terms ' Hindu'
and 'Buddhist' there is a clear distinction based upon real points of
difference. In the history of the two religions in South-East Asia,
however, it is not always easy to draw a clear dividing line between
them, especially in the case of Tantrayana Buddhism, which showed
marked Hindu features, and even at times, as in the cult of SivaBuddha in thirteenth-century Java, defies exact classification. Moreover, even in states where Hinayana Buddhism^ prevailed, Brahmans
played an important ceremonial part, especially at Court, and still do
so in Burma, Siam and Cambodia, though themselves strikingly
different from their counterparts in India. In the,present survey some
equivocation in the use of the term 'Hindu' may-be unavoidable. The
context, however, will, it is hoped, prevent any confusion of meaning.
Relations between the western ports of South-East Asia and India
may go back well into the prehistoric period. Traders and shippers
from both sides were involved; and, as we find at a much later date,
groups of traders from particular places; would reappear annually at
the ports with which regular relations had been built up and would
reside there during the trading season dictated by the monsoons. We
' These peoples today object to the term 'Hinayana' (Little Vehicle); they call their
Buddhism 'Theravada', the Buddhism of the Theras (Teachers).

CH. 2

SOUTH-EAST ASIAN PROTO-HISTORY

13

must, however, beware of using the term ' colonies' to describe these
settlements, or reading backwards the conditions of a later age when
there is evidence that al certain emporia a nucleus of traders would
remain behind during the wet monsoon to act as agents for the others
and particularly to collect local produce pending the return of the
trading fleets. Furthermore, since the myth has grown up that the
trading relations in the first instance, and the import of Indian culture
in the second, have to be explained in terms of Indian enterprise alone,
the point must be clearly made that the Malays (Indonesians) were par
excellence a sea-going people, and indications are not wanting that they
resorted to the ports of India and Ceylon every bit as much as the
shipmen of India and Ceylon to the ports "of South-East Asia.
Exact information about the lands to the east of the Indian Ocean is
conspicuously absent from Indian literature. There are purely incidental
allusions, almost impossible to interpret, in Sanskrit classical verse and
Tamil court poetry.^ The Rdmdyana, for instance, speaks of Yavadvipa,
the island of gold and silver, and the Vayu Purana, while spelling the
word Yamadvipa, mentions Malayadvipa also. Sir Roland Braddell, one
of the most penetrating students of the historical geography of the area,
equates Malayadvipa with Sumatra, while Yavadvipa is interpreted by
scholars as a regional name for Java-cum-Sumatra.^ The point of special
interest here lie in the prominence given to Sumatra, for in the light of
the inuch ampler early Chinese aeeounts of South-East Asia it would
seem that the earliest developments in Indian-Indonesian trade were
Swith'Sumatra, whose south-eastern ports also pioneered the earliest
"trading voyages direct to China across the South China Sea.
Other early place-names applied in the Rdmdyana to parts of SouthEast Asia were Suvarnadvipa, Golden Island or Peninsula, and
Suvarnabhumi, Land of Gold. The Buddhist Jdtakas, or birth-stories
of the Buddha, which enshrine folk tales of early India, often tell of
voyages to Suvarnabhumi. The name also appears in other texts,
together with a few other names applied by Indians to places in South. East Asia; but the only information to be drawn from all these references
put together is that in India there was a vague idea of an eldorado eastwards across the ocean. They tell us precisely nothing about the spread
of Indian culture in that direction. A statement in Kautilya's Arthasdstra, recommending a king to people an old or a new country by seizing
. the territory of another or deporting the surplus population of his own,
has been taken to indicate an early wave of Indian immigrants to
' Paul Wheatley, The Golden Khersonese, Kuala Lumpur, 1961, chap. I l l , pp. 176-84.
;' ' Ibid., pp. 178-9.

ffilN

GAL

ANDAMAN &

CEYLON

NICOBAftv,

OCEAN

SOUTH-EAST ASIA, I N D I A A N D C
(To iHustrate early contacts)
MILES

1000
=1

14

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT.' I

South-East Asia before the Christian era. . But so imaginative an

interpretation looks Hke a flight of nationaHstic fancy rather than sober
historical thinking; for if one thing js certain it is that Indian culture
was not brought to South-East Asia by waves of immigrants.^
Indigenous South-East Asian writings dealing with this early period
can provide little help: those extant are recent recensions, none of
which is more than two hundred years old. They tell us what dynasties
of a much later period wanted people to believe about ancient times,
and in particular about their own splendid ancestry. Chinese sources,
while invaluable for the light they shed upon the political geography
and trade of our area, even though extremely difficult to interpret,
contain disappointingly slight information about the spread of Indian
influence. They do indeed give us our earliest glimpse of a Hindu
court, that of Funan the precursor of Cambodia, and they mention the
story of the Brahman Kaundinya, whose arrival on the scene they place
in the first century A.D. They also mention states in the Malay Peninsula with apparently Sanskrit names. But before the appearance of the
earliest Sanskrit inscriptions/at the end of the fourth century or later
the Indian contact with the countries of South-East Asia is hidden in
dense mist.^
Geographical texts of European classical antiquity have been searched
for evidence on the subject. They come from the period when the
growth of wealth and luxury in the Roman Empire was leading to increasing demands for oriental produjcts. The disturbed conditions on
its Parthian frontier in the first century B.C. caused Rome to encourage
voyages of discovery in the Erythraean Sea (Indian Ocean), and in
due course words such as Chryse (gold) and Argyre (silver) began to
be applied to the lands beyond India. But it was a long time before
writers knew anything of the countries beyond the Ganges and the
island of Ceylon. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, compiled in about
A.D. 70-1, is the earliest text to mention trade between Indian ports
;and the countries further east. It is a manual of Graeco-Egyptian trade
and navigation in the Indian Ocean of anonynious authorship. The
'compiler had not personally been further east than the Malabar Coast,
but had picked up a little information from eastern traders he met there.
After mentioning three great ports in western IndiaBroach, Cranganore, and Porakadto which Greek ships made voyages, the author
says that native ships go from these to three more on the eastern side
beyond the Gulf of Manaarnamely Kaveripatnam, Pondicherry, and
^ T h e passage is today generally taken to refer to settlements in uncultivated areas of
India.
' In Funan, however, the earliest case may.ppssibly be attributed to the third century.

CH. 2

SOUTH-EAST ASIAN PROTO-HISTORY

15

one that he calls 'Sopatma', which Indian research identifies with

Markanum. From these in turn great ships called kolandia trade with
the territories at the mouth of the Ganges, and among others with the
island of Chryse, which produces tortoise-shell. Farther east than this
they do not go. Chryse, 'gold land', was a name later applied to a part
of Furma, and as ^gofrf isfand' to Sumatra. And as tortoise-sfie/f was a
product of the Archipelago, Dutch scholars are inclined to think that
this may be a vague teference to the trade of that region. Dionysius
Periegetes, a second-century Greek writer, mentions the 'gold island'
but adds nothing new to the Periplus.
What appears at first to be more definite information comes from
the Geographia of the Alexandrine geographer Ptolemy, who wrote in
A.D. 165 or possibly earlier, and certainly used much earlier sources.
.Recent research, however, surveyed by Paul Wheatley,i shows that in
its present form the work was compiled by a Byzantine author of the
tenth-or eleventh century on principles laid down by Ptolemy, and
incorporated parts only of the original book. The extant manuscript
maps, Wheatley tells us, were not drawn until the latter end of the
thirteenth century.^ Book VII of the work deals with the 'Golden
Khersonese', once identified with Lower Burma, but now with the
Malay Peninsula. The map of Trans-Gangetic India that can be drawn
from the data contained in the Ptolemaic tables of Latitudes and Longitudes shows the major features of mainland South-East Asia in a
clearly recognizable form, and Wheatley is convinced that in drawing
his own map 'Ptolemy' used authentic information.^ But the question
IS, to wfiiofi period of fiistoricai' geography does fii's account appfy ?
And Wheatley's answer is, to a very much later period than the second
century; so far as the Malay Peninsula is concerned. There are equal
difficulties when one attempts to make sense of his account of the
Archipelago. One has therefore to admit that for evidence concerning
the diffusion of Indian culture in South-East Asia these works of early
European geographers provide very little more substance than Indian
classical writings.
In the late nineteenth century, when European scholars began the
intensive study of the antiquities of South-East Asia and began to
realize the extent of the influence of Sanskrit culture upon the religion,
art and architecture of the area, the tendency was to regard these things
as the results of a movement of Indian expansion eastwards. Attempts
therefore were directed towards explaining it in terms of Indian
^ Op. cii.^ chap. X and appendices i, 2, and 3.
" Ibid., p . 138.
' Ibid., p . 145.

16

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

conditions; South-East Asia was at the receiving: end and played a passive
role. In due course Indian scholars; joined''lii'the fascinating chase for
information, and made important c(^ntributions to the literature of the^
subject. Their work shows an enthusiasm which partly reflects the
excitement of the quest, but largely also the nationalistic ardour that
was sweeping through the educated classes of India as the twentieth'
century dawned and proceeded upon its troubled way. Radhakumud
Mookerji's Indian Shipping: A History of Seaborne Trade and Maritime
Activity of the Indians from the Earliest Times, published in 1912,
illustrates to what flights of fantasy the enthusiast could ascend. In his
address before the University of Leiden in March 1946 entitled ' T h e
Problem of the Hindu Colonization of Indonesia' Professor F. D. K.
Bosch referred to Mookerji's vision of huge fleets of Indian adventurers,
like Drakes and Cavendishes, crossing the sea to Farther India and
Indonesia, founding kingdoms, establishing coloriies, expanding the
trade of their mother-country, and in due course bringing over talented
artists from Bengal, Kalinga and Gujerat to erect matchless monuments.^
One interesting feature of India's national movement was the foundation in 1926 of the Greater India Society, whose name is a sufficient
indication of the nature of its approach to South-East Asian studies.
Its members saw the countries of South-East Asia as 'ancient Indian
colonies'; indeed, R. C. Majumdar used the term in the titles of
scholarly works on the early history of Champa and Java, and described
the art and architecture of Java and Cambodia as derived from India
and fostered by the Indian rulers of these colonies. The Society has
indeed stimulated a great deal of scholarly research work, but it has
also created much misunderstanding; and the unhistorical myths to
which it has given wide currency have shown an amazing power of
persistence. Even Siam is claimed as an Indian colony by Phanindra
Nath Bose,^ and in the Preface to his book he comments on 'the extent
and greatness of that Greater India, which had been established outside
India by the brave and adventurous sons of India in the days of yore.
In a Foreword to the Book Dr P. C. Bagchi writes, ' T h e history of the
Indian colonization of Indo-China and the Ma'lay Peninsula forms a
glorious chapter to the history of India.'
When, however, Indian history wa.s searched for/an explanation of
this wave of emigration the theories put forward were sadly out of tune
with a glorious movement of expansion. Two were based upon the
* Selected Studies in Indonesian Archaeology, 1961, p. 5.
* The Indian Colony of Siam, Lahore, 1927.

CH. 2

SOUTH-EAST ASIAN PROTO-HISTORY

17

assumption that it arose out of disturbed conditions in India, which

caused large numbers of refugees to seek new homes across the sea.
The one attributed it to the bloody conquest of Kalinga by the Maurya
emperor Asoka in the third century B.C., which, it was suggested, plight
have provoked such an exodus. But there is no evidence of such a
movement, and Indian influence does not begin to show itself in SouthEast Asia until several centuries later." The other attributed it to the
pressure of the Kushana invasions of India in the first century A.D. The
Yueh-chi nomads, who gained control over Bactria shortly after loo B.C.,^
began some time later to expand southwards under Kushan control.
In A.D. 50 there was a Kushan king in the Kabul valley. Soon afterwards they dominated the Punjab and were pressing towards Gujerat
and the Gangetic plain. Their leader became the Emperor Kanishka in
.A.D. 78, and from his capital at Peshawar ruled much of north India.
Were there any evidence to prove that his conquests caused an emigration of Indians overseas, there would be no difficulty on the score of
the time factor. But there is none whatever. Others again have assumed
an exodus of Indians in consequence of the campaigns of Samudragupta,
which, though unlikely, falls in the period of earliest Indian influence in
South-East Asia.
In Les tats hindouises Coedes has formulated an ingenious hypothesis to explain what he thinks took place.^ The spread of Indian
culture, he believes, came as a result of an intensification of Indian
trade with South-East Asia early in the Christian era. He does not support the theory of a mass emigration of fugitives from India, but sees
Indian trading settlements arising in South-East Asian ports, through
which the arrival was facilitated of more cultivated elements, priests
and literati, able to disseminate Indian culture. The contact between
the Mediterranean world and India, he explains, followed by the foundation of the Maurya and Kushan empires on the one hand, and the
rise of the Seleucid and Roman empires on the other, led to an important
trade in luxury articles between East and West. During the two
centuries preceding the Christian era India lost her principal source
for the import of the precious metals when the movements of the
nomads cut the Bactrian route to Siberia. Hence in the first century
A.D. she sought to import them from the Roman Empire. But the grave
effects of this upon the imperial economy caused the Emperor Vespasian
(69-79) to stop the flight of precious metals, and Indians had to seek
for them elsewhere. They turned, Ccedes thinks, to the Golden
' Before 100 B.C. if A.D. 78 is the date of Kanishka's accession.
^ Op. cit., pp. 41-4. In Les peuples de la Peninsule Indochinoise, 1962, chap, ii, Coedes
has elaborated and corrected his views.

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I '

.Lhersonese and the Sanskrit names, Sucti as Suvarnabhumi and

Suvarnadvipa, which they gave to parts of South-East Asia, indicate
that to Indians they were famous chiefly for gold.
This theory, like those previously mentioned, suffers from the defect
of being based upon the assumption that the initiative in establishing
relations between India and South-East Asia was taken by Indians, and.
not by South-East Asians. On this point van Leur's scornful comment,' T o what extent Indonesian shipping played an active.role is a question,;
never raised!'^ is highly apposite; indeed, as we shall see later in this
chapter it was the Sumatran Malays who blazed the trail in developing,
the all-sea trade-route to China, and such evidence as we have suggests
that Malay seamen and ships played every bit as important a part as
Indian in the trade of South-East Asia with India and Ceylon.^ And
the same is true of the diffusion of Indian culture. Van Leur also rejected,
the notion that trade and the trader were disseminators of culture: most.
traders, he said, belonged to the lower social groups, and ships' .crews
were often composed of African negroes and slaves. Such people, he
argues, could not have been,'administrators of ritual, magical consecration and disseminators of rationalistic, bureaucratic written scholarship
and wisdom'.^ That was the work of Brahmans. Nevertheless, it was
through the operation of trade that the vital contacts were made, he
points out; but they were made at court level and arose out of the
dominant position rulers and nobles held in foreign trade. The Brahmanization of South India, he reminds us, was going on at ,the beginning
of the Christian era, and South India was, more than any other part of
the subcontinent, the trading region for Indonesia. Thus the princes
of Indonesia were aware of what was happening, and copied those of
Dravidian India by inviting the Brahman priesthood to their courts.
The transmission was at court level and was the work of Brahmans.
Here we come to the very heart of the matter, the nature of the
cultural elements transmitted from India to South-East Asia. Ccedes
,enumerates four; (a) a conception of royalty characterized by Hindu
or Buddhist cults, (6) literary expression by means of the Sanskrit
language, (c) a mythology taken from the Rdtndyana and Mahdhhdrata,
the Purdnas and other Sanskrit^ texts containing a nucleus' of royal
tradition and the traditional genealogies of royal familiies of the Ganges
region, and {d) the observance of the Dharmasastrds, the sacred law of
Hinduism, and in particular the Manava Dharmasastra or 'Laws of
Manu'.* It is thus something to do with rulers and courts, not peoples;
^ J. C. van Leur, Indonesian Trade and Society, The'Hague, Bandung, 1955, p . 92.
* Ibid., pp. 98-9.
' Ibid., p . 99.
^ * Les ^tats hindouises, p . 36.

CH. 2

SOUTH-EAST ASIAN PROTO-HISTORY

19

the Indian transmitters were court functionaries, not missionaries.

More often than not it was a case of an ambitious ruler, anxious to
copy the grander style of the Indian courts, employing Brahmans to
consecrate him as a* god-king in accordance with the ideas and ritual
of the Indian classics. .It was essential, when forcing other rulers into
a state of vassalage, to have consecration of this sort whereby the worship
was established of a linga as the king's sacred personality and he himself
was identified with Siva.
Van Leur's brilliant refutation of the Indian colonization theory was
of special value on its positive side for the emphasis he laid upon the
role of the Brahman. The most thorough examination, however, of
the whole question of the transmission of Indian culture was made by
Bosch in the Leiden address already referred to. Both men were confining their survey'to Indonesia, but much of what they say applies
equally to the other 'hinduized' states of South-East Asia. Bosch gives
careful consideration to the two immigration theories propounded by
Dutch scholars; he labels them respectively the 'ksatriya-hypothesis'
and the 'vaisya-hypothesis'. The former, which was propounded by
Professor C. C. Berg, saw Indian culture introduced as a result of the
activities of Indian warrior immigrants, who played the part of the
robber barons described in the Javanese Panji cycle of narratives,
marrying native women and breeding a kraton society of mixed blood.
And Moens took the idea a stage further by seeking to link the accession
of new Indonesian dynasties with the fall of dynasties in India followed
by the (hypothetical) emigration of their scions to the Archipelago.
The latter, expounded by Professor N. J. Krom, was to the effect that
Indian penetration was peaceful, and that it began with traders who
settled and married native women, thereby introducing Indian culture.
In this way, he suggested, the Indonesians voluntarily accepted the
higher Hindu civilization.
Bosch's criticisms of these hypotheses may be tabulated as follows:
(a) A conquering prince would have mentioned his success in an inscription, or, if not, one of his descendants would have done so. (b)
There is no sign of Dravidian mixture in the population of Java or Bali.
(c) The borrowed words of Indian origin in the Indonesian languages
show the pure Sanskrit form, indicating that they came from a literary,
learned court circle; whereas settlers would have used either a Dravidian
dialect or a vernacular of Aryan origin, (d) Indonesian social structure
followed Indian theory, not practice; for while some acquaintance with
the four primary divisions of Hindu society is to be found, there is
not the slightest indication of the introduction of the real castes with

20

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

all their special rules and ritual,as in India, (e) The design and detail
of Indonesian art and architecture show that they were not created by
Indians but by Indonesians; for instance, the similarities with Indian
models in the case of the monuments of central Java would be accounted
for by the fact that the Javanese architects were acquainted with the silpasastras, the classical Indian compendia of technical information about
architecture and sculpture. (/) If nierchants had played a part in the
transmission of culture, the early centres of Hindu civilization would
be found at the coastal emporia, whereas they are found at royal
residencies in the interior, and, in the case of Java, in 'the almost
inaccessible plains' of Kedu and Prambanan. (g) Commercial contacts
are inadequate for the transmission of the higher civilization of one
people to another. For example, the Chinese in Indonesia have had
no influence upon the local culture, and this must also have been true
of the Indians.^
Bosch's conclusion therefore is that it was at the royal residence
that the new culture was to be found with its blending,of Indonesian
and Hindu elements. It was, he explains, reminiscent of such things
as the learned manuscript, the code of law, the cell of the recluse and
the monastery; it belonged to the sphere of religion, and its practitioners were, like the scribes and scholastics of mediaeval Europe,
'clerks'.2
So far this discussion has centred almost entirely upon Brahmanism.
Buddhisrn, however, played a very important part; indeed, Coedes
seems to suggest that it blazed the trail and appeared in South-East
Asia before Brahmanism. Certainly the number of images of Buddha
of the Amaravati school that are associated with the earliest archaeological sites showing Indian irifluence are significant. Amaravati, on
the river Kistna about eighty miles from the east coast of India, was the
home of a great school of Buddhist sculpture which flourished especially
during the century from A.D. 150 to 250. Bosch describes the role of
the many Buddhist pilgrims who flocked eastwards to propagate the
Buddha-ideal. Unlike Brahmans they were missionaries. -They would
appear at Indonesian courts, preach the law, convert the ruler and his
family, and found an order of monks. This stream of devotees from
India, he then goes on to say, would stimulate a much-stronger countercurrent towards India of native bhiksus bound for/the holy land of the
Buddha and famous Indian monasteries, where they would often make
lengthy stays.
The Nalanda monastery near Rajagriha, in the old kingdom of
^ Bosch, op. cit., pp. 8-10. /

2 Ibid., p. 11.

CH. 2

SOUTH-EAST ASIAN PROTO-HISTORY

21

Magadha, attracted vast numbers of pilgrims from abroad. For a

time it was the largest and most important Buddhist centre of the
Mahayana School. They went in search of sacred manuscripts, relics and
images.. Indonesian pilgrims were so numerous that a monastery was
founded there foe theni, and a famous inscription there dating from about
860, and referred to by students of epigraphy as ' Balaputra's Charter'
records the donation of villages for its upkeep by a Pala king.^ These
were the people, says Bosch, who conveyed Buddhist art to their homeland, where it took root 'miraculously', causing architecture, sculpture,
painting and poetry to flourish.^ Buddhism, he. thinks, had a far
greater popular appeal than Hinduism, which was ' an esoteric doctrine
transmitted from guru to pupil' and confined to the Brahman caste.^
But if Buddhism blazed the trail, Hinduism made a big impact when it
revived in India under Gupta protection between the fourth and sixth
centuries. When the Chinese pilgrim Fa Hsien, on his way homewards
after visiting India, found heresy and Brahmanism flourishing in Java,
Hinduism, Bosch thinks, was new to Indonesia, and it was brought there
by gurus of the Saiva-Siddhanta sect, who made a big impact upon the
ruling class at the kraton because of the supernatural powers with
which they claimed to be invested. Through the Brahman Siva could
enter the king, conferring immortality upon him; through the Brahman
divine omnipotence could be invoked to niaiintain world order; and
consecration by the Brahman gave a higher sanctity to all the festivals
of the popular religion. There was therefore a demand for Siddhanta
initiates in the Archipelago; rulers sent messengers to India to invite
them, and on arrival they were given influential offices at the kratons.* In
a subsequent essay entitled '"Local Genius" en Oud-Javaanse Kunst',
published in 1952, Bosch came down even more strongly against the
theory of Indian expansion into Indonesia. * The evidence showed, he
claimed, that Indian' influence spread there mainly through Indonesian initiative in assimilating such elements of Indian culture as
attracted them rather than as a result of an Indian eff'ort at cultural
expansion. It came about through the great number of Indonesians
going to visit Indian sacred places and studying under Indian teachers.
Some years ago in an article contributed to Cahiers d'histoire mondiale
Coedes described the old civili2ation of Cambodia and Java as an
Indian superstructure upon an indigenous substratum.* Bosch, however,
comes nearer to the truth when he describes the old Hindu-Indonesian
' Infra, p. 45.
^ Op. cit., p . 14.
^ Ibid., p . 17.
^ Ibid., p . 19.
' Mededelingen Koninklijke Akademie van Wetenschappen, Afd. Lett., n.r. xv, i, 1952.
" Vol. i, no. 2, Oct. 1953, pp. 368-77. But see also Les Peuples de la Peninsule
Indochinoise, chap. ii.

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

culture as the product of the fecundation of the 'living matter' of

Indonesian society by the Indian spirit, and goes on to explain that a
new life was procreated which was to develop into an independent
organism.^ But we must be very careful to distinguish between the
court culture and that of the people, for it was to be a very long time
before Indian cultural elements were in any real way absorbed by the
mass of the people themselves. Their traditional culture continued to
prevail. What really happened was that the South-East Asian peoples
over a long period of their early history absorbed into their traditional
culture patterns imported Buddhist and Hindu elements, which they
adjusted to their own peculiar requirements and outlook. It was not
until from the thirteenth century onwards Theravada Buddhism, and,
somewhat later Islam, began to be propagated as popular religions^,
that external influences began to make any real impact upon the ordinary
villager; aud even, then it was a much slower process' than indigenous writings, reflecting the outlook of court or monastery, wouldgive one to understand: a process still incomplete. Moreover, in
coming to terms with the indigenous cultures the imported religions
were forced to change their character to a marked degree. And in the
case of the Theravada countries the propagation of the faith was
carried out by South-East Asians, notably Mon monks, who went to
Ceylon to study, to collect canonical texts, and to receive orthodox
ordination.
In the absence of historical documents sho\ying from what parts of
India the cultural influences flowed into South-East Asia, the evidence
has to be sought for in much the same way as in the case of the origin
and date of the movement itself. It is significant that modern Indian
writers who have pronounced upon the subject have been tempted to
stress rather too much the claihis of their own localities. Thus, as
Coedes puts it, Madras claims for the Tamils, and Bengal for the
Bengalis, the honour of having colonized 'Greater India'.
The script used in the earliest inscriptions has also been examined
ifor light on the problem. The great diflSculty here arises from the fact
that in their earliest forms the various types of Indian writing show
their fewest divergencies. Hence, while R. C. Majumdar thinks that
the oldest Sanskrit inscription in Funan uses Kushana script from
north India, K. A. Nilakanta Sastri argues that all,the alphabets used
in South-East Asia have a south Indian origin, and that Pallava script
has a predominant influence. Ccedes, however, points out that the
employment of a pre-Nagari script for a short time at the end of the
' Selected Studies in Indonesian Archaeology, p. 20.

CH. 2

SOUTH-EAST ASIAN PROTO-HISTORY

23

eighth and the beginning of the ninth centuries is evidence of a wave

of Bengali influence.^
The plastic arts and architecture afford little help, since their
earliest examples do not appear pntil long after the first impact of
Indian culture and show a diversity of influences. Of the architecture
Parmentier ventures the considered opinion that, shorn of its images
and inscriptions, it is so difl^erent from its Indian prototypes that the
connection is by no means obvious.
So far the sea alone has figured in this discussion as the way by
which Indian influence came into South-East Asia. It was the obvious'
way of travel between India and the Archipelago; indeed the voyage
from the Coromandel Coast to the Straits of Malacca was a comparatively short one, and at the right time of the year was easy and
safe even for small vessels. There was, however, a northerly land
route from India to China through Assam, Upper Burma and Yunnan.
Historical evidence shows it to have been in use as early as 128 B.C.
when Chang Ch'ien discovered the products of Szechwan in Bactria.
Steps were taken to develop it, and in A.D. 69, for its better control
and protection, China founded the prefecture of Yung-ch'ang across
the upper Mekong with its headquarters east of the Salween, about
sixty miles from the present Burma frontier. Along this route in
:A.D. 97 travelled envoys from the eastern part of the Roman empire to
,Yung-ch'ang. The Buddhist pilgrim I-tsing tells us that it was used at
the end of the third century by twenty Chinese monks, who went to
the Court of Sri Gupta.
In the fourth century China relaxed her hold on the Burma frontier
to such a degree that in 342 the Yung-ch'ang prefecture was abolished.
Thereafter the route was apparently closed until Ko-lo-feng (748-79)
of Nanchao reopened it, and thereby promoted much economic development in northern Burma and contacts between the Pyu of Burma
and the T'ang Court in China. Evidence discovered in Pyu sites
. tends to show that some Indian influence penetrated overland into
Upper Burma. By the same route it came also to the T'ai kingdom of
Nanchao. But the usual way of communication between India and
Burma was by sea.
To reach the countries in the eastern parts of the Indo-Chinese
mainland ships had to pass through either the Malacca or the Sunda
Straits. Owing to the prevalence of piracy in these narrow waters
travellers sought to avoid them by using a number of short cuts overland. Archaeological discoveries along these overland routes attest
^ Les tats hindouises, p. 59.

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE. SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

their importance, not only in the early days of Indian penetration, but
later also when the empire of Srivijaya maintained strict control over
the straits and forced all ships to put in at one or other of its ports.
The favourite short cut was across the narrow Isthmus of Kra, from
Takua Pa on the western side to Ch*aiya on the eastern, or from Kedah
to Singora. Farther north there was a route from Tavoy over the
Three Pagodas Pass and thence by the Kanburi river to the valley of
the Menam. Two ancient, sites, P'ong Tuk and P'ra Pathom, lie on
this route. Further still to the north lay a route to the Menam region
by Moulmein and the Raheng pass. Later on these last two routes
were used by the Burmese in their invasions of Siam, notably in the
sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. More recently they were used
by the Japanese to invade Burma during the Second World War..
There was yet another overland route used by early travellers. It led
from the Menam to the Mekong and passed over the K'orat plateau
via Si T'ep to the Bassak region, which was the cradle of the Khmer
kingdom of Cambodia.
(b) The earliest states; Funan, the Lin-yi
So far as historical evidence goes, the first signs of states formed in
the manner that has been described in the preceding section show
that they were in existence by the end of the second century A.D. They
appear in three regions: (a) that of the lower Mekong,and its delta,
(6) north of Hue in modern Annam, and (c) the northern part of the
Malay Peninsula. They probably existed elsewhere, say in Arakan and
Lower Burma, but the evidence is lacking. In the absence of archaeological and epigraphical material earlier than the fifth century, our sole
sources of information for the earlier period are the place-names in the
Niddesa and Ptolemy's Geographica, and the references in the Chinese
dynastic histories to relations with the states of South-East Asia. The
, latter are invaluable, for without them the earliest history of the impor' tant states of Funan and Champa would be completely unknown.
But their geographical particulars are vague and their transcriptions of
Sanskrit names difficult to recognize.
Funan represents the modern Chinese pronunciation of two characters once pronounced B'iu-nam, the name by which they knew the
pre-Khmer kingdom, whose original settlements were along the Mekong between Chaudoc and Phnom Penh. This was not its real name,
which is unknown, but the title assumed by its rulers. It is the modern
Khmer word phnom, 'mountain', in Old Khmer bnam, and the full

CH. 2

SOUTH-EAST ASIAN PROTO-HISTORY " ,

25

title was kurung bnam, 'king of the mountain', the vernacular equivalent of the Sanskrit sailaraja, itself reminiscent of the title borne by
the Pallava Kings of Conjeveram in south India.
Funan's capital city was for some time Vyadhapura, 'the city of
hunters', which lay near the hill Ba Phnom and the village of Banam
in the present Cambodian province of Prei Veng. The Chinese say
that it was 120 miles from the sea. Oc Eo, its port, on the maritime
fringe of the Mekong delta bordering the Gulf of Siam some three miles
. from the sea has been the subject of excavations by a French archaeologist.^ It was an immense urban agglomeration of houses on piles'
intersected by a network of little canals, part of an irrigation system
extending for over 200 kilometres, which had been constructed, with
wonderful skill, to drain what had previously been ' a cesspool of soft
mud barely held together by mangrove trees',^ and to irrigate rice fields
for the support of a large population mainly concentrated in lakecities.- These were linked up with each other and with the sea by canals
large enough to take sea-going ships, so that it was possible for Chinese
travellers to talk about 'sailing across Funan' on their way to the Malay
Peninsula. Oc Eo was a centre of industry and trade: its site bears
evidence of maritime relations with the coast of the Gulf of Siam,
Malaya, Indonesia, India, Persia and, indeed, directly or indirectly
with the Mediterranean. It was situated on ^yhat was in its day the
great maritime highway between China and the West. The Funanese
were of Malay^ race, and still in the tribal state at the dawn of history.
The culture of Oc Eo itself is characterized by M. Malleret as halfindigenous, half-foreign; its foreign affinities, he says, were almost
entirely with India.
The earliest Chinese reference to the kingdom comes from the pen
of K'ang T'ai, who together with Chu Ying was sent thither on a
mission in the middle of the third century. He tells the story of the
foundation of the kingdom by Kaundinya, whose name he trans-,
literates Hun-t'ien. According to his account this ruler was a foreigner,
who came from a place which may be India, the Malay Peninsula, or
even the southern islands. He was guided to his future kingdom by,
a dream, in which he was vouchsafed a divine revelation of his destiny.
On arrival he defeated an attempt by the queen of the country, Liuyeh, 'Willow Leaf, to seize his ship by transfixing her boat with an
arrow from his magic bow. Then he married her and founded the
dynasty which ruled after him for a century and a half.
1 Louis Malleret, 'Les Fouilles d'Oc-Eo (1944)', BEFEO, xvi, i, 1951.
^ B. P. Groslier, Angkor, Art and Civilization, p . 17.
^ T h e word is used here in its widest ethnic sense.

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

The story is apparently a local adaptation of the Indian legend of

the Brahman Kaundinya and the Nagi Soma, the daughter of the King
of the Nagas. The correct ^ccountl of the Indian legend is given in an
inscription found at Mison in Champa. This tells how the Brahman
Kaundinya received a sacred javelin from Asvattharman, the son of
Drona, and threw it in order to mark the site of his future capital. He
then married Soma, the daughter of the naga king, and founded a line
of kings. The descendants of the Pallava rulers of Conjeveram used
a similar legend to explain their own origin. At a later date the legend
was adopted by the Khmers and the naga became the sacred symbol
of their origin. A mystic union between the Khmer king and a naga
princess had a prominent place in the Court ceremonial of Angkor;
he was required to maintain the well-being of his realm through consummation of a union with a nine-headed naga. The nine-headed >
cobra indeed became the dominant theme of Khmer iconography.
The Liang History asserts that one of Kaundinya's descendants,
Hun P'an-h'uang, died at the age of over ninety and was succeeded by
his second son P'an-p'an, who handed over the conduct of affairs to his
great general Fan Man. Attempts have been made to explain the title
Fan as a Chinese transliteration of the Sanskrit suffix varman, used by
certain rulers in South India and later adopted by a number of SouthEast Asian dynasties; but there can be no doubt that it is a clan name of
native origin.^ According to the Southern Ch'i History Fan Man's full
name was Fan Shih-man, and on the death of P'an-p'an after a reign
of only three years he was chosen king by popular acclamation. His
accession may be placed early in the third century.
Fan Shih-man was a great conqueror. He extended his power so
widely that he took the title of Great King. He also built a fleet which
dominated the seas. The Liang History says that he attacked ten
kingdoms, and names four of them. There is some difficulty in identifying these, but his vassal states probably included the lower valleys
of the Mekong and Tonle Sap and parts of the delta. He is thought
also to have reduced the coastal strip from the Mekong-Donnai delta
to Cami-anh Bay. One of his conquests has been identified with Ptolemy's Kattigara, which Paul Levy places in Cochin China. Another,
Tun-sun,^ described by the Liang History as 'the mart" whereliast and
West meet together', i.e. a place on one of the laiid routes across,the
Malay Peninsula, was probably the confederacy of small Mon states
in the lower Meklong valley, with which the sites of P'ong-Tiik and
' Coedes, op. cit., p . 71, n. i.
'
' T h e name seems to be of Mon origin, ipdicating that there were five states.

gjj_ 2

SOUTH-EAST ASIAN PROTO-HISTORY

27

P'ra Pat'om, yielding Buddhist remains of the second to the sixth

century A.D., were connected.^
The Chinese assert that Fan Shih-man died while conducting an
expedition against a state called Chin-lin, 'Frontier of Gold'. This
has been identified with either Suvarnabhumi, 'Land of Gold', or
Suvarnakudya, ' Wall of Gold', and might be placed in either Lower
Burma or the Malay Peninsula. Cpedes is of opinion that he is the
king referred to as Sri Mara in a Sanskrit inscription of Vo-canh in
the region of Nha-trang, now in southern Annam, but at one time in
the kingdom of Champa. The inscription shows that he was a patron
of Buddhism and used Sanskrit as the official language of his Court.
Finot, however, thinks that Sri Mara was a vassal of Funan.
So far it has been impossible to assign exact dates to any of the
rulers or events in the early history of Funan. According'to the calculation of Ccedes, the events giving rise to the legend of Kaundinya
must have occurred not later than the first century A.D. During the
reign of Fan Shih-man's successor. Fan Chan, through the relations
of Funan with India and China, certain apparently well-attested dates
do at last emerge. Fan Chan was a nephew of the Great King, who
killed the legitimate heir, usurped the throne and reigned some twenty
years before dying at the hands of a brother of the man he had removed from his path. His reign falls somewhere between 225 and
250. He received a visit from a native of India, who so charmed him
by his account of that country that he sent an embassy, which after
embarking at the port of Chii-li in the Malay Peninsula went by sea
and up the Ganges to a Court identified by. Sylvain Levi as that of the
Murundas. This embassy belongs to the years 240-5.
Meanwhile, according to the History of the Three Kingdoms, he sent
in 243 a mission to China with a present of musicians and products of
his country. Somewhere between 245 and 250 his successor, Fan
Hsun,, received a return mission from China, which met an envoy of
the Murundas at his Court. K'ang T'ai, who recorded the first extant
account of the kingdom of Funan, was a member of this mission.:
Funan, he wrote, had walled cities containing palaces and dwellinghouses. The people were ugly, black, frizzy-haired and went naked.
Their manners were simple, but they were not given to theft. They
practised a primitive kind of agriculture. They enjoyed using the
chisel and engraved ornaments. Many of their eating utensils were
made of silver. Taxes were paid in gold, silver, pearls and perfumes.
They had also books and depositories of archives. Their writing
* Wheatley, op. cit., pp. 10, 15-21, 286.

28

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

resembled that of the Hu, a central Asian people using an Indian

script.
K'ang T'ai seems to have persuaded Fan Hsun to issue a decree
ordering the men to wear clothing, and they adopted the piece of cloth
wrapped round the waist which is now the Cambodian sampot. Such
is his story. Kaundinya is said to' have introduced the custom of
clothing for women. According to the legend, Soma wore no clothes
when he arrived in the country. He therefore dressed her in a fold of
cloth with a hole through which she passed her head. He also made
her do her hair in a knot. Such was the fabled origin of clothing and
hairdressing in Cambodia.
The relations with China, cemented by these missions, remained
close throughout Fan Hsun's reign, which lasted until at least 287.
The Chin History mentions a series of missions from him covering
the period 268-87. But relations were not invariably good, for he
appears to have made an alliance with Fan Hsiung, who came to the
throne of Lin-yi (Champa) in 270, and to have joined his ally in a tenyears war against Chiao-chi (Tongking). When the first emperor of
the Chin dynasty came to the throne in 280, the Governor of Tongking
addressed a memoriail to him complaining of the raids of the Lin-yi,
aided by friendly bands from Funan, upon the commandery of Je-nan.
The Chin History, in recording this incident, says that the state to
which the Lin-yi raiders belonged had been founded about a century
earlier by a native official, Ch'u Lien, who had taken advantage of the
weakness of the Han dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 221) to carve out a kingdom
for himself at the expense of Je-nan in the year A.D. 192. The Chinese
name for his kingdom was Hsiang-lin, which was in fact the ngme of,
their sub-prefecture in which the independence movement took place.
It coincided almost exactly with the present Annamite province of
Thua-thien, in which the city of Hue is situated.
Thus does the state later to be known as Champa first appear in
history. Archaeological evidence shows that the centre of its power
Hay just to the south of the Hue region, in the modern Annamite
province of Quang-nam, which is so rich in archaeological sites that it
was evidently the sacred territory of Champa. But, although the
famous sites of Tra-kieu, Mison and Dong-duong have yielded specimens of Amaravati art, no evidence exists, as in the case of neighbour. ing Funan, of the dynastic traditions of the Kings of Champa or of
the coming of Indian influence. Not till the beginning of the seventh
-century does the name Champa first appear in epigraphy, though as
the name of the kingdom of the Chams it was probably in existence

CH. 2

SOUTH-EAST ASIAN PROTO-HISTORY

29

before that date. It is, however, by the Chinese name of Lin-yi that
they are known during the first phase of their long struggle to expand
northwards into the lands under Chinese control.
The narrow coastal strip from the Porte d'Annam to the Col des
Nuages, which they coveted, was probably at this time inhabited by
wild tribes in a backward state. Their, own territory stretched down
the coast from the Col des Nuages to the Baiy of Camranh, but they
had settlements also in the Mekong 'valley, the valleys of the Sesan
and Song-ba, and the neighbouring hills. They held the western
', slopes of the.Annamite Chain up to the Mekong valley from Stung
Treng to the river Mun, They belonged to the Indonesian group of
peoples. Later the Indonesian settlements round the Bay of Nhatrang
were to form their southern province of Panduranga, now Phan-rang,
but this formed part of the empire of Funan when we first hear of the
Lifi-yi. The people of this region were related to the Funanese rather
than to the Chams. They appear to have received Indian influence as
early as the beginning of the first century A.D. According to Parmentier, their earliest art and architecture is Khmer rather than Cham.
Their region continued to form part oi Funan until the Chenla conquest of that country in the latter part of the sixth century.
The Governor of Tongking's complaint is not the earliest mention
of the Lin-yi in the Chinese annals. Somewhere between 220 and 230
a mission was sent by one of the descendants of K'iu-lien to the
Governor of Kwangtong and Tongking. It is in the record of this that
the names 'Lin-yi' and 'Funan' appear for the first time. In 248 the
Lin-yi are saidjto have pillaged the towns of the north, and to have
foughj! a big baitle with the Chinese in the region of Badon on the
Song Giang. The Fan Hsiung, who came to the throne in 270 and
began another series of attacks upon Tongking in alliance with Funan,
as we have seen above, is said to have been a grandson of K'iu-lien.
When, after a lengthy struggle, these were beaten off, another king of
the Lin-yi, Fan Yi, sent in 284 the first official embassy from that
" kingdom to the Imperial Court of China.
Fan Yi reigned for more than fifty years. His chief minister. Wen,
who is said to have been of Chinese origin, succeeded to the throne
in 336. Four years later, when the Chinese emperor refused to recognize his northern boundary at the Porte d'Annam, he took possession
of the territory involved, and at his death in 349 was carrying his arms
still farther northwards. Wen's son and successor, Fan Fo, however,
was forced to restore all that his father had conquered. The Chinese
record embassies from him in 372 and 377.

30

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

Of the earliest states in the Malay Peninsula mentioned by the

Chinese, some, as we have seen, are identified with conquests of Fan
Shih-man of Funan. The earliest written description of them was in
the accounts given by K'ang T'ai and Chu Ying of their visit to Funan
in the middle of the third century, f They have been lost, but much
of the information in them has survived in quotations made by later
writers. The evidence itself as well! as the efforts of modern scholars
to interpret it have been surveyed by Professor Paul Wheatley in his
Golden Khersonese,^ which offers the most up-to-date study of the early
historical geography of the Malay Peninsula. What is said here, therefore, is based entirely upon his findings.
The states in the lists of Fan Shih-man's conquests that can with
certitude be placed on the Peninsula are Tun-sun, which has been described above, Ch'ii-tu-k'un (or Tu-k'un), which cannot be located .with
exactitude, and Chiu-chih (Chii-li), a trans-isthmian state used by
travellers from China to India and some way to the south of Tun-sun.
The seventh century Liang-shu mentions a kingdom of Lang-ya-hsiu,
which, it shows, was founded in the second century A.D. This is easily
recognized as the Langkasuka of the Malay and Javanese chronicles.
An immense amount of effort has been expended by scholars to fix its
precise location, and their interpretation of the evidence has differed
considerably. Wheatley places it in the Patani region. Later, after
a period of eclipse, presumably the result of conqiiest by Funan, it was
to become a kingdom of some importance until the sixteenth century.^
Later Chinese writers also mention a Tan-Ma-Ling, which Wheatley
places in the Ligor district, i.e. north of Langkasuka.* Chti-li, the port
of embarkation of the Funan mission of A.D. 240 to the Murunda
Court, has been thought to have been the Takola of Ptolemy's Geographia, but this now seems very doubtful. That there was such a port
there is ample evidence in Indian sources, and that Indian traders
frequented it probably as early as the third century A.D. Wheatley
accepts Sir Roland Braddell's suggestion that it was in the neighbourhood of Trang.^
(c) The period of the earliest inscriptions
So far as our present knowledge goes, it is impossible to give a
connected narrative of the early history of the states mentioned in the
previous section. The Chinese, for instance, have nothing to say
* Supra, p . 24. "^ pp. 14-24. ' Wheatley, op. cit., pp. 252-7. * Ibid., pp. 66-7.
' Ibid., chap, xvii, pp. 268-72, is devoted to a discussion of the evidence regarding
this place.

CH. 2

SOUTH-EAST ASIAN PROTO-HISTORY

31

about Funan between 287 and 357, and we have no other evidence to
draw upon for this period. When once again light begins to penetrate
the darkness inscriptions appear in Funan, Champa, Borneo and Java,
and we enter upon a new period in which much stronger cultural
influences are evident.
In recording the receipt of tribute from a King of Funan named
Chan-t'an the Chinese describe him as a Hindu. Chan-t'an is the
Chinese transcription of Chandan, the royal title of the Kushanas of
Kaniskha's line, with which Funan is thought to have established
contact in the middle of the third century. Hence the theory has been
put forward that this king may have been a scion of that house who
fled to Funan as a result of the conquest of north India by Samudra-;
gupta (c. 335-c. 375), the second ruler of the Gupta dynasty.
The subsequent conquest of much of south India by this king
resulted in the submission of the Pallava sovereign and his viceroys
and caused such grave disturbances that it is feasible to imagine the
flight of princes, Brahmans-and literati to seek new homes beyond the
sea in lands where Indian culture already existed. This may account
for the strong Pallava influence which is found in Cambodia, Champa
and the Malay Peninsula, as well as for the fact that the inscriptions
of the new period are in Pallava characters. But it is only a Supposition.
The date 357 is the only one known of Chandan's feign. If, as is
supposed, he was an Indo-Scythian, his reign may account for the
'Iranian influence in early Khmer statuary, and for the fact that when
the Khmers conquered Funan their new kingdom had the name of
Kamboja, which, it has been suggested, may indicate some relationship with the Iranian Kambojas. The cabochon with a Sassanide
effigy found at Oc Eo seems to be a further pointer to a possible
connection.
The Liang History asserts that one of Chandan's successors was a
Brahinan from India named Kiao-chen-ju, whom a supernatural
voice bade go and rule over Funan. According to this account he vi^as
well received by the people, who chose him as their king. He then
changed all the rules in accordance with Indian methods. His name
is thought to be a Chinese rendering of 'Kaundinya', and the story
would thus indicate the restoration of the Hindu element in the ruling
family against the indigenous clan of the Fan, under whose rule Indian
influence had tended to be weakened by contact with the local culture.
No date is assigned to the reign of this second Kaundinya, but one of
his successors, with a name which may stand for Sreshthavarman, is
reported to have sent an embassy to the Emperor Wen (424-53). The

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

Liu Sung History mentions further embassies in 434, 435 and 438,
and says that this king refused to help the Lin-yi in an attack on
Tongking.
I
The greatest king of the latei- history of Funan was Jayavarman, or
Kaundinya Jayavarman, who died iii 514. The date of the beginning
of his reign is unknown. He' sent merchants to trade at Canton. On
their return journey they were wrecked off the coast of Champa, and
a monk, Nagasena, who was with them made his way back to the
capital overland. In 484 Jayavarman sent him to China to ask for aid
against the Lin-yi; but this was refused. Jayavarman's letter to the
Chinese emperor shows that the official religion of Funan was Saivite,
but that Buddhism was also practised.
This story comes from the Southern Ch'i History, which also contains an account of the kingdom as it was in Jayavarman's day. It is
a picture of a seafaring people, carrying on both trade and piracy, and
constantly preying upon their neighbours. The king lives in a palace
with a tiered roof, while the, houses of the common people are built
on piles and have bamboo leaves as a covering for their roofs. The
people fortify their settlements with wooden palisades. The national
dress is a piece of cloth tied round the waist. The national sport is
cock-fighting and pig-fighting. Trial is by ordeal. The king rides
about in public on an elephant.
A later text, the Liang History, adds that not only the king but the
whole Court, and the concubines as well, ride on elephants, The deities
of the sky are worshipped. These are represented by bronze images;
some with two faces and four arms, others with four faces and eight
armsevidently a reference to the cult of Harihara. The dead are
disposed of in four ways: by throwing the corpse into the current of
a river, by burning it to ashes, by burial in a trench, and by exposure
to- the birds. This account also refers to a custom of washing still
found in Cambodia and known as the trapeang, the use of a common
bathing tank by a number of families.
I On the occasion of the reception of an embassy from Jayavarman
in 503, the Imperial Court recognized his greatness by conferring upon
him the title of 'General of the Pacified South, King of Funan'. No
inscriptions set up by him have been discovered, but.his chief- queen
and a son named Gunavarman each,left a Sanskrit one. Both display
Vaisnavite inspiration. The prince's, at Thap-muoi in^the Plaine des
Jones, commernorates the foundation of a sanctuary containing a footprint of Vishnu called Chakratirthasvamin. It is reminiscent of Purnavarman's sanctuary in Java with his footprints likened to those of

(jjl. 2

SOUTH-EAST ASIAN PROTO-HISTORY

33

Vishnu. Gunavarman's inscription records the reclamation of marshland. Purnavarman was famous for irrigation works. The footprints
of Vishnu signify the reconquest of territoryin both cases, it would
seem, by peaceful means.
Rudravarman, who succeeded his father Jayayarman in 514, is described by the Liang History as a usurper, born of a concubine, who'
on his father's death murdered the rightful heir, presumably Gunavarman, and seized the throne. Between 51'^ and 539 he. despatched
a number of missions to China. When he died, presumably in about
ceo, a movement occurred in the middle Mekong region under the
leadership of two brothers, Bhavavarman.and Chitrasena, and under
somewhat mysterious circumstances the power of Funan was overthrown. Rudravarmari's embassy of 539 seems to have been the last
that Funan as an independent state sent to the Imperial Court. Early
in the next century,- when the Chinese record the next embassy from
the Funan region, the New T'ang History explains that the 'City of
Hunters', the old capital of Funan, has been conquered by Chenla,
and its king forced to emigrate to a place in the south.
Funan was the first > great power in South-East Asian history. Like
Rome in European history, its prestige lived on long after its fall. Its
traditions, notably the cults of the sacred mountain and the naga
princess, were adopted by the Khmer Kings of Cambodia. And
although its architecture has disappeared completely, there is every
reason to believe that some of its characteristics are preserved in a
number of Cambodian buildings of the pre-Angkor period which still
exist, and that the Gupta-style Buddhas, the mitred Vishnus and the
Hariharas of that period convey some idea of the way in which the
Funan sculptors fashioned the human form.
Champa's earliest inscriptions are associated with a King Bhadravarman. They are found in Quang-nam and Phu-yen. The older
generation of French scholars identified Bhadravarman with Fan Huta,
the son and successor of Fan Fo, who was driven back by the Chinese
from the Porte d'Annam frontier, and dated the inscriptions c. 400.
The distinguished Dutch scholar Vogel, however, attributes them to
Fan Fo's reign. In both cases, however, the king's name bears not the
slightest resemblance to 'Bhadravarman', and Stein has suggested that
the kings with Sanskrit names who reigned in Quang-nam were not
the same as the Lin-yi rulers of the Hue region whose doings are
chronicled in the Chinese histories. He thinks that there were two
separate states, and that the southern one was later conquered by the
Lin-yi.

34

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

Bhadravarman, whoever he may have been, founded the first sanctuary to be built in the Mison area and dedicated it to Siva-Bhadresvara. Such linking of a royal founder's name with that of Siva became
a widespread custom later on in states where Saivite traditions of
kingship prevailed. One of Bhadravarman's rock inscriptions is of
particular interest, since it contains the oldest extant text in any Indonesian language. It enjoins respect for the 'king's naga', which seeriis
to be a divinity guarding a water-spring. These inscriptions indicate
clearly that the Court religion was 6iva-worship; the god Siva-.
Bhadresvara was represented by a linga, which is the earliest example
of its kind in South-East Asia.
No contemporary Chinese account of the customs of the Lin-yi
exists, but the thirteenth-century traveller Ma Tuan-lin has described
them, presumably from earlier sources. He says that they were rcr
puted to be the same as those of Funan and all the kingdoms beyond.
He stresses the importance of woman, saying that marriages all take
place in the eighth month and that the women choose their husbands;
He also mentions the custom of urn burial. Seven days after death,
he tells us, the king's body is ceremoniously conducted to the seashore, where it is burnt on a pyre. The bones are then placed in a
gold vase and thrown into the sea.
The fall of the Chin dynasty at the beginning of the fifth century
led to such a spate of Cham attacks on Tongking that the Chinese
governor was forced to appeal to the Imperial Court for help. In 431
the Chinese made a sea attack on Champa, but were driven off. It was
in consequence of this threat that King Yang Mah tried, without
success, as we have seen, to obtain the help of Funan in an attack on
Tongking. In 446 a new Governor of Tongking, T'an Ho-ch'u,
decided to teach the Lin-yi a severe lesson. He swooped down on
their capital in the Hue region, plundered it and retired with a booty
estimated at 100,000 lb. of pure gold. China, it is to be noted, made
no attempt permanently to occupy and annex Lin-yi territory. Her
'aim was simply to keep her frontier region quiet by administering a
dose of frightfulness to the 'barbarians' beyond it. After this there
was a long period of peace during which the customary embassies
were sent to China.
In 529 a new dynasty, the fourth in Cham history according to
Maspero's reckoning, came to the throne. Rudravarnjan; its first king,
was granted investiture by China, and in 534 sent an embassy. Nine
years later he was tempted to send a raiding force into Tongking.
The opportunity seemed a good one, for tKe Vietnamese leader, Li

Cjj, 2

SOUTH-EAST ASIAN PROTO-HISTORY

35

Bon had revolted against China and was endeavouring to assert his
independence. Rudravarman's raiders, however, were defeated by Li
Bon's general, Phaum Tu. In j;^47 Li Bon's revolt itself was suppressed
by China. It was not long, however, before the weakness of the
Southern Ch'en dynasty (557-89) again tempted the Chams to renew
their raids; but only for a brief spell. For the conquests of Yang Chien,
the founder of the Swei dynasty, caused King Sambhuvarman to change
his policy and present tribute in 595.
Ten years later the Chinese decided to administer another dose of
the same medicine as in 446. Their armies invaded Champa, took its
capital, and again carried away a vast amount of booty. For a while
Sambhuvarman was submissive. Then, as a sign of his recovery, he
began to neglect to send the customary tribute. But the accession of the
T'ang dynasty in 618 led him to decide that discretion was the better
part of valour. So Cham missions were once more sent dutifully to the
Imperial Court at Ch'ang-an, and a long lull began in Cham aggression.
From their proximity to India it would naturally be inferred that
the valleys of the Irrawaddy and the Menam must have been penetrated by Indian influence both earlier and more profoundly than
Funan and Champa. Unfortunately there is practically no archaeological evidence from these regions before the middle of the sixth
century, and Chinese sources do not refer to them. The absence of
such evidence does not, however, prove very much either way, but
merely that the Chinese had no intercourse with these countries so
early. They do indeed mention a Buddhist kingdom of Lin-yang in
their story of Fan Chih-mjn's attempt to conquer the Chin-lin in the
third century, and in such a way as to suggest that it lay in central
Burma, j
,
If, as seems likely, they made their earliest contact via Yunnan with
the Pyu kingdom in the same century, the assumption may not be farfetched that Lin-yang was the Pyu kingdom whose capital, bearing
the legendary name of Srikshetra, was at Hmawza, near Prome in
central Burma. The earliest fragments of inscriptions found there go
back to c. 500. .Local chronicles give long lists of legendary kings
beginning from the time of the Buddha, but there is no means of
verification.
The legends of the Mon people of Burma centre around the city of
Thatgn-(Sudhammavati), which may have had some connection with
Orissa. There seems no reason to doubt that the Burmese name for a
Mon, 'Talaing', takes its derivation from Telingana, and indicates
the region in India whence their culture came. Legend asserts that

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

T? ddhaehosa, the father of Sinhalese Buddhism of the fifth century, '

was a Mon monk of Thaton, that He brought the Pali scriptures to his"
native city in 403, arid later died there. No archaeological evidence
exists concerning this subject. The earliest Mon sites are those of,
Si T'ep, P'ra Fathom and P'ong TOiik in the Menam basin, and date
from before 550. In their early days they were under Funan, but _
nothing is known of them during this period. In the severith 'i.
century they formed part of the Mon kingdom of Dvaravati, bufv?
whether this existed as early as the fifth or sixth centuries is also ;;
unknown.
The earliest epigraphical evidence regarding the kingdom of Arakan
has been interpreted as showing a Candra dynasty reigning there from
the middle of the fourth century. Its capital, near later Mrohaung in
northern Arakan, was called by the Indian name of Vaisali. The
names of thirteen kings whose reigns covered a period of 230 years
have been preserved, but only one of them can be equated with, a
name in the Arakanese chronicles. He is Candrodaya, who may be
Sandasurya of the chronicles, but his date of accession is given in
them as the equivalent of A.D. 146.
In the Malay Peninsula Cherok Tekun, on the mainland opposite
Penang, has yielded some fragments of rock inscriptions in Sanskrit
that have been attributed to the fourth century. A slightly later one comes
from near Bukit Meriam in Kedah. It is on a slate slab found in a ruined
brick house which may have been the cell of a Buddhist monk. It"'
consists of two Buddhist verses in Sanskrit inscribed in the characters
of the oldest Pallava alphabet. The second runs: ' Karma accumulates
through lack of knowledge. Karma is the cause of rebirth. Through
knowledge it comes about that no karma is effected, and through
absence of karma there is no rebirth.'
The late neolithic site of Kuala Selinsing in Perak has yielded a fifthcentury cornelian seal inscribed with the name of Sri Vishnuvarman.
But the most interesting find dating from this period comes from the
north of the present Province Wellesley. It is an inscribed slate slab
on a stupa surmounted by a chattravali, or seven-tiered 'umbrella'.
The Sanskrit text consists of the Buddhist verse quoted above and a
prayer for the success of a voyage projected by one Buddhagupfa, .the
master of a junk, who is said to reside in the 'Red Land'. The Red
Earth Land, known to the Chinese as CKih-t'u, is described in a text
containing the report of a Chinese mission there early in the seventh
century. The very considerable discussion on the subject of its location
that has so far been published, ha^ been examined by Wheatley, who is

CH, 2

SOUTH-EAST ASIAN PROTO-HISTORY

37

of the opinion that it was in the region of the Kelantan River rather than
the P'at'alung region of the Gulf of Siam favoured by Coedes.^ This
inscription also is in Pallava script. Thus Mahayana Buddhism was in
Malaya at this time, and had apparently been brought there from South
India.
The/same period shows the establishment of relations between some
of the peninsular states and China. In 515 a King of Lankasuka
called Bhagadatta is mentioned in this connection. The Liang History
describes his people as wearing their hair loose and sleeveless cotton
garments. The king, as usual, rides upon an elephant under a canopy,
preceded by drums and flags and surrounded by a fierce-looking bodyguard.. North of Lankasuka was the state of P'an-p'an, which ran
along the Gulf of Siam. Its earliest missions to China date from the
period 424-53. From this state the second Kaundinya was said to have
made his way to restore Hinduism in Funan.
The history of Indonesia in these early centuries is much less distinct than that of Funan or Lin-yi. The earliest indigenous records
from Borneo are in the form of seven inscriptions found in the Kutei
region in the east of the island at a sanctuary whose religious cult has
not been identified with certainty. -They are said to come from c. 400
and emanate from a King Mulavarman, who mentions his father
Asvavarman and his grandfather Kundunga. The father is said to have
been the founder of the dynasty. Kundunga is not a Sanskrit word,
and seems to point to the Indonesian origin of the family. In the
valleys of the rivers Kapuhas, Mahakam and Rata in western Borneo
other signs of Indian influence have shown themselves in the form of
Brahmanical and Buddhist images in the Gupta style.
Java's earliest inscriptions come from the hinterland of Djakarta,
the capital of the Republic of Indonesia. At the foot of the mountains
near Bogorpreviously Buitenzorgthree rock inscriptions dating
from ,c. 450, or perhaps a century later, have been found. A fourth
.belonging to the same period was found east of Tandjong Priok, the
port of Djakarta. The author was a King Purnavarman of Taruma, who
observed Brahmanical rites and promoted irrigation works, the earliest
known in Java. Two of the inscriptions reproduce his footprints, and
one those of his elephant. He is described as a great warrior, and these
are the usual marks of the occupation of a country after conquest.
Stutterheim, however, has suggested that his most important conquest
was the peaceful one recorded in one of the inscriptions wherein he
claims to have dug a canal some fifteen kilometres in length in the short
' Golden Khersonese, chap, iii, pp. 26-36; Les Stats hindouises, p. 89.

38

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

space of twenty days.^ Further inscriptions of this kingdom have been

found near the coast at the extreme west of the island, and it would
seem that Taruma was, in its day, an 'extensive kingdom.
These Indonesian inscriptions, valuable as they are, however, are
not readily susceptible to explanation in the light of Chinese evidence
about Indonesia in the same centuries. The chronological outline of
rulers and events, which has illuminated both Funanese and Lin-yi
history before the seventh century, is lacking in respect of Indonesia,
and the historian has been unable to do more than eke out his narrative
with a catalogue of such scraps of evidence as seem to fill the picture.
An attempt has recently been made by Dr O. W. Wolters to suggest a
few of the broad outlines of Indonesian proto-history which are reflected in the development of early Indonesian commerce with the outside world up to the emergence of the maritime empire of Srivijaya
in south-eastern Sumatra in the second half of the seventh century.^
His main findings, briefly summarized below, are of special significance.
While up to the early third century A.D. there is in fact no evidence
of direct sailing and commercial communication between (western)
Indonesia and (southern) China, the Chinese in the first half of that
century knew indirectly of an important commercial centre apparently
somewhere on the south-eastern coast of Sumatra, which they called
Ko-ying. Its importance lay merely in its trade connections with India.
At that time the main route of international trade through South-East
Asia ran across the northern end of the Malay Peninsula through the
Mon state of Tun-sun.^ Ko-ying's trading contacts with China would
therefore have been through Tun-sun or one of the other Isthmian
states of the peninsula, or possibly through Funan.
By the beginning of the fifth century this situation has changed
decisively. There is clear evidence, represented by pilgrim intineraries,.
of direct communication across the South China Sea between Indonesia
and southern China. There was Fa Hsien, the earliest of the pilgrims
whose writings are still extant, who made his way homewards to China
from the homeland of the Buddha in 413-14, and wrote sad comments
on the predominance of pagans and heretics in the kingdom of Ye-p'o-ti,
i.e. 'Java'. There was also the missionary monk Gunavarman, a prince
of Kashmir, who ten years later made the direct crossing on his way
to China from She-p'o, from whose kingdom of Ho-lo-tan, the Chinese
record embassies from 430 to 452. Thus between the early third century
' Het Hinduisme in de Archipel, p. 94.
^ O. W. Wolters, Early Indonesian Commerce and the Origins of Srivijaya, an unpublished thesis presented in 1962 for the degree of Ph.D. in the University of London.
' Wheatley, op. cit., p. 286.

CH. 2

SOUTH-EAST ASIAN PROTO-HISTORY

39

and the beginning of the fifth conditions of Indonesian commerce had

changed radically.
What had happened to bring this about? In the first place the
barbarian invasions of northern China early in the fourth century
caused a massive flight of Chinese southwards, and, towards the end of
the century and increasingly thereafter, the southern Chinese_dynasties,
denied their traditional trade-route across central Asia based on Kansu,
seem to have become more and more dependent upon maritime communications for their luxury imports from western Asia.^ The Liu
Sung shu referring to the first half of the fifth century comments:
'Precious things come from the mountains and seas by.this way . . .
thousands of varieties all of which the rulers coveted. Therefore ships
came in a continuous stream, and merchants and envoys jostled with
each other.'2 In the second place the coastal Malays of south-east
Sumatra, were now making an increasingly important contribution to
this commerce by providing shipping facilities between Indonesia and
China, and probably from India and Ceylon.
The evidence adduced by Dr Wolters of this development of Indonesian commerce suggests that while the Indonesian shippers at first
handled 'Persian',^ i.e. western Asian, produce destined for the
Chinese market, they subsequently proceeded to foist upon the trade
Indonesian pine resin and benzoin as deliberate substitutes for ' Persian',
frankincense and myrrh, and that by about 500 these products of the
Sumatran jungle had come to be accepted by the Chinese as ' Persiantype' goods. Moreover, by that date the 'Barus' camphor of Sumatra
was also known to the Chinese. The importance of the Malay role in
all this must be emphasized. When the substitute transaction was
achieved, there is no evidence that shipping from the Persian Gulf
had yet begun to sail direct to China; according to Byzantine writers
in the first half of the sixth century it went no farther east than Ceylon.*
Indian ships may have been sailing to China, b u t it is a striking fact
that Chinese sources mention only K'un-lun, or South-East Asiain,
ships as bringing the luxury goods from the Nan hat, 'the southern
ocean', to the south Chinese ports. Funanese ships are unlikely to
have handled the 'Persian' trade with its Indonesian connections, and
in fact in the later fifth century we hear of Funanese communications
with Tongking being interrupted by Cham pirates.^
There is, however, evidence of two western Indonesian kingdoms
1 Wolters, op. cit., pp. 145-6.
^ Ibid., p. 148.
' Po-ssu (Persia), the general name applied by the Chinese to the produce of western
Asia.
* Ibid., pp. 307-9.
* Ibid., p. 325.

40

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

which were trading with China in'these years. In 430 Ho-lo-t'o (or
Ho-lo-tan) is mentioned by the Chinese as sending envoys to seek protection from its neighbours and also jto ask for the removal of trading
restrictions on its merchants.^ This kingdom is more likely to have
been in western Java than anywhere else. Then in 502 the Chinese
say that the ruler of Kan-fo-li sent envoys to the new Liang dynasty
because he had been advised in a dream that, if he paid tribute, merchants would multiply in his kingdom.^ An analysis of the Chinese
geographical evidence of the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries indicates
that Kan-fo-li was, as the Ming History states, on the same coast where
Srivijaya later flourished. Kan-t'o-li, with its tributary record from
441 to 563, appears therefore in history as the successor of Ko-ying
and the predecessor of Srivijaya as the overlord of the south-east
Sumatra coast.*
Other kingdoms, such as P'o-li and Tan-tan, were also sending
tribute in the fifth and sixth centuries. They seem to have been in
Java, but there is no evidence that they had an important share in the
new trade with China. The explanation for their missions may well be
that they were demonstrating their political importance as regional
overlords. China was still unfamiliar to the Indonesians, and the
emperors were probably invested with a certain amount of glamour
and felt to be a new and important factor in the afi^airs of the region.
A ruler might also, as was the founder of Malacca centuries later, be
attempting to safeguard himself against attack.
Thus by the beginning of the Seventh century the outlines of Indonesiiin history are beginning to become apparent. A harbour-kingdom
was well established on the south-east coast of Sumatra, and there were
several important kingdoms on the island of Java. Expanding Indonesian communications with the outside world were bringing wealth
and new ideas to that region. It is not surprising that the following
centuries were to see the rise of substantial empires and a flowering
civilization in western Indonesia.
I

^ Wolters, op. cit., p. 322.

^ Ibid., p . 344.

* Ibid., pp. 455-7.

CHAPTER 3

T H E ISLAND EMPIRES (i)

(a) The emergence of ^rivijaya ; the Sailendras
T H E FALL OF FUNAN, with its powerful fleet and commercial ramifications, was followed by the rise of a new maritime empire at the western
end of Indonesia. The earliest historical evidence of the new state is
fragmentary, the lacunae are baffling in the extreme, and the picture
that emerges is often far from clear. But since George Ccedes published
the first study of the history of Srivijaya in 1918^ much progress has
been made in clarification and amplification. On some important
points, however, there are still wide divergencies of opinion among
scholars.
Srivijaya, although it has seemed to emerge suddenly and perhaps
inexplicably into the light of history, mainly because of the paucity of
the available evidenc;e, must be seen against the Indonesian historical
background that has been sketched in the previous chapter. The
development of the direct sea route to China by the beginning of the
fifth century A.D. brought new importance to the south-east coast of
Sumatra, which had long traded with India and Ceylon. Dr Wolters
calls it the 'favoured coast' of early Indonesian commerce, and it was
from here that the voyage across the South China Sea was pioneered.
From as early as 441 Kan-t'o-li, its chief port, had adopted the policy
of sending tribute to China. The evidence does not show whether it
was situated at either Jambi or Palembang, but he is convinced that it
alone of the ' tributary' kingdoms of Indonesia during the fifth and sixth
centuries was the predecessor of Srivijaya as overlord of the ' favoured
coast', attracting, to its service the roaming Malay shippers of this
coast and of the offshore islands. The international communications,
leading to and from it, sustained its maritime trade with China. Thus
Srivijaya can be seen as growing up on a coast whose commercial assets,
primarily its seamen and their ships, had already seen over 200 years of
development.
The political layout in Java and Sumatra in the middle of the
seventh century is indicated by the Chinese record of missions coming
' G. Ccedes, ' L e royaume de Qrivijaya', BEFEO, xviii (igi8), no. 6, 1-36.
41

42

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH' CENTURY

PT. I

from states there. Two states in Sumatra are mentioned: 'Mo-lo-yeou'

on the east coast, which has been identified as Malayu, now Jambi, on
the river Batang, and somewhat farther south 'Che-li-fo-che', the
Chinese form of the Sanskrit Srivijaya, at what is today Palembang.
Java seems to have been divided between three kingdoms: in the
extreme west Purnavarman's Tarurha with a changed name, in the
centre 'Ho-ling', or Kalinga, and in eastern Java a kingdom with its
capital somewhat south of modern Surabaya.
The two Sumatran states were visited in 671 by the famous Chinese
Buddhist pilgrim I-tsing while on his way to India. At Srivijaya, he
tells us, there were over a thousand Buddhist monks, and their rules
and ceremonies were the same as in India. The fact that he spent six
months there studying Sanskrit grammar before going on to India is
evidence of Srivijaya's importance as a centre of Mahayanist learning.
In 685, after a long period of study at the Buddhist 'university' of
Nalanda in Bengal, I-tsing returned to Srivijaya and spent some four
years there translating Buddhist texts from Sanskrit into Chinese. In
689, being in urgent need of writing materials and helpers, he made a
brief visit to Canton, then returned to Srivijaya with four collaborators
and settled down to complete his two memoirs on the Buddhist religion
in his .own time. These were completed and despatched to China
in 692; he himself followed in 695.
In the second of his books I-tsing makes the intriguing statement
that Malayu (Jambi), where he had stayed for two months after leaving
Srivijaya on his way to India, had since then become a part of Srivijaya. What exactly his words signified was only established by the
discovery of a series of Old Malay inscriptions dating from 683 to 686.
Two of them were found near to Palembang, the third at Karang
Brahi on the upper reaches of the river Batang, and the fourth on the
island of Banka. Together with the Cham inscriptions mentioned
earlier they form the earliest examples of the Malay-Polynesian group
of languages so far discovered.
These valuable records, taken together, attest the existence at Palembang of a Buddhist kingdom which had just conquered the hinterland
of Malayu and was about to attack Java. The oldest one, which- comes
from the Palembang region, records that, on a date that can be fixed
as 13 April 683, a king, who is unnamed, embarked with a force of
20,000 men to seek the magic power, and as a result conferred victory,
power and riches on Srivijaya. The second commemorates the foundation in 684 of a public park, called Sriksetra, by order of a King
Jayanasa (or Jayanaga) as an act of Buddhist merit. The third and

^jj

.,

THE ISLAND EMPIRES ( l )

43

fourth, dated 686, call down curses upon the inhabitants of the Batang
river region and the island of Banka respectively, should they be dis-,
obedient to the king or his officers, and the Banka one mentions that
the army of Srivijaya is about to depart on an expedition against Java.
Thus does Srivijaya emerge to view as an expanding power, stretching out her tentacles towards the Straits of Malacca on the one side
and those of Sunda on the other. Palembang, almost equidistant from
both, was exceptionally well placed for the task of maintaining a.commercial hegemony over Indonesia by controlling the two channels
through which all traffic must pass between India and China. The
developments of Arab navigation, and of trade between India and
China, combined to give a new significance to the straits, and Palembang was the normal port which ships from China would make for
during the north-east monsoon. It seems to have had at this time a
flourishing commerce and mercantile marine, and to have maintained
its own regular communications with both India and China. I-tsing
tells us that he travelled from China to Srivijaya on a ship belonging
to a Persian merchant. His voyage onwards to India was made in one
belonging to the King of Srivijaya. The hypothesis therefore seems
to be a reasonable one that the inscriptions of 683-6 point to certain
important stages in the career of King Jayanaga (or Jayanaga), ..the
conqueror of Malayu, and presumably of Taruma also, and the originator of the policy that was to make Palembang until the thirteenth
century the centre of a powerful maritime empire of the islands.
Palembang seems to have had a hard struggle to become, and remain,
powerful. The Hsin T'ang shu says that it had fourteen cities under
its sway. Were these its conquered rivals?^ It is not difficult to imagine
it sending out naval expeditions to occupy strategic points on the main
trade routes,, and forcing^its vassals to trade with the 'favoured coast'
alone. A few, for instance Kedah on the mainland, which was under
Srivijayan control by 695 at the latest, would be nominated ports of
call on the voyage between the Bay of Bengal and south-east Sumatra,
and Dr Wolters has suggested that it was to destroy the beginning of
competition in the China trade from harbours on the Straits of Malacca
that the navy of Srivijaya moved into the Straits early in its recorded
history. To conquer and hold together such an empire must have
involved endless campaigning, as indeed the inscriptions of 683-6 bear
eloquent witness.
The obvious importance of Palembang as a Buddhist centre at the
time of I-tsing's pilgrimages is one of those tantalizing facts which
' Wolters, op. cit., p. 520.

44

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH , CENTURY

PT. I,

emerges from a background so indistinct as to leave much to surmise.*

The early history of Buddhism in the Archipelago is unknown save
for a few stray references of this sort. If I-tsing is right, Hinayana
Buddhism was widespread there before the end of the seventh century.
That Srivijaya's Buddhism was mainly Mahayanist, however, has been
confirmed by the discovery of Bodhisattvas there',.^th6ugh there is also
evidence of the existence of some Hinayana Buddhism of the Sanskrit
canon. The differences between the two forms were then far less
distinct than they became later, particularly in thirteenth-century
South-East Asia.
'
It would be interesting to know what part ^rivijaya played in the
Mahayanist movement- of expansion throughout South-East Asia,
which has been described as one of the dominating facts of the latter
half of the eighth century. It coincides with the accession of the Pala
dynasty in Bengal and Magadha in the middle of the century, and has
been attributed to their influence and that of Nalanda. It exhibits the
sarne mixture of Buddhist and Hindu cults, and the tendency to
Tantric mysticism, as in Bengal. Its spread also coincides with the
appearance in Java of the Buddhist Sailendra dynasty bearing the
imperial title of Maharaja. ^ With this dynasty was to be linked an
important phase in the history of Srivijaya.
For the next half-century after the four Old Malay inscriptions the
only references to Srivijaya come from the Chinese record of embassies. These cover the period from 695 to 742, but tell us Very little.
Princes of Srivijaya bring presents of dwarfs, musicians and multicoloured parrots, and the emperor in acknowledgment confers titles
of honour on the king. Then there is a complete blank until 775, when
the much-discussed Ligor stele, discovered at the Wat Sema-muang,
takes up the story.
'
The stele has two faces, both containing inscriptions. Face A contains ten Sanskrit verses commemorating the foundation of a Mahayanist sanctuary by a King of Srivijaya anH bears the Saka date
corresponding to 15 April 775. It thus indicates the expansion of the
empire of Srivijaya and also of Mahayana Buddhism to the Malay
Peninsula. Face B bears what Ccedes and Krom describe as an^unfinished inscription celebrating a victorious king, who bears the title
of Sri Maharaja because he is of Sailendra family. Krom and a
number of other scholars identified the King of Srivijaya on face A
with the Sailendra monarch mentioned on face B, and hence inferred
that a Sailendra was ruling over Srivijaya in 775.^ And, as it was already
established that a Sailendra, vouched'^for by inscriptions at Kalasan

THE ISLAND EMPIRES ( l )

v>,.;;

45

d Kelurak, was ruling in central Java also at the same time, Krom
oncluded that Java was then under the supremacy of the Sumatran
kinedom. The assumption, therefore, was that the Sailendras were a,
Srlvijaya dynasty which had conquered parts of Java.
The discovery of the stele led the Indian scholar R. C. Majumdar
in 1033 ^ ^^^ whether it was not possible for the Sriyijayan capital to
have been located on the Malay Peninsula rather than in south-east
Sumatra. Then in 1935 Dr Quaritch Wales put forward the claims of
Chaiya on the east coast as a more likely place. But, leaving aside t"he
details of what has proved a barren discussion, it may be simply stated
that the evidence pointing to Palembang remains unshaken.^ Equally
barren has been the attempt to ascribe an Indian origin to the Sailendra
dynasty. R. C. Majumdar's supposition that it was in some way connected with the Sailodbhava kings of Kalinga has been rejected. K. A.
Nilakanta Sastri in 1935 suggested that since the title Sailendra,
'King of the Mountain', was often applied to Siva, and the Pandyas of
South India claimed descent from the god and assumed the title
'Minankita Sailendra', the Sailendras might have had a South Indian
origin. In his more recent work, The History of Sri Vijaya (1949),
however, he has abandoned the theory, though still unable to align
himself with Przyluski and Ccedes, who ascribe to them a purely
Javanese origin. But this does not imply, as Stutterheim once tried to
argue,* that it was Srivijaya that came under Javanese domination, and
not the other way round.
The question has been asked whether the ruler of Srivijaya mentioned
in face A of the Ligor inscription was indeed the Sailendra ruler
referred to on face B. Assuming that they were different persons,
the suggestion has been made that the latter was Balaputradeva, a
Srivijayan king, the son of a Javanese Sailendra ruler, who, according
to an inscription at Nalanda, now dated about 860,^ founded a monastery for Indonesian pilgrims going there to study, to which King
Devapala -assigned the revenues of a number of villages.* But the
' For further study of this question see G. Ferrand, ' L'empire sumatranaise de
^rivijaya' in JA, 1922; Quaritch Wales, 'A Newly-explored Route of Ancient Indian
Cultural Expansion' in Indian Art and Letters, new Series IX (1935), i, p. 15s; Nilakanta Sastri, 'Srivijaya, Candrabhanu and Vira-Pandya' in T B G , Ixxvii (1937), 2, pp.
251-68; J. L. Moens, 'Qrivijaya, Yava en Kataha", ifeiW., Ixxvii (1937), 3, pp. 317-487.
^ W. F. Stutterheim, A Javanese Period in Sumatra's history, Surakarta, 1929. For
the literature regarding the, origin of the Sailendras the reader is referred to R. C.
Majumdar, 'Las rois Sailendra de Suvarnadvipa' in BEFEO, I, xxxiii (1933), p p .
121-42; G. Ccedfes, ' O n the Origin of the Sailendra of Indonesia' in J G I S , I (1934),
2, p. 6 1 ; K. A. N. Sastri, 'Origin of the Sailendras' in T B G , Ixxv (1935), 4; J. Przyluski,
' T h e Sailendravamsa' in J G I S , ii (1935), i, p. 25* J. G. de Casparis, Prasasti Indonesia, II, Bandung, 1956, pp. 260, 297.
' Coedes, Les Stats hindouises, pp. 159-60, 184-6.

46

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

accumulating evidence regarding Balaputradeva, as will be shown in

due course, makes it quite clear that, whatever his claims to Java may
have been, he had no authority there whatever. Moreover, the script
on both faces of the Ligor inscription appears to be identical^ and
suggests that both were inscribed at roughly the same period. The
full explanation of this challenging docunient has yet to be established.^.
Java itself possesses hardly any epigraphical document between Purnavarman's fifth-century inscriptions and a Sanskrit inscription of 732 ina Saivite sanctuary at Changgal, south-east of the Borotudur. This
records the erection of a linga by a King Sanjaya of Mataram in Kunjarakunja in the island of Java 'rich in grain and gold mines'. As Java
produced no gold, attempts have been made to identify the name
Kunjarakunja with some place in the Malay Peninsula, but Stutterheim
has proved that it was in fact the name of the district in which Sanjaya
erected his sanctuary. Sanjaya, king of Mataram, also appears in a
much later inscription discovered by Stutterheim at Kedu in central
Java. This valuable record is dated 907 and gives a list of the predecessors of the then reigning king, Maharaja Balitung, beginning with'
Sanjaya. The remaining eight rulers all bear the title Sri Maharaja.
Sanjaya's immediate successor, Rakryan Panangkaran, who was
reigning in 778, is described as 'ornament of the Sailendra dynasty'^
in an inscription at Chandi Kalasan, east of Jogjakarta, which commemorates the foundation of the chandi as a shrine to the Buddhist
goddess Tara.
Now the old kingdom of Mataram was in central Java, and King
Sanjaya, though credited with sensational conquests in Bali, Sumatra
and even in Cambodia up to the borders of China in a Javanese work of
much later date, is nowhere in any contemporary or near-contemporary
source referred to as either Maharaja ot a Sailendra. Moreover, he
was a Saivite, not a Buddhist. Hence the list of rulers beginning with
him that is found in Balitung's inscription of 907 has presented his torians with very difficult problems. The fact that a Chinese account
, records that between 742 and 755 the capital oi'~Ho-ling (i.e. Central
Java) was transferred farther eastwards by a King Ki-yen, identified
with Gajayana, founder of a sanctuary of Agastya at Dinaya in East
Java in 760, has led to the theory that the Buddhist Sailendras drove
out the dynasty of Sanjaya from central Java, and with it the Saivite
religion; and the.suggestion has accordingly been put forward that
^ For further discussion see Ccedes in Oriens Extremus, 6, i, 1959, pp. 42-8 and de
Casparis, op. cit., II, p. 260, n. 77.
* He was a feudatory of the Sailendra house.

THE ISLAND EMPIRES ( l )

47

Balitung's list is not a dynastic one but a list of rulers of Central Java
arranged in chronological order.
The emergence of Sanjaya must be seen against a background of
struggle between the forces of unity and disunity in Java. Among a
host of petty rulers one vi^OuId from time to time build up his power by
forcing the ' rakryans' ruling the neighbouring localities to render him
obedience and tribute. When, from time to time, such a ruler was
able to extend his power over a wide area, he would proceed to demonstrate his greatness by building a 'chandi', or monumental tomb,
dedicated to the deity with whom he chose to be identified in Ijfe
and united in death. Sanjaya, as ' rakryan' of the district of Mataram,
gave its name to the kingdom that he carved out for himself. The
chandi bearing the Saivite symbol of the linga, which he erected in 732,
was the outward sign and manifestation of his claims to overlordship.
The evidence about him and his successors, however, is tantalizingly
scrappy; and, while its monumental remains, among the most magnificent in South-East Asia, are still with us, and we have at our disposal
an immense body of scholarly work concerning them, the political
history of old Mataram is little known. Until recently nothing was
known for certain as to the identity of the Sailendras. Of the dynasty
of 'kings of the mountain', responsible for the erection of the glorious
Buddhist monuments of the late eighth and early ninth centuries in
Central Java, the questing historian could find a vast amount of theory
and disappointingly little fact. On the other hand Dutch archaeologists
have made notable contributions to our knowledge of the monuments
themselves.
The Borobudur, which represents the highest expression of the
artistic genius of the Sailendra period, is utterly unlike any other
Javanese monument. It is not a temple with an interior, but an immense stupa in the form of stone terraces covering the upper part of
a natural hill, on the flattened top of which stands the central stupa.
Its height is 150 feet. To traverse the whole distance through the '
galleries up to the summit involves a walk of over three miles. The
walls of the galleries on both sides are adorned with bas-relief sculptures illustrating Mahayanist texts. They run to thousands. , In
addition there are 400 statues of the Buddha. The base has a series
of reliefs depicting the effects of good and evil deeds in daily life producing karma. But these are now covered up by a broad casement of
stonework. The Japanese, during their occupation of Java from 1942
to 1945, showed enough interest in the monument to have a small part
of the casement removed and some of the reliefs of the original base

48

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. 1

excavated. The stones have not been replaced, and it is now^ possible
to see the uncovered reliefs.
From the religious point of view the sanctuary as a whole forms an
impressive and convincing textbook of Buddhism as taught by the
Nalanda school. The style of sculpture follows the classic models of
Gupta India, but the reliefs are not.Indian, they are Javanese. They
provide a wonderful picture of Javanese life and customs. The Javanese artists in adopting Indian models had already changed them in.
conformity with their own traditions.^ Even the conventionalized
figures are often given a vitality that seems to break through formalisni,
and there are many human touches.
Architecture was the supreme achievement of the Sailendras. Most
of them are mere names in a list, but their glorious shrines are still to
be seen on the Kedu plain near to Jogjakarta. Not far from the Borobudur is the splendid Chandi Mendut containing three original stone
statues of huge size, representing a preaching Buddha between two
Bodhisattvas. Thanks to careful restoration by the Dutch, it is in
excellent condition today. Other outstanding examples of the same period
are Chandi Sari, a single vihara; Chandi Plaosan, consisting of two central
squares, each with a vihara, surrounded by a belt of shrines and two belts
of stupas; and the unfinished Chandi Sevu, consisting of a large vihara
surrounded by four square belts of small shrines said to number 240.
In basic principles of construction and decoration these products of
the Sailendra period differ little from the more sober Saivite temples
on the Dieng plateau nearby, which bear witness to the. prosperity of
the seventh century and the period of Sanjaya, but the vast scale on
which they were planned, their more highly-developed technique and
more imaginative use of ornamentation show an artistic expansion
which must have come from a hew impulse of great vitality. The idea
once held was that they were the products of a wave of immigration
from India. But there is no evidence of one, and Stutterheim has
' shown that these monuments were not only built by Javanese stonemasons and sculptors but also were associated with indigenous religious
ideas and practices par excellence. A chandi was in no sense an Indian
temple. The outstanding feature of the culture of the Sailendra period
is the vitality and potency of the Indonesian element. ' I n literature" this
tendency is already to be seen in the Old Javanese translation of the
Sanskrit work Amaramala, which was produced under the patronage
of a Sailendra prince whose name, given at the beginning of the work,
was Jitendra.
^
' W. F. Stutterheim, Het Hinduisme in de Archipel, p. 25.

THE ISLAND EMPIRES ( l )

CH.

49

Some of the mystery concerning the founders of these monuments,

nd the monuments themselves, has recently been cleared up by the
t)ublication in Bandung, Java, of new epigraphical material, translated
nd edited for Dinas Purbakala, the Indonesian Department of Archaeology by Dr J. G. de Casparis. It is contained in two volumes with the
general title Prasasti Indonesia, the first of which, Inscripties uit de
Cailendra-tijd, appeared in 1950, and the second. Selected Inscriptions
from the seventh to the ninth century A.D., in 1956. In his first study
Dr de Casparis is able to make a clear distinction between the real
Sailendra dynasty and the list of rulers given in Balitung's inscription
of 907, which Ccedes interpreted as containing a mixture of Sailendras
and non-Sailendras. The inscriptions, de Casparis tells us, contain the
names of three Sailendra kings and a princess belonging to the period
775-842. They are additional to Balitung's list, none of the kings of
which, according to de Casparis's showing, was a Sailendra: all were
indeed the lineal descendants of Sanjaya. During this period, therefore,
there were not one but two reigning dynasties in central Java, the
kings of the Sanjaya line being until 832 subordinate to the Sailendras.
On this showing, which accords with Vogel's interpretation of the
Kalasan inscription, Pailcapana, the Rakryan Panangkaran, was not a
Sailendra but a vassal of the Sailendra king Vishnu. The table of the
two dynasties runs thus:
Sanjaya's line {Saivite)

The ^ailendras {Buddhist)

Sanjaya (732-c; 760)

R. Panangkaran (c. 760-c. 780)

I

?(Bhanu, 752)

R. Panungalan (c. 780-c. 800)

Vishnu (Dharmatunga)
(before 775-82)

R. Warak (c. 800-before 819)

Indra (Sangramadhanamjaya)
(782-?8i2)

R. Garung (?R. Patapan)

(before 8i9-?838)

Samaratunga ( = T a r a )
(?8i2-?832)
I
Balaputra
=Pramodavardhani (Princess)

I
I

R. Pikatan(?838-?85i)
R. Kayuwani (?85i-after 882)

50

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

In 832 Rakryan Patapan, whom de Casparis equates with

Rakryan Garung of the Sanjaya line, erected an inscription proclaiming his authority over most of ceritral Java. This would imply
the end of Sailendra rule in Java. Exactly what happened the evidence
does not show. De Gasparis offers the following explanation. He
presumes the death of the Sailendra Samaratunga in that year. Balaputra, his infant son, was too young to come to the throne. Pramodavardhani, his daughter, is shown by the epigraphical evidence to have
married into the Sanjaya house. Her husband was Rakryan Pikatan,
the son of Rakryan Patapan, the author of the inscription of 832.
Ten years later, in an inscription of 842 recording the dedication of
ricefields to the upkeep of the Borobudur, she is described as queen.
Her husband probably succeeded his father in 838.
Thus did the hegemony over central Java pass out of Sailendra
hands. The young prince Balaputra, it is surmised, fled to Sumatra,
married a Srivijaya princess, and ultimately became the ruler of his
adopted state. In Java Rakryan Pikatan and his Sailendra consort
were the parents of Kayuwani, who came to the throne in the middle
of the ninth century. 'Later Javanese princes from Kayuwani to
Balitung,' writes de Casparis, 'and probably his predecessors, considered themselves as belonging to the dynasty founded by Sanjaya
in 732, but their titles show that they indirectly also belong to the
^ailendra dynasty.'^
In his second study much light is thrown upon Prince Balaputradeva,
the failure of the Sailendras in Gentral Java and the supplanting of
Buddhism by Saivism as the court religion. Three Sanskrit inscriptions
from the Ratubaka Plateau a little to the south of Prambanan deal with
the erection of lingas there by a prince, with a name composed of
synonyms for the sage Agastya, to celebrate a victory in the year 856
over an unknown enemy.^ The evidence, as de Casparis indicates,*
links him up with the founder of a Siva temple Bhadraloka at Pereng,
which is recorded in an inscription, dated 863-,,partly written in Sanskrit verse and partly in Old Javanese prose, which Krom interpreted
as the first clear proof of the cessation of Sailendra hegemony in Java.
Dr de Casparis's conclusion is that the victory of 856 marked the
culmination of a long struggle for dominance between the Sanjaya house
and the Sailendras, and that while Rakryan Patapan's 832 inscription
* Op. cit., p. 202.
^ Prasasti, II, p. 256. De Casparis thinks that the unknown enemy were probably
Malay-speaking invaders seeking to establish claims by marrying into the then powerless
Sailendra family.
' Ibid., pp. 249, 258.

CH. 3

THE ISLAND EMPIRES ( l )

51

shows that a prince of the Sanjaya house has made himself independent
of the Sailendras and estabhshed a Saivite centre in northern Central
Java, the Sailendras themselves probably continued to reign in southern
Central Java and to strive to reassert their ascendancy.
How that struggle ended is made clear by an Old Javanese inscription of unknown site, dated 856,^ the year of the victory recorded in
the Ratubaka inscriptions. It mentions Balaputradeva in connection
with the struggle in the preceding period, and indicates that after defeat
in the open country he retired to a stronghold, described as constructed
with hundreds of stones, where he was attacked and defeated by
Kumbhayoni, the founder of the Ratubaka lingas and of the Pereng
temple. The lingas thus indicate that the final victory for the Sanjayavamsa was won on the Ratubaka Plateau.
The Old Javanese inscription of 856 mentions a King Jatiningrat,
who after defeating Balaputra resigned his throne and handed over the
symbols of power to one Dyah Lokapala, whom de Casparis identifies
with Kayuwani. He, it will be remembered, was the son of Pikatan of
the Sanjaya line and the Sailendra princess Pramodavardhani, who as
Queen Sri Kahulunnan issued the edicts recorded in the inscription of
842, mentioned above, dedicating rice-fields for the upkeep of the
Borobudur and also participated in the foundation of Chandi Plaosan.
The story of the king, who on retiring from the throne to devote himself
to a spiritual life, and acquire merit by religious foundations, takes a new
name, is of special significance,^ for there is a close parallel with that of
King Airlangga of later Indonesian history. He retired to a hermitage
in 1045 and also adopted the name Jatiningrat. Moreover, the parallel
between the. two rulers, de Casparis points out, extends over their
careers as a whole. The three linga inscriptions show that Kumbhayoni's
(alias R. Pikatan, alias Jatiningrat) life was divided into a sequence of
four periods, one of asceticism, then one of fierce battles, then one of
complete victory, and finally one of resignation. The life of Airlangga
similarly is divided into this same sequence of periods, and de Casparis's
suggestion is that when he resigned the throne, adopted the name
Jatiningrat and became a hermit, he was inspired by the example of
King Kumbhayoni, so powerful was the influence of tradition in early
Indonesian history.
The Ratubaka Plateau would seem to have been an ideal place for
Balaputradeva's last stronghold. A Sailendra foundation of the eighth
century was situated there, and Buddhist statues together with a silver
plate bearing on it the abbreviated form of the Buddhist creed have
1/fctW., pp. 260, 280-99.

'

' Ibid., p. 2gi.

 TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I ,

been discovered there and a Sailendra inscription-in north Indian script

dated 792. It had special associations with'the Sailendra house. This
would explain why Kumbhayoni after his victory made a special point
of rfecting lingas there, and transformed the place into a Saivite centre.
But de Casparis warns us that in explaining this struggle religious factors
must not be stressed.^ It was not a. case of religious fanaticism, but
rather a struggle for dominance between two rival families, and it may
be that popular support went to the Sanjaya champion because of the.
tremendous burden the huge Sailendra foundations laid on the people.
When Balaputradeva was finally chased from his strong position,
he must have escaped to Sumatra, and in a way still unknown became
king of Srivijaya. Various suggestions aimed at explaining this have
been made. It has been thought that he may have had a claim to the
Srivijayan throne through his mother. Krom thought it likely that
Dharmasetu, who is mentioned in the Nalanda inscription as Balaputradeva's maternal grandfather, was a king of Srivijaya, that his
daughter married the Sailendra Samaragravira and became the mother
of the defeated prince.^ A much earlier family relationship has been,
suggested by Coedes in a study of face B of the Ligor inscription published in 1950.* He thinks that two kings, father and son, are mentioned,
the father being identical with the ruler of Srivijaya mentioned on
face A, and the son becoming the first Sailendra after marriage with
a princess descending from the 'Kings of the Mountain' of Funan.
While not committing himself to so precise a statement de Casparis
has pointed out that the two inscriptionsi.e. A and Bcan be interpreted in such a way as to suggest a close relationship between the
Srivijaya kings of Palembang and the Sailendra kings of Central Java;*
but he warns us that family relations are not the full explanation of
Balaputradeva's succession to the Srivijayan throne.^ There may have
been several candidates with claims based upon family relationship;
he, however, possessed the considerable advantage of bringing with
him important territorial claims. It is significant that in the Nalanda
inscription the fact is stressed that his father and grandfather were
kings of Java. Even if he himself were unable to recover his inheritance,
his claims would pass to his successors. Thus Krom's suggestion that
the shift of the Javanese capital from Central to East Java in tire first
Op. cit., I, p. 294.
^
^ In the Nalanda inscription Balaputradeva is called king of, Sumatra and a descendant
of the Sailendra kings of Java. His father's title is shown as Samaragravira, 'foremost hero
in battle', and his grandfather is described as the'Sailendra slayer of enemy heroes'.
^ ' L e Qailendra Tueur des Heros ennemis' in Bingkisan Budi, pp. 5S-70.
* Op. cit., I, pp. 99-100.
KOp. cit., i l , p. 296, n. 66.

THE, ISLAND EMPIRES ( l )

53

CH. 3

h If of the tenth century was due to fear of a Srivijayan attack may hold
the key to that mystery.^ Equally, suggests de Casparis, BalaputraHeva's defeat in Java may have induced him to send his mission to the
Pala king in c. 860 through anxiety to cultivate friendly relations with
what was then the gr^test Buddhist power in the West in view of a
possible threat to his eastern flank.^
Thus some of the mystery of the Sailendras in Central Java, and
of their disappearance from there and simultaneous appearance in
Sumatra, has been cleared up through the patient and penetrating work
of de Casparis. He has some equally penetrating things to say about
their artistic monuments.
He insists that the Buddhist foundations of the Sailendras must be
examined in the light of ancestor-worship, and shows that the nine
Bodhisattvas sculptured on the outside of Chandi Mendut, close to the
Borobudur, may be interpreted as representing the ancestors of King
Indra, its founder. If so, the Sailendra dynasty, which, it has been generaUy assumed, had its origin not long before, the date of its earliest in. scriptions, may have been founded as early as the first half of the seventh
century. Thus the view, long held by Ccedes, that the Java' Kings of the
Mountain' were in some way connected with the Funan monarchy
bearing the same .title no longer appears to be ruled out by the time
factor, since the end of Funan may have coincided with the foundation
of the Sailendra dynasty in Java. And indeed de Casparis has found in
two Sailendra inscriptions, at Kelurak and Plaosan, allusions pointing to
the name of the last capital of Funan, Naravaranagara.
His interpretation of the 'hidden meaning' of the Borobudur is of
special interest. Mention has already been made of the stone casement covering the reliefs around the foot of the monument.. Guesses
have been hazarded as to the reason for sculpturing the reliefs only to
cover them up afterwards. From an inscription of 842 de Casparis infers
that the full name of the monument was Bhumisambarabhudhara,
'the Mountain of Accumulation of Virtue on the ten Stages of the
Bodhisattva'. Its foot would thus represent the first stage. The covering of this, he tells us, is not to be explained in terms of Mahayanism,
but rather in those of ancestor-worship. The first stage of the Bodhisattvabhumi must be seen as the one which the Sailendra king Indra
would occupy when he reached the status of a Bodhisattva. It was
covered up by way of reservation. In a sense it was dead, and only
upon his becoming a Bodhisattva could the reliefs surrounding it be
uncovered and brought to life again.^
' Injra, p. 59.

^ Prasasti Indonesia, II, p. 297.

' Ibid., p. 184.

CHANDI MENDUT

CHANDi MENDUT ( i n t e r i o r )

(,jj

THE ISLAND EMPIRES ( l )

55

In order to see things in their proper setting it is necessary to treat

the complex Chandi Mendut-Chandi Pawon-Chandi Borobudur as
one whole, capable of analysis from the double standpoint of Mahayana Buddhism and ancestor-worship. From the one standpoint it
represents the Path leading to Buddhahood, with the ' Temple of the
Bamboo Grove' (Chandi Mendut) as the first preparatory stage. The
word gotra, however, used in this connection to indicate the fundamental element of Buddhahood, awakened at this stage, also signifies in
a non-Buddhist sense a line of ancestors. From tliis latter standpoint,
therefore, the chandi demonstrates King Indra'^ realization that he
followed a line of ancestors, represented, as already indicated, by the
nine Bodhisattvas sculptured on its outside.
Chandi Pawon, the name of which, according to de Casparis, refers
t6 a royal cremation, represents the last worldly stage giving entrance
to the supramundane stages in the progress of the Bodhisattva. These
latter are represented in the Borobudur itself. The covered-up foot
<ii the mQaumeat, as we have seen., sytahQlizies the first. The open
* terraces above it account for the remainder, culn^inating in the tenth
and topmost. Again it is the 'hidden meaning' which carries the
greater significance, for according to de Casparis's interpretation it
implies a representation of the nine preceding gailendra princes, each
in his proper place on the road leading to Buddhahood, with the
first ancestor, 'the " r o o t " {mula) of the dynasty, the (Jailendra,
"Lord of the Mountain", at the final momentary meditation before
obtaining Buddhahood'.
(i) The greatness and decline of ^ri'^j'^y^
Definite evidence is lacking concerning both the origin of the Sailendras and the disappearance of their power in central Java. So far
as history is concerned, unheralded they come and unheralded they go.
Moreover, they, who bequeathed to Java so glorious a heritage of
religious architecture and art, built no enduring rnonuments either in
Sumatra or anywhere else in their empire when they became the ruling
dynasty of Srivijaya. Internal evidence of Srivijaya's history under
their rule is conspicuous by its absence. May the lack of it in the tenth
century be attributed to the destruction caused by the great Chela
raid of 1025? Or does the explanation lie in the f^ct, noted by Coed^s,
that she was a 'great economic power which neglected the spiritual
values'? Her sovereigns, he suggests, were too busy controlling the
traffic of the straits to waste time on such matters-^
' Op. cit., p.

til.

56

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

It is intriguing to find that at about the time when the Sailendra

power 'disappears from Java the Chinese begin to employ a different
name for Srivijaya. Instead of Ghe-li-fo-che they call it San-fo-ts'i.
The new name appears first in the record of an embassy of 904-5,
and continues to be used until the end of the fourteenth century.
No explanation of this change in nomenclature has been suggested.
And the transliteration itself presents a difficulty, for while fo-ts'i
stands for vijaya, hi should be rendered by the Chinese characters
for che-li.
From the middle of the ninth century a new external source, the
writings of Arabic-Persian geographers, becomes important. They
extol the riches and power of the Maharaja of 'Zabag', who is the
' king of the isles of the eastern sea'. They mention in particular that
he rules over the maritime country of 'Kalah' and the island of
'Sribuza'. 'Kalah' stands for Kra, now the name of a region of the
Malay Peninsula, but then applied by the writers to the whole Peninsula. 'Sribuza' is a rendering of Srivijaya and is applied to both
Palembang and the island of Sumatra.
The Arab Mas'udi, writing in 955, speaks in exaggerated terms of
the enormous population and innumerable armies of the kingdom of
the maharaja. As Krom has pointed out, the defence of a privileged
position such as Srivijaya assumed involved perpetual recourse to
force. The empire, like that of the Dutch in the seventeenth century,
was a vast trading monopoly, and rivals had to be reduced to subjection or neutralized. Its territories, wrote the Arabs, produced
camphor, aloes, cloves, sandalwood, nutmeg, cardamum, cubeb and
much else. Its trade was far-reaching. The Nalanda inscription recording Balaputra's foundation of a vihara there is evidence of established relations with Bengal, which was presumably one of its sources
of piece-goods. There is evidence also of intercourse with the Coromandel Coast.
When in 971 the Chinese opened an agency at Canton for the
management of sea-borne commerce the merchants of Srivijaya are
mentioned in the list of foreigners resorting there. The History of the
Sung records the arrival of a merchant of Srivijaya in 980 at Swatow,
and five years later that of a purely commercial mission. The restoration of order by the Sung dynasty led to much intercoiirse with Srivijaya. The Chinese record the arrival of embassies in 960, 962, 971,
972, 974, 975, 980, 983, and 988. In some cases the king's name is
mentioned, but it has not been possible to transliterate the Chinese
into Sanskrit with certainty. Regular intercourse between the two

CH. 3

THE ISLAND EMPIRES ( l )

57

Courts went on until 1178, when the Chinese emperor, finding the
expense of receiving these embassies somewhat too heavy, directed
that in future they should proceed no farther than Chuan-Chu in
Fukien province, but trade there in the ordinary way.
The Srivijaya ambassador, who appeared at the Imperial Court in
088 and left for home in 990, heard on reaching Canton that his country
was being attacked by the Javanese. After waiting for a year at Canton
he sailed homewards, but on arrival in Champa heard such bad news
that he returned to China to ask for the issue of a decree placing his
country under the imperial protection. That was in 992. In the same
year Javanese envoys appeared before the emperor to complain of
continual war with San-fo-ts'i. The war was provoked by Dharmavamsa {c. 985-c. 1006), King of East Java, who aimed at destroying
Srivijaya and substituting Javanese supremacy over the islands. Little
is known of the actual struggle, though it would appear that for some
years the Javanese attacks placed Palembang in dire peril. They were,
Ino'wevti, \>ea\.en off. TWTI, k i?, t,Vio\ig\\t, $)TW\J2i7i3', a.\ded by its v?fi.%als
from the Malay Peninsula, organized a great counter-attack and burnt
Dharmavamsa's kraton. He himself was killed arid his empire
collapsed.
Srivijaya's success in the long struggle with Dharmavamsa came
partly through cultivating friendly relations with China on the one
hand and with the Cholas in India on the other. Had either supported
the Javanese attack the result might have been very different. In
sending the customary tribute to China in 1003 the King of Srivijaya
announced that he had erected a Buddhist temple for the offering of
prayers for the life of the emperor. This time the Chinese version of
the king's name is recognizable as Sri Chulamaiiivarmadeva.
About two years later this same king emulated Balaputra's example
by building at Negapatam on the Coromandel Coast a Buddhist
temple, named after him the Chulamanivarmadeva Vihara. The Ghola
king Rajaraja granted the revenues of a large village for its upkeep.
Like the. earlier Nalanda endowment, the Negapatam one was established to provide a place where the merchants of Srivijaya could
resort for worship in accordance with their owri religious tenets. It
witnesses to the importance of the trading connection between Palembang and the Coromandel Coast, which drove a. flourishing trade in
Indian piece-goods with South-East Asia.
In Rajaraja's grant of revenues to the Negapatam vihara it is stated
that the King of Srivijaya belonged to the Sailendra family. In his
reign the empire stood at the height of its power and prestige. Un-

eg

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

happily none of its records has survived, and all that is known of it,
even the names of its kings, comes solely from external sources. Thus
the Chinese record a mission received in 1008 from Chulamanivarmadeva's son Maravijayottungavarma, but there is no mention of the
date of the father's death. From another external source also come?
the interesting information that Srivijaya was still a famous Buddhist
centre. The renowned Atisa, who reformed Tibetan Buddhism, is
said to have studied there from l o i i to 1023 under Dharmakirti, the
head of the Buddhist clergy in Sumatra. The Tibetan biography of
Atisa calls Sumatra the chief centre of Buddhism and Dharmakirti the
greatest scholar of his time.
The good relations cultivated by Sri Chulamanivarmadeva with the
Cholas did hot last long. An expanding sea power like that of the
Cholas was bound to resent tjie methods used by the old empire of
the islands to maintain its commercial monopoly. In 1017 the Chinese
record the reception of a mission from yet another King of Srivijaya,
Haji Sumatrabhumi by name. It was in his reign that his empire
sustained at Chola hands a staggering blow, from which it never fully
recovered. In 1007 the Cholas had begun to raid eastwards, and
Rajaraja boasted that in that year he conquered 12,000 islands. This
exaggerated claim has been taken to refer to an expedition against the
Maldives. His son and successor, Rajendra, has been credited with an
attempted raid on the possessions of Srivijaya in the Malay Peninsula;
but there is some doubt as to whether this actually took place. Rajaraja died in 1014, and Rajendra seems to have remained for some years
on friendly terms with Srivijaya, and even to have confirmed the grant
made by his father to the Negapatam vihara.
The great.raid which crippled the Malay empire occurred in 1025.
Details of it were recorded by Rajendra in an inscription at Tanjore
dated 1030-1. Nilakanta Sastri's translation runs thus: '[Rajendra]
having despatched many ships in the midst of the rolling sea and
having caught Sangrama-Vijayottungavarman, the King of Kadaram,
together with the elephants in his glorious army, [took] the large heap
of treasures, which [that king] had rightfully accumulated; captured
with noise the [arch called] Vidyadharatorana at the war-gate of his
extensive capital, Srivijaya, with the jewelled wicket-gate adorned with
great splendour and the gate of large jewels; Pannai with water in its
bathing ghats; the ancient Malaiyur with the strong mountain for its
rampart; Mayirudingam, surrounded by the deep sea [as] by a moat;
Ilangasoka undaunted [in] fierce battles; Mappapalam having abundant
[deep] water as defence; Mevilimbangam guarded by beautiful walls;

^
CH. i

THE ISLAND EMPIRES ( l )

59

Valaippanduru possessed of Vilaippanduru [ ?]; Talaittakkolam praised

bv great men [versed in] the sciences; the great Tamralinga [capable
ofl strong action in dangerous battles; Ilamuri-deam, whose fierce
strength rose in war; the great Nakkavaram, in whose extensive
gardens honey was collected; and Kadaram of fierce strength, which
was protected by the deep sea.'i
Most of these places were situated in either Sumatra or the Malay
Peninsula, but several of the names have not been identified. Those
that can be identified with certainty are Palembang, Malayur (Jambi),
and Pane, on the east coast of Sumatra; Lankasuka (Ligor), Takola,
and Kedah, on the Malayan mainland; Tumasik, the old name for
Singapore Island, Acheh at the northern tip of Sumatra, and the
Nicobar Islands. It is interesting to see that Sangrama Vijayottungavarman, the King of Srivijaya, was known to the Tamils as King of
Kedah, although the chief seat of his power lay in Sumatra. Allowing
for the obscurity of several of the names, the extent of the empire of
Srivijaya corresponds fairly closely with the contemporary Arab
accounts of the empire of Zabag.
Krom is of opinion that the attacks began with Palembang, followed
by the occupation of important places on the east coast "of Surfiatra.
Then the Malay Peninsula was dealt with. On the way home Acheh
and the Nicobars we're raided. No attempt was made at conquest in
the real sense. Indeed the only political result of the raid of which
there is any record was the accession of a new Sailendra king, Sri
Peva, in place of the captured one. His embassy to China in 1028
was accorded more than the usual honours.
The weakness of Srivijaya after the raid enabled Airlangga of Java
(1019-42) to reconquer the patrimony lost by his father Dharmavamsa
in 1006. In face of the Chola threat the two Indonesian states buried
the hatchet, and in 1030 Airlangga married a daughter of Sangrama
Vijayottungavarman. From 1030 until 1064 nothing is known of the
history of Srivijaya. An inscription dated 1064 on the image of a
makara found at Solok, to the west of Jambi, mentions a certain
Dharmavira, but nothing is known of him. The image bears traces
of Javanese artistic influence. After the raid Srivijaya seems to have
re-established its authority over Sumatra but never to have recovered
its old power. With Airlangga it achieved a modus vivendi which left
it supreme over the west of the Archipelago and Java over the east.
But there is evidence of Java's commercial relations with the west.
There is a brief record of a Chola raid on the Malay Peninsula about
^ History of Sri Vijaya, p. 80.

6o

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

1068, when King Virarajendra is said to have conquered Kidaram on

behalf of Srivijaya and to have handed it over to the king, who had
sought Chola aid and protection. Thife seems to have later given the
Chinese the erroneous impression that it was the Chola king who was
the vassal of Srivijaya, and not the other way round. Whatever may be
the meaning of this stray and obscure reference, there are clear indications that during Virarajendra's reign friendly relations again existed
between the two powers, and no little commercial intercourse. An
inscription in Tamil dated 1088, found near Baros on the west coast of .
Sumatra, mentions an important south Indian corporation. In 1090,
at the request of Srivijaya, the Chola king Kulottunga I granted a new
charter to the Negapatam vihara.
In 1077, and not in 1067 as was once beheved, Srivijaya had sent a
mission to China. In 1079, however, the Chinese received missions
from both Jambi and Srivijaya, a curious circumstance that suggests
rivalry between Palembang, the capital of the Malay empire, and its
neighbour. In 1082 only Jambi was in official communication with
China, and it is likely that in the 1079-82 period Jambi was able to
supplant Palembang as the capital of Srivijaya.
During the twelfth century there is little to report. The Chinese
record a few embassies, and the commercial importance of Srivijaya is
suggested by the fact that one of its envoys in 1157 had long been
resident in China and had been made a Chinese official; in 1157 his
rank was raised. Obviously Srivijaya was able to employ experienced
agents in China. Yet this must have been a period of slow decline. The
development of the kingdom of Kediri in east Java as a naval and
commercial power stimulated economic progress in the Archipelago,
and Srivijaya is thought to have benefited thereby. But in 1178 the
Chinese writer Chou K'u-fei relegated her to the third place among
wealthy foreign states; she was surpassed by the Arab lands and Java.
Her methods too seem to have become more and more piratical. Every
passing ship was attacked if it failed to putjn to one of her harbours.
Nevertheless at the beginning of the thirteenth- century Srivijaya
inust still have been a great power. She is described as such in 1225 by
Chao Ju-kua, the Chinese inspector of foreign trade at Ch'uan-chou in
his Chu-fan-chi, 'Record of Foreign Nations'. He lists no less^than
fifteen vassal states, covering the whole of the Malay Peninsula south of
the Bay of Bandon and all western Indonesia, including'the state of
Sunda in West Java. Nilakanta Sastri thinks that there is.reason to
suspect that his political information was not as up-to-date as his
commercial data. But there can be no doubt'that Srivijaya still con-

Cxi* J

THE ISLAND EMPIRES ( l )

6l

. 4

trolled both sides of the Straits of Malacca and Sunda. Not until that
control was broken did her power vanish.
Chao Ju-kua's account of her capital shows it to have been a typical
water city full of creeks, with people living in boats or houses built on
rafts, like Mrohaung, the old capital of Arakan, modern Bangkok and
many older cities back to the days of Funan. One gathers, however,
that Palembang no longer exerted so tight a control over its vassal states
as once it had done. Aru, on the east coast of Sumatra, had set up its
own king. Chao Ju-kua's list of dependencies is not absolutely rehable:
Ceylon, for instance, is included in it. The list also includes Palembang,
but we have seen that there are reasons for believing that Jambi was
now the capital, though the Chinese preferred to call the empire by the
familiar name of San-fo-ch't. Chinese officials were never very interested in political events in Sumatra, provided that there was no interruption in trade. It is not surprising that Kertanagara's expedition to
Sumatra had Malayui.e. Jambias its objective, and according to
the Pararaton was planned as early as 1275. In 1281 the Srivijaya
embassy to China went from Malayu, and Marco Polo mentions
Malayu as the foremost state in Sumatra when he visited the island in
1292. During this period the name Srivijaya drops out of use.
One sign of the coming breakdown comes from the year 1230, when
Dharmaraja Chandrabanu of Tambralinga (Ligor) erected an inscription at Ch'aiya, in which he assumes the style of an independent ruler.
He makes no reference to Srivijaya. In 1247 and again in 1270 he
interfered in Ceylon. The defeat of his second expedition was so
severe that it is thought to have been the cause of Ligor's inability to
withstand the T'ai onslaught which came some twenty years later.
There is reason to think that Dharmaraja Chandrabanu developed
very friendly relations with the rising T'ai state of Sukhodaya (Suk'ot'ai) on the Menam. Ccedes suggests that the explanation of this,
and also of Tambralinga's atternpt to interfere in Ceylon, lies in its
adherence to Hinayana Buddhism of the Pali canon. The T'ai also
were Buddhists of the same school, and Ceylon was not only the foremost centre of this form of Buddhism but claimed to possess two of
the most prized relics of the Buddha, his begging-bowl and the famous
Kandy tooth. Taihbralinga's relations with her suzerain may have
been complicated by a growing antagonism between Hinayana and
Mahayana Buddhists.
The rise of the empires of Singosari and Majapahit in Java helped
to bring about the extinction of the old Sumatran empire. And
although in the light of recent research it is no longer possible to say

62

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

that Sumatra passed under the suzerainty of Kertanagara, the kingdom

of Sunda became subject to him, if the Nagarakertagama is correct,
and some parts of the Malay Peninsula.. Srivijaya must thus have lost
control over the Sunda Straits, and Kertanagara may also have weakened her hold on the Malacca Straits.
The decisive blow in this direction, however, came from the T'ai
kingdom of Suk'ot'ai, According to the Mon chronicles, the T'ais
were expanding their power over the northern possessions of Srivijaya in the Peninsula from about 1280. An inscription set up by Rama
K'amheng at Suk'ot'ai in 1292 claims that the kingdom of Ligor had
come under his rule. The Yuan History, in referring to a mission
received from Rama K'amheng in 1295, says that the people of Siam
and those of Ma-li-yu-eul (Malayu) had been killing each other for a
long time, but the latter had now submitted.
While the Javanese and the T'ais were extending their conquests
over the territories once ruled by the Sailendra maharaja Islam appeared as a proselytizing force in South-East Asia and began to add
to their disintegration. One of the earliest signs of its arrival is the
reference by Marco Polo to the, fact that Perlac, at the northern end of
Sumatra, had been converted to 'the law of Mahomet'. And the
discovery of the tombstone of Sultan Malik-al-Saleh of Samudra, who
died in 1297, shows that his state had adopted the new religion at
about the same time. Thus while the old Buddhist empire was losing
control over the straits through the pressure of Siam and Java, Islam
began to undermine its spiritual traditions.
In describing the eight kingdoms of Sumatra Marco Polo conveys
the impression that they were the ruins of an empire. And although
Kertanagara and the empire of Singosari came to a sudden end in 1292,
when they were threatened by a great Chinese punitive expedition
sent by Kublai Khan, neither Malayu nor Palembang was in a position
to carry out salvaging operations. Malayu was the only Sumatran
state of any importance in the fourteenth ^entury, and epigraphy
shows that it was still a refuge of ' H i n d u ' culture- But it was no
longer a great international emporium. Srivijaya was no more.

CHAPTER 4

T H E ISLAND EMPIRES (2)

(a) Java to the Mongol invasion of 1293
THE dominance of the Buddhist Sailendras over central Java in the
eighth century caused Saivism to seek a refuge in the eastern parts of
the island. There is evidence of the existence of an independent
kingdom there in the latter half of the century, with its centre somewhere in the neighbourhood of Malang. It was thus a forerunner of
the much later kingdom of Singosari. Its monuments were similar
in style to the ones that the Sailendras were erecting at the same time
in central Java, but were dedicated to the cult of Agastya, the sage who
. Hinduized south India. The rulers of the state were the guardians of
a royal linga representing much the same politico-religious ideas as
were to be found in contemporary Champa and Jayavarman II's
Cambodia. The oldest dated document coming from East Java
belongs to this period. It is a Sanskrit inscription dated 760 recording
the foundation at Dinaya of a sanctuary of Agastya by a king named
Gajayana.
During the second half of the ninth century the return of Saivism
to central Java has been taken as an indication of the decline of
Sailendra power there. Balitung (898-910), whose inscriptions are the
first to mention the kingdom of Mataram, was the first of four Saivite
kings who left inscriptions in the Kedu plain near Prambanan and
represent a dynasty which had come from East Java, and was presumably the one to which Gajayana belonged. Very little is known of
them.
Balitung's successor, Daksa (9io-?9i9), probably built the majestic
monuments of the Prambanan group, a vast complex of 156 shrines
ranged around a central cluster of eight major temples, with the temple
of Siva as its dominating feature. Just as the Borobudur with its
galleries of reliefs forms a.textbook of Mahayana Buddhism, so on a
smaller scale is the Siva temple, with its galleries of reliefs illustrating
the stories in the Ramayana, one of Hinduism. In one of the other
temples of the central group is the lovely statue of Durga, Siva's
consort, known locally as Lara Djonggrang, 'slender maiden'. The
63

64

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

complex forms a mausoleum housing the bodily remains of the king,

the royal family and the magnates of the realm, 'each identified with the
deity to which his or her^ shrine was dedicated, the royal personages
in the major temples with the deities of the Hindu pantheon, the
magnates' in the smaller shrines with the protecting deities of the
districts with which in life they were associated. The whole must have
afforded an indescribable impression of magnificence and splendour.
Daksa's successor, Tulodong, reigned from 919 to 921. The last
of the four was Wawa, whose dates, according to Krom, were 924-8.
He was the last king to maintain his capital in central Java. Traces of
it have been discovered close by Prambanan. The great aim of these
kings seems to have been to restore the Saivite tradition which the
Buddhist Sailendras had interrupted. After Wawa's brief reign central

Mediaeval Java

Java for some undiscovered reason sank into the background. An

earthquake or pestilence has been suggested as the cause of the sudden
transfer of the capital to East Java, but it seems most unlikely, since
there is no evidence of such an occurrence. The king who made the
move was Sindok (929-47), who is regarded as the founder of a new
dynasty which reigned in East Java until 1222^ It is possible that one
reason for hfs move was the fear that iSrivijaya-might attempt to
revive the Sailendra claims to central Java. Like all these early kings,
Sindok is only a name. All that is known of him personally is_^that he
ruled jointly with his chief queen,' who was the daughter of a high
official, the Rakaryan Bawang. This is one of many examples in Old
Javanese history of the importance of woman in the community. On
his death he was succeeded by his daughter Sri Isanatunggavijaya,
who ruled as queen. Her husband, a Javanese nobleman, held the
position of prince-consort.

CH. 4

THE ISLAND EMPIRES (2)

65

The period from 929 to 1222 was one of great importance in Java's
cultural development. The transfer of the seat of power to the valley
of the river Brantas led to a weakening of Hindu influence on government, religion and art and a corresponding increase in the importance
of the native Javanese element. Notwithstanding the allegiance of the
earlier rulers of East Java to the Saivite tradition, Indian influence had
always been weaker there than in central Java. Under the cloak of
Siva the old indigenous cults flourished, as indeed they did in Cambodia and Champa as well. Sindok's reign provides a series of Old
Javanese inscriptions which are a valuable source for the study of the
institutions of the country. They show clearly that its civilization was
Indonesian, not Indian.
In the days when it was usual to think in terms of' waves' of Indian
'immigration', one explanation of the growing predominance of the
Javanese element was that from the ninth century onwards Java
received no more of them. But the question that poses itself is whether
she had ever received any. Waves of immigration have been too easily
assumed on extremely tenuous evidence, and this assumption has
militated against seeing the development of Javanese culture in its
proper perspective. And, it may be remarked, this is equally true in
the cases of Burma, Siam, Cambodia and Champa.
The rise of the East Javanese kingdom had important economic
consequences for that region. The untilled swamps of the coastal
areas and the delta were brought under intensive cultivation. The
rulers of the new period began to develop an interest in overseas trade.
Commercial connections were made with the Moluccas on one hand and
with Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula on the other. Bali also for the
first time began to play a part in Javanese history. Late in the tenth century a Balinese ruler tnarried a daughter of Sindok's grandson, and thus
opened the way for the introduction of Javanese culture into the island.
The best known of Sindok's descendants is Dharmavamsa (c.985C.1606), who has been described as the first historical person of whom
we:have more than a dim vision. He ordered a codification of Javanese
law and encouraged the translation of Sanskrit texts into Javanese.
Among other works parts of the Mahabharata were translated into
Javanese prose with the Sanskrit verses interpolated. Thus arose the
oldest prose literature in the language.
His greatest enterprise was directed against the powerful empire of
Srivijaya. His attacks upon Palembang during the last decade of the
tenth century, as we have seen, placed Srivijaya in imminent danger,
until in 1006 the great Sufliatran counter-attack resulted in the

BUKIAL IMAGE OF KING AIRLANGGA FROM BELAHAN

(now in Mqjokerto Museum, Java)

CH. 4

THE ISLAND EMPIRES (2).

67

destruction of his kraton and his own death. The East Javanese
kingdom temporarily disappeared. Its place was taken by a number of
warring chiefs, each supreme in his own district.
Dharmavamsa had designated as his successor his son-in-law
Airlangga, the son of a Javanese princess, the great-granddaughter of
Sindok, who had married the BaHnese prince Dharmodayana. He
was in Java at the time of the disaster of 1006, but managed to escape
with his faithful servant Narottama and tobk refuge at a cloister of
hermits at Wonogiri. There he remained for some years waiting for
an opportunity to claim his throne. In 1019 he left his hiding-place
and received official consecration as king. But his sway extended over
only a fragment of the kingdom, and at first he dared not make any
attempt to recover the remainder through fear of intervention by
Srivijaya. There are indications that in 1022 he may have Succeeded
his father in Bali.
Three years later fortune favoured him in a quite unexpected
manner. Srivijaya was temporarily crippled by the great Chola raid,
and its threat to the East Javanese kingdom disappeared. Airlangga
thereupon began the task of reducing to obedience the various local
magnates who had divided the kingdom among themselves. It was
a long struggle, but by about 1030 he had made such progress that
Srivijaya recognized.him, and its king gave him a daughter in marriage.
A modus vivendi was established between the two powers, which
recognized Srivijaya's supremacy over the west of the Archipelago and
Java's over the east. Java, which the Cholas had presumably considered a commercial backwater not worth raiding, began rapidly to
rise-in importance as a trading centre. Airlangga's ports in the bay of
Surabaya and at Tuban traded not only with the 'Great East' but
were also the resort of merchants from the westTamils, Sinhalese,
Malabaris, Chams, Mons, Khmers and Achinese.
Such were the external signs of the new vigour infused into East
Java by this fine statesman. Internally he did much to improve
cultivation. But his reign has been celebrated by later ages chiefly for
its literary activity. Its most famous product is the Arjunavivaha,
composed by the Court poet Mpu Kanwa, probably in honour of
Airlangga's marriage with the Sumatran princess. The Mahabharata
story of the ascetic Arjuna is used as an allegorical representation of
Airlangga's own story. A version of it was adapted for presentation by
the Javanese theatre and has become one of the most popular themes
of the wayang, or shadow drama. In the poem itself and in the wayang
adaptation the setting is entirely Javanese.

68

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

The inscriptions of the reign mention three religious sects: Saivites,

Mahayana Buddhists, and Rishi, or ascetics. The return of.Saivite
rule to central Java had brought no antagonism between Buddhists
and Hindus; their mutual relations everywhere were excellent. This
symbiosis of the two religions was to be found in contemporary
Cambodia also. The Mahayana, especially in its Tantric form, was
becoming a secret sect, to which the highest in the land belonged.
Saivism was the first stage on the way to enUghtenment; after passing
through it the believer was ready to be inculcated with the higher
Buddhistic knowledge. Both priesthoods were so powerful that
Airlangga deemed it prudent to bring them under royal control. He
himself claimed to be an incarnation of Vishnu. His mausoleum atBelahan contained a remarkable portrait statue of him as Vishnu
riding on the man-eagle Garuda.^ It was the common practice for
the kings of his line to be worshipped after death in the form of
Vishnu. Ancestor-worship was a special task laid upon a king. At
certain set times he had to establish ritual contact with his ancestors in
order to strengthen his position by the receipt of new magical powers
from them. Hence the many chandis scattered about East Java
celebrating a dead ruler in the guise of Siva, Vishnu or the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara were all centres of ancestor-worship and,
although outwardly Hindu or Buddhist, represented a cultus that was
a survival from the pre-Hindu past.
Some four years before his death in 1049 Airlangga retired to a
cloister to become a Rishi. Before doing so, he is said to have performed an act strangely at variance with the policy he had pursued
throughout his reign; he divided his kingdom between his two sons.
Both were the children of concubines; he had no son born in royfl
wedlock. As their claims were equal, it may be that he feared that to
prefer one at the expense of the other would bring on civil war and
worse disunity than would result from peaceful partition. The
Javanese kingship, it must be remembered, w^as^not a central power
administering the whole kingdom. It was a case ^f'-a-maharaja controlling countless little lordships. The king received the homage and
tribute of the higher chieftains, who managed their own affairs.
Mediaeval Javanese history, like that of Europe, shows a constant
struggle in progress between the centripetal and the centrifugal
tendencies. Kings maintained their power only by repeated punitive
expeditions.
The river Brantas was the dividing line between the two kingdoms.
' Now in the museum at Modjokerto, East Java.

CH. 4

THE ISLAND EMPIRES ( z )

69

The eastern one, called Janggala, was of little importance it was soon
absorbed by the western one, called Panjalu at first, but better known
to history as Kediri. The union came- about peacefully through the
marriage of Kamesvara (i 117-30) of Kediri with the Princess Kirana
of Janggala.i
^ For many years after Airlangga's death Javanese history is almost
a blank. There are many inscriptions, but they contain little historical
substance. Chinese sources mention Kediri as a powerful wellorganized state. Ten kings are mentioned up to 1222, but-most are
mere names. Kamesvara is known through his marriage and Dharmaja's poem Smaradahana, in which he is associated with the god
Kama and his wife with the goddess Rati, Kama's wife. Jayabhaya
(1135-57) is Airlangga's best-remembered successor. Javanese
tradition asserts that he prophesied the downfall of his country and its
rise once more to greatness. He is the hero of a poem by Mpu Panuluh
entitled Harivamsa. Little is known of his reign, though in local legend
it figures as a time of romantic chivalry. Its real fame rests on the fact
that it produced another great masterpiece of Old Javanese literature,
the Bharatayuddha, an adaptation of the story of the great battle
between the Pandavas and Kauravas from the Mahabharata. The
Kediri period indeed witnessed an unparalleled flowering of literature.
It was also a time of much commercial development throughout
Indonesia. The Moluccas, the home of the clove and nutmeg, began
to be politically as well as commercially important. Ternate was a
vassal state of Kediri. There are accounts of extensive Arab trade with
the whole Archipelago. They came to buy pepper, spices and precious
woods. They were Mahomedans, but at this time had not attempted
proselytizing activities in these regions. Many merchants came also
from Cambay in Gujerat with Indian piece-goods to sell. To this city
Persians had bro.ught the faith of the Prophet, and before the end of
the thirteenth century merchants of Gujerat were to make a start with
the conversion of the Malay world.
Kediri fell in 1222, and a new state, Singosari, took its place as the
ruling power in Java. The story is told in the Javanese Chronicle, the
Pararaton or 'Book of Kings'. The central figure of the drama was
Ken Angrok, 'he who upsets everything'. By exploiting the dissatisfaction of Janggala with its subordination to Kediri, he managed, after
a career of crime, to dethrone Kertajaya, the last king of Airlangga's
^ But see C. C. Berg's Herkotmt, Vornt en Functie der Middeljavaanse Rijksdelingstheorie, 1953, in which the story of Airlangga's division of his realm is shown to be
unhistorical.

70

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

FT. I

line, and found a new state. There was indeed so much dissatisfaction in Janggala that many people were migrating to the neighbouring region of Tumapel in the Malang district. Ken Angrok, a
man of low origin, murdered the Regent of Tumapel and usurped his
place by marrying his widow Ken Dedes. He then availed himself of
a quarrel between Kertajaya and his clergy to attack Kediri. In ,1223
he defeated the king at the battle of Ganter. Then as King Rajasa he
built his kraton at Kutaraja, later known as Singosari.
No further facts of his reign are given in the Javanese Chronicle
until his death in 1227, and there is so much legend in his story that it
is impossible to distinguish between fact and fiction. Rajasa was himself murdered by Anusapati, a son of Ken Dedes by her former
husband. After a reign of just over twenty years the murderer himself
fell a victim to his half-brother Tohjaya, a son of Rajasa, who seized
the throne in 1248. The latter, however, soon died and was succeeded
by a son of Anusapati, who reigned as King Vishnuvardhana (1248-68).
The story of the early years of Singosari is completely lacking in
details, save for the sordid list of rnurders through which one king
was replaced by another. Archaeology, however, has revealed two
developments of much interest during this period. In architecture and
art the purely Javanese element has come into its own fully. In religion
the symbiosis of Saivism and Buddhism has become a marriage; and
although outwardly in the sculptures their Hindu or Buddhist
characters are distinguishable, their real significance must be sought
in native folklore and legend. They personify the divine and magic
powers worshipped by the people. When King Vishnuvardhana
(1248-68) died his ashes were divided between two shrines. At
Chandi Mleri he was worshipped as an incarnation of Siva, while at
Chandi Djago as the Bodhisattva Amoghapasa. The latter in its
terraces and walks contains a wealth of sculptured reliefs representing
the jataka stories of the Old Javanese Tantri.
The last King of Singosari, Kertanagara, who succeeded his father
Vishnuvardhana in 1268, completed the process of religious unification
by practising the cult of the Siva-Buddha. As a king initiated in the
secret Tantric knowledge necessary for the welfare of his realm, it was
his duty to combat the demoniac powers that were rampant in the"
world. To accomplish this, ecstasy must be cultivated through alcohol
and sexual excesses. His orgies shocked the compiler of the Pararaton,
who dismisses him as a drunkard brought to ruin by inordinate
indulgence in lust. On the other hand, in the poem Nagarakertagama,
composed in 1365 by Prapanca, the head of the Buddhist clergy, he is

CH. 4

THE ISLAND EMPIRES ( z )

71

described as a saint and ascetic, free from all passion. Professor

C. C. Berg of Leiden, who has published a recent study of his reign,
is convinced that for a proper understanding of his policy this latter
estimate must be taken seriously.^
Kertanagara believed that in order to defeat the centrifugal tendencies in Java he must coinbat the curse of division and strife laid
upon the country by the action of the ascetic Bharada, who was
believed to have carried out the partition of Airlangga's kingdom.
Hence he erected his own statue in the guise of Aksobhya, a meditative Buddha, on the spot where Bharada had lived. It now adorns
the Krusenperk at Surabaya, where it is popularly referred to as
Djaka. Dolog, 'Daddy fatty'. His brand of Tantric Buddhism, known
as kalachakra, had developed in Bengal towards the end of the Pala
dynasty. Thence it had spread to Tibet and Nepal, and also to
Indonesia, where it found in the Javanese ancestor-cult a system to
which it adapted itself with remarkable ease. Siva-Buddha was thus
an Indian cloak sheltering a native cult of great antiquity and power.
The different versions of Kertanagara's reign, provided by the
Pararaton and the Nagarakertagama respectively, represent more
than differences of opinion regarding the personality of the king
himself; for the former gives him a short and inconspicuous reign,
while the latter gives him a much longer one, lasting until 1292 and
full of brilliant achievement. Krom, in his monumental HindoeJavaansch Geschiedenis (1931), compiled the account of the reign that
has been generally accepted by modern historical scholarship, subject
to the modifications in his original views which he incorporated in
his contribution to the first volume of Stapel's Geschiedenis van
Nederlandsch Indie. He accepted the longer reign attributed to the king
by the Nagarakertagama and showed him as an empire-builder whose
greatest aim was the conquest of Sumatra. In 1275, according to
Krom, he sent a great expedition, known as the Pamalayu, to begin
the subjugation of the island, from which it did not return until
1293, the year after his death. By 1286 the conquest had gone so well
that he sent a replica of the image of his father Vishnuvardhana at
Chandi Djago to be solemnly installed at Dharmasraya in the kingdom
of Malayu in order to ensure contact between that kingdom, as his
vassal state, and his dynasty through the cult of ancestor-worship.
This version of the reign, generally accepted until recently, has
* ' Kertanagara de miskende empirebuilder' in Orientatie, no. 34, July 1950. pp. 3-32.
See also his section of F. W. Stapel's Geschiedenis van Nederlandsch IndiS, ii, pp. 7-148,
in which he discusses Old Javanese historical writings.

72

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

been subjected to drastic revision by Professor Berg. In ' Kertanagara

de miskende empirebuilder' he attempts a reconstruction of the story
based primarily upon a reconsideration | of the date of the attack on
Sumatra. He shows that there is no evidence that Kertanagara sent
the Pamalayu in 1275. ^ o * ^h ^^^ he^not in a position to do so as
early as 1275, but the Nagarakertagama passage that has been taken as
an assertion that he did has been misinterpreted. What it really says
is that, as a result of the king's assumption of divinity earlier in that
year, the order was issued for Malayu to be conquered. This must
be interpreted to mean that in that year he was specially consecrated
for the pursuit of an imperialist programme, the crowning achievement
of which was ultimately to be the conquest of Srivijaya. From an
exhaustive analysis of the available evidence Berg formulates the
hypothesis that the expedition did not actually leave Java until
seventeen years later, in 1292, the year of Kertanagara's death.
This involves a reinterpretation of what, in Krom's view, was the
most important direct evidence of an earlier conquest, namely the
image of Vishnuvardhana which Kertanagara sent to Sumatra in 1286,
according to the inscription of that date found in the heart of the
island on the river Batang. It was an image of Buddha Amoghapasalokesvara, the inscription tells us, and was conveyed to Sumatra by
four Javanese state officials on Kertanagara's orders and erected at
Dharmasraya. There it was the joy of all the subjects of the land of
Malayu, from the maharaja himself downwards. Berg's theory is that,
so far from testifying to a successful military campaign, it is evidence
of a friendly policy which sought to draw Malayu into an Indonesian
confederacy headed by Singosari. It bears witness to the fact that up
to that date no warlike expedition had been sent against Sumatra.
On the basis of this hypothesis he proceeds to reconstruct the
development of Kertanagara's policy of expansion according to a
sequence of events which is logical and convincing if one accepts
his interpretation of the passage in the Nagarakertagama regarding
the dedication ceremony of 1275. After the king's accession in 1268,
he says, he planned to make his kingdom a great Indonesian power.
His father's chief minister, Raganatha, who objected to this on the
grounds that it was too hazardous an undertaking, was given another
appointment, and in his place two supporters of the new policy, Kebo
Tengah and Aragani, became the king's principal advisers and were
entrusted with the necessary measures for his assumption of divinity
as a Buddha-Bhairava. This, the necessary preliminary to setting in
motion his ambitious scheme, took place in 1275.

pjj

THE ISLAND EMPIRES (2)

73

Berg insists that the king's poHcy can only be properly understood
in the light of what he believes to be the fundamental significance of
this act of consecration. He dismisses the idea that the king's imperialism may be attributed to caprice. Equally, he discounts any attempt
to interpret it as a revival of an earlier Javanese imperialism. He
thinks that the stories of Sanjaya's conquests, of the Javanese action
against Srivijaya shortly before A.D. IOOO, and of the imperiaHst
expansion of the kingdom of Kediri outside Java in the twelfth century
are without real historical foundation. The imperialism of Singosari,
he contends, was due to an external cause: it was one of the repercussions of the Mongol invasion of eastern Asia. He accepts the
theory, originally propounded by Moens in 1924,* that Kertanagara's
Bhairava-dedication was a consequence of Kublai Khan's dedication
as a Jina-Buddha in 1264, and again in 1269, which signalized his
adoption of a programme of further Mongol conquests. Fear of the
Mongols, Berg suggests, was the mainspring of Kertanagara's policy.
Hence in 1275, under the guise of a Bhairava-dedication ceremony,
he committed himself to a far-reaching imperialistic programme which
aimed at uniting Indonesia against a possible threat from China. By
imitation of Kublai Khan's dedication he hoped to develop similar
powers. His plan was to build up a sacred Indonesian confederacy
and mobilize its strength against the Mongols by means of his magical
powers as a Bhairava-Buddha. Thus it is significant that one of his
early acts was to establish friendly relations with Champa, which itself
was threatened by the Mongols. And his presentation of the Amoghapasa image to Sumatra in 1286 represented an export of his own
sakti to a territory also threatened by Mongol imperialist expansion. .
After the ceremony of 1275 Kertanagara proceeded systematically
to carry out a planned programme. In 1280, according to the
Nagarakertagama, he exterminated the malignant Mahishi-Rangkah..
The precise meaning of this is obscure, but it would seem to refer to
the steps he had to take in order to establish his authority firmly in his
own kingdom before any movement of expansion was possible. The
indications are that this was a very serious outbreak of opposition to
his policy. Throughout his reign the centrifugal forces were barely
held in check.
The next step, according to Berg, was the annexation of the island
of Madura lying opposite to his principal port of Tuban. The task of
preserving its loyalty was entrusted to Banjak Wide, an officer high in
' J. L. Moens, ' H e t Buddhism op Java en Sumatra in zijn laatste bloeiperiode' in
T B G , Ixiv (1924).

74

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

the king's confidence, who was given the title of Arya Viraraja. The
previously accepted story was that Viraraja was banished there because
the king suspected his loyalty. Berg, however, rejects the banishment
theory on the grounds that the post of Governor of Madura was one
of key importance in view of the need to secure his eastern flank while
pursuing a policy of expansion in the west.
This was followed by the conquest of Bali, for which, Prapanca tells
us, the order was given in 1284. He also speaks of other acts of hostility on the part of Kertanagara against his neighbours, but the
absence of precise details in his statements poses very difficult problems. If, as Berg attemps to demonstrate in his 'misunderstood
empire-builder' article, Kertanagara carried through a carefully
integrated programme of military conquests leading up to the final
objective of the subjugation of Malayu, his next necessary step, after
securing his eastern flank, would have been to reduce the kingdom of
Sunda on his western flank, and thereby effect the unification of the
whole island. Prapanca asserts that Sunda was in Kertanagara's
empire, but offers no clue as to ho\y or when it was acquired. Berg,
in working out a logical sequence of events in the king's aggressive
programme, places its conquest in 1289 or early 1290.

Happily, however, it is unnecessary to pursue his highly ingenious

argument, since in two subsequent articles^ he has offered an entirely
new interpretation of the nature of the Pamala)^!, involving a corresponding change of view in the matter of Kertanagara's other 'conquests'. He has removed from the word its military content. It
should be translated, he thinks, 'agreement with Malayu'; no military
action was taken against Malayu. He has come to the conclusion that
the conquests mentioned by Prapanca were in reality spiritual ones.
Kertanagara was building up a sacred confederacy of Indonesian
states in face of the Mongol menace by means of the establishment of
spiritual ties with each. Hence neither Bali nor Sunda were conquered by force of arms: they were brought into a 'holy alliance'.
This also explains the object and nature of the Pamalayu...
While Kertanagara was engaged in building up, by one or the other
method,^ an anti-Mongol defence front, the danger from the north,
which earlier had been no larger than a man's hand, began'to assume'
threatening proportions. Kublai Khan was sending' envoys to the
states of South-East Asia, which had been in the habit of recognizing
^ ' D e Geschiedenis van Pri) Majapahit', Indonesie, iv, pp. 481-520; v, pp. 198-202.
^ J. G. de Casparis,' Twintig jaar studie van de oudere geschiedenis van Indonesie',
Orientatie, no. 46, Jan. 1954, pp. 637-41, offers a valuable analysis of Berg's theories.

Cjj 4

THE fSLAND EMPIRES (z)

75

the overlordship of China, to demand tokens of submission. It soon

became clear that he was asking not for the usual declarations of
respect accompanied by presents of representative products of each
country, but for actual obedience, and where this was refused was
prepared to back his demands by military action. At first Kertanagara
maintained a watchful, non-committal attitude. It may be that he
was playing for time in order to weigh up the actual risks involved in
refusal.
If so, the disaster which befell the Mongol expedition against Japan
in 1281, and the subsequent failure of Kublai's forces in Tongking
and Champa in 1285, may have influenced him in staging his rash
act of defiance in 1289. For he arrested the whole Mongol deputation
which appeared in his capital in that year and sent the envoys back,
as the Chinese record puts it, with disfigured faces. This has been
held to indicate that he cut off their noses, or at least that of the leader
of the deputation, Meng K'i. Duyvendak, however, insists that the
statement must not be taken literally, but as signifying that Peking
was deeply hurt by the king's rude rejection of the mission.
However that may be, Kublai Khan prepared a great fleet and army
with which to punish the recalcitrant ruler, and Kertanagara seems
to have been aware, when launching his Pamalayu expedition in 1292,
that real danger was to be expected from China. Presumably he
gambled on the expedition completing its task successfully before the
arrival of the Mongol reprisal force.
But what was its task? The Nagarakertagama asserts that the
expedition of 1292 went not only to Malayu but also to the west coast
of Borneo and the Malay Peninsula. It claims that Kertanagara
acquired Bakulapurai.e. Tanjungpuriin Borneo, and Pahang, the
name applied to the whole of the southern part of Malaya in Prapanca's
day. It does not say exactly when they were occupied, but scholars
are agreed that it must have been at the time of the Pamalayu expedition. It looks as if, being aware of the impending Mongol attack,
Kertanagara hoped to ward it off by seizing strategic points on its
route. Berg argues that his expeditionary force narrowly missed
intercepting the Mongol armada off the coast of Borneo. In the
absence o f conclusive evidence as to the part the Pamalayu was
intended to play in the general plan for dealing with the Mongol
threat, speculation is all too easy. If its ultimate object was to mobilize
real resistance to an expected attack, it was ineffective, for it failed
to prevent the Mongol force from landing in Java.
Before that happened, however, an internal movement in Java

76

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

against Kertanagara's authority brought about the total collapse of his

plans. The despatch of a powerful expedition abroad left Singosari
dangerously weakened. Discontented vassals were presented with an
excellent opportunity to rebel, and the king's policy had many
opponents. Kediri was the obvious centre for such a movement,
since its ruling family had never forgotten its humiliation at the hands
of Ken Angrok. Jayakatwang, the Prince of Kediri, became the leader
of a formidable rebellion which threatened the capital. He skilfully
drew off the royal army by a diversionary attack from the north. Then,
on the day when the king and his circle were busy with the orgies prescribed by the cult of the Siva-Buddha, he made a surprise attack on
the capital from the west, captured it, and put to death Kertanagara,
his chief minister and the other members of the circle while, in the
words of the Pararaton, they were drinking palm wine.
Thus when the Mongol armada under Admiral Yi-k'o-mu-su
arrived at Tuban shortly afterwards, in 1293, the king whose power
it had come to break had disappeared from the scene and his throne
was occupied by Jayakatwang of Kediri. Its arrival presented Kert-.
anagara's son-in-law, the previous Crown Prince Vijaya, with a
heaven-sent opportunity to overthrow the usurper. When Singosari
was captured he had fled to Madura. On the advice of Viraraja,
however, he had returned to Java and made his submission to Jayakatwang, who had rewarded him with the governorship of a district
in the lower Brantas valley.
He now sought the assistance of the Mongols in overthrowing
Jayakatwang and promised in return to recognize Kublai Khan's
overlordship over Java. His proposal was accepted, and the combined
forces easily defeated the usurper and captured his capital. Then,
when the Mongols were off their guard and their troops were split
up into small detachments engaged in the task of pacification, Vijaya
began a series of surprise attacks upon them. Successful in these, he
cleverly manoeuvred the remainder into so unfavourable a position
that Admiral Yi-k'o-mu-su abandoned the campaign and sailed away
homewards, leaving him in command of the situation^
Vijaya now became king with the title of Kertarajasa Jayavarddhana.
He built his kraton at Majapahit, the seat of his headquarters in t h e ,
lower Brantas valley at the time of the Mongol arrival, and was the
founder of the last great dynasty in Javanese history which maintained
the Hindu tradition.
Krom's estimate of the situation when the Mongol fleet sailed away
was that the empire built up by Kertanagara had Been weakened, but

CH. 4

THE ISLAND EMPIRES ( 2 )

'

77

not broken, by his death. Kublai Khan's expedition had completely

failed, and in effect had brought Java profit through assisting in the
continuation of the Singosari-Majapahit dynasty. Against that Berg
points out that as a result of the Chinese invasion of Java Kertanagara's great expedition of 1292 had to return home in the following
year, and that in fact all the results of his efforts were lost. For
Jayakatwang's action caused Singosari's attempt to uriite nusantara,
the island empire outside Java, under her leadership to miss its mark.
The work had to be undertaken afresh by Majapahit, and in his view
failed to achieve the results that were within Kertanagara's reach at
the time of his death. His conclusion is that under slightly more
favourable circumstances Kertanagara might have become a national
hero irather than a 'misunderstood empire-builder'.
(b) Majapahit, i293-<r. 1520
. The elimination of Jayakatwang gave Prince Vijaya the opportunity
to save his face, says Professor Berg, by transferring attention from
Java's defeat by the Mongols to his own victory over the usurper.
As a result of his successful manoeuvres in forcing the Chinese to
give up their enterprise and. return home, he put over the appearance
of victory with great success. Three inscriptions of his reign, dated
respectively 1294, 1296 and 1305, convey the impression that he
enjoyed unchallenged power as the son-in-law and lawful successor
of Kertanagara and was recognized by all the chiefs who had been the
latter's vassals. This is echoed by Prapanca, 'the kraton His Master's
Voice', as Berg dubs him. Thus the Nagarakertagama states that all
Java was overjoyed at the accession of Kertarajasa Jayavarddhana and
his fourfold marriage with the daughters of Kertanagara.
Kertanagara left no son; and although as a descendant of the great
Rajasa (Angrok) Prince Vijaya had a perfectly good claim to the throne,
the Nagarakertagama lays such emphasis upon his marriage with the
four daughters of Kertanagara, and upon their great influence as to
suggest that this constituted his real claim to be his father-in-law's
successor. Krom and Stutterheim took it for granted that the four
ladies in question were indeed Kertanagara's daughters. The inscription of 1305, however, indicates that the marriages constituted
a mystical union with the territories 'conquered' by Kertanagara as
a result of his dedication as a Bhairava Buddha in 1275. The four
wives represented Bali, Malayu, Madura and Tanjungpura. Berg
has posed the hypothesis that not one of them was a natural daughter

y8

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

of Kertanagara.^ His explanation of the situation is that just as

Kertanagara had won nusantarahy yoga, so Kertarajasa Jayavarddhana
created four 'daughters of Kertanagara'' by means of Bhairava ritual,
and in uniting himself with them established a special relationship
with the island empire brought into being by Kertanagara. Thus by
sexual union with them as yoginis he developed new magical power for
carrying on Kertanagara's programme to a further stage.
Apparently the marriages were not made simultaneously, nor were
all of them permanent. The names of only the first and the fourth are
known. The first, who is described as the paramesvari, or chief
queen, was Dara Petak, the Sumatran princess brought back to Java
by Kertanagara's Pamalayu expedition. She became the mother of
Kertarajasa's son Jayanagara, who succeeded him in 1309. The
fourth, who is said to have been the king's favourite wife, was a Cham
princess named Gayatri, who became the mother of two daughters,
the elder of whom succeeded Jayanagara in 1328 as ruler of
Majapahit. She was brought to Java by the mission despatched to
Champa by Kertanagara in 1291 or early 1292 with a Javanese
princess for Jayasimhavarman III, and arrived after the departure
of the Mongol armada for home.
The name of the Javanese princess was Tapasi. Berg notes that
the word signifies yoginisind is of opinion that her despatch to Champa
was connected with Kertanagara's Bhairava rites. She represented an
export of his sakti to a territory exposed to the Mongol threat. The
other two ' daughters of Kertanagara' are vague figures; their marriages
with Kertarajasa appear to have been merely temporary and ritual
unions. The Nagarakertagama and the inscriptions ascribe children
to Dara Petak and Gayatri only.
The Nagarakertagama asserts that the reign of Kertarajasa was
peaceful and the whole land obedient. This was until recently the
accepted view. It was assumed that the Pararaton, which lists a whole
series of rebellions beginning with one led by-Rangga-Lawe in 1295,
wrongly places the early ones in Kertarajasa's reign. Krom, for
instance, places Rangga-Lawe's in 1309, the first year of Jayanagara's reign.^ The reign, he explains, was one of constant rebellions,
all of which were fomented by old companions of Prince Vijaya who
had helped him to obtain the crown and were disappointed with their
rewards. The fact that he was able, as King Kertarajasa Jayavarddhana,
' ' D e Geschiedenis van Pril Majapahit' ( i . Het mysterie van de vier dochters van
Krtanagara), Indonesie, iv, pp. 481-520.
'
' Hindoe-Javaansch Geschiedenis, chap, x, pp.,-346-82.

j,jj

THE ISLAND EMPIRES ( z )

yg

to keep these ambitious people under his thumb serves to show how
strong he must have been.
Stutterheim, on the other hand, while attrib\iting the revolts to
the same cause as Krom, accepts the dates given in the Pararaton}
Berg* agrees with Stutterheim in the matter of the dates. He shows that
there is reason to believe that the passages telling the story of the
revolts belong to a 'proto-Pararaton', probably written about 1330,
which contains trustworthy material. As far as their cause is concerned,
however, his analysis of the evidence leads him to a conclusion that
differs radically from Krom's. Their origin, he demonstrates quite
convincingly, lay in a conflict between two parties: those in favour of
Kertanagata's holy confederacy and those opposed to it, the panIndonesian party and the anti-foreign party. Thus Rangga-Lawe's
rebellion began because in 1295 Jayanagara, the infant son of the
Siimatran paramesvari Dara Petak, was given the title of Prince of
Kediri, the Javanese equivalent of the English ' Prince of Wales'. The
son of a Malay mother was thus given official recognition as the future
ruler of Java. Moreover, in that same year the king began to suffer
from a lingering illness, and Dara Petak came into prominence as the
mother of a child who might soon become the titular ruler of Majapahit while still a minor. The rebellion was thus a sign of Javanese
antipathy against a foreign queen and her Sumatran entourage.
Such is the explanation of a long list of conflictsnine in all,
according to the Pararatonwhich disturbed the reigns of Kertarajasa and his son Jayanagara from 1295 until shortly before the
latter's death in 1328. Besides Rangga-Lawe's, which was quickly
suppressed, three of the rebellions, associated respectively with
leaders .named Sora, Nambi and Kuti, were of special importance.
Sora's was. a formidable one which lasted from 12^8 to 1300. Nambi
stirred up national sentiment in East Java against the halfSumatran Jayanagara. He was the son of the great Viraraja, whose
personal estates were in the Lumajang district of East Java. Apparently Viraraja disliked the tendency of Kertarajasa's policy and obtained permission to retire to his East Javanese home. There, after a
time, he began to neglect his duties as a vassal ai\d failed to appear at
Court to pay his annual homage.
His son Nambi, who was chief minister at IVlajapahit, found his
position too difficult under the circumstances, and on the grounds
^ Cultuurgeschiedenis van Indonesie, ii, pp. 72-3.
' Loc. cit. See also de Casparis, 'Twintig jaar studie', Orie^itatie, no. 46, pp. 636-40,
where the Dara Petak story is examined.

8o

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

that his father was ill, he obtained

permission to leave the capital and
visit him. The two of them then
began to fortify themselves in the
stronghold. When Kertarajasa died
in 1309 they had broken off all contact with Majapahit. Viraraja died
in 1311, and as Nambi still continued to defy the royal authority
Jayanagara had finally to go to war
with him. An expedition was sent
against him in 1316, and according
to the Nagarakertagama his stronghold at Padjarakan was captured,
and he himself killed. Berg, however shows that he maintained the
struggle for another ten years before
being finally disposed of.
In 1319 Jayanagara was threatened
by the most dangerous of all these
rebellions. Kuti, its leader, was
a Javanese nobleman, who gained
possession of the capital itself. T h e
king fled to Badander, accompanied by part of his bodyguard
under a young officer named Gaja
Mada. The young man saved the
situation by a daring stratagem.
BURIAL IMAGE OF KERTANAGARA
Returning in disguise to the
capital to find out how the land
lay, he announced that the King had been killed by Kuti. T h e
reception of this news by the populace showed that Kuti was unpopular. Gaja Mada therefore was able to raise a successful insurrection against him and restore the king. For this courageous act
he was rewarded by appointment as Patih of Kahuripan. A few
years later he became Patih of Kediri. He was to rise to a still more
important position.
Between the Kuti affair and the death of Jayanagara
important events are recorded. The circumstances of
death are interesting. He was foolish enough to take
of Gaja Mada's wife. The injured husband instigated

in 1328 no
the king's
possession
the Court

jj

THE ISLAND EMPIRES, ( 2 )

81

physician, in performing an operation upon the king, to allow the knife

to penetrate farther than was necessary, and immediately afterwards
had his unfortunate agent executed. As Jayanagara left no successor,
the throne should now, according to Krom, have devolved upon
Gayatri. She had retired to a nunnery and for this reason is represented as having voluntarily stood down in favour of her elder
daughter Tribhuvana, whom it has been customary to describe as the
regent. But this assumes that Gayatri was a natural daughter of
Kertanagara, whereas, on Berg's hypothesis, she was a Cham princess.
Her Cham origin would seem to be the explanation of her renunciation of the world. She cannot have renounced the throne, he
contends, since she had no claim to it.
Tribhuvana was married to a Javanese nobleman, who as princeconsort took the title of Kertavarddhana and was created Prince of
Singosari, but had no share in the royal authority. Her reign, which
lasted until 1350, when she resigned the crown to her son Hayam
Wuruk, saw the rise of Gaja Mada to a position of power and influence never previously held by a minister in Javanese history. In 1330
he was appointed mapatih, or chief minister, of Majapahit. Thenceforward until his death in 1364 he was the real ruler of the kingdom.
The part played by Gaja Mada in suppressing Kuti's rebellion
shows him in his early days as a supporter of the pan-Indonesian
policy. This probably explains why his appointment as mapatih
caused a rebeUion in East Java. In 1331, when he returned to
Majapahit after suppressing it, he is said to have taken an oath before
the council of ministers never again to enjoy palapa until nusantara
had been subdued. That he was announcing the adoption of a new
policy of imperiahst expansion is clear, but the word palapa has
caused' much speculation among scholars. Krom suggested that it
might connote either his personal revenues or leave of absence from
duty. Stutterheim could offer no explanation of its meaning.^ Berg,
however, appears to have solved the riddle.^ The word, he explains,
means the exercise of mortification and was used to describe the
Bhairava Buddhist rite involving the enjoyment of sexual intercourse
with a yogini. The announcement therefore indicated the suspension
of the policy based upon Bhairava rites, or, in other words, the substitution of a policy of military conquest, involving the imposition of
Javanese domination over nusantara, for Kertanagara's plan of a panIndonesian confederacy maintained through a system of yoga.

^ Op. n i . , pp. 76-7.

^ ' D e Geschiedenis van Pril Majapahit', Indonesie, v, pp. 198-202.

82

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

The record states that the ministers present derided Gaja Mada's
oath. They were soon to be disillusioned; some"were removed from
office. The new policy was inaugurated in that same year, 1331, by
the removal of the Aksobhya statue, the symbol of Kertanagara's
peaceful policy towards nusantara, from his burial-place, Chandi
Javi, and the erection of a demoniac Camunda statue with the announcement that military action was to be undertaken against a
territory called Sadeng.
The term 'Sadeng' refers to the island of Bali, which had reverted
to independence when Kertanagara's confederation fell to pieces with
his death. Its reduction became Gaja Mada's main objective. Other
places were mentioned by him when he took his epoch-making oath
Gurun, Seran, Tanjungpura, Aru, Pahang, Dompo, Sunda, Palembang, and Tumasik, the old name of Singapore. These places and
others also, it has been assumed, were brought into the Majapahit
empire during the period from 1331 to 1351 while Chandi Javi was
closed and Kertanagara's policy suspended. But the evidence regarding their acquisition has been challenged, and only in Bali's case
can one speak with certainty. Its conquest began in 1331 and was
apparently completed in 1343. It was in Bali that the old Javanese
culture made its greatest impact outside Java itself. The island, however, was never wholly Javanized: it continued to develop its own
individual type of 'Hinduized' culture, which, unlike Java's own
culture, was able to maintain its integrity against all the assaults of
Islam.
Evidence of Javanese cultural influence, dating from this period,
it is thought, is to be found also in Dompo, Sumbawa and some other
places which tradition has assigned to the empire of Majapahit. Her
dependent states are enumerated in the Nagarakertagama. They
comprise all of Sumatra, a group of names from the Malay Peninsula,
Mendawai, Brunei and Tanjungpuri in Borneo, and a long list of
places eastwards of Java, beginning with Bali and including Makassar,
the Bandas and the Moluccas. Many of the names can only be
identified by guesswork. We are given a picture of an empire as extensive as present-day Indonesia plus much of Malaya. Krom,
Stutterheim and the many writers who have followed them have
accepted it as substantially true. Vlekke, for instance, has given a
graphic description of a mighty empire maintained by overwhelming
sea-power. After its fall, he says, nothing as great was achieved again
'until the Netherlanders completed their conquest'.^
^ Nusantara, p. 53.

liaJ^WSiJ.in1Liji.

__

"Svi-. i i

BALINESE TEMPLE

^B
^V
^M
^H

Did Prapanca's Great Majapahit ever exist as a reality? 'I:he

question has been posed by Professor C. C. Berg in another of his
attacks upon the orthodox interpretation of mediaeval Javanese I listoiy as set forth in Krom's Hindoe-Javaansch Geschiedenis.^ And his
un equivocal answer is that the Nagarakertagama list of the dependelncies of Majapahit is of great value as a statement of an import ant
hisitorical myth and a reflection of the geographical knowledge of Glaja
ada's own day, but for the student of political history it is ' wott h less'. It is based upon totally inadequate evidence. So far as the
;ertainable facts go, the state of Majapahit was limited to East Jaiva,
adura and Bali.
Little is known of the relations between Sumatra and Majap:ihit
er the return of Kertanagara's Pamalayu expedition. What is kno'wn,
aft wever,
does not seem to justify the Nagarakertagama's inclus ion
hothe island within the Majapahit dominions in 1365. The previ ous
ntury had seen the rise of Malayn at the expense of Palemba
an d it was to the former state that Kertanagara had sent the mu chdiiscussed Amoghapa^a statue in 1286, when engaged upon build ing
up1 his 'holy alliance' against the Mongol menace. King Mauli^:ar-

M;
^M

^H

M
H

^B
H

'De Sadeng-oorlog en de Mythe van Groot-Majapahit', Indonesie, v (1951). pp5-422.

84

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

madeva, who was on the throne at this time, sent two princesses to
Majapahit with the returning Pamalayu fleet. One of them, Dara
Petak, as we have already seen, married Kertarajasa Jayavardhana
and became the mother of Jayanagara. The other, whose name was
Dara Jingga, was, according to Stutterheim, married to a member of
the Javanese royal house and bore a son who succeeded Maulivarmadeva as King of Malayu. Berg, however, suggests that she went
through a Bhairava-ritual 'marriage' with Kertarajasa, after which
she was sent back to Malayu to be married to Visvarupakumara, the
son and successor of Maulivarmadeva. If one may accept his version
of the story, their son was the Adityavarman who later ruled over
much of Sumatra, and by virtue of his mother's double marriage was
regarded as at the same time the eldest son of his Sumatran father
a i d the youngest 'son' of Kertarajasa. He was brought up at the
Majapahit kraton and served as commander of the Javanese forces
which overcame Bali. In 1343 he dedicated at Chandi Jago a statue of
ManjuSri, the Bodhisattva who combats ignorance. Stutterheim has
interpreted this as an allusion to his early years of tutelage at the Court.
Soon afterwards he was ruling in Malayu, where, presumably, he
succeeded his father. There he made no attempt to revive the seapower once wielded by Srivijaya, but concerned himself solely with
the expansion of his dominion over the inland parts of Sumatra.
He extended his power over the Menangkabau mountain districts
and became the ruler of an inland state, based upon them, that was
to all intents and purposes independent. In 1347 he erected an inscription in which no sign of dependence on Java appears. Ruins in
Sumatra dating from his reign show the prevalence of strong Tantric
Buddhism with Saivite elements. Its days, however, were numbered.
Already Islam had begun to make progress in the northern coastal
regions of the island. Ibn Batuta, who visited Samudra in 1345-6,
wrote that it had been Muslim for nearly a century.
The accession of Hayam Wuruk in 1350 brought no change in the
policy of Majapahit. Gaja Mada remained in contr6l~until his death
in 1364. The young king was apparently quite content to leave the
direction of affairs in his hands. In 1351, however, one of the most
dramatic incidents in the early history of Java took place. Historiansrefer to it as the 'Bubat bloodbath'. It was the final, culminating
event of the period during which Chandi Javi was closed and the policy
of blood and iron pursued.
The story goes that soon after ascending the throne Hayam Wuruk
asked the King of Sunda for a daughter in marriage. His proposal

f;jj

THE ISLAND EMPIRES ( 2 )

8$

was accepted, and the king himself, with a splendid retinue, brought
the princess to Bubat, north of the city of Majapahif, where the
ceremony was to take place. At the last moment Gaja Mada intervened with the stipulation that the bride should be handed over in
the manner of a formal act of tribute from a vassal to his overlord.
The King of Sunda realized that he had been neatly trapped. Rather
than surrender his kingdom's independence, he attempted to fight
his way out. But he and all his retinue were overpowered and slain.
From the existing evidence it is not clear whether the marriage
actually took place or whether the princess committed suicide beside
her father's dead body. If it did take place she died soon afterwards.
After the affair Sunda seems to have acknowledged the overlofdship
of Majapahit for a time, but ultimately recovered her independence.
The 'Bubat bloodbath', as has already been indicated, ended the
period of conquest. Gaja Mada then personally demonstrated that
the policy of Kertanagara had been restored by founding a new shrine,
Chandi Singosari, to take the place of Chandi Javi. Also, under his
patronage, Prapanca began the composition of the Nagarakertagama
in praise of the 'misunderstood empire-builder'.
In addition to the list of Majapahit's dependencies Prapanca gives
the names of states with which she maintained friendly relations.
They include Siam, Burma, Cambodia, Champa and 'Yavana',i.e.
Vietnam^besides ihore distant countries such as China, the Carnatic and Bengal, with which she had commercial intercourse. Chinese
sources record Javanese embassies at the time of the accession of the
Ming dynasty, mentioning dates from 1369 to 1382. During the same
period Palembang also sent embassies to China asking for support
against Java. In 1377 the emperor sent a letter of recognition to a
King of Palembang, Before it arrived a Majapahit force occupied the
city and the Chinese envoys were put to death. Palembang was going
rapidly downhill. At about this time a Chinese pirate, Leang Taom^ing, at the head of some thousands of his compatriots, established
control over the city. Java apparently did nothing to interfere, and
Krom suggests that she pursued a deliberate policy of neglect. But
this assumes the existence of 'Great Majapahit' with its far-flung
Indonesian empire, which Berg has relegated to the realm of mythology. The kingdom founded by Adityavarman, it may be remarked,
had no external interests.
Gaja Mada's attention was concentrated so much upon imperial
affairs, that it is not easy to discover what part he played in the
direction of internal policy, Prapanca gives an excellent account of

86

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

Javanese administration in his own day, and shows that members of

the royal family exercised important functions. The king's father
dealt with justice, taxation and the classification of the population.
His uncle supervised agrarian affairs and the upkeep of the roads and
bridges. There was a survey of all desas and sacred lands; police
duties were laid down and families numbered; fixed occupations
were assigned to various classes of the population; regulations were
issued concerning gifts to officials and pious foundations, the maintenance of the army, the protection of cultivating and landholding,
the payment of the royal revenues, the assessment of taxation and the
enforcement of the various forms of labour services.
Most of these regulations, it is thought, must be ascribed to Gaja
Mada himself. The range of his activities was so great that when he died
a state council decreed that it was impossible to appoint a successor,
and divided his functions among four ministers. Possibly the decision
was a polite method of indicating that the council considered it unwise
to place so much power again in one man's hands.
Gaja Mada's name is associated with a law-book which was compiled under his instructions. It seems to have supplanted the Kutaramanava, an adaptation of the Laws of Manu, which had been the
chief written source of Javanese law before the Majapahit period.
But the form in which both works have come down to modern times
was the product of a later period. A judgement of Rajasanagara's
reign, inscribed on copper, shows how judges were instructed to
work in civil cases. They had to take into account the law as laid down
in the law-book, local customs, precedent and the opinions of spiritual
teachers and of the aged. They must also question impartial neighbours before finally reaching their decision.
Of the king as a ruler very little is said. Presumably after Gaja
Mada's death he found the task of co-ordinating and directing the
the work of the four ministers appointed to supervise the administration too arduous, for a few years later he again appointed a prime
minister with general control over the whole range of state business.
Prapanca's picture of the life of a great potentate conveys the impression that amid the distractions of living royally he can have had little
energy left for the conduct of affairs. ' Truly King Hayam Wuruk is a
great potentate. He is without cares and worries. He indulges in all
pleasures. All beautiful maidens in Janggala and Kediri are selected
for him, as many as possible, and of those who are captured in foreign
countries the prettiest girls are brought into his harem'^.
* B. H . M. Vlekke, Nusantara, p. 62.

87
Hayam Wuruk left no son by a principal queen. By his chief wife
he had only a daughter. She married her nearest relative, the king's
nephew Vikramavarddhana, Prince of Mataram, who became hei^

CH. 4

THE ISLAND EMPIRES ( 2 )

JAVANESE WAYANG PUPPET

apparent. There was a son, Virabumi, by a lesser wife. The king was
anxious to make special provision for him. He was accordingly
appointed ruler of East Java and married to the heir-apparent's sister.
Such an arrangement was bound to cause trouble after the king's
4*

88

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

death. Indeed there is evidence that even before that event Virabumi
was ruhng his appanage as an independent kingdom.
The reign of Vikramavarddhana (1389-1429) was a period of rapid
decline. The civil war which developed in consequence of Virabumi's
refusal to recognize the authority of Majapahit was the chief cause
of failure, for it fatally weakened Majapahit's control over her subject
states. Thus was the way opened for the rise of a new state, Malacca,
whose expansion was further facilitated by the vacuum created by the
fall of Srivijaya and the concentration of Malayu upon inland affairs.
Moreover, the spread of Islam added a powerful religious factor to the
political opposition and lent new strength to the centrifugal tendencies
always present in Java itself. For some years good relations were
maintained between Vikramavarddhana and his brother-in-law. In
1399, however, when the king's only son by his chief queen died,
troubles began. Civil war broke out in 1401. In 1406 Virabumi was
assassinated and his head brought to Majapahit in token of the restoration of unity to the kingdom.
The Chinese had recognized both kings. When Virabumi's capital
was taken some members of the suite of the Chinese envoy were killed
there. The emperor demanded an immensely large sum of money by
way of compensation. Vikramavarddhana sent one-sixth of the amount
as a token payment. This satisfied the emperor, and he remitted the
remainder of the debt.
The embassy sent to Java on this occasion was the first of a long
series, for the Ming emperor Yung-lo wished to revive China's
prestige and make her once more the great centre of the eastern world.
Most of them were led by the famous eunuch admiral Cheng-ho, who
made a remarkable series of voyages between 1405 and 1433, visiting
Champa, Java, Sumatra, India and Ceylon, and even Arabia and East
Africa. His Muslim secretary Ma Huan wrote a valuable account of
three of the voyages, the Ying-yai Sheng Ian, originally compiled in
1416, later improved and expanded in 1451.
The Chinese pirate-ruler of Palembang attempted to rob ChengHo in 1407, but the admiral, warned in time by Che Tsing-k'ing a
Chinese of the city, arrested the pirate chief and appointed Che Tsingk'ing in his place. It is significant that in dealing with this matter
Cheng-Ho regarded himself as acting on behalf of Majapahit, and the
new chief was nominally subject to Vikramavarddhana. Malacca,
which had received its first Chinese mission in 1403, claimed Palembang. The emperor, however, found its claims unacceptable and
decided in favour of Majapahit.

CH. 4

THE ISLAND EMPIRES (2)

89

The revival of Chinese interest in the Archipelago was thus in no

way directed against Majapahit. Evidently China did not feel called
upon to pursue the poHcy of 'fragmentation'; Ma Huan's account
of his travels shows that already Java's overseas empire was no more
than a name, if even that. To maintain authority over such an empire
required nothing less than a Gaja Mada, and after his death Majapahit
produced no one of his stature. The weakening of political ties, however, made little, if any, difference to Java's commerce. For instance,
when in the fifteenth century the ports of Borneo, which had previously paid tribute to Majapahit, demonstrated their independence
by developing relations with China, their trading relations with Java
remained unaffected. And Chinese trade with the Moluccas was
conducted mainly through Java.
Very little is known of the last century of Majapahit's history after
the death of Vikramavarddhana's death in 1429. He was succeeded
by his daughter Queen Suhita (1429-47), in whose reign a rebellion
occurred under a leader named Bhre Daha. The next ruler was her
brother Bhre Tumapel, who became King Kertavijaya (1447-51).
After him there is no mention of any further sovereigns of the old
royal house.
The next ruler, Bhre Pamotan, held his Court at Keling Kahuripan
and reigned as Rajasavarddhana (1451-3). Then after a kingless period
of three years a certain Hyang Purvavisesa reigned from 1456 to 1466.
In 1460 his ambassadors caused a scandal in China by killing six
priests of another mission in a drunken brawl. Bhre Pandan Salas,
who reigned from 1466 to c. 1478 with the title of Singhavikramavarddhana, abandoned the kraton at Majapahit in 1468. Javanese
tradition asserts that in 1478 Majapahit was conquered by a coalition
of Mahommedan states. This, however, is impossible, since there is
clear evidence that a ' H i n d u ' king, Ranavijaya, was reigning in i486.
The end of Majapahit is shrouded in darkness. Krom's last king is
Pateudra, who was in occupation of the throne in 1516. He is mentioned by Barbosa as the heathen king of a heathen people to whom
Albuquerque sent an embassy after the conquest of Malacca in 1511.
The name 'Pateudra' is presumably the Portuguese rendering of Pati
Udara. Barbosa writes that the coastal havens were Mahommedan
and at times rebelled against the 'King of Java', but were suppressed.
A report sent in January 1514 to the King of Portugal by de Brito, the
Governor of Malacca, adds just a little to this picture. He says that
Java has two 'kaffir-rulers', the King of Sunda and the King of Java,
but the Moors control the coastal regions.

CHAPTER 5

T H E K H M E R S AND ANGKOR
(a) The Khmer kingdom of Cambodia to looi
T H E disappearance of the empire of Funan in the middle of the sixth
century came, according to the Chinese account, through the rebellion
of a feudatory state named Chenla. The History of the Sui describes
the occurrence thus: 'the kingdom of Chenla is on the south-west of
Lin-yi. It was originally a vassal kingdom of Funan. The family
name of the king was Ch'a-li and his personal name Che-to-sseu-na.
His predecessors had gradually increased the power of the 'country.
Che-to-sseu-na attacked Funan and conquered it.' Lin-yi is, of course,
Champa, Ch'a-li stands for Kshatriya, and Che-to-sseu-na for Chitrasena. No explanation of the name 'Chenla' has yet been found; it
cannot be related to any Sanskrit or Khmer word.
Funan proper stretched over southern Cambodia and Cochin
China of modern times. Chenla was to the north of it; it occupied
the lower and middle Mekong from Stung Treng northwards, and its
original centre was in the region of Bassak just below the mouth of
the Mun river. It thus covered what is now northern Cambodia and
the southern part of the kingdom of the Laos. According to the
History of the Sui, before the subjugation of Funan the Chenla capital
was situated near a mountain called 'Ling-kia-po-p'o'i.e. Lingaparvataon which was a temple consecrated to the god ' P'o-to-li'
i.e. Bhadresvarato whom the king annually offered a human sacrifice
during the night.
A Khmer legend recorded on a tenth^century inscription ascribes
the origin of the royal family to the marriage of a hermit,' Kambu
Svayambhuva, with the celestial nymph Mera given him by the god
Siva. This story, which is obviously quite different from that of
Kaundinya and the naga princess, seems to have been invented to
explain the name 'Kambuja', which the Khmers adopted as a result
of Indianization.
^
Bhavavarman, 'Protege of Siva', the elder of the two brothers who
led the revolt against Funan, had become King of Chenla through
marriage with Princess Lakshmi of the Kambu-Mera dynasty, which
90

CH. 5

THE KHMERS AND ANGKOR

91

had had about a century and a half of history before that event. His
father Viravarman is mentioned in inscriptions as a vassal of Funan.
His grandfather is called ' Sarvabhauma', and if, as is thought, Rudravarman, the last King of Funan, is indicated by this title, he himself
belonged to the Lunar dynasty founded by Kaundinya and Soma.
His marriage was of great significance in the development of Khmer
royal traditions, since it was used to explain how the later Cambodian
monarchs claimed to trace their descent from both the Lunar and the
Solar lines with their entirely unrelated dynastic legends.
What exactly took place when Rudravarman of Funan disappeared
from the scene is not known. Coedes thinks that an attempt was made
to restore the legitimate line, and that this provoked the brothers
Bhavavarman and Chitrasena to place themselves at the head of a
movement to vindicate their own rights as grandsons of the last reigning king. The picture is complicated by the fact that, although Rudravarpian presumably died somewhere about 550, Funan was still sending missions to China at the beginning of the next century, though
from a capital farther to the south, since the old capital of Vyadhapura
had been captured by the Chenia brothers. Briggs thinks that the
evidence points to the fact that Bhavavarman did not annex Funan,
but that it enjoyed autonomy until 627, when it was incorporated with
Chenia in the reign of Isanavarman. He points out that the hereditary
line of ministers which had served Rudravarman continued in office
at the old capital as the servants of Bhavavarman, though he never
moved his capital from Chenia.^
The exact site of his capital is uncertain. It may have been near
Vat Phu or possibly at Stung Treng. In any case it was to Chenia
that the sovereignty over Funan was transferred; and even if Briggs's
view is correct that a ' wise policy of conciliation' was pursued towards
the conquered state, Bhavavarman's long reign seems to have been a
period of warfare, during which his brother Chitrasena, who commanded his armies, was kept constantly busy. The empire of Funan
had included peoples and vassal states stretching from Champa in the
east to the Bay of Bengal in the west, and including most of the Malay
Peninsula. Of these only Funan proper seems to have acknowledged
the suzerainty of Chenia. The Malay states known to the Chinese as
Lang-ya-hsiu, P'an-P'an and Ch'ih-t'u seem to have opened diplomatic relations with China, as also did the Mon state of Dvaravati on
the Menam.
The exact length of Bhavavarman's reign is unknown. The date of
' Lawrence Palmer Briggs, The Ancient Khmer Empire, p. 42.

92

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

his sole inscription, conamemorating the foundation of a linga, is 598.

Chitrasena succeeded him in c. 600 and took the regnal name of Mahendravarman, 'Protege of the Great Indra'. The dates of his reign are
unknown, but it was a short one, since he was getting on in years when
he became king. All accounts of him, Cham, Chinese and his own
inscriptions, describe him as a hero and a conqueror. During his
own reign he conquered the lower Mun valley. He celebrated his
conquests by establishing lingas dedicated to 'Girisa', the 'Lord of
the Mountain'. His inscriptions have been found along the Mekong
near Kratie and Stung Treng, and to the west as far as Buriram and
Surin.
His son Isanavarman, who succeeded him in c. 611, was credited by
the Chinese with the completion of the conquest of Funan. From the
date given in the T^ang History this must have taken place in, or
shortly after, 627. Its separate existence as a vassal state was terminated and its territory annexed. The Chinese record that it continued to send embassies even after its annexation. Briggs suggests
that these were missions of protest sent by the deposed dynasty.^
Isanavarman I also extended his power westwards towards the
region that was later to become the centre of the Angkor monarchy.
A prince named Baladitya, apparently a scion of the Kaundinya-Soma
line which had ruled over Funan, had established an independent
state in the valley of the Stung Sen, a tributary of the Tonle Sap river
running parallel to the Mekong. His kingdom seems at first to have
been known by the name of Baladityapura, though it is better known
by its later name of Aninditapura. This was conquered by Isanavarman, who thereupon built himself a new capital on the Stung Sen.
The new city was called Isanapura. Its site was apparently about
twelve miles north of the present city of Kompong Thom and is
marked by the most impressive group of ruins of pre-Angkor Cambodia so far discovered. The reason for the transfer seems to have
been that with a policy of westwards expansion in view his old capital
on the Mekong was too near to his eastern frontier. Thereafter he
extended his sway over three states of north-west Cambodia: Cakrankapura, Amoghapura, and Bhimapura. In the south also he conquered
territories which brought his dominions as far to the west as the
modern city of Chantabun and up to the boirders of the Mon kingdom
of Dvaravati. It is significant that both he and his father, in order to
facilitate their policy of conquest, cultivated friendly relations with
Champa. Isanavarman himself married a Cham princess.
1 Op. cit., p. 48.

CH. 5

THE KHMERS AND ANGKOR

'

93

According to Chinese sources, Isanavarman I reigned until 635,

though his latest inscription is dated 628-9. His successor was Bhavavarman II, whose relationship to him is unknown, as also are the
dates of his reign. Briggs suggests that he may have been 'a son of
the mysterious son of his namesake who disappeared so completely
from history'.^ Only one of his inscriptions can be dated; Coedes
attributes it to 639. He was succeeded by Jayavarman I, who, according to Ccedes, was his son, but Briggs denies this.^ He thinks that
Jayavarman probably belonged to the dynasty of Isanavarman. The
earliest date of his reign is an inscription dated 657, but it is thought
that he came to the throne some years earlier. He reigned for possibly
forty years, and though no building can be assigned to him he was
the author of many inscriptions. One of them calls him ' glorious lion
of kings, the victorious Jayavarman'. He conquered central and upper
Laos up to the borders of the kingdom of Nanchao. But his large
dominions were never peaceful, and the civil wars which split the
Chenla empire asunder after his death had their origin much earlier.
He himself was able to maintain his hold over the Mekong region, but
Baladityapura seems to have been the centre of a rival power controlling the west, and it is doubtful whether he controlled the south of
Isanavarman's far-flung dominions. He left no heir, and for more than
a century after his death Cambodia passed through a very troubled
period. From an inscription of 713 it wou'd appear that his widow
Jayadevi reigned after him, but failed to check the separatist movements that challenged his authority during his lifetime.
Up to the reign of Jayavarman I the Khmers had progressively
consolidated their power over the lower Mekong region and around
the Tonle Sap. They left behind much that is of archaeological
interest today. There are brick towers, single or in groups, statuary
showing a likeness to Hindu prototypes but also strongly-marked local
traits, and rich decorative sculpture of the sort which developed with
such exuberance during the Angkor period. Administration was well
organized, but from the epigraphical sources at our disposal it is impossible to present an integrated picture of its functioning.
The inscriptions are all connected with religious shrines, and
evidence is plentiful regarding the state religion. Buddhism no longer
held a favoured position as it had done under Funan. Hinduism was
predominant, and in particular the linga cult of Siva was the essence
of the Court religion. The principal Saivite and Vaisnavite sects found
in India are mentioned. The worship of Harihara, or Siva and Vishnu
' Op. cit., p. 52.

^ Ibid., p. 53.

94

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

united in a single body, which is said to have first appeared on the

rocks of Badami and Mahavellipur in the Pallava country some time
before A.D. 450, was a marked feature of the period.
Most of the inscriptions are in Sanskrit, but there were some already
in the Khmer language. An inscription at Ak Yom in the Man valley,
which may possibly be dated 609, is the oldest so far discovered in the
Khmer language. Literary culture was based upon the Sanskrit
classics, and much use was made of the mythology of the Ramayana,
the Mahabharata and the Puranas. But all this was the culture of the
Court; how far it affected the outlook of the ordinary people we are
not told. That the old pre-Hindu culture still persisted strongly
cannot be doubted, and it is interesting to find in the inscriptions
confirmation of the importance of the matrilineal constitution of the
family.
So far as the material culture of this period is concerned, the History
of the Sui gives some account of it as it was in the reign of Isanavarman. Most of the space, however, is devoted to the king and his Court.
The only industry mentioned is agriculture, and it is dismissed in one
cursory sentence: 'in this kingdom rice, rye, a little millet and some
coarse millet are cultivated.' And from the fact that Ma Tuan-lin in
the thirteenth century incorporated the whole passage in his Ethnography of the Peoples Outside China one is left with the impression
that no great social or economic changes had taken place during the
intervening centuries, and that upon the basis of an economy of small
peasant agriculturists the architectural and artistic wonders of Angkor
were achieved. Up to the present research has for obvious reasons
been concentrated upon the temple and the Court, and unfortunately
outside them history has little to tell in the case of Cambodia.
The History of the T'ang asserts that shortly after 706 the country
split up into two separate parts, which it names the Land Chenla and
the Water Chenla. The names signify a northern and a southern half,
which may conveniently be referred to as Upper and Lower Chenla.
Jayavarman I's successors were in nominal control of both as ' Adhirajas', or Supreme Rulers, but in fact power was in the hands of a
group of petty kinglets. So great was the confusion, and so scanty is
the evidence, that it is impossible to tell a coherent story. Ever since
the appearance of Aymonier's classic Le Cambodge in 1900 theory
after theory has been formulated regarding the sites of the capitals of
the two divisions mentioned by the Chinese.^ In his Deux Itineraires^
' Briggs discusses this question in detail in op. cit.^ pp. 58-9.
" BEFEO, iv 1904, pp. 131-385.

CH. 5

THE KHMERS AND ANGKOR

95

Paul Pelliot advanced the theory that Vyadhapura was the capital of
Lower Chenla, and Sambhupura (Sambor) the seat of Upper Chenla.
For some time this was generally accepted. But it has been challenged
by Henri Maspero, Coedes and Pierre Dupont. The last named
believes that for the location of Upper Chenla one must look to the
old homeland of the Khmers, which he places well to the north in the
Bassak-Pakse region and the lower part of the river Mun. Lower
Chenla, he thinks, comprised Sambhupura, Vyadhapura and Baladityapura. On this showing Lower Chenla would have been the true
successor of the kingdom of Jayavarman L
All that is known of Upper Chenla comes from the Chinese record
of embassies. They called it Wen Tan, and its territories seem to
have extended northwards to Yunnan, with a population of Khas and
possibly of T'ais on the Nanchao border. Its first embassy arrived in
China in 717. In 722 it joined in a war against the Chinese Governor
of Chiao-chou (Tongking), but was defeated. Another embassy was
recorded in 750, but from which Chenla is uncertain. The Crown
Prince of Wen Tan went to the Court of China in 753 and received
the title of 'Protector Firm and Persevering'. China was then at war
with Nanchao, whose king, Kolofeng, had aUied with Tibet. The
crown prince accompanied the Chinese army, which was utterly
defeated by Nanchao. The last record of an envoy from Wen Tan is
in 799. All that can be said of its history during this period is that,
compared with Lower Chenla, it maintained a reasonably stable
existence.
In Lower Chenla in the period immediately following the death of
Jayavarman I two dynasties strove for supremacy: the Lunar dynasty
of Aninditapura under Isvara (lords) of Baladitya's family, and the
newly formed Solar dynasty of Sambhupura. The old kingdom of
Baladityapura, which had been conquered by Isanavarman, was
restored by Nripatindravarman, who ruled as king and acquired a
strip of delta territory extending to the sea at the old Funanese port of
Oc Eo. Its capital is thought to have been at Angkor Borei. Sambhupura,' near the present Sambor and Kratie, broke off from Chenla
under Jayavarman I. Many inscriptions and monuments date from
the period 681-716. A princess of this state, thought to have been a
daughter of its founder, married Pushkaraksha, a son of Nripatindravarman of Aninditapura, and her husband became King of Sambhupura. Thus both kingdoms came under monarchs claiming to belong
to the Kaundinya-Soma dynasty.
After this period information about Lower Chenla is very slight

g6

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

and raises more questions than it answers. There is no record of

embassies to China, and only a few inscriptions. The last inscription
of Queen Jayadevi, dated 713, speaks of misfortunes. A doorinscription of Preah Theat Kvan Pir in the province of Kratie, dated
716, runs: 'Pushkara had the god Pushkaresa erected by munis and
the most eminent of Brahmans.' Presumably Pushkaraksha of Sambhupura was its author. This is claimed to be the first example in
Carnbodian history of the apotheosis of a king.^ Four inscriptions of
the period 770-81 mention a King Jayavarman who had not been
included in the previously accepted list of Cambodian kings. In order
to prevent confusion, therefore, Coedes calls him Jayavarman I bis.
All come from the territory of the kingdom of Sambhupura.
The family of Nripatindravarman of Aninditapura seems to have
made itself supreme over the whole delta region. Coedes suggests that
the marriage of Pushkaraksha with the heiress of Sambhupura was a
conquest in disguise. The Adhirajas of Vyadhapura apparently controlled only a short strip of territory along the Mekong in the vicinity
of Jayavarman I's old capital. A son of Pushkaraksha married the
heiress to its throne, and as King Sambhuvarman united the whole of
Lower Chenla. His son Rajendravarman, who reigned in the second
half of the eighth century, is therefore generally accepted as Rajendravarman I among the Kings of Cambodia. He was succeeded by
his son Mahipativarman. It is thought that the capital of these kings
was also at Angkor Borei.
During the latter part of the century Lower Chenla was attacked
by Malay pirates from 'Java'. The term may refer to Java itself, to
Sumatra or the Malay Peninsula, or even to all three. They seized
the islands of Pulo Condor and used them as a base for raids which
extended as far north as Tongking. In 774 and 787 they raided
Champa. Cambodia was also attacked, but the inscriptions do not say
precisely what happened. A Javanese inscription claims that the
country was conquered by King Sanjaya. An early tenth-century
Arab writer, Abu Zaid Hasan, tells the story of the travels of a merchant named Sulayman, who travelled in these regions in 851 and
picked up an account of a Javanese expedition against Chenla in the
closing years of the eighth century. Although legendary, it seems to
throw some light on the conditions prevailing at the time.
A young Khmer king rashly expressed a desire to see before him
the head of the Maharaja of 'Zabag' (i.e. Srivijaya) on a dish. The
story reached the ears of the maharaja, who made a surprise attack
1 Briggs, op. cit., p. 60.

CH. 5

THE KHMERS AND ANGKOR

97

upon the Khmer king's capital, seized hina and cut off his head.
Taking it home with him, he had it embalmed, and sent it back in an
urn as a warning to the king's successor. A Khmer inscription of a
later date asserts that Jayavarman II, before his accession to the throne
of Cambodia, visited Java. Apparently he was taken to the Sailendra
Court to pay homage as the successor of the beheaded king. Historians
are inclined to think that there is much truth in the Arab story, since
when Jayavarman II had gained control over his kingdom he staged a
special ceremony at which he made an express declaration of his independence. Briggs therefore suggests that he was the successor of
Mahipativarman, and that the latter was the Khmer king who was
beheaded by the Sailendra maharaja.^
Notwithstanding the lack of historical evidence, the eighth century
provides interesting examples of pre-Angkorian art and architecture.
The chronology and classification of Khmer art have been radically
changed since 1937, when Philippe Stern published his challenging
Le Bayon d'Angkor et revolution de Vart Khmer. He stimulated a new
crop of researches into the subject by Parmentier, Madame de Coral
Remusat, Pierre Dupont and other scholars. In 1940 the results were
incorporated by Madame de Coral Remusat in a work of great importance, L'art Khmer, les grandes etapes de son evolution, which places
the major monuments in their historical setting with something hke
exactitude, and among other things gives a new significance to the long
period of development before the establishment of Angkor as the
capital and artistic centre of the Khmer realm.^
Jayavarman II was the founder of the Angkor kingdom, though not
of the actual city. Briggs assumes that he was chosen by the ministers
of Mahipativarman in accordance with the instructions of the Javanese
maharaja of the Arab story.* He did not belong to the line of Rajendravarman I. Later inscriptions make him a great-grandson of Nripatindravarman of Aninditapura, but a successful claimant to a throne
could always be provided with a suitable genealogy. Nothing is known
of his father. That he himself came from Java to assume the crown
is certain. The suggestion has been made that his family may have
settled there during the time of troubles, and that he had been held as a
hostage at the Sailendra Court. He left behind no inscription, so far
as is known, and his importance in Khmer history has only comparatively recently been recognized.
' Op. cit., p. 69.
^ An excellent summary of Khmer art and architecture c. SSO-790 is given by
Briggs in ibid., pp. 69-80.
* Ibid., p. 69.

98

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

The chief facts of his reign are given in an eleventh-century inscription, the Sdok Kak Thom stele, which was translated by Louis
Finot in 1915. He began his long reign by planting his capital, which
he named Indrapura, at a place which has been identified with the
archaeological site of Banteay Prei Nokor, east of Kompong Cham on
the lower Mekong. There he took into his service a Brahman, Sivakaivalya, who became the first priest of the new cult which he established as the official religion. It was that of the Deva-raja, the godking, a form of Saivism which centred on the worship of a linga as the
king's sacred personality transmitted to him by Siva through the
medium of his Brahman chaplain. The prosperity of the kingdom
was considered to be bound up with the welfare of thp royal linga.
Its sanctuary was at the summit of a temple-mountain, natural or
artificial, which was at the centre of the capital and was regarded as
the axis of the universe.
This conception of a temple-mountain is of much earlier origin than
Siva-worship itself. It goes back to an ancient Mesopotamian practice,
and from thence had come to ancient India, where a number of Hindu
dynasties had their sacred mountains. Funan, as we have seen, had
its sacred hill of Ba Phnom, and in Java the Sailendras were 'Kings
of the Mountain'. The adoption of the cult by Jayavarman was a
gesture of independence, a sign that he recognized no superior on
earth. More than that, it signified his claim to be a Chakravartin, a
universal monarch, and bore for him and his successors much the
same meaning as the white elephant was to have for the monarchs
who were Buddhists of the Theravada school. From his time onwards
for several centuries it was the duty of every Khmer king to raise his
temple-mountain for the preservation of the royal linga, which enshrined his 'sacred ego'. Thus arose the great temples which were
the glory of the Angkor region.
Indrapura, however, was only the first of a number of capitals
founded by Jayavarman II. He was apparently anxious to find a site
which, while providing a suitable eminence for his temple, would be
more easily defensible against both external attacks by Malays and
internal enemies. His next move was into the region of the Great
Lake, whose bountiful supplies of fish combined with the high yield
of rice from its flood-plain to enable it to sustain a large population.
Here he planted his second capital at Hariharalaya, 'the abode of
Harihara', south-east of modern Siemreap. Its site is today marked
by the group of ruins called Roluos. Later he founded a third capital,
named Amarendrapura, at a site which is still uncertain. Finally he

CH. 5

THE KHMERS AND ANGKOR

99

moved to Phnom Kulen in the Kulen hills, some thirty miles northeast of Angkor, where he built Mahendraparvata. Excavations on the
summit of Phnom Kulen have revealed a number of temples, including
his great pyramid-temple and its linga. His buildings, which were
completely hidden by thick forest, were largely excavated by Philippe
Stern and Henri Marchal. They are in a style that is obviously transitional, linking up the ' pre-Angkorian' with the style which predominated during the early days of Angkor. There are signs of both
Javanese and Cham influences; the former explained by the king's
early connection with Java, the latter as yet inexplicable in terms of
historical facts. It is thought that this final move marked the completion of the conquest of his heritage, and that his previous capitals
must have been connected with stages in his campaigns. But of these
no historical evidence has so far come to light.
Ccedes places his accession in the year 802. Against this Briggs
points out that that is the date on which the inscriptions say that he
established his capital on Mount Mahendra (Phnom Kulen).^ Its
significance lies in the fact that it is the year in which he instituted a
new era by a formal declaration of Cambodian independence and by
the establishment of the ritual for the worship of the Deva-raja. The
date of his return from Java and the length of time he resided at each
of his earlier capitals are unknown.
Mahendraparvata was not his final residence, for ultimately he returned to Hariharalaya and remained there until his death in 850. In
northern Cambodia his authority did not extend beyond the region of
the Great Lake. He may have chosen this area as the centre of his
power partly because of its proximity to the sandstone quarries of
Phnom Kulen and to the passes giving access to the Korat plateau
and the Menam basin. It was an excellent base from which to launch
the policy of expansion imposed by the Chakravartin title upon its
holders.
Jayavarman IPs reign made a great impression upon his kingdom.
He was the founder of its greatness, and especially of the far-reaching
claims of its ruHng authority. From his reign the pyramid-sanctuary
marked the centre of the royal city. At its summit, which was the
centre of the universe, the Deva-raja entered into relationship with
the divine world. He himself was the god to whom in his own lifetime
the temple was dedicated. At his death it became his mausoleum.
For some time after Jayavarman IPs death his successors continued
to reside at Hariharalaya. His son Jayavarman III (850-77) was famous
^Ibid., p. 88.

THE BUDDHA WITH SNAKE BACKGROUND TO HEAD, ANGKOR

CH. 5

THE KHMERS AND ANGKOR

lOI

as a hunter of elephants. Several foundations in the neighbourhood

of Angkor date from his reign, but no inscriptions. Indravarman I
(877-89) built the Bakong, the first of the majestic stone temples in
the grandiose style found later at Angkor. This together with the
Preah Ko, which he built, and the Loley, built by his son and successor, Yasovarman I, forms a group to which the term 'Art of Indravarman ' has been applied. It signalizes the beginning of the first period
of classical Khmer architecture.
Yasovarman I (889-900) was the founder of the first city of Angkor.
In order to surpass his father's temple, the Bakong, he chose a natural
hill, Phnom Bakheng, on which to build his own, and the city which
grew up around it was named after him-Yasodharapura. His immense
building programme included the great reservoir, now the Eastern
Baray, and a series of monasteries for the religious sectsSaivite,
Vaisnavite, and possibly Buddhist. Yasodharapura, the original city
of Angkor, covered a considerably larger area than the later Angkor
Thom, founded by Jayavarman VII towards the end of the twelfth
century, with the unique and mysterious Buddhist temple of the Bayon
as its central feature. The two cities overlap, but the Phnom Bakheng
is just outside the southern wall of Angkor Thom.
Little is known of the political history of these reigns, or of those
that follow up to the end of the tenth century. Yasovarman I's sway
extended over a much greater area than Jayavarman's had done. His
inscriptions pay him the most fulsome tributes as a warrior. If the
inscription of 947 at Baksei Chamrong is reliable, his dominions extended as widely as those of Funan in her greatest days. When and
how this expansion took place does not appear. In view of the fact
that he reigned for only eleven years and carried out a vast building
programme, it is difficult to believe that he had time to acquire a farflung empire which extended to China on the north, Champa on the
east, the Indian Ocean on the west, and included the northern part of
the Malay Peninsula as far down as P'an-P'an (Grahi). Briggs thinks
that even if he was not responsible for all the expansion represented
by these boundaries, the territories included in them did indeed
acknowledge his sway.^ Ccfdes, on the other hand, only credits him
with the control of the Mekong valley up to the borders of China and
of the Menam valley, thus omitting the Malay Peninsula region and
the Mon kingdom of Thaton in Lower Burma from the list of his
possessions. The fact is, as Briggs admits, that ' more misinformation
has probably been written about Yasovarman I than about any other
^ Ibid., p. 113.

102

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

king of Cambodian history', and much that has been attributed to

him belongs to a later period. One example of this is the story of his
attempt to conquer Champa and its defeat by the Cham Indravarman
II. The greatest achievement of his reign was the provision of an
adequate water supply for his new capital. ' T h e digging of the
immense East Baray,' writes Briggs, 'the changing and control of the
course of the Siemreap river and the wonderful system of moats,
reservoirs and pools with which he provided his new capital constitute
a remarkable achievement.'^
Khmer history in the tenth century is mainly a record of buildings, not
of political events. It was a period of splendour when civilization took
shape. It corresponds to a period of anarchy in China at the end of the
T'ang period and during that of the Five Dynasties. Historians therefore have to rely almost entirely upon inscriptions; all documents of
less durable materials, such as palmleaf, have perished through the
ravages, of K^ildew, vrkite ants or flte. A.nd the mscciptioivs are concerned solely with the affairs of the Deva-raja and his Court; they
give hardly any clue to the material civilization, customs and beliefs
of the people.
The king as head of the state occupied so exalted a position in
theory, and was committed to a life involving so much religious ceremonial, that he can have had little, if any, personal contact with his
people. As the source of all authority he was the guardian of law and
order, the protector of religion, and the defender of his land against
external foes. But he can have performed hardly any administrative
functions. These were in the hands of a narrow oligarchy, with the
chief offices held by members of the royal family and the great sacerdotal families. They intermarried and formed a class racially different
from the rest of the population. But it is noteworthy that although
they represented the Hindu tradition they used Khmer names.
Like the king, only in a smaller way, the magnates erected shrines
to their own personal cults. The beUef was that by erecting an image
the 'sacred ego' of the person to be worshipped became fixed in the
stone, and the shrine would contain an inscription recommending to
the founder's descendants the continuance of the cult. When he died
it became his tomb. Thus the innumerable statues of Siva, Vishnu,
Harihara, Lakshmi, Parvati and of Bodhisattvas found on temple sites
are portraits of kings, queens and magnates, while their names, carved
on the statues, show a fusion of their personal titles with the names of
the gods and goddesses, with whom they are united. Each statue was an
^ Ibid., p. 114.

104

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

.artificial body with magic properties conferring immortality upon

the person it represented. The practice was widespread throughout
South-East Asia. It is found in Champa and was of special importance
in Java and Bali. It exhibits a blending of the cult of ancestor-worship,
dating from neolithic times, with Hindu and Buddhist ideas introduced
from India.
In the ninth and tenth centuries Saivism predominated. By the
twelfth century Vaisnavism was powerful enough to inspire great
foundations, of which the outstanding example was to be the Angkor
Wat itself. But Buddhism always had its followers, and as all these
religions were foreign importations they found it essential to preserve
mutual tolerance. Moreover, there was much syncretism, for the old
cults of animism and ancestoi-worship continued to be the real religion
of the mass of the people. In social life also, while the Laws of Manu
and other Brahmanical codes were officially recognized by the Court,
the deciding factor in most matters was immemorial custom.
Six kings reigned during the course of the tenth century. Their
reigns are mainly a record of buildings. Two only are noteworthy in
connection with political changes. Jayavarman IV (928-42) was a
usurper who conquered Yasodharapura (Angkor) and was either
driven out or abandoned it to establish a new capital at Koh Ker,
away to the north-east. Rajendravarman II (944-68) dethroned the
usurper's son Harshavarman II and transferred the capital back to
Angkor, which remained the capital city of the Khmers thenceforward until its final abandonment in 1432. The return to Yasodharapura involved a great task of reconstruction, and the king is praised
in an inscription for rendering it 'superb and charming by erecting
there houses ornamented with shining gold, palaces glittering with
precious stones, like the palace of Mahendra on earth'. He was responsible for the invasion of Champa in 945-6, and a Cham inscription
credits him with carrying away the gold image of Bhagavati from the
temple of Po Nagar. Although he himself was a Saivite, his inscriptions display a great variety of religious practices and extreme toleration. Buddhism in particular seems to have flourished during his
reign. Ancestor-worship too became more closely identified with the
great temples than ever before.
The last king of the century, Jayavarman V (968-1001), completed
and dedicated one of the most beautiful of the Khmer temples, the
Banteay Srei, 'Citadel of the Women', which was the first to be
restored by French archaeologists according to the method known as
anastylosis, first exploited by the Dutch in Java.

CH. 5

THE KHMERS AND ANGKOR

IO5

(b) From looi to the abandonment of Angkor in 1432

The first half of the eleventh century is notable for the reign of
another of the great kings of Khmer history, Suryavarman I (1002-50).
He succeeded ' a phantpfn king who flitted across the throne', as Finot
describes Udayadityavarman I (1001-2), the successor of Jayavarman
V. There is no evidence regarding either the disappearance of
Udayadityavarman I or the accession of Suryavarman I. The latter
is said to have been a son of a King of Tambralinga, and to have
claimed the throne by virtue of descent through his mother from the
maternal line of Indravarman I. The indications are that he landed
in eastern Cambodia in looi, and after a long civil war was ultimately
installed at Angkor in c. loio. Later inscriptions date his reign from
1002, when Udayadityavarman I disappeared. His chief rival after
1002 was a certain Jayaviravarman, who held parts of Cambodia until
1007, or possible l o i i . Suryavarman's claim was a weak one. He is
described in one inscription as having gained the throne by his sword,
which 'broke the circle of his enemies'.
Suryavarman's buildings have attracted much attention. The two
that are best known, the Phimeanakas ('celestial palace') and the Ta
Keo, had been begun in the reign of Jayavarman V. The Ta Keo was
the first of the Khmer temples to be built of sandstone. Like the
earlier Bakheng and the later Angkor Wat, its central feature is a
platform surmounted by five towers. The Phimeanakas, on the other
hand, is in pyramidal style with one central tower only. Legend has it
that it was a palace, but Khmer palaces were always in wood, and its
plan is quite unlike the traditional palace layout. Chou Ta-kuan, who
visited Angkor at the end of the thirteenth century, records the
popular belief that the Khmer king spent the first watch of every night
in the tower with the mythical naga in the form of a beautiful woman,
and that upon this ceremonial consummation depended the welfare of
the kingdom. The towers of these two temples are gilded, and the
fashion is first mentioned in Suryavarman's reign. It was a contemporary Mon custom, which the Khmers are thought to have copied.
The Chiengmai Chronicle of a much later date describes Khmer
expansion in the Menam valley during his reign. An inscription at
Lopburi dating from this period claims that his empire included both
the. Mon kingdom of Dvaravati and the Malay kingdom of Tambralinga, later Ligor. Local chronicles credit him with the occupation
of the Mekong valley as far north as Chiengsen, but archaeology

I06

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. 1

shows no traces of it beyond Luang Prabang. In contrast with the

many campaigns waged on other fronts, his eastern frontier seems to
have remained at peace throughout his reign.
The eleventh century was indeed a period of increasing warfare for
the Khmers. Suryavarman's son and successor Udayadityavarman II
(1050-66) was busy deaUng with revolts throughout his reign. The
first broke out in the far south and seems to have been caused by
Cham interference from the region of Panduranga. That region,
which had been in a state of revolt for some time, was thoroughly
subdued by King Jaya Paramesvaravarman, whose forces also made
an incursion into Cambodian territory and sacked Sambhupura. The
revolt which ensued was led by a chief who is described as a master in
the science of archery. He may have been a Cham. At first he achieved
no little success and defeated more than one Cambodian army. When
he was finally crushed by the famous Cambodian general Sangrama,
who celebrated each of his victories with a pious foundation, he took
refuge in Champa.
During Udayadityavarman's reign King Anawrahta of Pagan
reduced the Mon peoples of southern Burma and took Thaton, their
capital. T'ai tradition asserts that he extended his conquests as far as
Lopburi and Dvaravati, and that the Khmers had to recognize Burmese
suzerainty over the conquered territories as the price of receiving back
Lopburi. Epigraphy yields no evidence in support of this story, and
the Burmese chronicles are significantly silent on the subject. 'There
is no reason to believe that Anawrahta attempted any conquests to the
eastward of the Thaton kingdom.
Two further revolts took place during Udayadityavarman II's
reign. One was in the north-west and was led by a royal general,
Kamvau, who actually threatened the capital, but was defeated by
Sangrama. The other, in the east, was also crushed by him. The
suggestion has been made that they may have been the result of the
king's hostility to Buddhism. His father, coming from a Buddhist
state, had shown special favour to the religion, though maintaining
the cult of the god-king. Udayadityavarman built only Saivite
sanctuaries. In the most magnificent of them all, the gilded Baphuon,
he installed a gold linga. It was the largest temple built up to that
time in Cambodia. Parmentier describes it as 'one of the most
perfect of Khmer art'. Chou Ta-kuan, who saw it in its full glory,
wHtes that it was 'really impressive',
Harshavarman I I I (1066-80), Udayadityavarman II's younger
brother, tried to repair the damage and loss caused by the warfare of

CH. 5

THE KHMERS AND ANGKOR

107

the previous reign. He was a peace-loving king, but the times were
against him. He was dethroned by a revolt led by a prince named
Jayavarman, not of the royal family, but apparently the son of a
vassal ruleror provincial governorof a city named Mahidharapura,
the site of which has not yet been identified.
Jayavarman VI, who founded a new dynasty, had a troubled reign.
Members of the family of Harshavarman H I raised the south against
him, and continued the struggle until the accession of Suryavarman H

RELIEF FROM THE BANTEAY SREI

in 1113. Coedes thinks it is doubtful whether he ever reigned at

Angkor, though an inscription of a century later asserts that he was
consecrated there. Mahidharapura, somewhere in the north, seems to
have been the headquarters from which he directed operations.
He was succeeded by his elder brother Dharanindravarman I
(i 107-13), a man of advanced age who had retired to a monastery.
Although an inscription records that he 'governed with prudence', he
was quite unable to cope with the rebellion which had lasted throughout his brother's reign. That task was performed by his grandnephew on the maternal side, a young man of boundless ambition,

I08

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENJURY

PT. I

who crushed the house of Harshavarman III, deposed the feehle

Dharanindravarman I, and was consecrated king as Suryavarman II.
Suryavarman II (i 113-50) became the most powerful king of
Khmer history. Ccedes comments: 'His accession coincides with the
deaths of Jaya Indravarman II of Champa and Kyanzittha of Pagan.
A better knowledge of the relations between these countries might
show a connection of cause and effect between the disappearance of
two powerful kings and the seizure of power by an ambitious Khmer
king able to strike both east and west. '^ His armies went farther afield
than ever before in Khmer history. The inscriptions of his reign are,
however, strangely silent regarding his campaigns agair^st Champa
and Annam, as well as against the Mons and T'ais of the Menam
valley. Most of them are found in the north, where he apparently
spent much of his time and founded a number of temples.
Suryavarman H's conquest of Champa has been dealt with elsewhere, xc was provoked by the Cham attitude towards his attempts
to coerce them as allies in his'operations against the Annamite kingdom of Dai-Viet. All his attempts to invade Annam by the overland
route from Savannakhet to Nghe-an failed, as also did his effort to
hold Champa in subjection.
Little is known about his western campaigns. The T'ais had begun
to infiltrate into the Menam valley and had settled in the state 6f Lavo
(Lopburi). According to the T'ai chronicles, his campaigns against
that state and the Mon kingdom of Haripunjaya (Lamp'un) failed.
But Khmer influence upon the contemporary architecture of Lopburi
was so strong that doubt is thrown on their veracity. The Sung
History shows a considerable expansion of Khmer sovereignty. It
describes the Cambodian frontiers as the southern border of Champa,
the sea in the south, the borders of Pagan in the west, and Grahi on the
east coast of the Malay Peninsula.
Suryavarman II was the first King of Cambodia since Jayavarman
II to enter into diplomatic relations with China. His first embassy
was received in China in i n 6 . A second appeared in 1120. When,
eight years later, a third arrived the emperor conferred high titles upon
the 'King of Chenla'. Between 1136 and 1147 discussions took place
regarding commercial difficulties, which were peaceably settled.
Suryavarman was as famous as a builder as he was as a warrior,
since he was the founder of the Angkor Wat. With the possible
exception of the Banteay Chhmar, at the foot of the Dangkrek mountains about a hundred miles north-west of Angkor, and now a heap of
' Les Eials Hinduuises d'Indochine et d'Indonesie, p. 369.

no

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

ruins it is the largest religious building in the world. Of all the

Khmer monuments it is the best preserved. The central sanctuary,
130 feet high, stands on a square terrace 40 feet high and 750 feet
square. At the corners rise four towers connected by galleries and
communicating with the central shrine by covered passages. Around
this immense central building is a lofty wall of galleries, with towers
at its four corners. This in turn is enclosed by an outer square of
colonnades. Beyond this there is a further enclosure measuring 850
by 1,000 metres and surrounded by a wall of laterite and sandstone.
The whole was originally surrounded by a moat 200 metres wide
enclosing a total area of nearly a square mile.
The legend was that the Wat was not built by human hands but by
Indra, the Lord of Heaven, who sailed down to earth for the purpose.
Originally all nine great pinnacles were plated with gold, while the
sculptures of incredible richness, covering the walls in high and low
relief, were ablaze with colour. The central shrine contained a gold
statue of Vishnu mounted on a garuda, which was taken out of its
sanctuary on festival occasions. It was of course, a representation of
the king deified as Vishnu, and the majestic shrine was erected in
order to become his mausoleum when he died. The enthusiasm for
Vaisnavism which it manifests was to be found at the same time
in Java, where the Kings of Kediri, like Suryavarman, were incarnations of Vishnu. But Saivism was still important, as the many
Saivite scenes depicted on the walls bear witness. The total effect is
of a blending of the two cults, with the emphasis on Vaisnavism.
The exact date of Suryavarman's death is unknown. Cham inscriptions show that he was still reigning in 1149. Coedes thinks that
he probably sent the Cambodian expedition against Tongking which
met with disaster in 1150, and that he must have died in that year.
His vast building programme, coupled with his rash and largely
unsuccessful foreign policy, plunged his country into a sea of misfortunes, from which she was only rescued by Jayavarman VH.
The period from his death to the accession of Jayavarman VH is
very obscure. There are no contemporary inscriptions, and information concerning it has to be gleaned from those of the ensuing period
and foreign sources. Dharanindravarman H, his cousin on the female
side, who succeeded him in 1150, was a Buddhist who broke the long
tradition of Hinduism. In ii6o he was succeeded by Yasovafman II,
who is thought to have been one of his sons, but not the legitimate
heir to the throne. His eldest son, Jayavarman, who should have
succeeded, went into voluntary exile in Champa, so the story goes.

CH. 5

'"''^E KHMERS AND ANGKOR

III

because as a good Buddhist he shrank from causing civil war by

pressing his claim.
Yasovarman's short reign, which ended ia 1165 or 1166, saw two
rebellions. The first, referred to as the revolt of the Rahus, seems to
have been a peasants' revolt, presumably against the harsh conditions
they suffered as a result xA SxiTyaTarman's extravagance. T h e second,
led by a chief called Tribhuvanadityavarman, cost Yasovarman his
throne and his life. The rebel leader is described in an inscription as
' a servant ambitious to arrive at the royal power'. When Jayavarman
heard of the insurrection he hurried back home to help his brother,
or mayhap to seize the throne for himself. An inscription at the
Phimeanakas runs: 'Seeing the moment come, he rose to save the
land heavy with crime.' But he was too late. He found Yasovarman
dead and the usurper on the throne, and he retired again into obscurity.
In 1167 Jaya Indravarman IV of Champa, also a usurper, began a
long series of attacks upon Cambodia. His sole object seems to have
been plunder. At first the campaigns were limited to border fighting,
in which the Chams won some success as a result of training their
cavalry in the use of the crossbow. In 1177, however, having failed
to obtain the necessary number of horses for a raid on the grand scale,
they resorted to a surprise attack by sea, which resulted in the capture
and sack of Angkor. The old city of Yasodharapura was defended by
wooden palisades, which proved inadequate to meet the sudden
attack launched by a well-prepared enemy. King Tribhuvanadityavarman lost his life when the capital was taken. The central government
coWapsed and anatcby became -widtrspTead.
It was now Jayavarman's turn to deal with the situation. He dealt
first with the Chams. The great naval fight in which he routed them
is represented almost identically on the walls of the Bayon, his own
funerary monument, and those of the Banteay Chhmar. His next
task was to reduce the country to obedience. By 1181 he had established his power firmly enough to celebrate his coronation at Angkor.
Almost immediately afterwards, however, he was faced by a serious
rising in the dependent kingdom of Malyang, in the southern part of
what is now the province of Battambang. His army, which quelled
the rebels, was led by a young Cham prince, Sri Vidyananda, who
was a refugee from his own country, though for what reason is unknown. He displayed such ability as a commander that Jayavarman
VII marked him out for a still greater enterprise which he was preparing secretly against Champa.
The conquest of Champa was the greatest military achievement of
5

112

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

Jayavarman's reign. The patience and care which he bestowed upon

preparing his great act of vengeance were notable. He even sent an
embassy with presents to the King of Dai-viet so as to ensure Annamite neutrality. The story, which belongs rather to the history of
Champa than that of Cambodia, is told in Chapter 7. That he
envisaged the permanent reduction of Champa to the position of a
vassal state is shown not only by his appointment of the Cham prince
Vidyanandana as commander-in-chief of the invading force but also
by the fact that when Champa fell a second time to the Khmer armies,
in 1203, its administration was entrusted to another Cham, Ong
Dhamapatigrama, who had spent some time at the Court of Angkor.
It is also significant, in quite a different connection, that the Cham
viceroy, who was created Yuvaraja in 1207, employed the Khmer
troops at his disposal mainly in attacks upon Annam. They were led
by another Cham prince, Ong Ansaraja, a son of Jaya Harshavarman
II (1162-3) and heir to the throne of Champa.
Under Jayavarman VII the sway of Angkor extended possibly even
more widely than under Suryavarman II. An inscription dated 1186
at Say Fong, on the Mekong close to Vien Chang (Vientiane), indicates
its farthest extension northwards. Chinese sources show that it
exercised at least nominal suzerainty over part of the Malay Peninsula.
They also assert that the kingdom of Pagan was a dependency of
Cambodia at this time. Attempts have been made to explain that in
their ignorance of the geography of Burma they confused Pegu, the
capital of the Mon country, with Pagan. But even this suggestion is
unacceptable. Burmese and Mon sources are completely silent on the
subject, and the rule of Pagan under Narapatisithu (1172-1210) was
too firmly established to admit of Cambodian suzerainty over any
part of the country.
One interesting development in Burma during this king's reign was
destined to have important effects upon Cambodia by the middle of
the next century. Among the companions of the Mon monk Chapata,
who in II90 established a chapter of Theravada Buddhism after the
Sinhalese pattern in Burma, was a Khmer prince whom Coedes
suspects to have been a son of Jayavarman VII. The teachings of the
new sect were brought by missionary monks to the states of the Menam
valley, and ultimately to Cambodia itself, with revolutionary effects.
For unlike Saivism, Vaisnavism, and Mahayana Buddhism, which
were imposed from above, the new doctrines were preached to the
people, and stimulated a popular movement which carried the Khmers
as a whole into the Hinayana fold, which they have never deserted.

CH. 5

THE KHMERS AND ANGKOR

II3

Jayavarman VII's internal work shows a building programme of

the most extravagant order. It was unparalleled alike in its immensity
and in the haste and carelressness with which it was carried out. In
the first place, with the lessons of the Cham invasion in view, he set
himself to build an impregnable city. The result was Angkor Thom,
which was planned on a much smaller scale than Yasodharapura.
While it was under construction the king resided in a temporary
capital, Nagara Jayasri, which was erected just outside the north-east
corner of the new one.
Angkor Thom was enclosed by a wide moat some eight miles in
circumference and a formidable laterite wall, supported on the inside
by an enormous earth embankment. Five stone causeways crossed the
moat and gave access to the city through five monumental gates, each
with towers surmounted by gigantic heads with four human faces.
The causeways themselves were flanked on each side by balustrades
formed by rows of giants holding on their knees a naga, whose seven
heads rose fanwise at each end of the causeway.
At the centre of the city rose the strangest monument ever erected
by a Khmer king, the Bayon, next to the Angkor Wat the largest
temple of the Angkor group.^ It was a pyramidal temple with its
central mass crowned by a tower of gold bearing four gigantic human
faces. Around it from an inner and an outer gallery arose many
smaller four-faced towers, the number of which has been estimated
at fifty. It was built in such a hurry that stone was piled upon stone
without any form of cement. Its decorations were among the finest
in Khmer architecture, its architectural motif one of the most striking
in the world, but it is now in a worse state of ruin than almost any of
the other great Angkor temples. The myriad faces which so impressively and disconcertingly confront the observer are portraits of
Jayavarman himself in the guise of the Mahayanist Bodhisattva
Avalokitesvara, usually referred to in South-East Asia as Lokesvara.
Like his father Dharanindravarman II, he was a Buddhist, and
under him Mahayanism became for a time the dominant religion in
Cambodia. Suryavarman II had blended Vaisnavism with Saivism
in such a way as to substitute a Vishnuraja for a Devaraja at the
Angkor Wat. Jayavarman VII took the blending process a further
stage by the substitution of a Buddharaja cult with its centre at the
Bayon. In 1933 the French archaeologist Trouve discovered a huge
statue of the Buddha in a pit under the central tower of the Bayon.
' Coedfes, Pour mieux comprendre Angkor, chap, vi, ' L e mystfere du Bayon', pp.
izi-SO.

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

114

PT. I

This must have been the representation of the Buddharaja. It was

apparently buried there during the violent Hindu reaction after
Jayavarman's death, when the Bayon became a Saivite shrine and the
linga cult replaced that of Lokesvara.
Saivism, however, did not disappear during Jayavarman's reign.
No great Saivite monument was erected, but among the smaller
shrines as many were dedicated to Siva as to Lokesvara. Needless to
say, the mass of the people remained largely untouched by these

PLAN OF THE
ANGKOR GROUP

B.P.

WESTERN 8ARAY
[EIMEBON

P.K. =
T.N.=
P. =
T.P. =
T.K.=
B. =
P.B. =
B.K.=
B.P, =

Prah Khan
Ta Neo
Phimeanakas
Ti Prohm
Ta Keo
Bayon
Phnom Bakheng
Banteai Kdei
Banteai Prei

N.B. The dotted lines indicate the boundaries of three

artificial lakes and those of the earlier city of
Yoiodharapura with Phnom Bakheng at its centre

developments in the official cult. They interpreted its various forms

in terms of their own animism and ancestor-worship.
Jayavarman VII's building programme included much more than
his two great monuments, Angkor Thorn and the Bayon. Among
other things he claimed also to have built no less than 121 rest-houses
at intervals along the roads radiating from the capital. His chief
queen Jayarajadevi, we are told, 'filled the earth with a shower of
magnificent gifts'. On her death he raised her elder sister Indradevi
to the position she had occupied. Indradevi had been a distinguished
teacher of the Buddhist doctrine in three monastic schools. Besides
erecting 'numerous images of Jayarajadevi with images of the king

'^y^t^jH

^%W^rV}^f^^-im:i - flfc .
^

-liSfc--*-

^:^

Il6

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

and herself in all the cities', she composed in perfect Sanskrit the
famous inscription on the Phimeanakas which gives her husband's
biography.
A programme such as this was far too heavy for a people already
crushed by the burden of wars and the buildings of Suryavarman II.
Thousands of villages were assigned for the upkeep of the great
temples, while tens of thousands of officiants and hundreds of dancers
were employed in their service, not to mention the army of labourers,
masons, sculptors and decorators required for the constructional work.
Jayavarman VII may have been the greatest of all the Khmer monarchs, and it may be claimed that his reign represented the apogee of
Cambodia, but he impoverished his people with heavy taxation and
insatiable demands for forced labour and military service. Ccedes
poses the question whether he is not rather to be seen as ' a megalomaniac whose foolish prodigality was one of the causes of the decadence
of his country'.^ There can be no doubt as to the answer.
Up to the present no definite evidence regarding the date of
Jayavarman VII's death has come to light. At one time it was supposed to have been in 1201. Now Coedes places it in 1218. The
increase in the length of the reign attributed to him illustrates the
growth of knowledge concerning him during the past fifty years. In
1900 little more than his name was known. The programme of conquest and buildings with which he is now credited would certainly
demand a reign ending not earlier than 1215. Moreover, the date of
his birth also has been altered. Ccedes, who at one time placed it
shortly before 1130, now favours a date not later than 1125. This
would make him well over ninety at the time of his death.^
The details of Khmer history during the remainder of the thirteenth
century are hard to find. There are no important contemporary
inscriptions, and the Chinese dynastic histories have nothing to say
about the period. The chief sources of information are Cham and
T'ai inscriptions, and later Cambodian ones. No great ruler arose
after Jayavarman VII. Much of his work perished soon after his death.
Champa was evacuated and a Hindu reaction swept away the cult of
the Buddharaja. Everywhere lingas replaced Lokesvaras.
The evacuation of Champa was the first step in the dissolution of
the empire. There is reason to think that it was followed soon afterwards by the indepenaence of Tambralinga, though quite what
happened is by no means clear. The T'ai also were strengthening
' Op. cit. sup., chap, viii, pp. 176-210.
' Les Stats Hindouises, pp. 286, 291.

CH. 5

THE KHMERS AND ANGKOR

II7

their hold on the upper Menam valley at the expense of the Khmer
power. In Cambodia itself, however, there were no signs of collapse,
and only a few of decay, so that at the end of the century it was possible
for the Chinese observer Chou Ta-kuan to describe a magnificent
city and a prosperous country, notwithstanding the ravages of T'ai
raiders.
Five more Kings of Angkor are mentioned before the inscriptions
come to an end and the official Cambodian Chronicle begins. One
of them, Jayavarman VIII (1243-95), had the longest reign in Khmer
history, but achieved no distinction either as statesman or builder.
The great age of Khmer architecture had come to an abrupt end with
the passing of Jayavarman VII. Jayavarman VIII was largely responsible for the acts of vandalism on the Buddhist images erected by his
predecessor. Under him Brahman dominance was re-established.
He was quite unable to curb the T'ai. It was during his reign that
they gained control over most of what is today the kingdom of Thailand or Siam. A big step in this direction was taken when a T'ai
chieftain who had married a daughter of Jayavarman VII defeated
the Khmer governor of the upper Menam valley and established the
kingdom of Sukhot'ai. Rama Khamheng, who ascended its throne in
1270, expanded his power far and wide at the expense of the Khmer
empire. Farther north another T'ai prince, Mangrai, conquered the
old Mon kingdom of Haripunjaya in the Meping valley and built the
city of Chiengmai as his capital. Both he and Rama Khamheng
established close relations with Kublai Khan, who had conquered the
old T'ai kingdom of Tali, or Nanchao, in 1253. Their attacks upon
the Khmer were made with his encouragement. Jayavarman VIII
asked for trouble by stolidly turning a deaf ear to Mongol demands
for homage, and even went so far as to imprison Kublai's envoy. Had
Marshal Sogatu succeeded in subduing Champa, doubtless Cambodia's
turn v^ould have come next. But his attempt ended in disaster. Hence
Kublai found the T'ai all the more useful as a means of weakening
the proud Angkor regime.
The early conquests of the T'ai caused such serious losses both of
revenue and of man power for forced labour that they alone would
account for the sudden stop in the erection of great monuments of art.
Otherwise, however, the life of Cambodia went on much as before,
and for a time may have become somewhat easier for the oppressed
masses, whose main task was to labour for the greedy gods. At the
top of the scale the abandonment of great enterprises, whether of
, erecting temples or of foreign conquest, promoted a new zest for

^^%

TBN-ARMED BODHISATTAVA, ANGKOR

CH. 5

THE KHMERS AND ANGKOR

II9

learning. As Louis Finot puts it: 'Sanskrit verse was still written.
Wise men abounded there, and foreign savants came, drawn by the
reputation of this kingdom of high culture. Nowhere was knowledge
more in honour. Scholars occupied the first charges of the State;
they were on terms of familiarity with kings. Their daughters were
queens. They themselves were royal preceptors, grand judges,
ministers. There was a "King of Professors".'^
But it was at the other end of the scale that the great change was
in progress which was to be the most potent factor in causing the
collapse of the old culture, upon which the greatness of Angkor had
been based. This was the conversion of the people to the Buddhism
of the Sinhalese Mahavihara sect. We have seen how the new teaching had been introduced into Burma at the end of the twelfth century
by Mon monks. Thence it had spread to the Mon peoples of the
Menam valley, where Hinayana Buddhism had already centuries of
existence behind it. By the middle of the thirteenth century it was
spreading northwards to the T'ai and eastv/ards to the Khmers.
It was simple and needed no priesthood for the maintenance of
expensive temples and elaborate ceremonial. Its missionaries were
monks who prescribed austerity, solitude and meditation, and were
devoted to a life of poverty and self-abnegation. Unlike the hierarchy
at the capital, they were in direct contact with the people, and they
undermined completely the old state religion and all that went with it.
'From the day when the sovereign ceased to be Siva descended to
earth,' writes Ccedes,^ 'or the living Buddha, as Jayavarman VII had
been, the royal dynasty failed any longer to inspire the people with
the rehgious respect which enabled it to accomplish great enterprises.
Under the threat of the anarchical spirit of Sinhalese Buddhism his
prestige diminished, his temporal power crumbled away, and the godking was thrown down from his altar.'
When Chou Ta-kuan arrived in Angkor with the Chinese embassy
of 1296-7 a new king, Indravarman III, was on the throne. He was a
soldier who had married Jayavarman VIII's daughter and seized the
royal power by deposing his father-in-law and imprisoning the
legitimate claimant. He tried to infuse new energy into the kingship;
and whereas his predecessor had never shown himself in public,
Indravarman appeared often in the streets. His reception of a Chinese
mission was a sign of a change of attitude, if not of policy. Jayavarman
VIII had imprisoned the members of the sole Chinese mission on
^

1 In G. Maspero, L'Jndochine, i, p. 108.

^ Pour micux comprendre Angkor, p. 66.

I20

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

record to his Court; this one was accorded an honourable reception.

It was sent by Timur Khan, Kublai's grandson and successor, and
Chou Ta-kuan asserts that homage was paid by Indravarman III to
the new emperor. But there is no sign of the usual official relations
subsequently, and Pelliot, in his edition of Chou Ta-kuan's Memoirs
on the Customs of Cambodia,^ quotes a Chinese author of 1520 to the
effect that Cambodia never did pay homage to China.
Still, Indravarman must have done enough to placate the Imperial
Court. Moreover, he was able to hold the T'ai attacks, and the danger
from their direction lessened. In 1317 Rama K'amheng died and the
power of Sukhot'ai declined. Chou Ta-kuan mentions that before
Indravarman's accession Cambodia proper had been subjected to
Siamese raids. From his time until the foundation of Ayut'ia in
1350 she seems to have been in no great danger.
There is reason to suspect that in religion also Indravarman III
reversed the policy of Jayavarman VIII. He would appear to have
made no change in the official state ceremonial, which had become
Saivite again after Jayavarman VII's death. But there are records of
his benefactions to a Buddhist monastery and shrine at the close of
his reign. An inscription dated 1309, recording a gift of revenues
made by him to the monastery, shows that he had abdicated in the
previous year.^ Did he do so, as Ccedes suggests, in order to become
a monk and devote himself to the study and practice of the new
Hinayana doctrine? That Hinayana Buddhism had become the
predominant religion of the people by the end of Jayavarman VIII's
reign is abundantly evident from Chou Ta-kuan's account of the
religions of Angkor. Everybody, he says, worshipped the Buddha,
and his description of the chu-ku (Siamese chao-ku'sir'), the name
he applies to the Buddhist monks, who 'shave the head, wear yellow
clothing and leave the right shoulder uncovered', leaves no doubt that
they were Hinayanist.
Little is known of the reigns of Indravarman's two, immediate
successors, Indrajayavarman (1308-27) and Jayavarman Paramesvara
(1327-.?). The latter is the last Cambodian king to be mentioned by
the inscriptions. Not only is the date of the end of his reign unknown,
but also his connection with the earliest kings of the Cambodian^
Chronicle, who begin in c. 1340 with a posthumous name, Mahanippean. The Sanskrit inscriptions end abruptly in the reign of Jayavarman
BEFEO, ii, (1902), pp. 123-77 Until recently he was thought to have died in 1307. On this point see Briggs,
Ancient Khmer Empire, p. 252.

CH. 5

THE KHMERS AND ANGKOR

121

Paramesvara; there is no decline in their style or in the skill of

the lapidists who executed them. The only explanation would seem
to be that the king and his Court became converts to Hinayana
Buddhism, and the official language thus became Pali. With the
passing of the deva-raju passed also the habit of celebrating his
achievements in conventional Sanskrit verse exquisitely carved in
stone. Was Jayavarman Paramesvara the king under whom this
important change took place?
Briggs' shows that there is good reason to suppose that he had a
long reign, that he was the Khmer king who helped the exiled I>aos
prince Phi-Fa and his son Fa-Ngum to found the independent kingdom of Lan Chang with its capital at Muang Swa in 1353, that Fa
Ngum married his daughter, and that largely through her efforts the
Laotians were converted to Hinayanism. Jayavarman Paramesvara is
said to have exhorted his son-in-law, soon after his accession, to obey
the teaching of the Buddha in his relations with his subjects.
The Cambodian Chronicle, on the other hand, places a series of
four kings, beginning with Nippean Bat (Nirvanapada), on the throne
of Angkor between 1340 and 1353. It also asserts that in the latter
year the king of Ayut'ia, Rama Thibodi I, captured the city and held
it for four years, during which time the Khmer king took refuge at the
Court of Laos. Briggs, however, has disposed of these intrusive
kings by proving that they, together with the Siamese capture of
Angkor, belong to a much later period.^ 'Those who prepared the
Chronicles,' he writes, 'apparently set back the dates of the reigns and
events, interjected kings and otherwise distorted and misrepresented
the facts.'^
The exact date of Jayavarman Paramesvara's death is unknown,
and for the remainder of the fourteenth century the chronicle of events
is uncertain. The accession of the Ming dynasty in 1368 brought
Cambodia once more into relationship with China. The Ming
History records the reception of ten embassies from 'Chenla' between
1371 and 1403. A king is mentioned as coming in person in 1371, but
the Chinese version of his name* has not been identified. The next
king named by th^ Chinese bears the title of Samtac Preah Phaya.
He died in 1404 or 1405, and the Ming emperor Ching Sung sent a
delegation to attend his funeral and accord his eldest son, ' Phing-ya',
official recognition. He, according to Briggs's reckoning, should be
1 Ibid., pp. 253-5.
^' Siamese Attacks on Angkor before 1430' in FEQ, viii (1948), pp. 3-33.
^ The Ancient Khmer Empire, p. 254, f.n.
' Hou-eul-na.

122

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

the Nippean Bat mentioned in the Cambodian Chronicle list of kings

leading up to the supposed fall of Angkor in 1353. The list with the
amended chronology he gives as follows-.i
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Samtac Chao Phaya Phing-ya, Nippean Bat, 1405-9.

Lampong, or Lampang Paramaraja, 1409-16.
Sorijovong, Sorijong or Lambang, 1416-25.
Barom Racha, or Gamkhat Ramadhapati, 1425-29.
Thommo-Soccorach, or Dharmasoka, 1429-31.
Ponha Yat, or Gam Yat, 1432-?.

Between 1350 and the Siamese capture of Angkor in 1431 there

must have been almost incessant fighting between T'ais and Khmers.
Ayut'ia was far more dangerous to Angkor than Sukhot'ai had been.
It was much nearer and lay in the Mon country, whose people were
closely related to the Khmers in race and language. Most of the
fighting took place in the frontier regions of Chantabun, Jolburi and
Korat. The very unreliable Cambodian Chronicle has led historians
to conclude that the T'ais captured Angkor again in 1394 and placed
a puppet king on the throne. Then, after an interregnum las'ting
until 1401, the T'ais were driven out and the Khmer monarchy
restored.
What actually happened cannot be established with certainty, save,
that, as in 1353, Angkor was not captured by the T'ais. Raiding, said
to have been started by the Khmers, and counter-raiding by the
T'ais, began in the provinces of Chantabun and Jolburi in 1390 and
lasted for some years, with each side deporting thousands of people
when it carried out a raid.
This severe struggle led the Chams to think the time ripe for an
attempt on their part to ravage Cambodia. In 1414 Khmer envoys
complained to China that Cham raids had on several occasions prevented the despatch of embassies to the Imperial Court. The emperor
sent a letter of warning to the Cham king, but it did not'restrain the
latter in 1421 from carrying out a large-scale invasion of the Mekong
delta region, whence his forces were not expelled until about 1426.
But the Khmers showed no signs of weakness. At the very time when
they were forced to deal with the Cham invasion they were apparently
engaged in offensive operations against Ayut'ia.
Along both the Jolburi route in the south and the Mun valley route
in the north they threatened the T'ai capital again and again. When,
' Ibid., p. 256.

CH. 5

THE KHMERS AND ANGKOR

123

therefore, King Boromoraja 11 of Ayut'ia did at last penetrate to

Angkor and lay siege to it in 1430, it was only after his own capital had
for some years been exposed to the same threat by the Khmers.
Moreover, when Angkor did fall, after a siege of seven months, it was
by treachery rather than through weakness. For King Dharmasoka's
death during the siege was followed by the defection of two mandarins
and two leading Buddhist monks to the enemy, and it was in consequence of this that the city fell.
The Siamese, on taking Angkor in 1431, stripped it of all they could
carry away and deported thousands of prisoners. A Siamese prince
was placed on the throne as a puppet king. His career was short.
The Cambodian crown prince Ponha Yat managed to procure his
assassination and was then himself crowned at Angkor. Before long
the Khmers were once more holding their own along the ChantabunJolburi-Korat frontier. Angkor Thom, however, was no longer considered safe as a capital. It was evacuated by Ponha Yat in 1432. He
transferred his Court first to Basan in the province of Srei Santhor on
the eastern side of the Mekong, and in 1434 to Phnom Penh.
Cambodia was still intact; she had ceded no territory to Boromoraja n and was still a powerful state. She had not been conquered.
Nevertheless the evacuation of Angkor ended finally the great period
of Khmer civilization. The Khmers were not to repeat elsewhere the
woiiderful works of art and architecture, or the treasures of Sanskrit
epigraphy, which they had wrought at Angkor in the days of its glory.
They were not even to make an attempt to conserve what was left
there: that was to be the task of the French centuries later. The king
and his Court fled because the city was no longer suitable as a capital.
The people fled to escape from slavery to the greedy gods, whose yoke
was too heavy to bear. And inside and around the deserted city the
tropical forest began rapidly to efi'ace the traces of man.
(c) The economic basis of Khmer civilization
The economic factors, which made possible so great an outburst of
glorious art and architecture in the Angkor region from the tenth to
the thirteenth centuries, have only recently been investigated. For
many years archaeologists were so busily engaged upon the study of
what was above the ground and visible that the examination of the subsoil was neglected. Recently, however, M. Bernard Philippe Groslier
has been engaged upon this task, and with the aid of aerial photography
has made discoveries which not only answer the questions, which had

124

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

long perplexed students of Khmer antiquities, but also indicate the

lines along which future research into other South-East Asian civilizations might profitably proceed. In 1958 he summed up his results in
a section of his book dealing with Portuguese and Spanish accounts of
Cambodia in the sixteenth century. ^ It is a brief statement, but it
provides for the first time the essential facts for lack of which it had
hitherto been impossible to present a rounded picture of Khmer
civilization. The basic question, which had worried the minds of
students, was: how could an agricultural community, 'une civilisation
du vegetal', have become rich enough to produce a range of monuments, which, as M. Groslier sees it, is incomparable for numbet, size
and perfection. It was, he tells us, a matter of agricultural hydraulics.
The Khmers, who had inherited methods of irrigation from Funan,
found the Angkor region ideal for the purpose of constructing a system
of water utilization that would cause the soil to yield its utmost in the
service of man. It was a system designed to solve the problem posed
by too much and too heavy monsoon rain within too short a time. What
they did was to construct a vast reseau hydraulique, whi.ch ensured that
as much water as possible was conserved during the rains so that during
the dry season it could be used rationally for both human consumption
and the permanent irrigation of the paddy-fields. Aerial photography
has enabled the plan of this remarkable system to be plotted. It depended
upon the construction of immense storage tanks, the barays, one of
which had a capacity of 30 million cubic metres, supplied with an
ingenious apparatus for carrying off the water as and when it was
needed. The whole region, running to some twelve and a half million
acres, was minutely divided into square paddy fields, capable of yielding
three, and even four, harvests a year. The complex net of waterways
served other purposes also. It protected the soil from diluvial erosion
through uncontrolled flooding in the rainy season. It seems to have
controlled the annual inundation of the great Tonle Sap lake. Moreover,
it provided an efficient means of travel and transport at any season of
the year; even the moats of the chief monuments formed an integral
part of it, enabling materials from the quarries to be brought direct to
the building sites.
The city itself, so far from being an urban agglomeration, was rather
a collection of waterworks stretching far and wide beyond the palace
and its immediate temples, with a considerable population densely
settled along its causeways and canals, and much of its land cut up
' Angkor et le Cambodge au XVI'
Paris, 1958, pp. 107-21.

Steele d'apres les sources portugaises et espagnoles,

_ ^

CH. 5

THE KHMERS AND ANGKOR

125

into cultivated holdings. In this connection modern research has

established the significant fact that each Khmer king, upon taking
office, was expected to carry out works 'of public interest', particularly
works of irrigation, before starting upon his own temple-mountain.
Indeed, M. Groslier goes so far as to say that the labour bestowed upon
the ever-developing irrigation system is 'far more impressive than the
building of temples, which were merely chapels crowning a Cyclopean
undertaking'.^
We have seen the Khmer king as the deva-raja, the intermediary
between men and the divine powers, the upholder of the established
order (dharma) handed down by his ancestors, the intercessor with the
spirit world for the fertility of his realm, and his city as the image of
the universe interpreted in terms of the Hindu Mount Meru. It is now
obvious that he must also be seen as the creator and director of the
public works designed to ensure prosperity. Thus the religious and
economic systems were intimately bound up with each other, and hark
back to a condition of society anterior to any impact of Indian influence.
As M. Groslier expresses it, 'La religion fondamentale de la societe
khmere, sous son brillant manteau indien, fut le culte des eaux et du
sol.'^ The ubiquitous naga of Khmer art, the water spirit, was the
central figure of the popular religioij.
The Angkor economy, and the organization of society which it
entailed, depended upon a system of water utilization so highly complex and artificial, that any interference with it could have extremely
serious consequences. So long as rulers were public-spirited and people
were content to play the part assigned to them in keeping the vast
mechanism going, Angkor prospered; and from 802 until far into the
twelfth century the heartland of the Khmer kingdom enjoyed quite
exceptional tranquillity. But royal megalomania, showing itself in
increasing extravagance in building and in wasteful wars of aggression
undermined the economy, and bred discontent with the established
order. And when the machine was already beginning to show signs of
strain, the persistent T'ai raids deep into the metropolitan area ultimately
wrecked it beyond repair.
(d) Cambodia from 1432 to the Siamese conquest in 1594
Cambodian history during the long period from the abandonment of
Angkor to the Siamese conquest in 1594 is even more obscure than
' Angkor, Art and Civilization, London, 1957, p. 30.
* Angkor et le Cambodge au XVI' siecle, p. 116.

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TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

FT. I

during the preceding period from the death of Jayavarman VII. From
the middle of the fourteenth century to the end of the fifteenth the
chronicles are our sole source of information. Those extant today
were all produced in the nineteenth century, save for an eighteenth
century fragment found in Siam; they are mere dynastic records in
the narrowest sense of the term, and extremely unreliable. There is
slightly less obscurity in the sixteenth century, since they can be checked
with the parallel Siamese accounts, and with a few inscriptions found
at Angkor. In the first chapter of his valuable Angkor et le Cambodge
au XVF Steele d'apres les sources portugaises et espagnoles, M. Bernard
Philippe Groslier has submitted the Cambodian sources, and the French
accounts of Cambodian history in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
based upon them, to very careful scrutiny, and offers a reconstruction
of the events of the period, which is probably as near to the truth as we
shall ever get.
M. Groslier accepts Briggs's revision of the Cambodian Chronicle
list of kings 1 but not his contention that there was no Siamese attack
on Angkor Thom before 1431. He points out, however, that excavations
undertaken in 1952-3 on the site of the royal palace at Angkor Thom
confirm the story of the city's destruction by the Siamese in 1431, and
of its consequent abandonment as their capital by the Khmers. The
subsequent period up to the seizure of power in (presumably) 1516 by
the redoubtable Ang Chan presents virtually insoluble problems,
mainly of chronology. Ponhea^ Yat, after defeating the Siamese,
established his Court for a short time at Basan in Srei Santhor, on the
left bank of the Mekong, and then, two years later, in 1434 made
Phnom Penh his capital.' According to the fragment of the Cambodian
Chronicle^ discovered in Siam, and produced in 1796, Ponhea Yat was
succeeded by a son, Prince Gamkat, who reigned at Angkor for twentyfive years with the title Narayana Ramadhipati. At his death his
brothers Cri Raja and Tieraraja fought for the crown. The latter won,
killed his brother, and reigned under the name of Cri Sodaiya at
'Muan Nagara Hlvan', presumably Angkor. Trouble broke out between him and his son Dharmaraja, whom he tried to seize and put to
death. The prince, however, fled to Korat, raised an army and drove
his father out of Angkor, whence he escaped first to Lovek and afterwards to Ayut'ia. Narayana Ramadhipati's widow, who was a refugee
at Pursat, then proclaimed her son Chau Ba king. He resisted all
^ Supra, p. 122.
" Groslier's spelling.
^Published in G. Coedes, 'Essai de classification' in 'fitudes
V I I I , BEFEO, 1913, vol. 13, fasc. 6, pp. 28ff.

Cambodgiennes':

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THE KHMERS AND ANGKOR

127

Dharmaraja's attacks, and the two then reigned simultaneously. There

the fragment ends. It gives no dates whatever.
Three nineteenth-century recensions of the chronicles have been
used by French historians. One, translated into French in 1865-6 at
the request of Doudart de Lagree, was edited by Francis Garnier.^
The other two have formed the basis of the histories of Cambodia
compiled respectively by Jean Moura^ and Adhemar Leclere.^ So far
as their treatment of facts is concerned all pretty well agree; but they
differ considerably in chronology. Moura's chronology has been
followed by Etienne Aymonier* and Georges Maspero^ among others,
and is preferred by M. Groslier.*
i
Moura places Ponhea Yat's establishment of his court in Srei Santhor
in 1435 and at Phnom Penh in 1446; and makes his reign last until
1467 when he abdicated in favour of his son Preah Noreay Reamea
Thupdei. The latter died in 1472 and was succeeded by his younger
brother, Preah Srei. According to this version of the story Angkor came
back into the picture for the first time when Preah Srei sent his younger
brother Thommo Reachea there as governor, presumably to defend the
province against the Siamese. In the year after his accession, so the
story goes, he had to deal with a rebellion led by his nephew Soryotei,
a son of Preah Noreay, supported by the Siamese, who apparently
gained possession of the Cambodian provinces of Chantabun, Korat
and Angkor. They followed this up by capturing King Preah Srei
himself, and he and the rebel Soryotei were both deported to Siam.
The leadership in the struggle for liberation devolved upon Thommo
Reachea. It was a severe one lasting three years; but he finally drove
out the Siamese and was crowned king in 1476. During his reign the
two exiles died in Siam, Soryotei in 1479 and ex-king Preah Srei in
1484. Thommo Reachea himself died in c. 1494 and was succeeded by
his eldest son, Chau Pnhea Damkhat.
M. Groslier thinks that the differences between the fragment of
1796 and the nineteenth-century recension used by Moura are more
apparent than real. He suggests that the Gamkhat of the 1796 fragment
must be Preah Noreay, Tieraraja is Thommo Reachea, Cri Raja is
Preah Srei, Dharmarajjt is Damkhat (son of Thommo Reachea), and
Chau Ba (son of Gamkhat) is Soryotei, the rival of Preah Srei.'' It
' 'Chronique royale du Cambodge', Journal Asiatique, sixth series, tome i8, p p .
336-85, and tome 20, pp. 112-44.
^ Le royaume du Cambodge, 2 vols., Paris, 1833.
' Histoire du Cambodge, Paris, 1914.
* Le Cambodge, 3 vols., Paris, 1900-4.
* L'Empire khmer, Phnom Penh, 1904.
' Op. cit., pp. 8, 11.
' Ibid., p. 12.

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TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. 1

seems quite unlikely, however, that there was any return on the part of
the court to Angkor during this period.
King Damkhat was dethroned and assassinated by his brother-in-law
Kan, who established his capital at Srei Santhor. The most likely date
for this event appears to be 1499.^ Damkhat had a younger brother
Ang Chan, who escaped with members of the royal family to Pursat
when he was dethroned.^ There Ang Chan rallied his partisans, and
in due course was strong enough to invade Angkor province as a first
step towards the reconquest of the kingdom. In the ensuing struggle
the usurper Kan was defeated and killed, and as Damkhat's son and
heir hadpresumablybeen assassinated by Kan, the way was open
for Ang Chan to seize the throne. Moura places his accession in 1505,
Garnier in 1516. In this case the latter date fits in better with the
known facts of his reign.* Ang Chan made Lovek his capital, and surrounded it with stone fortifications. He was a very devout Buddhist,
decorating his capital with pagodas and commemorating his victories
in the struggle against Kan by dedicating shrines at Pursat, Babor
and Udong.
Ang Chan became the most powerful monarch Cambpdia was to produce after the fall of Angkor. During his long reign of fifty years he
was able to turn the tables on Siam and regain for his country some
at least of her former prestige. The Siamese chronicles mention a
Cambodian raid on the Prachim province in 1531. A Siamese counterattack by land and sea during the dry season of 1532-3 was led by Chau
Pnhea Ang, a son of the exiled king Preah Srei, who had died in Siam.
There is much disagreement between the chronicles on each side as to
what took place. One version of the Siamese chronicles claims victory
for Siam, while the Cambodian chronicle makes Ang Chan "the winner,
and asserts that Chau Pnhea Ang was killed near Pursat in 1534. One
version of the Siamese chronicles appears to confirm this: it states
that the Siamese forces were dispersed by bad weather and that Chau
Pnhea Ang died in Cambodia. Garnier assigns the date 1555 to this
event, and it seems probable that these raids and counter-raids are
related to that date rather than the earlier one, for Siam was then
passing through a period of dynastic troubles which offered Cambodia
an excellent opportunity to weaken her rival. The Burmese had taken
advantage of the situation to lay siege to Ayut'ia in 1548-9, and
although they had had to abandon it and go home, the accessiofi of the
warlike Bayinnaung to the Burmese throne in 1551 was followed by an
' Ibid., p. 13.
^ According to Garnier and Leclfere he fled to Ayut'ia.
' Groslier, op. cit., pp. 13-15, 26.

CH. 5

THE KHMERS AND ANGKOR

129

all-out attempt by Burma to subjugate all the Tai states within her
reach, the Shan States, Chiengmai, the Laos Kingdom and Siam
herself.^ W. A. R. Wood in his History of Siam places the Cambodian
raid on Prachim in 1549 during the Burmese siege of Ayut'ia,^ and Chau
Pnhea Ang's defeat and death in 1556. ' T h e kings of Cambodia,' he
comments, 'filled with regard to Siam a similar role to that filled by
the kings of Scotland with regard to England in the Middle Ages.'
From 1559 onwards Ang Chan unceasingly raided Siamese territory.
In 1564 his armies advanced to the walls of Ayut'ia, but returned emptyhanded, for the city had fallen into Burmese hands in February of that
year, and there was a Burmese army of occupation.
When Ang Chan died, presumably in 1566,^ and was succeeded by
his only son Barom Reachea I, the contest with Siam continued with
such vigour that in 1570 the new king established his headquarters in
the Angkor region and his armies occupied the Korat province. But
according to M. Groslier, he and his successors were 'sorry figures',*
and the struggle produced no decisive results, though causing appalling
suffering through widespread devastation and wholesale deportations
of people.
Under Barom Reachea's son and successor Satha (1576-?!594) the
tide turned decisively against Cambodia. The death of Bayinnaung in
1581 weakened Burma's hold on Siam, and a new Siamese leader of
magnetic personality, Pra Naret, began rapidly to build up his country's
powers of resistance, not only to the Burmese, but also to the Cambodian raids.' The Cambodian Chronicle mentions a successful expedition against Siam in 1580, but the evidence of the Siamese chronicles
makes this doubtful. Three years later Pra Naret invaded Cambodia,
it would seem, and according to the Siamese gained an important
success, which some modern writers have construed as indicating the
capture of Lovek.* There is, however, no evidence of a Siamese capture
of the Cambodian capital until 1594, notwithstanding an inscription at
An Lok, mentioned by M. Groslier, which talks of the 'fall' of Lovek
in 1587. On the other hand. Wood's circumstantial story of Siamese
relations with Cambodia at this crucial period has the ring of probability.' King Satha, he writes, decided to help Siam against the Burmese, and in 1585 concluded a treaty to this effect with Pra Naret.
Under its terms he sent an army under the command of his brother
^ Infra, chap. 13.
^ Page 115. He calls Ang Chan 'Ghandaraja' and Chau Pnhea Ang 'P'ya Ong'.
^ Groslier, op. cit., p. 15.
* Ibid., loc. cit.
' Infra, pp. 218-22.
" Op. cit., p. 19.
' History of Siam, pp. 133-7.

110

"

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

Srisup'anmai which in the following year co-operated with the Siamese

in defeating a Laotian invasion led by the Burmese governor of Chiengmai. A subsequent quarrel, however, between Pra Naret and the
Cambodian prince, broke up the alliance, and when in the early months
of 1587 Ayut'ia was again besieged by the Burmese, Satha himself
invaded Siam and seized Prachin. The result was that when the Burmese were forced to abandon the siege through lack of supplies, Pra
Naret was baulked of a decisive victory over their retreating forces
through having to turn and deal with the Cambodians. He pursued
them deeply into their own country, capturing Battambang and Pursat,
but Lovek he failed to take for the same reason that the Burmese had
failed to take Ayut'ia a few months earlier.
During the next few years Burmese pressure was too great for Pra
Naret (King Naresuen, as he became in 1590) to attempt to clinch
matters with Cambodia, but he awaited only the right moment. King
Satha on the other hand began anxiouslybut fruitlesslyto seek
Spanish and Portuguese help. In 1593, when the Burmese attempts to
restore their hold over Siam had been brought to a final halt, three
Siamese armies simultaneously invaded Cambodia and, after capturing
Siemreap and Bassac in the north and Battambang and Pursat farther
south, converged upon Lovek. King Satha fled to Srei Santhor leaving
his younger brother Soryopor to defend the capital, which, according
to the Siamese accounts, put up a strong resistance, but was ultimately
carried by assault, in January 1594 according to Groslier,^ in the following July according to Wood.^ The captured city was placed under a
Siamese military governor. At Srei Santhor the defeated king was
deposed by a relative, Reamea Chung Prei, and with his two elder sons
fled to Luang Prabang, where he died in 1596.
With Satha's reign Cambodian history enters upon a much better
known period. Two new sources yield useful material, stone inscriptions at the Angkor Wat and Spanish and Portuguese writings. The
deliberate destruction of reservoirs and other hydraulic works by the
Siarfiese between 1350 and 1431 had made the x^ngkor Thom area
almost uninhabitable. On the other hand the great temples seem to
have remained accessible, and the country to the south and west, which
had not depended upon the city's vast hydraulic system, continued to
be inhabited and cultivated. And even if there is good reason to disbelieve the stories of a return to Angkor by certain rulers in the fifteenth
century, there is equally good reason to think that from time to time
^ Wood's version of the name.
' Op. cit., p. 19.
^ Op. cit., p . 147.

CH. 5

THE KHMERS AND ANGKOR

13I

in the course of their struggles with Siam Cambodian kings made their
headquarters in the Angkor neighbourhood.
Various European accounts^ mention the 'rediscovery' of a city,
obviously Angkor Thom, in the second half of the sixteenth century.
The most striking of these, by Diogo do Couto, is in an unpublished
chapter of his Degadas da Asia giving a remarkably good description
of Angkor itself and its irrigation system.^ He writes that the city was
discovered in 1550 or 1551 by a Cambodian king hunting in the area,
who was so attracted by _the fertility of the region that he established
his court there. This would make Ang Chan the city's discoverer. It
is noteworthy that from this time inscriptions begin to reappear there.
Groslier suggests, however, that it is improbable that he established
his court there. The reoccupation of the old city, he thinks, and the
repopulation of the region might possibly have been carried out by
Barom Reachea I round about 1570, though this is uncertain. What is
certain is that Satha installed his court at or near Angkor and restored
the Wat 'before or after 1576'.* A stone inscription of July 1577
mentions his restoration of 'Brah Bisnuloka', i.e. the Angkor Wat.
Another of 1579 relates how for the glorification of Buddhism he had
repaired the great towers of the Wat, built new summits to them, recovered them with gold, and consecrated a reliquary to his ancestors
and his deceased father. The inscription also commemorates the birth
of a son* to him, and records t'ne consecration of the child to Buddha
at the Wat, ' this great domain . . . of powerful spirits and of the companies of his ancestors'.^ How long Satha held his court there is
unknown. There is evidence that Catholic missionaries at his invitation
visited the ruins somewhere between 1583 and 1589. They were responsible for giving the West its earliest information about Angkor.
An inscription at the Wat dated 1587, and recording the erection of
images of the Buddha and repairs to 'the towers with four faces', by a
court dignitary, suggests that the king himself was no longer there.
It was the year of the great Siamese invasion which nearly succeeded in
capturing Lovek.
' Groslier, op. cit., pp. 21-3.
- Discovered by Professor^ C R. Boxer and reproduced in a French translation by
Groslier in op. cit., pp. 68-74.
^ Groslier, op. cit., p. 17.
' Later Barom Reachea 11.
^ Groslier, loc. cit. sup.

CHAPTER 6

BURMA AND ARAKAN

(a) The pre-Pagan period
THE earliest historical evidence touching the land of Burma relates to
the old overland route between China and the West, which crossed
the northern region of the country. The first reference to its use is in
128 B.C., when Chang Ch'ien discovered the products of the Chinese
province of Szechwan in Bactria. Steps were taken to develop it, but
only in A.D, 69 did China found the prefecture of Yung-ch'ang across
the Mekong with its headquarters east of the Salween, some sixty
miles from the present Burma frontier. The peoples who submitted
were called the Ai-lao, who were said to be under the rule of seventyseven ' district princes'. They bored their noses and loaded their ears.
Shortly after the foundation of the prefecture they revolted. With the
suppression of their rebellion there ensued a century of peace, during
which the peoples beyond them, called by the Chinese the Tun-jen-i
and the Lu-lei, sent embassies. They are thought to have been
settled in northern Burma.
In A.D. 97 ambassadors coming from the Tan or Shan in the Roman
empire arrived in Yung-ch'ang by the northern land route. They may
have come from Tanis, east of the Nile delta. Other travellers between
the Roman empire and China used the sea route and made the short
overland journey across Tenasserim. Thus in 131-2 Tan envoys on
their way to Tongking, then in Chinese hands, are said to have used
this route, as also a trade delegation from the Roman empire to China
in 166, and the merchant Ch'in Lun in 226.
Burmese Buddhist legends tell of Indian influence coming to
Lower Burma by sea. In the Jatakas the region is referred to as
Suvarnabhumi, the Golden Land. A favourite Burmese story is of the
two brothers, Tapusa and Palikat, who are said to have been given
eight hairs of his head by Gautama. These they brought by sea to the
Golden Land and enshrined under the Shwe Dagon Pagoda, which
adorns modern Rangoon. The Mon chronicles contain a legend which
tells how Sona and Uttara, two Buddhist monks, were deputed to the
Golden Land by the Third Buddhist Synod at Pataliputra in c. 241
132

CH. 6

BURMA AND ARAKAN

I33

B.C. So far as historical evidence is concerned, however, there is no

trace of the penetration of Indian influence earlier than the fragments
of the Pali canon found at Hmawza (Srikshetra or Old Prome) dating
from c. A.D. 500.
Ptolemy's Geographia shows a coastline roughly approximating to
that of Arakan and Burma as far as the Gulf of ' Sahara' (? Martaban).
His Argyra fits the situation of Arakan, and he mentions Chryse as
its neighbour. He mentions a race of cannibals who occupy a river
mouth thought by scholars to be in the Moulmein region. It may be
of some significance that their name corresponds to Vesunga, a port
named in the Jatakas.
In connection with the conquests of Fan Shih-man, the Great
King of Funan, mention has been made in an earlier chapter^ of the
Buddhist kingdom of Lin-yang, which, it has been suggested, may
have been situated in central Burma. If so, whence came its Buddhism ? Was it from India by the northern land route ? Chinese works
from the fourth century onwards refer to the wild and troublesome
tribes south-west of Yung-ch'ang, and especially the P'u, who tattooed,
used bows and arrows, and some of whom were cannibals and went
naked. Beyond them some 3,000 li south-west of Yung-ch'ang was a
civilized people, the P'iao, who as the Pyu are the earliest inhabitants
of Burma of whom local memory survives.
Their capital, Srikshetra, is mentioned in the seventh century
by the Chinese pilgrims Hsuan-tsang and I-tsing. Legends of this
people come from the area between Halin, in Shwebo district, and
Prome. Inscriptions at both these places are of seventh-century or
earlier origin. Urn inscriptions, deciphered by the late Otto Blagden,
show a Vikrama dynasty reigning at Prome from at least 673 to 718.
Three kings are mentioned:
Suryavikrama, who died in 688 aged 64.
Harivikrama, who died in 695 aged 41.
Sihavikrama, who died in 718 aged 44.
The dates are provisioftal, since the era is not stated. If, as is
thought, it is the 'Burmese Era', which begins m A.D. 638, this may
have originated as a Pyu era under this dynasty. Inscriptions have
also been found with the name of a Varman dynasty, but where it
reigned has not been discovered. The name indicates the possibility
of Pallava influence from Conjeveram.
' Chap. 2, (b).

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TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

Srikshetra, now Hmawza, the only Pyu site searched with

thoroughness, has provided archaeologists with much valuable
material. There are traces of a massive city wall, embracing an area
larger than that of Pagan or Mandalay, and with impressive internal
and external moars. The importance of the city is shown by the fact
that Mon inscriptions as late as Kyanzittha's reign (i 084-1112) still
referred to it as the capital, Close to it are three large Buddhist
stupas, one 150 feet high. It has also a number of small vaulted
chapels, which are prototypes of the later Pagan temples. There are
large stone sculptures in relief in the Gupta style, small images in the
round, silver coins, probably symbolical, with curious designs of the
sun, moon and stars, and terra-cotta votive plaques with Sanskrit
legends in Nagari characters.
The religious remains are mixed and syncretist. There are numerous
stone sculptures of Vishnu, bronze statuettes of Avalokitesvara and
other Mahayanist Bodhisattvas, besides statuary and Pali inscriptions
showing that Hinayana Buddhism flourished there from an early date.
The dead were burnt and their ashes stored in urns within pagoda
precincts, or in extensive cemeteries on brick platforms covered with
earth. Mention has been made earlier of the Candra dynasty of
Vaisali, the first Arakanese rulers to be attested by epigraphy. The
same source shows a second dynasty, founded in the eighth century
by Sri Dharmavijaya, whose grandson is said to have married a
daughter of a Pyu King of Srikshetra.
In the eighth and ninth centuries the T'ai state of Nanchao dominated Upper, and much of Lower, Burma. Kolofeng, its ruler, (748-79)
built a fortress to control the upper Irrawaddy and enlisted local
tribesmen in his armies. He had relations with the Pyu, whom he
may have subdued, since Pyu soldiers served with the Nanchao force
which captured Hanoi in 863. His campaigns opened the old road to
India across Upper Burma. One of the routes passed through the
Pyu capitalpresumably this was Halinwhence it proceeded up the
Chindwin to the borders of Manipur. There are signs that northern
Burma in this period saw much development. Contemporary writers
refer to the production of gold, amber, salt, horses, long-horned cattle,
elephants for ploughing, and much else.
I-mou-hsiin, Kolofeng's grandson and successor, sent a present of
Pyu musicians to the T'ang Court in 800. In 801-2 a Pyu king sent
a formal embassy, accompanied by thirty-five musicians, to China via
Nanchao. Chinese interest in the Pyu was stimulated, and the T'ang
History contains a graphic account of the Pyu capital. The Chinese

CH. 6

BURMA AND ARAKAN

135

also State that in 832 'Man rebels' (PNanchao) plundered the Pyu
capital and deported 3,000 captives to Yunnanfu.
Was this the end of the Pyu kingdom ? It is the last we hear of it.
Were the Pyu the advance-guard of the Burmese ? Their language belongs to the Tibeto-Burman group. The Pyu face of the Myazedi
inscription of 1113 shows that speakers of the language still existed then.
As a people they have completely disappeared. Presumably they merged
with the Burmese when the latter became the dominant people in Burma.
The Pyu claimed suzerainty over eighteen subject states, mainly in
Lower Burma. One of them, Mi-chen, whose king secured recognition
from China in 805, was in 835 destroyed by Nanchao. Among them
also were the K'un-lun states near a port, Mo-ti-po, from which
Palembang and Java could be reached. These were Mon states. The
Mons in Burma were mainly to the eastward of the Irrawaddy, and their
settlements spread as far south as Tavoy. The basin of the Menam
Chao P'ya was, however, their political and cultural centre. There their
Buddhist kingdom of Dvaravati flourished from the sixth century
onwards. Its earliest known capital was at Nakorn Pat'om, thirty miles
west of modern Bangkok. Here a Mon inscription of c. 600 has been
discovered; it is the earliest so far known to archaeologists. Later
Lopburi, away to the north, was to be its capital; eighth-century Mon
inscriptions have been found there. A further Mon state centred
around Haripunjaya in the Meping valley, and was said to have been
founded by a queen of Lopburi. The Mons had a high culture; they
were pioneers in the cultivation of rice and beans in Burma, and were
the creators of the irrigation system at Kyaukse, in the dry zone of
central Burma, which made it of vital strategic importance again and
again in Burmese history.
The Arab geographers refer to Lower Burma by the name Ramaiiiiadesa, 'the Mon country'. The word is an adaptation of the old Mon
word Rmen from which the modern ' M o n ' derives. The Burmese
called them Takings, a word which some have derived from Telingana,
signifying south-east India, whence came their Hindu-Buddhist culture.
Certainly the script of the early Mon inscriptions resembles Pallava
script, but nothing is known for certain of the etymology of the word.
The Mons had not only to sustain the attacks of the Nanchao invaders after the destruction of the Pyu capital, but later in the ninth
century to lose control over the Kyaukse area to the incoming Burmans.
The traditional date of the foundation of the Mon capital Hamsavati,
now Pegu, is 825. Pagan, the Burmese capital, may possibly have been
founded in 849, the traditional date of the construction of its walls by

136

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

FT. I

Pyinpya. It is said to have been formed by the union of nineteen villages.

If the date is correct, the depopulation of the Pyu capital in the north
may have caused a movement of refugees downstream which led to
the formation of a new centre at Pagan. The Burmese chronicles push
its foundation back to the second century A.D., but there are insuperable
difficulties in the way of accepting this hypothesis.
Between 849 and the foundation of the Pagan kingship in 1044 by
Anawrahta there is almost a complete blank so far as reliable historical
sources are concerned. This is all the more tantalizing, since it was
during this period that the main body of the Burmese people entered
Burma and settled down. G. H. Luce has attempted to trace their
history before they began, in the middle of the ninth century, to come
down from the hills in what are now the Northern Shan States and
penetrate into the Kyaukse district south of modern Mandalay. The
earliest known home of the Tibeto-Burman-speaking peoples was
somewhere between the Gobi Desert and north-east Tibet, possibly
Kansu. The earliest Chinese written records mention the Ch'iang, who
were tribes of shepherds and goatherds to the west of the Chinese,
The ancestors of the Burmese, Luce thinks, were to be found among
the Ch'iang. The Chinese constantly raided them to obtain victims for
human sacrifice. From these raids the Ch'iang took refuge in northeast Tibet. In the first millennium B.C. the Chinese rulers of T'sin
pursued them, and many fled southwards.
The Burmese were on the eastern edge of the migration, and
some centuries later with the rise of Nanchao they came under its
dominance. From their overlords they learnt the arts of war, the use
of the bow, horsemanship, the terracing of hill slopes for cultivation,
wet rice cultivation on the plains, and much else. The desire for
independence, which has been such a strong feature of their mentality
throughout history, led them to escape from Nanchao, and they made
for the hot arid plains of Upper Burma.
They entered Burma through the region between the N'mai Hka
and the Salween, and it was shortly after the destruction of the Pyu
kingdom in 832 by Nanchao that they are found in the ' Eleven Villages'
of Myittha in the Kyaukse district. There they took over an already
existing irrigation system, which, according to Luce, must have beenoriginally developed by the Mons. By their sudden movement down
from the hills they drove a wedge into the Mons, leaving some in the
north separated from the main body in the south.
They fanned out to cross the Irrawaddy. Some went beyond it to
the Pondaung range, the Chin hills and the Akyab region of Arakan.

CH. 6

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Others went to found a second home in Minbu district west of the

Irrawaddy, where in the Salin-Sagu region they entered another
irrigated system, older than that of Kyaukse, and presumably the
work of Sgaw Karens and Palaungs. Further migrations took them
down the Irrawaddy to the Taungdwingyi rice-lands and Prome, up
the Chindwin to a number of places whose names have not been
identified, and up the Mu valley northwards to Shwebo, Tabayin and
Myedu, where they mixed with other tribes.
During this period of settlement the Mranma, as they called themselves, must have been under a number of local leaders. The Burmese
chronicles, which place the foundation of Pagan in A.D. IO8, give a
list of forty kings reigning there before the accession of Anawrahta,
but these are unknown to history. Before his time only one Burmese
monarch is mentioned in the inscriptions. He is Saw Rahan, who built
a Buddhist shrine on Mount Turan, eight miles from Pagan. The
earliest historical reference to the city itself is in a Cham inscription
dating from somewhere before 1050. The earliest mention of the
name of the Burmese is in a Mon inscription of 1102, in which they
are called the 'Mirma'. Mien, the name by which the Chinese kriew
them and their country, only appears in 1273, shortly before the
Mongol conquest of Pagan.

(b) The empire of Pagan, 1044-1287

It was Anawrahta (1044-77) ^^^ ^''^^ united Burma politically and
founded the greatness of Pagan. He is, however, rather a majestic
legendary figure than a historical personage. Moreover, not a single
authentic inscription dates from his reign, save for votive tablets
briefly inscribed. His achievements were real enough and left a
permanent impress upon his country and people. He united under
his sway most of what may be termed Burma proper, together with
northern Arakan and. Lower Burma, the Mon country. Eastwards
he made expeditions into the Shan country, but not with the intention
of adding it to his kingdom,.since he built a line of forty-three outposts
along the eastern foothills to restrain the Shans from attempting to push
into the plains. The Siamese chronicles assert that he attacked Cambodia and ruled over most of what is now Siam, obtaining the Hinayana
Buddhism, which he. established as the official religion of Pagan, from
Nakorn Pat'om. But there would seem to be no historical basis for
such assumptions.
His most important achievement was the conquest of the Mon

THE SORABA GA.

kingdom of Thaton. Tradition asserts that he took a Mon monk.

Shin Arahan, into his service and charged him with the task of converting the Burmese to Hinayana Buddhism. This entailed a struggle
with a priesthood known as the Ari, who dominated Upper Burma.
They were Mahayanist and practised Tantric and other erotic rites.
To obtain copies of the Pali canon, the Tripitaka, for the proper
instruction of the people, he conquered Thaton, which possessed
thirty complete sets, deported to Pagan its king, Makuta, and its entire
population of 30,000 souls. Such is the story told by the nineteenth
century Burmese chronicle, the Hmannan Yazawin. According to
Gordon Luce,i however, Anawrahta's campaign must be seen against
the background of the westward expansion of Angkor. The conquest
of Lopburi by Suryavarman I {supra p. 105) had caused a great influx of
Mon refugees into the states of Pegu and Thaton. These in their turn
were then invaded by the Khmers, whereupon Anawrahta intervened,
allied with Pegu and conquered Thaton. Thus was the first Union
' G. H. Luce, ' M o n s of the Pagan Dynasty' in JBRS, XXXVI, Part I, August 1953,
pp. 1-19.

CH. 6

BURMA AND ARAKAN

I39

of Burma formed by_a champion of Buddhism against invaders whose

king was identified with Siva.
The defeated conquered their conquerors: Mon cuhure became
supreme at the court of Pagan. PaH became its sacred language and
the Mon alphabet was ultimately adopted for the literary expression of
the Burmese language. King Makuta went into honourable confinement
at Myinkaba just south of Pagan, building there the Nanpaya, an
exquisite example of Mon architecture. The Buddhism that was brought
from Thaton, however, was by no means the pure milk of the Theravada
gospel. The evidence of epigraphy and archaeology shows clearly that
Pagan Buddhism, in Luce's words, 'was mixed up with Mahayanism, and
towards the end of the dynasty at least with Tantrism. It rested doubtless on a deep bed of Naga and Nat worship.' And in King Makuta's
throne-room at the Nanpaya the bas-reliefs of Hindu deities show how
closely the two religions were interwoven. Furthermore, in spite of the
tradition that Buddhaghosa brought Pali Buddhism to Thaton in 403
from Ceylon, the evidence goes to show that the real influence upon
Thaton's Buddhism was not Ceylon but Conjeveram, which had become
a famous centre in 'the fifth century under the great commentator
Dhammapala.
The chronicles carry a story of relations with Ceylon in Anawrahta's
reign. Chola attacks caused Vijaya Bahu to appeal to Pagan for help.
Anawrahta sent a costly present instead. Later, when he had driven
out the invaders, Vijaya Bahu sent again to Pagan for monks and
copies of the scriptures to assist him in the task of reconstruction.
These were sent, and in return the Burmese monarch received a
miraculously produced replica of the Kandy Tooth, which he enshrined beneath the Shwezigon Pagoda. Whatever the truth of the
story as it stands, its significance lies in the fact that in the eleventh
century Conjeveram was no longer a great Buddhist centre; Brahmanism had triumphed there. Ceylon was then coming to take its
place as the main centre of Theravada Buddhism.
Anawrahta's conquest of Thaton was a key event in Burmese history.
Mon civilization was higher than Burmese and the influence of the
Thaton captives was great, though perhaps of less importance than the
opening of a door to the sea, which resulted from the control of
the Irrawaddy delta. Moreover, Anawrahta's work assured the triumph
of Theravada Buddhism; in time it became the most powerful factor in
Burmese national life. The splendid temples of Pagan, however, were
not built utitil after his reign. He built solid pagodas, not temples.
The Shwezigon Pagoda, begun in 1059, was his chief monument, and

140

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

it is significant that one of its notable features is a set of shrines to

the Thirty-seven Nats. Nat-worship, Burma's own form of animism,
which was so important an ingredient in the basic culture of SouthEast Asia as a whole, continued to hold sway with scarcely abated force
over men's minds, from the highest downwards. The Pali scriptures,
setting forth the Buddhist ethic, came ultimately to exert sufficient
moral force to liberate them from the worst of their animistic practices.
But Buddhism had to come to terms with the old religion, and in so
doing became highly syncretistic. Nat-worship continued to exist in
two forms: one closely interwoven with Buddhism, and the other
having no connection whatever with it, and frowned on by the monkhood.
Anawrahta's conquest of the Mons had disastrous consequences for
that people. It was the beginning of a struggle between Burmese and
Mons running right through Burmese history, and resulting by the first
half of the nineteenth century in the virtual elimination of the Mons
as a people. A Mon rebellion indeed brought the reign of Anawrahta's
son Sawlu (1077-84) to a sudden end. Pagan, however, was saved by
another son of Anawrahta, who defeated the Mons and ascended the
throne. King Kyanzittha (i 084-1112), as he is known in the chronicles,
raised the Burmese kingship to a higher level than it had previously
reached. He had a magnificent coronation with Brahamical ritual,
built himself a new palace, and erected a series of inscriptions, mostly
in the Mon language, which rank as literature. He devoted his life to
the ideal of establishing a real partnership between Burman and Mon.
His enthusiasm for Mon culture was intense. All his extant inscriptions
are in the Mon language. With him Pagan's great age of temple-building
began; all his temples, including the lovely Ananda, are Mon in style.
He married his daughter to the great-grandson of King Makuta, and
nominated their son as his successor to the exclusion of his own son.
Kyanzittha revived the practice of sending missions to China. The
two he sent, in 1103 and 1106, probably represent an attempt to facilitate
overland trade with Yunnan, which had revived after Nanchao was
subdued by China at the end of the ninth century. He was also the
first king of Burma to take an active interest in the Mahabodi temple
at Buddhagaya. The work of restoration, carried out there at his behest,
was recorded in an inscription in Mon at the Shwehsandaw Pagoda at
Prome.
He in his turn was visited by a Chola prince, about whom there
has been much speculation. The Cholas, it will be remembered, had
raided Srivijaya in 1025, subdued Kedah in 1068-9, were developing

CH. 6

BURMA AND ARAKAN

141

extensive trading contacts with South-East Asia and sending missions

to China. What was a Chola prince doing at Pagan? The probable
answer is that he was a trading prospector, or a traveller anxious to
improve his knowledge, not the ruler of a Tamil colony in the delta
region, as has been suggested. It has yet to be proved that there ever
was such a colony in Burma. Is it another example of the colonization
myth which has grown up through .the equivocal use of the word
'colony' in describing a trading settlement pure and simple?
Kyanzittha is best known today as the builder of the Ananda temple
at Pagan. The story goes that he entertained eight monks who had
fled from persecution in India, and whose description of the cavetemple of Ananta in the Udayagiri hills of Orissa kindled in him the
desire to build one in imitation. Compared with its exterior loveliness
of form and proportion, its interior is disappointing. The building is
a solid mass pierced by lofty vaulted corridors leading to four central
chambers, in each of which stands a gigantic Buddha with its head and
shoulders lit by natural light from outside in such a way as to produce
a dazzling effect as the spectator emerges from the dim corridor. Before
the western image are two life-size kneeling statues of Kyanzittha and
Shin Arahan.
The story of Kyanzittha's reign was recorded in an inscription
erected by his grandson and successor Alaungsithu (i 112-65) at the
Myazedi Pagoda, south of Pegu, in 1113. It has been called the Rosetta
Stone of Burma, since the same text appears on its four faces in Pyu,
Mon, Burmese and Pali. Its discovery in 1911 provided a key not only
to the Pyu language but also to the dates of the early kings of Pagan.
Alaungsithu's long reign, however, saw a sharp decline in Mon influence at Pagan. It was to suffer total eclipse in the reign of
Narapatisithu (1174-1211).
The reign of Alaungsithu shows two distinct pictures, in striking
contrast. One, much played up by the chronicles, is of the ideal
Buddhist king, travelling far and wide throughout his kingdom engaged
upon building works of merit and composing inscriptions which reflect
a deep sense of other worldliness, expressed in poetry unsurpassed in
the literature of his country. His finest building, the Thatpinnyu
temple, was consecrated in 1144. Its style resembles closely that of the
Ananda, but the main mass rises much higher before the tapering
process begins. The spirit which inspired Alaungsithu in his pious
works reaches its perfect expression in his Pali prayer inscribed at the
Shwegu Pagoda. Mutatis mutandis, it suggests the aspiration of the
mediaeval saint in Christendom.

CH. 6

BURMA AND ARAKAN

143

The Other picture is of revohs and disorder. The king's early years
were spent queUing revolts in Tenasserim and northern Arakan. An
inscription at Buddhagaya commemorates the repairs executed there
at Alaungsithu's request by a ruler of Arakan in token of gratitude for
help in driving out a usurper. The chronicles say that he was murdered
by his son Narathu, but this is not confirmed by the inscriptions. The
probable date of his death is 1165.
Narathu, known in the inscriptions as Imtaw Syan, ' Lord of the
Royal House', has the nickname in popular history of Kalagya, 'the
king killed by Indians'. The Indians, however, seem to have been
Sinhalese, if the Chulavamsa account of what happened is X.o be trusted.
According to it the Burmese king interfered with Ceylon's trade with
Cambodia via the Malay Peninsula, seized a Sinhalese princess on her
way to Cambodia, and placed an embargo upon the Burmese elephant
trade with Ceylon. King Parakkama Bahu I accordingly sent an armada
which devastated the Bassein area, while a Sinhalese force made its way
up the Irrawaddy, took the city of Pagan by surprise and killed the king.
Burmese sources make no mention of this incursion, but Dr Than Tun,
a modern Burmese scholar who has made Pagan his special study, is
inclined to accept it.^ That was in 1165, it was followed by an interregnum of nine years at Pagan until the accession of Narapatisithu in
1174. This was a dividing-line in Burmese history. From a period in
which Mon is the chief language of the inscriptions we pass to one
in which Burmese predominates. For the remainder of the Pagan
period Mon as a literary expression disappears completely. The same
change shows itself also in architectural style: the great temples of the
new period, the Sulamani, Htilominlo and Gawdawpalin, are built in
a distinctive Burmese style with large doorways to let in the light,
brighter interior colours and an exterior design which aims at conveying
a sense of height. Even more important in the long run was the effect
upon Burmese Buddhism of the contacts with Ceylon stimulated by this
encounter. A religious movement began in Burma which was to substitute the Sinhalese form of Theravada teachings for the Conjeveram
form brought from Thaton in Anawrahta's reign.
The story, as given in the Hmannan Yazawin ('Glass Palace
Chronicle'), tells how during the disorders of Narathu's reign Shin
Arahan's successor, the primate Panthagu, retired to Ceylon. After
Narapatisithu's accession he returned, but soon died. His successor,
a Mon monk named Uttarajiva, followed his example in 1180 by going
' Than Tun, 'History of Burma down to the end of the thirteenth century' in New
Burma Weekly, 29 Nov. 1958, pp. 83-4.

14.4

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

there and on his return received the title of 'First Pilgrim of Ceylon'.
One of his monks, Chapata, also a Mon, remained behind in Ceylon
for ten years. On his return in 1190 he became the 'Second Pilgrim
of Ceylon'. He brought with him four foreign monks, one of whom,
Tamalinda, must have been, according to Ccedes, a son of Jayavarman
VII of Angkor.
At Nyaung-u they formed a chapter for ordination according to
Mahavihara principles and built a pagoda of Sinhalese pattern. This
caused a schism in Burmese Buddhism between those who followed
the new leaders and those who remained loyal to the Thaton form.
The king gave his support to the reformers, but the Former Order, as
the Thaton school was called, continued to exist for another two
centuries. The reformers set about their task with missionary ardour.
Large numbers of monks went to Ceylon for ordination, and Buddhism
became for the first time in the Indo-Chinese peninsula a truly popular
movement, not something imposed by the Court. As such it spread far
and wide beyond the confines of Burma, embracing the T'ai peoples,
the Laos states and Cambodia. The results were of permanent importance ; for while during the subsequent period Islam became the
religion of the peoples of Malaya and Indonesia, it made no headway
in the Buddhist countries. The various cults of Saivism, Vaisnavism,
Sanskrit Hinayana and Mahayana Buddhism were Court religions,
whose main function was the deification of kings and ruling classes.
They made no real impression upon the mass of the people. States,
where they were established, were easily won over to Islam.
Narapatisithu's reign was the longest in the Pagan period. In 1211
he was succeeded by his son Natonmya (wrongly named Nantaungmya
in the chronicles),^ popularly known as Htilominlo, 'he whom the royal
umbrella designated as king', from a legend that the royal umbrella
had miraculously indicated him as the rightful claimant to the throne.
During his reign were built the last two temples in the grand style, the
Mahabodi, an imitation of the famous temple at Buddhagaya, and the
Htilominlo. The chronicles show Natonmya devoting his time so fully
to pious works that he left the management of the realm to his four
half-brothers, who ruled jointly, meeting together at a building called
the Hlutdaw, 'Place of Release'. This has been claimed as the origin
of the Hlutdaw of modern times, the Burmese Supreme Royal Council,
composed of the four highest ministers of state, the Wungyis. Dr.
Than Tun, however, had disposed of this myth. Epigraphic evidence,
he says, shows that Natonmya had five ministers of state, none of whom
^ Than T u n , op. cit., in New Burma Weekly, 3 Jan. 1959, pp. 23-5.

CH. 6

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145

was his half-brother; and there is no mention of the Hlutdaw in the

inscriptions.
The inscriptions show that in 1231(?) Natonmya was succeeded by
his son Naratheinhka who was dethroned by his younger brother Kyazwa
in 1235.^ Kyazwa was the ablest of the later Pagan monarchs, and
ruled with vigour. A long edict, issued by him in 1249, is extant; it
describes in gruesome detail the various punishments to be inflicted for
various types of crime, and seems to indicate that he made a great
effort to stamp out dacoity, which always became prevalent when the
central government was weak. He lost a struggle with the Buddhist
church over lands which he had confiscated because he was worried
about the vast amount of property dedicated to the upkeep of monasteries and temples. His reign is notable for a Buddhist mission which
went to study in Ceylon and on its return instituted a further purification movement. The austere puritanism of Ceylon's Buddhism
appealed powerfully to the reformers in Burma's monastic order, but
the hold of traditional ideas and practices upon the great mass of both
clergy and people was so strong that they must have made very slow
headway.
When the Pagan kingdom was founded, one of Anawrahta's campaigns
aimed at extending Burmese control northwards. But although he
occupied Tagaung, the capital of the Kadu people then supreme in
northern Burma, he failed to hold it. Later kings were more successful,
and in 1196 Narapatisithu claimed that his dominions included not
only Tagaung, but stretched also as far as Ngasaunggyan further
north. In 1236 Kaungzin is mentioned as the administrative headquarters of the Burmese in that area. Dr. Than Tun places it just
opposite to Bhamo on the Irrawaddy, with the Ngasaunggyan fort four
miles to the north guarding the frontier. 1 his pressure northwards was
to have disastrous results for Burma in the reign of Narathihapate
(125687). A brutal despot who showed no zeal for religion, he built
the Mingalazedi Pagoda and commemorated its dedication by a hyperbolic inscription, in which he described himself as the ' supreme commander of a vast army of 36 million soldiers, the swallower of 300
dishes of curry daily'. He boasted also of possessing 3,000 concubines.
His pagoda, which took six years to build, inspired the Burmese proverb:
'The pagoda is finished and the great country ruined.' I'he Burmese
chronicles refer to him as the Tarokpyemin, 'the king who ran away
from the Chinese'.
During his reign the Mongol conquest of China was completed by
' See tables on p. 867.

146

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

Kublai Khan. When the conqueror had established himself at Peking

he sent out missions to demand tokens of submission from all the
states recorded in the imperial archives as tributaries of the Middle
Kingdom. In 1271 his viceroy in Yunnan was instructed to send
envoys to Pagan to request the payment of tribute. Narathihapate
proudly refused to receive them. Two years later the demand was
renewed by an imperial envoy, who was the bearer of a letter from
Kublai Khan himself. This time the rash king seized the ambassador
and his retinue and summarily executed them.
Kublai, with many irons in the fire, had to postpone action, and
Narathihapate carried his defiance further by attacking the little state
of Kaungai on the Taping river because its chief had submitted to
China. Thereupon Kublai ordered the local authorities to punish the
Burmese, and the Governor of Tali sent a Tartar force, which defeated
them at the battle of Ngasaunggyan and drove them back into their
own country (1277). The battle was made famous by the graphic
account of it written by the Venetian traveller Marco Polo from eyewitness stories.
A second Tartar force under Nasr-uddin, the Viceroy of Yunnan,
advanced into the Bhamo district, and after destroying some Burmese
stockades retired homewards because of the excessive heat. The
Burmese thereupon recovered their self-confidence and renewed their
raids on the Yunnan frontier. In 1283, therefore, the Tartars invaded
again by the same route, defeated the Burmese at Kaungsin, and
planted garrisons in the upper Irrawaddy valley. Narathihapate,
believing that his capital was about to be attacked, abandoned it in
panic and fled to Bassein in the delta region.
This precipitate act sealed the fate of his kingdom. The central
authority vanished, northern Arakan proclaimed its independence, and
the Mons of the south rose in rebellion under a leader Tarabya,
assisted by a Shan adventurer, Wareru, who is said to have absconded
from Sukhot'ai. Too late Narathihapate sent his submission to Yunnan and attempted to return to his capital. In 1287 on his way northwards he was murdered by one of his sons, who was holding Prome.
At about the same time Prince Ye-su Timur, Kublai's grandson,
fought his way down the Irrawaddy to occupy Pagan, whence he sent
out detachments to enforce the submission of the provinces. A Tartar
occupation of the kingdom was not at first envisaged. The campaign
had been a costly one, and the original plan was to organize northern
and central Burma into two provinces of the Tartar empire and permit
a member of the royal family to return to Pagan and rule over central

CH. 6

BURMA AND ARAKAN

I47

Burma. When, therefore, after a bloodbath of the royal princes in the

south, the sole survivor, Kyawswa, returned to Pagan, he was accorded
official recognition. So for a few years Pagan was a provincial capital.
Its very existence, however, was threatened by three Shan chiefs who
had made themselves masters of the vital Kyaukse region, from which
it drew all its supplies of rice. In 1299 they murdered Kyawswa and
burnt his city.
(c) From the Mongol conquest of Pagan (1287) ^^ '^^
Shan sack of Ava (1527)
The Mongol invasions of Burma gave the Shans the opportunity to
play a dominant rule in that unhappy country. This proved to be more
than the Mongols had bargained for. They had begun to organize
northern and central Burma into two provinces. In 1283, when they
had taken Tagaung, they had made it the centre of a new province of
Chieng-mien. Similarly, in 1287, when Pagan fell, they set about
organizing central Burma into a province named Mienchung. These
arrangements were upset by the Shans.
The story of Shan penetration into Upper Burma has long been
obscure, but recently Gordon Luce has thrown much light upon the
subject from his researches into Old Tai inscriptions in northern Siam,
east Burma and Laos, and information contained in the Yuan-shih and
the Ming-shih. We now have a much clearer outline of the situation
when Pagan fell.^ The Yuan History applies the name Pai-i to the
North and North-West Shans, and places them in 1278 on the SinoBurmese frontier between the Irrawaddy and the Salween. It was the
Mongol conquest of Yunnan which had caused them to cluster there,
but Pagan's power and prestige in northern Burma had prevented them
from making any further move westward. When in 1271 the Yunnan
viceroy had demanded the submission of Pagan, the initial suggestion
had come to him from a Pai-i chieftain. The Mongol victory at Kaungzin in December 1283 'opened the floodgates', as Luce puts it. The
Shans descended from the hills to cover both banks of the Irrawaddy,
and also drove the Chins out of the Chindwin valley into the western
hills. During the Mongol invasions the 'Three Shan Brothers', as they
are called in the Burmese chronicles, made themselves masters of three
principalities in the Kyaukse area. Athinkaya, the eldest, became Chief
of Myinsaing; Yazathinkyan, the second. Chief of Mekkaya; and
Thihathu, the youngest. Chief of Pinle. King Kyawswa, on returning
^ G. H. Luce, ' T h e Early Syam in Burma's History', JSS, XLVI, 2, Nov. 1958.

148

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

to Pagan as the vassal of the Mongols, confirmed them in the possession

of these principalities. So say the chronicles. In other sources they make
their first appearance in February 1289, when they dedicated a pagoda
in their area.
Ten years later the province of Mien-chung disappears. An inscription set up by Athinkaya in 1293 claims that he and his brothers, having
defeated the Taruk (i.e. Mongol) army, now rule the whole of Burma.
Luce suggests that they tried to rule through Kyawswa, but his subservience to the Mongols became obnoxious to them. In 1297 he sent
his eldest son to Peking, and the emperor gave the king official recognition and conferred decorations on the crown prince and the Shan
Brothers. They, however, refused to accept their decorations. During
March/April 1298 rebellion flared up and Pagan was besieged, but the
Tuddhist monks persuaded the combatants to make peace. A couple of
months later, however, the Shan Brothers seized Pagan, imprisoned the
king and his two sons for submitting to China, and placed upon the
throne Sawhnit, a bastard son of the king. The new king sent reports of
the affair calculated to deceive the Chinese at Tagaung and the Viceroy
of Yunnan, and in 1299 ^"^^ Brothers allowed the captive crown prince
to head another embassy to Peking, presumably to present their version
of the matter to the emperor. On his return he, his father and his captive brother were then callously done to death.
Another son of Kyawzwa, however, escaped to Yunnan, and the
story he had to tell caused the imperial commissary to espouse his cause.
Thus came about the last Mongol invasion, sent to punish the Shan
Brothers. But the strength of the resistance, both Burmese and Shan,
to the Mongols was underestimated, and the expeditionary force was
too small for its task. It began the siege of Myinzaing in January 1301.
But the defenders beat off all attacks, and after the failure of a grand
assault on 28 February negotiations opened. The Burmese account
asserts that the Mongol commander accepted a heavy bribe to lead his
forces home. The retreat began early in April. The Mongols had to
fight their way out and suffered severe casualties. The Yunnan
authorities executed the commander and his chief-of-staff. To soften
the blow the Shan Brothers sent envoys to Peking with tribute. It was
accepted, and during the next few years five more tribute missions from
the Shan Brothers are recorded, as well as one Mongol mission to
'Mien' in 1308. In April 1303 the emperor formally abolished the
Chieng-mien province.
The repulse of the Mongols was a victory for the Shans, and they
now carried all before them. Myinsaing, however, was too far away

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149

from the Irrawaddy to become the capital of an Upper Burma kingdom.

Pagan also was no longer suitable. Shorn of its Mon provinces the
kingdom lay almost entirely in the dry zone. Hence it had become
necessary to remove its capital to some place near the junction of the
Myitnge with the Irrawaddy, whence the paddy traffic from the
Kyaukse ricelands could be controlled. Ava, the obvious place, was for
some reason declared unpropitious by the Brahmans. Finally in 1312
Thihathura, the sole survivor of the Shan brothers, fixed his capital at
Pinya close by. Later inscriptions attribute the discomfiture of the
Mongols to him and refer to him as the 'Tarok Kan Mingyi', 'the king
who defeated the Chinese'. In 1315 one of his sons, after a family
quarrel, crossed the river and founded another principality at Sagaing.
The Mongol abandonment of Upper Burma and the weakening of
their power in Yunnan opened the way for a great increase in Shan
activity in the far north of Burma, and for the foundation of a new
kingdom with its capital at Che-Ian and with ambitions of expanding
its authority southwards. In Burma proper there was anarchy and
disorder. The Shan rulers of Pinya and Sagaing quarrelled incessantly, and one of them, Narathu of Pinya, in 1364 called in the
Maw Shans to attack Sagaing. The population stampeded into the
jungle. The Maws then turned and sacked Pinya as well. Thereupon
a stepson of the chief of Sagaing, Thadominbya, founded a new
capital at Ava and set about reducing the country to obedience.
Ava, a corruption of In-wa, 'the entrance to the lake*, was founded
in 1364 or 1365. As the capital of Upper Burma, and, after 1634, of
the whole of Burma, its name became so closely associated with the
country itself that Europeans came to refer to Upper Burma as the
' land of Ava', and to the government as the ' Court of Ava', even when
the capital was at Amarapura or Mandalay. The striking thing about
Ava was that it was Burmese, not Shan. The royal city followed the
pattern of Pagan. Its founder sought to conciliate Burmese national
sentiment by tracing his descent from the legendary kings of Tagaung.
From its foundation its inscriptions were in excellent Burmese.
Thadominbya's efforts to establish his rule were directed to the
Burmese districts to the southwards, which were unaffected by Shan
infiltration. In 1368 he died of smallpox while attacking Sagu. His
successor, Mingyi Swasawke (1368-1401), significantly laid stress on
his descent from the Pagan dynasty.
The Shan penetration into Upper Burma led to the formation of a
new Burmese centre on the Sittang river, where in 1280 a village had
been fortified on a hill spur {taunghgu) as an outpost against slave-

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TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

raids from the nearby Karen states. The fall of Pagan led numbers
of Burmese families to escape from Shan rule by trekking off and
settling there. Its early development was almost unhampered, and by
the middle of the fourteenth century it had become strong enough for
its chief, Thinhkaba (1347-58), to assert his independence by assuming
the royal title and building himself a palace in traditional style.
During the reign of his son Pyanchi (1358-77) the liquidation of
Sagaing and Pinya brought a fresh wave of Burmese immigrants to
Toungoo. Pyanchi erected an inscription at Pagan, in which he recorded a visit he paid to make offerings to the temples there and stated
that he and his wife had welcomed refugees from, the Shan terror. The
new state had a chequered existence; both Ava and Pegu tried to
quench its independence. But its rulers were destined to play an
important part in Burmese history later on.
Mingyi Swasawke was anxious to revive the traditional Burmese
policy of subduing the Mons of the south. In the early part of his
reign, however, the threat from the Shans on his northern and northwestern frontiers was too serious for him to embark on any adventures
in Lower Burma. Moreover, Pyanchi of Toungoo was friendly with
the Mons. He was forced, therefore, to pursue a peaceable policy,
and in 1371 he had a conference with King Binnya U of Pegu,
at which the frontier between Burma and the Mon country was
delimited.
From the first he trod delicately in his relations with the powerful
and quarrelsome Shan states. In 1371 he refused to intervene in a
struggle that was in progress between the Sawbwas of Kale in the
upper Chindwin valley and Mohnyin in the Katha district. In 1373,
however, Mohnyin raided Myedu in the Shwebo district. By this
time the Mongol dynasty, after a period of rapid decline, had been
supplanted by the Mings, and until Ming rule was firmly estabHshed
in Yunnan, where the Mongols were making a last stand, the Shan
states in and around northern Burma went in no fear of the strong
hand of Peking. The Myedu raid was the beginning of a long series
of attacks from Mohnyin, and in 1383, two years after the last Mongol
resistance had been stamped out in Yunnan, the harassed King of Ava
sent an embassy to the Ming viceroy there asking for help.
The Chinese, who were now for the first time in contact with the
Maw Shans, were as anxious as Mingyi Swasawke to restrain their
lawlessness. Hence he was accorded official recognition as ' Governor'
of Ava, and the viceroy ordered Mohnyin to keep the peace. For
some years the order seems to have been effective, but in 1393 a

CH. 6

BURMA AND ARAKAN

15I

further Mohnyin raid penetrated to Sagaing. The king's brother-inlaw, Thilawa, Chief of Yamethin, inflicted so severe a defeat upon the
marauders that for some years afterwards all the neighbouring Shan
sawbwas treated Ava with respect.
The support obtained from China in 1383 enabled Mingyi Swasawke to turn his attention at last to the project of gaining control
over the Irrawaddy waterway down to the sea. In 1377 he had
procured the murder of the pro-Mon Pyanchi of Toungoo.
In 1385, therefore, when Razadarit succeeded Binnya U to the
throne of Pegu and a traitorous uncle wrote offering to hold Pegu as
his vassal in return for support in a rebellion against his nephew,
Mingyi Swasawke saw a golden opportunity for extinguishing Mon
independence.
But the Mons proved a tougher proposition than he had bargained
for; and although he took Prome and carried the fighting again and
again into the heart of the Mon country, he failed to capture Pegu.
The Mon chronicles mention contingents of Shans from the mountains
in his forces, and sometimes refer to the invaders as Shans. But the
struggle was essentially one of Burmese against Mons. It was not a
Shan migration that the Mons held up, but a Burmese push towards
the Irrawaddy delta. All the Upper Burma inscriptions of the period
are in Burmese; and before the long period of the warfare ended,
Burmese vernacular literature was born.
Mingyi Swasawke's successor, Minhkaung, who ruled energetically
from 1401 to 1422, made tremendous efforts to bring the struggle to
a successful issue, and nearly succeeded. But Razadarit was an able
opponent who weakened the Burmese striking power by obtaining
Arakanese help and fomenting discord between Ava and the Shan
states of the north. In 1374 Mingyi Swasawke had placed an uncle on
the throne of Arakan. On the latter's death in 1381 he sent his own
son to rule there, but the prince was soon driven out. In 1404, as
punishment for an Arakanese raid on the Pakokku district, he sent an
expedition which occupied the capital, while the king fled to Bengal
and his son escaped into the Mon country. This time he placed a sonin-law on the throne. But the Arakanese prince returned with Mon
support and killed the Burmese puppet king. The Burmese replied
by sending another expedition, and so began a ding-dong struggle
between the two sides which lasted until 1430, when the exiled king,
Narameikhla, returned, and with help from Bengal regained his throne.
In 1406, after some years of peace with the Shans, Minhkaung was
tempted to interfere in the feud which had again broken out between

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TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

FT. I

Kale and Mohnyin. According to the Chinese account, he sent a force

under 'Nolota' (Nawrahta), his 'Senior Comforter' (Wungyi), who
robbed the land and killed the Sawbwa of Mohnyin and his son. The
emperor sent his ' Governor' of Ava a severe reprimand, and the latter
withdrew his troops and sent a propitiatory embassy. But so thoroughly
had the Burmese commander performed the task entrusted to him
that it was not until 1416 that the sawbwaship of Mohnyin was revived, the dead sawbwa's nephev/ and heir having fled and taken
refuge in Nan-tien.
In due course the Sawbwa of Hsenwi took upon himself to avenge
the ravaging of Mohnyin. In 1413 he raided some Ava villages and
sent some of the prisoners to Peking. But the Burmese followed him
up and defeated his force at Wetwin, near the present Maymyo. In
the following year, at the instigation of Razadarit of Pegu, he raided
again, while at the same time the Shan Chiefs of Mawke and Mawdon
attacked Myedu. This time they were driven offj but in 1415, while
the Burmese forces were campaigning in the delta, the two chiefs
attacked again and threatened Ava itself. Minhkaung's son by a Maw
Shan princess, Minrekyawswa, was at the time almost within sight of
decisive victory over the Mons. Only Pegu and Martaban were left to
Razadarit. But he had to be recalled in haste to Ava to deal with the
Shan threat, and victory over the Mons slipped from the Burmese
grasp. Two years later the prince was killed while on another campaign in the delta. That was the end of the struggle with the Mons.
The Shan pressure had become so insistent that further campaigning
in the delta involved too much risk.
Hsinbyushin Thihathu succeeded his father as King of Ava in
1422, and as husband of the Maw Shan princess. He attacked the
Shans, but through the treachery of his wife was ambushed by the
Sawabwa of Onbaung (Hsipaw) in 1426 and killed. The sawbwa then
placed his own nominee, Kalekyetaungnyo, upon the throne. But
he was driven out, together with the Onbaung Shans, by a Burmese
chief, Mohnyinthado, who seized the crown for himself. Mohnyinthado reigned from 1427 to 1440. The country was in disorder. The
feudal chiefs were independent, and were supported against the king
by the Sawbwas of Onbaung and Yawnghwe. There were times when
he even lost control over the vital Kyauks^ area. The Onbaung raids
forced him to abandon Ava temporarily. He was kept so busy with
the efforts to stave off complete disaster that when, in 1430, the exiled
King of Arakan returned home and began to build a new capital at
Mrohaung he had no power to interfere. Arakan began a long period
of independence.
- "

CH. 6

BURMA AND ARAKAN

153

Under Mohnyinthado's sons, Minrekyawswa (1440-3) and Narapati (1443-69), the Ava kingship revived considerably. The chief
factor in this was the Chinese attack on the Maw Shans. With the
passing of Kublai Khan's dynasty in 1368 China lost control over the
route across Asia to the West. In their search for new outlets for
trade the Mings, with their eyes upon the Irrawaddy, decided that the
Maw Shans must be subdued. The result was a long struggle lasting
from 1438 to 1465. There was added reason for the Chinese move in
view of the fact that an ambitious Maw Shan chieftain, Thonganbwa
('Ssu-jen-fa'), was attempting to revive the old Nanchao empire. In
1441 Wang Chi, the President of the Board of War, was appointed to
lead a strong army, which drove the Shans out of Luch'uan. Some of
them fled to Hsenwi, but the majority, under Thonganbwa, crossed
the Irrawaddy and took refuge in Mohnyin. The story of Wang Chi's
campaigns is told in the Ming shih, which states that the emperor
oflfered ' Ssu-jen-fa's' land to whoever should succeed in arresting him.
An inscription at the Tupayon Pagoda, erected by Narapati at Sagaing,
relates how Thonganbwa, fleeing before Wang Chi to Mohnyin and
Kale, was captured by the Burmese and presented to their king on
his coronation day.
Wang Chi's forces in due course conquered Mohnyin, and he
demanded the surrender of the fugitive. When Narapati refused his
demand the Chinese proceeded to invade Burmese territory. A
battle was fought near Tagaung in which, according to the Hmannan
Yazawin, the Chinese general was killed and his army badly mauled
(1445). In the following year the Chinese invaded in greater strength
and appeared before the walls of Ava. Narapati thereupon agreed to
their demand. Thonganbwa, however, committed suicide, and only
his dead body could be surrendered. Narapati also formally accepted
Chinese overlordship. In return the Yunnan forces assisted him to
subdue the rebellious Chief of Yamethin. In 1451 he received from
China a gold seal of appointment as 'Comforter of Ava', and three
years later a slice of Mohnyin territory.
While the Shans felt the impact of China's chastising hand the Ava
king, managed to maintain some semblance of authority. But it was
very delicately poised, for the constant state of friction between the
Shan statesa major cause of Burma's survivalalways threatened
to involve the king in some dispute or other, or give his vassals an
excuse to rebel. Thihathura (1469-81) was the last of the Ava kings
in whose reign revolts and disorder were not the normal state of
affairs. During this brief interval of relative calm the Ava kings

154

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

established relations with the famous centre of Theravada Buddhism

at Kandy in Ceylon. In 1456 Narapati bought land there for the
maintenance of Burmese monks visiting the Temple of the Tooth.
In 1474 Thihathura and his queen sent brooms made from the hair of
their heads as an offering.
Much future trouble might have been prevented had China agreed
to Thihathura's request in 1472 for the cession of Mohnyin. Instead,
however, China contented herself with warning the sawbwa against
obstructing the route between Burma and Yunnan. The trouble was
that, although from time to time she would administer a dose of frightfulness and send them scattering in all directions, China failed to
administer the Shans. And her policy of fragmentation aimed at
preventing the development of any powerful state within the areas
from which she claimed allegiance. Hence, when her control weakened
even for a short time, Upper Burma and the regions to the north and
east became, as Harvey puts it, 'a bedlam of snarling Shan states'.
That is what happened after Thihathura's death in 1481. Two
kings, Minhkaung (1481-1502), and Shwenankyawshin (1502-27),
completely failed to stem the disorders. Mohnyin became so strong
and threatening that in 1507 Ava resorted to appeasement by ceding
territory in order to gain time. So serious became the situation that in
1520 the Chinese pushed across the Salween and moved their advanced
base to Tengyueh. Unfortunately this had not the slightest eifect.
In 1527 Mohnyin's chronic attacks culminated in the capture and
sack of Ava, the death of Shwenankyawshin, and his replacement by
the sawbwa's son Thohanbwa, a 'full-blooded savage', says Harvey,
who pillaged pagodas, massacred monks, and made bonfires of the
precious contents of monastic libraries. The remaining rulers of Ava,
from 1527 until its absorption in 1555 into the reunited kingdom of
Burma created by Bayinnaung, -were all Shan chigfe.
The force that reunited Burma in the middle of the sixteenth
century, and finally delivered the Ava region from the Shan terror,
was built up unostentatiously at Toungoo in the Sittang valley, away
from the main centres of disturbance. During the long struggle
between Ava and the Mons the little state barely maintained jts
existence, with each of the combatants from time to time attempting"
to bnng it to an end. No ruling family held power for long. But a
turning point came under King Minkyinyo (1486-1531), when the
chaos in Ava offered an able ruler an excellent opportunity for expanding his domains. His most important acquisition was the
Kyaukse area. In 1527, when the Sawbwa of Mohnyin sacked Ava, so

CH. 6

BURMA AND ARAKAN

155

many Burmese chiefs fled to take service under him that he became the
most powerful ruler in Burma.
With this addition to his strength he turned his attention southwards and began to make preparations for an attack upon the rich and
cultivated Mon kingdom of Pegu. The various Shan sawbwas to the
northwards of his territory were so deeply engaged in quarrelling
among themselves that he gambled on their congenital incapacity for
combined action and determined on a bid to acquire the fabulous
riches of Pegu as a basis for further conquests. In 1531, however,
while in the midst of his preparations he died, and it fell to his
brilliant son Tabinshwehti to carry through his cherished project.
The Mon kingdom which Anawrahta of Pagan had conquered in
the middle of the eleventh century and incorporated in his dominions
had regained its independence during the Mongol invasions which
brought about the downfall of the great Buddhist state in 1287. The
initial movement of severance came in 1281, when Wareru, or Mogado,
captain of the guard to King Rama Khamheng of Sukhot'ai, eloped with
one of the king's daughters, so the story runs, and seized the port of
Martaban. At Donwun in Thaton district, his birthplace, he is said to
have started his career as a pedlar. After establishing himself at
Martaban he joined with a Mon rebel leader, Tarabya, in expelling the
Burmese from Pegu. By 1287 they had gained control over all the
country south of Prome and Toungoo. Then they quarrelled, and
Wareru murdered Tarabya.
Siamese sources assert that Wareru held his new kingdom as the
vassal of Rama Khamheng who conferred on him the title of Chao Fa
Rua. This, however, did not prevent him from obtaining recognition of
China and ruling as an independent sovereign. Martaban was his capital,
and remained the capital of the Mon kingdom until 1363. Southwards
his territory stretched down the Peninsula as far as Mergui. But
the kingdom of Ayut'ia, after its foundation in 1350, claimed all
the territory from Martaban southwards, and ultimately acquired
most of it. Wareru is said to have beaten off an attack by the three
Shan Brothers. His chief monument today is the law-book known as
the Wagaru Dhammathat, a digest of the Laws of Manu, compiled at
his behest by monks from the writings of earlier scholars preserved in
Mon monasteries. It is the earliest law-book in Burma still extant.
After Wareru's death in 1296 the Mon kingdom passed through a
time of internal troubles and succession disputes which lasted many
years, and might have had disastrous results had the Shans or the
Siamese been in a position to intervene. When, however, they did at

156

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

last attack, a strong king, Binnya U (1353-85), was on the throne;

and though forced to yield territory, he managed to save his kingdom.
The attacks came from both Chiengmai and Ayut'ia. The Chiengmai
forces burnt Taikkola, Sittaung and Donwun, but were driven off in
1356. In 1363 the Siamese forced Binnya U to abandon Martaban
and pressed their attacks upon the provinces of Moulmein and
Tenasserim. Binnya U transferred his capital temporarily to Donwun,
and finally in 1369 established it at Pegu, which remained the capital
of the Mon kingdom until Tabinshwehti extinguished its independence in 1539. In 1362 he repaired the Shwe Dagon Pagoda and
raised its height to 66 feet. It was a famous resort of pilgrims, standing just outside the small fishing village of Dagon, named after it, and
centuries later renamed Rangoon by Alaungpaya (1755).
Binnya U ' s reign was a troubled one, full of wars and strife. The
Siamese held Martaban and Tenasserim and were constantly threatening. His eldest son Razadarit (1385-1423) had to deal not only with
raids from Chiengmai, Kampengp'et and Ayut'ia, but also, as we
have seen, with a long succession of attacks from Ava. Against them
all he defended his realm with success. Only the preoccupation of
Ayut'ia with her attempts to subdue Cambodia, Sukhot'ai and
Chiengmai saved the Mon country from becoming a bone of contention between Ava and Siam. Razadarit was not only a statesman
who played his cards with consummate skill; he has also a great name
in Burmese and Mon tradition as an administrator. The Burmese say
that he divided the 'Three Taking Countries', Pegu, Myaungmya,
and Bassein, into thirty-two provinces each. Presumably the area
indicated was what British administrators called a 'circle', under a
myothugyi or taikthugyi.
With the cessation of the Burmese wars shortly before Razadarit's
death, the Mon kingdom passed into a long period of peace and prosperity. Its capital became a great centre of commerce and the resort of
foreign merchants. Its three busy ports of Martaban, recovered from
Siam; Syriam, just below Dagon; and Bassein, in the delta, carried on
regular trade with India, Malacca, and the Malay Archipelago. In
1435 Nicole di Conti of Venice, the first recorded European to visit
Burma, stayed four months at Pegu, then ruled by Binnyaran I
(1426-46).
The fifteenth-century Kings of Pegu were deeply interested in
religion. Binnyakyan (1450-53) raised the height of the Shwe Dagon
Pagoda to 302 feet. His successor. Queen Shinsawbu (1453-72), a
daughter of Razadarit, constructed additions to the precincts of the

CH. 6

BURMA AND ARAKAN

157

pagoda which made it very much as it is today. Missions were again

sent to Ceylon, and, hke those of an earlier period, stimulated a new
religious revival which affected the whole of Burma and caused the
rulers of Ava also to seek direct contact with the source of Theravada
teaching.
The centre of the movement was the Kalyani thein near Pegu,
which took its name from the river in Ceylon where the monks who
founded it had been ordained. Kalyani ordination became the standard
form for the whole country. The story of the reforms is told in the
inscriptions erected at the thein by Shin Sawbu's successor Dammazedi (1472-92). He was a monk chosen for the succession by the
devout queen, and accordingly made to leave his cloister and marry
her daughter. He became a Buddhist ruler of the best type, famous
for his wisdom. A collection of his rulings, the Dammazedi pyatton, is
still extant. Under him mildness prevailed and a gracious civilization
flourished. Friendly intercourse was maintained with China, and
missions were again sent to Buddhagaya. When he died he was
honoured as a saint, and a pagoda was erected over his bones.
His son Binnyaran II (1492-1526) received two more European
prospectors, both Italians. The first was Hieronomo de' Santo Stefano,
who in 1496 sold him a valuable stock of merchandise and was kept
waiting for payment much longer than he had bargained for. The
second was Ludovico di Varthema, who wrote with enthusiasm about
the splendour of the king and his capital, and the abundance of
elephants in the country. He listed shellac, sandalwood, cotton, silk,
and rubies as the main articles of trade from which the king drew his
revenue.
Binnyaran also received in 1512 a European prospector of a different
sort. He was Ruy Nunez d'Acunha, deputed by Affonso de Albuquerque after the capture of Malacca to report on conditions at Tenasserim, Martaban, and Pegu. As a result of his visit a Portuguese
trading station was opened in 1519 at Martaban. It was a sign of a new
age that was dawning. Another, the gathering of a Burmese nationalist
revival at Toungoo, was hardly as yet visible during Binnyaran's
reign. The pent-up avalanche broke suddenly upon his successor
Takayutpi (1526-39) when Tabinshwehti fell upon the delta region
in 1535. Within a very short period the Burmese leader had reduced
the whole of the Mon kingdom to submission, captured Pegu by
stratagem, and brought the rule of Wareru's line to an end.

CHAPTER 7

T H E T'AIS AND T H E K I N G D O M OF AYUTTA

T H E Shans, the Laotians and the Siamese are all descended from a
parent racial group, cognate to the Chinese, which is thought to have
made its first historical appearance in the sixth century B.C. From that
time onwards Chinese records make frequent references to them as
the 'barbarians' south of the Yang-tse-kiang. They came under
Chinese suzerainty early in the Christian era, but made many attempts
to assert their independence. In order to escape subjection to China
many of them emigrated to the region now occupied by the Northern
Shan States of Burma. There the Chinese knew them as the
Ailao. The warlike kingdom of Nanchao in west and north-west
Yunnan had a T ' a i population, but rulers of a different race. Between
757 and 763, under Ko-lo-feng, Nanchao conquered the valley of
the upper Irrawaddy. In 791 I-mou-hsiin, his grandson and successor,
accepted Chinese overlordship, and through him the earliest relations
were established between the Pyu of Burma and the Chinese.
I-mou-hsiin was a conqueror who expanded his control over neighbouring states and tribes. His successors in the ninth century pursued
the same policy. Not only did they destroy the Pyu capital in 832
and carry their conquests as far as the delta region- of the Irrawaddy,
but they twice invaded China and besieged Chengtu. They raided
Tongking and Annam, then under Chinese rule. Before the end of
the century, however, they made their peace with China and settled
down as a vassal kingdom. Thenceforward for a considerable period
little mention is made of them by the Chinese dynastic histories.
But the T'ai never ceased to be on the move, slowly, very slowly,
infiltrating along the rivers and in the valleys of central Indo-China.
Small groups of them settled among the Khmers, the Mons, and the
Burmese. T'ai mercenaries appear on the bas-reliefs of the Angkor
Wat. Long before that they had been crossing into the Menam valley
from those of the Salween and Mekong. North of Raheng, at the
junction of the Mep'ing and the Mewang rivers, the small independent
T'ai state of P'ayao came into existence as early as 1096.
Early in the twelfth century their muongs in the upper Menam valley
158

KHMER TOWERS AT LOPBURI, SIAMTHE. PHRA PRANG SAM YOT

began to form tiny states under chieftains called chaos and sawbwas.^
In the thirteenth century what had been a movement so slow as to be
scarcely observable became what has been described by Coedes as an
'effervescence', showing itself on the southern confines oi Yunnan.
Possibly it was a result of the weakening of Khmer power in that
region towards the end of Jayavarman VII's reign through his concentration upon holding Champa in subjection. In 1215 the T'ai state
of Mogaung, north of Bhamo in Upper Burma, came into existence.
In 1223 Mone or Muong Nai, another powerful Shan state, was
founded. The year 1229 is the traditional date of the establishment
of the Ahom kingdom of Assam, also a T'ai achievement.
At about the same time the T'ai chiefs of Chieng Rung and Chieng
Sen on the upper Mekong made a marriage alliance. To this period
also the legendary mass migration of T'ais along the Nam U river to
the site of the present Luang Prabang may possibly be ascribed. In
1238 two T'ai chiefs attacked and defeated the Khmer commander at
Sukhot'ai, then the capital of the north-western part of the Angkor
empire, and established there the centre of a T'ai kingdom which was
' Sawbuia is the Burmese rendering of the T'ai Chao P'ya.

l60

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

to become a mighty state under Rama Khamheng in the latter half of

the century.
Kublai Khan's conquest of the kingdom of Nanchao in 1253 caused
an even stronger 'effervescence' among the T'ais. Ccedes thinks that
the prodigious epic of the Mongol conquests struck their imagination
and inspired them to great achievements. Whether this be so or not,
the'Mongols adopted the traditional Chinese poHcy of' fragmentation'
and favoured the establishment of a series of T'ai states at the expense
of the older states. And what happened was not a mass displacement
of population in the areas affected but the seizure of power by a T'ai
governing class.
The fall of Pagan in 1287 resulted in the division of much of its
territory under T'ai rulers. In the upper Menam valley Mangrai, the
T'ai Chief of Chieng Rai, conquered the old Men state of Haripunjaya,. or Lampun, in 1290-2 and founded the kingdom of Chiengmai.
Between 1283 and 1287 Rama Khamheng of Sukhot'ai conquered the
Mons of the Menam valley and substituted T'ai rule for Khmer over
an area which included much of the'upper Mekong region as well. In
1287 Mangrai, Rama Khamheng and Ngam Muong, the Chief of
P'ayao, met together arid concluded a firm pact of friendship. The
year was significantly that of the Mongol conquest of Pagan. The
decline of Khmer power on the one side and the disappearance of a
strong Burma on the other provided the T'ais with an unrivalled
opportunity for expansion, provided they kept the peace among
themselves.
Rama Khamheng, or 'Rama the Brave' (i283-<^.i3i7), had proved
himself a redoubtable warrior before he succeeded his father Sri Indraditya as king of Sukhot'ai. He became a renowned statesman, under
whom the T'ais absorbed the best eleinents of the civilizations with
which they came into: contact. Indeed, Sukhot'ai during this period
has been called the 'cradle of Siamese civilization'- The T'ais possessed a social organization of a feudal type, vestigial remains of which
still persist in the Shan and Laos states and the Muongs of Tongking
and'Thanh-hoa. Through long contact with China they had a relatively advanced civilization. They were as remarkable as assimilators
as the Normans in Europe. By the trade route through Assamrjoining"
China sand India, they had made contact with the Buddhism of
northern India, and the influence of Buddhist and Sena art upon their
own in the extreme north of the Menam basin is easily recognizable.
Under Rama Khamheng, in expanding down the Menam valley and^
into the Malay Peninsula, they conquered anareaithat had been Mon

CH.

THE

T'AIS A N D

THE

KINGDOM OF

AYUT'IA

I6I

since before the dawn of the historical period. It was the home of a
fine civiUzation with deep roots. In the seventh century, when the
strong hand of Funan was removed, the Buddhist kingdom of Dvaravati
had arisen there. Of its history unfortunately very little is known.
While the Khmers conquered large parts of what is now eastern and
north-eastern Thailand, SDvaravati maintained its independence up to
the reign of Suryavarman I (1011-50); when what was then called
Lavo, namely the region of the Menam valley, came under Khmer
rule.
In the thirteenth century, when the western parts of the Khmer
empire were coming under T'ai control, Lavo regained its independence and sent embassies to' China. Thus it was not absorbed into
Rama Khamheng's kingdom, though in the middle of the next century
it came under a T'ai ruler. Nevertheless the majority of Rama Khamheng's subjects must have been Moris arid Khmers, and from them
he adopted the script which he used for reducing the T'ai language
to writing in 1283. His aim was to establish an official language that
could be used also by his Mon-Khmer-speaking subjects. In his
celebrated inscription of 1292 at Siikhot'ai he employed the new
characters for the first time, arid this inscription is the oldest extant
specimen of the T'ai language. His alphabet, the Sukodaya script,
was adopted throughout Siam. It had a strong influence also upon
the development of writing in the Laos states.
Sukhot'ai's geographical situation helps to explain its role as the
cradle of Siamese civilization. It lay on the dividing-line between the
spheres of influence of the Khmers on the one hand and of the Mons
and Burmese on the other. Moreover, it had easy communication
with Lower Burma, through which it could maintain relations with
the metropolis of its Buddhism, Ceylon. Through all these contacts
it absorbed important cultural elements and incorporated them in the
civilization of Siam. To quote Coedes: ' From Cambodia the Siamese
assimilated its political organization, material civilization, writing and
a considerable number of words. Siamese artists learnt from Khmer
artists and transformed Khmer art according to their own genius,
and above all under the influence of their contact with their western
neighbours, the Mons and Burmese. From these tatter the Siamese
received their juristic traditions, of Indian origin, and above all
Sinhalese Buddhism and its artistic traditions.'^
A postscript to Rama Khamheng's inscription, of later date, sets
forth the details of his conquests. It runs: 'Rama Khamheng is
' Les BtaU hindouis4s, p. 370", translated.

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i
sovereign lord of all the T'ais . . . He has conquered the multitude
of his enemies, possessing spacious cities and numbers of elephants.
Eastwards he has conquered the land up to Saraluang [P'ichit],
Song K'we [P'isnulok], Lum [Lomsak], Bachay, Sakha up to the
banks of the Mekong and as far as Vieng Chan, Vieng Kham which
mark the frontier. Southwards he has subdued the country up to
Khiont'i [on the Meping between Kamp'engp'et and Nakhon Savan],
P'rek [Paknam P'o], Sup'annaphum, Ratburi, P'echaburi, Si Thammarat [Ligor], up to the sea, which marks the frontier. Westwards
he has conquered the country up to Muong Chot [Me So]t, Hangsavati [Pegu] and up to the sea which marks the frontier. Northwards
he has conquered the country up to Muong P'le [P're], Muong Man,
Muong P'lua [on the river of Nan], and on the other side of the Mekong
up to Muong Chava [Luang Prabang] which marks the frontier.'^
It is impossible on the existing evidence to check up this list in
every detail. So far as the territories previously under Khmer rule
are concerned, Chou Ta-kuan's testimony lends support to the T'ai
claim. Coedes dates Rama Khamheng's conquests in the Malay
Peninsula from round about 1294 and suggests that T'ai penetration
dates from the reign of Chandrabhanu of Tambralinga in the middle
of the century. The T'ai conquests were made at the expense of
Srivijaya, and in 1295, when a Siamese envoy appeared at the Mongol
Court, a Chinese mission went with him on his return bearing an
. imperial order to Rama Khamheng: 'Keep your promise and do no
evil to Ma-li-yu-eul.'
The T'ai claim to Pegu raises the question of the historicity of the
story of Wareru, or Mogado, which is related in the previous chapter.
It may well be that the story of his elopement with a daughter of Rama
Khamheng is legendary, but Wareru, the first ruler of the independent
kingdom of the Mons, is a well-attested historical person, and there
can be little doubt that after seizing Martaban he must have paid
formal homage to Sukhot'ai.
The linch-pin of Rama Khamheng's policy was the maintenance
of the most cordial relations with China. As the director of a spUnter
movement in the Khmer empire he had the full approval of China.
The Yuan History records a whole series of missions from Sukhot'ai
to the Imperial Court. Siamese tradition asserts that Rama Khamheng went there in person once, and possibly twice, and brought back
with him Chinese workmen, who established the production of
ceramic ware at Sukhot'ai and Sawankhalok. The industry persisted
' Ibid., p. 342. A translation of Ctrd^s's French version.

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down to the middle of the eighteenth century. The sites of the old
kilns with their huge heaps of celadon refuse are a striking testimony to
the importance of the industry at certain periods.
Rama Khamheng's great inscription paints a picture of a prosperous
state governed with justice and magnanimity, and with Pali Buddhism
of the Sinhalese orthodox pattern as its official religion. The king,
we are told, with his Court and all his rnagnates, practises the religion
of the Buddha with devotion. For all this, however, it is not surprising
to learn that on the south side of the city there is a hill (Khao Luang)
on which dwelt the most important of all the spirits in the country,
P'ra Khap'ung, and that the ruler of Sukhot'ai made regular ritual
offerings at his shrine in order to ensure the prosperity of the realm.
The Chinese applied the name ' Sien' to the kingdom of Sukhot'ai.
' Syam' was the name used by the Khmers for the 'savages' from the
middle Menam depicted on the south gallery of the Angkor Wat.
The earliest use of the word so far discovered is in a Cham epigraph
of the eleventh century, which mentions Siamese in a list of prisoners
of war. The name seems to be a variant of the word 'Shah', applied
by the Burmese to the wedge of hill states running southwards from
Mogaung and Mohnyin in the far north. Its etymology is unknown.
After the foundation of Ayut'ia in 1350 the territory that owed
obedience to its monarchs became known as Siam. Europeans often
called the city itself 'the city of Siam'.
Rama Khamheng ceased to reign shortly before 1318; tradition
asserts that he disappeared in the rapids of the river at Sawankhalok.
Under his son Lo T'ai (?i3i7-?i347) the power of Sukhot'ai declined
almost as rapidly as it had arisen. A false reading of his name has
caused him to be celebrated in some writings as Sua T'ai, the 'tiger
of the T'ais'. Far from being a tiger he was interested chiefly in works
of Buddhist merit and founded a number of Buddhapada, or footprints of the Buddha, in imitation of the one on Adam's Peak in
Ceylon. His religious devotion earned him the title of Dharmaraja.
Lo T'ai's son Lu T'ai, who succeeded him in ?i347, was a scholar
who was completely preoccupied with religion, and eventually resigned
his crown in 1361 to enter a monastery. In 1345 he had composed-a
large treatise on Buddhist cosmology, the Traibhumikatha,- which is"
still extant under the name Traiphum P'a Ruang. An inscription
describes him thus: 'This king observed the ten royal precepts. He
showed mercy towards all his subjects. When he saw another man's
rice he did not covet it, and when he saw another's wealth he did not,
behave unworthily. . . . If he arrested people guilty of cheating or

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insolence, those who put poison in his food so as to cause him illness
or death, he never killed or beat them, but forgave those who behaved
evilly towards him. The reason why he repressed his heart and
restrained his temper, and did not give way to anger when he might
have done, was that he desired to become a Buddha and to take every
creature beyond, the ocean of the affliction of transmigration.'^
The way was thus left open for an ambitious T'ai prince to found
a new state in the south. According to tradition, he belonged to the
Chiengsen house, from -which Mangrai, the founder of Chiengmai,
had sprung. He married a daughter of the.Mon ruler of U T'ong and
eventually succeeded him. Having made himself master of much of
the old kingdom of Lavo, he forced the pious Lu T'ai to acknowledge
his suzerainty. Then, when an epidemic of cholera forced him to
evacuate his own city, he went fifty miles to the southward and
founded a new capital, Dvaravati Sri Ayudhya, on an island in the
Menam. In 1350 he was crowned with the title of Ramadhipati. He
is regarded as the first King of Siam.
Three years after his accession another T'ai chieftain. Fa Ngum,
united all the small Laos states to the north, in the region of the upper
Mekong, to found the kingdom of Lang Chang, later known as Luang
Prabang. Here also Khmer influence was felt, for Fa Ngum had been
brought up at the Court of Angkor and was ndarried to a Khmer
princess.
The new kingdom of Ayut'ia was a strong one which soon begaa
to make its power felt. It gained control over the middle and lower
Menam, and of much of the Malay Peninsula,^ including Tenasserim
and Tavoy in what is .now Burma, and.exercised suzerainty^over
Sukhot'ai. .Whether a strong'China would have permitted so powerful
a state to arise without let or hindrance is highly doubtful.;. Kublai
Khan and his successors had encouraged the T'ais to dismember
the Khmer empire in accordance with the traditional Chinese policy
of fragmentation pursued towards the 'southern, barbarians', but it
was the weakness of the Mongol power in the middle of the fourteenth
century that made possible the creation of so strong a kingdom as
Ayut'ia became. As soon as the Mongols were supplanted by the
Mings the situation changed radically. The Siamese kings seem to
have been aware of this, for they sent frequent embassies to Nanking,
' A translation of Co5dfes's French version in Les Stats hindouises, pp. 368-9, and his
Receuil des inscriptions du Siani, i, p. 107.
^ Wood's story in his History of Siam, p. 64, that Ramadhipati extended his conquests
to Malacca must not be taken literally, since Malacca was not founded until 1403 or
thereabouts.

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the Ming capital, and sedulously cultivated friendly relations. As

diplomatists the T'ais have never been surpassed.
The transference of the main centre of T'ai power in the Menam
valley from Sukhot'ai away in the north to Ayut'ia" in, the south spelt
danger for Cambodia, for her capital, Angkor, was now within range
of attack. It has been conclusively proved that Ramadhipati did not
capture Angkor in 1353, but there can be no doubt that as soon as he
had founded his new capital he began to make sustained efforts to
subdue Cambodia. A long period of warfare began between the two
states. Siam, however, was unable to give undivided attention to the
Cambodian enterprise, for she soon became engaged in a series of
struggles with rebellious Sukhot'ai and hostile Chiengmai.
Ramadhipati I promulgated the first system of law on record in
Thailand. It embodies much ancient T'ai custom going back to the
Nanchao period. Modified as it was subsequently by assimilation
with the Laws of Manu, it provided the basic principles of Siamese
law for centuries up to the reign of Chulalongkorn, and has not been
entirely superseded by modern legislation. For all his importance in
Siamese history, practically nothing is known of Ramadhipati personally. When he died in 1369 he was succeeded by his son Prince
Ramesuen, who was Governor of Lopburi. He, however, was
unpopular, and in face of disturbances which he was unable to quell
he abdicated in 1370 in favour of an uncle, who became Boromoraja I.
During the early part of his reign the new king had to devote his
whole attention to the task of re-establishing authority over the upper
Menam valley. Sukhot'ai was bent upon reviving its independence.
In 1371 Boromoraja led an invasion of the northern kingdom and
succeeded in capturing several towns. This was the first of a series of
annual invasions culminating in 1378 in the submission of King
T'ammaraja II of Sukhot'ai, and the cession to Ayut'ia of its western
districts, including Kamp'engp'et. The king, who transferred his
capital to P'itsanulok, was allowed to reign over the remainder as the
vassal of Siam.
The extension of Ayut'ia's power so far northwards brought trouble
with Chiengmai, and just before Boromoraja's death a struggle began
which was to last off and on for several centuries. Like so many ofthese wars, it arose out of a disputed succession. In 1387 Sen Muang
Ma, a boy of fourteen, succeeded to the Chiengmai throne, and an
uncle at once sought to dispossess him by summoning Siamese aid.
The Siamese invading force, however, was defeated at the village of
Sen Sanuk, close to Chiengmai. The battle became famous in local

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history through the exploit of the princess Nang Muang, who, although
far advanced in pregnancy, took part in the fighting dressed as a man
riding on an elephant.
In the following year Boromoraja I died and was succeeded by his
son, a boy of fifteen. He was immediately dethroned and put to death
by the ex-king Ramesuen, who seized power and reigned until 1395.
He has been credited in error with a second Siamese conquest of
Angkor, supposed to have taken place in 1394 and to have been the
cause of the removal of the Khmer capital to Phnom Penh. The
Siamese Chronicle, the P'ongsawardan, credits him also with the
capture of Chiengmai and relates how he battered down its walls
with large cannon. This story also is apocryphal. What actually
happened was that the King of Chiengmai, on the pretext of helping
Sukhot'ai to make another bid for independence, led an army there.
But King T'ammaraja, realizing that Chiengmai's real aim was to
gain control over his kingdom and use it as a base from which to
attack Ayut'ia, defeated the Laos army and drove it out of his
territories. The Siamese took no part in the struggle.
The period 1395-1408 is a blank in Siamese history. A phantom
king. Ram Raja, a son of Ramesuen, occupied the throne, but nothing
is recorded of his reign. In 1408 he was deposed through a palace
revolt led by a son of Boromoraja I, who succeeded to the throne as
Int'araja (1408-24). The only noteworthy events in his reign occurred
in the north, where there were two succession disputes.
The first was in Sukhot'ai, where the Siamese intervened and
imposed a settlement in 1410. The other occurred in the following
year in Chiengmai and resulted from the death of Sen Muang Ma.
A Siamese force commanded by T'ammaraja III of Sukhot'ai was
sent to place one of the claimants on the throne. Instead of proceeding
directly to Chiengmai it attacked the cijy of P'ayao, once an independent T'ai state, away to the north-west. Here, according to the Chiengmai Chronicle, cannon were used by both sides. The resistance of the
city was so stubborn that the Siamese abandoned the siege and went
on to Chiengrai to recruit their strength for an attack on Chiengmai.
The capital, however, resisted all attempts to take it, and finally the
Siamese moved off again to Chiengrai, captured it after some resistance, and deported large numbers of prisoners to Ayut'ia.
When in 1424 Int'araja died he left three sons. A struggle for the
throne at once broke out between the two elder ones. An attempt to
settle it by personal combat on elephants resulted in both combatants
being thrown from their mounts and killed. The youngest brother

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was thereupon proclaimed king as Boromoraja II (1424-48). He was

the conqueror of Angkor, though from what has been said in the
previous chapter the word 'conqueror' can only be applied in this
case with a somewhat restricted meaning; for his attempt to impose
a Siamese puppet king upon Cambodia was an immediate failure,
and in effect his campaign was little more than a successful raid on a
big scale. Its objective, to make Cambodia a vassal state, was not
realized. The Cambodian Chronicle mentions further fighting after
a brief interval, and it is significant that the T'ais obtained no territory
as a result of the struggle of 1431-2. In the subsequent fighting the
initiative was by no means always with the T'ais.
In 1438 an important step was taken in the consolidation of the
kingdom of Siam. Boromoraja II appointed his eldest son, Ramesuen,
to be Governor of P'itsanulok, thereby incorporating what was left
of the old kingdom of Sukhot'ai as a province of Siam. Shortly afterwards, in 1442, another succession struggle in Chiengraai afforded an
opportunity for Siamese intervention. Again it was unsuccessful. The
Chiengmai army inflicted a severe defeat upon the Siamese. The king
was taken ill during the campaign and the expedition was abandoned.
When in 1448 he died he was conducting a further abortive campaign
against the arch-enemy.
Prince Ramesuen, who succeeded him as Boromo Trailokanat
(1448-88), usually shortened to Trailok, has left his mark upon the
administrative history of his country. His measures aimed at the
creation of a centralized system of administration. Up to his time the
various provincial governments had been subject to very little central
control. The provinces indeed had functioned much in the same way
as the great fiefs of mediaeval France and Germany. In order to control them the central administration was reorganized on a departmental basis and the rank of its principal officers raised. A distinction
was made between the five great civil departments and the military
administration. The civil departments were i;he Ministry of the
Interior, at the head of which was the chief minister; the Ministry of
Local Government, which dealt with the city and province of Ayut'ia;
the Ministry of Finance, which also dealt with foreign trade; the
Ministry of Agriculture, which was concerned with cultivation and'
land tenure; and the Ministry of the Royal Household, which had
charge of palace affairs and justice.
The military administration under the Kalahom was also divided
into departments, whose heads had ministerial rank. This remained
largely the structure of the central government until the nineteenth

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century. In its distribution of functions it was ahead of all the other

governments of South-East Asia. Siam's neighbour Burma, for
instance, never achieved more than a mere rudimentary difFereiitiation
of functions at the highest level. Its supreme body of ministers composing the Illutdaw maintained, in theory, joint control over the
whole field of administration until the abolitioji of the monarchy in
1886.
Another notable measure of Trailok's reign was the regulation of
the Sakdi Na grades. From the earliest times under the T'ai social
system every man might possess an amount of land varying according
to his status. Trailok overhauled the whole system, laying down
definite rules regarding the status of the different classes of people and
assigning amounts of land to each. The amounts varied from the
equivalent of 4,000 acres for a Chao P'ya down to that of 10 acres in
the case of the lowest class. The system, which survived until recent
times, supplied more than a framework to society. For officials,
before the introduction of salaries in the second half of the nineteenth
century, it determined their emoluments; each received the amount of
land prescribed by the Sakdi Na and was expected to live on the
revenue received therefrom. In the courts the amount of the fine
which could be imposed was determined by a man's Sakdi Na grade;
so too was the compensation to be paid for his murder. For the lowest
grades, seeing that there was plenty of land for all and in monsoon
Asia nature is beneficent, it meant that no one need starve.
The Kot Mont'ien Ban, or 'Palace Law', of 1450 was a further
lengthy and detailed enactment of this Siamese Edward I, and like the
English monarch's work was definitive rather than novel. It was a
codification and clarification of existing custom. It enumerated the
tributary states and the form of their tribute, defined the relative
rank of all classes at Court from queens and royal princes downwards,
regulated ceremonies, prescribed functions of officials, and fixed
punishments. Thus it laid down the procedure to be followed when a
member of the royal family was to be beaten to death with a sandalwood club.
Trailok's reign was one of almost incessant war with Chiengmai.
This time it was the northern kingdom which started the trouble.
The war arose out of the dissatisfaction felt in Sukhot'ai at its incorporation in the Siamese kingdom. Matters came to a head in 1451
when the Governor of Sawankhalok offered to become a tributary
of Chiengmai in return for-support in a rebellion against Ayut'ia. The
King of Chiengmai at once despatched a force, which attacked

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PT. I

Sukhot'ai but was repulsed. A second force, sent against Kamp'engp'et, captured the city. But an invasion of the Chiengmai dominions
by the King of Luang Prabang caused the Whole campaign to be called
off, and for some years no further move was made.
Trailok was in no position to take advantage of the Luang Prabang
diversion by seeking to deal a decisive blow at Chiengmai, for his
attention was concentrated upon developments in the Malay Peninsula. He was handicapped also by an alarming outbreak of smallpox
throughout his kingdom. Exactly what happened in Malaya is not
clear. Wood asserts that Malacca rebelled, that the Siamese captured
the city in 1455, but failed to make their control effective for long.
Apparently the rapid rise of the power of Malacca during the first
half of the fifteenth century was achieved only in face of the chronic
hostility of Siam, which during the sudden decline of the Javanese
power after the death of Hayam Wuruk had sought to extend her
suzerainty over the whole of the Malay Peninsula.
Krom's account of the reign of Mudhafar Shah, better known as
Raja Kasim (1446-59), causes one to' suspect the veracity of the Siamese
record. He writes that the greatest expansion of Malacca's power
occurred under this ruler, whose name is associated with his success
in beating off Siamese attacks. Winstedt in his History of Malaya
is silent on the subject of the supposed Siamese capture of Malacca,
but records that Raja Kasim defeated a Siamese fleet off Batu .Pahat.
The story of the Siamese attacks on Malacca, as recorded in the
Sejarah Melayu, or 'Malay Annals', shows two as having been made
during Raja Kasim's reign, the first by land and the second by sea.
Both were defeated, and the Malay account of the former expressly
states that the city was not taken.^ The second was defeated before
it reached its objective. Afterwards, according to the Sejarah Melayu,
Sultan Muzaffar Shah and the King of Siam exchanged envoys and
presents and made peace.^
Tome Pires, who resided at Malacca soon after its capture by the
Portuguese in 1511, and in his Suma Oriental presents a picture of the
East that is remarkable for its trustworthiness, mentions an alliance
between Malacca and Siam in the reign of 'Modafarxa'. He says that
this ruler fought successfully with the Rajas of Pahang, Trenggariiland Patani, and also against the states of Kampar and' Indragiri in
Sumatra, and that his success was due to his alliances with the
^ Translated by C. C. Brown in Journal of the Malayan Branch of the R.A.S.,
parts 2 and 3, 1952-3, p. 66.
^ Ibid., pp. 70-2.

xxv,

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Javanese, the Chinese and the Siamese. As in 1456 China accorded

Raja Kasim the title of 'sultan' in recognition of his importance, this
may have affected Siam's attitude towards him. She was usually very
heedful of the wishes of the Mings.
In 1460 the clouds gathered again in the upper IVIenam region.
The Governor of Sawankhalok fled to Chiengmai and stirred up its
king once more to invade Siam. In the next year the Chiengmai
forces captured Sukhot'ai and besieged P'itsanulok. An invasion
from Yunnan forced them to retire to defend their own territories,
and in 1462 the Siamese recaptured Sukhot'ai. Sawankhalok, however, remained iii Chiengmai's possession. The threat from Chiengmai
caused Trailok to transfer his headquarters from Ayut'ia to P'itsanulok in 1463, and that city became for all practical purposes his
capital for the remainder of his reign. Soon afterwards Chiengmai
made the third attack of his reign on Sukhot'ai. It was severely
repulsed, and the Siamese chased the retreating enemy as far as Doi
Ba. There, however, they turned and made a stand. In a battle
fought by moonlight the Siamese were checked and retreated homewards. After this there was peace for some years.
In the interval Trailok received tonsure as a monk and entered a
monastery for a time. He then sought to weaken Chiengmai by
occult means. Iri 1467 ihe sent a Burmese monk to sow dissension at
the Court of Chiengmai. In the next year he followed this up by
sending an embassy, headed by a Brahman, bent on the same object.
Much trouble was indeed caused by these emissaries, for their
slanders led to the execution of the king's eldest son and a faithful
minister on false c h a r ^ . But the Brahman's actions caused suspicion,
the plot was discovered, and both he and the Burman were thrown into
the river with stones .tied to their necks. The war was resumed in~
1494, and went on intermittently and without result for the next
quarter of a century.
Shortly before his death in 1488 Trailok took the important step of
creating his son, Prince Jett'a, Maha Uparati.e. Second King or
Vice-King. This is the first mention of an office which lasted until
the second half of the nineteenth century. The Maha Uparat was
given some of the appurtenances of kingship and ten times the amount
of land granted to the highest official in the government. In the early
days the dignity was usually conferred upon the king's eldest son.
As Jai Jett'a, however, was not his eldest son, it has been suggested
that his intention was to divide the administration of the kingdom
between the two capitals of P'itsanulok and Ayut'ia. He died before

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TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

this could be arranged, and was succeeded by his eldest son Boromoraja III (1488-91). Ayut'ia became again the capital, but Jai
Jett'a, as Maha Uparat, remained at P'itsanulok as its governor.
When Boromoraja I I I died Jai Jett'a succeeded him as Rama
T'ibodi II (1491-1529). With his reign we enter a new period in the
history of South-East Asia. He received the first envoy of the Portuguese conqueror of Malacca, Duarte Fernandez, who came to
announce the victory to the Court of Ajrut'ia. Siafti still claimed
suzerainty over the whole of the Malay Peninsula, but Rama T'ibodi's
attention was concentrated upon Chiengmai, and he was not in a
position to create difficulties over the Portuguese possession of Malacca.
He therefore consented to treaties permitting them to trade at Ayut'ia,
Nakhon Sritammarat, Patani, Tenasserim and Mergui.
Trouble with Chiengmai had flared up early in the reign because
one of the Siamese royal princes, who had taken the yellow robe there,
smuggled away a white crystal image of the Buddha to Ayut'ia. The
King of Chiengmai thereupon invaded Siamese territory and Rama
T'ibodi restored the image. A second incident occurred in 1508,
when an attack by Chiengmai on Sukhot'ai led to a Siamese invasion
of Chiengmai. It failed, as also did a further one in 1510. When
Duarte Fernandez arrived in Ayut'ia the war was in full swing. In
1513 the Chiengmai forces raided Sukhot'ai and returned home with
a haul of prisoners and booty. Two years later they took Sukhot'ai
and Kamp'engp'et, but a large Siamese army under the king himself
drove them back into their own territory and inflicted on them a
decisive defeat on the banks of the Me Wang river near Nakhon
Lamp'ang.
The Siamese did not follow up this victory, but it is significant
that Rama T'ibodi set about to reorganize the whole military system
upon the basis of compulsory service. The kingdom was divided up
into military divisions and subdivisions, and all men of eighteen and
over were enrolled for call-up, if and when required. Boromoraja IV
(1529-34) made a treaty of peace with Chiengmai, and for a few years
there was a breathing space in the interminable struggle.
In 1545, however, another succession dispute at Chiengmai ofi'ered
Siam an opportunity for intervention, which she seized. - But thi? story must be deferred to another chapter, since it was no longer a
simple struggle between Ayut'ia and Chiengmai. The Laos.kingdom
of Lan Chang (Luang Prabang) was also involved, as well as the
newly united kingdom of Burma, created by the victories of Tabinshwehti, and ambitious to establish its authority over all the T'ai
states.
"^

CHAPTER 8

T H E K I N G D O M O F CHAMPA
T H E foundation and early history of the Cham kingdom has been
dealt with in a previous chapter. The story is now taken up from the
early part of the seventh century, when the accession of the T'ang
dynasty in China brought a lull in Cham aggression which for various
reasons lasted until the beginning of the ninth century. The seventh
century saw the beginnings of artistic developments, chiefly at Mison
and Tra-kieu, close to Anjflravati (Quang-nam) just south of modern
Touiane and tbe Co\ des Nuages. Some of the Misbn monuments are
still to be seen, but at Tra-kieu only the bases remain, since the city was
later destroyed. Most of them belong to the long and peaceful reign
of Prakasadharma, who on coming to the throne in 653 adopted the
regnal title of Vikrantavarman. They are closely Indian in style.
Several are dedicated to Vishnu, whose cult appears for the first time
in Champa during his reign. Both he and his successor, Vikrantavarman II (?686-73i), sent numerous missions to China. A rock inscription of Prakasadharma, found to the north of Nha-trang,
shows that his sway extended well to the south of the modern
Cap Varella.
In the middle of the eighth century the Chinese cease to mention
the Lin-yi; they refer to the Chams by the name Huan-wang. This
change synchronizes with a transference of the centre of gravity in
the kingdom southwards from Quang-nam to Panduranga (Phan-rang)
and Kauthara (Nha-trang). A new dynasty^the fifth, according to
Georges Maspero's reckoningreigns there from 758 to 859 and
begins to use posthumous names indicating the god with whom the
dead king has united himself. More stress is laid on state Saivism,
and the cult of the linga becomes more important even than in
Cambodia. It imposes itself upon the ancient indigenous worship of
upright stones symbolizing the god of the soil. There are many examples of the use of the moukhalinga, an Indian form of the cult, in
which the stone has a metal covering decorated with one or more
human faces, symbolizing, as in the case of the Khmer Devaraja, the
identification of the king with Siva. It is an interesting case of
173

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT.

symbiosis, whereby the imported and the traditional

cults were united in an
attempt to broaden the basis
of the state religion.
The second half of the
eighth century was a critical
time for Champa. Like Cambodia, it had to sustain a
number of heavy Javanese
attacks. One in 774 destroyed
the old sanctuary of Po Nagar
at Nha-trang. Three years
later another destroyed a
temple near the capital, Virapura, which occupied a site
not far from modern Phanrang. But the Javanese peril
passed away, and early in the
ninth" century Champa herself
again went over to the offensive. Under Harivarman I
she renewed her attacks on
the Chinese provinces to the
north, with varying success.
CHAM DANCER,
There
were also
Cham
c. seventh century
attacks on Cambodia early
in the reign of Jayavarman II, the founder of the Angkor dynasty. It
used to be thought that Ya^ovarman, the founder of the city of Angkor,
replied to these by an invasion of Champa which w^s repelled by
Indravarman II. But it is now known that the record of the Khmer
invasion refers to a much later one.
Under Indravarman II (854-93) t^^ north again became the centre
of gravity; he founded a new capital, Indrapura, in Quang-nam
province. He restored good relations with China, and in his reign
Chinese historians begin to refer to Champa by a third name, Changchengi.e. the city of Chan, or, in its Sanskrit form, Champapura.
His reign was a peaceful one, notable for a great Buddhist foundation,
a monastery, the ruins of which have been located at Dong-duong,
south-east of Mison. This is the first evidence of the existence of
Mahayana Buddhism in Champa.

CH. 8

THE KINGDOM OF CHAMPA

I75

Indravarman II founded the sixth dynasty in Champa's history.

The kings of his Hne were more active than any of their predecessors
in their interest in the reUgious Hfe of the country. Not only did they
build new sanctuaries but they protected rehgious foundations against
pirates and restored them after desecration. They erected inscriptions
describing in detail their donations to temples and monasteries.
During the reign of Indravarman's successor, Jaya Simhavarman I,
relations with Java were close and friendly. A relative of his queen
went to Java on a pilgrimage and returned to hold high office under a
number of kings. This contact is thought to explain the Javanese
influence on Cham art which shows itself in the teiith century.
During the tenth century events of great importance for the future
of Champa took place beyond her northern borders. In 907 the
T 'ang dynasty fell in China, and the Annamites took advantage of the
situation to stage a struggle for independence which resulted in the
foundation of the kingdom of Dai-co-viet (Annam and Tongking) in
939. This happened during the reign of the Cham king Indravarman
III {c. 918-59). At first the change seems to have had little effect
upon Champa, unless the friendly relations cultivated by Indravarman
I l l ' s successor, Jaya Indravarman I, with the first Sung emperor may
be taken to indicate the likelihood of trouble arising between Champa
and the new kingdom.
Trouble indeed did arise under the next king, Paramesvaravarman.
He was persuaded by a refugee Annamite claimant in 979 to espouse
his cause and sent an expedition by sea against Hoa-lu, the capital of
the Dinh dynasty. It came to grief, however, in a storm. Then in the
following year, when Le Hoan seized the throne from the Dinh and
sent a mission to Champa to announce his accession, Paramesvaravarman was foolish enough to clap the envoy into prison. The result was
an Annamite invasion which destroyed Indrapura and killed the Cham
king. His successor, Indravarman IV, had to take refuge in the south
while appealing in vain for Chinese help. Such was the disorder in
northern Champa that an Annamite named Luu Ky-Tong seized
power and successfully resisted an attempt by Le Hoan to depose him.
When in 986 Indravarman IV died Luu Ky-Tong even proclaimed
himself King of Champa and sought Chinese recognition.
In 988 a Cham resistance movement came to a head under a native
leader, who was proclaimed king at Vijaya (Binh-dinh). His task was
rendered easier by the death of Luu Ky-Tong in 989, but he had to
beat oflF a renewed Annamite attack in the following year. He took the
title of Harivarman II and was the founder of the seventh dynasty in

176

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

Cham history. After a short period of peace, during which he secured

recognition by China and restored the capital to Indrapura, he launched
a series of counter-attacks upon Annam. Thus' began the long struggle
which was to end only with the extinction of the Cham kingdom.
Annamite pressure upon the northern Cham provinces became so
acute that as early as the year 1000 Harivarman I I ' s successor, who is
known by the incomplete name of Yang Pu Ku Vijaya Sri, was forced
to abandon Indrapura and transfer his capital to the less exposed
Vijaya.
The eleventh century was one of disaster, when the Chams lost
their northern provinces to Annam. They sent frequent missions to
China, and in 1030 made an alliance with Suryavarman I of Angkor.
But all hopes of help from these quarters were illusory, and in 1044
a long series of Annamite attacks culminated in another great Cham
disaster. Their capital, Vijaya, was taken and King Jayasimhavarman
II beheaded. A new dynasty, the eighth, was founded by a war leader
belonging to one of the noble families. He took the title of Jaya
Paramesvaravarman I and set himself to revive the kingdom. He
repressed revolts in the southern provinces and made every effort to
develop good relations with both Annam and China by means of
frequent missions.
Rudravarman III, however, who came to the throne in 1061, while
seeking to lull Annamite suspicions by continuing to send frequent
missions, went ahead with preparations to attack the arch-enemy.
When he launched his attack, late in the year 1068, it was a fiasco. It
brought the inevitable Annamite counter-invasion in 1069. Li
Thanh-Ton speedily obtained possession of the capital and captured
the fugitive king, after pursuing him into Cambodian territory. Then
the victor celebrated his triumph with a great ceremonial banquet in
the royal palace and made a holocaust of the capital. His wretched
captive, Rudravarman III, was taken away to Tongking, and only
liberated on making a formal surrender of the three northern provinces of his country, corresponding to modern Quang-binh and
Quang-tri. On arrival home, however, he was quite unable to restore
his authority, and with his death in 1074 his short-hved dynasty canieto an end.
A prince named Thang founded the ninth dynasty. He took the
title of Harivarman IV and was soon displaying the greatest energy
repairing the damage caused by the invaders and reviving the fortunes
of his country, enfeebled as it was through the loss of its northern
provinces. Champa's recovery seems to have, been remarkably rapid,

CH. 8

THE KINGDOM OF CHAMPA

177

for not only did Harivarman drive off a further Annamite attack but
he also defeated a Khmer one, and followed this up by sending a raiding force which penetrated Cambodia as far as Sambor on the Mekong,
where it destroyed all the religious sanctuaries.
Harivarman IV's policy was to cultivate better relations with the
Annamites. Hence it was with some reluctance that in 1076 he
allowed himself to be drawn into a coalition organized by China
for an attack on Annam. When it failed he took care to ward off
Annamite anger by sending propitiatory offerings. After this regular
tribute was sent to Annam until the end of the century. In 1103,
however, his son Jaya Indravarman II was persuaded by an Annamite
refugee into making a vain attempt to recover the three lost northern
provinces. But this was only a passing interlude in a long period of
peaceable relations with Annam which lasted until the middle of the
thirteenth century. Not that the Chams acquiesced in the permanent
loss of the disputed territory; on the contrary, they were forced to live
at peace with Annam because they had to concentrate all their efforts
upon defending their independence against the Khmers.
This new struggle was precipitated by the warlike Suryavarman II
of Angkor, who made a determined attempt to impose Khmer rule
upon Champa. His ambition to become a world conqueror was
favoured by the circumstances of his time. Because of the struggle
between the Sung and the Kin, China was unable to exercise a restraining hand on the 'southern barbarians'. Annam also, as a result
of the long minority of Li Anh-Ton, was weakened by faction struggles
among the magnates. The Khmers began by raiding Champa. Then,
when refugees sought safety by crossing over into Annamite territory,
Suryavarman invaded the province of Nghe-an and pillaged the
coastal districts of Thanh-hoa. In 1132 he persuaded, or forced, Jaya
Indravarman III to join with him in an attack which failed. The Cham
king thereupon made his peace with Annam, and when some years
later Suryavarman renewed the attack he refused to co-operate with
the Khmers.
^ In revenge for this, Suryavarman in 1145 invaded Champa, took
the capital, Vijaya, and made himself master of the kingdom. Jaya
Indravarman III disappeared during the struggle; what happened to
him is unknown. The northern part of Champa remained under
Khmer rule until 1149, but in the southern region of Panduranga a new
Cham king, Jaya Harivarman I, arose in 1147. In the next year,
having driven off a Khmer invading force, he went over to the offensive, and in 1149 recovered Vijaya and reunited the kingdom. But he

178

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

was not yet master in his own house. A pretender, Vamsaraja,

collected a large force of savage peoples from the mountains, and
when this was routed escaped to Annam. (There he was allowed to
recruit another large force, with which he invaded Champa. He was
again defeated, in late 1150 or early 1151, and both he and his Annamite commander lost their lives.
Jaya Harivarman I's troubles were still not over. In 1155 the
district of Panduranga rose in rebellion, and it was not until 1160 that
the revolt was finally crushed. Notwithstanding all these disturbances
his reign was a period of recuperation. He repaired the damage of
war, devoted part of the booty to the restoration of temples, and
erected new ones. He sent embassies to China and appeased Annam
by regular payments of tribute. A rupture was nearly caused by the
lawless behaviour of the Cham envoy bearing presents to Thein To in
1x66. An Annamite force actually crossed the frontier in 1167, but
by that time Jaya Harivarman I was dead, and his successor, Jaya
Indravarman IV, sent a rich present to Thein To, who recalled his
troops.
,
Jaya Indravarman IV was a cleyer adventurer who had seized the
throne from Jaya Harivarman I's son. His great desire was to turn
the tables on Cambodia in revenge for Suryavarman I I ' s invasions
of Champa. His first attack, made in 1170 after assuring himself of
Annam's neutrality, went by land and failed. In 1177, however, he
sent an expedition by sea to the Mekong delta, whence it sailed up the
river and took Angkor by surprise. The city was pillaged, and the
Cham force then retired with immense booty. This daring act caused
the deepest hatred between Champa and Cambodia for many years.
In II90 after long preparation Jayavarman VII, the builder of
Angkor Thorn, launched a great attack on Champa under the leadership of a Cham prince, Sri Vidyanandana, who had been educated at
Angkor. Once more the Cham kingdom fell to the Cambodian invaders.
Jaya Indravarman IV was sent a captive to Angkor, and the son of
Jayavarman VII,' Prince In, was proclaimed king in-his stead at
Vijaya. The realm was again split into two, and the Cham Sri Vidyanandana became ruler of Panduranga as the vassal of Cambodia and
with the title of Suryavarman.
"
. ,Rebellions arose everywhere against the new regime. Prince In was
chased out of Vijaya in 1191 by a Cham leader, who proclaimed himself king as Jaya Indravarman V. Jayavarman VII thereupon sent the
captive Jaya Indravarman IV with an army to regain his throne. The
latter called upon Suryavarman, who hSd crushed his own rebels, for

CH. 8

THE KINGDOM OF CHAMPA

179

aid. Suryavarman led a force'to Vijaya, captured the city and killed
Jaya Indravarman V. He then turned on the unlucky Jaya Indravarman IV, whom he defeated and killed in 1192. Having reunited
Champa by these successes, he threw off his allegiance to Cambodia.
He now had to meet a whole succession of Khmer attacks. For some
years he was successful. He sent embassies to Annam and China, and
in 1199 secured an edict of investiture from the Emperor Long Can.
In 1203, however, the Khmer armies drove him out. After attempting unsuccessfully to shelter in Annam, whither he had fled by sea, he
evaded an Annamite attempt to arrest him and sailed away, and,
writes Maspero, 'history does not tell us what became of him'. For
seventeen years, 1203-1220, Champa was under Khmer domination.
Then, for some reason about which the records are silent, the Khmer
army of occupation evacuated the country. It was a voluntary
withdrawal, and a Cham prince of the old royal line took over the
reins of government peaceably and assumed the difficult task of
reconstruction.
There has been much speculation among historians as to the cause
of the Khmer evacuation. Maspero's conclusion, accepted by Ccedes,
is that T'ai pressure upon the Khmer empire had become so acute
that Angkor was forced to abandon the idea of holding Champa in subjection. Her century-long feud with Cambodia left Champa very weak,
and her recovery was slow. Throughout the period she had had to forego all attempts to regain her three northerly provinces from Annam.
But it was a case of postponement only: she was implacable in her
resolve never finally to acquiesce in their abandonment. And as
Annam was equally determined to keep them, there could be only
one end to the contest: the total extinction of one or other of the
contending parties.
The resumption of the struggle took place during the reign of Jaya
Paramesvaravarman II, the king who came to the throne when the
Khmers left. According to the Annamite Annals the Chams took
advantage of the weakness of the Li dynasty to commit a series of
piratical raids upon the coastal districts of Annam. In 1225 a new
dynasty, the Tran, succeeded the Li, and in due course an Annamite
envoy was sent to coniplain that the Cham tribute had not been paid
regularly. Jaya Paramesvaravarman II replied by demanding the
return of the lost provinces. The result was a fresh Annamite invasion led by King Tran Thai-Ton in person. Cham resistance was
fierce. Jaya Paramesvaravarman II seems to have been killed during
the struggle, presumably in 1252. He was succeeded by his younger

l8o

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

brother, Jaya Indravarman VI, a man of peace. And although the

Annamites had won no spectacular success, they were glad to call off
the struggle, for they themselves were Aow threatened by a new
danger from the north.
The victories of the Mongols in China were the cause of this
sudden cessation in the Cham-Annamite wfar. Only five years later,
in 1257, a Mongol army pillaged Hanoi, but retired before strong
Annamite resistance. In 1260 Kublai Khan succeeded to the Mongol
leadership, and, while continuing the conquest of the Sung empire,
began to demand tokens of obedience from the states which had previously recognized Chinese overlordship. Envoys were sent to Annam,
Cambodia and Champa ordering their kings to proceed to his headquarters and pay homage in person. All made excuses and sought to
temporize by sending envoys and presents.
In Champa's case matters came to a head in 1281, when Kublai's
patience was exhausted and he sent Marshal Sogatii to impose Mongol
administration upon the country. The appearance of the Mongols
caused a nation-wide movement of resistance in Champa. S5gat\i
soon found his task too great for his resources, and he was unable to
deal a knock-out blow to the Cham army, for Indravarman V retired
with it into the mountains. When Kublai sent reinforcements Annam
refused them passage by land. In 1285 Kublai's son Togan, while
trying to force his way through Tongking, was defeated and driven
back into China by the Annamites, while Sogatii, on attempting to go
to his aid, was defeated and driven back into Champa, where he was
killed by the Chams.
Indravarman V, in the hope of avoiding further trouble, at once
sent an envoy with tribute, which was accepted. Kublai had too many
irons in the fire to risk another adventure in Champa. Three years
later, when Marco Polo visited the country, a new king, Jaya Sinhavarman III (1288-1307), was reigning peaceably. He was determined,
howeyer, to make no concessions to China and to take iio chances, for
in 1292, when the Mongol fleet sailed down his coast'on its famous
punitive expedition against JaVa, the Cham fleet shadowed it to see
that it made no attempt to land in Champa.
"
Jaya Sinhavarman III was disposed to ally with Annam. In 1301"
he received a visit from Tran Nhon-Ton, \yho had abdicated in favour
of his son Tran Anh-Ton and was ostensibly seeking merit by a round
of pilgrimages to sacred shrines in neighbouring countries. On leaving,
the ex-king professed himself so gratified at the warmth of his reception that he promised the Cham monarch one of his daughters in

CH. 8

THE KINGDOM OF CHAMPA

l8l

marriage. Jaya Sinhavarman III, who was partial to foreign marriages

and already had a Javanese wife, weakly swallowed the bait. In the
negotiations, which led up to a marriage alliance in 1306, he was
cajoled into surrendering two of the Cham provinces north of the Col
des Nuages as the price for the hand of a sister of Tran Anh-Ton.
He died in the following year, and his son Che Chi, who succeeded
him as Jaya Sinhavarman IV, had to bear the consequences of this
stupid act. For the ceded provinces, renamed Thuan-chau and Hoachau by Annam, were so rebellious that they made life unbearable
for their Annamite administrators, who naturally attributed all
their troubles to Cham support of the rebelHous elements. In 1312
Annam, unable to put up "with this condition of affairs any longer,
invaded Champa, dethroned Jaya Sinhavarman IV and took him away
a prisoner, having replaced him by his younger brother Che Nang.
Champa now became a province of Anniam and its ruler was designated a 'feudatory prince of the second rank'. In the following
year, when troops of the T'ai ruler, Rama Khamheng of Sukhot'ai,
crossed Cambodian territory and raided Champa, Annam faithfully
carried out the task of a suzerain by driving them off. Che Nang,
however, was a loyal Cham and unwilling to submit to Annamite
domination. In 1314 he rebelled and made an attempt to recover the
two provinces ceded by his father. Success favoured him at first, but
in 1318 he was so badly defeated that he disbanded his army and fled
to Java, his mother's home.
He was succeeded by a viceroy, Che Anan, installed by the victorious
Annamite commander. In 1323 he in turn threw off his allegiance to
Annam. He managed to beat off every Annamite attempt to depose
him, but made no attempt to recover the ceded provinces. After
1326 he was left to reign in peace until his death in 1342. The
Franciscan friar Odoric of Pordenone, who travelled in these regions
during his reign, placed on record that the King of Champa had no
less than 200 children, and a very fine country with rich fishing grounds
off its coast. He was the founder of the twelfth dynasty in Cham
history, which held power until 1390.
In 1353 his successor, Tra Hoa, made a further attempt to recover
the lost provinces, but failed. This, however, was the prelude to a
period of amazing Cham recovery. It began in 1360 with the accession
of Che Bong Nga, the last king of the short-lived dynasty, and a
military adventurer of immense daring and resource. So great was
his success that Maspero calls his reign the 'apogee' of Cham power.
Ccedes, however, challenges this appraisal and prefers to regard it as

182

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

'the last ray of the setting sun'.^ Ghe Bong Nga took advantage of the
establishment of the Ming dynasty in China to begin a series of
successful attacks on Annam, which culminated in 1371 with the sack
of Hanoi. When the first Ming emperor ordered him to stop his
campaigns he proceeded to attack pirates at sea and send the booty
to China, while under cover of this he continued his war with Annam.
That country was kept in a constant state of terror until in 1390 the
indomitable Cham king was killed in a sea fight.
His successor was soon forced to abandon all his conquests, but
owing to revolutions in Annam, which caused a temporary loss of
power by the Tran dynasty, Annam's counter-attack did not come
until 1402 Then Champa lost the province of Indrapura (Quangnam), and would have been forced to yield much more to her northern
neighbour had not China intervened in 1407 and driven off the Annamite fleet, which was attacking Vijaya.
The tables were then turned on the Annamites in the most dramatic
way. For the Chinese proceeded to conquer and annex Annam,
which they held until 1428. The Chams on their part recovered the
territory they had lost in 1402. Moreover, they were soon so aggressive that they turned their arms upon the enfeebled kingdom of
Cambodia, which was forced to appeal to the Ming for protection.
And when in 1428 Le Lo'i, the Annamite national leader, expelled
the Chinese and regained his country's independence his successors
for some years were glad to maintain peaceable relations with Champa.
In 1441 the long reign of Jaya Sinhavarman V came to an end and
Champa became a prey to civil war. The Annamites were presented
with an unrivalled opportunity once and for all to break the power of
their troublesome neighbour. In 1446 they took Vijaya, but the Chams
recovered the city. In 1471, however, the final conquest was achieved.
No less than 60,000 people are said to have lost their lives in this las*
struggle, while the royal family and 30,000 prisoners were carried
away into captivity.
Annam annexed the whole of Champa down to. Cap Varella.
Beyond it in the far south a diminutive Cham state continued to
exist for some centuries. A succession of kings was recognized by
China until 1543. A Cham Court existed in this region untU 1720,^
when the last king fled with most of his people before Annamite
pressure into Cambodian territory. His last descendant died early
in the present century.
''
^ M.aspeio,LeRoyaumedeChampa,pp.

igg-2i8;C<sdks,LesEtatshindouisds,p,

395.

CHAPTER 9

ANNAM AND T O N G K I N G
T H E Vietnamese, as they now prefer to be called, are today the most
numerous of the peoples of the Indo-Chinese peninsula. They occupy
the valleys of the Red and Black rivers of Tongking, the coastal belt
of Annam and the Mekong delta region of Cochin China. At the
beginning of the Christian era they occupied Tongking and northern
Annam only. They pushed southwards at the expense of the Chams,
whose kingdom they conquered in the fifteenth century. Under the
leadership of the Nguyen of Hue the last remaining independent Cham
districts were absorbed during the seventeenth century. In the same
century the Vietnamese began to plant colonies in the Mekong delta
region in what was then Cambodian territory, and from that time
onwards their steady penetration into Cochin China has been continuous.
Their origin has been much debated. They are thought to have
been the result of intermarriage between local tribes already settled
in Tongking and a mongoloid people, who may represent the third
prehistoric migration to reach Indo-Chinain their case via the
Yangtse valley and what are now the Chinese provinces of Chekiang,
Fukien, Kwang-tong and Kwang-si. Their language has predominantly T'ai affinities, but contains so many Mon-Khmer elements that
some theorists have attempted to place it in the Mon-Khmer group.
The earliest archaeological evidence, chiefly from the sites of
Thanh-hoa and Dong-son, shows their culture as a Mongol-Indonesian
mixture already profoundly influenced by China. Chinese culture
spread over the Chekiang, Fukien, Kwang-tong and Kwang-si area
during the period from the ninth to the fourth centuries before the
Christian era. In the third century B.C. it began to affect the region
that is now Tongking and northern Annam. Under Shih Huang Ti
(246-209), the 'First Emperor' of the Ch'in dynasty. General Chao
T'o conquered the two Kwangs and they were annexed to China.
Their population at the time was non-Chinese; it was made up of
peoples related to the T'ais and the Annamites. Chinese colonization
of the area began from about 214 B.C. Tongking and northern Annam
1S3

184

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

remained for the time being outside the Chinese empire. When the
Ch'in dynasty was tottering to its fall General Chao T'o in 208 B.C.
united them with the two Kwangs to form the independent kingdom
of Nan-yue, or Nam-viet, to use the Annamite form of the word. The
part of Annam affected consisted of the three provinces of Thanh-hoa,
Quang-tri and Quang-binh. The Han dynasty recognized Nan-yue as
an autonomous kingdom, over which they retained vague rights of
suzerainty. The Canton dynasty, founded by Chao T'o, confined its
direct rule to Kwang-tung and Kwang-si, leaving Tongking and
northern Annam under native administration.
In I I I B.C., however, the Emperor Wu Ti (140-87 B.C.), the creator
of Chinese imperialism in Asia, annexed the Canton kingdom, and
with it Tongking and Annam, to which by this time the name Namviet was limited. This latter region he divided into the commanderies
of Chiao Chih (Tongking), Chiu Chen (Thanh-hoa) and Jenan (North
Annam). From this time onwards until A.D. 939 Nam-viet remained
an integral part of the Chinese empire. At first the people were permitted to remain under their own feudal administration. But in A.D.
40, in consequence of a revolt, Chinese administration and institutions
were imposed.
Between 541 and 602 Nam-viet made three major attempts to regain
independence. The first was a movement against the tyranny of the
Chinese governor Siao Tseu. At the outset it was successful, and in
544 its leader Li-Bon proclaimed himself King of Nam-viet. ' But
in 547 he was defeated and his movement collapsed. The second,
which occurred in 590, was an attempt to take advantage of the situation in China at the fall of the Ch'en dynasty. The third, which
began in 600, was led by another member of the Li family, Li-phat-Tu,
and was crushed in 602 by General Lieu Fang, who subsequently
proceeded to punish the Cham king Sambhuvarman for his encroachments upon the Jenan commandery.
During its long .period under Chinese rule, although exposed to a
gradual intensification of Chinese cultural pressure, involving the
introduction of the Chinese classics, the ethical system of Confucius
and Mahayana Buddism, Nam-viet remained stubbornly loyal to its
national traditions. Chinese culture was of course only for the literate'
minority; the people as a whole retained their language, customs and
ancient culture with its roots in animism and ancestor-\yorship. From
the third to the tenth century a number of missions passing between the
Indian world and China touched at Tongking and introduced a certain
amount of Indian culture, but with only slight effect. I-tsing writes

CH. 9

ANNAM AND TONGKING

185

that by his time the country had become a great intellectual centre
of Buddhism where many translations were made of texts brought
from Srivijaya. This had begun through the labours of Chinese and
Annamite pilgrims.
China's influence was strengthened by her successful defence of the
country against the Malay attack of 767. But during the decadence of
the T'ang dynasty her hold began to weaken. She failed to prevent
Champa in 780 from gaining control over Hue, Quang-tri and Quangbinh, the coastal strip from the Col des Nuages to Porte d'Annam.
In 862 Tongking was invaded by the T'ai from Nanchao, and in the
following year Hanoi was sacked. When in 907 the T'ang fell and
anarchy reigned in China the Annamites seized the opportunity to
make another bid for independence. This time they were successful,
and in 939 their leader Ngo Quyen founded the national dynasty of
the Ngo (939-68).
French scholars distinguish fifteen dynasties during the whole
period of Annamite history. Four held power for brief periods before
939 during intervals in Chinese domination. The first three after 939
had very short careers, numbering in all only eight kings and covering
the period up to 1009. With one exception, the later ones had longer
careers, each of which marks a distinct development in the couiitry's
history. At first the independent kingdom comprised only Tongking
and the three northern Annamite provinces of Thanh-hoa, Nghe-an
and Ha-tinh. South of these the kingdom of Champa held sway.
The Ngo dynasty was unable to control the local chieftains and
never secured recognition from China. The Dinh dynasty (968-79)
was even more ephemeral. The earlier Le dynasty (979-1009) started
off with a flourish. Its first king, Le Hoan, invaded Champa in 982,
killed its king, sacked its capital Indrapura, and retired home with
vast booty. His successor, however, was dethroned in 1009 to make
way for the Li dynasty, which lasted for over two centuries. Between
968 and 1009 important developments in the sphere of religion took
place. Tien-Hoang of the Dinh dynasty established the official
religious organization by incorporating Taoists and Buddhists in an
administrative hierarchy. The second Le king imported classical
texts of Mahayana Buddhism from China and made an effort to induce
his people to accept Buddhism in place of the indigenous cults of
animism and ancestor-worship. In effect Buddhism became grafted
on to the indigenous cults, which Continued to exist as strongly as
ever. The scholars, however, remained for the most part Taoist or
Confucian.

l86

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

FT. I

The Li dynasty (1009-1225) began the long fight to recover the

Annamite provinces from Champa, which in its cultural aspect represented a struggle between Chinese and Indian influence. In the
eleventh century Annamite pressure forced the Chams to abandon
their northern provinces. After the sack of Indrapura by Le Hoan in
982 the Chams transferred their capital farther south to Vijaya
(Binh Dinh). But in 1044 Vijaya itself was sacked by the Annamites
and its king beheaded. It was taken a second time in 1069. Its king,
Rudravarman III, was chased into Cambodian territory and taken
prisoner. Then, after a grand ceremonial banquet held by Li ThanhTon in the captured city, he and his family were deported to Annam.
In the following year he regained his liberty by the formal cession of
the three northern provinces to Annam.
The Chams made tremendous efforts to recover the lost provinces,
but in the twelfth century the attacks launched by the great Cambodian warrior Suryavarman II reduced them to impotence, so far as
their struggle with Annam was concerned. The Cambodian wars,
which ended in 1220, left the three northern provinces firmly in
Cambodian hands.
In 1225 the Li dynasty was supplanted by the Tran. Champa was
then beginning slowly to recover after her long contest with Cambodia.
But the lost provinces remained an eternal bone of contention, and in
the middle of the thirteenth century the duel showed signs of beginning again. This time, however, it had hardly got going when a truce
was imposed on both sides by the Mongol threat. In ,1257 a Mongol
army sacked Hanoi (Thanh-long), but was forced to retire before
growing Annamite resistance. Kublai Khan, who became emperor
in 1260, sent envoys to all the states of the Indo-Chinese peninsula
demanding tokens of obedience. The danger caused Champa to
attempt a rapprochement with Annam, but nothing came of it.
Nevertheless when Marshal Sogatu was sent by Kublai in 1281 to
impose Mongol rule on Champa, Annam found herself forced to fight
as the ally of the Chams, for in striving to overcome the extremely
effective Cham resistance Kublai tried to send an army through
Annamite territory, and the Annamites, realizing that their own
independence was at stake, resisted. In 1285 a Mongol army fought"
its way to Hanoi through Lang-son and Bac-ninh. But again Annamite resistance was too strong and it had to retire. Another Mongol
army under Kublai's son Togan was defeated when attempting to
enter Tongking from the north, and Marshal Sogatu, in trying to
come to his aid, was defeated and killed by the Chams. In 1287

CH. 9

ANNAM AND TON6KING

'

187

Hanoi was occupied by the Mongols for the third time, but again the
Annamites forced them to evacuate the country, and Tran Nho'n-Ton
(1278-93) re-entered his capital in triumph.
Together Champa and Annam had' successfully repelled all the
Mongol attempts to subjugate them. To cement the friendship thus
achieved, the King of Champa vi^as persuaded to ask for an Annamite
princess in marriage. When in 1306, after long negotiations, Tran
Anh-Ton consented to bestow his sister upon the Cham monarch, the
price demanded, and strangely enough accepted, was the cession to
Annam of the provinces of Quang-tri and Thu'a-thien (Hue). But
Jaya Sinhavarman died soon after the marriage, and the Chams at
once started to recover the two provinces. Then in 1312 Tran AnhTon invaded Champa, crushed its resistance and took its king a
prisoner to Tongking. The conquered kingdom was thereupon
reduced to the rank of a feudatory state of Annam.
In 1326, after several rebellions and an appeal to China, Champa
regained her independence. But it was the leadership of Che Anan,
and not the injunction issued by Peking in 1324 ordering the Annamites to respect Champa, that caused them to relinquish their prey.
In 1353 the Chams made an effort to regain the Hue region but failed.
Then the Cham hero Che Bong Nga (1360-90) began a series of attacks
which kept Annam in a constant state of terror during his reign. In
1371 he even sacked Hanoi. In 1377 Tran Due-Ton staged a counterattack and managed to penetrate as far as Vijaya, but he was ambushed
outside the city and perished with the whole of his force. Che Bong
Nga reoccupied all the territories previously taken from Champa by
her rival. As soon as he was dead, however, the Annamites recovered
all the territory they had lost to him as far as Tourane, and in 1398,
in order the better to direct their efforts to complete the conquest
of Champa, moved their capital southwards from Hanoi to Thanh-hoa.
Then came a sudden and unexpected halt in their progress. In
1400 a general named Le-Qui-Li deposed the Tran monarch and
seized the throne. The partisans of the Tran dynasty thereupon
called in Chinese aid, and in 1407 the Ming emperor Yung-lo sent an
army to Tongking which occupied Hanoi and seized the usurper. The
Chinese had come to stay, and had they not made the mistake of
attempting to denationalize the country by forcing their language and
customs upon the people they might have added Annam to their
empire as a vassal state. As it was, however, the discontented people
found a leader in a Thanh-hoa chieftain named Le Lo'i, who in 1418
began guerrilla operations against the Chinese with marked success.

l88

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

In 1427 he penned them up in Hanoi. The emperor sent an army to

relieve the city, but Le Lo'i defeated it before it could make contact
with the beleaguered garrison, and in 1428 the city capitulated. Le
Lo'i then proclaimed himself King of Annam and became the founder
of a second Le dynasty. He adroitly warded*, off the wrath of the Ming
emperor by sending an embassy with tokens of his submission to
Chinese overlordship, and Peking deemed it wise to let well alone and
accord him formal recognition.
The Chams had taken advantage of the troubles in Annam to
recover their lost provinces to the north of the Col des Nuages. At
first the new Annamite dynasty maintained peaceful relations with
its southern neighbour, but in 1441 a new series of Cham attacks
began. In 1446 the Annamites, taking advantage of civil war in
Champa, reoccupied Vijaya, but not for long, for the Chams soon
recovered it. It was left to Le Thanh-Ton (1460-97), the greatest of the
Le rulers, to deal the death-blow to the Cham kingdom in 1471. He
transformed Champa into a circle of his dominions.
The political independence wrested by Le Lo'i from the Ming
proved to be real and durable. But while throwing off Chinese
domination the Annamites conserved the culture which in the course
of the centuries they had absorbed from China. Le Thanh-Ton divided
his empire into thirteen circles and gave it the strong administrative
system which it maintained long after his time. His successors,
however, were weaklings. Between 1497 and 1527 no less than ten
kings came to the throne, four of them usurpers. Their ineptitude
encouraged the ambition of the great mandarin families. The Court
became a centre of intrigue, while central control over the feudal
magnates practically lapsed. In 1527 an ambitious mandarin Mac
Dang-Dung, who had made and unmade kings since 1519, ordered the
reigning monarch Le Hoang-De Xuan to commit suicide and usurped
the throne. In 1529 he abdicated in favour of his son Mac Dangdoanh, but retained control until his death in 154,1
In 1533, however, through the powerful Nguyen family, the Le
dynasty was restored. Nguyen Kim drove the Mac out of the Annamite
provinces of Nghe-an and Thanh-hoa, but when he was poised for j h e
conquest of Tongking in 1545 he was assassinated, and his sons weretoo young to take up his task. The Mac therefore remained in control of Tongking, and China, appealed to by both sides, authorized
them to govern the parts they occupied as hereditary lordships under
her suzerainty. The Mac dynasty ruled Tongking until 1592. Annam
proper in the south was nominally under the Le dynasty, but as they

CH. 9

ANNAM AND TONGKING

189

were rois faineants actual power was wielded by Nguyen Kim's

successors as mayors of the palace. His immediate successor was his
able son-in-law Trinh Kiem, who died in 1570.
When Nguyen Kim's two sons grew up, bitter rivalry developed
between them and the Trinh. Trinh Kiem procured the murder of
the elder, but the younger, Nguyen Hoang, escaped death by feigning
madness, and Trinh Kiem sent him to govern the southern provinces
that had once been the Cham kingdom. He calculated that in such a
dangerous area the young man would not long survive. In this he was
mistaken, for Nguyen Hoang, throwing off the cloak of madness, won
the affection of the people of the south and before long was beginning
to build up his military strength.
In 1570, when Trinh Kiem died, the Annamite dominions were
divided between three authorities. The Mac were masters of Tongking,
with Hanoi as their capital. The Trinh, as mayors of the palace for the
Le sovereigns, ruled Thanh-hoa, Nghe-an and Ha-tinh, with Tay-do
as their capital. T h e Nguyen, also acting on behalf of the Le, ruled
the southern provinces, with Quang-tri as their centre. In 1592 Trinhtong, Trinh Kiem's successor, captured Hanoi and obtained control
over most of Tongking. The Mac fled to Cao-bang on the Chinese
frontier, where they managed to hold out with the support of Peking
until 1677. ^^ China refused for many years to recognize the authority
of the Le over Tongking, the Mac at Cao-bang, though without
effective power, were always a potential danger. Not until the Mings
were supplanted by the Manchus at Peking was Chinese recognition
withdrawn from them and transferred to the Le. Nevertheless from
1592 onwards the Trinh were the lords of the north, and in 1593 they
moved their capital, and the puppet Le sovereign, from Tay-do to
Hanoi.
From time to time Nguyen Hoang appeared at Court. He still
hoped that an opportunity would arise for him to regain the position
held by his father. By the end of the century, however, it was obvious
that the power of the Trinh was too well established to be shaken.
In 1600 therefore, when a revolt occurred in Ninh Binh, and Nguyen
Hoang went to quell it, he severed his connection permanently with the
Court of Hanoi. Thenceforward the two rival families, each supreme
in its own sphere, began to prepare for the inevitable war, which broke
out in 1620.

CHAPTER lO

MALACCA AND T H E SPREAD O F I S L A M

LONG before the days of the Prophet the Arabs had made settlements
along the trade route between the Red Sea and China. Islam gave
a new impetus to their shipping. In the eighth century they were
sufficiently numerous in south China to sack Canton (758). In the
ninth century there were small communities of Mahommedan merchants in several ports on the route to China. In the eleventh century
they are mentioned as having existed in Champa for some time. They
married native women but kept themselves socially apart from the nonMahommedan communities. There is no evidence of Arab settlements of any importance in the Indonesian archipelago. Much of it,
including Java and the Spice Islands, lay well away from the trade
route to China.
The reports of the early Ardb geographers concerning South-East
Asia are vague and fantastic, and much of their information is secondhand. An Arabic-inscribed gravestone of a young woman at Leran,
near Gresik, has been taken as the earliest evidence of the presence of
Muslims in Java. The date may be 1082 or 1102, but there is a strong
suspicion that the stone was brought there at a later period. Even if the
date is genuine, the inscription does no more than indicate the presence
of an Arab, or Persian, there in about iioo. There is no evidence of
the spread of Islam to that area until long afterwards.
In 1292 the Polos, on their way home from China, visited Sumatra.
'Ferlec', the first port they entered, has been identified as Perlak.
According to Marco's story, it was visited by so many Muslim traders
that they had converted the natives of the place to^the Law of the
Prophet. From what he has to say further it is obvious that the
conversion of Sumatra had only just begun. His is the earliest report
we have of Islamic proselytizing activities in South-East Asia.From Perlak the Polos went on to Samudra, where their ship was
delayed for five months by the monsoon. In its immediate vicinity
have been found the oldest relics, in the form of tombstones, of the
Mahommedan sultanate of Samudra. Marco writes that at the time
of his visit it was not Mahommedan. Its conversion must have come
190

-^

CH. lO

MALACCA AND THE SPREAD OK ISLAM

I9I

soon afterwards, since the tombstone of Sultan Malik al Saleh, its

first Muslim ruler, is dated 1297. The stone came from Cambay in
Gujerat.
The spread of Islam to Gujerat was one of the results of the conquests of Mohammed of Ghor in north India and the Ganges valley
nearly a century earlier. In the latter half a struggle for dominance
over Gujerat was decided in favour of the Mahommedans. Cambay
fell into their hands in 1298, and although the majority of the Gujeratis
remained Hindu the Court and ruling class became Muslim. In the
thirteenth century Cambay already had a long history behind it as an
emporium. Arab and Persian merchants had been settled there from
the ninth century. Its trading connection with Indonesia was also
of long standing. The conversion to Islam of many of its native
merchants added the stimulus of missionary ardour to their trade with
Indonesia. Hence it can have been no mere coincidence that the
evidence of the presence of Islam in the northern ports of Sumatra
bears witness to a Cambay origin.
Ibn Batuta, who was twice at Samudra on his way to and from China
in 1345-6, tells us that the sultan followed the rite of Shafi'i, the form
of Islam which all Indonesian believers profess today. On his showing
also the country around was still non-Muslim. On the opposite bank
of the river to the town of Samudra a Mahommedan grave dated 1421
has been found. This is thought to have been the site of Pase,
mentioned in the Malay Annals as Pasai, which Diogo Lopes de
Sequeira visited in 1509. It was apparently the first important
diffusion-centre of the new faith in South-East Asia.
So far as the Peninsula is concerned, the earliest Islamic document
is a stone inscription at Trengganu with its date defaced. It is somewhere between 1303 and 1387. Blagden, whose authority commands
respect, favours the earlier date. The stone may have been a boundary
mark between the territory of Islam and the 'territory of the war',
and shows by its wording that the new faith had not been accepted
by the local people. Against the early date suggested by Blagden
stands the testimony of Ibn Batuta that in 1345-6 the ruler of the
Malay Peninsula was an infidel. Does he refer to the King of Kedah ?
The Nagarakertagama of 1365 claims the region as a dependency of
Majapahit. Actually there is little evidence suggesting the spread of
Islam to the Peninsula before the fifteenth century.
It was the rise of Malacca that gave the real impetus to the conversion of the Peninsula. There has been much divergence of view
regarding the date of the city's foundation. Against the arguments

CH

lO

MALACCA AND THE SPREAD OF ISLAM

193

in favour of a date earlier than 1400 stands the fact that no mention
of such a place is made by Marco Polo, who passed through the
Straits in 1292; the Blessed Odoric of Pordenone, who passed that
way in 1323; Ibn Batuta in 1345-6; and Prapanca, who composed the
Nagarakertagamam 1365.
In 1918, however, Ferrand^ put forward an ingenious argument
in support of Caspar Correa's statement in Lendas da India' that when
the Portuguese arrived Malacca had already been in jexistence for
more than seven centuries. He identified Malacca with Marco Polo's
' Malayur', which he placed on the Peninsula, and with' Ma-li-yu-eul',
which, according to the Chinese account, was attacked by the T'ais of
Sukhot'ai in and before 1295. In 1921 C. P. Rouffaer attacked
Ferrand's thesis.^ He argued that both names referred to Malayu
i.e. Jambi in Sumatraand on the available evidence built up the
story of the foundation of the city by Paramesvara that is generally
accepted today.
The founder, whose name means 'prince-consort', was the husband
of a Majapahit princess. According to Sumatran tradition, he was a
Sailendra prince of Palembang. During the war of secession which
broke out in 1401 between Virabumi of East Java and King Vikramavarddhana of Majapahit he took refuge in Tumasik (Singapore),
then under a chief who owed allegiance to Siam. He killed his host
and took possession of the town. In 1402 he was driven out by the
Raja of Pahang or Patani, also a vassal of Siam, and according to one
account brother of the murdered chief. After some wanderings he
settled at Malacca,, then an insignificant village of sea-rovers and
fishermen. A place of that name is mentioned in a Siamese source in
c. 1360. TomePires, who was in Malacca from 1512 to 1515, tells the
story with a wealth of detail not elsewhere available in his valuable
Suma Oriental, which was discovered as recently as 1937.* He placed
the arrival of' Paramjcura' there in about 1400. D'Albuquerque's son,
who wrote his Commentaries in 1557, gives substantially the same
story. So also does de Barros in Decada II, but he dates the foundation
of the city 250 years b'efore the arrival of the Portuguese.
Aided by the sea-rovers and reinforced by numbers of Malays,
who came over from Palembang to join him, Paramesvara rapidly
' ' Malacca, le Malayu et Malayur' in J A, 1918.
' Composed between 1512 and 1561.
' ' Was Malaka emporium voor A.D. 1400 genaamd Malajoer?' in BKI, The Hague,
1921, deel 77, part i.
* The English translation by Armando Cortesao was published by the Hakluyt
Society in 1944.

194

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

built up a large settlement. It began as a market for irregular goods, a

pirate centre. Then, by forcing all vessels passing through the Straits
to put into its harbour for passes, it developed at the expense of
Samudra and Singapore. Both Siam and Majapahit claimed suzerainty over the Peninsula, but Siam alone could enforce it. Hence
when in 1403 Malacca was visited by a Chinese envoy, the eunuch
Yin-k'ing, Paramesvara seized the opportunity to apply for recognition
by the Ming efnperor and support against Siam. In 1405 he sent an
embassy to China and promptly received recognition. Ming policy,
as we have seen, aimed at restoring Chinese control over the states
of South-East Asia. Ambassadors were sent from port to port to
explain Chinese policy and were followed by a war fleet to enforce it
where necessary. The mission which appeared at Malacca in 1403
was sent by the third Ming emperor Ch'eng-tsu (Yung-lo). It was the
one which went to Java and found two kings there. It was followed
by a war fleet under Cheng Ho, whose series of voyages began in 1405.
Paramesvara maintained the closest possible relations with China.
In 1409 Cheng Ho visited Malacca, and in 1411 the king returned the
compliment by going personally to Peking to pay his respects to the
emperor. In the following year he sent his niephew. R. A. Kern
states that in 1414 his son Mohammed Iskander Shah went to China
to announce his father's death.^ This would appear to be a mistake,
which, as Sir Richard Winstedt points out,^ was due to the fact that
the Chinese failed to realize that Paramesvara had become a Muslim
and changed his name to Megat Iskandar Shah. His conversion seems
to have been the result of his marriage to a daughter of the Sultan
of Pase, who himself was a recent convert to Islam. According to
Coedes, he paid a further visit to China in 1419 to ask for support
against Siam.
Malacca's expansion was particularly rapid. Its position was more
favourable than Palembang's or Jambi's for controlling shipping
passing through the Straits. It thus became the heir to the commercial
power once wielded by Srivijaya. It became an emporium, whereas
the Sumatran ports were merely places for the export of pepper. It
thrust itself into the trade route in spices (cloves, nutmeg and mace)
from the Moluccas to India. Previously the route had been'ffom the"
Moluccas to East Java and thence to India. Now ships leaving East
' In Stapel, Geschiedenis van Nederlandsch-Indie, I, p. 322.
* History of Malaya, pp. 41-3, expresses the view held by Kern. In The Malays,
a Cultural History he quotes the account given by Tom^ ^"-^^ ^ Paramesvara's^
conversion to Islam and consequent change of name. See also on this point Ccedes,
Les Stats hindoitisis, p. 410, f.n. 2.

CH. lO

MALACCA AND THE SPREAD OF ISLAM

195

Java had to put in at Malacca before proceeding onwards to India.

The rising state, which at first had paid tribute to Siam to escape
destruction, soon ceased to consider itself a dependency of Ayut'ia,
especially after Cheng Ho in 1409 had presented Paramesvara with a
silver seal, a cap, and official robes 'and declared him king'.^ Indeed,
Paramesvara so far forgot his humble beginnings as to demand the
submission of Palembang, and the Emperor Yung-lo had to intervene
in order to maintain the status quo. This was one of the objects of
Cheng Ho's third voyage in 1415.
Megat Iskandar Shah, who, according to Tome Pires, embraced
Islam at the age of seventy-two, died in 1424. His son, who succeeded
him, significantly took the old Srivijaya title of Sri Maharaja. He went
at once to China for recognition, taking his son with him. In the
Chinese record of his visit he appears as Si-la Ma-ha-la. Fear of
trouble from Siam led him to send regular embassies to China
throughout his reign, which lasted until 1444. Winstedt tells us that
in some recensions of the Malay Annals he is credited with the
organization of the elaborate palace etiquette which still obtains in
Perak." He also received a visit from Cheng Ho.
His son Raja Ibrahim, who succeeded him, assumed the title of Sri
Paramesvara Deva Shah. Winstedt thinks that his assuniption of this
hybrid Hindu-Muslim title may indicate a reaction against the new
faith. He sent a mission to China in 1445, but in the following year
was dethroned and murdered as a result of a coup d'etat by Tamil
Muslims led by his elder brother Raja Kasim, whose mother was the
daughter of a rich Tamil or half-Tamil merchant from Pase.
Raja Kasim assumed the title of Muzaffar Shah. The Portuguese
writers refer to him as Modafaixa or Malafar Sha. He reigned until
1459. His reign saw the emergence of a famous figure in Malaccan
history. Tun Perak, the brother of Tun Kudu, a wife of Muzaffar
Shah. In the Malay Annals he is celebrated as the victorious hero of
campaigns against the Siamese, Pahang and Pase. Winstedt calls him
'the brain of Malacca's imperialist policy in Malaya and Sumatra for
more than three reigns'.^ The story goes that the king's Tamil uncle,
who had been mainly instrumental in placing him on the throne,
received thereby so much power that the bendahara, the father of Tun
Perak and Tun Kudu, committed suicide. The Tamil Tun Ali then
became bendahara. This caused so bitter a feud between him and Tun
Perak that the king to end it offered Tun Ali any bride he might choose
as the price of his resignation. His price was the hand of Tun Kudu,
' Winstedt, History of Malaya, p. 41.

' Ibid., p. 44.

^ Ibid., p. 46.

196

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

and with her brother's acquiescence the king handed her over. Tun
Perak himself then became bendahara. The lady seems to have
accepted the change of husband with complacency.
Tun Perak was responsible for the defeat lof the Siamese attacks on
Malacca that have been dealt with in Chapter 7, and for a great
extension of Malacca's territorial dominion. Tome Pires speaks of
successful campaigns against Pahang, Trengganu and Patani in the
Peninsula, and Kampar and Indragiri in Sumatra. He also brought
about the resumption, in 1456, of relations with China, which had been
interrupted by the coup d'etat and subsequent Tamil regime. The
emperor conferred on Muzaffar Shah the title of sultan and sent him
*a cap of leather, a dress, a daily dress of red silk gauze, a girdle
adorned with rhinoceros horn and cap of gauze'.^
When he died in 1459 Muzaffar Shah was succeeded by his son
Raja Abdullah, who assumed the title of Mansur Shah. In the first
year of his reign the new ruler sent an embassy to China. The return
mission sent by the emperor was shipwrecked, but two years later
another was despatched which arriyed safely. During Mansur Shah's
reign Tun Perak further extended Malacca's sway. A great expedition
against Pahang deposed Maharaja Deva Sura, a vassal of Siam, and
placed a Malaccan prince on its throne. This was by way of revenge
for the Siamese attacks on Malacca during the previous reign. Afterwards peace was patched up with Siam. Before the end of the reign
the empire of Malacca included Kedah, famous for its tin, Trengganu,
Pahang, Johore, Jambi, Kampar, Bengkalis, the Canmon Islands and
Bintang. Pase might have been included in the list, for Tun Perak
led an expedition which crushed a rebellion there and restored its
sultan to his throne, in return for his promise to accept Malaccan
suzerainty. But he broke his promise, and his state ultimately became
part of the dominions of Acheh.^
Malacca was now a political power of the first rank, able to withstand Siam. She was also the most important commercial centre in
SouthrEast Asia as well as the main diffusion-centre of Islam. Two
more sultans sat on the throne before Albuquerque's conquest in
1511: Ala'uddin Riayat Shah (1477-88), a son of Sultan Mansur
Shah, and Mahmud (1488-1511), a brother of Ala'uddin Riayat Shah."
In Mahmud's reign Malacca was at the height of her wealth and prestige. Tun Perak, the great bendahara, whose name is associated with
' Part of the inscription on his grandson's tombstone, ibid., p. 46.
' T h e English name for this place was Achin, the Dutch Atjeh. T h e Indonesian
repubUc has adopted the latter, the English spelling of which is given here.

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her greatest triumphs, died in c. 1498, but his successors continued

to be the real rulers. Mahmud himself was little more than a figurehead. He is said by the Portuguese to have been an opium addict.
His main interest was in religion and mysticism.
War broke out again with Siam over the Siamese claim to overlordship, which Mahmud refused to recognize, saying that his only
suzerain was the Emperor of China. Siamese attacks were beaten off
and their fleet was defeated off Pulo Pisang. Malacca also helped
Pahang to drive off an attack by Siam's vassal Ligor. This state of
war only ended with the Portuguese conquest.
Malacca has been described as not a trading city in the accepted
sense, but rather the site of a vast fair, where during the season the
products of China and the Far East were exchanged for those of
western Asia and Europe. Tome Pires, who arrived there as secretary
and accountant of the Portuguese factory in the year following Albuquerque's conquest oi the city wrote in his invaluable Suma Oriental
a detailed account of its commerce and administration under its sultans
such as is found in no other source. 'Men cannot estimate the worth
of Malacca on account of its greatness and profit', he writes. Where
other ports had one Shabandar to take charge of all ships coming into
the port, Malacca had no less than four. The most important was the
one who dealt with the ships from Gujerat. Another was in charge
of merchants from the Coromandel Coast, Bengal, the Mon kingdom
of Lower Burma, and Pasai in north Sumatra; a third in charge of those
from Palembang, Java, the Moluccas and the Bandas, Borneo and the
Philippines; and a fourth in charge of the Chinese and merchants
from the eastern ports of the Indo-Chinese Peninsula.
Gujerat's importance lay largely in the fact that its chief port Cambay
was the main rendezvous for merchants travelling to Malacca from
Cairo, Mecca, Aden and the ports of the Persian Gulf. Their practice,
Pires tells us, was, after trading in Gujerat, to 'take up their companies
for their \ cargo' and ' embark in March for Malacca sailing there
direct'. Piece-goods formed by far the biggest item in the cargoes
they took there. ' T h e principal merchandise brought back', he writes,
'is cloves, mace, nutmeg, sandalwood, seed-pearls, some porcelain, a
little musk; they carry enormous quantities of apothecary's lignaloes,
and finally some benzoin, for they load up with these spices, and for the
rest they take a moderate amount.' ' T h e rest' consisted of gold, tin,
large quantities of white silk and white damask, coloured silks and birds
from the Banda islands much prized for their plumage. Herein lay
the secret of Malacca's quite exceptionally rapid rise to a position of

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PT. I

world importance at the end of the fifteenth century, a position, be

it noted, that it was never to hold again after its conquest by the
Portuguese in 1511. It became the focus of an expanding east-west
trade movement in which Muslim trade from the ports of north-west
India played a dominant role. 'Malacca cannot live without Cambay,
nor Cambay without Malacca, if they are to be very rich and very
prosperous,' was Tome Pires's comment when his countrymen had
already cut the lifeline between the two ports, and Muslim merchants
were beginning to transfer their custom to other centres in Sumatra
and Java.
Malacca gave a new impetus to the propagation of Islam in SouthEast Asia. The first Muslim ruler of Pahang was a son of the Sultan
of Malacca. When he died in 1475 his grave was marked by a stone
inscribed in classical Ar'abic similar to that of the first Sultan of Samudra.
Both were imported from Cambay. Vast numbers of these inscribed
tombstones, with blank spaces left for the insertion of names, were
brought to Malacca by Gujerati merchants; so many, in fact, that later
on the Portuguese found them handy material in building their first
fort there. Trengganu officially adopted Islam on becoming a vassal
state of Malacca. Patani was converted from Malacca; Kelantan as
Patani's vassal. A I^lusliiri prjnce is mentioned as ruler of Kedah in
1474. Across the straits Rokan entered the Islamic fold in the first
half of the century, Kampar, Indragiri and Siak later. Brunei also, the
first Muslim state to appear in Borneo, came to accept Islam through
its trading connection with Malacca. The Malaccan dynasty saw in
Islam a political instrument of great potential value; by adopting the
religion officially it secured admittance to what Van Leur has described
as 'the unity of Islam' with its assurance of powerful allies, and its
expansive ardour. Thus, as Malacca established overlordship over the
states of the Peninsula and of the east coast of Sumatra across the
straits, so Islam penetrated them. It was a political weapon against
Buddhist Siam; still more it supplied the Malaccan. empire with a
cohesive force which enabled it to hold together after the Portuguese
capture of Malacca itself.
R. A. Kern makes the striking claim that 'Java was converted^t^
Malacca'.^ It is, of course, very far from true, but it does serve as a
useful pointer to the way in which Islam made its first impact upon
Java, namely through the very close connection which grew up'between
Malacca and the ports of northern Java, notably Tuban and Gresik.
Malacca received not only its spices but also its< vital food supply
^ In F. W. Stapel (ed.), Geschiedenis van Nedertandsch Indie, vol. i, p. 328.

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through the east Javanese ports. The trade was in Javanese hands, and
by the beginning of the sixteenth century they formed the most important element in Malacca's population. Its army was Javanese; most
of its shipwrights were Javanese; and the great Javanese aristocratic
families who ran the trade between eastern Indonesia and Malacca
were represented there. One Javanese merchant-prince is said to have
maintained his own force of 6,000 slave troops. In this way was Islam
introduced into the coastal districts of Java, which were asserting their
independence of the declining empire of Majapahit, to become a potent
weapon in their struggle against the Hindu-Buddhist central authority.
Of these merchant-princes themselves Tome Pires tells us that they were
'not Javanese of long standing in the country', but were descended
from Chinese, Persians and Tamils who had settled there some seventy
years earlier.^
The tradition of a Muslim conquest of Java, referred to on p. 89
above, comes from the story in the Babad Tanah Jawi of the overthrow
of the kraton of Majapahit by a disowned son of its last king Bra
Vijaya, who at the moment of defeat is shown as ascending the lofty
look-out tower and thence floating up to heaven. The son, Raden
Patah, is said to have founded Demak as an Islamic centre and to have
conquered Majapahit at the head of an alliance of north Javanese
Muslim states, thereupon becoming the first Muslim king of Java.
Its most important effect upon historical thinking comes from the idea
which it conveys of a sudden break in Javanese history, bringing with
it what C. C. Berg has described as a cleavage in Javanese cultural
life through the substitution of Islamic for Hindu-Javanese culture,
to use Krom's term. Berg claims that by ending his Hindoe-Javaansche
Geschiedenis at the fall of Majapahit Krom conveyed the impression
that it ushered in a cultural change of fundamental importance.
Such a notion, however, is quite untenable. It has been attacked
by the sociologists on the one hand who see the elements of Javanese
culture today as the products of a process of continual evolution.
Berg sums up their point of view aptly by denying that Java was ever
converted to Islam: what really happened was that her pattern of
culture gradually absorbed elements of Islam, just as earlier it had
absorbed elements of Hinduism and Buddhism, and was later to absorb
elements of European civilization.^ Moreover, the political advance
of Islam was very slow. Dr H. J. de Graaf represents the empire of
Majapahit as gradually disintegrating through its vassal states embracing
1 Cortesao, op. cit., vol. i, p. 182.
* ' T h e Islamization of Java', Studio hlamica, iv, Paris, 1955, p. 137.

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TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

Islam and declaring their independence.^ ' Schrieke thinks that the
coup de grace was administered by the ruler of Demak at the head of
a combination of Muslim coastal lords probably in the year 1514,^ but
points out that when the Dutch first arrived in 1597 much of the
interior was still 'infidel'^ -In Easf Java the Hindu-Buddhist state of
Panarukan maintained its independence until 1614. Balambangan in
the farthest east of the island successfully 'resisted a jihad launched
against it by Sultan Agung of Mataram in 1639 and did not go over
finally to Islam until late in the eighteenth century. The 'infidel'
kingdom of Pajajaran in West Java, with its capital at Pakuan near
modern Bogor, continued to exist until the fifteen-seventies, although
cut off from the sea through the capture of its port, Sunda Kalapa, by
Muslim Bantam half a century earlier. It fell when Panembahan
Yusup, the second sultan of Bantam, captured Pakuan, slaughtered the
whole royal family and forcibly converted the magnates to Islam.
What we see then is a series of what were essentially political changes
occupying a long period of time; and, as van Leur has emphasized,
what took place was mainly an affair of rulers and aristocracies.^ Mass
conversion was unlikely, for at this stage missionary activities were not
directed at the masses of the people.
One of van Leur's most interesting theories was that the propagation
of Islam in Indonesia received its strongest impetus from the appearance
of the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean in 1497.* This point was taken
up by Schrieke in an essay entitled ' T h e Penetration of Islam in the
Archipelago', which was unpublished at his death in 1945 arid has
since been issued in an English translation of his writings. ' T h e race
with Christianity', as he terms it, had actually begun before the arrival
of the Portuguese in the East. The close coherence of the Muslim
powers, he points out, found expression in their annual meeting at
Mecca, and through this medium rurnours of the Christian struggle
against Islam in the Iberian Peninsula reached Indonesia ahead of the
Portuguese. Hence by the time of their arrival the Muslim powers
were already pressing on to extend Islam's influence ^s" widely as possible. When Malacca fell in 1511 to the Poituguese, and became a
strategic centre for their attack upon Islam and the Islamic trade-in
the vast island world of South-East Asia, the Crescent was already-a*.
move or two ahead of the Cross. It never lost its lead. The Muslim
* Geschiedenis van Indonesie.
^ B. Schrieke, Indonesian Sociological Studies, Part II, Ruler and Realm in Early Java,
pp. 65-9.
^ Indonesian Trade and Society, p. 11%.
/
* Ibid., p. 113.
^ Op. cit., pp. 232-7.

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tradei;s, driven out of Malacca, settled in the rising north Sumatran

state of Acheh, which by the middle of the sixteenth century became
the most important entrepot for the trade of the Indian and West
Asian Muslims with the Archipelago, and, like Malacca and its predecessor Pasai, a centre of Islamic studies.
In Java, as we have seen, Muslim operations were first concentrated
upon securing the immensely important ports of the northern coast,
thus cutting off the Portuguese from contact with their potential allies
the Hindu-Buddhist states of the interior. For instance in 1522 a
Portuguese ship visited Sunda Kalapa, the port of the Sundanese kingdom of Pajajaran, and made a treaty with its Regent permitting the
establishment of a factory there. But when five years later a Portuguese
expedition arrived there for the purpose of planting the factory, the
place was in Muslim hands. It is noteworthy also that from the northern
Javanese ports, and Demak in particular, Islam spread to southern
Borneo and the Moluccas ahead oi the Portuguese. This start, as we
shall see in Chapter 12, enabled it without much difficulty to win the
race in the east of the Archipelago. How far the policies of religious
imperialism pursued in their respective regions by Acheh, Bantam
and Demak, represented a reaction to the Portuguese threat to Islam
it would be hard to say: other compelling motives undoubtedly played
their part, and, unfortunately, the historical evidence is extremely
defective. The general picture of Islam's progress in Indonesia,
however, makes the race theory a very attractive one; the subject calls
for a definitive study.
The case of Celebes seems to have been exceptional. Notwithstanding long trading contracts with Muslim ports in Indonesia, its
rulers did not begin to -go over to Islam until the end of the sixteenth
century, when Portuguese power was visibly waning. The interesting
suggestion has been made that the strong loyalty of its peoples to their
adat (customary law) was the cause of the delay. ^ When in 1603
Macassar officially adopted Islam, the motive of political aggrandizement was uppermost; in setting out to extend its power over its neighbour states it calculated that as a Muslim state it stood a better chance
of success by swimming with the advancing tide of Islam. The conversion of its ruler was thus the prelude to a series of expeditions
against the states to the north, who were forced to accept Islam as well
as his overlordship. The various mountain tribes of the island were
never converted. Elsewhere there were also notable cases of resistance.
Bali successfully repulsed all attempts to introduce the religion of the
^ J. Noorduyn, ' D e Islamisering van Makasar' in Bijdragen, Deel 112, 1956, p. 250.

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TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

Prophet, even when a holy war was proclaimed against its princes and
people by Sultan Agung of Mataram in the sixteen-thirties. It maintained close connections with the last Hindu-Buddhist states of East
Java and became a storehouse of Old Javanese literature when the
advance of Islam caused it to disappear from Java itself.
If our knowledge of the spread of Islam in South-East Asia as a
political force is far from adequate, even more so is the picture that can
be presented of its progress as a missionary movement. Scholars are
generally agreed that the trader was the most common missionary.
Throughout the areas where Islam spread the ruler was the chief
merchant; he controlled all external trade and traders, for he directed
and controlled all supplies of the basic commodities required by them,
rice on Java and in Macassar to exchange for spices in the Spice Islands,
pepper at Bantam and the ports of south-east and south-west Sumatra,
pepper also and especially gold at Acheh. He had the fiVst choice of
all the goods brought to his country, bought them wholesale at his
own prices, and fixed the prices at which they were to be sold in the
common market. His most important official in dealing with foreign
merchants was the Shahbandar ('Ruler of the port'), who by reason of
his duties was in most cases a foreigner.
Schrieke has drawn attention to the important fact that when trade
with the Red Sea ports via Cambay and Aden had got into the hands of
-Muslim merchants, after the end of the thirteenth century, foreign
Muslims tended to become shahbandars in the ports of both. India
and the Archipelago.^ He suggests that it was through them that
Islam extended its influence at court level; they were able to indicate
'what was considered good form' at the great Mohammedan courts
abroad, to warn of the danger of Portuguese expansion, and to recommend the adoption of Islam as a means of extending the ruler's own
power. They also introduced Muslim scholars and holy men to
stimulate his religious zeal and establish centres in his country for
Islamic propaganda. The courts became to a greater r less degree
centres of Islamic learning, producing a not inconsiderable literature
much of which is still extant. The local centres of Muslim walls, or
saints, came into being in order to counteract the influence of the h"er-^
mits, who for many centuries had been the teachers and mentors of'
the conimon people. It was a contest in supernatural powers^ and in
Sumatra and Java brotherhoods of Sufi mystics from India, organized
in trade guilds, became an important element in society. Sufisin, as
Sir Richard Winstedt has shown, ^ had a powerful influence in Malacca
* Op. cit., p. 238.

" The Malays; aj^ultural

History, pp. 33-44.

CH. 10

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203

also, and later, after its fall, when Acheh took the lead, two Sumatran
mystics, Hamzah of Barus and Shams al-din of Pasai, disseminated
doctrines which had their effects upon the whole Malay world. The
appeal of Sufism was assisted by the deep-seated popular mysticism
of Malaya and Indonesia with its roots in animism and its inclination
towards a pantheism 'that finds Him closer than the veins of one's
neck'.i Moreover, as Sir Hamilton Gibb has shown, the Sufi brotherhoods succeeded in spreading Islam because of their tendency to
tolerate popular usages and beliefs not in accordance with the strict
practice of Muslim orthodoxy.^ So far as Java was concerned, C. C.
Berg sums up what happened as Islamization, not conversion.^ Most
significant of all, perhaps, is the fact that Muslim law has not the same
sanction in Malaya and Indonesia as in other Muslim countries: their
own adat law has maintained its position.
The Muslim scholars and holy men played an important part in
political as well as religious affairs at the various courts which received
them. They both gave impetus to the political expansion of Islam
and also strove to promote a sense of unity among the Muslim communities of the Peninsula and Archipelago in opposing the advance of
Portuguese and, later, Dutch power. The Babad Tanah Jawi mentions
many by name and provides vivid pictures of their activities, which
with their mixture of fact and fable are reminiscent of Bede's Ecclesiastical History of England. Schrieke describes their influence upon the
courts of Bantam and Acheh.* At the former, he says, it showed itself
in punishments for using tobacco and opium similar to those established
at the same time by Aurangzeb in Mughal India, in anti-European
propaganda throughout the Archipelago, in stimulating an interest in
Mecc^ and the pilgrimage, and in spreading a knowledge of Arabic
literary works, often by means of translations. At Acheh during the
sixteerith and seventeenth centuries a vast number of Malay writings
on Islamic doctrines were produced. Their authors were in every case
foreign scholars, many of whom were members of brotherhoods of
mystics.
Acheh's greatness, like that of its predecessors, Malacca and Pasai,
was based upon its commerce and maritime power. Like them, its
market was almost entirely in the hands of Gujerati merchants. For
a time it was a serious threat to the Portuguese in Malacca. Achinese
ships sailed to India, Ceylon and the Red Sea. Achinese rulers maintained contacts with the Sultan of Turkey, the Great Mughal and the
' Ibid., p. 38.
* H. A. R. Gibb, Modern Trends in Islam, 1945, p. 25.
^ It is the theme of his article quoted above.
* Op. cit., pp. 241-67.

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TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

rulers of Western India, the Coromandel Coast, Bengal and Ceylon.

Its suzerainty extended over the west coast states of Sumatra, some of
the east coast ones and several of the Malay states of the Peninsula.
Even more important were its pre-eminence throughout the Malay world
as the 'Gate to the Holy Land', the point of departure for the pilgrimage to Mecca, and its renown as a centre of religious study.
Indian, Persian and Arab scholars stayed and worked there, as well as
Malay and Javanese scholars on their way home after completing their
pilgrimage. In his account of Mecca Snouck Hurgronje mentions the
large number of religious foundations there for students from the
Archipelago at the time of his visit and says that those for the Achinese
were among the best known. ^ And Schrieke comments that there is
no reason to assume that they did not exist in earlier times as well,
for the rulers of Acheh, Bantam, Mataram, Palembang and Banjermasin,
who are recorded to have received titles, holy flags and consecrated
garments from Mecca, all sent rich contributions towards the maintenance of its activities.
Through Acheh also the influence of Mughal India passed to the
Muslim courts of Malaya and the Archipelago. Its rulers copied
Mughal architecture, gardens, court dress and ceremonial, and even
adopted Mughal titles for some of its administrative officers.
' Mekka in the Latter Part of the Nineteenth Century, a translation of Volume II of
Snouck Hurgronje's Mekka by J. H. Monahan, p. 255.

CHAPTER II

THE COMING OF THE EUROPEAN

MEDIAEVAL Europe had no recorded contacts with South-East Asia
until late in the thirteenth century, when the Polos, returning from
the Court of Kublai Khan by the sea route, passed down the coast of
Champa, rounded the southern extremity of the Malay Peninsula,
and were held up for five months by monsoon conditions in northern Sumatra before passing on their way across the Indian Ocean.
They had crossed Asia by the overland caravan route to China,
where in 1275 they had been received by Kublai in the 'Upper
Court' at Shangtu. During their seventeen years' sojourn in China
Marco was employed as an intelligence officer by the Imperial Court
and was sent on distant journeys. On one of these, a four-months
journey from Peking to the west, he went via the land of the 'goldteeth' people, with its capital at Yung-ch'ang, between the Mekong
and the Salween, by an itinerary which it is impossible to trace, to a
town in northern Burma, which he calls 'Mien'. What impressed
him most were two stone towers fifty feet in height, one covered with
gold and the other with silver, and both hung round with bells which
tinkled in the wind. If his claim to have actually entered Burma is
true, and much doubt has been thrown upon it, he may have reached
Tagaung. He refers to ' M i e n ' as the capital of Burma, but it is not
recognizably Pagan, nor could he have travelled so far within the time
at his disposal.

Of greater interest is his account of the Great Khan's war with the
King of ' Mien and Bangala'. His description of the battle of Ngasaunggyan, fought in the Namti valley in 1277, wherein the Tartar
archers won a victory by causing panic among the Burmese elephants,
must have been derived from eye-witnesses. But he erroneously
attributes the leadership of the Mongol forces to Nasr ed-Din, who
was the commander of the later expedition which captured Kaungsin,
the Burmese stronghold commanding the defile of Bhamo.
He gives a brief glimpse into one of the semi-independent Laos
states on the Yunnan border. The king has 300 wives; there is
abundance of gold and elephants and many kinds of spices; wine made
205

2o6

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

from rice is drunk, and both men and women tattoo their bodies all
over with figures of beasts and birds in black colouring >stufF. How
much of this was mere hearsay it is impossible to determine. His
information certainly contains much that isi inaccurate, as is shown by
his reference to 'Bangala' as a part of the idominions of the King of
Burma. The word can only refer to Bengal; apparently Polo confused
the deltas of the Ganges and the Irrawaddy. It is significant that Fra
Mauro's map, based upon the information in his book, makes a. similar
error:
Marco's account of his homeward voyage, which began early in
1292, contains interesting material on South-East Asia. Kublai's
great-nephew Arghun, Tartar lord of Persia, had requested a Mongol
princess of China in marriage. The Great Khan selected the Lady
Kukachin for this purpose and committed her to the special care of
the Polos, who had begged him to allow them to return to their native
land. Marco's description of the Chinese junk in which they made
the voyage tallies exactly with those of such fourteenth-century travelogues as the Blessed Odoric, Ibn Batuta and Fra Jordanus. He says
that 'Chamba'i.e. Champais a very rich region ruled by a king
who pays an annual tribute of elephants to the Great Khan. He writes
in extravagant terms of the Mongol 'victory' over Champa in 1281,
but is silent on the subject of the final disaster which befell Marshal
Sogatii's army there four years later.
Java he calls the 'Great Island of Java' as distinct from 'Java the
Less', his name for Sumatra. Java, he tells us, was reputed among
mariners to be the largest island in the world and was more than 3,000
miles in circumference.^ His extravagant notion of its size reflects an
idea that was current among Arab seamen, whose knowledge was
confined to the few ports on its north coast which they frequented.
The island, he says, produces black pepper, nutmegs, spikenard, galingale, cubebs, cloves and all other kinds of spices. In point of fact,
though the island was a great mart for spices, itprojduced none. He
does not seem to have visited it but to have relied entirely on seamen's
gossip for his account of it. His statement that Java had never fallen
into the Great Khan's possession is intriguing in view of the great
armada which Kublai despatched against Kertanagara of SingosarFnot so very long after Marco's departure from China.
Among other islands, some of which are very difficult to identify,
he mentions Pulo Condore, lying opposite to the Mekong delta, the
strategic possibilities of which were to be much del^ated by the English
' Pauthier's text gives 5,000 miles.

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THE COMING OF THE EUROPEAN

207

and the French in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and Bintang at the east end of the Straits of Malacca, where the Sultan of
Malacca settled after Albuquerque captured his city in 15ii. The
identity of 'Malaiur', which he describes as a fine and noble city with
its own king, great trade, and abundance of spices, has been the
subject of a certain amount of debate, as we have seen in the previous
chapter. It must obviously be Jambi, and it is perhaps of some significance that he makes no mention of a Javanese conquest. Equally
significant is the fact that he makes no mention of Malacca.
In striking contrast to his inaccurate account of Java is his betterinformed description of Sumatra. His estimate of its compass at 2,000
miles is not far from the truth. His reference to the recent conversion to Islam of 'Ferlec' by Saracen merchants is a piece of
valuable historical evidence. He personally visited six Sumatran
'kingdoms'; and although he credited the island with only eight
states, there is much that rings true in his account, even if he was
credulous enough to record the story that one of them was peopled
b,y men with tails about a palm in length and of the thickness of a
dog's, though without a hair on them.
In the year before the Polos began their homeward journey from
China a Franciscan friar, John of Monte Corvino, set out for Peking
in the hope of converting Kublai Khan to Christianity. He and his
little company reached India via Ormuz and the Persian Gulf. Then,
after a stay of over a year on the Coromandel Coast, they proceeded
onwards by the sea route through the Archipelago, reaching their
destination before Kublai's death in 1294. This was the beginning of
half a century of Latin missions to the Mongol Court. And as several
of th^ missionaries either went or returned by the sea route, SouthEast Asia received further attention in books of travel.
The best, and indeed the only one worthy of serious consideration,
was by the Franciscan Odoric of Pordenone, who left Europe in 1316
and returned early in 1330. His route, after leaving the Coromandel
Coast, was via Sumatra, Java, Borneo and Champa to Canton. His
Description of the East, written after his arrival home, is characterized
by Sir Raymond Beazley as 'the fullest, most graphic, and the most
amusing picture of Asia left by any religious traveller of this age'.^
Notwithstanding a good many inaccuracies, it does to some extent
supplement Marco Polo's picture of South-East Asia. His knowledge
of Sumatra compares unfavourably with Polo's. He mentions only
three kingdoms, and he does not give the island a name. But his
1 Dawn of Modern Geography, iii, p. 253.
8

2o8

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

'Lamori', at the extreme north-west,'is undoubtedly Polo's 'Lambri',

and his 'Sumolchra', where people branded their faces with hot iron,
corresponds to the Venetian's ' Samara'y ^he place from which the
island was ultimately to take its name. He was horrified by the customs
of the island, such as communal marriage and cannibalism. Children,
he credulously asserts, were brought in by foreign merchants and sold
for slaughter as food.
His account of Java is fuller than Polo's, though he repeats some of
the latter's inaccuracies. While Polo has nothing to say about the
government of the island, Odoric speaks of a great king who rules over
seven under-kings and lives in a magnificent palace. The Great Khan
of Cathay, he writes, has often taken the field against this King of Java,
but never with success. When due allowance is made for the exaggeration, the statement is not entirely wide of the mark. The Great
Khan, of course, did not command in person the sole expedition he
sent against Kertanagara.
He mentions 'Patem' or 'Talamasim', presumably a region in
Borneo, as lying near to Java, and; bordered on the south by a dead
sea whose waters run only in a southwards direction, so that if a man
drifts into them he is never seen again. Here he meets the sago palm
and watches the process of sago-preparation, though not with complete understanding.
His account of Champa* has striking similarities with Polo's, but
he does not mention the Mongol invasions. The king, he says, is
polygamous and has 200 children. He has also 14,000 tame elephants.
Vast shoals of fish come ashore in Champa at certain times of the year
and allow themselves to be caught, 'doing homage to the emperor-',
according to the local saying. He mentions the prevalence of suttee
and professes having seen a huge tortoise larger than the dome of St.
Anthony of Padua.
His chapter on 'Nicuveran'i.e. the Nicobar Islandsis full of
legendary nonsense, and disconcertingly so, for he implies that he had
visited 'it'. He describes 'Nicuveran' as a great island 2^000 miles in
circuit, remarkable for naked, dog-headed, ox-worshipping cannibals.
Two other friars of this period wrote of South-East Asia, Jordanus
and John Marignolli. Jordanus, whose work is entitled The-Wonders^
of the East, went to India in 1330, but no farther eastwards. He describes the spice trade, 'Java' (=Sumatra) and Champa, and/repeats
' Sir Raymond Beazley is wrong in giving Cochin China as the equivalent of Polo's
and Odoric's Champa. It was the old kingdom of Champa with its centre just south of'
n\odern Hu6 to which they referred.

CH. I I

THE COMING OF THE EUROPEAN

209

what had become the traditional yarns of Arab seamen. 'There is

also', he writes, 'another exceeding great island, which is called Jaua,
which is in circuit more than seven [thousand ?] miles as I have heard,
and wherein are many world's wonders. Among which, besides the
finest aromatic spices, this is one, to wit, that there be found pygmy
men, of the size of a boy of three or four years old, all shaggy like a he
goat. They dwell in the woods and few are found.' In 'Java', he also
tells us, 'they delight to eat white and fat men when they can get
them'. Franciscan friars, presumably.
John MarignoUi of Florence, who arrived in China by the overland
route in 1342 and left for home in December 1346, travelled homewards through South-East Asia. He describes ' Saba' (Java or Sumatra) as a remote and matchless isle, where women have the mastery
in all things and the queens are descended from Semiramis. The
queen, he says, honoured him with banquets and presents, and he rode
on an elephant from the royal stables. Was he by any chance referring
to the Minangkabau districts of Sumatra? On the island's sacred
mountain, he was told, the Magi first saw the star which led them to
Bethlehem. His account of his travels is, strangely enough, introduced
into his Latin Annals of Bohemia, which he compiled as domestic
chaplain to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV. It contains
graphic descriptions of personal experiences mingled with fantastic
hearsay.
Whence came all these fantastic tales? 'One must notice', writes
Sir Henry Yule of Jordanus,^' the frequent extraordinary coincidences
of statement, and almost of expression, between this and other
travellers of the same age, especially Marco Polo. At first one would
think that Jordanus had Polo's book. But he'^certainly had not Ibn
Batuta's, and the coincidences with him are sometimes almost as
striking. Had these ancient worthies, then, a Murray from whom they
pilfered experiences, as modern travellers do? I think they had; but
their Murray lay in the traditional yarns of the Arab sailors with whom
they voyaged, some of which seem to have been handed down steadily
from the time of Ptolemyperadventure of Herodotusalmost to our
own day.'
Soon after the middle of the fourteenth century the Mongol dynasty
made way for the Mings, and Western intercourse with China ceased.
The next European to travel, in South-East Asia was not a missionary
but a trading prospector, a Venetian of noble family, Nicolo de' Conti,
who spent twenty-five years wandering about the East and returned
' Cathay and the Way Thither, Preface, p. xvii.

2IO

TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

FT. I

home in 1444- As a young man he was a merchant in Damascus. Then

he passed through Persia, sailed along the Malabar Coast, visited
parts of the interior of India, went on to Ceylon and thence to SouthEast Asia. There he visited Sumatra, Java, Tenasserim, Arakan and
Burma. He is thought to have gone also as far as southern China. He
returned home via the Red Sea and Cairo! On arrival he confessed
that to save his life he had been forced to renounce the Christian
religion and become a Muslim. Pope Eugenius IV granted him
absolution on condition that he related his adventures to the papal
secretary, Poggio Bracciolini, who wrote the account of them that we
now possess.
Conti calls Sumatra 'Taprobana', a name applied by Europeans in
early days to Ceylon. This curious error appears in both the Catalan
Map of 1375 and Fra Mauro's of 1458. He says, however, that among
the natives it is known as ' Sciamuthera'. Although he remained there
a year, he has little of real interest to say about it. Its chief products
were pepper, camphor and gold, but the people were cruel, and in
parts of the island there was cannibalism and head-hunting.
He mentions also an island named 'Andamania', 'which means the
island of gold'. It is 800 miles in circumference, he says, but the
inhabitants are cannibals and travellers avoid it. Tenasserim abounds
in elephants and a species of thrush. Presumably he refers to the mina
bird. From Tenasserim he went to Bengal, where he stayed for some
months. Then he took ship down to Arakan and travelled overland
to Ava, the capital of the Upper Burma kingdom, going by the route
across the Yomas to the Irrawaddy, which he thought larger than the
Ganges. Ava was then in its heyday and the chief centre of Burmese
culture. He estimated its circumference at fifteen miles and considered it a noble city. He describes the Burmese method of catching
elephants and their use of them in battle. The king, he tells us, rides
upon a white elephant. He is nearer the truth when describing the
universal practice of tattooing, the 'frightful serpents without feet, as
thick as a man, and six cubits in length', and the universal belief that
rhinoceros horn was an antidote against poison.
He travelled down the Irrawaddy and made his way through the
creeks to 'a very populous city called Panconia'i.e. Pegu, the capitaL
of the Mon kingdom. But although he stayed there four months he
tells us little about it. Equally disappointing is his account of Java.
He describes the process of running amuck and says that the chief
amusement is cock-fighting. The inhabitants he considers inhuman,
since they ate dogs, cats, mice and unclean animals;

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THE COMING OF THE EUROPEAN

211

In 1496 another Italian, a Genoese merchant, Hieronomo de Santo

Stefano, crossed from the Coromandel Coast to Burma and reached
Pegu, which he calls by its correct name. He was a trading prospector
making his way round the East from one commercial centre to another,
doing what trade he could at each. He was unable to go to Ava because
there was war between the two states. He had, therefore, to sell his
valuable stock to the King of Pegu, who kept him waiting eighteen
months for payment. While there his companion, Messer Hieronomo
Adorno, died. He buried him in what he took to be a ruined church,
'frequented by none'.
On leaving Pegu he set sail for Malacca, but was driven by stress
of weather to Sumatra, ' where grows pepper in considerable quantities, silk, long pepper, benzoin, white sandal wood, and many other
articles'. There he was plundered of his rubies and much else by the
Mahommedan ruler of a port which he does not name. He decided,
therefore, that it was 'not a desirable place to stay in' and took ship
for Cambay on the west coast of India.
Santo Stefano was followed shortly afterwards by a Bolognese
traveller, Ludovico di Varthema, who left Europe towards the end of
1502 and, travelled through Egypt, Syria, Arabia, Persia, India to
South-East Asia, returning to Lisbon after an absence of some five
years. Very little is known of him. He had the instinct of the geographer, an insatiable desire to visit foreign countries and learn about
them. He was the first European on record to visit the holy places of
Islam. He did so by becoming a Muslim and attaching himself to a
company of Mamelukes at Damascus.
His account of Tenasserim is, with the exception of Conti's few
remarks, the first authentic account written by a European. The city
of ' Ifernassa^i', he tells us, was situated at the mouth of a river of the
same name. Large two-masted junks (giuncM) were built there for
trade with Malacca. Its importance, it is to be noted, lay in the fact
that much of the Malay Peninsula was under Siam, and it served one
of the best short cuts between the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Siam.
Varthema describes Pegu as a great city, west of a beautiful river,
containing 'good houses and palaces built of stone with lime', and
enclosed with a wall. When he arrived there the king was absent on
an expedition against the King of Ava. On his return he granted the
visitor an audience. Varthema was much impressed by the vast
number of rubies worn by the king, as also by his affability. ' He is so
humane and domestic', he writes, 'that an infant might speak to him.'
He sold the king some coral in return for rubies.

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TO THE BEGINNING OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

PT. I

Varthema was the first to make Europe acquaijited with Malacca.

He mentions the great commerce carried on at the port, and especially its spice trade. More ships arrived therie, he tells us, than at any
other place in the world. The majority of the inhabitants of the city
were 'Giavai'i.e. Javanese. There were, also the 'men of the sea',
who did not care to reside on land, and set the local authorities at
defiance. These were t h e ' Orang-laut' of the Malays, the ' Cellates', or
'men of the straits', of Tome Pires and de Barros, the 'sea-gipsies' of
Crawfurd, whose headquarters were the narrow straits of the'Johore
Archipelago. They lived by the produce of the sea or by robbery.
The natives of Malacca, he says, were a bad r^ce, the worst ever
created, and foreigners slept on board their ships to avoid assassination. The most marketable commodities to be obtained were spices
aiid silks.
In Sumatra Varthema visited the flourishing port of Pedir, near
Acheh. Every year, he tells us, eighteen to twenty ships were laden
with pepper tor China, ft afso produced an immense quantity of silk
and much benzoin. So extensive was its trade, and so great the number
of merchants resorting there, that one of its streets contained about
500 money-changers. Stamped money of gold, silver and tin was in
use there, with a devil stamped on one side and soinething resembling
a chariot drawn by elephants on the other. He was much impressed
by the strict administration of justice there. Thre^-masted junks with
two rudders were built there. He also makes the interesting statement
that the natives excelled in the art of making fireworks. This is corroborated by Crawfurd,^ who mentions that the more advanced Malay
peoples already used firearms vvhen the Portuguese first arrived in the
Archipelago.
He visited the island of Banda, where nutmegs and mace grew,
but the people were without understanding; the Moluccas, where the
people were worse than those of Banda; Borneo; and the 'beautiful
island.of Giava', which was divided up into many.,Iyngdoms all subject
to a piagan king, who resided inland. But he heard' so many hairraising stories of the cannibalism there that he left as soon as possible
for fear of being carried off and eaten. Crawfurd <iubs his description
of the island false and worthless.^ From Java he returned to Malacca,"
and after a stay of only three days took ship for the ' City of Cioromandel'.*
^ Descriptive Dictionary,of the Indian Islands, p. 23.
^ Ibid., pp. 165-6.
" Badger in his edition of The Travels of Ludovico Di Varthema (Hak. S o c , 1863)'
suggests Negapatam.

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THE COMING OF THE EUROPEAN

213

Varthema's work was first published in 15lo in Rome. His description of men, countries and scenes which he had himself seen at
once attracted attention, and translations of it were issued in Latin,
German,. Spanish, French, Dutch and English. After him we pass
from the age of mediaeval wanderers to that of the Portuguese
filibusters.

PART II

SOUTH-EAST ASIA DURING THE EARLIER PHASE

OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

PART 11

SOUTH-EAST ASIA DURING THE EARLIER PHASE

OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

CHAPTER

12

T H E PORTUGUESE AND SPANIARDS IN

SOUTH-EAST ASIA
{a) The Portuguese
AT the end of the Middle Ages the Portuguese were well fitted for the
leadership of a European effort to exploit the trade of the Indian
Ocean. Their position on the Atlantic made them a race of mariners
able to cope with the risks of the sea. In their long crusade against
the Moors they had built up a formidable naval power. They employed skilled Genoese seamen. They were ahead of other powers in
the construction of 'great ships' able to accommodate large numbers
of men for long ocean voyages. Their chief ports, Lisbon and Oporto,
had trading connections with both the Mediterranean and northern
Europe. When, under the leadership of Vasco da Gama, they made
their first appearance in the Indian Ocean they had behind them the
experience of a long series of explorations and the urge of a fervent
nationalism, which, impelled them to destroy Islam.
In the eastern seas they excelled the Moors in both fighting and
navigating their ships, arid the ships themselves were in every way
superior to those of the Arabs, which were built for sailing only under
favourable monsoon conditions. Lest the crusading motive be overstressed, let it be stated that long before they first rounded the Cape
of Bona Esperanza the economic motive had begun to compete with
the religious; and as the ideas of commerce and colonization gained
ground, so the mediaeval crusading ideal weakened. In the light of
the experience gained at Calicut, the chief emporium of Arab trade on
the Malabar Coast, the enormous profits of the spice trade and the
desire to wrest the trade monopoly from the MoorS became overriding considerations. Happily it was possible to serve God and
Mammon at the same time, for by striking at Arab trade in the Indian
Ocean Portugal aimed a blow at the Ottoman empire, which drew the
major part of its revenues from the spice monopoly.
Against the strong opposition of the Arabs and other Muslim
traders the Portuguese rapidly expanded their power and influence.
217

218

THE EARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

PT. II

Cochin, their first settlement and a centre of the pepper trade, became
the headquarters of their first viceroy, Francisco de Almeida, whose
policy was to gain the mastery over the trade of the Malabar Coast,
while at the same time resisting the pressure to extend Portuguese
influence Into the Red Sea or the Straits of Malacca, since in his view
such a course was calculated to weaken their position. His successor,
Don Afi'onse de Albuquerque, however, decided that such limited aims
would fail to achieve the desired result. To gain commercial supremacy over the Indian Ocean it was necessary to seize and control
the main strategic points and drive a trade which should provide a
revenue adequate for the maintenance of irresistible power.
The capture of Goa in 15lo gave him a centre from which to develop
control over the Indian trade, but Muslim vessels could still collect
the produce of Bengal, Burma, Sumatra, the Spice Islands, Siam and
China at the great emporium of Malacca. He proposed to stop this
trade by holding the mouth of the Red Sea and at the same time
striking at its very headquarters. Moreover, since Malacca under a
Muslim ruler was the chief diffusion-centre of Islam in Indonesia, by
capturing it he would be carrying out the obligation laid on the Portuguese by the bull of Alexander VI. Thus the conquest of Malacca in
1511 was one of the most important features of an over-all strategic
plan, and not an act of revenge for the treachery of the sultan in his
dealings with Diogo Lopez de Sequeira when he attempted to establish
a factory there in 1509. The Malay Annals state that Sequeira abused
the sultan's hospitality by beginning to build a fort from which to
menace the city. There can be no doubt that he was sent there with
the deliberate intention of manufacturing a casus belli.
From Malacca Albuquerque sent ambassadors to Siam and Burma.
Duarte Fernandez, who went to Siam, was the first European to visit
Ayut'ia. From Malacca Albuquerque also sent an expedition to the
Moluccas. Its leader, Antonio d'Abreu, had strict instructions to
refrain; from filibustering, to do everything possible to estabhsh
friendly relations with the islands, and to observe the customs of the
people. Ternate, Tidore and Halmahera and a number of small
islands were the original home of the clove tree. Nutmeg and mace
were the principal products of Amboina and the Banda Islands.'
Malacca, the chief distribution centre for these spices, received its
supplies from Javanese traders, who collected them from the^islands
themselves. Supplies were so abundant and cheap that if the Portuguese were to keep the prices high in Europe it was essential for them
to establish a monopoly and restrict export. ^This entailed driving out

CH. 12^ THE PORTUGUESE AND SPANIARDS IN SOUTH-EAST ASIA

219

the Javanese traders and policing the sea-routes between Indonesia and
Arabia. The chief difficuhy lay in the fact that shortly before the arrival
of the Portuguese the Spice Islands had been converted to Islam.
A inore'pressing danger at first, however, lay in the state of affairs
at Malacca itself. There the Portuguese were on the defensive. The
neighbouring country was unsubdued, the Muslim sultans of Indonesia were hostile, and Sultan Mahmud of Malacca, who escaped when
his city fell, made the island of Bintang in the Straits of Singapore his
headquarters-and used his powerful fleet in an attempt to cut off
Malacca from all trade with the Archipelago. In 1517 he took the
offensive, stockaded himself on the Muar river close to the city, and
was not driven out until 1520. In the following year, assisted by the
forces of Acheh, whose sultan was expanding his power over northern
Sumatra, he returned. But the Portuguese stormed his fortified position after twelve days of heavy fighting. In 1526 a Portuguese counterattack upon his capital on Bintang was successful. But his son and
successor established himself on the southern tip of the mainland at
Johore and continued the struggle by harassing Portuguese shipping.
And Muslim merchants, in order to avoid Malacca, transferred their
headquarters to Brunei on the southern coast of Borneo, which became
a new centre for the spread of Islam.
After 1526, however, Acheh became the leader of the opposition to
the Portuguese. The increased demand for pepper brought its sultan
a corresponding increase in power, and between 1529 and 1587 the
Achinese made attempt after "attempt to capture Malacca. The biggest
of these occurred in 1558, when an armada of 300 war-boats, with
15,000 troops and 400 artillerymen from Turkey, besieged the city for
a month. The years 1570 to 1575 were a critical period, when, in
addition to three major Achinese attacks, the city had to meet a dangerous attack launched in 1574 by the Javanese state of Japara. It was
saved only by the timely arrival of reinforcements from Goa. In 1587
a period of easier relations began, when a new Sultan of Acheh, Ala'uddin Riayat, in difficulties with the rebellious chiefs of his dependent
states, was glad to make peace with the Portuguese. Notwithstanding
all the threats and dangers of the years before 1587, Portuguese
Malacca prospered exceedingly; its trade continued to expand and
showed vast profits.
Abreu's expedition, which left Malacca for the Spice Islands in
December 1511, met with little success. He lost two of his three ships;
and jalthough he procured a cargo of cloves and nutmeg from the
Bandanese, he was unable to make Ternate and Tidore, the chief clove

CH. 12

THE PORTUGUESE AND SPANIARDS IN SOUTH-EAST ASIA

221

islands. A second expedition in 1513 was more successful. The

Sultans of Ternate and Tidore provided a large cargo of cloves, and
each granted permission for a factory to be established on his island.
These two chiefs were the heads of opposing island confederacies, and
both played for Portuguese support. The situation was complicated
in 1521 by the arrival of Magellan's ship the Victoria on her homeward
voyage. This Spanish intrusion into their preserve led the Portuguese
to seek to strengthen their position by concluding a treaty with Ternate giving them the monopoly of its clove trade.
At the same time Portugal protested to Spain that the appearance
of a Spanish ship in the Spice Islands constituted an infringement of
the Treaty of Tordesillas, concluded between the two states in 1494.
The papal bull of 1493 had separated their respective spheres of
interest by a line drawn from the North to the South Pole 100 miles
to the west and south of the Azores and the Cape Verde Islands. The
treaty had improved on this by laying down the dividing line 370
miles west of the Cape Verde Islands. Nothing, however, had been
done towards demarcating the respective spheres of the two powers
on the far side of the newly discovered continent.
In consequence of the Portuguese protest a conference of experts
met in 1524, but failed to agree on the exact location of the Moluccas,
since the computations of each side differed by no less than forty-six
degrees. Spain thereupon sent a fleet of seven ships by way of the
Straits of Magellan to assert her claim to the islands. Only one ship
reached them. It was welcomed by Tidore, and a struggle then began
between the Portuguese allied with Ternate and the Spanish allied with
Tidore. Fortune favoured the Portuguese, for the Spanish were dependent for help upon Cortez in Mexico, and when it failed to arrive
in time were forced to come to terms with their opponents. In Europe
also the Portuguese managed to carry their point. In 1529 by a new
treaty the Spanish agreed to halt their explorations seventeen degrees
east of the Moluccas. This, however, did not prevent them, later in the
century, from sailing to the Philippines and founding Manila in 1570.
The Portuguese voyages to-the Spice Islands brought the question
of Java to the fore. The normal route from Malacca followed the
southern coast of Borneo, crossed the Java Sea to Gresik near Surabaya, and proceeded thence via the south of Celebes to the Moluccas.
The hostility of the Java Muslims made this way unsafe. Hence an
attempt was made to establish connections with the Hindu states, and
in 1522 a ship was sent to Sunda Kalapa, later to become the Dutch
port of Batavia. The Hindu raja granted facilities for building a fort.

222

THE EARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN. EXPANSION

PT. II

but when the Portuguese returned in 1527 they found that the town
had been conquered by the Muslim state of Bantam and renamed
Jacatra.
'
The rapid spread of Islam constituted a serious setback to their
plans. The Bandanese and Amboinese maintained close connections
with the Muslim sultans of Java. The Portuguese failed to obtain
permission to build forts on the Banda Islands or to monopolize the
nutmeg trade. Amboina was less difficult, and for their supply of
nutmeg they had to rely upon cultivating friendly relations with its
chiefs. By 1535 the whole of the north coast of Java had become
Muslim; only in the extreme east of the island did Hinduism* hold
out. Under the circumstances, therefore, it was decided to make a
great effort to convert the non-Muslim peoples so as to prevent the
further spread of Islam. Where Islam had already penetrated.
Catholic missions had no hope of success.
Missionary enterprise was first directed to those parts of East Java
which had not yet embraced the faith of the Prophet. But it came just
too late, for except in the extreme east, in which they had no interest,
Hindu rule was already tottering before Muslim penetration. Parts of
Amboina had not yet accepted Islam, and the Catholic missionaries
gained a foothold there, as also in the northern part of Halmahera.
The Portuguese ally, the Sultan of Ternate, was, however, the enemy
of Christianity, and for commercial reasons they dared not support
the missionaries against him.
Moreover, in the Moluccas they had gained a bad reputation for
rapacity. Only one Portuguese governor, Antonio Galvao (1536-40),
behaved in such a way as to gain the respect and regard of the native
peoples. The saintly Jesuit St. Francis Xavier, who arrived in Amboina in 1546, wrote that the knowledge of the Portuguese in the
Moluccas was restricted to the conjugation of the verb rapio, in which
they showed ' an amazing capacity for inventing new tenses and participles'.' Amboina and its neighbouring islands were thought to be
ripe for Christianity, and as they were independent of both Ternate
and Tidore, and the Portuguese needed a second base in the Spice
Islands, the decision was taken to concentrate upon their conversionT
St. Francis, who spent a year and a half in the 'Islands of Divine'
Hope', as he called the Moluccas, found the Christian communities
too ignorant and the population too barbarous for his liking. After a
tour of all the places where Christian communities existed he decided
^ The word is used relatively. T h e existing religion was mainly a mixture of ancestor
worship and other traditional cults. It had a H i n d u ^ u d d h i s t fajade.

CH. 12

THE PORTUGUESE AND SPANIARDS IN SOUTH-EAST ASIA

223

that h^ jcould do better work in China and returned to Malacca.

In practice the fortunes of Christianity depended almost entirely
upon the military strength of the Portuguese. Most of their converts
fell away when threatened by the Muslims. Sultan Hairun of Ternate
became their determined enemy, and he was powerful enough to defy
them. He attacked the Christian communities, and by 1565 had
practically ruined the whole mission. Goa then sent a fleet to restore
the situation, a fortress was built on Amboina, and Christianity began
to revive. But not for long, for the Portuguese quarrelled with Hairun,
who accused them of depriving him of his legal share of the spice profits.
Then, to make matters worse, they made a solemn agreement with him
and immediately afterwards treacherously murdered him (1570)..
The result was disastrous. Ternate rose in revolt, led by its new
sultan Baabullah. For nearly five years the Portuguese fortress on the
island was besieged. Neither Goa nor Malacca could send help, and
when in 1574 the fortress fell the Christian communities were doomed.
Amboina, however, was saved by Vasconcellos, its governor, who
rallied the native Christians there and built a new fort. The hostility
of Baabullah drove the Portuguese to turn to Tidore, where in 1578
they were permitted to build a fort. No sooner were they installed
there than Francis Drake appeared at Ternate, and the vengeful
Baabullah offered him a treaty and a lading of spice. His return home
from his voyage of circumnavigatioii (1577-80) aroused English
interest in the possibility of voyages direct to the Spice Islands, and
in 1586 Cavendish crossed the Archipelago from north to south
through the Straits of Macassar and Bali,
The extension of Portuguese commercial activity in South-East
Asia, notwithstanding the Constant threats to their position at Malacca
and in the Moluccas, was indeed remarkable. After 1545 they managed to obidin a share in the trade of Bantam, which had become the
chief pepper port for the supply of both India and China, and through
which it has been estimated that 31 million pounds of pepper passed
annually. To avoid the ^southern passage to the Moluccas via East
Java they made treaties with the Sultan of Brunei which enabled them
to use a northern one through the Sulu Archipelago and the Celebes
Sea. It was through their application of the name of his kingdom to
the whole of the island that its corrupt form 'Borneo' came into
general use. By both routes they touched at the island of Celebes, but
never realized the different parts were those of a single island and not
a group of separate ones; hence the name by which they knew them
'the Celebes'.

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THE EARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

PT. II

In their relations with the more powerful kingdoms of the IndoChinese mainland the Portuguese had to be content to play a humbler
role than at Malacca and in the Spice Islands. Many of them served as
mercenaries in the armies of the various mqnarchs and often proved
a source of, embarrassment to their employers. Under commercial
treaties withSiam they were permitted to trade at Ayut'ia the capital,
at Mergui and Tenasserim in the Bay of Bengal, and at Patani and
Nakon Srit'ammarat on the eastern coast of the Malay Peninsula.
Both Ayut'ia and Patani did a considerable Chinese trade, and the
Portuguese factories at both places flourished. The Siamese ports
were also useful as places where Portuguese ships bound for China
could shelter during the north-east monsoon, when the China Sea
was difficult to navigate. They remained well established there until
ousted by the Dutch in about 1630. Their missionaries and traders
settled also in Cambodia, and it would appear that a Portuguese friar
was in 1570 the first European to see the Great Lake and the ruins of
Angkor.
In Burma and Arakan Portuguese mercenaries and adventurers
were more in evidence than missionaries and traders. Diogo Soarez
de Mello played an important part in the wars of Tabinshwehti and
Bayinnaung and helped the latter to gain his crown in 1551. In Siam
the Portuguese never attempted.to gain territorial possessions; the
king was too powerful. So it was in Burma until the end of the
sixteenth century. But in 1599, when Pegu was captured and its
booty shared between a rebellious prince of Toungoo and the King of
Arakan, and the country laid waste by Siamese invaders, Philip de
Brito, a feringi leader in the service of Arakan, seized its chief port,
Syriam, and tried to gain the mastery over Lower Burma. But after
an adventurous career of fourteen years he fell before the revived
power of the house of Bayinnaung. .
At almost the same time another/m^z leader, Gonsalves Tibao of
Diangaj made himself 'king' of the island of Sandwip, lying below
the eastern arm of the Ganges delta, and maintained, himself there
from 1609 to 1617. In 1615 with the help of Goa he"even attacked
Mrohaung, the capital of Arakan, but^ was driven off. From the
middle of the sixteenth century Portuguese freebooters settled in"
large numbers at Dianga, close by Chittagohg, then in the dominions
of Arakan. They made the place a notorious centre of piracy, vvhence
they sailed up the creeks of the Sunderbunds to bring back thousands
of slaves, whom they sold to the King of Arakan. Their forays went ,
on until 1666, when the Mughal Viceroy of Bengal, Shayista Khan,

QH. 12

THE PORTUGUESE AND SPANIARDS IN SOUTH-EAST ASIA

. .

-I

22?

wiped out their pirate nest and annexed The Chittagong district to
the empire of Aurungzeb.
The decline of Portuguese power in the East set in early, though in
South-East Asia, through their tenacious hold on Malacca, there were
few signs o^it before the appearance of the' English and the Dutch as
competitors for the control of the spice trade. The Portuguese have
been described by Sir Hugh Clifford as swarming into Asia in a spirit
of open brigandage.^ Against the Muslim peoples their crusading zeal
stimulated rather than restrained their cruel and capricious behaviour.
Even their own historians were ashamed at their crimes in the
Moluccas, where the natives were driven into resistance by the injustice
of their trading methods. And although priests and monks multiplied
in their dominions, they were ineffectual missionaries because of the
misdeeds of traders and freebooters. That indeed seems to have been
the theme of Mendes Pinto's Peregrinagam, which for all its questionable accuracy of detail gives a remarkably authentic picture of Portu. guese activities in the middle of the sixteenth century. Moreover, the
cost of their military and ecclesiastical establishments was more than
the profits of their commercial enterprise could bear.
'Look at the Portuguese,' wrote Sir Thomas Roe, the English ambassador to the Mughal Court in 1613. ' I n spite of all their fine settlements they are beggared by the maintenance of military forces; and
even their garrisons are only mediocre.' Albuquerque's policy of
erecting forts and establishing domination over native rulers has been
held to have been one of the chief causes of their downfall. They
behaved as conquerors rather than merchants, and when internal disorganization and lack of discipline began to appear, as they did before
thfe, middle of the sixteenth century, general corruption resulted.
There were too many potential de Britos and Tibaos, all anxious to
make their fortunes and get'home while the going was good.
The union of Spain and Portugal, if not the main cause of their
downfall, had serious consequences for the Portuguese, for the enemies
of Spain became their enemies, and in their attacks on them were
aided by native rulers, and peoples who had learnt from bitter experience to detest them. One has also to realize that the Dutch and English
had made so miich progress in developing their sea-power during the
century before they appeared in the East that in sea fights with the
Portuguese they could both sail and fight their ships better than their
opponents. Yet when all has been said regarding the moribund state
of the Portuguese empire at the end of the sixteenth century, the fact
remains that; like Charles II, it took an unconscionable time in dying.
' Further India, London, 1904, p. 48.

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(b) The Spaniards in the Philippines

The Treaty of Saragossa, concluded between Spain and Portugal in
1529, drew a line seventeen degrees east of the Molijccas as the boundary
between the Spanisli and Portuguese spheres of interest. This placed the
island group, discovered by Magellan in 1521,, and named by him San
Lazaro, clearly within the Portuguese sphere, ^pain, however, was
determined to have a share in the spice trade, and with that object sent
a further expedition to the western Pacific in 1542. In February of that
year Ruy Lopez de Villalobos sailed from Mexico with 5 ships and 370
men on a reconnoitring expedition of the archipelago. His expedition
achieved practically nothing, but he it was who n^med the islands the
Philippines in honour of the Emperor Charles V's son Philip, the heir
to the Spanish throne; and in spite of strong Portuguese protests Spain
claimed them. For twenty years she made no attempt to establish her
claim. Then, late in 1564, Miguel Lopez de Legaspi, with a force
hardly any larger than Villalobos's, put out from Mexico to attempt
the permanent occupation of the islands, and in the following April
landed on Cebu and planted the first Spanish settlement there.
Before his death in 1572 he had extended Spanish control over the
islands of Cebu, Leyte, Panay, Mindoro and the fertile central plain
of Luzon". He had crowned this achievement in May 1571 by taking
possession of the town of Manila and making it the capital of the new
dominion he had acquired for King Philip H.
The Spanish occupation of the Philippines was relatively bloodless.
For one thing Philip H was much concerned that the bloody conquests
of Mexico and Peru should not be repeated in the Philippines; for
another, save among the Moros of Mindanao ther^ was nothing of the
nature of a political power to deal with. The only political unit, the
barangay, was a relatively small kinship group; hefice armed resistance
was only on a local scale. Even more important, however, was the fact
that Philip H had named as joint commander with Legaspi an Augustinian friar Andres de Urdaneta, who before takiog orders had commanded a ship in Villalobos's expedition. He and his fellow missionaries,
believing that Spanish dominion over,the peoples of their newlyacquired territories should be guided rathW by x\\C papal injunction to"^
convert them to Christianity than by theV crusading notion of subjugating infidels, showed themselves more effectual than the -military
in the work of conquest, and zealous in protectil^g their flocks from
exploitation by the colonists.
Luckily for the Catholic missionaries, Iskm, \vhich had begun to

CH. 12

THE PORTUGUESE AND SPANIARDS IN SOUTH-EAST ASIA

22?

spread to the southern Philippines during the latter part of the fifteenth
century, had had very little impact upon the central and northern parts
of the archipelago by the time of their arrival, and they found their
task relatively easy. The Filipinos were animists and nature worshippers.
They had no temples or religious buildings, and no organized priesthood, and as the Catholic missionaries were always in short supply,
they had to be content for the most part with outward ritual and
formalism. The old magic and animism remained unshaken; indeed,
the acceptance of Christianity by the ordinary people was not a little
furthered by their belief in the magic property of baptism, and with
the extension of the Church the Spanish clergy incurred the danger of
themselves coming under the influence of the popular superstitions
of their flocks. After the conquest Church and State remained entirely
interdependent, with the State supporting the Church and ecclesiastical advance aiding the consolidation of political control.
In colonizing the Philippines Spain had three clear objectives: to
gain a share in the spice trade, to make contacts with China and Japan
in order to pave the way for their conversion, and to Christianize the
Filipinos themselves. She succeeded only in the third. The Philippines produced no spices, and while the Portuguese dominated the
Moluccas the Spaniards could do nothing there. Indeed, the Portuguese
made two determined attempts, in 1568 and 1570, to drive Legaspi
out of the Philippines. It was only after the union of the crowns of
Spain and Portugal in 1580, when the Portuguese hold on the Moluccas
was threatened by the hostility of the Sultan of Ternate and the
appearance of Francis Drake there, that Spanish intervention began.
In 1582 the first of a series of expeditionsnearly all fruitlesswas
launched by Manila against the sultan. It failed through disease. In
1585 a much larger one consisting of twenty-four ships led by Juan
Morones came no. nearer success, although reinforced by the Portuguese from Tidore. In 1593 Governor Dasmarinas sent a powerful
expedition of 100 vessels against Ternate, but off Surphur Point,
Batangas in South Luzon its Chinese rowers mutinied and massacred
the Spaniards. In 1603 in response to an appeal from the Portuguese
Governor of the Moluccas because of the arrival of the Dutch upon the
scene Juan de Gallinato was sent to co-operate with admiral Hurtado
de Mendoza against Ternate. Dutch help to the Ternateans, however,
enabled them to repulse the attack. Two years later with Dutch help
Sultan Zaide of Ternate expelled the Portuguese from their fort on his
island and also from Tidore. This brought an immediate riposte from
Manila, and in the following year Governor Acuna himself led an

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expedition, which defeated Zaide and his Dutch allies and left a strong
Spanish-Filipino garrison in Ternate. But Dutch pressure was steadily
mounting, and the truce of 1609 with Spain'brought no relaxation to
the struggle in the eastern seas. And the Dutch were now no longer
con(5iined merely with the elimination of Hispano-Portuguese power in
the pepper and spice producing areas of Malaysia, but were going all
out for the conquest of the Philippines.
The conversion of China and Japan to Christianity was in any case
a chimera. In Japan, where Spanish missionaries operated for a time,
the intense friction which developed between them and the Portuguese,
especially when the Spanish Franciscans set out to break the religious
monopoly of the Jesuits, led to the expulsion of both nations between
1614 and 1624. The Shogun leyasu, anxious to make Yedo a great
commercial centre, granted the Spaniards free trade, and sent an
embassy to Manila to ask for mining instructors. But the attempts of
the Catholic missionaries to evade the expulsion order of 1614 led to
a severe persecution, and in 1624, when Manila sent an envoy, the
Shogun lemitsu (1623-51) refused' him audience and ordered all
Spaniards to leave the country.
With neither spices nor gold and silver, trade with China and Japan
was essential to make the Philippine colony even pay its way. When
Portuguese hostilityall the stronger after the union of the crowns in
1580barred Spanish traders from eastern Asia, the authorities at
Manila pursued the policy of attracting Asian traders to their city.
In this they were successful: Manila became the resort of traders from
China, Japan, Siam, Cambodia and the Spice Islands. Before the end
of the sixteenth century the China trade was prospering. Spanish
galleons from the Mexican port of Acapulco brought to Manila cargoes
of silver dollars and bullion with which to purchase Chinese silks,
velvets, porcelain, bronzes and jade, and the Mexican dollar went in
such quantities to the Chinese commercial ports of Canton, Amoy and
Ningpo', that it became the medium of exchange*in the international
trade of the Far East.
The Manila galleon became the economic life-line of the colony.
It enabled Manila, with its excellent harbour close to the 'rice baskeT'
of central Luzon, to maintain its position as the metropolis of the
archipelago. There was considerable Chinese immigration. They
occupied a separate quarter at Manila, where they were useful not only
for their contribution to the colonial economy, but also as the scapegoats
for the economic hardships that from time to time aroused discontent
with Spanish rule. Anti-Chinese riots, which in 1603, 1639, 1662 and

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THE PORTUGUESE AND SPANIARDS IN SOUTH-EAST ASIA

229

1782 led to frightful massacres, served as a safety-valve for Filipino

resentment. Mutual hostility was the normal state of affairs between
the Spaniards and the Chinese. The colonial government produced
an annual deficit which had to be made up with silver bullion from the
treasury of Mexico, and most of this subvention found its way into
Chinese hands. Nevertheless, the overriding fact of the interdependence
of the two peoples normally prevented bloodshed. Moreover, massacres
of Chinese had extremely serious effects upon the trade of Manila, and
as most of the agriculture in the islands remained primitive, and the
Spaniards took no steps to discover the economic resources of their
colony, the Chinese were indispensable. The drain on the Mexican
treasury, and the fears of mercantile interests in Spain lest their
monopolies in Mexico and Peru be threatened by the import of Chinese
textiles, led'from time to time to proposals to abandon the Philippines.
But the opposition of the missionaries, -who argued that the islands
would relapse into paganism or be taken over by the Protestant Dutch,
always carried the day.
In taking over the rapidly-conquered areas of his island-empire
Legaspi divided up the population into encomiendas under the control
of Spanish; colonists. The object was to steer a middle cou'rse between
safeguarding native rights and ensuring the profits of the colonists.
The encomendero had the right to collect tribute from the five hundred
to a thousand Filipinos on his estate. In return he was pledged to rule
and protect his people and ensure their conversion to Christianity.
The tribute could take the form of labour services, and here abuses
soon showed themselves, for the subsistence type of Philippine agriculture was quite inadequate to meet the demands of Spanish rule.
The missionaries headed by Domingo de Salazar, first Bishop of Manila,
whose authority was almost equal to that of the Governor, thundered
against the illegal exactions by the encomenderos. In 1595 the Audiencia
began to take the matter in hand by laying down a standard computation
of payments, the tasacion; later it adopted the plan of gradually liquidating private encomiendas.
The most powerful factor in lightening the pressure upon the Filipinos was the improvement in the production of rice. But not for
long, for early in the seventeenth century the gathering strength of the
Dutch in the Malay archipelago threatened the Spanish hold on the
Philippines. The Spaniards, as we have seen, used the Philippines as
a base for an offensive against the Spice Islands, which the Dutch
foiled. They in their turn tried to wrest the Philippines from Spain:
they wanted Manila as an emporium of spices and silks. But though

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the Spaniards lost the ' war of cloves' they managed to hold on to the
Philippines until the Treaty of Munster (1648) removed the threat of
Dutch conquest. The struggle, however, severely strained the Philippine economy, and it was naturally the labourer who suffered most.
Two methods of exploitation, introduced through stress of war, hit
him hard. Under the polo system all except chieftains and their eldest
sons had to serve in the labour pool. This was hard enough, but working
conditions were appalling, wages were rarely paid, and only the rice
supplied monthly by the village treasuries kept the labourer alive.
Even worse was the vandala, the compulsory sale of products to the
government in return for token payments or promissory notes. Starvation and disease took so heavy a toll in lives that the population under
Spanish control declined appreciably. When peace returned, however,
the pressure on the Filipino was relaxed, and the population curve
began to move upwards.
In taking over the islands the Spaniards left the existing system of
food production unchanged and made few alterations in the indigenous
labour systems. An increased food supply was of course necessary,
but the measures taken to ensure it brought no fundamental changes,
though they involved forcing the Filipinos to grow a surplus. A fair
price for their produce would have easily overcome this difficulty.
The Spaniards did, however, introduce important changes in the land
system, which were responsible for the growth of landlordism on a
large scale, that was to become so prominent a feature of Filipino
society in the nineteenth century. In the first place they introduced
the notion of ownership: the chieftains assumed the ownership of the
barangay lands which their dependents cultivated. Previously all
landowning had been communal in character with the title vested in the.
barangay. In the second place under Spanish law all lands owned
neither communally nor privately belonged to the royal domain, and
could be assigned to Filipino chieftains as real estate. Little is known
of the early history of these forms of landowningsthe subject awaits
the researcherbut certain facts can be stated: (a) the religious orders
acquired their estates by purchasing lands, once communally owned,
from local chieftains; {b) the ecclesiastical estates became the largest
item of the Spanish-owned latifundia, but represented only'a small"
fraction of the total land under cultivation, and [c) the bulk of all
cultivated lands remained in the possession of the Filipinos. There were
very few individual Spanish landlords: the exploitation of the Filipinos
was exercised by their own chieftains and by the clergy, against whom,
there was no effective protection.

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231

Spain treated the Filipinos as a segregated community with its .own

laws and magistrates. On to this were grafted Spanish political institutions transplanted from Mexico. The barangay became the basic unit
of local government under a cabeza (head) with the privileges of a
hidalgo. For some two centuries the office was hereditary, but a law
passed in 1786 introduced the elective" principle. The cabeza was
responsible for the collection of taxes, and had duties in connection
with the polo and vandala which were a source of graft and power to
him. Higher up in the scale the ^ue^/o (township) with its parish church
and outlying clusters of population {vistas or barrios) was a principal
settlement under a gobernadorcillo. It was an extensive territorial unit.
The gobernadorcillo was appointed annually by a process of democratic
nomination with Spanish officialdom having the final voice. The
'little governor', usually dubbed capitan, was assisted by a number of
officials, and these and the cahezas formed a local oligarchy with considerable power. It has been estimated that the power wielded by these
'bosses' in the field of local government'caciquism'proved the
major obstacle to democratic growth' in modern times. An important
institution, already referred to, was the community treasury {caja de
comunidad)i supervised by treasury officials and under the judicial protection of the Audiencia. Every Filipino, when paying his tribute, deposited
half a bushel of rice in the treasury. The object was to build up a
surplus against famine, but lavish expenditure upon local fiestas prevented the accumulation of a substantial surplus. A few large pueblos
were organized as cities with a government similar to^ that of cities in
Spain and Spanish America. By the end of the seventeenth century
six of these had been created, with Manila at their head.
The biggest unit of internal administration was the province (alcaldia).
Confined at first to the pacified regions of Luzon and the Visayas,
the provinces numbered fifteen by the end of the sixteenth century.
Each was under an alcalde-mayor appointed by, and responsible to, the
governor-general. The salary was very low, but the alcalde-mayor was
permitted the privilege of personal trade, a source of scandalous corruption which made his office highly lucrative. The unpacified regions
throughout the archipelago were divided into districts called corregimientos under politico-military officers (corregidores).
At the head of the central government in the Philippines was the
governor and captain-general, who was appointed and removed from
office by the king. Not only did he exercise great powers in the executive, military, judicial and religious fields as the king's representative,
but because of the great distance of the Philippines from Spain he

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conducted the foreign relations of the colony with Asian rulers, receiving
embassies, concluding treaties, declaring war and making peace. His
powers, however, were subject to various checks. In the first place
there was the Royal Audiencia, first created jn 1583, a supreme court
of almost omnicompetence, through which much of his power had to
be exercised. In cases of vacancy due to death, or absence the Audiencia
exercised the gubernatorial powers; its special task was to protect the
Filipino from abuse of official powers. In, the second place each
governor, upon relinquishing office, had his acts examined by a court
{residentia) presided over by his successor. It was possible also for the
king to appoint a special investigator (visitador) to look into colonial
affairs. But internally the biggest check upon the governor's powers
was exercised by the Church, whose priests and friars learned the indigenous languages and developed a closer association with the Filipinos
than anyone else, and were able to make complaints either directly to
the king or through the powerful religious orders to which many of
them belonged.
The system of justice was based''upon the recognition of Filipino
customary law where it did not violate Spanish Catholic morality. In
cases not covered by customary law Hispano-Roman law was applied.
The gohernadorcillo could try petty civil cases. The alcalde-mayor
heard appeals from these and exercised a wide criminal and civil jurisdiction. The Audiencia heard appeals from his Court. In theory the
Council of the Indies in Spain was the highest court of appeal, but! cases
from the Philippines were seldom referred to it. The clergy, it is
interesting to note, opposed and criticized the application of Spanish
legal procedure to the Filipinos, fearing that the spread of Roman ideas
of law would reduce their own influence.
The Spanish arrival in the Philippines was only just in time to halt
the advance of Islam into the centre and north of the archipelago.
Islam had, however, taken a firm hold upon Mindanao, Sulu and the
other islands of the south, and when the Spaniards attempted to
conquer them for the Cross they stirred up such fierce resistance that
not only did t h e ' Moros' maintain their independence, but their counterattacks upon Christian communities and Spanish-held territory inflicted frightful bloodshed and damage. It was not only a matter- of the"
Cross and the Crescent, though that was how the Spaniards saw it, but
a struggle for independence by a people just as brave and adventurous
as the Spaniards themselves, and with long traditions of sea-roving.
The preliminary skirmishes began during Legaspi's regime. Then in
1578 the Spaniards made their first serious invasion of Moro territory.

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233

They captured the city of Jolo^ in the Sulu archipelago but failed to
hold it in face of the deadly hatred of the population. In 1596 Captain
Esteban Rodriguez de Figueroa led an expedition to Mindanao in an
effort to plant a colony there. It failed miserably; worse still, it provoked a, whole series of appalling raids upon towns and villages in Luzon
and the Visayas. The Visayas suffered horribly and the Jesuit missions
on Leyte, Samar, Cebu and Bohol were heavily damaged. The Spanish
efforts to defend their exposed southern territories from bases at Iloilo
and Cebu proved inadequate, and all their punitive expeditions failed.
Moreover, when the Dutch appeared upon the scene they found
useful allies among the Moros. Hence, after insistent appeals from the
Jesuit missionaries, it was decided to establish a military base upon the
Mindanao coast. Accordingly in 1635 Zamboanga was seized, and
under the expert direction of the Jesuit missionary-engineer Father
Melchor de Vera a powerful fortress was erected, which restrained
Moro depredations and enabled the Spaniards to take the offensive
against the Moro bases at Jolo and on Lake Lanao in northern Mindanao.
Neither side, however, could win an outright victory, and when the
Chinese leader Koxinga, having ousted the Dutch from Formosa in
1661, went on to threaten Manila in the following year, Zamboanga
was evacuated by the Spaniards and their hopes of conquering the
Moros were abandoned for the time being. The Moros too had gained
little from their alliance with the Dutch, so tenacious had been Spanish
resistance to their attacks. Thus by the middle of the seventeenth
century a position of stalemate had been reached.
(c) Spanish intervention in Cambodia
Cambodia, a minor political power in the sixteenth century, away
from the great maritime highways and with little to offer of commercial
value in the eyes of the European trader, was somewhat late in attracting
Western notice compared with other parts of South-East Asia. The
Portuguese Dominican Caspar da Cruz, the first Christian missionary
known to have worked there, was at Lovek in 1555, but stayed only a
short time because of the opposition of the Buddhist clergy. Two more
Portuguese Dominicans, Lopo Cardoso and Joao Madeira, arrived there
in 1583 or 1584,^ but met with the same reception as their predecessor.
King Satha, however, for commercial reasons was anxious for contacts
with Malacca. Hence, although they and others who arrived in 1584
^ The Spanish rendering of the word ' Sulu'.
' 1570 has been the usually accepted date. For C. R. Boxer's note on its inadmissibility see Groslier, Angkor et. le Cambodge au XVI' Steele, pp. 29-30.

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soon left, a few stayed on, relyingOTIthe king's favour. One of these,
the Dominican Sylvestre d'Azevedo, who learnt the Khmer language,
was in charge of a small Christian comrhiinity of Chams, Malays,
Japanese and some Portuguese merchants at the capital.
At about the same time Portuguese and Spanish soldiers of fortune
began to arrive in the country. Under the leadership of the Portuguese
Diogo Veloso, whom, according to the Cambodian Chronicle, Sattha
'adopted' as his 'son', they formed a pretorian guard, and the king
was induced to write to Malacca inviting missionaries to come to his
kingdom. His real object by so doing was to obtain Portuguese help
in his struggle against Pra Naret of Siam, but in this he was unsuccessful : Malacca could spare neither men nor money. Hf turned therefore
to the Philippines where Manila, since the union of the crowns of Spain
and Portugal in 1580, had become in theory the centre of power in the
Far EastFar West in Spanish eyesin place of Malacca.
The Spaniards were looking for an opportunity to intervene on the
mainland. Hence in 1593 two Spanish adventurers, Bias Ruiz de
Hernan Gonzales and Gregorio Vargas Machuca, left Manila for Cambodia, and after extraordinary adventures on the way arrived at Sattha's
court shortly before the great Siamese attack on Lovek was launched. ^
The king at once sent Veloso and Vargas to the Spanish governor
of the Philippines, Gomez Perez Dasmarinas, bearing a royal letter
inscribed on gold leaf asking for help against Siam and offering in return
freedom for missionaries and a number of commercial privileges.
Manila sent a non-committal reply by Veloso; but when he arrived with
it he found the Cambodian capital in Siamese hands. He himself was
taken prisoner and with a number of missionaries and other Europeans
was deported to Ayut'ia.
There Velloso found King Naresuen anxious to conciliate the
Spaniards, for his situation was far from easy, with Cambodia to hold
down on the one side and Burma to deal with on the other. Thus it
came about that he was soon on his way back to "Manila as interpreter
to a Siamese mission accredited to the Spanish governor. He arrived
there in June 1595 to be reunited with his former associates Vargas
and Bias Ruiz, the latter of whom had been captured by the Siamese^t
Lovek, but had managed to escape by seizing the junk on which he and"others of his compatriots were being taken to Siam, landing the
Siamese crew and sailing it to Manila. The project now was to obtain
aid for King Satha, of whose flight to Laos no news had reached
' T h e latest, and most complete, version of the story is by Bernard P. Groslier in 0/).'
cit., chap, ii, pp. 27-62.
_ _

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Manila. The ecclesiastics were all for intervention; they overcame the
opposition of the acting-governor, Don Luiz Dasmarinas, the son of
Governor Gomez Perez Dasmarinas, who had been murdered while
leading ap expedition bound for the Moluccas, and in August 1595
Velos.o and Vargas, styling themselves Satha's ambassadors, signed
capitulations with the Manila goverament providing for the establishment of Spanish suzerainty over Cambodia and of a Spanish garrison
there, and the conversion of the king and queen to Christianity.
There followed one of those highly romantic episodes in the story
of European activities in the East of which this particular period
provides such amazing examples. One has only to think of the exploits
of 'king' Gonsalves Tibao of Sandwip and Philip de Brito at Syriam.
In January 1596 an expeditionary force consisting of a frigate and two
junks bearing 120 soldiers under the command of General Juan Xuares
Gallinato and a number of Dominican friars left Manila bound for
Cambodia. A storm dispersed it and the only vessel to reach its destination was one of the junks commanded by Bias Ruiz. The other,
with Veloso in command, was stranded south of the Mekong delta, but
her people were able to make their way on foot to Phnom Penh. Galliriato's frigate was blown far down into the Singapore straits and it
was not until the following May that he was able to reach Cambodia.
Meanwhile Bias Ruiz and Veloso on arrival at Phnom Penh had
found that King Satha had disappeared from the scene, the Cambodians
had driven the Siamese garrison out of Lovek, and the royal power had
been seized by a usurper, Chung Prei, whose headquarters were at
Srev Santhot. He was supported by an army of Chams and Malays,
which Satha had recruited for the defence of Lovek against the Siamese,
but which had arrived only after the city's fall. Chung Prei ordered the
Spaniards to remain in the foreign quarter at Phnom Penh. There
trouble flared up between them and the Chinese, and on 12 April the
Spaniards ran amuk in the Chinese quarter and pillaged their junks in
the harbour. Chung Prei ordered them to make restitution, but was
unable to enforce his order because at the time his army was away
from the capital. Several weeks of negotiations then ensued until
suddenly, on the night of the 11-12 May or the next one, the Cambodians, who sympathized with the Chinese, rose against the Spaniards.
In the fighting which followed Veloso and Bias Ruiz attacked the
palace at Srei Santhor, killed Chung Prei and one of his sons, blew
up the magazine, set the fortifications ablaze, and finally regained their
ships. On the day after this bloody affray Gallinato unexpectedly
arrived on the scene. The court was in a state of complete panic, and

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according to some accounts a section of the magnates offered him the

crown. He decided, however, that the whole project must be abandoned
and the expeditionary force must return to 'Manila. Accordingly he
restored the goods seized from the Chinese, promised reparation for the
misdeeds of the Spaniards at Srei Santhor, and early in July sailed
homewards.
This, however, was far from the end of the affair. On the homeward
voyage Veloso and Ruiz persuaded Gallinato to drop them off at the
Vietnamese port of Faifo so that they might make their way to the Laos
kingdom in search of King Satha. In October 1596 they arrived at
Vientiane to find that he and his eldest son Chestha were both dead,
but that his second sOn Chau Pnhea Ton and other members of the
royal family were still there. The arrival of the two trouble-makers at
Vientiane was soon reported at Srei Santhor, where a son of Chung
Prei had been placed on the throne by the magnates. The news
caused such alarm that the new king promptly fled and the magnates
thereupon invited the exiled Chau Pnhea Ton to return and assume the
crown. He reached Srei Santhor in May 1597 together with Veloso and
Bias Ruiz and was proclaimed king with the title of Barom Reachea H.
The new ruler was completely^^ under the control of the two adventurers supported by the growing number of Spanish volunteers who
gradually appeared on the scene. But there was disorder throughout
the country; the magnates rebelled; and urgent appeals for help were
sent to both Manila and Malacca. The king himself was persuaded to
write to the heads of the three religious bodies in Malacca, the Franciscans, the Dominicans and the Jesuits, as .well as to Manila and Goa,
offering complete freedom to preach in his kingdom. For a time Veloso
and Bias Ruiz were able to hold down parts of the country, but against
the increasing opposition their position became hazardous in the extreme.
In Manila the enthusiasm of the missionaries rose to fever heat: they
pressed for a holy war. And Don Luiz Dasmarinas, who had handed
over control on the arrival of Don Francisco Tello de Guzman as
governor, offered personally to- finance a new expedition provided he
were guaranteed the governorship of Cambodia in the event of its
annexation by Spain. It was sheer madness: there was not even^a
gambler's chance of success. Nevertheless, in September isgS^a smalf
expedition under the command of Dasmatinas left Manila fon Cambodia. Of his three ships one was totally lost in a storm, one was driven
back to the Philippines, but after refitting managed to make Phnom
Penh in October; his own was wrecked on the China coast and the
survivors eventually reached the Portuguescsettlement of Macao.

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THE PORTUGUESE AND SPANIARDS IN SOUTH-EAST ASIA

237

In Cambodia the royal family and. the magnates were planning to

depose Barom Reachea II in favour of Satha's exiled brother Soryopor;
the deposed son of Chung Prei was canvassing support in the provinces.
Moreover, Siam was becoming worried by the new signs of Spanish
intervention. The forces at the command of Veloso and Bias Ruiz were
totally inadequate to maintain their puppet on his throne; yet in this
desperate situation with sublime self-assurance they were trying to
persuade the king to accept a Spanish protectorate over his kingdom.
It needed only an appropriate incident to trigger off a showdown.
This was provided by the Laksamana of the Malays, who stirred
up an attack upon Luiz Ortez, one of the Spanish leaders, and when
the Spaniards in revenge started to sack the Malay camp, laid siege in
turn to theirs with his Malays and the exasperated "Cambodians. The
Spaniards, overwhelmed by numbers, were massacred almost to a man,
Veloso and Bias Ruiz, who hearing of the trouble rushed to the support
of their compatriots, were also killed. Only a few refugees escaped
by boat.
The massacre took place in about the middle of the year 1599. It
ended all hope of Spanish influence in Cambodia. A few months later
the Laksamana had Barom Reachea II assassinated. The magnates then
raised Pnhea An, a younger brother of Satha and Soryopor, to the
throne as Barom Reachea III. He lasted only a few months (earlylate 1600) before assassinationthis time by an outraged husband
removed him also, but not before.he had got rid of his overmighty
Cham and Malay mercenaries and made a new approach to Manila
through a Spanish soldier who had escaped the massacre. His successor
Chau Pnhea Nhom, a son of Satha, who seized power and held on to it
until the-middle of 1603, welcomed some Dominican missionaries to
Phnom Penh and made discreet- enquiries of the Governor of the
Philippines regarding possible Spanish aid. But the opposition in Cambodia was too great: Spanish ' protection' was too high a price to pay for
the independence of Siam. So in 1603, with the connivance of the royal
family and the magnates, the exiled Prince Soryopor with armed Siamese
support seized the throne from Nhom and became Barom Reachea IV.
With him a new period of Cambodian history begins: Cambodia is a
vassal state of Siam.

CHAPTER

13
I

BURMA AND T H E T'AI K I N G D O M S IN T H E S I X T E E N T H

CENTURY
(a) To 1570
THREE years after the foundation of Ayut'ia in 1350 another T'ai kingdom, later known as the kingdom of Laos or Luang Prabang, was
founded in the upper Mekong valley. It came into existence through
the union of a number of small Laos states under the leadership of a
chief of Muong Swa named Fa Ngum, who had been brought up at
the Court of Angkor and was married to a Khmer princess. T h e origin
of the Laos states on the Mekong is obscure and legendary. The T'ai
seem to have settled there in the second half of the thirteenth century,
and to have been first under the suzerainty of Angkor and later under
that of Sukhot'ai. Through such channels they came into contact with
Indian culture. Under Fa Ngum they were converted to Hinayana
Buddhism. His father-in-law sent him a mission of monks bearing
with them the Pali scriptures and a famous statue of the Buddha,
which had been sent nuich earlier by a King of Ceylon as a present to
Cambodia and was called the Prabang. It was installed at Larig
Chang, Fa Ngum's capital, in a temple specially built for it, and at a
later date the city came to be named after it.
Fa Ngum's military prowess earned him the title of ' the Conqueror'. The kingdom which he acquired and consolidated extended from the borders of the Sibsong Pannas along the valley of
the Mekong down to the northern confines of Cambodia. On the west
it touched the borders of the T'ai states of Chiengmai, Sukhot'ai and
Ayut'ia, while on the east its neighbours were Annam and Champa.
Though sparsely populated, it was one of the largest states in IndoChina. Fa Ngum's reign was one of constant campaigns and aggres-^
sion, and both Annam and Ayut'ia felt the impact of his power. But
to his peace-loving, easygoing subjects his autocratici rule,, and the
exhaustion caused by his wars, became increasingly unpalatable, until
in 1373 his ministers united to drive him into exile, and placed on the
throne his son Oun Hueun, a young man of seventeen.
238

'

CH. 13

BURMA AND THE T ' A I KINGDOMS

239

P'aya Sam Sene-T'ai, as he is known in the official chronicle, earned

his title of ' Lord of 300,000 T'ais' from the census of males which he
carried out in 1376. His reign was a period of consolidation and
administrative development. He was married to a Siamese princess
of Ayut'ia, and in carrying out the organization of his kingdom was
much influenced by Siamese methods. He also built temples and
founded monastic schools for the study of Buddhism. Economically,
Lang Chang was well placed. It had easy communications with both
Annam arid Siam, and it soon became an important centre of trade,
with its gumlac and benzoin much in demand by the Siamese.
Prosperity depended upon the maintainance of good relations with
these two powerful neighbours. In the latter half of the fifteenth
century, however, Lang Chang was nearly brought to ruin through the
hostility of Annam. This was aroused by an incident which occurred
in the reign of Lan-Kham-Deng (1416-28). He had offered assistance
to the Annamites when they were invaded by the Chinese in 1421, but
the force he sent had gone over to the Chinese and had eventually
been driven back into its own country by the exasperated Annamites.
During the subsequent period they were too deeply involved in their
final struggle with Champa to take their revenge. But as soon as Le
Than Ton had completed the (eduction of Champa in 1471, he began
to prepare to attack Lang Chang. In 1478 he delivered his blow,
storming the city of Lang Chang itself and driving its king, P'aya Sai
Tiakap'at (1438-79), into exile. His success, however, was shortlived.
A son of the fugitive king, T'ene Kham, rallied the Laos forces and
drove out the Annamites. He then succeeded to the throne and set
himself to re-establish his country's prosperity by cultivating better
relations with her eastern neighbour.
The struggle with Annam was followed by a long period of peace
during which, as a result of the development of closer commercial
relations with the Menam valley cities, the kingdom prospered. King
P'ot'isarat (1520-47), the builder of "Wat Visoun, was a devoted
Buddhist who strove to stamp out the popular animism and witchcraft, but failed. He was the first of the Laos kings to take up his
residence at the city of Vien Chang (Vientiane), which, lying much
farther down the Mekong, occupied a central position in his longstrung territories and was better placed than Lang Chang for trade
with Siam ^nd Annam.
The period of comparative calm ended in 1545, when P'ot'isarat
was tempted to intervene in an acute succession dispute in the muchtroubled kingdom of Chiengmai. In 1538 Muang Kesa, the fifteenth

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THE EARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

PT. II

king since the foundation of the state, had been deposed by his son
T'ai Sai Kham. The latter's cruehy and misgovernment, however, led
to his assassination in 1543, and with him the direct male line became
extinct. P'ot'isarat thereupon claimed the throne through his mother,
a Chiengmai princess, and sent a strong force which rapidly defeated
the various rival claimants who had come upon the scene, and caused
a deputation to be sent to him with an offer of the crown. He accepted
it for his son Sett'at'irat, a boy of twelve. Pending the boy's arrival
the notables of the kingdom met and appointed a princess, Maha
Tewi, as regent.
The news of Sett'at'irat's accession to the throne of Chiengmai
brought a Siamese army on the scene, led by King P'rajai himself.
Apparently his excuse for intervention was the punishment of Muang
Kesa's murderer. But as this had already been carried out before his
arrival, and Siam's real aims were well known, and likely to be stoutly
resisted, he was persuaded by Princess Maha Tewi, a woman of
immense ability in the exercise of statecraft, to return home. In 1547
King P'ot'isarat was killed in a hunting accident, and Sett'at'irat had
to return to Lang Chang in order to deal with an attempt by his
younger brothers to partition the kingdom. As soon as his back was
turned another crop of pretenders arose to dispute the Chiengmai
succession, and once again King P'rajai invaded the kingdom. This
time Princess Maha Tewi resisted. The Siamese were repulsed before
the walls of Chiengmai. While retreating they were defeated in a series
of engagements by the pursuing Laos army and completely routed.
The story of the campaign is graphically told by Fernao Mendes
Pinto, who of course claims to have accompanied the expedition. He
tells us also that on arrival home King P'rajai was poisoned by T'ao
Sri Suda Chan, one of his four senior non-royal consorts. She was
pregnant by a lover, whom she had taken during the king's absence
on campaign. Her own son, a boy of nine, succeeded his father as
king, but she soon had him put out of the way.^ Then after a bloodbath of her opponents she placed her lover on the throne.~Two months
later they were both assassinated at a royal banquet.
Pinto cannot have accompanied P'rajai's army, since he represents
the campaign as a victorious one against an invading force from' Chieh-~
gmai. His account seems to be a hotch-potch of stories picked up
probably from Portuguese soldiers-of-fortune who had served in the
Siamese army. His story of T'ao Sri Suda Chan's coup d'etat is
nearer the mark, though the Siamese version accepted by Wood^
* History of Siam, p. 1.11.

CH. 13

BURMA AND THE T ' A I KINGDOMS

24I

represents the assassination of her and her lover as taking place while
they were in the royal barge on their way to an elephant hunt. Pinto's
dates do not -fit in with what is known of the story. But in any case
the Siamese records for this period are so conflicting and obscure that
it is almost impossible to check his details.
The leaders in the assassination plot placed Prince T'ien, a younger
brother of P'rajai, on the throne with the title of Maha Chakrap'at.
Wood assigns this event to the year 1549,* but there is good reason
for placing it a year earlier, feince that would accord with the date
ascribed by the Burmese chronicles^ to Tabinshwehti's invasion of
Siam, which took place towards the end* of the year of Maha Chakrap'at's accession, and the Burmese sources for this period are more
reliable than the Siamese in the matter of dates.
Tabinshwehti (1531-50) of the Toungoo dynasty, whose rise has
been recorded in Chapter 6, c, aimed at reuniting the whole of Burma
under one ruler. His first step, for which his father had been in the
midst of preparations when he died, was to conquer the richer and
more urbane kingdom of Pegu. Such was the chaos in the Ava kingdom after the conquest of its capital by the Shans in 1527 that he took
the risk of leaving his rear undefended while he concentrated upon
his southern objectives. His first campaign in 1535 gave him possession
of the Irrawaddy delta and its chief town Bassein. Pegu, however,
was strongly defended, and only fell by stratagem in 1539 after four
years' resistance. The Mon king, Takayutpi, fled northwards to
Prome, where Tabinshwehti's attack was foiled by reinforcements sent
down from Ava by its Shan ruler.
But Takayutpi died, and many of the Mon chiefs offered their
allegiance to the Burmese king, seeing in him the only leader capable
of giving their land settled government. Moreover, he wisely showed
respect for their customs and institutions and accorded Mons equality
of treatment with his Burmese. In 1541, with an army reinforced by
Mon levies and a contingent of Portuguese mercenaries under Joao
Cayeyro, he captured the port of Martaban. It had put up a magnificent resistance, but was finally taken by storm and sacked without
mercy. Pinto, who again claims to have been present, gives a vivid
eye-witness account of the horrible massacre systematically carried
out by the conqueror. Moulmein, cowed by the treatment of Martaban, surrendered, and the whole of the Mon kingdom down to the
^ Ibid., p. 112.

' According to Phayre's reading in his History of Burma, p. 100. But see Harvey's
note in his History of Burma, p. 343.

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THE EARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

FT.-II

Siamese frontier at Tavoy fell into Burmese hands. Then as a thankoffering for victory Tabinshwehti placed new spires on the chief Mon
pagodas. The most renowned of them all, the Shwe Dagon, received
a special offering of ten viss (36.5 lb.) of pure gold.
In the following year Prome was starved into submission after a
five-months siege and treated with the same cruelty as Martaban. Its
capture opened the way to central Burma. But before Tabinshwehti
was in a position to take the offensive he had to meet a powerful
counter-attack launched against Prome by the Shan ruler of Ava in
league with the sawbwas of six of the Shan states. With the help of
his Portuguese gunners he won a decisive victory, which he followed
up by occupying all the country as far as the districts of Minbu and
Myingyan. At Pagan he was crowned with ancient ceremonial. But
he did not go on to attack Ava. He returned southwards and in 1546
staged a second coronation at Pegu, using both Burmese and Mon rites.
Neither Toungoo nor Pagan was to be his capital, but Pegu with
its historic Mon associations. The-explanation, so often given, that
he was pro-Mon in his sympathies ,is inadequate. It is true that he
did everything possible to conciliate the Mons, even to adopting their
hair-style. But a pro-Mon king would hardly have permitted the
atrocities perpetrated at Martaban and Prome. His real reason seems
to have been that he planned to attack Ayut'ia and needed the Mon
country as a base. He sought to become a Chakravartin, the world
conqueror of the Buddhist white elephant myth. The King of Siam
possessed a number of these precious animals^ and he was determined
to have them.
Actually, however, his first great enterprise after his coronation was
an invasion of Arakan. This move does not seem to have formed part
of any over-all plan but to have been purely opportunist. A discontented Arakanese prince appeared at his Court and offered to become
his vassal if he would place him on the throne at Mrohaung; But the
city's fortifications were too powerful for him, and he was glad of an
excuse to abandon the expedition. The excuse was the news of a
Siamese raid on the Tavoy region. Wood, however, rightly points out
that the violent revolutions that had been taking place at the Court ofAyut'ia led him to believe that the moment was ripe for an invasion. His preparations were on a great scale, and the force he led into Siam
when the campaigning season began with the end of the wet monsoon
of 1548 was indeed formidable. Nevertheless it failed to break through
the defences of Ayut'ia, and on returning homewards nearly came to
grief before the incessant attacks of the Siamese.

CH. 13

BURMA AND THE T AI KINGDOMS

243

After two major reverses Tabinshwehti, though only thirty-six years

old, completely lost his morale. He became a debauchee and left the
conduct of affairs to others. The Mens, who had borne the brunt of
his wars, rose in revolt under Smim Htaw, a minor prince of the old
dynasty. While Tabinshwehti's brother-in-law and alter ego Bayinnaung was absent dealing with this rebellion another member of the
Mon royal family, Smim Sawhtut, procured the king's murder (1550).
Pegu opened its gates to him with joy. For the moment Tabinshwehti's kingdom was in hopeless chaos. A Mon leader ruled as king
in Pegu. Another was gathering strength at Martaban. And the
Burmese chiefs of Toungoo and Prome refused to recognize the
authority of Bayinnaung, who aimed at succeeding the murdered
king.
First of all, however, Smim Htaw marched on Pegu and eliminated
his rival Smim Sawhtut. Then Bayinnaung seized Toungoo and was
crowned king. His next move was to gain control over central Burma
as far northwards as Pagan. He considered the feasibility of an attack
on Ava, but decided to reconquer the Mon kingdom first. In 1551,
with a mixed force of Burmese and Mons, and a Portuguese detachment led by Diogo Soarez de Mello, he defeated Smim Htaw in a
battle fought outside the walls of Pegu. Mon resistance thereupon
collapsed everywhere. Smim Htaw himself was hunted through the
delta, managed to escape in an open boat to Martaban, but was finally
caught in the hills around Sittaung and cruelly done to death. His
gallant struggle caught the popular imagination, and many local
traditions of him still survive.
Bayinnaung was crowned at Pegu with the grandest ceremonial.
He began to build a magnificent palace-city for himself and his Court.
His next military enterprise, the subjugation of northern Burma and
the Shan states, >vas on a far more ambitious scale than the two campaigns whereby he,-had restored the kingdom created by Tabinshwehti. In 1553 he sent an army of observation up the Irrawaddy, but
its advance caused the Shan chiefs to set aside their mutual quarrels
and unite against the threatened invasion. He therefore raised the
largest force he could possibly muster, and late in 1554 launched a
two-pronged attack against Ava from Toungoo and Pagan respectively.
In March 1555 the city fell, and he then pushed his conquests to
Bangyi in Monyua district and Myedu in Shwebo district, beyond
which in those days the authority of the Ava rulers did not extend.
Next he turned on the Shans. In 1556 he subdued Hsipaw and
Mone while on his way to conquer Chiengmai. This state was now

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THE EARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

PT. II

ruled by a Shan prince named Mekut'i, w;ho had been accepted as

their king by the local chieftains when Sett'at'irat, having secured the
throne of Luang Prabang, refused to returii to Chiengmai. Mekut'i
surrendered without resistance, swore allegiance to Bayinnaung, and
agreed to pay an annual tribute of elephants, horses, silk and other
products of his country. This expedition had a profound effect upon
the Shan chiefs on the borderland between Burma and China; all
hastened to pay homage to the new conqueror.
As soon as the Burmese army left Chiengmai, however, forces from
Luang Prabang moved in. In 1558 they defeated Mekut'i and would
have deposed him had not Bayinnaung reappeared on the scene and
driven them out. He then proclaimed the deposition of Sett'at'irat
from the throne of Luang Prabang. Sett'at'irat in reply formed a
large coalition of Shan states and advanced to Chiengsen at the head
of their combined forces. Bayinnaung, however, by occupying the
territories of his allieS;, forced him to retire^ and the confederation
broke up (1559).
In the following year Bayinnaung returned to Pegu, and Sett'at'irat,
taking advantage of the lull, made a formal alliance with Ayut'ia. In
1563, in order to maintain close^ contact with the Siamese and avoid
a surprise attack by the Burmese, he removed his capital to Vien
Chang and strongly fortified the city. He also built there a shrine for.
the famous Emerald Buddha (Pra Keo), which he had carried off from
Chiengmai when he had returned to Luang Prabang after his father's
death. His greatest architectural work in his new capital was the
pyramidal structure known as the That Luong, which is today the
finest example of Laotian architecture, though severely damaged in
1873 by bandits from Yunnan.
Bayinnaung's assumption of suzerainty over the Shan states was a
new departure in Burmese history. It was the inevitable result of the
successful resistance of the Burmese to the Shan attempts to dominate
Burma, which had gone on ever since the fall of Pagan in-1287 and
had brought the ruin of the Ava kingdom. Henceforward there was
to be no longer any question of the Shans recovering control over
Upper Burma; the shoe was now firmly on the other foot.
^
The Burmese champion's control over Chiengmai was-of even"
greater immediate importance, since it vastly facilitated an^attack upon
Ayut'ia. And it was Bayinnaung's dearest ambition to force thie most
powerful of all the T'ai states to submit to his authority. Sett'at'irat's
alliance with King Chakrap'at and Siam's rapid recovery after Tabinshwehti's invasion hastened his decision to strike as soon as possible.

CH. 13

BURMA AND THE T AI KINGDOMS

245

His demand for a couple of white elephants and Chakrap'at's refusal,

much discussed as the cause of the war, must surely be regarded merely
as formalities preceding hostilities, like the solemn throwing down of
the gauntlet in mediaeval Europe.
The invasion began after the close of the wet monsoon of 1563. The
Burmese forces crossed from the Sittang valley to Chiengmai. They
then proceeded by way of Kamp'engp'et and Sukhot'ai to Ayut'ia,
which surrendered in February 1564 after slight resistance. The king
and most of the royal family were carried off to Burma as hostages,
while a son of Chakrap'at was left behind as vassal ruler with a Burmese garrison to control him. As soon as he had settled the new
regime at Ayut'ia, Bayinnaung planned to lead a punitive expedition
against the King of Chiengmai, whose attitude had been unsatisfactory when the Burmese army had passed through his state. News
came, however, of a serious Mon rebellion, and he had to hurry off to
Pegu,, leaving his son, the heir-apparent, to command the force marching against Chiengmai.
On arrival home Bayinnaung found that the rebels, aided by Shan
and Siamese prisoners settled in the neighbourhood, had burnt Pegu
together with his own palacevand even some of the older buildings
dating from Dammazedi's reign. With characteristic energy he
crushed the outbreak, rounded up the rebels, and was only dissuaded
by the intervention of the Buddhist clergy from burning several
thousands of them in huge bamboo cages. He at once began to build
an even more magnificent palace-city than the one that had been
destroyed.. The Venetian Caesar Fredericke and the Englishman Ralph
Fitch, who saw it in its full glory, have recorded their wonder at its
size and richness. In some parts, they said, its roofs were covered
with plates of gold.
Meanwhile the heir-apparent's expedition against Chiengmai had
met with general resistance and King Mekut'i had taken refuge in Vien
Chang. The Burmese therefore invaded the kingdom of Luang Prabang and prepared to attack Sett'at'irat in his capital. On the appearance of their flotilla before Vien Chang the king fled. They occupied
the city, capturing the queen and Oupahat, or heir-apparent, as well
as the fugitive Mekut'i. When, however, they tried to follow up
Sett'at'irat his harassing tactics were too much for them and they had
to give up the attempt. In October 1565 they arrived back in Burma
with their prisoners. Mekut'i was placed in safe custody at Pegu
while Princess Maha Tewi was installed a second time as regent at
Chiengmai, this time with a Burmese garrison.

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THE EARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

PT. II

In Siam Prince Mahin, who had been estahlished as regent by Bayinnaung, functioned under the control of the pro-Burmese Raja of
P'itsanulok.. Sett'at'irat's successful defiance of the Burmese caused
Mahin to turn to him for assistance in throwing off the yoke of Bayinnaung. In 1566 the two of them attacked P'itsanulok, but the arrival
of a Burmese army forced them to abandon the enterprise. In the
hope of preventing further trouble, Bayinnaiing in the following year
permitted the captive king Chakrap'at, who had become a monk, to
return to Siam on a pilgrimage. His generosity was misplaced, for on
arrival home the king threw off the yellow robe and joined Prince
Mahin in another attack on P'itsanulok.
Bayinnaung therefore had to stage a second invasion of Siam. In
1568 he set out from Martaban and made for P'itsanulok, which hg
relieved. Then he passed on to Ayut'ia. This time the city put up a
desperate defence and defied all his efforts to storm it. Sett'at'irat sent
a force to the assistance of his ally, but the Burmese ambushed it and
drove it off. The siege lasted until August 1569, when the city fell
through treachery. King Chakrap'at had died during the siege. Prince
Mahin died a prisoner on his way to Pegu. Maha T'ammaraja, the
pro-Burmese Raja of P'itsanulok, was installed as the next vassal ruler
of Ayut'ia, and Bayinnaung prepared to lead his victorious army to
punish the King of Vien Chang. He had gorged his men with the
plunder of Ayut'ia. The city's defences were dismantled and vast
numbers of its population deported to Lower Burma.
For the second time the Burmese invasion of the Laos kingdom was
a failure. Vien Chang defied all Bayinnaung's attempts to take it, and
in April 1570, with his troops exhausted by famine and disease, he beat
a hasty retreat so as to reach home before the onset of the wet mon- .
soon. Siam, on the other hand, remained under Burmese control for
the next fifteen years. One interesting result of this was the adoption
by Siam of the Burmese Era beginning in A.D. 638. It became known
as the Chula Sakarat to distinguish it from the Maha Sakarat beginning
in A.D. 78, which it displaced. It remained in official use until 1887,
when Chulalongkorn adopted the European calendar. According to
Wood, the Burmese dhammathat, based on the Laws of Manu, was
introduced at the same time and grafted on to Siamese law. "
(6) From 1570 to 1599
Bayinnaung's career has been aptly described, as 'the greatest^
explosion of human energy ever seen in Burma'. ' The king of Pegu',

CH. 13

BURMA AND THE T ' A I KINGDOMS

247

wrote the Venetian Caesar Fredericke, who visited his capital in 1569,
'hath not any army or power by sea, but in the land, for people,
dominions, gold and silver, he far exceeds the power of the Great
Turk in treasure and strength.' The bare record of the events of his
reign shows' him everlastingly hastening somewhere to assert his
authority: it is a catalogue of campaigns.
There, is, however, another side to his story, though it is of minor
importance. Strange as it may seem in one who was responsible for
so much hurhan bloodshed, he strove to be a model Buddhist king,
building pagodas wherever he went, distributing copies of the Pali
scriptures, feeding monks, and promoting the collection and study of
the dhammathats. The. costly offerings he made-to pagodas at Pegu
on his return from Vien Chang in 1570 give the .impression of being
acts of atonement for the demerit incurred through the deaths of so
many thousands of human beings. He probably explained away his
own responsibility in much the same terms as," two centuries later,
King Naungdawgyi used when rejecting the British demand for compensation for the massacre ofNegrais (1759). The victims, he said,
were fated to die in such a way.
But if Bayinnaung had no strong feehngs about human slaughter,
he had conscientious scruples against animal sacrifices such as the
Muslim practice of killing goats in celebration of Bakr Id or the offering of white animals to the Mahagiri spirit on Mount Popa. Such
practices he prohibited, as also the killing of slaves, elephants and
horses at the death of a Shan sawbwa for burial along with his body.
In his zeal for the enhancement of his reputation as a Buddhist king
throughout Indo-China he sent offerings on several occasions to the
famous Tooth of the Buddha at Kandy in Ceylon, providing lights
to burn at its shrine, craftsmen to beautify the.building, and brooms,
made from his own and his chief queen's hair,, for use there. In 1560
the Viceroy of Goa, Dom Constantinp de Braga'nza, led an expedition
to punish the Raja of Jafna for the persecution of Catholic converts
made there by St. Francis Xavier. In sacking the place a tooth, reputed to be the Kandy one, was seized and taken to Goa. Bayinnaung
sent envoys with the offer of a large, sum of nioney for it. But the
archbishop intervened and referred the matter to the Inquisition,
which condemned it to be destroyed as a dangerous idol. The sentence
was carried out before a great concourse of people, among whom were
the scandalized Burmese envoys.
Some years later Bayinnabng asked Raja Dharmapala of Colombo
for a daughter in marriage. Having no daughter, but being anxious

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to please the king, that ruler palmed off on !him the daughter of one
of his ministers as his own. He also sent with the bride a tooth, which
he claimed was the genuine one. The Raja of jafna, he said, had palmed
off a monkey's tooth on the Viceroy of Goa. Both the ' princess' and
the tooth were received in Burma with the highest honour, and the
Raja of Colombo received so munificent a present in return that the
King of Kandy offered a princess and a tooth, both of which should
be genuine. But it was useless for him to protest that the real tooth
had never left its temple at Kandy and that the Raja of Colombo had
no daughter. Bayinnaung was far too shrewd to permit any doubt as
to the authenticity of the raja's gifts. The tooth he had deposited in a
jewelled casket beneath the Mahazedi Pagoda.
In 1571 died Sett'at'irat of Vien Chang, the chieftain who had never
bent the knee to the king of kings. His brother the Oupahat had been
a hostage in Burma since 1565, and Bayinnaung sent envoys to Vien
Chang to negotiate his return as a vassal ruler. But the Laotians had
bitter memories of Burmese invasions, and they murdered the envoys.
In revenge Bayinnaung sent Binnya Dala, his Mon commander-inchief, with an army composed of levies drawn from Chiengmai and
Siam to attack Vien Chang. It was defeated, and Bayinnaung either
put his general to death or exiled him to a place where he soon died.
Then in the dry season- of 1574-5 he personally led an expedition
which drove the regent, General Sene Soulint'a, out of the capital and
placed the Oupahat on the throne.
;
As soon as his back was turned his puppet's power began to dwindle.
In 1579 he sent another army to deal with the general disorder, which
his vassal was unable to quell. But no sootier had it completed its
task and left for home than the unhappy king was driven out of his
capital and died while fleeing to safety. Bayinnaung thereupon
sought to solve the problem by placing Sene Soulint'a himself on the
throne. But he was an old man and only survived for two years. He
was succeeded by his son Nakone Noi, who soon found his task
impossible. Revolts broke out everywhere. In the confusion the new
king was dethroned and anarchy reigned supreme. There was no
longer any fear of Burmese intervention; Bayinnaung had died in
1581 and his son Nanda Bayin had other things to attend to.
For several years no solution could be found. Sett'at'irat's only
son had been born at the time of his death in 1571. When^he had
placed the Oupahat on the throne in 1575 Bayinnaung had carried off
the young prince as a hostage to Burma. In 1591,the abbots of the^
leading monasteries met and decided that the only cure for the

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249

country's ills was to recall the legitimate heir from captivity. The
moment was propitious, since King Nanda Bayin was so hard pressed
by the gathering strength of Ta Siamese national movement against
Burmese dominance led by Pra Naret that he willingly released the
prince. In 1592 Prince Nokeo Koumane gained possession of Luang
Prabang and was accepted as king. His first act after establishing
.control over his kingdom was publicly to proclaim its independence of
Burma.
When Bayinnaung died in 1581 he was poised for an attempt to
deliver a knock-out blow to the kingdom of Arakan. The Burmese
chronicles assert that shortly before his death he deputed a niission
to the Mughal emperor Akbar. As Bengal had been conquered by the
Mughal armies in 1576, and there is no mention of a Burmese mission
to Fatehpur Sikri in the Mughal records, it seems more probable that
the mission went to the Viceroy of Bengal. Its object seems to have
been to sound him regarding his attitude towards a Burmese attack
upon Arakan. But the blow was never delivered, and when the two
states did in fact come to war, in 1596, it was the Arakanese who were
the aggressors, joining in the general scramble for loot which occurred
when Naiida Bayin's armies were driven out of Siam and Pra Naret's
counter-offensive was making serious inroads into Burma.
Bayinnaung had sown the wind; his son reaped the whirlwind.
Not that Nanda Bayin was lacking in either ability or determination,
but sooner or later the reaction against his father's extravagance and
megalomania must come. The Mons in particular were driven to
desperation by the unceasing demands upon them for military service
and the famine and exhaustion which resulted from their inability to
cultivate their lands. For uncultivated delta lands relapse quickly
into impenetrable jungle, and the task of clearing them is heartbreaking.
The Siamese might have attempted to regain their independence
' earlier had not Boromoraja of Cambodia seized the opportunity presented by their weakness to pay off old scores. In the year after the
second fall of Ayut'ia he invaded Siam, and, though driven out with
heavy loss, kept up the pressure until after' Bayinnaung's death. The
threat to Ayut'ia made it necessary to restore the fortifications which
had been dismantled, and the Burmese had to permit the strengthening of the city's defences. The Siamese also found a new leader in
Pra Naret, the 'Black Prince', later to be King Naresuen, the elder
son of T'ammaraja, who had been taken as a hostage to Burma
when his father became vassal king of Ayut'ia. In 1571 as a lad of

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sixteen he had been allowed to return home as a result of the marriage

of one of his sisters to Bayinnaung. His courage and resourcefulness
against the invading Cambodians made himithe hope of the patriots.
Nanda Bayin's accession was the signal for a dangerous attempt to
break up the united kingdom. Bayinnaung'^ brother Thadominsaw,
the Viceroy of Ava, tried to draw the Viceroys of Prome and Toungoo
into a movement for independence. They, however, forwarded his
letters to the Court, and Nanda Bayin, suspecting that some of his
ministers were involved, arrested them and had them burned to death
together with their wives and families. Gaspero Balbi, a Venetian
jeweller, who witnessed the appalling scene, describes it in his account
of his travels, an English translation of which was published by
Richard Hakluyt in his Prindpall Voyages. In 1584 Nanda Bayin led
an army against his uncle and defeated him in a battle in which the
two leaders, in traditional style, fought a duel on elephants.
Pra Naret had been summoned to bring a contingent from Siam
to support his overlord against the Ava rebels. According to Wood,
Nanda Bayin planned to have him- murdered, but the Mon chiefs
entrusted with the task disclosed the plan to the prince. Instead of
marching on Ava, therefore, he appeared before Pegu and threatened
an attack. On learning of Nanda Bayin's victory over the Ava forces,
however, he retreated to Martaban, collected a large number of
Siamese prisoners, who had been deported to Lower Burma during
Bayinnaung's wars, and led them back to their own country. Nanda
Bayin sent a force in pursuit of him, but he turned and defeated it in
the Menam valley. Shortly afterwards another Burmese force,
chasing some Shan prisoners who were fleeing from Burma to P'itsanulok, was also defeated and driven back over the frontier. The die
was now cast. Siam was asserting her independence. The Governors of
Sawankhalok and P'ijai, fearing Burmese vengeance, rebelled against
Pra Naret, but he stormed Sawankhalok and executed them both.
In December 1584 Nanda Bayin invaded Siani through the Three
Pagodas Pass, midway between Moulmein and Tavby.- He was to
to join up with the Chiengmai army before Ayut'ia, but Pra Naret
defeated each force separately. In November 1586 three Burmese
armies began a converging movement upon Ayut'ia, and from January,to June 1587 the city was besieged. But the administrative arrangements for such a large-scale effort were defective, and the invasion
ended in disaster. Things might have gone even worse with the
Burmese had not King Satt'a of Cambodia invaded Siam while the
siege was in progress, so that as soon as the Burmese'^retired Pra Naret

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BURMA AND THE T ' A I KINGDOMS

251

had to concentrate upon driving out the Cambodians instead of seeking

to dehyer a knock-out blow at Nanda Bayin's disorganized and disheartened forces. On the other hand, his pursuit of the Cambodians
was so relentless that he nearly succeeded in capturing their capital
Lovek. Outside its walls, however, lack of supplies forced him to
abandon the enterprise and return home.
From this moment the independence of Siam was assured. But the
stubborn Burmese king refused to give up the futile struggle and thereby accomplished his own doom. He could have held his own country
together had he been vvise enough to evacuate Siam. In his desperate
attempts to raise and equip new armies his demands fell most heavily
upon the Mens, already alienated by the treatment they had received
over many years. Many tried to evade the press-gang by taking the
yellow robe and becoming monks. But the king had them unfrocked.
Many abandoned their villages and took to the jungle. Bassein
rebelled, without success, and all the captured rebels were tortured to
death. Many fled to Arakan and Siam.
In 1587 Ralph Fitch, the first recorded Englishman to set foot in
Burma, arrived at Bassein from Bengal. He had left England with three
companions in 1583 and had travelled to India. There he had parted
with his companions and pursued his way farther eastwards alone.
On his journey through the creeks from Bassein to Pegu he noted
the houses built on 'great high postes' for fear of the many tigers,
he supposed. In his account, which Hakluyt included in the
second edition of his Principall Navigations, and Purchas printed also
in his Pilgrimes, he indicates no signs of the coming collapse. He
describes the country as 'very fruitful' and was much impressed by
the king's majesty and riches. Unfortunately he kept no diary or
notes for fear of being arrested as a spy by the Portuguese on his
way home, as indeed he had been on his way out. Hence in writing his
account of Burma he made extensive use of Thonias Hickock's
translation of Caesar Fredericke's story of his own visit to the country
in 1569, when he saw Bayinnaung in his glory. This also was published
by Hakluyt.
Caesar Fredericke wrote what might be described as a guide for
commercial prospectors, and as such it is invaluable, full of useful
information about trade, conditions of travel, and currency and
exchange. Ralph Fitch also was a merchant, seeking knowledge that
would be of possible commercial value. He obviously could not
improve on "the Venetian's account, and he was a modest man
with no pretensions to literary skill. He does, however, add a few

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independent touches which show that he could be interested in things

other than trade. Here is his description of the Shwe Dagon Pagoda:
I
' About two dayes journey from Pegu there is a Varelle or Pagode,
which is the pilgrimage of the Pegues: it' is called Dogonne, and
is of a wonderful! bignesse, and all gilded frpm the foot to the toppe.
It is the fairest place, as I suppose, that is in the world: it standeth
very high, and there are foure ways to it, which all along are set
with trees of fruits, in such wise that a man may go in the shade
above two miles in length.'
His account of the Buddhist monkhood is equally apt:
' The Tallipoies go very strangely apparelled with one camboline
or thinne cloth next to their body of a brown colour, another of
yellow doubled many times upon their shoulder: and those two be
girded to them with a broad girdle: and they have a skinne of
leather hanging on a string about their necks, whereupon they sit,
bareheaded and barefooted: for none of them weareth shoes; with
their right armes bare and a great broad sombrero or shadow in their
hand to defend them in the Summer from the Sunne, and in the
Winter from the rain. They keepe their feasts by the Moone: and
when it is new Moone they keepe their greatest feaste: and then the
people send rice and other things to that kiack or church of which
they be; and there all the Tallipoies doe meete which be of that
Churche, and eate the victuals which are sent them. When the
Tallipoies do preach, many of the people carry them gifts into the
pulpit where they sit and preach. And there is one that sitteth
by them to take that which the people bring. It is divided among
them. They have none other ceremonies nor service that I could
see, but onely preaching.'
In 1590 T'ammaraja died and Pra Naret became king, in name
as well as in fact. In the list of Kings of Siam he is known as Naresuen.
By 1593 Nanda Bayin had failed in five^ full-scale invasions of Siamr
In the last, which was launched at the end of 1592, the Burmese"
heir-apparent was defeated and killed at Nong Sa Rai' before he
reached Ayut'ia. The ruins of a pagoda erected on the spot where he
was killed-in personal combat with Naresuen, according to the
Siameseare still to be seen. From this time onwards it was the turn
of the Siamese to invade Burma.

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BURMA AND THE T AI KINGDOMS

253

But first it was necessary to deal with Cambodia, so that there

should be no danger of a stab in the back when Naresuen's attention
was concentrated upon Burma. Immediately after the Burmese
defeat of February 1593 Naresuen began a campaign against Cambodia.
It was long and severe. Eventually in July 1594 Lovek was taken and
the king fled to Luang Prabang. No attempt was made to annex the
kingdom; it was enough to paralyse it so that Naresuen should be
free to deal with the arch-enemy. Thousands of prisoners were
deported to Siam to be settled in her depopulated northern provinces;
many Siamese previously carried off by King Satt'a's raids were
brought back.
Naresuen's first moves in taking the oflfensive against Buijma show
a statesmanlike regard for the needs of his kingdom. He did not
seek to inflict a knock-out blow, which would merely have brought
plunder and might have involved him in an exhausting attempt to
hold the turbulent Burmese in subjection. Siam was a trading state
and had urgent need of ports on the Indian Ocean. Southern Burma
had useful ones within comparatively easy reach of Ayut'ia. It was
on these that Naresuen first concentrated his attention. In 1593 the
Siamese made themselves masters of Tavoy and Tenassefim. Thereupon the Mon Governor of Moulmein, sick of the massacres of his
people, rose in rebellion and called on Siam for help. In response
Naresuen led a force which not only drove off the Burmese from
besieging Moulmein but also took Martaban.
Nanda Bayin's next loss was Chiengmai. The old Princess Maha
Tewi, whom Bayinnaung in 1564 had made regent for the second time,
had died in 1578. With the object of strengthening his position
vis-a-vis Luang Prabang, Bayinnaung had next placed his son Tharrawaddy Min on the throne of Chiengmai. When things began to
go badly with Nanda Bayin, Nokeo Koumane of Luang Prabang
declared war on Chiengmai, and Tharrawaddy, unable to obtain help
from his brother, was in such dire straits that he appealed to King
Naresuen. It was a heaven-sent opportunity for the King of Ayut'ia.
In 1595, in return for reinforcements which saved his kingdom,
Tharrawaddy had to place the much-coveted Chiengmai under
Siamese suzerainty.
In that same year the Siamese threatened the city of Pegu. But a
Burmese force came down from Toungoo and forced Naresuen to
withdraw. Then, with the writing on the wall, a family quarrel broke
out which made disaster inevitable. Prome, Toungoo and Ava were all
governed by brothers of Nanda Bayin. When the Toungoo Min went

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to the assistance of Pegu against Naresuen, his brother the Pyi^ Min
took advantage of his absence to attack Toungoo. The king was helpless to deal with the situation and a general revolt began. The
Toungoo Min invited the Arakanese to join with him in an attack
on Pegu. In 1599 a powerful Arakanese fleet seized the port of Syriam
and conveyed a land force to effect a junction,with the Toungoo army
besieging Pegu. Then Naresuen realized what was afoot and attempted
to join in. He was just too late, for when he arrived in Burma Nanda
Bayin was a prisoner on his way to Toungoo, and Pegu lay in ashes.
The confederates had divided the booty. Toungoo received the king
and the Tooth of Buddha, Arakan a princess and the royal white
elephant. The Arakanese on leaving set fire to the city. They deported
thousands of Mon households. They also maintained a foothold in
the country by retaining Syriam, which was placed under one of their
Portuguese mercenaries, Philip de Brito.
Naresuen, in aA effort to gain possession of Nanda Bayin, marched
northwards to attack Toungoo. But he was so heavily defeated
that he had to return home. Nanda Bayin was murdered soon after
reaching Toungoo. With the fall of Pegu all semblance of a central
government disappeared. Siam held Lower Burma from Martaban
southwards. A parcel of warring chiefs divided the remainder of the
country between them, whilfe Philip de Brito, with Syrian; as his base,
began to play a game of high stakes.
* T h e Burmese name for Prorae.

CHAPTER 14

INDONESIA FROM T H E PASSING OF MAJAPAHIT T O T H E

RISE O F MATARAM
(a) The Indonesian states
WHEN the Hindu-Buddhist empire of Majapahit disappeared from the
scene, MusHm Demak, which, Schrieke thinks, administered the coup
de grace and did so because the Portuguese of Malacca were seeking to
estabhsh contact with its ruler, became the leading state in Java.
Members of the old dynasty held out for a century and more at Pasuruan,
Panarukan and Balambangan in the eastern parts of the island, but
lladen Patah of Demak gained possession of the Majapahit regalia.
Later accounts of this period ascribed to him a Majapahit origin, besides telling the dramatic story of his conquest of the city at the head
of a Muslim army. Both stories are apocryphal. Dr de Graaf thinks he
probably came to Demak from Palembang, and had Chinese blood in
him. His kingdom owed its importance to two main factors, its control
over the northern rice-growing jjlains stretching from Japara to Gresik
and the extensive trade of those two ports. Through Japara the rice of
Java was exported to Malacca; Gresik conducted a flourishing trade
with the Spice 'Islands.
Raden Patah's reign extended from c. 1500 to 1518. His son Pangeran Sabrang Lor, also known as Pati Eunus, who succeeded him,
had led an abortive attack in 1512 on the Portuguese at Malacca. He
reigned only three years. His brother Tranggana, who succeeded him
in 1521, raised the state to its highest pitch of prosperity and influence,
and assumed the title of sultan. Closely associated with Demak's power
was the theologian, statesman and soldier, Sunan Gunung Jati
called 'Falatehan' by the Portuguesewho came from Pasei, having
made the pilgrimage to Mecca, and married Tranggana's sister. As '
Demak's representative he txtended his control westwards over the
coastal region of Java. At the same time Javanese Muslim colonists
settled in the ports of Cheribon and Bantam, then under the rule of
the Hindu-Buddhist Sundanese kingdom of Pajajaran with its centre
near present-day Bogor. Sunan Gunung Jati gained control over both
ports and turned them into orthodox Muslim states. He established
2SS .

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his son Pangeran Pasarean at Cheribon, while he himself ruled Bantam.

When this son died in 1552, Sunan Gunung Jati transferred his own
residence to Cheribon leaving another sonl Hassan Udin, in charge
of Bantam. Under this ruler Bantam became an independent state: he
founded a kraton there and extended his power deeply into the interior
at the expense of Pajajaran. He also gained control over the Lampongs
and cultivated relations with the southern states of Sumatra. He
married a princess of Indragiri who brought him as dowry the pepper
port of Silebar.
Much earlier on, Sunan Gunung Jati's activities had caused Pajajaran
to lose the harbour of Sunda Kalapa (now Djakarta) which served its
capital Pakuan. As in Majapahit's case, if Schrieke is right, it came
about through the Portuguese seeking to establish contact with the
'infidel' kingdom. In 1522 a Portuguese ship had come to Sunda
Kalapa and its Sundanese regent had made a treaty permitting the establishment of a Portuguese trading settlement at the mouth of the river
Chiliwung. The Portuguese did nothing towards carrying the treaty
into effect until 1527. When, however, they returned, they found that
Sunda Kalapa had been captured by Bantam and renamed Djakarta;
and instead of opening a factory there, they had to purchase their
pepper in the bazaar. It was Hassan Udin's son Panembahan Yusup
(1570-80) who, as mentioned above,^ slaughtered the whole royal
family of Pajajaran at Pakuan and forcibly converted th^ Sundanese
magnates to Islam. Long before the end of the century Bantam had
become one of the principal pepper ports of Indonesia and the
'southern staple port of Chinese trade', as van Leur describes it. Its
great bazaar to the east of the city outside the gates was a centre-for
trade, both local and international, wholesale and retail, very similar
to that of Malacca in the days of its sultans. There were to be seen, once
more to quote van Leur, ' all sorts of foodstuffs (of which rice and salt,
for example, came from overseas, and may perhaps have been vended
by the Javanese who had transported them), pots, pans, pepper bags,
spices, Gujerati and Bengali with painted articles and trinkets, Persians
and Arabs with jewels, rows of Chinese shops . . . with all their expensive goods: damask, velvet, satin, silk, gold thread, cloth of gold,
porcelain, lacquered work, copperwork, woodwork, medicinal productsand the like'.^ It was an aristocratic city with wealthy nobles who
maintained their armed retinues of warriors and slaves, and a patriciate
of wholesale traders, among whom Chinese merchants formed probably
the most influential group.
^
' Page 200.

* Indonesian Trflde and Society, p. 140.

CH. 14

INDONESIA FROM THE PASSING OF MAJAPAHIT

257

Demak's sea power seems to have enabled her to control the ports
of the south coast of Borneo, but the evidence of this is uncertain.
The island of Lombok came under her rule and was 'Islaniized'. T o
the south and south-east the expansion of her control over the interior
of Java was extensive; in particular she subdued the Hindu-Buddhist
realm of Supit Urang with its capital at Malang. But her attempts to
conquer the eastern territories of the former Majapahit empire were
less successful, and ultimately ended in disaster. Sultan Tranggana's
attack upon Panarukan was defeated with immense loss in 1546, and
he himself was killed. His empire thereupon disintegrated so suddenly
that his son and successor Sultan Prawata had no power outside the
city of Demak itself.
The Portuguese possession of Malacca became a serious threat to
the trading states of the north Javanese coast. The monopoly over the
spice trade, that the Portuguese were able to enforce through their
establishments on Ternate and Amboina, crippled the regular traffic
of the Javanese harbours so that with the failure on the one hand of
the attempts of Acheh and her Javanese allies to regain Malacca for
Islam, and on the other of those of the local rulers, with Javanese help,
to break Portuguese power in the Moluccas, the prosperity and military
power of the coastal states declined. At the same time their relations
with the inland regions deteriorated, and we now find the states to the
south of central Java beginning to play a bigger part in history. Some
time before the break-up of Demak's empire we begin to hear of the
little kingdorfi of Pengging. A prince of this state, Jaka Tingkir, was
sent to Demak for his education. He rose to become the head of the
sultan's bodyguard, received a daughter in marriage with Pajang (now
Surakarta) as an appanage, and took the title of Pangeran Adivijaya.
During the struggles which followed the death of Sultan Tranggana
he was able to increase his power to such an extent that in about 1568
he became sultan of Pajang. The Portuguese referred to him as
'emperor'; the Banjermasin chronicle calls him Sultan Surya Alam,
' Sun of the World'. For a few yearsless than twenty according to de
Graafhe was pre-eminent among the rulers of Java. Javanese sources
say that his most feared rival was Pangeran Aria Penangsang, the ruler
of Jipang, who had striven to attain to supreme power in Java by the
assassination of all possible rivals. Among those who fell by the
krisses of his murder gangs had been Sultan Prawata himself in c. 1550.
When ultimately, and inevitably, war arose between Aria Penangsang
and Adivijaya, so the story goes, the latter promised the district of
Mataram as the prize for anyone killing his rival. It was won by a

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certain Kjai Gede Pamanahan, who in personal combat with Aria

Penangsang caused his stallion to throw him., Kjai Gede, upon receiving
his fief, proceeded to build his capital at the present Kota Gede, and
soon settlers were coming in to occupy his vacant lands. He died in
c. 1575 and was succeeded by his spn, kncjwn to history as Senapati
('general') from the title conferred upon him by his overlord Sultan
Adivijaya of Pajang.
Panembahan Senapati Ingalaga was, according to the seventeenth
century bahads, or dynastic panegyrics composed by official court poets,
the founder of the Mataram dynasty, which achieved the greatest sway
of any ruling family after the fall of Majapahit, and produced Sultan
Agung (1613-45), one of the outstanding characters of Indonesian
history. Unfortunately, the Javanese accounts of Senapati's career
contain so much myth and miracle, reminiscent of stories in the earlier
Pararaton and Nagarakertagama, that it is almost impossible to sift out
the little that can be accepted as historical from the clogging mass of
allegory and poetic fiction, since these sources are practically all there
are at the disposal of the historian^ Nevertheless, in his Geschiedenis
van Indonesie,^ and in much greater detail in his monograph The Reign
of Panembahan Senapati Ingalaga,^ Dr de Graaf has essayed this difficult
task, and constructed an account of the political history of central and
east Java during the last quarter of the sixteenth century in which he
sets out what in his opinion are the acceptable facts.
Dr de Graaf rejects out of hand the genealogy 'invented' by the
babad-wrhers connecting Senapati with the more famous dynasties of
earlier Java, notably that of Majapahit, and presents him as a man of
comparatively low origin. He divides the reign into a series of phases.
The first sees Senapati allying with the western regencies and stealing
their allegiance from Pajang. The second shows him fortifying his
capital with a stone, wall while relations with Pajang deteriorate to the
point of war. A great attack by Pajang, however, fails because of an
eruption of Mount Merapi. The next phase is concerned with Demak.
After the death of Sultan Adivijaya of Pajang in i586,~his successor
Pangeran Benawa obtains Senapati's help against the raids of the
Adipati of Demak. Demak is defeated and Benawa offers the pverlordship of PSjang to Senapati, who, however, refuses it. Th'e fourth"
and last phase sees Senapati's attempts to expand his power eastwards.
The first is directed at Surabaya, strong through overseas trade and
proud of its Majapahit traditions. He fails to conquer it, but at Jipang
^ 's-Gravenhage, 1949.
,
^ Verhandelingen van het Koningklijk Instituut voor Taal-,,Land- en Volkenkunde,
Deel 13, 's-Gravenhage, 1954.

CH. 14

INDONESIA FROM THE PASSING OF MAJAPAHIT

259

(modern Mojokerto) envoys of the priest-ruler of Giri arrange an understanding by which Surabaya recognizes Mataram's overlordship. Next
he proceeds to deal with Madiun, which at the instigation of Surabaya
had made an alliance with Panaraga against Mataram. His third attack
is against the Hindu-Buddhist state of Pasuruan. Its general, Adipati
Kaniten, is defeated in the field and its ruler then pays homage. His
last move is in support of the rights of the legitimate claimant to the
regency of Kediri, which had been denied to him by his .overlord
Surabaya. It brings a double attack by the Surabayans and their allies
upon Mataram through Madiun. Senapati is victorious but dies soon
after,.in 1601. He had made his power felt from Cheribon to Pasuruan,
but the coastal states, notably Surabaya, remained practically independent, otherwise the great attack on Mataram at the end of the reign
would have been impossible. It is noteworthy, says Dr de Graaf, that
the Dutch, who appeared in Java during Senapati's last years, hardly
mention him, but accord the title 'king' to coastal potentates such as
the rulers of Tuban and-Surabaya. The Adipati of Pati, according to
the Javanese accounts, long defied Senapati, and finally led an invasion
into the heart of Mataram, reaching as far as Prambanan. Senapati's
cavalry, however, defeated him, and his extensive territory came under
Mataram's (nominal?) sway.
. The picture of Senapati drawn by Dr de Graaf is that of a tyrant,
not a king: a lucky soldier who founded a dynasty but did nothing
fonstructive. His son and successor, Panembahan Krapyak (1601-13),
was busy throughout his short reign dealing with rebellions and striving
with little successto hold his inheritance together. The first, and
most dangerous, revolt was raised by his elder brother, Pangeran Puger
of Demak, Senapati's second son. With the aid of Dutchmen captured
from Jacob van Heemskerck's squadron, whence they had gone ashore
at Japara to open, trade, he beat off' the first attack by the Mataram
forces. Finally iii 1604 Krapyak himself took the field and defeated his
brother. Some time later another brother, Pangeran Jayaraga of
Panaraga, made an attempt to seize the throne. Little, however, is
known of this rebellion, since, unlike Puger's, there is no foreign source
with which to check the Javanese accounts. It seems to have been
speedily suppressed.
The remainder of the reign was taken up with hostilities against
Surabaya. The powerful city-state, which had been the chief opponent
of Senapati's Mataram, was ever ready to help the enemies of Krapyak.
The war took the form of chronic raiding and counter-raiding. The
city itself behind its massive walls and ramoarts, five miles in

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circumference, with regular bastions in the Chinese style half a cannonshot away from each other, according to the description of the Dutchman
Artus Gijsels, could defy all attempts to st6rm it; and Krapyak made
none. The Javanese accounts of the war are unsatisfactory: as Dr de
Graaf puts it, they arouse more thirst for information than they
assuage.^
Panembahan Krapyak's death is mentioned in a letter of i January
1614 by Jan Peterszoon Coen.^ His eldest son Rangsang, later to be
known as Sultan Agung, who succeeded him, was the first Javanese
ruler of whom there is a personal, description by a European, and the
events of whose reign can be satisfactorily checked up by comparing
indigenous and European sources. Agung's career is of the greatest
interest, not only for what he did, or tried to do, but also for the views
of Javanese history that it caused to be propagated. He aimed to become
an empire-builder in the grand manner, and his court-poets invoked
and embroidered the traditions of a Majapahit greater than the reality,
weaving a new web of mythology to substantiate his clairns to universal
allegiance.
The products of their imaginative labours have been devastatingly
analysed by Professor C. C. Berg, who has singled out Dr de Graaf's
account of Senapati for special attention.' He points out that according
to the Babad Tanah Jawi story Senapati accomplished in general the
same warlike deeds as his grandson Agung, and that while it is quite
possible that Senapati's gains were lost and the work had to be done all
over again by Agung, there is also the possibility to be reckoned with that
because the compiler of the Babad Tanah Jawi has ascribed to Agung
forefathers who are certainly fictitious, Senapati himself may be in the
same category; that the deeds ascribed to Senapati may be interpreted
as a projection into the past of Agung's conquering expeditions, which
are historical; and that the court poet ascribed adversity to Senapati
during the latter part of his life in order the more to exaggerate the
story of Agung's conquests. According to this theory Agung himself,
not Senapati, was the novus homo, the founder of the dynasty, and as
such according to Javanese ideas his power had to be legitimated through
the recognition of suitable ancestors ultimately tracing back ' to a wellknown ruler in an unverifiable past'.* Agung's court poet. Berg points
' De Regering van Sultan Agung, Vorst van Mataram (1613-45) en die van zijn
Voorganger Panembahan Seda-ing-Krapjak (1601-13), 's-Gravenhage, 1958* p. 22.
^ Ibid., p. 25.
^ Notably in ' Twee Nieuwe Publicaties betreffende de Geschiedenis en de Geschiedsschrijving van Mataram', Indonesie, viii, pp. 97-128. See also 'Javanese Historiography
a Synopsis of its Evolution' in D . G. E. Hall (ed.), Historians of South-East Asia,
London, 1961, pp. 13-23.
* Indonesie, viii,.p. i n , my translation.

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261

out, would have been well aware that this sort of thing had been done
twice before in Java, namely in the case of the Airlangga-poem, i.e.
Mpu Kanwa's Arjunavivaha,^ and that of Propanca's Nagarakertagama,^
and his interest in ' events' was that of the high priest in tradition, not
that of the historian in history.
Whatever we may think about the historicity of the Senapati story,
there can be no doubt that long before Agung appeared upon the scene
Mataram was a power to be reckoned with in the politics of Java. At
the outset of his reign Agung was able to take the offensive with success
against the allies of Suraljaya. In 1614 there were raids into east Java
followed by a counter-attack by Surabaya and her alliesa contemporary Dutch source lists them as Tuban, Lasem, Gresik and Pasuruan
which came to grief against the Mataram forces in a battle at the river
Brantas near Kediri. In the next year Agung conquered a regency
called Vira-Saba in the Javanese accounts, which apparently stretched
from the neighbourhood of Mojokerto to the mouth of the Brantas.
It was an area of strategic importance from which one could command
the overland way into the Brantas delta as well as communications
between the delta and the eastern end of Java. His success led to another
counter-attack by Surabaya and her allies, this time aimed at the heart
of the Mataram state; but they were again defeated in a battle fought
near the present Surakarta (Solo). A few months later in quick succession Lasem and Pasuruan fell. In 1617 Pajang, which was foolish
enough to rebel, became Agung's next victim, and for her presumption
was horribly devastated.
In 1619 the great port of Tuban was conquered and the dominance
at sea of the eastern regencies came to an end. Thereafter the Mataram
war fleet became appreciably stronger, and Agung was able to threaten
Surabaya so seriously with sea blockade that in May 1620 Jan Peterszoon
Coen wrote to the Dutch governor-general expressing his doubts
about the city's further powers of resistance. Actually they were
greater than he anticipated; not until 1625, after a five-year struggle,
did Agung at last gain his objective. Blockade proved extremely difficult : it was impossible to surround the city effectively for the neighbourhood was swampy and very unhealthy, and part of the city itself was
situated on an island. Assault was out of the question because of its
strong fortifications. Attrition was the chief method employed: every
year after harvest the Mataram forces systematically ravaged the surrounding country. But even then the city capitulated only when Agung
dammed up the Kali Mas river and cut off its water supply.
' Supra, p. 67.

^ Supra, pp. 70 et sqq.

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During the siege expeditions were sent to Borneo, in 1622, which

forced Banjermasin and Sukadana to acknowledge Agung's suzerainty.
In 1624 the conquest of the island of Madura was undertaken. The
western part was easily subdued but there was a bloody struggle for
the eastern. Agung placed the Adipati of Sampang over the whole
island and gave him one of his sisters in marriage. To defeated Surabaya Agung behaved magnanimously, placing the defeated ruler's son
Pangeran Pekik in charge as vassal-ruler and giving him also a sister
in marriage.
Surabaya's fall was Agung's greatest achievement; only Balambangan
in east Java, closely linked with Bali, and western Java, dominated by
Bantam did not recognize his suzerainty. Cheribon, which offered
homage and a princess in marriage in 1625, represented the farthest
extension westwards of his irifluence. In 1624 he had assumed the title
susuhunan, 'royal foot' (i.e. placed upon the head of a vassal paying
homage), which the Dutch appropriately translated as 'emperor'.
{b) The Anglo-Dutch assault on the 'ring fence'
That the English made so late a start in exploiting the Cape route
to the Indian Ocean and beyond was in no way due to lack of interest
in Eastern trade. The voyages of John Cabot from Bristol in the reign
of Henry VII were undertaken with the object of reaching the great
spice and silk markets of eastern Asia. The discovery of America
resulted in the postponement of the achievement of this aim for something like a century. But the many attempts to discover a northern
passage either round America or round Russia and Siberia show that
the original object of intrusion into the trade of Asia was kept constantly in mind. The failure of the Muscovy Company to open up
the North-East Passage led to Anthony Jenkinson's attempts to find
a way to the Far East overland through Russia. But the sole result was
a short-lived trading connection with Persia. And when the London
mercKants sought to develop a route to the East^thrqugh Syria, though
they managed to establish a prosperous trade with the eStern Mediterranean, it was useless as a gateway to India and the lands beyond.
Individual prospectors such as John Newbery and Ralph Fitch-did
indeed make their way via the Levant to India, and in Fitch's case to
South-East Asia; but Newbery disappeared on his way home, and
Fitch's experiences showed clearly the impracticability of thcfoute he
used for large-scale commerce. Hence as the sixteenth century drew
towards its close the London merchants came to r^ealize that the only
practicable route was round the Cape of Good Hope.

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The difficulties which for so long deterred the English from exploiting the Cape route must be realized if their appearance in SouthEast Asia as competitors with the Portuguese and the Dutch is
to be seen in its true perspective. In the first place there is no
evidence that they deliberately refrained from poaching in the
Portuguese preserves out of respect for the papal award of 1492.
During the first half of the sixteenth century their lack of knowledge
concerning the trade and navigation of the Indian Ocean was a
sufficient deterrent. The Portuguese took the greatest pains to
maintain secrecy regarding their operations in the East. No Portuguese
navigator would serve on an English ship, nor would they pei'mit an
Englishman to sail on one of their eastbound ships if he were of
sufficient education to learn their secrets.
^
During the second half of the century English geographical knowl'edge improved immensely as a result of the work of such scholars as
Dr. John Dee, Richard Eden and the two Hakluyts. But there were still
immense difficulties to be overcome. England produced practically
no goods that were saleable in tropical countries. Her greatest need
was to sell her woollen cloth, and for this a northern approach seemed
to be essential. Moreover, not until the end of the century did her
merchants dispose of enough fluid capital to risk on an all-round
voyage of 16,000 miles for a cargo of spices. Expeditions involving
long voyages were indeed sent out, but they went westwards in search
of Spanish treasure ships.
There was also a further difficulty involved in long trading voyages.
Ships required large crews in proportion to their size, and the longer
the voyage the more space was required for their provisions, so that
the problem was to find enough space for a profitable cargo. The
Portuguese solved it by building large carracks of 1,200-1,500 tons
which required-proportionately fewer men to handle them than the
200-ton merchantmen which constituted the largest type normally
einployed by English shippers. The v/ar with Spain led to the construction of larger ships by private enterprise, but not until sufficient
headway had been made in meeting this difficulty were the English
in a position to compete with the Portuguese in the trade of the
Indian Ocean.
,
When Philip II of Spain acquired the crown of Portugal in 1580
he in effect invited the enemies of Spain to invade the Portuguese
empire. In that same year Drake returned from his voyage round the
world bringing with him, besides the precious metals he had looted
from the Spaniards, a small cargo of cloves he had acquired at Ternate

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after crossing the Pacific. He reported that -he had made a trade treaty
with the king of the island, who was anxious for help in a struggle
he was engaged in against the Portuguesfe. His exploit stimulated
much interest in the East Indies, and six years later Thomas Cavendish.
left on a voyage which took him through the Magellan Straits, across
the Pacific to the Philippines and on to thci south-west coast of Java,
where he refitted for his voyage home. He reported that trade might
be carried on freely with the Moluccas and, moreover, that he had
heard in Java that if the Portuguese pretender, Don Antonio, whose
cause England supported, were to go to the East Indies they would be
at his disposal. There were two schools of thought in England regarding the question of the Portuguese empire. Drake and the Devon
men believed that England's best plan for obtaining access to the
trade of the Indian Ocean would be by helping Portugal to gain her
independence. Then, they argued, she could expect to be rewarded
by a share in the Portuguese monopoly.
The London merchants, however, favoured a direct attack upon
the monopoly, and after the defeat of the Armada in 1588 they
began to petition the queen to encourage trade via the Cape route.
Drake's capture in 1587 of the Portuguese San Filippe off the Azores
with a cargo of spices worth ^^108,000 led them to suggest that the
proposed venture could be financed by the plunder of Portuguese ships.
And they pointed out that trade could be opened with places between
south India and the Philippines without going near any Portuguese
or Spanish stronghold. To their original petition, presented in
October 1589, there is no answer on record. But the project was
revived in the following year and resulted in the despatch in 1591
of an expedition of three ships from, Plymouth under George Raymond and James Lancaster bound for the East Indies by the Cape
route. It is significant that both Cornells de Houtman, whom the
Dutch Amsterdam merchants chose to lead their first expedition to
the East Indies, and Lancaster were men who had spent part of their
early life in Lisbon.
The expedition would have been successful had it not been for the
appalling mortality among the crews. On the way to the Cape- it
became so serious that one ship had to be sent home from Table Bay
with the sick men. After leaving the Cape Raymond's ship was lost
at sea. Lancaster, however, reached north-west Sumatra and passed
on to Penang, whence he carried on commerce-raiding activities
against Portuguese shipping passing through the Straits of Malacca.
But he lost so many men by disease that he was unable to work his

CH. 14

INDONESIA FROM THE PASSING OF MAJAPAHIT

265

ship home; for when, after leaving St. Helena^, he was delayed by
calms he had to run across to the West Indies for provisions, and
while collecting them he was marooned on Mona through his ship
drifting away with only six men on board to San Domingo, where she
surrendered to the Spaniards. He himself and eighteen men were
taken by a French privateer to Dieppe, whence he reached Englaiid
on 24 May 1594. The venture had come to grief, but the fact that
an English ship had roamed the Indian Ocean, preying with impunity
upon Portuguese commerce, aroused some compensating enthusiasm.
And while Lancaster was away another carrack, with an even richer
cargo than Drake's prize of 1587, had been taken.
The London merchants, however, hesitated to send a further expedition by the direct route. There was a deepening trade depression and
much opposition from the merchants engaged in the Levant trade.
"in 1596 Dudley was able to obtain support for a voyage to China via
the Magellan Straits, and Benjamin Wood's disastrous expedition
was despatched. The original plan was abandoned and his squadron
of three ships entered the Indian Ocean by the Cape route. After
reaching the Malay Peninsula they were all lost, and the sole survivor,
a Frenchman, was in 1601 picked up by a Dutch ship from Mauritius,
where he was living in Robinson Crusoe style.
The news of Houtman's voyage to Bantam (1595-7) caused opinion
to veer once more in favour of the Cape-route approach: the Dutch
intrusion into the field was seen as a threat to the Levant trade. When,
therefore, in 1599 van Neck's four ships returned to Holland not only
with rich cargoes but also in record time, a large subscription began
to be raised in the London market for a further voyage to the East.
The appearance in 1598 of an English translation of Linschoten's
Itinerario, providing first-rate information regarding the trade and
navigation of the Indian Ocean, had already aroused considerable
interest, and, together with the reports of van Neck's success, clinched
opinion in favour of the formation of a company to trade to the East
Indies by the Cape route.
But there were still great difficulties to be overcome. Elizabeth's
government was in financial straits; there was the Irish rebellion and
the war with Spain. The project was held up by the queen's negotiations with Spain. When, however, these broke down in July 1600,
the Privy Council tipped the promoters of the company to go ahead,
with the assurance that an application for a royal charter would be
successful. On 31 December of that same year the East India Company began its official existence. Stow's Chronicle attributes its

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THE EARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

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creation to a Dutch corner in pepper, and the story has often been
quoted, though entirely legendary.
Under its royal charter the Company, whiih consisted of a governor
and twenty-four 'committees' appointed to organize a trading
expedition to the East Indies, was granted a monopoly of trade in the
region between the Cape of Good Hope and. the Magellan Straits for
a period of fifteen years. For its first voyage it raised a capital of
;(^68,ooo. Four ships were specially purchased at a cost of 3^41,000,
;6,86o was spent on goods for trading, .and specially coined ' rials
of eight' to the value of ^^21,742 were put on board for the purchase of
return cargoes. Lancaster, who had assisted in fitting out the fleet,
was placed in charge of the expedition, with John Davis as pilotmajor. He had occupied a similar position in Cornelis de Houtman's
fleet on his second voyage in 1598-1600.
Lancaster's fleet left in February 1601 and reached Acheh on 5 June
1602. It sailed on to Bantam, where permission was obtained to build
a factory. Then it set out for home with full cargoes of spices. It
brought back so much pepper that there was a glut in the market and
the shareholders had to receive part payment of the proceeds of the
voyage in pepper. Lancaster had met with no'opposition from the
Dutch, who were already well established in the East Indian trade,
and had received active assistance from the King of Acheh in keeping
Malacca ignorant of his arrival in its neighbourhood. Bantam was the
most suitable site for the first English factory, since it was not only a
flourishing centre for local commerce but was the port to which the
Chinese junks came for their pepper. It continued to be the headquarters of English trade in the Archipelago until 1682.
When Lancaster founded the first English factory in the East
Indies the Dutch had already put in four years of the most intensive
eff"orts to capture the markets hitherto dominated by the Portuguese.
Before the end of 1601 no less than fifteen fleets, comprising in all
sixty-five ships, had sailed to the Indian Ocean either round the Cape
or through the Magellan Straits. Philip H's decree of 1594 closing
the port of Lisbon to Dutch and English traders has usually been
given as the cause of this truly remarkable onslaught upon the Portuguese 'ring fence'. Recently, however, Dutch scholars have-been in-"
clined to ascribe less importance to it, and to point out that long
before 1594 the Dutch were dissatisfied with their position as-middlemen between Lisbon and the rest of Europe and were anxious to make
the voyage direct to the East for their own profit. The decree, it is,
claimed, hastened this new development of Dutch enterprise, but
did not cause it.
"

CH. 1*4

INDONESIA FROM THE PASSING OF MAJAPAHIT

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When the Dutch assumed the task of wresting the spice trade from
the Portuguese they possessed certain advantages which placed them
well ahead of the English or any other likely competitors. Their
extensive fishing trade was an excellent nursery for seamanship. Their
function as the waggoners and factors of Europe, in which they were
competing successfully with the Hanseatic cities, gave them experience as middlemen which few could rival. Moreover, their
financial methods were the most up-to-date in Europe, and they had
at their disposal an amount of fluid capital which from the start gave
them an immense superiority over the English East India Company.
Their chief reasons for hesitation in attempting to develop the Cape
route were, as in the case of the English, the lack of knowledge concerning the navigation of the Indian Ocean and their long concentration
upon attempts to discover a North-East Passage.
In 1592, however, Jan Huygen van Linschoten of Haarlem, who
had spent four years in Portugal and subsequently five years in Goa as
secretary to its archbishop, arrived back in his native country with an
immense fund of knowledge regarding the trade and navigation of the
Indian Ocean, which he at once placed at the disposal of the leading
geographers and cartographers. His Reysgeschrift van de Navigatien
der Portugaloysers in Orienten, published in 1595, and Itinerario,
Voyagie ofte Schipvaert van Jan Huygen vHn Linschoten naar Oost
ofte Portiigaels Indien, which appeared a year later, contained exactly
the practical information that had hitherto been lacking. Perhaps
more important still, he showed that the Portuguese power in the
East was rotten and that their relations with the native peoples were so
bad that other traders had a splendid opportunity to enter into competition. And he pointed to Java as an excellent centre for establishing
trade, since the Portuguese rarely went there.
In 1595 the first Dutch expedition set out to the East Indies by the
Cape route. It was financed by a syndicate known as the Compagnie
van Verre, which came into existence as a,result of the failure to make
headway with the discovery of the North-East Passage. The expedition was under the leadership of Cornells de Houtman, who had
spent some years as a merchant in Lisbon. How much he actually
learnt from Linschoten before his departure is uncertain, but it is
significant that his course was plotted by Linschoten's close friend
and colleague, the cartographer Plancius, and he used the Reysgeschrift.
He himself was a bad commander, a boaster and ruffian, who nearly
brought the expedition to grief through his 'preposterous' conduct.
The fact that on the outward journey alone 145 of his 249 men

CH. 1 4

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269

died has been attributed to his deficiencies as a commander, but, in

view of Lancaster's losses in men during his first voyage, must
probably with more justice be put down to lack of experience.
With his small squadron of four ships he reached Bantam in June
1596. He was well received, but his behaviour was so outrageous that he
and some of his men were thrown into prison. The Dutch ships thereupon bombarded the town. A month later de Houtman was ransomed.
After sailing off eastwards to Jacatra and other north Javanese ports
as far as the island of Bali, de Houtman's officers forced him to make
for home, though inadequate cargoes had been procured and he was
anxious to visit the Moluccas. In August 1597 he returned to the
Texel with three out of his four ships and eighty-nine men. Notwithstanding the disappointingly small cargoes which he brought back
with him, there was great jubilation in Holland at his return. His
voyage had demonstrated that with better organization and leadership
successful trade with the Indies was possible. And preparations were
at once put in hand for further expeditions.
The rejoicing of the Dutch was equalled by the consternation of
the Portuguese at de Houtman's exploit. The Viceroy of Goa equipped
a fleet to prevent further Dutch voyages. The King of Bantam was
strictly forbidden to receive further foreign European merchants and
reprisals were taken against his shipping. But the Javanese resistance was so determined that the Portuguese fleet had to retreat on
Malacca.
In 1598 no less than five expeditions, numbering in all twenty-two
ships, left Holland for the East Indies. Of these, thirteen went via the
Cape and nine via the Magellan Straits. Oliver van Noort, in one of
the westward-bound ships, returned via the Cape and became the
first Dutch commander to circumnavigate the globe. The biggest
single expedition was sent by the Compagnie van Verre from Amsterdam under Jacob van Neck, with van Warwijck and van Heemskerck
next in command. On the outward voyage the island of Mauritius was
discovered by van Warwijck and named after Maurice of Nassau.
Van Neck reached Bantam in six months from leaving home. The
Bantammers, having had to fight off a Portuguese fleet, traded willingly, and with four ships fully laden with pepper he sailed for home,
whither he arrived less than fourteen months after his departure.
His treatment of the natiyes had been so tactful that he brought with
him for presentation to Prince Maurice a gold cup from the young sultan and a letter from his chief minister. The remaining four ships of
van Neck's squadron sailed along the north coast of Java, touching at

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Jacatra, Tuban and Gresik. Van Heemskerck and van Warwijck then
went on to Amboina, whence the former was sent on to the Banda
Islands. He established a factory on Lonthor and returned to Holland
in 1599. Van Warwijck went on to Ternate and returned home late
in 1600. The cargoes brought back by van Neck yielded a profit of
100 per cent on the outlay for the whole expedition. When the remaining ships returned home and the accounts were closed a total
profit of 400 per cent was declared.
Other ships of the fleets sent out in 1598 visited Sumatra, Borneo,
Siam, Manila, Canton and Japan. But none of the other expeditions
made such staggering profits as van Neck's. The two expeditions
through the Magellan Straits failed badly to the tune of half a million
guilders, and one of those via the Cape brought heavy losses to its
promoters. But the significant fact is that, notwithstanding their
struggle for independence against Spain, these losses, which would
have brought a crisis in London, neither crippled nor even cramped
the Dutch effort. Several more companies were formed and more
ships than ever before were despatched to the East. There were so
many companies competing with each other in sending out ships that
the period up to the formationof the United East India Company in
1602 goes by the name of the wilde vaart, or the period of indiscriminate voyaging. So far as South-East Asia was. concerned there
was hardly a port of any importance that was not visited by Dutch
ships. Everywhere almost without exception they were received with
friendliness and their help was sought against the Portuguese. The
most striking exception was the murder of Cornelia de Houtman at
Acheh in 1599 and the imprisonment of his brother Frederick therfe
for two years, during which he coinposed the earliest Malay-Dutch
dictionary and Malay translations of a number of Christian 'prayers.
In 1600 Steven van der Haghen concluded the first important treaty
with a native ruler. It was with a chief of Amboina, who besides permitting the Dutch to establish the ' Kasteel van'Verre' on his territory
promised them the exclusive delivery of all the cloves produced
there. It was the first of many similar agreements whereby the'Dutch
sought not merely to oust the Portuguese but to monopolize the trade
against all comers from Europe. Before the ever-increasing^ number
of Dutch ships that poured into their preserves the Portuguese were
at a great disadvantage. At home Lisbon could send no help. Philip
I l l ' s use of the port for his naval preparations against England and the
Netherlands in 1599 caused the English to blockade it, and in any case
the extravagance and inefficiency of Spanish policy had reduced it to

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a mere shadow of its former greatness. Goa therefore had to manage

with such naval forces as it could muster in the Eastern seas. In 1601
Fiirtado de Mendoza put out from Malacca with a fleet of thirty
vessels to attack Bantam, but Wolphert Harmensz with five ships of
the Compagnie van Verre drove him off. But while the Dutch ships
were scattered collecting cloves among the islands of the Moluccas the
Portuguese commander succeeded in an effort to regain control of
Amboina. He followed this up with an attack upon Ternate in
co-operation with the Spaniards from Manila. But this failed and he
returned withhis exhausted troops to Malacca. The Portiiguese were
also foiled by a Dutch squadron in an attack upon their old enemy
the Sultan of Johore.
The failure of the Portuguese attempt to drive the Dutch out of the
Archipelago provided the latter with an excellent opportunity for a
general counter-offensive, but one which under the existing conditions of trade they were not in a position to seize. It had become
urgently necessary to bring the wilde vaart to an end. Prices were
rising steeply as a result of the competition between the merchants of
different companies to procure cargoes, and in some cases they had
even come to blows. A movement towards amalgamation began in
1600. The formation of the English East India Company convinced
the Dutch that only by a united national effort could, they consolidate and preserve what they had gained in the enthusiasm of their
first push to the East. Such were the factors which brought into
being the United East India Company or the V.O.C. (Vereenigde
Oostindische Compagnie).
The constitution of the Company was laid down by the octrooi of
the States General of 20 March 1602 which brought it into being. It
was granted the monopoly of trade in the regions between the Cape of
Good Hope and the Magellan Straits for an initial period of twentyone years, together with power to make treaties, build forts, maintain
armed forces and install officers of justice. In each city where amalgamating companies were established, namely Amsterdam, Middelburg, Delft, Rotterdam, Hoorn and Enkhuizen, there was to be a
V.O.C. Chamber, while the governors of these companies, numbering
seventy-six were to form its directors, with the provision that vacancies
were to remain unfilled until the number had declined to sixty. The
actual management of day-to-day affairs was entrusted to a body of
seventeen, referred to as the Heeren XVII, the Directeuren or the
Majores. On this body the Amsterdam Chamber was to have eight
seats.. An initial capital of 6^ million guilders was subscribed, of

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which Amsterdam's share amounted to 3,675,000 guilders. Each

Chamber was to fit out ships independently, but profit and loss were
to be shared by all. Finally the Company was to take over all the
factories established in the East by its predecessors, namely at Ternate
in the Moluccas, Banda, Bantam and Gresik on the north coast of Java,
Patani and Johore on the Malay Peninsula, and Acheh at the northwestern tip of Sumatra. It was a truly remarkable piece of amalgamation, in which local interests and central direction were harmonized
in such a way as to provide for the utmost concentration of the
national effort. And it is noteworthy that the capital with which it
commenced operations was practically ten times as large as the
English Company's.
Wybrand van Warwijck commanded the first fleet of fifteen ships
sent out by the Company, and within three years thirty-eight ships
had been equipped and despatched to the East. They went out in
powerful, heavily armed fleets designed to attack the Portuguese, and
while new factories were being established in Java, Celebes (at
Macassar) and on the mainland of India (at Surat, Masulipatam and
Petapoli) relations were established with Ceylon, where the Portuguese
monopolized the cinnamon trade, and preparations were made to
trade directly to China and Japan.
The counter-attack upon the Portuguese had only mixed success.
With their backs to the wall they showed unexpected powers of resistance, and they received valuable assistance from the Spaniards at
Manila. A Portuguese fleet was defeated off Johore in 1603. Two
years later notable successes were gained in the Spice Islands: the
Portuguese fortresses on Amboina and in the Moluccas came under
the suzerainty of the Netherlands. But in 1606 the Dutch attack on
Malacca was beaten off by the Portuguese, while a Spanish fleet from
the Philippines conquered their trading posts in the Moluccas. And
although in 1607 they recovered eastern Ternate from the Spaniards,
their, attacks on Mozambique and Goa in the next year completely
failed, and they wasted their resources in fruitless efforts to capture
Manila.
In 1609 the situation showed clear signs of improvement. B y t h e
occupation of the island of Banda-Neira and the establishment of-^
Fort Nassau the Dutch regained the upper hand in the Spice Islands,
while by the Twelve Years' Truce signed with Spain at Antwerp they
obtained a breathing-space from the long struggle in Europe together
with the right to hold all the conquests they had nnade from Spain and
Portugal. In that same year they took^^a far-reaching and much-

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needed step in the consolidation bf jtheir power in the East by the

appointment of Pieter Both as Governor-General of the Indies with
control over all 'forts, places, factories, persons and business of the
United Company'. With him was associated a 'Council of India'
consisting of four members. His instructions laid down that the
possession of the Spice Islands was of the highest importance to the
Company and that all competitors must be excluded from them.
Before these instructions were drawn up there had already been trouble
between the Dutch and the English in both the Moluccas and the
Bandas. It was soon to develop into a serious quarrel.
(c) The Anglo-Dutch struggle for the spice trade
' From the beginning of the century the English, though far inferior
in strength, had been following the Dutch around the archipelago,
pursuing them like gadflies,' writes J. S. Furnivall.^ And Bernard
Vlekke writes in the same vein: ' The merchants of London followed
their more powerful neighbours wherever they went, hoping to profit
from the pioneer work of others. The expenses of the war against
Spain, by which Indonesian trade was made safe for the northern
nations, were left graciously to the Netherlanders, and wherever the
Dutch .Company founded a trading post the English were sure to
follow: at Patani, at Djambi, at Jacatra, and in many other places.'^
And he proceeds to quote Furnivall's statement in support of his own.
Now, though plausible, neither statement will bear detailed examination, f a r more authoritative accounts of this period, based upon
research into the original manuscript sources, are to be found in the
works of Sir William Foster* and W. H. Moreland* on the East India
Company's activities on the one hand, and those of H.T. Colenbrander*
and F. W. Stapel^ on the VOC's on the other. But those of the latter
two are available in Dutch only. Hence the 'gadfly' legend of English
attempts to trade with South-East Asian ports is widely accepted.
In any case it is difficult for a Dutchman to write dispassionately
^ Netherlands India, Cambridge, 1939 and 1944, pp. 26-7.
' Nusantara, A History of the East Indian Archipelago, Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, Mass., 194s, p. m .
' 5ee particularly England's Quest of Eastern Trade (1933), The Voyages of Sir James
Lancaster (1940), The Voyage of Sir Henry Middleton to the Moluccas (1943) and The
Journal of John Jourdain (1905).
* Eeter Floris, His Voyage to the East Indies in the Globe (1934), The Relations of
Golconda (1931).
Koloniale Geschiedenis (3 vols., 1925) and his monumental Jan Pieterszoon Coen (5
vols., 1919).
" Geschiedenis van Nederlandsch Indie, vol. iii. '

CH. 14

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275

of this period. Dutch expansion to the East formed a major item in

their eighty years' struggle for independence and was undertaken
as much for political and strategic as for economic reasons. Their East
India Company conducted a concentrated national offensive against
Portugal and Spain, and they bitterly resented th intrusion of the
English into the spice trade, since the latter had lost much of their
Elizabethan hatred of Spain and would gladly have made peace with
the Portuguese on a basis of live and let live in the East.
Moreover, from their experience as middle-men the Dutch realized,
in a way that the English could not, that the market for spices in
Europe was limited, and that competition, by forcing up the purchase
price in the East and causing a glut in the West, would dangerously
reduce the possibilities of profitable trade. They therefore concentrated upon establishing a monopoly, and were prepared, by fair
means or foul, to exclude all competitors. And the English, who had
sympathized with and helped the Dutch in their struggle against
Philip II of Spain, were at first surprised, and subsequently deeply
indignant, at their treatment by the people whom they regarded as
their natural allies in Europe.
The trouble began during what is known as the Second Voyage of
the English Company, which was intended to open up direct relations
with Amboina and the Banda Islands. Its commander, Henry Middleton, on arrival at Bantam in December 1604 found there a powerful
Dutch fleet under Steven van der Haghen, which had been sent out
to attack the Portuguese. The Dutch attitude was friendly, and he
learnt frofn the English factors who had been left behind by the First
Voyage that after Lancaster's departure for home the attitude of the
natives had become so difficult that but for the backing of the Dutch
factors the English factory might have been exterminated. Middleton
arrived at Amboina before the Dutch and began to negotiate with the
Portuguese for permission to trade. But the Dutch fleet, following on,
forced the Portuguese to capitulate and prevented him from carrying
on trade. He went on to Tidore, where by chance he saved the Sultan
of Ternate and three Dutch merchants, who were fleeing from the
place. He vvas again followed up by the Dutch fleet, now bent on the
capture of Tidore, which fell to it in May 1605. He managed to obtain
a cargo of cloves at Ternate, and one of his ships collected a fair
quantity of mace and nutmegs in the Bandas; but Dutch hostility
forced him to return to Bantam without planting a factory.
The commanders of the Third Voyage had much the same experience as Middleton's. David Middleton, his brother, arrived in the

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Moluccas in January 1608 to find a struggle in progress between the

Dutch and the Spaniards, who had come to the help of the Portuguese
and inflicted a severe reverse on the Dutch and their ally the Sultan of
Ternate. As he refused to join in an attack upon the Dutch, he was
refused permission to trade. William Keeling, who arrived in the
Bandas in February of the following year, found the Dutch factors
friendly and began to collect a cargo of spices. But in the following
month Admiral Verhoeff arrived there in command of a powerful fleet
with special orders to enforce the monopoly. Having overcome all
resistance, the Dutch then forced the local chiefs to sign treaties granting them a monopoly of the spice trade and ordered Keeling to depart.
In i6io David Middleton, in charge of the Company's Fifth Voyage,
arrived at Banda Neira only to be ordered away by the Dutch governor.
\7hen he adopted a defiant attitude, saying that the English had a right
to be there since their nations were friends in Europe, the Dutch
threatened force. He also made a show of force and got away to the
island of Wai, which was not under Dutch control. There he secured
a good lading and left behind two factors to collect more.
As incident after incident of this sort followed one another, the
English merchants came to realize that they were up against a resolute
Dutch move to monopolize the commerce of the Archipelago; and the
East India Company decided to invoke the support of the government.
In November 1611 it complained to Lord Treasurer Salisbury of the
'uncivil and inhuman wrongs' committed by the Dutch against its
servants and begged him to take the matter up with the States General.
The English ambassador at The Hague, who was instructed to make
representations on the subject, warned Salisbury that the V.O.C. was
so powerful that it was quite likely to flout the orders of the States
General if these were contrary to its own interests. The only result
of his intervention was the production by the Dutch, of a long list of
counter-charges against the English. He suggested, therefore, that
pressure should be brought to bear upon both companies by their
respective governments to negotiate an agreement for joint trade.
Neither side, however, was willing to come to such an arrangement;
so that although, under pressure from both governments, two conferences were heldone in London in 1613 and the other at The Hague
in 1615nothing came of them. The Dutch took their stand upon the
treaties they had concluded with native rulers, though the manner in
which they had secured some of them would not bear investigation,
and complained that the English expected to share free of cost the
commerce which they had wrested from Spain and Portugal at im-

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277

mense cost. The English contended that they had traded in the Moluccas long before the Dutch had appeared on the scene, and that as a
friendly nation they should not be debarred from trading there on the
pretext of Dutch hostilities with other powers. They refused outright
to pay any share of the expenditure already incurred by the Dutch in
fighting the Spaniards and the Portuguese, or to join with them in
further acts of war. In this they were supported by James I, who was
most assiduously cultivating friendly relations with Philip III.
Meanwhile the English were busily engaged in broadening the scope
of their trade. They had discovered that the best way to obtain spices
was to lade cotton goods and opium in India for sale in the spice ports
of the Archipelago. One result of this was that in 1609 they began to
cultivate relations with the Mughal emperor Jehangir and at the same
time, against fierce Portuguese resistance, to force their way into the
textile trade of western India. Another was the despatch of the Globe
in 1611 to engage in trade in the Bay of Bengal and the Gulf of Siam.
The Dutch had already pushed their way with considerable success
into the textile trade between the Coromandel Coast and the countries
on the opposite side of the bay; and in 1610 the committee entrusted
with the preparation of the English Company's Seventh Voyage
obtained the services of two Dutchmen, Pieter Willemszoon Floris and
Lucas Antheuniszoon (always referred to in the English records as
Peter Floris and Lucas Antheunis), both of whom had had practical
experience in the Dutch Coromandel factories, to take charge of the
enterprise..
The voyage of the Globe opened a new chapter in the history of the
East India Company, for it not only resulted in the establishment of
an English factory at MasuHpatam on the Coromandel Coast but also
directly in the opening of commercial relations with Siam and indirectly with Burma. In Siam factories were planted at Patani, a
Malay state under Siamese suzerainty, and at Ayut'ia, the capital.
Both Patani and Ayut'ia were important for their trade with China,
whence came supplies of silk and porcelain, and Japan. The merchants
of the two countries went to Ayut'ia principally to buy hides and
skins, and to Patani for spices imported there from the Archipelago.
The dye-wood known as 'brazil', aloes-wood, benzoin and tin could
also be obtained in the local markets. The Dutch were already established at both places and the rulers welcomed competition from other
Europeans. From Ayut'ia two factors were sent up to Chiengmai to
open trade with the Laos states. While they were there King Anaukpetlun of Burma besieged the city. One of them got away before it

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THE EARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

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fell; the other, Thomas Samuel, was captured and taken to Pegu with
his unsold goods. There he died, and the East India Company's first
relations with Burma were opened when the Masulipatam factory sent
two of its assistants to Pegu to claim his goods.
While the Globe was engaged upon this enterprise further developments were taking place in Sumatra, Java, Borneo and Celebes.
Captain Thomas Best, after establishing English trade at Surat in 1612
(in the teeth of Portuguese opposition), went on to Acheh in April
1613 to exploit the pepper trade. Two years later, against strong
Dutch opposition, factories were planted at Acheh, Priaman and
Jambi. In 1617 the English at Bantam planted factories at Jacatra
and Japara on the north coast of Java. The Dutch destroyed the
factory at Japara in the course of a war with Mataram, but it was reestablished in 1619. In 1611 or 1612 Bantam had also planted a
factory at Succadana on the south-west coast of Borneo. This was in
consequence of a report that the Dutch were obtaining gold and
diamonds there; but Dutch competition prevented it from making
headway, and when in 1622 the town was sacked by a Javanese force
both Dutch and English sustained heavy losses and withdrew.
The factory at Macassar in Celebes was founded by John Jourdain
in 1613. This tough Devon seaman, whom Jan Pieterszoon Coen
considered the 'most guilty' of all his English opponents,^ became
the leading protagonist of the struggle against the Dutch when in that
year he was entrusted by Sir Henry Middleton with the task of planting
a factory in the Moluccas. He went first to Hitu on the northern coast
of Amboina, where the Dutch refused him permission to buy cloves.
He thereupon sailed across to Luhu on the western end of Ceram,
where the Dutch had become unpopular through using their monopoly
agreement to beat down the price of cloves by almost 50 per cent.
When the natives explained that they would willingly supply him
with cloves were it not for their fear of the Dutch, he went up to the
Dutch factory to expostulate. There he was confronted by an indignant young man who was none other than the future governor-general
himself.
In the interview that took place each struck sparks off the other's
armour. Coen, 'in a choleric manner', said that if Jourdain bought
cloves without Dutch consent 'it was so much stolen from them, and
therefore they would prevent it, if by any means they might'. Jourdain
replied that the country was free for the English as for the Dutch, and
when Coen refused his challenge to put the matter to a meeting of the
' H . Terpstra, De Factnrij der Oostindische Compagnie te Patani, p. 216.

CH. 14

INDONESIA FROM THE PASSING OF MAJAPAHIT

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chiefs he went off to an assembly of the natives and told them what
had passed between himself and Coen. The natives accordingly
demanded the attendance of the Dutch, and in their presence reaffirmed their desire to trade with the English. But it was all to no
purpose; for though Jourdain contemptuously refused to be deterred
by Dutch threats to use force, he failed to persuade the natives to
disobey their masters and sailed away to Kambelu, on the opposite
coast of Ceram, in response to a message that he might take delivery
of a quantity of cloves there. He obtained^ a small supply, but the
chief was too frightened of the Dutch to grant his request to plant a
factory.
There was nothing for it but to return to Bantam with his mission
unaccomplished. On the way he called at Macassar; and although the
Dutch had settled there, the king was on bad terms with them and
gladly permitted him to establish a factory. It proved to be of considerable importance, for Macassar was a halfway house between Java
and the Spice Islands. Its connection with the latter was important,
for it sent them gold and much-needed rice in return for spices. For
many years it was to be a thorn in the side of the Dutch, stoutly
maintaining its independence and defying all their attempts to prevent
a large leakage in their spice monopoly, until at last they conquered
it in 1667.
So far as the Moluccas were concerned, the English persevered in
attempts to carry on trade despite Dutch opposition. Cloves fetched
more than three times the price of pepper in the London market, and
there was a demand for the finer spices all over the East. In every
way it was the most lucrative trade in the East, and, writes Foster,
'our countrymen can scarcely be blamed for struggling hard against
the attempt to exclude them from all share in this commerce'.^ They
were, however, too weak to undertake anything more than sporadic
efforts, in which they encouraged the natives to break their contracts
with the Dutch in the hope of English support. When, in face of the
determined attitude of the Dutch, these efforts petered out, as they
did in the case of the attempts of the Concord and the Thomasine to
trade with Ceram i n \ 6 i 5 , the unfortunate natives were left in the
lurch.
It was in the Bandas that the great struggle took place which more
than anything else brought matters to a head. It began with the
expedition in 1615 of George Ball and George Cokayne in the Concord
and Speedwell to the islands. On arrival at Neira in March they found
' England's Quest of Eastern Trade, p. 261.

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a Strong Dutch squadron there under the command of no less a person

than the governor-general himself, Gerard Reynst (1614-15). What
had happened was that the Dutch, in view of persistent English
attempts to trade with the islands, had decided that the only effective
method of maintaining their monopoly was that of outright conquest.
Reynst not only forbade the English to trade but sent ships to shadow
them in their endeavours to evade his order. When, in spite of Dutch
vigilance, Ball managed to purchase a quantity of spices on the island
of Wai, the Dutch landed a force on the island. But the natives rallied
to the support of the English and drove off the Dutch with heavy loss.
The upshot of it all was that two English merchants wer^ left on the
island while a representative of the chiefs went to Bantam, where
Jourdain was Agent, to ask for help against the Dutch. Jourdain,
however, had not the strength at his disposal to challenge the Dutch
to a fight, and he was aware that negotiations for a settlement were in
progress in Europe. Nevertheless he was resolved to do what he could,
since he believed that the Dutch had no claim to Wai: its chiefs, he
was informed, had never made any agreement with them.^ In January
1616, therefore, he sent a squadron of five ships under Samuel Castleton to the Bandas.
As soon as the Dutch at Neira heard of Castleton's arrival at Wai
they despatched a strong fleet to drive him off. Faced by overwhelmingly superior numbers, he weakly accepted the terms dictated to him
by the Dutch commander, Jan Dirkszoon Lam. He gave an assurance
that no English assistance would be given to the natives of Wai on
the understanding that when the Dutch invaded the island they would
not interfere with the English factors there. If the Dutch conquered
the island the English factors would leave. To have attempted to put
up a fight would have been madness, but Sir William Foster claims
with justice that he could have withdrawn under protest, leaving the
Dutch with the embarrassment of dealing with the year-old English
factory on an island to which they had no valid claim. ^ Castleton's
squadron, leaving behind a pinnace for the evacuation of the factory
should the need arise, went on to seek for spices in the Moluccas. But
wherever the Dutch were in control the natives were prevented from
trading with them. Only at Tidore, where the Spanish still maintained
a fortress, were they able to barter rice for spices.
Meanwhile Richard Hunt, the chief English factor at Wai, was
determined not to leave the natives in the lurch. He therefore per' On this point, however, see Heeres, Corpus Diplomaticum, i, p. 35.
* Op. cit., p. 264.

CH. 14

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suaded them and the inhabitants of the neighbouring island of Run

to make a formal surrender of their islands to the East India Company
and to hoist the English colours over their defences. His fond hope
that this would deter the Dutch from attacking proved false. They
quickly made themselves masters of Wai. Most of the inhabitants fled
in panic to Run. Hunt also eluded the infuriated Dutch and escaped
to Macassar, whence he made his way to Bantam. For the time being
they left Run alone, and Jourdain, as soon as he heard what had
happened, sent a fresh expedition under Nathaniel Courthope to help
the natives to defend the island. He was instructed to offer English
protection to the people of Lonthor and Rosengijn also.
Courthope with his two ships, the Swan and the Defence, arrived at
Run in December i6i6. Although Wai was in Dutch hands, the
ceremony of ceding both islands was re-enacted after he had received
assurances from the chiefs that they had never made any agreement
with the Dutch. Then guns were landed and preparations made for
defence. Agreements were also made with Rosengijn and a town on
Lonthor for the surrender of their lands to the British Crown. The
Dutch, however, were just as determined as Courthope. They attacked
and overpowered the Swan, killing in the fight one of the senior
officers of the expedition. Courthope then prepared to make a desperate resistance. He fortified the little island of Nailaka overlooking
his anchorage and prepared to beach the Defence in a sheltered place.
Unfortunately during the operation she began to drift away and
eventually a mutinous section of her crew sailed her off and surrendered
her to the Dutch.
At this juncture the Dutch governor-general Laurens Reael arrived
in Neira. Realizing the full seriousness of the situation, he decided to
try. negotiation before proceeding to sterner measures. His proposals
were not unhke those previously accepted by Castleton at Wai: if the
English would leave the Dutch a free hand to deal with the island
their ships would be restored and they could depart with all the spices
they had collected. But Courthope replied that he would neither turn
traitor to his king and country nor would he betray the natives. His
own counter-proposal was that if Reael would leave the matter of the
disputed territory to be settled at Bantam or in Europe he would agree
to depart. The governor-general in his turn rejected these terms and
negotiations were broken off. Reael decided that he must await reinforcements before attacking Run; Courthope held on grimly at Nailaka
and sent an urgent appeal for help to Bantam. But Jourdain was no
longer in command there; he had gone home. Hence nothing effective

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was done to relieve the threatened post. In November 1617 Reael

wrote to the English president at Bantarri ordering the evacuation of
Run and threatening that any English ship found in the Moluccas
would be attacked. He received a defiant, reply to the effect that the
island would be defended to the last and he would be held responsible
for any bloodshed that might occur.
In 1618 relations between the two parties became steadily worse.
The Dutch were genuinely worried by the situation in the Spice
Islands; they feared lest as a result of English encouragement the
natives would fall upon and destroy their weak garrisons there. By
this time they had spread themselves so widely that their strength was
dangerously dispersed. In June of that year Jan Pieterszoon Coen
became governor-general of the Netherlands Indies and at once began
to infuse a new vigour into the administration. As early as 1614 he
had submitted a statement on policy to the directors. ^ He recom:
mended a programme of vast territorial expansion and colonization at
the expense of the Spaniards and Portuguese, and the annihilation of
the shipping of other European competitors. English competition he
considered to be the greatest danger: in the Moluccas they ruined the
piece-goods trade and got away with much spice. The Bandas, he
thought, must be either peopled with colonists from other parts or
completely conquered by arms. Moreover, to concentrate and direct
their full strength the Dutch must have a rendezvous. In his instructions, which were signed by the Heeren XVII and confirmed by
Maurice, he was enjoined to expel all foreigners, whether allies or
enemies, from places where the Dutch tradedby force, if necessary.
Their ships must be searched, and if spice were found on them it must
be removed.
In the following November John Jourdain arrived in Bantam as the
English president. His appointment indicated the adoption of a
more vigorous policy by the English Company. While in England he
had attended the Company's committee and pressedfor force sufficient
not only to hold Bantam but to trade with the Moluccas and Bandas.
He affirmed his belief that uncompromising resistance to the Dutch
monopolizing efforts would not lead, to war, since the Dutch would
hesitate before taking extreme measures. He underestiniated Jaff~
Pieterszoon Coen.
He was sent out with a fleet of six vessels under the command of
Sir Thomas Dale and was given authority over all the Company's
' ' Discoers aen de E. Heeren Bewinthebberen, touscher'ende den Nederlantscfie
Indischen Staet.'

CH. 14

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factories, except Surat and its dependencies. Off the coast of Sumatra
the fleet's flagship, the Sun, was wrecked. On arrival at Bantam they
were greeted with serious news. Two ships sent to reheve Courthope
at Run hai^d been captured by the Dutch, while in Bantam they had
assaulted Englishmen in the streets. But the Dutch situation in Java
was by no means happy. Their relations with Ranamanggala* of
Bantam had been so strained that Coen had threatened to withdraw
the factory. He had gone to Jacatra with the intention of making the
Dutch factory there his rendezvous. But when, against the strict
orders of the pangeran, he had begun to fortify it a state of war had
developed. At about the same time the Dutch factory at Japaira had
been captured by the forces of the Sunan Agung of Mataram, whose
ambition was to restore the empire of Majapahit, and he came to the
conclusion that a coalition of Javanese states was forming against the
Dutch. And as most of his ships were guarding the Spice Islands
against an expected attack by the English in reprisal for the action
against their ships at Run, Dale's arrival and junction with another
English fleet under Martin Pring, which was already off Bantam,
placed him in a position of serious inferiority at sea.
The trouble began on 14 December 1618, when the Zwarte Leeuw,
on arriving at Bantam from Patani, was seized by Dale to be held as
surety for the satisfaction of the English claims against the Dutch.
Unfortunately she was accidentally set on fire and burnt out, and Coen
in reprisal attacked and destroyed the English factory at Jacatra. Dale
thereupon sailed to Jacatra and an indecisive engagement took place
between the two fleets. Coen, however, managed to extricate his fleet
and sailed away to Amboina to collect reinforcements and concentrate
his forces. He was prepared to sacrifice the beleaguered fort at Jacatra
in order to save his ships. And Dale, although the main objective of
his expedition was to protect English trade in the Spice Islands,
weakly decided against following Coen and taking relief to the gallant
Courthope. Instead he remained at Jacatra to assist the pangeran
against the Dutch fort. It was a bad miscalculation of the situation;
for when the Dutch Council had agreed to articles of surrender under
which the Dutch personnel were to be transported in English ships
to the Coromandel Coast, Ranamanggala of Bantam suddenly appeared at Jacatra with an army and demanded that the fort and all
the prisoners should be handed over to him. And, to cut si long story
short. Dale, unwilling to go back on the agreement he had made with
the Dutch, sailed away to Bantam; the Bantam army drove off the
' He was the chief minister and, as the hing was a minor, was the effective head of the
state.

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pangeran's besieging force, but then found itself quite unable to

capture the fort, which managed to hold out until the end of May
1619, when it was relieved by Coen, who returned from Amboina with
a powerful fleet.
Coen's bold gamble succeeded beyond his highest expectations, for
he found on returning that the whole situation had changed in his
favour. In the first place the English had 'quarrelled with Ranamanggala and had decided, temporarily at least, to leave Bantam. Dale and
Pring, whose ships were in bad condition, had left for the Coromandel
Coast to effect repairs and collect more ships with which to fight Coen.
Jourdain himself, with two ships, had left to take much-needed help
to the factories at Jambi, Patani, Ayut'ia and elsewhere. Coen learnt
of these happenings when, having taken initial steps to establish the
new city of Batavia on the site of Jacatra as the capital of the Dutch
eastern empire, he went on to Bantam to challenge Dale and Jourdain.
He at once detached three ships in pursuit of Jourdain. In the middle
of July they found him at anchor off Patani and at once attacked. The
result was a foregone conclusion; Jourdain was caught in a trap, and
although he put up a stubborn fight his casualties were so 'heavy that
he was compelled to negotiate for surrender. While the discussion was
in progress under a flag of truce he unwisely appeared on deck and
was at once killed by a shot from one of the Dutch ships. The Dutch
claimed that his death was accidental, but the English account asserted
that 'the Flemmings espying him most treacherously and cruelly shot
at him with a musket'. Modern Dutch historical research confirms
this view, for Terpstra in his history of the Dutch factory at Patani
writes: ' Careful comparison of the evidence has convinced me that
the English view is more acceptable than the Dutch.'*
This was not the only English disaster. In the following month the
Dutch captured the Star in the Sunda Straits; and a few weeks later
they surprised and captured no less than four English ships at the
pepper port of Tiku on the west coast of Sumatra. Dale died at Masulipatam in August 1619. Not till December of that year was his
squadron, under Pring, ready to return to the Archipelago. In March
at Tiku it was joined by three ships from Surat. On 8 April, in the
Sunda Straits, while on their way to Bantam the united squadronsTnet
a ship coming from England bringing news of the signature o f a n Anglo-Dutch treaty whereby the two companies were to share the
trade of the Archipelago and jointly bear the costs of defence. Four
days later, on arrival at Bantam, they found that Coen had already
' Op. cit., p. 215.

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received notification of the agreement from Holland, so that instead

of meeting as enemies they now had to co-operate as allies.
This short-lived attempt to end a rivalry which had deteriorated
into a savage undeclared war was by no means so unrealistic as it might
se?m at first sight. The initiative had been taken by the Dutch late in
the year 1618 because the directors of the V.O.C, with the end of the
Truce of Antwerp in sight, felt it to be essential to come to terms with
the English. The East India Company, however, was hostile, and the
negotiations, which began in December 1618, threatened to be broken
ofi^ several times before agreement was reached on 17 July 1619. Foster
tells us that it was concluded only under pressure from James I,^ but
according to Stapel^ the king's attitude was very reserved. Its main
provisions were (a) that grievances on both sides were to be forgiven
and forgotten, prisoners to be freed and captured ships restored; (b)
. that each comMny was to buy half of the total pepper available, and
the English were to have a third share of the spice trade of the Moluccas, Amboina and the Bandas; (c) that a Council of Defence was to be
established consisting of four members from each side and was to have
at its disposal a defence fleet composed of ten ships from each party;
(d) that each party was to keep its own forts and strongholds, and
during the first two to three years was not to build new ones; and
(e) the capital of the two companies was to remain separate and each
was to keep its own accounts.
Coen's reaction on learning the terms of the treaty was characteristic.
He wrote home that he wondered whether the directors had had good
advice in so hastily assuming so hard a bridle and surrendering so
many of their rightful conquests. They were, he said, nourishing a
serpent in their bosom. What he found most difficult to understand
was why a third of the cloves, nutmeg and mace should have been
conceded to the English when they had no claim to a particle of the
beach in the Moluccas, Amboina or the Bandas. There can be no
doubt that, however one may view the difEculties which arose in
the working of the other clauses of the treaty, the operation of this
one was deliberately sabotaged by Coen. In 1608 the Heeren XVII
had written: 'Banda and the Moluccas are the principal target at
which we shoot'. They were now to be the principal rock upon which
the unsteady bark of Anglo-Dutch co-operation foundered.
News of the treaty did not reach Robert Hayes, the English chief
factor at Nailaka, until late in November 1620. A month earlier his
^ Op. cit.~ p. 276.
'' Geschiedenis van Nederlandsch-Indie, iii, p. 142.

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THE EARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

PT; II

predecessor, the heroic Nathaniel Courthope, had been waylaid and

killed by the Dutch while returning from a visit to Lonthor. The
news of the agreement brought hostilities ito an end, but left the situation otherwise unchanged. Meanwhile, at Batavia Coen and his
council had taken the fateful decision td complete the conquest of
the Bandas which had been held up after their capture of Wai in 1616.
Coen justified the decision to the directors on the plea that the
Bandanese were delivering their produce to the Spaniards on Tidore.
He invited the English to participate in the expedition, but according
to the Dutch account they excused themselves on the grounds that
they had no ships available.
In January 1621 Coen himself left in command of a fleet of twelve
ships to carry out the task. The conquest of Lonthor was his first
objective. While completing his preparations for a landing he offered
the islanders peace if they would hand over all their nutmeg and mace
exclusively to the Dutch under the terms of the original agreement.
He also informed Robert Hayes of his intentions, and when the latter
urged that he should await the arrival of English ships he bluntly
refused. The islanders put up what resistance they could, but were
eventually, on 11 March 1621^ forced to capitulate. Soon afterwards
the inhabitants of Run, fearing a Dutch attack, made their submission
also. The Dutch occupied the island, forced the English there to
leave, but left the English post on Nailaka alone. A few days later
an English vessel under Captain Humphrey Fitzherbert arrived in
the islands, and on 19 March the solemn farce was enacted of proclaiming the Anglo-Dutch treaty. The Dutch, however, began to
consolidate their conquest by building a new fort, Hollandia Gastle,
on Lonthor.
The effect of all this upon the minds of the Bandanese was a conviction that they had been betrayed by the English, and a serious
revolt began on Lonthor aided by partisans from other islands. Coen
then proceeded to carry out his full plan of removing all the inhabitants
and restocking the rebellious islands with other settlers. It was carried
out with appalling frightfulness. Hundreds of people were rounded up
on Lonthor and sent into slavery in Java, thei kampongs and boats
being systematically destroyed. Forty-seven orangkayas, held. as
hostages, were tortured and executed when the rebels, who had taken
to the mountains, repulsed a Dutch attack. Thousands died of starvation in the mountains rather than surrender. Some 300 got away in
praus to south Ceram. The inhabitants of Run, on learning of the
atrocities in Lonthor, tried to flee en masse, but were rounded up aiid

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INDONESIA FROM. THE PASSING OF MAJAPAHIT

287

all the grown men killed to the number of i6o. The cultivated lands in
the islands were then parcelled out to Company's servants to work
with slave labour. 'Coen acted in this whole business,' writes Colenbrander*, ' which is a stain on his memory, with an inhuman ruthlessness which shocked even the Company's servants.' And when his
former colleague, Aert Gysels, heard of it he wrote: ' We must realize
that they fought for the freedom of their land just as we expended our
lives and goods for so many years in defence of ours.' . The directors
themselves were moved to write to Coen that they wished he could
have carried out his task with greater moderation. ^
Having scored a buU's-eye on his chosen target, Coen next turned
his attention to Amboina and the Moluccas. He forced the chiefs of
Amboina to make a new treaty recognizing Dutch authority. Ceram,
whose chiefs showed some reluctance to follow suit, was then treated
to a dose of the same medicine as the Bandas. With- the Moluccas,
however, the difficulties were greater, since the Spaniards still held
Tidore and Coen could not spare adequate forces to deal with
them. Moreover, he had to return to Batavia before attempting a
final settlement.
Meanwhile the arrangements for Anglo-Dutch co-operation in
other spheres had completely broken down. The Council of Defence,
provided for under the treaty, had been set up at Batavia. The Dutch
quarrel with Ranamanggala of Bantam showed no signs of abating,
and their blockade of the place became so intense that the English,
unable to trade there, transferred their headquarters to Batavia.
There they found their position an impossible one. The Dutch
insisted that their authority was supreme there by right of conquest
and that all Englishmen were amenable to Dutch tribunals. The
Truce of Antwerp expired in 1621 and Coen planned expeditions
against Manila and the Portuguese ports in India and at Mozambique.
The English were dragged into these, and when they could not afford
their share of the expenses and their quota of ships the effort to cooperate petered out. By the time that Coen left for home at the end
of his first term as governor-general early in 1623 the decision had been
taken to leave Batavia and to withdraw their factors from all the
Dutch settlements. Before they could begin to carry out this decision
an event took place which made a deeper and more lasting impression
upon the relations of the two peoples than any other incident of this
unhappy period. It became known as t h e ' Massacre of Amboina'.
^ Kolomale Geschiedenis, ii, p. 117.
* Stapel, op. cit., iii, p. 151.

CH. 14

INDONESIA FROM. THE PASSING OF MAJAPAHIT

287

all the grown men killed to the number of i6o. The cultivated lands in
the islands were then parcelled out to Company's servants to work
with slave labour. 'Coen acted in this whole business,' writes Colenbrander*, ' which is a Stain on his memory, with an inhuman ruthlessness which shocked even the Company's servants.' And when his
former colleague, Aert Gysels, heard of it he wrote: ' We must realize
that they fought for the freedom of their land just as we expended our
lives and goods for so many years in defence of ours.' . The directors
themselves were moved to write to Coen that they wished he could
have carried out his task with greater moderation.
Having scored a bijU's-eye on his chosen target, Coen next turned
his attention to Amboina and the Moluccas. He forced the chiefs of
Amboina to make a new treaty recognizing Dutch authority. Ceram,
whose chiefs showed some reluctance to follow suit, was then treated
to a dose of the same rnedicine as the Bandas. With- the Moluccas,
however, the difficulties were greater, since the Spaniards still held
Tidore and Coen could not spare adequate forces to deal with
them. Moreover, he had to return to Batavia before attempting a
final settlement.
Meanwhile the arrangements for Anglo-Dutch co-operation in
other spheres had completely broken down. The Council of Defence,
provided for under the treaty, had been set up at Batavia. The Dutch
quarrel with Ranamanggala of Bantam showed no signs of abating,
and their blockade of the place became so intense that the English,
unable to trade there, transferred their headquarters to Batavia.
There they found their position an impossible one. The Dutch
insisted t^at tlcieit axitViOtity -was s.MpTeTnt tVieic hy liglnl oi conquest
and that all Englishmen were amenable to Dutch tribunals. The
Truce of Antwerp ej^pired in 1621 and Coen planned expeditions
against Manila and the Portuguese ports in India and at Mozambique.
The English were dragged into these, and when they could not afford
their share of the expenses and their quota of ships the effort to cooperate petered out. By the time that Coen left for home at the end
of his first term as governor-general early in 1623 the decision had been
taken to leave Batavia and to withdraw their factors from all the
Dutch settlements. Before they could begin to carry out this decision
an event took place which made a deeper and more lasting impression
upon the relations of the two peoples than any other incident of this
unhappy period. It became known as t h e ' Massacre of Amboirta'.
^ Koloniale Geschiedenis, ii, p. 117.
* Stapel, op. cit., iii, p. 151.

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. PT. ' II

On leaving Amboina in 1622 to return to Batavia Coen had reminded the governor, Herman van Speuh, not to allow the English
to reduce his authority. The English, ijinder the treaty of 1619,
traded there under the protection of the Dutch fort Victoria Castle.
Relations with the Dutch were good until Isuddenly, on 23 February
1623, the members of the English factoryeighteen Englishmen,
eleven Japanese, and one Portuguesewe're arrested by the Dutch
on a charge of conspiring to seize the fortress. Confessions were wrung
from all of them under torture, and after a 'trial' ten Englishmen,
including the chief factor Gabriel Towerson, ten Japanese and the
Portuguese were beheaded. Stapel is of opinion that although the
penalty was very heavy the fact that there was a conspiracy cannot
be denied.^ But as all the evidence was obtained under torture it
was worthless, and the only conclusion to be safely reached is that the
Dutch either acted in a state of panic, as in the case of Pieter
Eberfelt's judicial murder at Batavia in 1721, which Stapel himself
condemns,^ or deliberately 3i order to force the English to quit the
Spice Islands. The hurried nature of the proceedings and the flimsy
excuses made for not referring the matter to Batavia before carrying
out the executions arouse one's deepest suspicions.
Attempts to deal with the difficulties which had arisen under the
treaty had been made in England, and in January 1623 ^ fresh agreement had been made. But the Amboina outrage now removed all hope
of further co-operation. The English withdrew their factory from
Batavia early in 1624 ^^^ tried to settle on an island in the Sunda
Straits; but it was so unhealthy that they were soon too weak to
defend themselves against plundering bands from Sumatra. In May
1625 they had to obtain Dutch help to return to Batavia, where Coen's
successor, de Carpentier, housed them in a disused school building.
In 1627 when Coen returned to Java they decided to transfer to Bantam, and the sultan, still on bad terms with the Dutch, willingly took
them under his protection. There they remained until the Dutch
conquered the place in 1682. Under the agreement of 1623 P^lo Run
had been recognized as English property, but the Dutch clung on to
it, and the East India Company was in no position to maintain a factory
there. At the end of the First Dutch War in 1654 the Dutch agreed'tq
restore it and pay a sum of ^^85,000 in compensation for the losses
inflicted upon the East India Company. But the Company was still
unable to take possession of the island. Charles II took the matter up
^ Op. cit., iii, p. 161.
' Geschiedenis van Nederlandsch-Indie, 1930, p. 133.

CH. 14

INDONESIA FROM THE PASSING OF MAJAPAHIT

289

in 1662, and again the Dutch agreed to hand over the island. In 1665
the East India Company did actually occupy it, only to lose it a few
months later as a result of the outbreak of the Second Dutch War.
It was finally ceded to the Dutch by the Treaty of Breda, which ended
that war in 1667.
It is interesting to note that during the years in which the English
were competing with the Dutch for the trade of the Spice Islands the
East India Company was able to pay higher dividends than the V.O.C.
The reason was that the Dutch had to devote too much of their profit
to the expense of building forts, maintaining large garrisons and
equipping fighting squadrons. They were firmly convinced that the
spice monopoly was a matter of vital national importance, and so, in
the words of an acute critic,^ 'applied their greatest effort of empirebuilding to an object that was only temporarily worth attaining'. For
with the expansion of world trade the spice trade became less and less
important, and the misapplication of Dutch energy in the East had its
effect upon the decline of their national power in the second half of the
seventeenth century.

But from the point of view of South-East Asia the Dutch triumph
over the English is to be seen as the first decisive step towards the
formation of a new empire, commercial at the outset like Srivijaya and
Malacca, but gradually becoming predominantly territorial; yet not in
the true line of succession to either, since the centre of control lay
thousands of miles away.
^ J. A. Williamson, The Ocean in British History, p. 103.

CHAPTER 15 '

MATARAM AND T H E EXPANSION OF T H E V.O.C, 1623-84

was the founder of the Dutch empire of the
East Indies; but its development after his death was hardly along the
lines he had striven to lay down. According to his plans, Batavia was
to be the centre of a great commercial empire based upon complete
control of the sea. He did not envisage any wide extension of territorial power and was not interested in the political affairs of the interior of Java. The territories which, in his view, the V.O.G. should
' have in actual possession were small islands such as Amboina and the
Bandas. The remainder of the empire should consist of strongly
fortified trading settlements closely linked and protected by invincible sea-power.
Nor would it be confined to Indonesia: its forts and trading stations
should be far-flung over the whole of the East. He was especially
anxious to conquer Manila and Macao so as to drive the Spaniards and
Portuguese from the Philippines and the China coast. And he wanted
plenty of Dutch colonists; they were to direct slave labour in
cultivating estates in the Spice Islands and elsewhere, to assist in
defending the newly accquired possessions and to engage in the interAsiatic trade. This trade he believed to be capable of yielding far
greater profits than the traffic between Europe and Asia, each of which
had very limited requirements of the other's goods. His ideas were
vague and imaginative rather than practical, and utterly ruthless. In
the days when he was Director-General of Commerce at Batavia his
plans for the Spice Islands shocked his predecessor as governorgeneral, Laurens Reael, who thought that their execution would
involve such cruelty to the native people as would involve the ruin of
the V.O.C.
His warlike measures vastly increased the Company's expenses; and
although its methods of accountancy and the loss of some of its
account-books made the presentation of an accurate statement of
profit and loss for the early period impossible, his own estimate for the
years 1613-20 showed a deficit of 8,000 guilders, and on occasion the
directors had to borrow money in order to maintain an average dividend
JAN PIETERSZOON COEN

290

"^

CH. 15 MATARAM AND THE EXPANSION OF THE V.O.C, 1 6 2 3 - 8 4

ZQI

of 10 per cent. Nevertheless he was convinced that if the commercial

system could be reformed in accordance with his suggestions enormous
profits could be realized with the export of further capital from Holland.
And after his death the development of the Company's inter-Asiatic
trade, upon which he pinned his faith, certainly did yield a very
satisfactory return, although the directors rejected his colonization
proposal, which was the chief ingredient in his recipe.
Coen's short second term of office as governor-general (1627-9)
provided an object lesson in the dangers to which a commercial empire
with no territorial power was exposed. Sunan Agung of Mataram, as
we have seen, had gone far towards realizing his ambition to revive
the power of Majapahit. Of the Javanese powers only Balambangan in
the east of the island, and the rich and powerful sultanate of Bantam
in the west, refused to pay homage. After the conquest of Surabaya
Bantam became Agung's next objective. He pushed his control westwards over the area south of Batavia, which had become a sort of noman's-land through depopulation when the kingdom of Pajajaran had
been destroyed. But his best approach was by sea, and it was barred by
the Dutch. Batavia had in 1622 begun to send him formal embassies
with presents, but it had refused his demands for assistance against
Surabaya. In 1626 therefore he refused to receive the usual Dutch
missions and prepared to attack Batavia.
It was at this juncture that Coen returned. Batavia still maintained
its close blockade of the trade of Bantam which had been imposed
during his previous governor-generalship, and it was against the
raiding bands of his nearer neighbour that he had at first to strengthen
the city's defences. On Christmas Eve 1627 a Bantam force actually
got inside the citadel in a surprise attack, but was driven out. Eight
months later Mataram also staged a surprise attack, by sea, but after a
desperate resistance this also was beaten off. In 1629 Agung laid
siege to the city with the biggest force he could muster. But so large
an army could not be adequately supplied with food by overland
transport and the Dutch reduced it to starvation by their attacks upon
its supply ships. After five weeks the grand army of the susuhunan
had to beat a disorderly retreat, leaving its track strewn with the bodies
of men and animals who had died of starvation and exhaustion. During
the siege Coen contracted cholera and died within a few hours. This
second attack of Mataram upon Bavatia alarmed the Sultan of Bantam,
who realized that if the city fell his state would be the next to be
attacked. He <-herefore offered terms of peace which Coen accepted
and the ten years' blockade was lifted.

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THE EARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

PT. II

The severe defeat inflicted on Sunan Agung 's forces by the Dutch
did not lead to any better relations, although Hendrik Brouwer, who
became governor-general in 1632, made an attempt to reach an understanding with him. But there was little fighting, for the susuhunan
left the west alone and concentrated his attention on the east. He was
a fervent Muslim, and one of his most far-ijeaching acts was to develop
relations with the Muslim powers of Arabia, as a result of which a new
waye of Islamic missionary activity began in Indonesia. Pilgrims from
Mecca sought to revive and intensify the faith of the peoples, who,
though nominally Muslims, still clung to most of their old traditional
customs and observances. Agung proclaimed a holy war against the
two regions, Balambangan and the island of Bali, which up till then
still held out against conversion to Islam. In 1639 he conquered
Balambangan arid deported much of its population. Bali, however,
resisted his attacks with exemplary courage and maintained its
independence.
The Dutch, freed from the threat of Mataram, entered upon a
period of spectacular success and expansion. The great advance began
under Antonie van Diemen, 1636-45. He had been Coen's choice as
his successor in 1629, but the Council had decided otherwise and had
appointed Jacques Specx acting governor-general. The directors at
home after lengthy consideration appointed one of their number,
Hendrick Brouwer. In comparison with Coen and Van Diemen,
both Specx and Brouwer were mediocrities; but when Stapel describes
their period as one in which little energy was shown for expansion in
new regions* he is surely confining his attention too much to the
Archipelago, for the early thirties saw much expansive activity on the
Indo-Chinese mainland, in Arakan, Burma, Tenasserim, Siam, and
Cochin China. It was in one sense a development of Coen's policy of
annihilating native as well as foreign European shipping in the Indies.
The Dutch Coromandel Coast factories, the 'left arm of the Moluccas',
were striving to capture the export trade in Indian textiles from Indian
and Arab merchants. And in order to achieve this it was found
necessary to establish factories at all places outside India which imported these goods.

Thus in 1634, in an intensive effort to gain complete control over

the trade of the Bay of Bengal, the Dutch reopened their factory in
Arakan, planted one for the first time in Burma and sent a prospecting
expedition to Tenasserim, then in Siamese hands. The re-establishment of the Arakan factory was also closely connected with the
' GesMedems van Nederlandsch-Indie (second ed.), 1943, p. 85.

CH. 15 MATARAM AND THE EXPANSION OF THE V.O.C, 1 6 2 3 - 8 4

293

permanent blockade of Malacca, which began in 1633 and lasted until

the city fell in 1641. Arakan exported rice, and Batavia, faced by the
hostility of Sunan Agung and his repeated prohibitions of the import
of rice from his dominions by the Dutch, was anxiously looking round
for new sources of supply. Throughout the factory's history, therefore, by far the greater part of its trade was carried on directly with
Batavia.^
The ventures to Burma and Tenasserim, on the other hand, were
undertaken and directed by Pulicat. In all three places the Dutch
entered as competitors with Indian merchants; but although they
carried on successfully for about half a century, they never ousted the
Indians. Wherever there was relatively fair competition, the Asian
Arab, Persian, Indian or Chinesecould always maintain his position.
Only where the Dutchman could resort to force, as in the Spice
Islands, could he gain the advantage over the Asian trader; even then
he could not drive him out of the field, but had to arrange a modus
vivendi. With the more powerful monarchies of the mainland the
Dutch were, rarely in a position to dictate terms, and the Asian trader
was too well established to be ousted.
The early thirties also saw developments in Dutch relations with
Siam and Annam. Dutch ships were sent to assist King Prasat T 'ong
of Siam against the Cambodians and Portuguese on the one hand and
rebellious Patani on the other. Prince Frederick Henry of Orange sent
a congratulatory letter to the king in 1632, and in 1634 van Vliet was
established as Dutch Agent in a solid brick headquarters at Ayut'ia.
It was the beginning of a long period of Dutch ascendancy in Siamese
trade. Like Arakan, Siam at this period assumed a new importance in
Dutch eyes because of the food question. 'This station', wrote Joost
Schouten in 1636 in his Description of Siam, 'supplies Batavia with
great quantities of provisions.' From Ayut 'ia a factory was planted
in Cambodia in 1637, and in 1641 van Wuysthoff went from the latter
up the difficult Mekong river to open relations with the Laos kingdom
of Vien Chang (Vientiane). Settled commercial relations with Annam
began in 1633 with the establishment of a factory at Qui-nam, but
because of the factory planted four years later in Tongking they were
never happy and were soon broken off. Both the Trinh of Hanoi and
the Nguyen of Hue welcomed European merchants, but as they were
at war with each other it was practically impossible to carry on trade
with both.
' D. G. E. Hall, 'Studies.in Dutch Relations with Arakan', JBRS, xxvi, pt. i, p p .
1-31.

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THE EARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

PT. II

Thus it can be seen that the period of Specx and Brouwer, though
unable to show the spectacular advances made under Coen and van
Diemen, has an interest all of its own. It has been passed over lightly
by Dutch historians largely because the ventures described above had
comparatively little success. The factory at Mrohaung in Arakan had
a chequered existence and was finally withdrawn before the end of the
century. In Burma, after several threats to withdraw, the factories
were wound up in 1679. In Siam during the second part of the century King Narai attempted to escape from the grip of the Dutch by
calling in the French; and although Louis XIV's attempt to secure a
predominant influence there collapsed with the fall of Constant
Phaulkon in i688, the Dutch never managed to get hack on the old
footing. Their factory in Tongking lasted until 1700 but can never
have been a commercial success.
Van Diemen has been called ' statesman, warrior, admiral and merchant in one'. As a builder of their empire of the Indies he ranks next
to Coen in the estimation of the Dutch. He owed much to Coen, for
soon after his first arrival at Batavia an order came from the directors
that he was to be sent home because he was a bankrupt who had got
into the Company's service under a false name. But Coen set aside
the order and gave the young man rapid promotion. The most pressing
problem when he entered upon his term of office in 1636 was that of
the spice trade. The efforts constantly made by the Dutch to tighten
their monopoly hit the peoples of Amboina and the Moluccas, and
there was unrest and 'smuggling'. Sultan Hamja of Ternate was the
ally of the V.O.C., but his kimelaha (deputy ruler) in south Ceram
was hand-in-glove with the Sultan of Macassar and promoted the large
clandestine trade of which Macassar was the centre. A Dutch attempt
in 163 5-to invade south Ceram failed badly and caused so much unrest
throughout the islands that in 1637 van Diemen went with a fleet of
seventeen ships to deal with the situation. He put down the rebellion
in Ceram and restored peace in the islands, but-as soon as his back was
turned the old troubles broke out afresh.
In 1638, therefore, he returned to Amboina and made a new agreement with Sultan Hamja, who came to meet him in person. On-his
way back from his first visit he visited Macassar, where he brought to
an end the long state of war which had existed since 1616 between the
V.O.C. and the ruler by an agreement wherein the latter recognized
the Company's rights in the Spice Islands and conceded to it the right
to capture and destroy any Macassar ships found in their vicinity.
Firmer action he hesitated to take, since his ships and soldiers were

CH. 15 MATARAM AND THE EXPANSION OF THE V.O.C, 1623-84

295

needed elsewhere. On his second visit to Amboina in 1638 he sent a

punitive expedition against Buton, off the south-east coast of Celebes,
which was deeply involved in the clandestine spice trade. These
various measures brought some improvement to the situation but fell
far short of a solution. While Macassai; remained unsubdued and a
prosperous centre of English, French, Portuguese and Danish spice
merchants the spice monopoly remained an unrealized dream. But
van Diemen's hands were tied by his commitments in Ceylon and
before Malacca, while the susuhunan of Mataram, Agung, was
again creating serious difficulties by forbidding the sale of rice to the
Dutch and obstructing their trade on the north coast of Java.
Ceylon and Malacca were still important centres of Portuguese
power. In Ceylon the King of Kaudy, Raja Singa, was anxious to
obtain Dutch help against their stranglehold on all his ports. In
answer to a request made by him in 1636 to the governor of the Dutch
Coromandel factories van Diemen had instituted a blockade of Goa.
In 1638 a Dutch fleet under Adam Westerwoldt came to the help of
Raja Singa, who was now at open war with the Portuguese, and took
the Portuguese fort at Batticalo. In return Raja Singa made a treaty
granting the Dutch the cinnamon monopoly. During the next few
years the Dutch captured further Portuguese settlements and planted
strong garrisons at Gale and Negombo. They were well on their way
towards the complete domination of the island when Portugal, as a
result of her successful revolt against Spain in 1640, made a ten-year
truce with the Netherlands which left Colombo still in Portuguese
hands.
Before the new agreement took effect in the East, Malacca fell at
last in 1641. Right to the end it put up a magnificent resistance.
MataHeff had failed to take it in 1606 and van der Haghen in 1615.
On several occasions the Dutch made approaches to Acheh, the old
enemy of the Portuguese, but nothing came of them. Malacca remained a thorn in the side of the Dutch, supporting both Mataram
and Macassar against them. From 1633 onwards they instituted a
close blockade of the port, which seriously interrupted its trade and
supplies. In August 1640, with the help of the Sultan of Johore, a
descendant of the lasj Sultan of Malacca driven out by Albuquerque,
the Dutch began a regular siege of the city. It held out with incredible
valour until the middle of January 1641, when the besiegers finally
stormed the ruins and brought resistance to an end. Its fall revolutionized the situation in the Archipelago. Malacca quickly lost its
importance. Many Portuguese families moved to Batavia. Mataram

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THE EARLIER PHASE O F EUROPEAN EXPANSION

FT. II

lost one of its best customers for rice; and with the Javanese merchants
transferring their trade to Batavia, Agung had to revoke his
prohibition of the export of rice to the Dtitch, though he remained
as hostile as ever. The Dutch were now unquestionably the strongest
power in the Archipelago and their efforts to maintain the spice monopoly were greatly strengthened. Van Diemen was anxious to settle
matters with Agung, who intrigued with the English, murdered
Dutch hostages and finally fomented an attempt to seize the fortress
at Batavia. But the directors were opposed to any strong action, and
relations remained unsatisfactory and undecided until after both van
Diemen and Agung passed from the scene in 1645.
Van Diemen's term of office saw other notable developments in the
history of Dutch eastern enterprise in regions outside South-East Asia.
When in 1641 Japan expelled all Westerners the Dutch alone were
allowed to continue their commeircial activities. They had to leave the
main islands and confine themselves to the little island of Deshima off
the port of Nagasaki, where they lived and worked under rigorous
conditions and the closest supervision. Van Diemen sought compensation for this in a more determined pursuit of Chinese trade. In
1642 by the conquest of the Spanish fort at Quelang the Dutch gained
possession of the whole island of Formosa, an important distribution
centre in the sugar trade from China. They soon had a flourishing
trade going there; but when the Manchus brought the Ming dynasty
to an end and Ming leaders were flying in various directions, one of
them, Kuo Hsing Yeh ('Coxinga'), estabhshed himself in Formosa in
1661, and soon afterwards forced the Dutch to abandon their factory.
Van Diemen's name is associated with, a number of important
voyages of discovery. He sent out navigators in search of the fabulous
island of 'Rica Doro', which was said,to be somewhere east of Japan.
Two expeditionsone in 1639 under Matthijs Hendricksz. Quast and
Abel Janszoon Tasman, and the other in 1643 under Maarten Gerritsz.
de Vriesresulted in the discovery of the Kurile Islands and the east
coast of Sakhalin, but there was no gold island to be found; and Tasman made far more valuable contributions to geographical knowledge
in quite another direction.

Quite early on in their quest of the spice trade the Dutch had dis- _
covered that there was a better approach to the Archipelago than the
one used by the Portuguese. T h e latter had adopted from the Arabs
the practice of monsoon sailing whereby they proceeded up the coast
of East Africa into the monsoon belt and approached the Archipelago
by crossing the Indian Ocean north of the Equator and passing into

CH. 15 MATARAM AND THE EXPANSION OF THE V.O.C., 1 6 2 3 - 8 4

297

the Straits of Malacca. Such a route hinged upon a strategic centre

on the west coast of India. The Dutch, however, unhampered by such
considerations, after passing the Cape used the westerly winds of the
' roaring forties' of the southern hemisphere, which gave them a much
quicker passage across the Indian Ocean and made the Sunda Straits
their natural approach to the Archipelago. Ships sailing too far along
the southerly course had discovered what is now known as Australia,
and not a few had been wrecked upon its inhospitable western shore.
In 1642 and again in 1644 van Diemen sent out Tasman and Frans
Jacobsz. Visseher to determine its connection, if any, with the Terra
Australis Incognita of the geographers. On their first voyage, after
touching at Mauritius they passed round Australia from the west and
made their first landing on the island named by Tasman van Diemen's
Land, but subsequently, by the English, Tasmania. They then went
on to discover New Zealand, which they thought to be a part of the
great southern continent, and returned to Batavia by the north of New
Guinea. Their second voyage was undertaken to discover whether
there was a^ channel between New Guinea and Ausftalia and whether
the Gulf of Carpentaria was the opening of a channel which passed
right through Australia. Although they failed to discover the strait
which the Spaniards Torres and Prado had successfully navigated as
early as 1607,^ they mapped out the Gulf of Carpentaria correctly.
But their voyage was the last important Dutch effort of exploration.
Van Diemen could point to no new openings for trade as a result of
their efforts. The people they encountered on the north coast of
Australia were ' without rice or any considerable fruits, very poor, and
in many places evil-natured'. With his death in 1645 the V.O.C. lost
interest not only in further discovery but also in the lands their intrepid mariners had placed on the map.
If Coen was the founder of Batavia, van Diemen was in many ways
the creator of the city that was soon to be dubbed the ' Queen of the
East'. He completed its castle, built a town hall and a Latin school
and did much to expand and beautify the original settlement. Cultivation and industry were developed around it, chiefly by the Chinese
whom Coen had encouraged to settle. A new church was built, houses
in the Dutch style lined the banks of the canals, and the whole place
began to look almost like a Dutch city transplanted from Europe. It
became the home, and indeed the grave, of an increasing number of
Dutchmen, for it was excessively unhealthy, and one of van Diemen's
* Both wrote accounts of their discovery but they were never published. Torres's
manuscript only came to light in the middle of the eighteenth century.

298

THE EARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

FT. II

more important contributions to the city's amenities was an orphanage

founded in 1639.
Van Diemen's immediate successors, C^melis van der Lijn (164550) and Carel Reijniersz. (1650-3), made no outstanding personal contributions to the development of the Dutch empire; but their period
was far from one of stagnation. Amangkurat I (1645-77), Agung's son
and successor, made peace with van der, Lijn, and conceded to the
V.O.C. freedom of trade in his dominions. The Company in return
undertook to send an annual embassy to Mataram and to permit the
susuhunan's Javanese subjects to trade everywhere save in the Moluccas. New agreements were also made with Raja Singa in Ceylon and
with the tin-producing states of the Malay Peninsula which improved
the Dutch position in both regions. In 1650 the directors issued a new
comprehensive set of regulations (Generate Instructie) for the administration of the Indies. These emphasized the Company's position as a
commercial body whose operations must be conducted according to
the twin principles of the exclusion of competitors and of ' buy cheap,
sell dear'. In order that the spice trade should be more effectively
brought under control it laid down that the production of cloves should
be confined to Amboina and the neighbouring islands and that of nutmeg and mace to the Bandas; overproduction and smuggling must be
prevented by destroying trees elsewhere. In the same year for strategic
reasons a decision was taken to colonize the Cape of Good Hope, and
in 1652 Jaa van Riebeeck planted there the one and only colony in
the real sense that the V.O.C. ever possessed.
The policy of destroying the surplus spice trees which invited
smuggling had actually been put into practice by Arnold de Vlaming
van Oudshoorn in 1649, when he led what was known as a hongitocht
to cut down trees in west Ceram, where the clandestine trade with
Macassar still continued. A hongi Was a fleet of cora-coras or large
praus propelled by oars. This inhumane method of enforcing the
monopoly was systematically employed until the production of cloves
was practically eliminated in the Moluccas. In 1650 a serious revolt
broke out in these unhappy islands which was not. completely repressed until 1656. T h e Dutch arrested the Sultan of Ternate, Mandar Shah, and deported him to Batavia; and he was only reinstated
when he had made a formal agreement permitting them to cut down
clove trees wherever they liked in his dominions. As the price of
compliance he was granted an annual allowance. His people were
forced to plant rice and sago in place of cloves, and as their islands
could not produce enough food they had to buy'additional rice, at a

CH. IS

THE EXPANSION OF THE V.O.C, 1623-84

299

higher price than they could afford, from the Dutch. Ruin spread
over the once-prosperous islands, and an alarming increase of piracy
naturally resulted.
Johan Maetsuycker's term of office as governor-general (1653-78)
ranks with those of Coen and van Diemen as a period of notable
advance in the affairs of the V.O.C. Under van Diemen, as legal
expert of the Council of the Indies, he had composed the Statutes of
Batavia, which gave the Dutch empire its first code of law and remained until the beginning of the nineteenth century the chief
authority in legal matters. Later, as Governor of Ceylon, he had
cultivated good relations with Raja Singa and paved the way for the
final elimination of Portuguese power there. One of his early achievements as governor-general was the accomplishment of this aim. Not
only was Colortibo taken (1656) and the Dutch headquarters established there, but van Goens", who was sent in 1657 to chase the Portuguese out of Ceylon and the Coromandel and Malabar coasts of India,
carried out his task with such success that when the peace of August
1661 between the Netherlands and Portugal brought his conquest to
an end at the beginning of 1663, the Portuguese had not only lost all
their possessions in Ceylon but were left with only Goa and Diu in
India. In that same year the Spaniards evacuated Tidore and the
Dutch were left complete masters of the Moluccas.
Under Maetsuycker the Dutch achieved a great measure of control
over the pepper ports of Sumatra. Firm action had to be taken against
the Sultan of Palembang, who in 1658 treacherously attacked the
Dutch factory, murdering the factors and the crews of two ships lying
at anchor before it. A punitive expedition forced him to permit the
construction of a Dutch fort close to his town and to grant the Dutch
the exclusive right to purchase his pepper. Measures were also taken
against Acheh, whose power had notably declined after the death of
Iskander Muda in 1636. By the Painan Contract of 1662 the leading
Minangkabau chiefs, in revolt against Achinese suzerainty, came under
the protection of the V . O . C ; and when four years later Achinese
agents stirred up trouble for the Dutch on the west coast, an expedition
under Abraham Verspreet put an end to Achinese influence throughout the whole region.'
After breaking all resistance in the Moluccas in 1656 the obvious
next step was to put an end to the power of Macassar. But Hassan
Udin had strongly fortified his city and was well supplied with arms
by the Europeans who traded there; and moreover Maetsuycker
shrank from a task which was certain to entail a heavy expendituTe

300

THE EARLIER' PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

PT. II

such as would be frowned on by the directors. For some years the

renewed war with the Portuguese in Ceylon and south India prevented
him from risking a large expedition against Hassan "Udin. I n 1660,
however, a force under Johan van Dam captured one of Macassar's
forts, and in consequence the sultan accepted terms by which he
promised to stop all sailings to the Spice Islands, abstain from interference with the Company's allies, Buton and Menado, and expel the
Portuguese from his dominions. But he failed to carry out his treaty
obligations and reverted to his former attitude of hostility. In 1666,
therefore, Maetsuycker entrusted Cornells Janszoon Speelman with
the task of settling accounts with him. Speelman enlisted the support
of Aru Palakka, a Buginese chief of Boni, whose family had been,
murdered by Hassan Udin. The expedition began by destroying a
large Macassar force which was operating against Buton. Speelman
next sailed to the Moluccas, where he forced the ruler of Tidore to
recognize Dutch overlordship and abandon his age-long feud with
Ternate. Then, with further reinforcements from Ternate, he returned to Celebes and began the hard task of bringing Macassar to its
knees. It took four months of desperate fighting to force Hassan Udin
to submit. On 18 November 1667 ^e signed the Treaty of Bongaya,
by which he accepted Dutch overlordship, dismantled his forts,
granted the Dutch a monopoly of trade and agreed to expel all nonDutch Europeans. He had also to pay a huge indemnity and permit
the Dutch to occupy his principal fortress, which they named Fort
Rotterdam after Speelman's birthplace. Four months later he tried
once again to evade the peace terms. This time the Dutch took possession of his city, pensioned him off and placed south Celebes under
a Dutch governor with his headquarters at Fort Rotterdam. Indonesian independence in the east of the Archipelago was now virtually
stamped out.
Up to Maetsuycker's time there had been no deviation from Coen's
poHcy of confining the Dutch empire to a chain-of. forts and trading
posts and of eschewing territorial dominion save in the case of very
small islands such as Amboina and the Bandas. A change, however,
begins to be discernible with Maetsuycker; though it can scarcely
have been realized by anyone at the time. In the first place the Y.O.C.
became the controlling power in Ceylon; and although the Raja of
Kandy still continued to function as a ruler, the island had in fact
become largely a Dutch territorial possession. Shortly before Maetsuycker's death events took place in the kingdom^ of Mataram which
led to Dutch interference, and thereby set-up a chain of consequences

CH. IS MATARAM AND THE EXPANSION OF THE V.O.ci, 1-623-84

301

culminating in the establishment of their supremacy over the whole

island. There was no conscious change of programme, no ambition
on the part of the directors to transform their commercial empire into
a territorial one. Yet such a transformation was inevitable, as in the
case of the English in India at a later date, if they were to maintain
and consolidate the position they had won for themselves in defeating
their European rivals. The alternative was decline and in all probability extinction. Hence although it was clearly recognized that nonintervention in the mutual quarrels of the Indonesian rulers was
essential, and Batavia was willing to recognize any de facto ruler so
long as he was willing to fulfil the obligations of his state towards the
V.O.C., the very condition upon which this policy was based was
bound, sooner or later, to force its abandonment.
The trouble in Mataram which caused Dutch interference began in
1674 when Trunojoyo, a Madurese prince who claimed descent from
the old royal family of Majapahit, led a formidable rebellion against
Agung's successor, Amangkurat I, with whom the Dutch had been
on good terms since the treaty of 1646. Amangkurat I, or Sunan
Tegalwangi, to use the name by which he was commonly known, was
a monster of cruelty whose atrocities were on so extravagant a scale as
to be scarcely credible. In carrying out the reorganization of the
administration of his empire his measures to crush local independence
stirred up much discontent. The situation was complicated by the
presence of a large number of refugees from Macassar who had settled
on the east coast of Java and become pirates. With these and his own
Madurese followers, who were angry at Javanese treatment of their
island, Trunojoyo quickly overran East and part of central Java and
established himself at Kediri. And the susuhunaUj quite unable from
the start to take effective measures against the rebels, called on Batavia
for help.
Maetsuycker was not bound by the treaty of 1646 to give military
help unless Mataram's enemies were also those of the Dutch. He
realized, however, that the rebels contained strong anti-Dutch elements, and, moreover, that the Sultan of Bantam hoped to turn the
confusion in Mataram to his own advantage by seizing its western
provinces and thus encircling Batavia. He decided, therefore, to send
help, but to cut down Dutch intervention to the absolute minimum.
Speelman, whom he placed in charge of the naval force sent in 1676
against Trunojoyo's Macassar pirates, had quite different views. He
wanted to pursue a strong policy which would restore Amangkurat's
authority, while placing him in a position of dependence upon the

,02

THE EARLIER PHASE OF, EUROPEAN EXPANSION

PT. II

Dutch, and enable a decisive blow to be delivered against the plans of

Abulfatah Agung of Bantam. Meanwhile Trunojoyo, profiting by the
Dutch half-measures, stormed and sacked the kraton of Mataram, and
Amangkurat, fleeing to place himself under Dutch protection, died at
Tegalwangi, leaving his successor, Adipati Anom, completely dependent upon the Dutch so far as any hope of his restoration was
concerned. In October 1677, in return for recognition as the legal
sunan, he granted the Dutch vast commercial concessions together
with the cession of much territory south of Batavia and the port and
district of Semarang. He also promised to repay all their war expenses
and handed over a number of coastal towns to be held as a pledge.
Maetsuycker was far from happy about the treaty which was negotiated by Speelman; but he died soon afterwards and was succeeded
by the more warlike Rijklof van Goens, who made Speelman his righthand man in the Council of the Indies and at once adopted a vigorous
policy. Anthony Hurdt, in command of a strong force of Dutch
troops, captured Kediri, and Adipati Anom was crowned as Amangkurat II with the ancient crown of Majapahit, which was handed over
by the Dutch commander. Trunojoyo escaped but was followed up
by two native forces, a Buginese and an Amboinese, in the service of
the Dutch. He was finally run to earth in the jungle-covered mountains of East Java by the Amboinese and handed over to Amangkurat II
at his new capital of Kartasura, where a few days later the susuhunan
slew him with his own hands. Gradually the other rebels were hunted
down and destroyed by Dutch and Mataram forces; but peace was
only finally restored in 1682. ' H e whom all obey' was now, for all
practical purposes, a Dutch vassal maintained on his throne by a bodyguard of Dutch troops.
The Mataram struggle was rendered all the more difficult for Batavia
by the situation at Bantam. Abulfatah, who had come to the throne
with the title of Sultan Agung in 1651, was a powerful ruler who
sought to restore to his kingdom the important position she had earlier
occupied in commerce. He had resumed hostile relations with the
Dutch in 1656, but their close blockade of his capital had caused him
to make peace in 1659. As soon as the blockade was lifted he made
efforts to promote. commercial prosperity, and with French and
English factories operating there Bantam became once more a serious
rival to Batavia. The treaty of 1677 between Batavia and Mataram"
roused him to make an attempt to prevent Amangkurat II from drifting
into too close association with the Dutch, and in particular he laid
claim to suzerainty over Gheribon, whose territory lay to the east

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303

of that of Batavia, and threatened the Dutch with war if they

interfered.
But a family quarrel played into the hands of the Dutch. Agung's
eldest son returned in 1676 from a pilgrimage to Mecca, which earned
him the title of Sultan Haji, to findthat during his absence his younger
brother, who was married to a daughter of the chief minister, was to
be invested as heir-apparent. This drove Haji to cultivate secret
relations with the Dutch. In May 1680, when Agung was about to
resort to arms to enforce his claim over Cheribon, a palace revolution
forced him to abdicate in favour'of Haji. The new ruler at once began
negotiations with Batavia for a*treaty of friendship. This caused a
revulsion of feeling against him in certain districts; Agung was able
to regain power and a civil war began between father and son. In
1683 Haji captured his father and handed him over to the Dutch, who
kept him a prisoner until his death in 1692.
Haji's success was due entirely to the support he received from a
strong contingent of Diltch troops and was achieved only after a very
severe struggle. Hence in 1684 he had to make a treaty in which he
practically signed away the independence of his state. Besides surrendering all claim to Cheribon he promised to pay the war-costs of
the Dutch forces amounting to 600,000 dollars, granted the Dutch the
exclusive right to the import and export trade of his kingdom, and
agreed to expel all non-Dutch Europeans. He was relieved of the
obligation to pay his debt so long as he honoured the monopoly conferred upon the Dutch. They in their turn made sure of his obedience
by building a strong fortress at Bantam. The English, who had
already lost their footing at Macassar, were now forced to leave Bantam. They retired to Bencoolen on the west coast of Sumatra, where
they were to remain until 1824.
The Dutch were now unquestioned masters of the Archipelago. But
they had won their supremacy at great cost and at a time when they
were fighting with their backs to the wall in Europe against Louis XIV
and Charles II. Their trade had passed through periods of serious
interruption, and on a number of occasions during Maetsuycker's term
of office the V.O.C. had been unable to pay its annual dividend. It
was still, however, able to show a high average profit and to send rich
cargoes of spices to Europe. But it was now changing from a commercial to a territorial power, and the time was soon to come when,
with increased costs of administration and decreased trade, its steady
decline was to set in.

CHAPTER 16, 1

T H E Z E N I T H AND DECLINE OF T H E V.O.C, 1684-1799

IN 1684, when Governor-General Speelman died and was succeeded
by the scholarly and unwarlike Johannes Camphuys (1684-91), the
Dutch Company had become the most powerful political force in Java.
The sultans of the two most important states, Mataram and Bantam,
had been placed on their thrones by its troops and owed it vast surhs
of money by way of war costs. With both rulers the Dutch had
concluded agreements by which, so long as they faithfully carried out
the terms of the commercial treaties dictated to them, the question of
repayment would not be raised. Quite apart from the indirect control
which was thereby implied, the Dutch now possessed a belt of territory
stretching across the island from Batavia southward to the opposite
coast, thus completely separating the territories of the two states.
From the point of view of all the parties concerned, this was a
highly unsatisfactory situation, though the Dutch higher command
seems to have been slow to reahze its implications. Dutch policy for
some considerable period, so far from proceeding according, to any
overall plan, tended to wait upon events and to issue in positive action
only when forced to by circumstances. Louis XIV's growing threat
to their homeland in Europe made them hesitant about assuming new
military or territorial responsibilities abroad. Such things involved
much extra expense and no compensating increase in revenue.
Nevertheless the expansion of the Company's power and the
methods it used in building up its trade monopoly created a situation
which rendered further advance in Java inevitable, no matter how
hard those in charge of its affairs, both at home and on the spot, might
strive to limit its commitments. The treatment received by Mataram
and Bantam at the hands of the Dutch 'infidels' caused many Mahommedans to take up arms in defence of their religion, and for a time--a_
pirate fleet under a fanatical Malay of Sumatra, who assumed the name
of Ibn Iskander ('Son of Alexander the Great'), terrorized the Java
Sea until in 1686 a Dutch squadron under Krijn de Rbnde destroyed it.
The threat of a widespread Mahommedan movement against them
caused the Dutch no little uneasiness, especially as some of the Bantam
304

CH.

THE ZENITH AND DECLINE OF THE V.O.C.

305

chiefs were involved, while the ^usuhunan Amangkurat II of Mataram also allowed himself to be drawn into the intrigues. At the same
time trouble broke out in the lowlands to the south of Batavia and in
the mountains of the Preanger, where the Dutch had hesitated to
enforce their control over the districts ceded to them by Mataram in
the treaty concluded in 1678 by Speelman. These districts had become
the refuge of many lawless characters, one of whom, Surapati, once a
Balinese slave at Batavia, had found a happy hunting-ground there
at the head of a band of his compatriots. During the struggle against
Bantam he and his men had taken service with the Dutch, but as a
result of an insult offered him by a Dutch officer he and his followers
had fled to the Galungung mountains, where they were joined by
several hundreds of bad^hats. While the Dutch were busy with Ibn

.--

(Surakarta^

HWOWJWl-

DUTCH EXPANSION IN JAVA

Iskander, Surapati and his 'patriots' were terrorizing the whole

countryside south of Batavia. A Dutch detachment was sent to hunt
him down, but he escaped to Kartasura, where he was favourably
received by the susuhunan.
Camphuys sent an embassy to demand his surrender. He appointed
as its leader Major Tack, who had distinguished himself in the fighting
against Trunadjaya in Bantam and shocked Javanese opinion at the
capture of Kediri in 1678 by trying on the sacred crown of Majapahit
before handing it over to Amangkurat II. Soon after his arrival at
Kartasura he intervened in an affray between some Javanese and
Surapati's Balinese and was killed together with a large number of his
escort. Although Batavia realized that the incident had been staged
with the object of getting rid of the detested Dutchman, Camphuys
held his hand. He had discovered signs of disloyalty among the Company's native troops. The susuhunan soon found his Balinese guests
an unwelcome encumbrance, and Surapati, escaping to Pasuruan in

CH. l 6

THE ZENITH AND DECLINE OF THE V.O.C.

3O7

East Java, began to carve out a kingdom for himself and to make
serious inroads into the territory owning allegiance to Mataram. But
both Camphuys and his successor, Willem van Outhoorn (1691-1704),
turned a deaf ear to the appeals of Amangkurat II for help.
While the affairs of central and East Java were thus in the meltingpot Amangkurat II died in 1703 and was succeeded by his son Amangkurat III, called by the Dutch Sunan Mas. He was a bloodthirsty
tyrant whose quarrels with his uncle, Pangeran Puger, caused the
latter to flee to Semarang and crave Dutch protection. Joan van
Hoorn, who succeeded his father-in-law Van Outhoorn as governorgeneral in 1704, learnt that Sunan Mas was in league with Surapati
against the Company and that a number of Mataram chieftains were in
favour of raising Puger to the throne. He thereupon recognized him
as susuhunan and lent him a Dutch force.
So began what is known to the Dutch historians as the First Javanese
War of Succession. With his Dutch force Puger easily occupied Kartasura and was installed as Pakubuwono I. He had, however, to pay
heavily for Dutch support. In 1705 he concluded a treaty which
ceded them further territory at the expense of his kingdom up to the
river Losari in the north and the river Donan in the south. He formally wafved all claims to Cheribon and the Preanger besides the eastern
half of the island of Madura. Moreover, he granted the Company full
control over the trade of his kingdom and accepted a strong Dutch
garrison in his capital, Kartasura.
Meanwhile the Dutch had driven Sunan Mas out of his kingdom
to seek a refuge at the Court of Surapati. In 1706 a strong Dutch
force landed at Surabaya and captured Surapati's frontier fortress of
Bangil. He himself died of wounds sustained in attempting to defend
it. In the following year, after heavy fighting against Sunan Mas and
the sons of Surapati, the Dutch won a complete victory. Sunan Mas
surrendered and with*his family was sent into exile in Ceylon.
The Company was now master of Java, but it had yet to crush out
the last embers of resistance. In 1712 Surapati's partisans made
further trouble and were not finally liquidated until 1719. In that
same year the Company's vassal, Pakubuwono I of Mataram, died and
what is known as the Second Javanese War of Succession broke out.
Pakubuwono's son Amangkurat IV's succession to the throne was
contested by his own. brothers, who rose in rebellion. It took the
Dutch four years of hard fighting before the rebel leaders were all
rounded up and sent away into exile, some to Ceylon and the remainder to the Cape of Good Hope. Like the empire of Majapahit,

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THE EARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

PT. II

Mataram had fallen through internal dissensions rather than as a

result of outside pressure. Contrary to the accusations of Machiavellian policy levelled against them by their critics from Raffles onwards, the Dutch had intervened unwillingly in the case of Mataram.
The ceaseless civil wars affected their trade adversely and might have
had serious political consequences if they had not adopted a firm line.
The extension of their control over the whole island was the inevitable
result of their assumption of the role of a territorial power. A century
later the British were to find themselves in a similar position in relation
to India.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century the V.O.C. stood at the
zenith of its power. To the outside observer it appeared to be rich and
prosperous, with its annual fleets returning to Europe laden with
merchandise and its annual dividends of between 20 and* 40 per cent.
Actually its financial condition waS wretched. The long, expensive
wars, the increase of territory, and the consequent increase in the
numbers of officials involved it in immense expenditure at a time when
its trade was actually decreasing. /
The pohcy of ' sell dear, buy cheap' brought its own nemesis, for
it reduced the Javanese to a condition of such poverty that he could
not afford to buy the European goods or the fine Indian textiles
brought to him by the Dutch. He learnt to supply his needs otherwise,
by growing his own cotton and weaving it in traditional fashion, or by
clandestine trade with Portuguese and English smugglers, who gave
him better prices for his produce than the Dutch. On more than one
occasion Governor-General van Hoorn (1704-9) had to report home
that the goods sent out to Java had had to be sold at a loss.
The directors at home, with a blind eye to the defects of their own
poHcy, attributed their losses to smuggling and the private trade,
which was the common practice of their officials, whose salaries were
below subsistence level for Europeans in the East. But the heavy
penalties they imposed for these practices completely failed to achieve
their object. In 1722, for instance, Governor-General^Zwaardekroon
had no less than twenty-six Company's servants beheaded in one day
for theft and smuggling. And nine years later Governor-General
Durven, Director-General Hasselaar and two members of the-Gouncil_,
of India were dismissed for failing to deal adequately with the prevailing corruption. But the malpractices went on unchecked.
With a mounting deficit the directors pursued a policy .of absolute
secrecy regarding the Company's accounts, and in order to maintain
its credit in the money-market paid out annual dividends of from 20

CH. l6

THE ZENITH AND DECLINE OF THE V.O.C.

3O9

to 40 per cent, although to do so they had to float further loans. By

the year 1700 the Company's debt already stood at 12 million guilders,
and in order to fight its wars it was forced to apply to the StatesGeneral for help in the form of money and ships. Thus its outward
appearance of riches and power concealed a state of deterioration and
corruption. The most disturbing fact was the actual decline in its
trade at a time when the expansion of its territory entailed a marked
increase in the number of its officials.
The Batavia authorities, in suggesting methods to deal with the
decline of trade, revived Coen's proposal to open the trade of the
Indies to private enterprise and confine the Company's shipping to
voyages between the East and Europe. But the directors refused to
abandon the strict monopoly system and ordered it to be supplemented by the introduction of the method of' contingencies and forced
deliveries'. Contingencies were a form of tribute in kind levied on
districts under the Company's direct control, while forced deliveries
were in products which cultivators were forced to grow and deliver
at a fixed price, always much to the advantage of the purchaser. The
directors took no heed of the fact that such methods increased the
poverty of the people and were a direct incentive to smuggling.
Governor-General Zwaardekroon sought to improve the situation
by introducing new products into Java. He put into operation a better
method of preparing indigo for the European market, which stimulated its production. His efforts also to improve cotton cultivation and
to encourage the planting of sappan wood, which yields a red dyestuflF,
met with success.' But the most important development of this period
was the introduction of coffee planting, which proved an immediate
success and freed the Dotch from their dependence upon the Mokka
trade at a time when the Turks were placing difficulties in the way of
their export of coffee. The first plantations grew up in the districts
around Batavia and Cheribon, and Zwaardekroon's contracts for
deliveries of coffee at the equivalent of fivepence a pound caused the
Javanese to expand their cultivation of the crop to such an extent that
production threatened to outstrip demand.. Thereupon, against the
advice of the governor-general, the directors insisted on the price
being lowered by 75 per cent, and the growers in desperation cut down
large numbers of their trees. The government therefore applied the
system of forced deliveries to the community and raised the price
somewhat.
The subsequent manipulation of the coffee trade by the Company
during the eighteenth century is a sorry tale of measures taken to

THE EARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

FT. II

310

ensure a high price in the European^ market and a mere pittance for
the producer, who was at the mercy of a government which changed
its policy from time to time in such an arbitrary fashion as to make it
impossible for him to cultivate on economic lines. Moreover, as the
Dutch worked through the local chiefs, who in equally arbitrary
fashion fixed their own share of the proceeds, the cultivator's position
was worse than that of a slave. Furnivali sums up the final position
thus: ' T h e net result was that for every pikol of 126 pounds shipped,
the cultivator had to supply 240 to 270 pounds and was paid the
equivalent of 14 pounds.'^
During the third and fourth decades of the eighteenth century
Dutch rule in Java passed through a period of turbulence. Before the
end of the Second Javanese War of Succession there occurred the ugly
incident known as Peter Erberfeld's 'conspiracy'. Erberfeld was a
well-established free burgher of Batavia who developed a grievance
against the government over a claim it enforced unfairly to some
property left him by his father. In December 1721 he was accused of
plotting with the Surapati party and a number of discontented chiefs
to raise an insurrection with the aim of murdering all the Europeans
in the city. Although the evidence was obtained under torture,
nervous tension was stimulated to such a pitch that he and such of his ;
supposed accomplices as were within reach were put to death. The
authorities even went so far as to pull down his house, expose his head
on the ruins and set up a stone inscription enjoining that the place
should remain desolate for ever. Historians seem to be generally
agreed that the evidence upon which he was condemned was worthless
and that he was more sinned against than sinning.^
A few years later mass hysteria was responsible for a far worse
crime which had serious consequences. There were Chinese settlers
in Indonesia long before the coming of the Portuguese. Jan Pieterszoon
Coen had a high opinion of their industry and diligence and encouraged
them to settle at Batavia. By the year 1700 there were some 10,000 of
them living in or in the neighbourhood of the city. They were craftsmen, tea-traders and sugar cultivators for the most part. They were,
useful to the Dutch as intermediaries in fheir trade with the Javanese.
They were also a mainstay of the smuggling trade, while some of them"
had become so wealthy and powerful as to constitute a potential
danger to Dutch rule. But the real problem in the early years of the
eighteenth century arose from the fact that the tea-junks plying
' J. S. Furnivali, Netherlands India, P./40.
De Haan, Priangan, i, p. 210.

CH. 16

THE ZENITH AND DECLINE OF THE V.O.C.

3H

regularly from China brought increasing numbers without means

of existence who became roving beggars and a menace to law and
order.
As early as 1706 the Dutch issued stiff regulations aimed at preventing the entry of such undesirables. When this method proved of
no avail the Batavia. authorities rounded up numbers of wandering
beggars and transported them to Ceylon, the Banda Islands and the
Cape of Good Hope. Only those with a government pass might remain
in Java. These measures also failed: deeds of violence by wandering
bands of Chinese became frequent, and the officials entrusted with
the issue of passes used them as a means of graft. The bad situation
became suddenly critical when in July 1740 Governor-General
Valkenier and the Council of the Indies decided on sterner measures.
All Chinese unable to prove that they were suitably employed were
to be deported to work in the cinnamon gardens in Ceylon.. The
regulation was carried out with gross unfairness: greedy officials seized
Chinese long resident in Java in order to squeeze money out of them
under threat of deportation. And when a baseless rumour went
round that the deportees were thrown overboard as soon as their ships
were out of sight of Java, large numbers of Chinese fled from Batavia
and organized armed resistance.
The Dutch authorities discovered that those still remaining in the
city were m Jeague with the rebels and were preparing to defend themselves. A chance fire which broke out in a Chinese house was taken as
a sign that those within the city and those without were to make a
concerted attack. Thereupon the infuriated population, supported
by soldiers, seamen, slaves and Javanese, fell upon the Chinese, and for
a whole week massacre and plunder went on unchecked. GovernorGeneral Valkenier lost his head so completely as to order the massacre
of all Chinese prisoners and did nothing to prevent the Company's
troops from participating in the bloodbath.
When the work of vengeance was over and order was restored,
the government offered a general amnesty to all Chinese who surrendered their weapons within one month. The large numbers who
availed themselves of this offer were housed in a special quarter that
was built beyond the city limits. Many, however, trekked away and
forhied a formidable force which wreaked vengeance on Europeans at
Rembang, Joana and elsewhere, and finally laid siege to Semarang. The
. situation became serious for the Dutch when the susuhunan, Paku
Buwono II, openly declared for the rebels, seized the Dutch garrison at
Kartasura and murdered its officers. Semarang, however, was saved

TI2

THE EARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

PT. II

by the timely arrival of Dutch reinforcements, and the Madurese, who

had suffered much at the hands of Mataram, threw in their lot with
the Dutch.
I
Then Paku Buwono II, suddenly realizing that he was backing the
wrong horse, made his peace with the Dutch. His action nearly cost
him his throne, for many of his chiefs, in their fanatical hatred of the
Dutch, joined with the Chinese in driving him out of his capital and
proclaimed as their ruler a grandson of the exiled Sunan Mas. He was
saved, however, by quarrels which broke out between the Chinese and
their Javanese allies. The Dutch recaptured Kartasura and reinstated
him as ruler of Mataram.
But it was a sadly depleted Mataram over which he was allowed to
rule. By a new treaty, which he was forced to conclude with Batavia
in 1743, he had to cede the whole of the north coast of Java together
with all his claims to the island of Madura. Moreover, he abandoned
Kartasura as his capital city and built a new kraton in the Solo
district to which he gaye the name of Surakarta. The Dutch created
a new North Coast Province with Semarang as its capital. Their
Madurese allies, however, had come into the struggle in the hope of
gaining their independence. They refused to accept the settlement
and were only reduced to obedience after much fighting.
Governor-General Valkenier's handling of the Chinese question
met with stiff opposition from a section of the Council of the Indies
headed by van Imhoff. After a dramatic quarrel, in the, course
of which Valkenier had the members of the opposition arrested
and sent home, he himself was put on trial at Batavia by order
of the directors, and van Imhoff appointed governor-general in
his stead.
This able and energetic man realized that exceptional measures were
needed to arrest the economic decline of the Company. He persuaded
the directors to open the inland trade and the sea trade between
Indonesia and India to free burghers and natives subject to certain
restrictions. For instance, Batavia must be the beginning and the end
of each trading voyage. Inter-commerce between other ports was
forbidden. The scheme failed to realize iiis expectations, partly3ecause of this restriction. In any case" it came a century too late, when - .
private trading and smuggling in Indonesia had already passed beyond
Dutch control. Also in the hope of reducing smuggling van Imhoff
established in 1745 the Opium Society, with sole rights of trading
in that article in the Dutch empire. Here also his efforts met with
little success.

CH. 16

THE ZENITH AND DECLINE OF' THE V.O.C.

313

More success, on the other hand, attended his measures to extend

land cultivation in the Batavian hinterland, especially in the parts
affected by the Chinese depredations. Waste land was sold to private
farmers with seignorial rights over the native settlers, but with the
obligation to sell their pr(^uce to the government at fixed prices. He
himself purchased land in the lovely Bogor region, where he built himself the stately mansion named Buitenzorg ('Carefree'), which at his
death was taken over by his successors in turn until it ultimately
became the official country residence of the governor-general. With
his encouragement Dutch farmer families migrated from the homeland
to take up lands in Java. He also improved the lot of the native
cultivator by fixing the annual amount of coffee to be delivered to the
Company, thereby aiming at preventing the destruction of redundant
coffee when there was overproduction. His reforms were introduced as
the result of journeys of inspection made to various parts of Java,
where he met regents and other local officials and took measures to
save the villager from the oppression of his immediate masters. His
valuable report on his travels, full of interesting details of places and
peoples, could not be published owing to the policy of secrecy
sedulously' maintained by the directors.
Van Iriiholf's fertile brain produced scheme after scheme of reform
in such rapid succession that he attempted far too much, and little that
he did took root. The overall plan which he would have liked to carry
out would have been to reduce drastically the Company's commitments in the way of trading stations outside Indonesia and Ceylon,
and to concentrate upon its growing responsibilities as a territorial
power. His ill-starred attempt to open direct trade with Mexico in
order to import badly-needed silver for coinage shows how far his
imagination could lead him to disregard hard facts such as the existing
treaty stipulations preventing such enterprises.
His greatest failing was a lack of statesmanlike insight in his dealings
with native potentates. While on a visit to the susuhunan, Paku
Buwono H, at Surakarta his tactless intervention in a quarrel between
that ruler and his brother Mangku Bumi caused the latter to rise in
revolt, and a long struggle, the Third Javanese War of Succession,
1749-57, once more involved the Company in expensive military
action. During its first year the death of the susuhunan changed its
character from a dynastic squabble into a war of liberation from Dutch
rule; for Paku Buwono H on his deathbed agreed with Van Hohendorff, the governor of the North Coast Province, to cede his kingdom
to the Dutch, and his successor, Paku Buwono H I , received his crown

314

THE EARLIKR PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

FT. II

at the hands of the Company, not by virtue of birthright. This

caused the majority of the Mataram chiefs to throw in their lot with
Mangku Bumi, whom they proclaimed su^uhunan. The Dutch therefore had to fight the most destructive of all their Javanese wars in
order to maintain their candidate on the throne. And while they had
their hands full in Mataram a serious rebellion broke out in the
sultanate of Bantam which also involved them in heavy military
sacrifices before it was crushed.
In the Mataram struggle, after two years of varying fortunes, Mangku
Bumi defeated and killed the Dutch commander De Clercq in a battle
at the Bogowonto river in 1751 and proceeded to occupy a large part of
the North Coast Province, from which he threatened to advance deep
into the Company's territory. After a great effort, however, he was
driven out of the province, and luckily for the Company found himself
involved in a fight for leadership with his nephew Mas Said which
paralysed his eiforts against the Dutch. Van Imhoff had died in 1750,
and his successor, Jacob Mossel, decided to partition Mataram. In
1755 a treaty was made with Mangku Bumi by which he accepted Paku
Buwono III as ruler of the eastern half of the kingdom. He himself
received the western half with Jogjakarta as his capital and the title of
Sultan Amangku Buwono. It took two years of fierce fighting to
subdue Mas Said. At the Peace of Salatiga (1757) he recognized the
suzerainty of the Company and received as its vassal a portion of
Mataram now known as the Mangku-Negorose territory.
The trouble in Bantam arose out of a dynastic dispute, and again
van Imhoff's intervention on the wrong side had serious results. The
old sultan who had ruled since 1733, came so much under the influence of one of his wives, Ratu Fatima, of Arab race, that she
persuaded him to nominate her son-in-law, his nephew, as heirapparent in place of the rightful heir, Pangeran Gusti. Van Imhoff
lent his support to the scheme, and in 1748, when the Sultan showed
sigris of madness, Ratu Fatima brought about his deposition in
favour of her candidate, with herself as regent. When Pangeran Gusti
attempted to assert his rights he was deported by the Dutch to Ceylon,
and the old sultan was taken to Amboina, where he soon -died^ A
general revolt at once broke out under the leadership of a priest, Kjahi,
Tapa, and a chieftain, Ratu Bagus. The Dutch troops sent in support
of Fatima were defeated, and the rebels sought the help of the English
at Bencoolen.
Such was the situation when van Imhoff died in 1750. Jacob
Mossel, on succeeding him, decided to reverse his policy. He won

CH. 16

THE ZENITH AND DECLINE OF THE V.O.C.

315

over the leading Bantam chiefs by banishing Fatima and her candidate, placed the brother of the dead sultan on the throne, brought
back Pangeran Gusti from Ceylon, and recognized him as heirapparent. The new sultan made a treaty in 1752 with the Company
by which he recognized its overlordship and ceded it control over the
Lampongs. The rebellion, however, continued. Ratu Bagus took the
title of sultan, while Kjahi Tapa, taking advantage of the Dutch preoccupation with the Mataram war, plundered Dutch territory and
even made an abortive attack on Batavia. For a time the Dutch troops
were closely besieged in Bantam by the rebels. It took much hard
fighting before the two rebel leaders gave up the struggle. In 1753
the new sultan abdicated in favour of Pangeran Gusti, who confirmed
the treaty with the Company, and quiet was restored. The Dutch
were now masters of the whole of Java, save for the territory in the
extreme east of the island, where the Balinese supporters of Surapati
still caused trouble. Not until 1772 were the Dutch able to put an
end to their activities.
The Dutch were now complete masters of Java. They had long
been more or less the dominant power over the rest of the Archipelago.
Of the larger islands only Bali and Lombok remained free from their
influence. Their products had little economic importance, while the
warlike character of their people and the doggedness with which time
and again in history they had resisted outside interference were a
strong deterrent to the Dutch. The remarkable success with which the
Balinese clung to their traditional religion with its Hindu associations
when all the great powers in the island world adopted Islam tells its
own tale.
In Sumatra they had broken the Achinese control over the pepper
trade before the end of the seventeenth century. The result was that
with the exception of Acheh, which stoutly maintained its independence, most of the coastal states were vassals of Batavia. But there
was little or no interference with native life, for the Dutch were
strongly averse to territorial expansion on the island; and in any case
the authority of the coastal sultans did not spread far inland. The
pepper monopoly could not be rigorously maintained, partly for geographical reasons, and also because of the factory established at Bencoolen by the English after their expulsion from Bantam. In more backward Borneo Dutch relations were mainly with the sultanate of BandJermasin, which attained some importance as a centre of the smuggling
trade after the Dutch conquest of Macassar in 1667. To end this
situation Batavia sent a special envoy in 1756 who concluded a new

3i6

THE EARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

FT.

II

trade agreement under which control passed into Dutch hands. The
eighteenth century saw the rise of a Chinese mining colony to work at
the rich gold deposits of the Sambas sultjanate. The immigrants were
organized in kongsis, and ultimately came to form semi-independent
communities.
'.
If the Dutch made little impact upon the life of Sumatra and
Borneo, their rigid regulation of spice production and trade in the
islands of the 'Great East' ruined alike the prosperity and the native
culture of the region. The production of clove and nutmeg was
limited to the Banda Islands and Amboina. Unlicensed trees grown
elsewhere were destroyed by large fleets of prows under the command
of Dutch officers which made annual voyages (hongitochten) to suspected areas. Ternate and Tidore, once prosperous centres of the
clove cultivation and of inter-island shipping, became povertystricken and backward. Their hereditary ruling families received
annual pensions for their compliance. But conditions in the 'privileged'
areas were, if anything, worse than in those in which spice production
was prohibited. The natives worked for a pittance, were forced to
buy all their foodstuffs from the Dutch at exorbitant prices, and had
to cut down their spice trees whenever the Company decided to
restrict the supply. To make matters worse, the policy of monopoly
and restriction brought its own nemesis, for it forced the English and
the French to experiment with the planting of clove and nutmeg in
their own tropical territories, and with enough success to keep the
price at a reasonable level when the European demand began to
expand towards the end of the eighteenth century.
One of the worst results of the harsh measures taken by the Dutch
in building up and maintaining their trade monopoly was an immense
increase in piracy. Among the Malays piracy had for many centuries
been regarded as an honourable occupation, while to the Indonesian
Mahommedans war against the infidel was a religious duty. The
destruction of much of the native shipping trade and the extreme
poverty to which many coastal districts of nusantara were reduced
caused larger numbers than ever to swell the great pirate fleets which
swarmed in the seas of the Archipelago. The defeat of the sea power
of Macassar in particular opened the way for the rise of the Buginese state of Boni. Its intrepid and intelligent people began to prey upon
the coasts of Java, Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula in increasing
numbers from the latter part of the seventeenth century onwards.
Throughout the eighteenth century they were the open enemies of
the Dutch East India Company. They joined in f he intervening wars

CH. 16

THE ZENITH AND DECLINE OF THE V.O.C.

317

waged by the sultans of the west coast of Borneo, overran the sultanate
of Johore and even threatened Malacca. And as Dutch control of the
seas declined during the latter half of the century immense pirate
fleets made regular annual voyages from well-established bases in
various parts' of the Archipelagoat Tobelo on the north-east coast
of Halmahera, in the islands off the coast of New Guinea, and in the
Sulu Islands. The Illanos of the Sulu Islands v?ere the most dreaded
of all. Their large fleets of heavily armed galleys would fearlessly
attack the strongest warships of the Company, while at the end of the
century they planted a fortified base at the southern tip of Sumatra
from which they preyed upon the Sunda Straits and carried their slave
raids far and wide.
The restoration of peace in Java after the Third War of Succession
and the Bantam rebellion brought some improvement in conditions
there. The Company was at pains to maintain good relations with the
vassal sultans of Surakarta and Jogjakarta, and refused to be drawn
into the frontier disputes which constantly arose between the two.
The cultivation of coflFee and sugar was encouraged, and roads were
built to improve the traffic in these articles. The salaries of officials
were raised in the hope of reducing corruption and there was some
attempt to raise the efficiency of the armed forces. But the increasing
financial exhaustion of the Company and the steadily mounting deficit
in its accounts prevented any thorough-going reforms.
Outside Java Dutch decline was more obvious. The growth of
English ipower in India from the days of Clive onwards became a
serious menace to their position there, especially in Bengal, from which
Batavia imported not only vast quantities of textiles but also supplies
of opium, the secret monopoly of which brought the Company's
servants immense gains. Their blundering attempt at armed intervention in 1759 against Clive brought them a humiliating defeat as a
result of which their Bengal trade came under English supervision.^
In Ceylon their quarrels with the King of Kandy over the cinnamon
trade resulted in open war. This, however, ended in 1766 in a treaty
favourable to .them. Elsewhere, in Sumatra, Borneo and the Spice
Islands, it was a sad story of commercial stagnation and decline. To
make matters worse, at the moment when only a great national effort
could have saved the Company, the quarrel which broke out in 1780
between the Patriots and the Princely party in Holland prevented
anything from being done.
In thft same year also the 'Fourth English War', as it is called by
^ Cambridge History of India, vol. v, pp. 153-5.

-l8

THE EARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

PT. II

Dutch historians, broke out, and, as they bitterly remark, gave the
Company its deathblow. Their governnient listened to the blandishments of the New Englander, John Adams, and agrtsed to recognize
American independence. Lord North's government got wind of the
agreement and declared war on Holland. In both the East and the
West Indies her colonies were defenceless. Her losses of merchantmen
were immense. Negapatam and other trading stations in India fell
into British hands, as also all the Dutch stations on the west coast of
Sumatra. Only through the help of a French naval squadron under
the brilliant Suffren were the Dutch able to save Ceylon and the Cape
from falling into British hands. They lost almost all their homewardbound ships from the East. No trading ships dared leave the Dutch
ports in Europe. Trade was at a standstill. Their godowns at Batavia
were packed with unexportable goods, which they were glad to sell
to neutrals at sacrifice prices.
The Treaty of Paris, which was signed in 1784, broke the Dutch
monopoly system. Under it British shipping was granted free trade
throughout the Indian seas. The way was open once more for the
British to challenge the Dutch supremacy over the trade of Indonesia.
Only two years later a significant step in that direction was taken when
Francis Light founded a British settlement at Penang, off the coast
of Kedah.
The loss of control by the Dutch over their eastern empire
during the war of 1780-4 had further consequences. The Bugis
seized the opportunity to threaten Malacca, and only the timely
arrival of a Dutch squadron under van Braam saved the city. When
in 1783 the Dutch brought about their expulsion from Johore they
caused trouble to Dutch interests on, the west coast of Borneo and at
Banjermasin in the south of the island. This, combined with the
foundation of Penang, led the Dutch in 1787 to enforce their control
in that region, but not for long. Shortly afterwards trouble began
to brew in central Java between the sultanates of Surakarta and
Jogjakarta, and in the weakened state of Dutch power might have had
serious consequences; happily Dutch pressure on the sunan in 1790
brought about a settlement.
.
The temporary restoration of Dutch naval power by van Braam^._7
squadron came through the intervention of the home government in
the Company's affairs. A committee sent out subsequently to investigate the state of defence of the Dutch eastern empire found the
situation alarming. Equally alarming was the unchecked and rapidly
mounting, deficit in its accounts. In 1789 this stood at 74 million

CH. l 6

THE ZENITH AND DECLINE OF THE V.O.C.

319

guilders. Two years later it had increased to 96 million guilders, the

Company's credit was lost and it could negotiate no further loans in
the open market. The States-General must now act. The great
question was whether the Company's life could be saved by reform
or whether the home government should dissolve it and take over all
its responsibilities.
William V, who was reinstated as Stadhouder as a result of the
counter-revolution of 1787, was anxious to save the Company.
Notwithstanding the failure of previous commissions for reforming it,
he appointed in 1791 a high commission composed of Nederburgh,
the. Company's advocate, and Frijkenius, the officer in charge of its
maritime affairs, to proceed to the Indies, where it was to act with
Governor-General Alting and van Stockum, the Director-General
of Trade at Batavia. Nederburgh and Frijkenius did not arrive in
Batavia until 1793. There they joined hands with the ruling clique
and proceeded to stifle the demands for reformfor a time.
At the beginning of 1795, however, the troops of General Pichegru
overran Holland, overthrew the Stadhouderate and established in its
place the Batavian Republic .under French protectorate. William V
fled to England and issued the ' Kew Letters' by which he ordered the
Dutch East Indies officials to place the Company's possessions in
British hands as a safeguard against seizure by the French. The
British, he explained, had given a solemn pledge to return them to the
Netherlands when peace was restored. Under this arrangement the
Brjtishin 1796 took over control of the Cape of Good Hope and Ceylon.
All the Dutch posts in India and on the west coast of Sumatra, as well
as. Malacca, fell into British hands. In the Moluccas they took
Amboina and the Bandas but failed to get Ternate.
The Government of Batavia under Nederburgh's influence was
opposed to the policy laid down in the Kew Letters. It was equally
opposed to the demands for a more democratic government, which
began to arise from groups of free burghers and Company's employees
in Javar. While, therefore, Nederburgh and Governor-General van
Overstraten sternly repressed the Liberal movement, they also prepared to resist any British attempt to occupy the island. But none was
made, although the alliance between the Batavian Republic and
revolutionary France brought once more a state of war between
Britain and the Dutch. For the time being British hands were too
full elsewhere.
The change of government at The Hague, however, brought a clear
change of policy there towards the eastern empire. The College of

320

THE EARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

PT. II

Directors was abolished. In its place a " Committee for the Affairs
of the East Indian Trade and Settlements' was established underclose government supervision. In 1798 the (decision was taken to wind
up the Company itself; its debts and possessions were to be taken over
by the State. The decree took effect on 31 December 1799 when the
Company's charter expired and was not renewed. Its debt then
stood at 134 million guilders.

CHAPTER

17

T H E MALAY POWERS FROM T H E FALL OF MALACCA

(1511) T O T H E END OF T H E E I G H T E E N T H CENTURY
TOME PIRES, who came to Malacca in the year after its conquest by
Albuquerque, descnbes conditions there and throughout the Peninsula in the sixth book of his Suma Oriental. He says that from Malacca
up to Kedah ^re the tin lands, all of them previously subject to its
sultan. In describing them he mentions Sungei Jugra, Selangor,
Klang, Bernam, Mimjam, Bruas and a village called Perak. To the
south are Muar and Singapore, the latter of which, he says, consists
of only a few villages of Cellates, and is 'nothing much'. On the east
coast, he says, Pahang and its tributary state Trengganu are in the
land of Siam; but Pahang is also in the empire of Malacca and constantly at war with the Siamese.
When Sultan Mahmud lost the battle for Malacca he and his son
fled qpross country to Pahang, whence he sent an emissary to China
beseeching aid against the Portuguese. The Ming emperor, however,
plead'ed that with a war against the Tartars on his hands he was in no
position to fight the Portuguese. Mahmud therefore had to search
for a site for a new capital where he could re-establish his sway over
the Peninsula and be reasonably safe from the Portuguese. His first
settlement was at Sayong Pinang on the upper reaches of a tributary
of the Johore river. This turned but to be too far from the sea, and in
1521 he removed to the island of Bintang, south-east of Singapore.
Here, however, he was repeatedly attacked by the Portuguese. In
1523 and 1524 he beat them off with heavy loss, and even sent a force
to lay si'ege to Malacca.
But in 1526 the Portuguese counter-attacked, destroyed his capital
and gave the island to the Raja of Lingga. Mahmud himself fled to
Kampar in Sumatra, where he died in 1528. His younger son
Ala'ud-din succeeded him and planted his capital on the Johore
idver. There for a time he was a serious thorn in the flesh of
the Portuguese, until at last in 1536 Dom Estavao da Gama led
an expedition which forced him to make peace and take up his
residence at Muar.
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In the meantime his elder brother M'uzaffar Shah had made his
way up to Perak, where he founded the dynasty which still reigns
there. For a time Perak, Johore and Pahahg were content to remain
on friendly terms with the Portuguese. They were watching with
considerable alarm the rapidly rising power of Acheh, on the northwestern tip of Sumatra, which under Sultan Ali Mughayat Shah had
gained control over the pepper ports of Pedii: and Pasai and was carrying on a rich trade with Gujerat and China. Under his son Ala'ud-din
Ri'ayat Shah (1530-68) Acheh became the tough rival of Portuguese
Malacca and for many years made repeated efforts to capture the city.
Her ambitious policy threatened not only Malacca but also the Malay
states of Sumatra and the Peninsula. The Portuguese drove off a
surprise attack in 1537. Two years later the Achinese fleet captured .
Deli in Sumatra. In reply Johore, together with Perak and the
Sumatran state of Siak, inflicted a crushing defeat upoo the upstart
power.
The Achinese setback was only a temporary one. By 1547 they had
recovered sufficiently to launch another attack on Malacca. It came
perilously near to success, and their Malay rivals were tempted to try
their hand at the game. The combined fleet of Johore, Perak and
Pahang sailed into the Muar estuary and waited to see what the outcome of the struggle with the Achinese would be. When the Portuguese at last beat off the Sumatran flotilla the Malay fleet sailed away.
In 1551 it returned and for three months laid siege to Malacca^ An
attempt to storm the city was repelled with such determination that
it was not repeated. In the end the Portuguese forced the besieging
fleet to give up the enterprise by sending a fleet to harry the home
harbours of the allies.
Acheh's bid for dominance over the Malay world assumed formidable proportions before the death of the second of the great sultans,
Ala'ud-din Ri'ayat Shah, in 1568. He built up a league of states against
the Portuguese, obtained gunners, guns and ammunition froin Turkey,
and amassed a bigger fighting force than ever before. Before striking
at Malacca he dealt a staggering blow to his rival, the Sultan of Johore.
In 1564 his armada sacked Johore Lama and took away Sultan
Ala'ud-din a captive to Sumatra. For some years after this a bitter ^,
feud raged between Johore and Acheh, and Johore swung over to the
Portuguese side. So much so that in 1568,'when Acheh's great attack
was made on Malacca, the Portuguese sought Johore's aid. This was
granted, but when the Johore fleet of sixty vessels arrived the Portuguese had already, beaten off the Achinese. By way of retaliation an

CH. 1 7

THE MALAY POWERS FROM THE FALL OF MALACCA

323

Achinese fleet sailed up the Johore river and burnt a number of

villages.
The ding-dong struggle between Acheh and Malacca continued
until 1575, vi^hen, for a reason never explained, the Achinese fleet,
after threatening Malacca, turned north and conquered Perak,
killing its sultan, a kinsman of the JoKore house, and carrying away his
widow and children to Acheh. This caused some extraordinary
changes in the Malay situation. The captive Crown Prince of Perak
married an Achinese princess and in 1579 succeeded his father-in-law
as Sultan Ala'ud-din Mansur Shah. He in turn married his daughter
to Sultan Ali Jalla Abdul-Jalil Ri'ayat Shah of Johore and sent his
younger brother to rule Perak as vassal raja.
The Johore marriage, however, did not improve the relations between the two states. In 1582 the Portuguese helped the Johore
sultan to beat off an Achinese attack. In 1585 Mansur Shah appears
to have been murdered by the admiral of his fleet. Four years later
' the murderer became Sultan Ala'ud-din Ri'ayat Shah (1589-1604).
It was in his reign that the Dutch, French and English first visited
Acheh. For a space there was a lull in the Acheh-Johore struggle.
In 1584 the Portuguese had quarrelled with their ally over matters
arising out of their trade monopoly. As a result in 1586, and again in
1587, Johore besieged Malacca and blockaded it by land and sea. She
also made an aUiance with Acheh. But it was of very short duration,
for when the Portuguese made a great counter-attack, sending an
expedition up the Johore river which destroyed Johore Lama and
carried away immense booty, Acheh sent formal congratulations to
Malacca.
Thus the triangular struggle continued. The feud between the two
Malay empires was in the last resort of greater moment to them than
their desire to drive out the Portuguese. By the end of the century
JohcTre had recovered sufficiently to threaten Acheh so seriously that
Ala'ud-din Ri'ayat Shah sent an embassy to Malacca to ask for help.
And the Portuguese, with the Dutch and English trespassing in their
preserves, decided that the wise course would be to bury the hatchet
provided the sultan would kill Dutch 'pirates' and hand over his
strongest fort. But the fortunes of war changed suddenly, as so often
before, and the alliance did not take place. Then the sultan, having
in 1599 killed Cornelis de Houtman and taken his brother Frederick
prisoner, became alarmed at his dangerous isolation. And since he
feared an alliance between the Portuguese and Johore more than the
vengeance of the Dutch, he decided to turn the Dutch hostility against

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PT. II

the Portuguese to his own advantage. Hence he released his Dutch

prisoners arid sent envoys to Holland. He even sent an expedition to
besiege Johore's new capital at Batu Sawai-, but without success.
The arrival of the Dutch and the English presented Johore, as well
as Acheh, with new opportunities. Johore also saw in the Dutch a
potential ally against her old enemy Portugal and began to listen to
Dutch proposals for a joint attack upon Malacca, seemingly regardless
of the fact that the Dutch had no intention whatever of restoring the
city to Malay rule. In 1606 they joined in an attack on Malacca. But
it failed, and for a time the sultan's confidence in the Dutch weakened
so that he wavered.
In the following year a new ruler, Iskandar Shah, seized the throne
of Acheh and began to pursue an expansionist policy with great vigour.
Taking advantage of the decline of Portuguese power he extended his
control not only over further coastal regions of Sumatra but also over
the mainland states of Pahang ,(i6i8), Kedah {1619) and, most
important of all because of its tin, Perak (1620). In 1613, and again
in 1615, the Achinese sacked Johore because its sultan was negotiating
with Malacca. In 1616, therefore, the Sultan of Johore deemed it
prudent to join Iskandar Shah in a big attack on Malacca. Again it
failed: the Portuguese with their backs to the wall proved themselves
very tough fighters, still able to maintain possession of the famous
emporium.
Nevertheless the expansion of the power of Acheh was indeed
spectacular. In writing to James I of England Iskandar claimed overlordship over Johore itself. This was mere wishful thinking, but his
control over both sides of the Straits of Malacca was extending to such
a degree that he looked like gaining supremacy over all the native
states of the Peninsula and the north-western parts of the Archipelago.
On the other hand, his deportations of thousands of people from the
states he conquered stirred up a deep hatred of the Achinese yoke and
a movement to get rid of it. In 1629 the united forces of Malacca,
Johore and Patani inflicted a crushing defeat on the Achinese fleet
near Malacca. Thereafter the power of Acheh began to decline as
rapidly as it had arisen. Iskandar died in 1636. He was succeeded
by an adopted son Iskandar II. He died in 1641, the year in \Yhich the^
Dutch captured Malacca. Then for sixty years Acheh was ruled by
queens. The pressure of the Dutch and their support of Johore
caused Acheh to lose all her territories on the Peninsula except Per^k.
Johore's great hope had been to recover Malacca through alliance
with the Dutch. Her sultan styled himself King of Johore and Malacca.

CH. 17

THE MALAY POWERS FROM THE FALL OF MALACCA

325

The Dutch, however, refused to recognize his claim to the city.

Nevertheless such was his hatred of the Portuguese that Sultan Abdul
Jalil made a treaty with the Dutch in 1637 by which he undertook to
co-operate with them in an attack upon the city, and in the final struggle
in 1640-1 assisted them with a fleet of forty sail. He had already
added Pahang to his dominions when Acheh's control over it lapsed.
Now, free from any further threat from either the Portuguese or
Acheh, he proceeded to build a new capital at Makam Tauhid, near
the present Kota Tinggi. He was still the titular head of a great empire
which included most of the Malay states of the Peninsula, the Riau
Archipelago and Bengkalis, Kampar and Siak in Sumatra. Only when
it was too late did he begin to realize that whereas the Portuguese had
chastised with whips, the Dutch were to chastise with scorpions.
No sooner had they taken Malacca than the Dutch began to seek
to control the tin-producing states. Tin was their main interest in
the Peninsula; it was qf prime importance to them in their commercial
dealings with both India and the Chinese. In 1639 they had made a
contract with Acheh permitting them to purchase tin in Perak. In
1641 the first Dutch Governor of Malacca presented the Sultan of
Perak with a demand that he should stop all dealings with foreigners
and in future sell all his tin to the V.O.C. When he refused to do so,
Dutch cruisers blockaded the entrance to the Perak river. When,
however, he still managed t evade their persistent attempts to establish a monopoly over his export trade the Dutch in 1650 extorted from
his suzerain, the Queen of Acheh, a treaty whereby the Company was
to share the Perak tin trade equally with her and to the exclusion of all
other traders.
The subsequent history of Dutch relations with Acheh and Perak
over the tin question may be briefly told. The 1650 agreement
satisfied no one. It was detrimental to the large trade carried on
between Acheh and Surat, through which quantities of Indian textiles
came to Sumatra and the Peninsula. As a result the Dutch factory
at Surat was attacked and plundered. Moreover, in 1651, with the
connivance of Acheh, the Dutch factory at Perak also was attacked
and plundered and nine of its officials killed. And they were too busy
elsewhere to send a punitive expedition. In 1653 Sultan Muzaff'ar of
Perak promised to restore the 1650 agreement, pay compensation for
the lossof the Dutch factory, and execute the chiefs responsible for the
murders. But'he made no attempt to carry out his undertaking.
- In 1655 the Dutch approached the sultan through Acheh, and in the
presence of Achinese ambassadors he signed a further agreement to the

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THE EARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

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same effect. Again, however, he failed to carry it out, and when the
Achinese put new difficulties in the way of the Dutch it became obvious
that as their rivals for the Perak trade they were double-crossing thena.
The Dutch therefore blockaded both ports, -Perak and Acheh. In
1657 the Achinese replied by destroying the Dutch factories in their
subject ports of Priaman, Tiku aiid Salido in Sumatra. Batavia
thereupon sent a naval force to attack these ports and tightened the
blockade of Perak and Acheh. Again Acheh climbed down. In 1659
an Achinese embassy was received at Batavia by Governor-General '
Joan Maetsuycker, and a treaty was signed which provided for the
payment of compensation through a reduction in the price of the tin
bought by the Dutch in Perak and a division of the trade whereby
the Achinese were to take one-third and the V.O.C. two-thirds of
Perak's tin export.^
This treaty, however, had no more value than its predecessors,
since at this time the woman who exercised the sultan's powers at
Acheh was merely the head of a confederation of chiefs, over whom,
the Dutch were to discover, she' had little or no real control. As we
have seen, Johore and Pahang had already successfully asserted their
independence of Acheh. Now Perak, annoyed by Acheh's action in
concluding the treaty, threatened to transfer her allegiance to Johore.
As things turned out, however, the Dutch tin trade with Perak improved considerably, for the reason that Acheh's decline became so
marked that few of her vessels visited the port.
In their dealings with other tin states the Dutch had mixed success.
In 1642 they made an agreement with Kedah for the delivery of half
its product. In 1643 Junk Ceylon, and in 1645 Bangeri, promised the
Dutch the whole of their product. Kedah, however, evaded her agreement, and the Dutch in retaliation resorted to blockade. The Malays
indeed would appear to have been annoyed that a treaty should have
been considered anything more than a diplomatic gesture. When the
Dutch found themselves unable to maintain an effective blockade
owing'to Kedah's distance from Malacca and her easy communications
with the Coromandel Coast, they tried to enlist Siamese support. In
1664 they made a treaty with Siam which granted them free trade with
the Malay states under her suzerainty. But her overlordship overKedah meant little or nothing in practice, and all the D.utch efforts
to coerce the little state failed. With other states under Siamese
* Winstedt, History of Malaya, p. 132, says the tin was to be divided equally between
the V.O.C. and Acheh, but Stapel's statement in Geschiedenis v(pi Nederlandsrh Indie,
iii, p. 358, is the more acceptable.

CH. 17.

THE MALAY POWERS FROM THE FALL OF MALACCA

327

cpnttol, notably Ligor and Selangor, they had better success, and
ultimately made monopolistic agreements.
The decline of Acheh entailed the loss of her control not only over
the states of the Peninsula but also over the Minangkabau pepper
ports of west Sumatra. With these the Dutch long sought to make
individual agreements by which they were to forsake their allegiance
to Acheh and come under the Company's protection. In 1663 they
were-at last successful with an agreement known as the Painan Contract, which was signed by a number of West Coast sultans granting
the V.O.C. an absolute monopoly over the pepper trade, together with
freedom from tolls, in return for protection. It resulted in much
fighting and led the Dutch to withdraw their factories from Acheh
and Perak. But it brought the west coast of Sumatra practically under
Dutch supervision.
The Dutch conquest of Malacca and the decline of Acheh offered
Abdul Jalil a good opportunity to strengthen the position of Johore.
I n 1644 his younger brother married the Queen of Patani. Fear of the
Dutch gave him Jambi and Acheh as allies, while the weakness of
Acheh enabled him to extend his power over Siak and Indragiri on
.the east coast of Sumatra. For a time his capital became an important
centre of trade, and he a rich man. But in 1666, owing to a broken
' contract of marriage between his heir and a daughter of the Pangeran
of Jambi, resulting from the intrigues of an ambitious laksamana of
Johore, who married his own daughter to the prince, the two states
drifted into a chronic condition of warfare. In 1673 Jambi sacked
Batu Sawar, Abdul JaHl's capital, and the old sult^m fled to Pahang,
where he died three years later at the age of ninety.
His nephew and successor Ibrahim settled at Riau, whence he
carried on the struggle. But his.empire was already falling apart.
Unable to gain a decisive success, he called to his aid a Bugis mercenary
leader Daing Mangika, who in 1679 sacked Jambi in retribution for
her treatment of Johore six years earlier. The war, however, continued, and in 1682 Ibrahim wrote to Governor'General Cornelis
Speelman suggesting a revival of the old alliance originally made in
1603, when an embassy had been sent to Prince Maurice at The
Hague. Speelman replied by asking for the monopoly of the trade of
Johore and Pahang.
Before anything came of the negotiations Ibrahim died in 1683,
leaving a young son Mahmud to succeed him under the regency of his
njother and Paduka Raja, the laksamana who had brought on the war
with Jambi. The Governor of Malacca at once sent an envoy to ask

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THE EARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN^EXPANSION

PT. 11

for a monopoly of Siak's newly discovered tin. The regency, unable

to control the Minangkabaus of that district, signed a treaty granting
it in return for a Dutch undertaking to m'ediate between Johore and
Jambi. The treaty, however, proved futile, and when in 1688 Paduka
Raja was driven out and replaced by a new chief minister, who took
the young sultan away from Riau back to, Kota Tinggi on the mainland, a new one was made in 1689. This confirmed the provisions of
the earlier one, granted the Dutch toll-free trade in Johore until the
sultan came of age, and added a prohibition to Indian traders to settle
in the Johore dominions. Winstedt asserts that this treaty lalso was
futile.^' F. W. Stapel on the other hand describes it a s ' very profitable',
and is of opinion that it greatly strengthened the Dutch position at
Siak at the end of the seventeenth century.^
Mahmud turned out to be a pervert and sadist whose cruelties
caused his murder in 1699. He was the last of the old Malacca royal
. line to rule in Johore. He was succeeded by the chief minister,
Bendahara Sri Maharaja Tun Habib Abdul Jalil. But family feuds
caused him to leave affairs of state/in the hands of his brother the Raja
Muda, and the latter's tyranny led to so much dissension that in 1717
the Minangkabau ruler of Siak, Raja Kechil, surprised Johore Lama and
seized the throne. Abdul Jalil was reduced once more to the position of
bendahara. In the Malay Annals the new ruler is known under the
title Abdul Jalil Rahmat Shah.
Raja Kechil ruled the Johore dominions from Riau. In 17118 the
deposed sultan intrigued with Daing Parani, a Bugis chief who had
served Raja Kechil in Sumatra and was disappointed in his expectations of receiving the office of Yam-tuan Muda of Johore. The plot
failed, and the fugitive Abdul Jalil was put to death while attempting to
flee to Pahang. In 1722, however; Daing Parani and his Bugis
followers drove out Raja Kechil and placed a son of Abdul Jalil on
the throne. The new sultan was forced to appoint Daing Parani's
eldest brother Yam-tuan Muda, or Under-king, &i Riau and reign as
the puppet of the Bugis. From then onwards the Bugis were the real
rulers of Johore.
Malayan history throughout the eighteenth century is the story-of
Bugis ascendancy. The dominant people in Celebes in the seventeenths,
century, they become known to history first as mercenaries fighting
for the Dutch. The Am Palacca of Boni led a cOntingent/of Bugis
volunteers in Speelman's campaign against Macassar in 1666-7. They
were of much assistance to the Dutch in the conquest of Mataram.
' Op. cit., p. 146.

' Op. cit., iii, p. 460.

CH. 17

THE MALAY POWERS FROM THE FALL OF MALACCA

329

Their native country was in the south-west limb of the island, where
they were organized in a number of small states, which from time to ,
time formed confederations. They were a maritime people and ranked
among the most advanced in Indonesia. The Bongais Treaty of 1667,
which ended the independence of Macassar, and the ruin of the
Moluccas caused them to roam far and wide. Their pirate fleets
swarmed all over the Archipelago, and before the end of the century
had begun to attack the coasts of Java, Sumatra and the Peninsula. As
early as 1681 there were large Bugis settlements on the Klang and
Selangor estuaries.
Daing Parani, who secured Bugis ascendancy over Johore in 1722,
was one of five famous brothers who had left Celebes to seek their
fortunes in Borneo, the Riau Archipelago and the Peninsula. Riau
now became the centre of their influence. From it they established
control over the tin states of Kedah and Perak. A dynastic struggle
in Kedah led to their being invited to assist a new sultan against his
rebellious brother. For this they received a huge cash payment, and
Daing Parani married the sultan's sister. In 1724 their enemy the
Minangkabau Raja Kechil of Siak, whom they had driven out of Riau,
led a force to Kedah against them, and for two years the Minangkabau
and the JBugis fought for the possession of the state. The war had
disastrous effects upon Kedah's trade. Daing Parani was killed, but
in the end the Bugis drove Raja Kechil back to Siak.
Then the struggle spread to Perak and Selangor. Daing Parani's
brother Daing Merewah, the Under-king of Riau, led an invasion of
Perak, where Minangkabau warriors and Kedah chiefs were seeking to
gain control over the country. This also was successful, and Bugis
dominance established over a third state. Selangor was raided by a son
of Raja Kechil and a renegade Bugis chieftain. This situation was
dealt with by another of the famous brothers, Daing Chelak, who had
succeeded Daing Merewah as Under-king of Riau. He and his
puppet. Sultan Sulaiman, expelled the raiders. His son Raja Luma
was then created sultan of Selangor, the first in its history. Two
years later in 1742 he led another invasion of Perak to re-establish
Bugis control against further Minangkabau interference.
This immense upsurge of Bugis activity and influence alarmed the
Dutch. Their long efforts to monopolize the tin of Malaya were now
in danger of coming to grief before the competition of Bugis traders
under the protection of the fighting fleets of Riau. In 1745, therefore,
they began to rebuild their fort at the Dindings. By that time there
were signs that the Malays themselves were looking round for help

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THE EARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

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to get rid of Bugis control. Sultan Sulaiman made a treaty with van
ImhofF by which in return for a promise of Dutch assistance he ceded
Siak besides granting them once again the tin monopoly in his
dominions. So strong was Malay hostility at Riau that Daing Kemboja, who had become the power behind the throne at Riau, found it
safer to transfer his headquarters to Linggi.
For some time the Dutch made no move to take over Siak. In
1753, however, a palace revolution there placed on the throne a ruler
who began a commercial war against them. In 1755, therefore, they
expelled him. Then they made a fresh treaty with Sultan Sulaiman
by which they promised him help in recovering his lost possessions
from the Bugis. He in his turn appointed a regent to look after Dutch
interests at Siak and conferred on the Company the tin monopoly in
Selangor, Klang and Linggi. Dutch ships also were to trade free of
tolls throughout his kingdom.
There was now open war between the Dutch and the Bugis. In
1756 the Bugis attacked Malacca. In retaliation the Dutch, together
with the forces of Trengganu, attacked the Bugis stronghold at Linggi.
The fighting at both places was long and bitter, but in the end the
Bugis were defeated. As a safeguard Sultan Sulaiman ceded Rembau
and Linggi to the Dutch, and on i January 1758 the three Bugis
leaders, Daing Kemboja of Linggi, Raja Tua of Klang, and Raja Adil
of Rembau, signed a treaty of peace with the Dutch and confirmed
the sultan's grant of the tin monopoly.
The empire of Johore was now a thing of the past. Selangor was an
independent state under a Bugis sultan. The smaller inland states were
under Minangkabaus or Bugis. Pahang was under Minangkabau
chiefs. Anarchy reigned in Johore itself. And Siak was about to be
lost, and just before his death in 1759 its vassal ruler, Sultan Muhammad, massacred the Dutch garrison On the island of Guntung. In
1761, therefore, the Dutch sent a punitive expedition which installed
their own nominee as sultan. To complete the picture, in 1759,
shortly before the death of Sultan Sulaiman, the Bugis leader Raja
Haji, nephew of Daing Kemboja, staged a coup d'etat at Riau and
reinstated his uncle as under-king of the Johore dominions. In the
next year, when Sulaiman himself died, the Bugis murdered, his
successor, and Daing Kemboja, as the guardian of his infant grandson
born in that same year, thus remained the de facto ruleir of the state.
Under Daing Kemboja's rule the imperial sway of Johore saw a
temporary revival, mainly through the military prowess of Raja Haji
and partly through his skill in maintaining good'relations with the

CII. 17

THE MALAY POWliRS I'ROM Tilli VALL OF MALACCA

331

Dutch. Raja Haji forced the rulers of Jambi and Indragiri to pay
homage to Johore, thereby reviving her influence in Sumatra. Then
he sailed north to deal with Perak and Kedah. The Sultan of Perak
made the necessary acknowledgements, but the Sultan of Kedah
resisted. F"or so doing he was deposed and expelled.
In 1771 Francis Light, later to be the founder of Penang, had
urged the Madras authorities to guarantee the sultan's independence
and accept his offer of a seaport in return. But when the East India
Company learnt that the sultan wanted military help against a possible
attack by the Bugis Sultan of Selangor, Raja Haji's brother, the
negotiations broke down. The excuse was that such a move would
cause trouble with the Dutch. How completely irrelevant this was
becomes clear when one realizes that the decay of Dutch power was
the main cause of the Bugis threat to the sultan's independence. So
the way was left open for Raja Haji and his Selangor brother to gain
control over Kedah and an ample share of the revenue drawn by its
sultan from its extensive trade with Bengal, Surat and Sumatra.
In 1777, when Daing Kemboja died, Raja Haji went to Riau and
wrested the chief authority from the dead leader's son, his cousin,
"although the latter had received Dutch recognition as his father's
successor. For some time he maintained friendly relations with the
Dutch, but in 1782 they quarrelled and the Bugis began to raid Dutch
positions in the Malacca Straits. In 1783 a Dutch attempt to capture
Riau failed through mismanagement. Thereupon Raja Haji, gathering
together his utmost strength, besieged Malacca. He had caught the
Dutch on the wrong foot; they were fully engaged in their disastrous
'Fourth English War' (1780-4) and could not muster adequate
naval stirength to defend their eastern empire. But Malacca stood
firm. In June 1784 van Braam with a fleet of six ships, sent out from
*. Holland in an attempt to restore their fortunes, suddenly attacked the
. besieging force and completely destroyed it, killing Raja Haji in the
process.
In August van Braam followed up this success by driving its Bugis
sultan out of Selangor. Then in October, he expelled the Bugis from
Riau and dictated a treaty whereby the sultan, the bendahara and the
temenggong acknowledged that the port and kingdom were Dutch
property and that they must entertain a Dutch Resident and garrison.
In June 1785 the first Resident entered into occupation.
The war, however, had only finished its first phase. In that same
year the Bugis Sultan of Selangor, Ibrahim, returned, and the Dutch
garrison, unable to hold out against his attacks, evacuated their fort

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and fled to Malacca. He was soon blockaded by a Dutch fleet. In

the vain hope of English assistance, he defied the beleaguering force
for a year, but had finally to accept Dutch authority.
The Dutch hold on Riau was next challenged. Sultan Mahmud
had sought the assistance of the dreaded Ilanuns of Borneo. In May
1787 they arrived and drove out not only the Dutch but also the sultan
himself and his Malay chiefs. The fugitive sultan sought help first of
the Dutch and next of Captain Francis Light, who in the previous
year had taken possession of Penang for the English East India Company. When these overtures failed he formed a coalition composed of
Trengganu, Kedah, Rembau, Siak, Solok, Lingga, Indragiri, Siantan
and Johore, which had the declared aim of driving both the Dutch
and the English from Malayan waters. But after some ineffectual
attacks on the Dutch fort at the Dindings and the coast of Penang
the grandiose coalition dissolved. The Dutch recovered Riau, the
Ilanuns returned home, the Bugis migrated to Selangor, Siantan and
Borneo, and the Malays, stimulated by Mahmud, turned to piracy.
Such remained the situation until in 1795 the French revolutionary
armies overran Holland, and as a result of the Kew Letters, issued by
the exiled Dutch government, the English began to occupy the Dutch
possessions in the East. When that happened the Dutch had just
concluded an agreement by which they had undertaken to restore the
fugitive sultan. It was the English, however, who reinstated Mahmud
and incidentally removed the Dutch garrison from Riau. In so doing
they restored also the Bugis to power.
This revolution in Riau was to have consequences of no little
interest, for the Bugis leader Raja Ali, by driving out the Malay
under-king Enku Muda, started a feud which not only caused much
trouble in the Malay world for a good many years but also presented
Raffles in 1819 with the perfect opportunity for creating a sultan from
whom to purchase the island of Singapore. For Raja Ali resisted all
Mahmud's attempts to drive him out of Riau sq^ stubbornly that at
length in 1803 the sultan accepted him as under-king and gave him
his younger son Tengku Abdur-Rahman to bring up. Then three
years later, having failed to persuade the disappointed Engku Muda
to accept it, he conferred the ofiice of temenggong upon the Malays
chief's nephew. At the same time he entrusted his elder,son Tengku
Hussein to Engku Muda to bring up, and in due course marry to his
daughter. The new temenggong was the one who In 1819 was to
enter into the famous deal with Raffles; while Tengku Hussein,
cheated of his succession to the throne at his father's death by Raja

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THE MALAY POWERS FROM THE FALL OF MALACCA

333

Ali's successor as under-king, was the sultan created by Raffles to give

legal semblance to that deal.
The feud between Raja Ali and Engku Muda had its repercussions
in other Malay states also. In 1800 the Bugis Sultan Ibrahim of
Selangor intervened in support of his relative. Soon afterwards the
Perak chiefs, unaware that the Bugis had the upper hand at Riau,
sent an ill-timed offer of their throne to Sultan Mahmud. This
brought down on them the full force of Sulaiman's wrath. In 1804 he
conquered Perak, driving out the reigning sultan and holding the state
for two years. In 1806, however, a new sultan of the old line succeeded,
and when Sulaiman made a further attack to regain control the defence
was too strong for him. Nevertheless he continued for many years, as
Winstedt puts it, 'to fish in the troubled waters of the Perak river'.^
By the end of the eighteenth century, save in Selangor, the Bugis'
ambitions had received, or were about to receive, a series of decisive
checks, mainly through the intervention of outside powers. One
further one remains to be recorded. Behind Malacca ever since the
fifteenth century Malays from the Minangkabau region of Sumatra
had been coming across to form new settlements. By the time of the
Dutch conquest of Malacca in 1641 there were Minangkabau colonies
at Naning, Rembau, Sungai Ujong and Klang. In the latter half of the
century the Dutch had some trouble with them. In the early part of
the eighteenth century the Bugis became the dominant factor in
Malacca's hinterland and kept the Minangkabau power in check. Van
Braam's conquest of Selangor and the expulsion of the Bugis from
Riau by the Dutch left the way open for the formation of a loose
coalition of the small Minangkabau states with a ruling dynasty at its
head. Its founder, Raja Melewar (1773-95), claimed descent from the
royal house of Minangkabau in Sumatra, which itself claimed descent
from the Sailendras of Srivijaya fame. He seems to have been recognized by the Dutch Governor of Malacca, and by carefully eschewing
rivalry with any of the powerful chiefs he gradually built up a compact
wedge of Minangkabau states. At his death in 1795, the year in which
the British took over Malacca and readmitted the Bugis to Riau, what
is now the state jjf Negri Sembilan had become an independent unit.
With the coming of the nineteenth century Malaya stood on the
threshold of a ftew era. The ambitions of the Bugis had been thwarted.
Dutch power was temporarily in abeyance while Napoleon dominated
Europe. The Malay empire of Johore was at its last gasp. Meanwhile
Siam, after her disastirous defeat by the Burmese in 1767, had made a
* History of Malaya, p. 163.

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wonderful recovery, and under the new Chakri dynasty was beginning to revive her ancient claims over the Malay states. Finally the
British, having planted their flag on the island of Penang in 1786 and
occupied Malacca in 1795, were engaged in a mighty struggle with
France, and consequently were determined to deny their rival the
strategic advantages in the Indian Ocean which the occupation of the
Netherlands Indies would confer on her. Moreover, in 1805 the young
Stamford Raffles was to arrive in Penang. And although some ten
years later he was to be prevented from realizing his dream of substituting British for Dutch control over the Archipelago, he was nevertheless by the occupation of Singapore to do something of decisive
importance to tKfe future of Malaya.

CHAPTER

I8

SIAM AND T H E EUROPEAN POWERS IN T H E

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
the 'Black Prince' of Siam, who turnea the tables on the
Burmese and restored the independence of his country, holds one of
the most honoured places in her history. After the failure of his attack
on Toungoo in 1600 he concentrated his attention upon the Shan
states, all of which had become independent when Nanda Bayin was
finally defeated in 1599. But, as we have seen, the Nyaungyan Prince,
with Ava as his base, was soon engaged upon the task of reconquering
them, and while campaigning against him in 1605 Naresuen died of a
carbuncle.
His brother, the 'White King', succeeded him with the title of
Ekat'otsarat. He was unwarlike and so the Siamese effort in the Shan
states was abandoned and Burma recovered them. Ekat'otsarat was
interested in financial reform and trade, and during his brief reign of
five years the Dutch trading connection with Siam was established.
In 1602 they opened a factory at Patani and in 1608 at Ayut'ia. Both
places were important centres for Chinese and Japanese trade. The
Japanese had been the first foreign traders to settle in Siam as soon as
Naresuen's victories over the Burmese made a resumption of peaceful
trade possible. Many of them were converts of the Jesuit missionaries
in Japan and came to Siam when the religious policy of the Shogun
lyeyasu made their position unsafe in their own country. At Ayut'ia
they were granted a settlement of their own by Ekat'otsarat, who
enlisted a large force of them in his bodyguard under the command of
their headman, Yamada. Siam also exchanged complimentary missions
with the great shogun.
NARKSUI'N,

At both Patani and Ayut'ia the Dutch ha4 to face the opposition of
the Portuguese and the Japanese, but they were welcomed at both
places by the rulers, and in 1609 a Siamese embassy from Ayut'ia was
received at The Hague by Maurice of Nassau. It was the first recorded visit of Siamese to Europe. In 1610 Ekat'otsarat was succeeded
by his son Int'araja, who is referred to in Siamese history as Songt'am,
'the Just'. His accession was the signal for a Japanese rising which
T2

335

SIAMESE DANCING

CH. 18

SIAM AND THE EUROPEAN POWERS

337

for a time threatened to bring disaster to the kingdom. They rose

because the minister who was their patron was executed on account
of the part he had played in a conspiracy which had caused the death
of the Maha Uparat in the previous reign. They sacked Ayut'ia and
then made off to P'etchaburi, which they fortified and prepared to
hold. At the same time the King of Luang Prabang invaded Siam on
the pretext of coming to expel the Japanese. Songt'am, however, was
equal to the emergency. He reduced P'etchaburi and then turned and
inflicted a decisive defeat on the invaders. The Japanese seem to have
made terms with the king, for they were retained in the royal bodyguard and Yamada himself was given a Siamese title of honour.
Peace was restored in 1612, the year in which the Globe appeared at
Ayut'ia bringing a complimentary letter from King James I of England.
Notwithstanding Dutch opposition, Songt'am permitted the East
India Company to establish a factory at his capital. In the following
year Anaukpetlun of Burma captured Syriam and put an end to the
stormy career of Philip de Brito. He then proceeded to strike at the
parts of Bayinnaung's empire held by Siam. Binnya Dala handed over
Martabin to him without a blow, but further south there was some
severe fighting during the course of the year 1614. The Burmese, as
we have seen, recovered Moulmein and Tavoy, but failed to capture
Tenasserim, which was defended by Portuguese auxiliaries in the
service of Siam.
In the following year the war was switched to Chiengmai, which the
Burmese took. After three more years of struggle, during which the
Siamese failed to regain the place, a truce was negotiated in 1618
which left the Burmese in possession of their gains. The cessation of
the war was probably due to an event which took place in Cambodia
' in that year. Taking advantage of the Siamese preoccupation with the
Chiengmai question, the Cambodians declared their independence and
drove out the Siamese garrison, which Naresuen had placed in their
capital in 1594. In 1622 a Siamese attempt to restore their control
over Lovek failed. During the rest of his reign Songt'am repeatedly
sought to enlist Dutch and English support against Cambodia, but
both were unwilling to commit themselves to such a dubious adventure
and Cambodia retained her independence. Although he had acted
with firmness in face of the Japanese revolt and the Luang Prabang
invasion, Songt'am disliked war. He had been a monk when called to
the throne and was fond of study and devoted to religious exercises.
Relations between the English and the Dutch in Siam became
steadily worse. The sea fight at Patani in 1619, in which John Jourdain

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PT. II

lost his life, has been chronicled elsewhere! At Ayut'ia the Dutch had
the advantage over the English as a result of the agreement they made
with Songt'am in 1617 for the purchase of {hides. In 1622 the English
factories at both Patani and Ayut'ia were closed down, and for thirtyseven years they had no regular trade with Siam. The Dutch also
closed their factory at Patani; trade there did not fulfil the great
expectations cherished by both companies when they first settled
there. At Ayut'ia, however, with the departure of the English they
became stronger than ever.
When Songt'am died, while still a young man, in 1628, he was
succeeded by his son Jett'a. He was a puppet in the hands of P'ya Sri
Worawong, a cousin of Songt'am, who had had a stormy career and
seized power with the help of the Japanese leader Yamada. In 1630
the ambitious minister seized the throne for himself and assumed the
title of Prasat T'ong, the King of the Golden Palace. His nickname
among the people was 'the bottled spider'. At the moment of his
usurpation Yamada turned against him and essayed the role of kingmaker. He succeeded, however, in outwitting the Japanese leader,
who was promptly poisoned. Then after a bloody struggle in 1632
culminating in a massacre of the Japanese in Ayut'ia the survivors
were expelled from the kingdom. The trouble with the Japanese
played into the hands of the Dutch, who established even closer
relations with the usurper and promised him their support against his
enemies. In 1632 Prince Frederick Henry of the Netherlands sent a
letter congratulating Prasat T'ong on his accession to the throne, and
in 1634 the Dutch were permitted to build 'a stone lodge, with fit
packhouses, pleasant apartments and a commodious landing-place' on
the river-bank at Ayut'ia.^

But although Joost Schouten, who was the Dutch Agent at the time
of Prasat T'ong's usurpation, described him in 1636 as 'ruling with
great reputation and honour', his successor, Jeremias van Vliet, paints
a very different picture of his rule.^ The explanation is that relations
between the Dutch and the 'bottled spider' passed through some
critical phases. The Siamese became uneasy at the prosperity and
power of the Dutch as a result of the elimination of their rivals. The
reign was, moreover, one of murders and revolts, and the king on more
than one occasion quarrelled with the Dutch over their failure to give ' Joost Schouten: A True Description of the Mighty Kingdoms of Japan and Siam,
Roger Manley's translation, London, 1663, pp. 151-2.
^ Jeremias van Vliet, Revolutions arrivees au Siam en iG^y, Paris, 1663, and Description of the Kingdom of Siam, van Ravenswaay's translation in Journal of the Siam
Society, vol. vii, pt. i.
/

CH. l 8

SUM AND THE EUROPEAN POWERS

339

him the help they had promised. Early on, the Queen of Patani refused to recognize his seizure of the throne and described him as a
'rascal, murderer and traitor'. In 1632, and again in 1634, the royal
army failed badly in attacks upon Patani. On the first occasion the
Dutch sent no help; on the second it came too late, though through
no fault of theirs. In 1636, when a further attack was planned, a
reconciliation was effected through Dutch mediation. But in that
year a further quarrel arose oyer the Siamese deliveries of rice
and an attack was made on two Dutch factors at Ayut'ia, who
were arrested and sentenced to be trampled to death by elephants.
Their lives were only saved by heavy bribes to the king and chief
ministers.
After this incident there was a long period of better relations. The
goodwill of the king was sedulously cultivated by the Dutch authorities, both at Batavia and The Hague. The growing strength of Batavia
and the conquest of Malacca in 1641 were not without their effects
upon the Dutch attitude towards the king. Thus when in 1649 the
Court of Ayut'ia failed to satisfy certain claims put forward by the
Dutch, van Vliet threatened to call in the Dutch fleet to attack the
city. This caused a serious crisis. The factory was besieged and all
its inmates arrested and threatened with death. Five years later, when
another crisis blew up over the Dutch refusal to assist Prasat T'ong
against rebellious Singora, van Vliet's successor, Westerwolt threatened to close the factory and leave the country. On this occasion a
Dutch naval demonstration was staged in the Gulf of Siam with appreciable effect. Prasat T'ong climbed down and there was no further
trouble.
When Prasat T'ong died in 1656 there was an uneasy period of a
few months during which two short-lived kings came to the throne
and were murdered. They were followed by Narai, a younger son of
Prasat T'ong, whose long reign of thirty-one years (1657-88) is of
unusual interest in the history of European rivalry in South-East Asia.
Apart from a recurrence of the perennial struggle with Burma for
Chiengmai, King Narai's policy was mainly concerned with efforts to
free himself from the economic control which the Dutch had been
gradually fastening upon his country during his father's reign. And
by inviting the assistance of Louis XIV of France he created a situation
which not only made his country for a time of no little importance in
the calculations of the European naval powers but developed to a
degree of dramatic intensity only equalled by the Paknam incident of
1893.

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The renewal of the struggle for Chiengmai resulted from the confusion wrought in Burma and the Shan, states through the flight of
Yung Li, the last Ming emperor, from Yiinnan to Bhamo in 1658.^
Chiengmai, in terror of a Chinese invasion, felt impelled to seek
Siamese aid. But when in 1660 Narai led a large force northwards
better news from Ava caused Chiengmai to change its mind and the
king was forced to retire. In 1661 the unsuccessful Mon revolt at
Martaban led to a Burmese invasion of Siam by the Ataran river and
the Three Pagodas Pass towards Kanburi, and during the lull in the
Chinese invasions of Burma, caused by the energetic mopping-up
operations of the Manchus in Yunnan, it looked as if the full-scale
struggles of the latter half of the previous century between the two
powers were about to be revived. But the Siamese easily drove out
the invading force; and although they followed up their victory by
raiding deeply into Burma in 1662, their real interest was in Chiengmai. Early in that year they had captured the city, and King Pye of
Ava, threatened by the Manchus, was powerless to intervene. The
Siamese were, however, quite unable to hold on to the place. In 1664
the people of Chiengmai rose in revolt and drove them out, and a
Burmese prince was again installed as a vassal of Ava. It was to
remain under Burmese control until 1727.
In 1659 the English factors of the East India Company's Cambodian
factory, established at Lovek in 1654, were forced by an Annamite
invasion to flee the country. They took refuge at Ayut'ia, where they
were so warmly welcomed by Narai that in i66i the Company reopened its factory there. In April of the following year Bishop Lambert de la Motte of the French Societe des Missions Etrangeres landed
at Mergui en route for Annam. The society had been founded *iii
Paris in 1659 with the object of undertaking missionary work, independently of the Jesuits, in China, Annam and Tongking. Louis XIV
backed the scheme. It was bitterly opposed not only by the Jesuits,
who had been in the field since the pioneer days .of St. Francis Xavier
in the middle of the sixteenth century, but also by Spain and Portugal,^
who realized that it was intended as a means of spreading French
influence in the Far East. The Pope, in an effort to disarm the opposition of the Archbishop of Goa, who claimed authority-over all^
missionaries working in the East, conferred upon the bishops sent out
* Infra, pp. 357-9
' T h e Portuguese still guarded their old privileges granted by papal bulls during the
sixteenth century. Under these, missionaries going to the East must embark at Lisbon
and must have the permission of the King of Portugal. On arrival in the East they came
under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Goa.

CH. l 8

SIAM AND THE EUROPEAN POWERS

34I

to organize the work on a territorial basis obsolete titles of bishoprics,

in existence in Asia Minor before its conversion to Islam, together
with the rank of Vicar-Apostolic. Lambert de la Motte, for instance,
was Bishop of Beritus.
His original intention had been to proceed to western China by the
Irrawaddy and the old overland route from Bhamo. But owing to the
news of Chinese incursions into Burma, which he received at Masulipatam before crossing the Bay of Bengal, he decided to go to Ayut'ia
where he hoped to obtain a passage to Annam. After leaving Ayut'ia,
however, his ship was wrecked and he had to return to the Siamese
capital, where in January 1664 he was joined by a second missionary
prelate, Pallu, Bishop of Heliopolis, and four priests. News of the
outbreak of a very severe persecution of Catholics in Annam caused
the two bishops to remain in Siam; and finding the king well disposed,
they decided to make Ayut'ia the headquarters of their mission. They
were permitted to build a church and a seminary there, and before
long their priests began to penetrate into various parts of the country.
The favour shown by Narai to the English and the French aroused
the hostility of the Dutch, who demanded additional commercial
privileges. When these were rejected, a Dutch fleet blockaded the
mouth of the Menam, and Narai, unable to resist this form of pressure,
had to climb down. In August 1664 he signed a treaty granting the
Dutch the monopoly of the trade in hides, the practical monopoly of
sea-borne trade between Ayut'ia and China, and certain extraterritorial rights of jurisdiction. The Dutch had won the first round;
but their victory made the king all the more anxious to shake off their
control. He would have liked to obtain the support of the English
East India Company, and the English factory at Bantam wrote to
London urging that something should be done. The Ayut'ia factory,
however, was under the jurisdiction of Fort St. George, on the Coromandel Coast, which was most unwilling to interfere in Siamese
affairs. Moreover, while Sir Edward Winter remained in control at
Fort St. George the Company's interests in Siam were so badly mismanaged that the factory was ruined and English trade in the country
fell into the hands of interlopers.
Meanwhile the French missionaries at Ayut'ia were sending home
exaggerated accounts of their success which led the Court of Versailles
to entertain the fond hope that the conversion of Siam to Christianity
was within sight. In 1673 Mgr. Pallu, whp had been on a visit to
Europe, returned to Siam with a personal letter from Louis XIV' to
the king. It was accorded so splendid a reception that the two bishops,

54.2

THE F.ARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

FT. II

Pallu and Lambert, began to press the king to send a diplomatic

mission to Versailles. Narai does not seem up to this point to have
seriously contemplated attempting to'obtain a French alliance against
the Dutch, but Louis XIV's letter certainly turned his mind in that
direction. France and Holland, however, were at war in Europe and
for some years the plan hung fireif indeed there was anything so
definite as a plan in any other minds than those of the French missionaries. During these years a new actor appeared on the scene whose
influence carried the king completely into the French camp.
In 1674 the English factory was reopened. The initiative came from
Bantam, whose interest in Siam had never relaxed. From the start
things went badly with the factory, and in 1678 Richard Burnaby was
deputed by the Bantam Council to investigate the cause of the trouble.
With him went a Greek, Constant Phaulkon, who had been in the East
India Company's service at Bantam, and having won a large reward
for saving the magazine there had resigned in order to try his fortune
in Siam. Phaulkon was the son of an innkeeper on the island of
Cephallonia; he had run away frorA home to become a cabin-boy on
an English merchant ship. His real name was Constantin Hierachy,
but at the suggestion of George White, whom he apparently accompanied to India in 1670, he changed it to its French equivalent, by .
which he became known to history. White went on to Siam, where
he became a pilot on the Menam river. In 1675 his younger brother
Samuel followed him there and became the captain of a Siamese ship
trading between Mergui and Masulipatam. On arrival in Ayut'ia
Burnaby persuaded George White to enter the service of the East Iftdia
Company, and for a time the two of them employed Phaulkoi\ in
private trading ventures. Then in 1680 they hit upon a plan whereby
the Greek was to enter the Siamese service and use his position to
further the interests of the English Company against the Dutch. He
was accepted by P'ya Kosa T'ibodi, the Siamese Minister of the
Treasury, as an interpreter, and showed such high ability that he was
soon promoted to the post of Superintendent of Foreign Trade.
The chief object of the plan, however, was never achieved. Burnaby
quarrelled so badly with his colleague Potts, who heartily disliked
Phaulkon, that he was recalled to Bantam in 1682, while "George" ^
White resigned in disgust and went home to London, where he set up
in business on his own account. Potts, left in charge of the factory,
plunged into a bitter quarrel with Phaulkon over a debt he owed to
the Company. The latter, therefore, finding it impossible to maintain,
good relations with the English factory, allowed his favour to be wooed

CH_ 18

SIAM AND THE EUROPEAN POWERS

343

by a young French commercial agent, Boureau-Delandes, who

appeared at Ayut'ia early in 1682 with a special recommendation from
Louis XIV transmitted to King Narai by Bishop Pallu. The young
Frenchman, who was a son-in-law of Frangois Martin, the founder
of Pondicherry (1674), set himself to win over Phaulkon to the French
interest. He was considerably aided by an incident which occurred
in December 1682. The English factory was burnt out and Potts was
foolish enough to hint that the Greek adventurer had engineered the
fire. Even then, however, Phaulkon seems to have wavered for a long
time before committing himself finally, and there can be no doubt that
had he received any encouragement from the English he would have
preferred them to the French.^ But his closest associates were Burnaby, who after dismissal by the Company had returned to Ayut'ia as
a private trader, and Samuel White. And William Strangh, who was
sent to Ayut'ia in 1683 by Surat^ to decide whether or not to close the
factory there, would neither co-operate with the friend of Burnaby
and White nor submit to the conditions of trade imposed upon the
factory; so in January 1684 it was closed and its personnel left for
Surat.
During this period Phaulkon's influence at Court had increased to
such a degree that he had become the controHing factor in its foreign
policy. Narai was as anxious as ever to bring in another power as a
counterpoise to the influence of the Dutch. The EngHsh were obviously .unable to fill the role effectively, and the fact that their king,
unlike Louis XIV, completely ignored his existence was a source of
keen disappointment. He would have preferred not to commit himself wholly to a French alliance, but there seemed to be no alternative.
In 1680, therefore, he had deputed an embassy to the Court of Versailles, but the French ship conveying it was lost off the coast of
Madagascar. The news of this disaster reached Siam in September
1683. Narai therefore decided to send two minor officials to France
with the request that a French ambassador should be sent to Ayut'ia
with powers to conclude a treaty. It is a fact of some significance,
however, that the ship, which left in January 1684 with the envoys on
board, was bound for England and carried despatches from Phaulkon
to George White and the East India Company and a consignment ot
presents for judicious distribution. Thus before they proceeded to
France the envoys made a brief stay in London, and Father Vachet,
' T h e question is carefully analysed by E. W. Hutchinson in Adventurers in Siam in
the Seventeenth Century, pp. (>&-()i.
' T h e Bantam factory had Deen closed in 1682 as a result of Dutch action against the
sultan.

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their compare, was personally received by Charles II. The East India
Company, however, was so firmly opposed to Phaulkon, who was
regarded as the chief cause of the failure of the Ayut'ia factory, that
White's efforts on his behalf were in vain. Moreover, the envoys were
accredited only to the Court of Versailles] and for obvious reasons
Vachet was in a hurry to get them safely across the Straits of Dover.
They were accorded a magnificent reception in France, though
behind the scenes Vachet found himself up against an unexpected
situation. The king had come completely under the influence of
Madame de Maintenon and the Jesuits, and the Societe des Missions
Etrangeres no longer held the place it had once had in the royal favour.
Moreover, the high hopes of Narai's personal conversion to the
Catholic faith, with which Pallu had parlier stimulated Louis XIV's
interest in Siam, had given way to disillusionment. Vachet, however,
held a trump card in his hand in that he was able to tell Pere de la
Chaise, the king's Jesuit confessor, that Phaulkon had been converted
to the Catholic Church by a Jesuit. This, in fact, had been one of the
chief reasons for PhauUcon's hesitancy in committing himself wholeheartedly to the French interest. He was a patron of the Jesuits and
disliked the influence exerted on King Narai's mind by the missionaries of the Societe des Missions Etrangeres, their rivals. Vachet's
description of Phaulkon as the dominating personality in the Siamese
government and the staunch friend of the Jesuits completely won over
Pere de la Chaise, and as a result Louis XIV decided to send the
Chevalier de Chaumont as his accredited ambassador to the Coiirt of
Ayut'ia together with a large suite of priests and Jesuits and with the
avowed object of converting King Narai to Christianity.
The embassy, conveyed in two French, men-of-war, arrived at
Ayut'ia in October 1685 and was received with the utmost pomp by
the king. De Chaumont, a Huguenot converted to Catholicism, was a
religious fanatic whose one aim was the conversion of King Narai; he
had no interest in the negotiation of commercial concessions and little,
indeed, in the question uppermost in the minds of Narai and Phaulkon
a political alliance against the Dutch. Phaulkon, however, whc
acted as interpreter at all royal audiences, carefully parried all de
Chaumont's clumsy attempts to raise the question of the king's conversion and behind the ambassador's back made secret arrangements
with the Jesuit Pere Tachard to lay before Louis XIV a-plan for the
conversion of the kingdom by the Jesuits. His suggestion was that a
large number of them should be sent to Siam dressed as laymenand
he would then secure for them appointments to the governorships ol

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SIAM AND THE EUROPEAN POWERS

345

provinces, cities and fortresses. To ensure the success of the scheme

it would be necessary, he said, to have two good colonies of French
soldiers in the country. He cleverly manoeuvred de Chaumont into
making a public affirmation of a French alliance. In return he negotiated a draft agreement containing trading concessions, privileges for
missionaries and the promise of the cession of Singora, near to Patani
on the east coast of the Malay Peninsula, as a French garrison town,
the ostensible object of which was to deter the Dutch from any
offensive action against Siam. De Chaumont left for France in
December 1685, taking with him Kosa Pan, a high official of the Court
of Ayut'ia, as ambassador to Versailles charged with the task of
negotiating the arrangements for the despatch of French troops to
Singora.
De Chaumont, with Kosa Pan and Tachard, arrived in France in
June 1686. Again a double set of negotiations was carried on, with
Kosa Pan completely ignorant of the extremely shady arrangements
that were being made behind his back by Tachard. Louis XIV's
advisers were of opinion that Singora, in spite of its strategic position,
was too far away from the capital. They decided to raise the price of
Louis XIV's support for Phaulkon's scheme as high as possible. De
Seignelay, Colbert's son, went so far as to question Kosa Pan regarding the feasibility of ceding Mergui as a depot for shipbuilding and
repairs, but his arguments against the proposal were so strong that no
more was said about it to him. And he was kept completely in the dark
as to the real destination of the troops for whose despatch to Siam he
had been sent to negotiate. Had he known that the arrangement
made with Tachard was for the occupation of Bangkok, a move which
was calculated to strangle the independence of his country, he would
have broken off negotiations at once. The upshot of it all was that on
I March 1687 a squadron of six warships left Brest for Siam with 636
soldiers under the command of Marshal Desfarges. With them went
Kosa Pan, two French plenipotentiaries, Claude Ceb^ret de BouUay,
a director of the Compagnie des Indes, and Simon de la Loub^re,*
together with Pere Tachard and a number of Jesuits. Tachard was
entrusted with the task of persuading Phaulkon to agree t q t h e substitution of Bangkok for Singora. He was also to arrange for a French
governor and garrison to be posted to Mergui, which, he was informed,
was as vital for French trade with the Coromandel Coast in particular
and India in general as Bangkok was for the control of trade with the
' His Du Royaume de Siam, 2 vols., Paris, 1691, is the best account of Siam at this
time.

346

T H E EARLIKR PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

PT.

II

Gulf of Siam and the China coast. In return for his conxpliance
Phaulkon was to be created a Count of France and a Knight of the
Order of St. Michael. In case of opposition Desfarges was instructed
to seize Bangkok by force.
Phaulkon's dilemma when the mission arrived in Siam in September
1687 may well be imagined. French garrisons at Bangkok and Mergui
would be highly unpopular with the Siamese and might easily endanger his hold over King Narai. Refusal, on the other hand, might

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY AYUT lA

ruin the co-operation with Louis XIV upon which his'scheme for the
conversion of Siam depended. He decided to throw caution to the winds
and commit himself wholeheartedly to the French plan; but in order
to overcome the scruples of his royal master he insisted that Desfarges"
and his troops must become mercenaries of Siam under ,his personal
control and must take the oath of allegiance to the king. In due course,
therefore, Desfarges and the main body of his troops occupied Bangkok, which they proceeded to fortify strongly, and Dubruant was sent
as governor to Mergui with a garrison of 120 men. In due course also

CH. 18

SIAM AND THE EUROPEAN POWERS

347

the two plenipotentiaries negotiated a treaty granting the French

extra-territorial jurisdiction over all subjects of Louis XIV in Siam,
permission to build suitable trading posts and, significantly, the
cession of all the islands within a ten-mile radius of Mergui.
Before following the course of this extraordinary French adventure
further it is necessary to turn back and take note of its repercussions
in the English camp. Siam's possession of Mergui had resulted in the
development of a very profitable trade with the Coromandel Coast.
Before Phaulkon's time this was entirely in the hands of Mohammedan
shippers belonging to the kingdom of Goiconda. Phaulkon's policy
was to develop this trade by using ships flying the Siamese flag and
captained by English 'interlopers'. The ships were built at Mergui,
and the place soon had quite a colony-of English seafaring men in
Phaulkon's employment. The Indian traders naturally resented this
intrusion into their domain and English skippers complained of illtreatment at Goiconda ports. In 1681 Samuel White's ship was
wrecked through the refusal of the port officer at Masulipatam to
supply him with cables. In 1683 Phaulkon appointed Burnaby
Governor of Mergui and White its shabander. Their task was to
superintend the building arid commissioning of ships at what had now
become a very busy port. White, in his new capacity, was anxious to
exploit his grievance against Goiconda in such a way as to make a
fortune rapidly and get away home with it. In 1684, therefore, he
instituted a war of reprisals against Indian shipping in the Bay of
Bengal. It was not long before this began to cause the English factory
at Fort St. George, Madras, considerable inconvenience, and very
naturally Phaulkon was held to blame for the acts of piracy committed
by the ships based on Mergui. Madras therefore began to contemplate
strong action against Siam.
Tiie rift became wider through a quarrel which arose in 1685 between Elihu Yale and Phaulkon over a contract for the supply of some
jewellery ordered for King Narai through Thomas Ivatt, the agent for
Siam at Madras. Yale had sent in what can only be characterized as
an outrageouslyheavy bill which Phaulkon had refused to pay. Yale's
brother Thomas and two other factors had taken the jewels to Ayut'ia
with the intention of reopening the English factory. They had arrived
in time to be present at the reception of de Chaumont's embassy.
When soon afterwards Phaulkon ordered them to take the jewels
back to Madras fuel was added to a fire that was already becoming
dangerously strong. And although as soon as he discovered the effect
upon Madras of the piracies organized at Mergui he withdrew his

348

THE EARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

PT. II

sanction for them, Samuel White and his associates found easy excuses for going on with them, and thereby made war between the East
India Company and Siam inevitable.
(
James II on coming to the throne in 1685 had sent an autograph
letter to Phaulkon thanking him for the presents he had sent in 1684
for distribution by George White. In July 1686, however, before the
letter arrived at its destination, the king held a council at Windsor
Castle at which the decision was taken to issue a proclamation forbidding British subjects from serving in the ships of foreign rulers in
the East. By this time the Fort St. George authorities had already
begun a war of reprisals against the Mergui pirates and were looking for
a base on the east coast of the Bay of Bengal from which to conduct
operations. Their first plan was to seize the island of Negrais at the
entrance to the western arm of the Irrawaddy delta, but the expedition
was a fiasco. It left Madras in October, after the changeover from the
S. W. to the N.E. monsoon had begun, and was forced by contrary winds
to return. A few weeks later, at the beginning of 1687, news came of
James II 's proclamation and it was decided to send a couple of warships, the Curtana and the James, to Mergui to order all the English
to leave and to seize all the shipping there pending settlement of a
claim for ^65,000 damages by King Narai. Meanwhile in November
1686 Phaulkon, who had become alarmed at the irresponsible behaviour of White at Mergui, had written to Pere de la Chaise offering
to hand over Mergui to the French. Needless to say, he was quite
unaware of the fact that the occupation of the port had already become
a prime object of French policy in the East.
The two English warships carrying James II's proclamation arrived
at Mergui in June 1687 at the very moment when White, fearing an
English attack on the place, was making final preparations to escape
homewards in his ship the Resolution. White, finding himself trapped,
decided that his only possible course was to comply with the orders
sent from Madras, and he and all the English in-the town signified
their intention to leave the Siamese service. Anthony Weltden, the
commander of the expedition, who had been instructed to keep up a
blockade of Mergui until late in October, when the change of monsoon
would permit him to return to Madras, took White's submission at itsface value, and with the most surprising unpreparedness against a
possible Siamese attack he and the English on shore gave therhselves
up to a series of lavish entertainments. On the night of the 14th,
during an orgy on shore, the Siamese batteries began to fire on the ^
ships, sinking the James, while on shore their troops fell upon the

CH. 18

SIAM AND THE EUROPEAN POWERS

349

English and massacred them. White and Weltden were among the
few survivors to get away, and with their two ships, the Resolution
and the Curtana, they ran for sheher among the islands of the Archipelago, where they lay waiting for the change of monsoon. White
then persuaded Weltden to allow him to sail for England in the
Resolution, while Weltden returned to Madras.
While this little drama was in progress the French squadron under
the command of Marshal Desfarges was on its way to Siam. On
learning of its departure from Brest the East India Company had
represented to James II how serious would be the position of its
shipping in the Bay of Bengal were the French to possess Mergui on
its eastern side in addition to Pondicherry on the Coromandel Coast.
The king had therefore sent secret instructions to Governor Elihu
Yale of Madras to seize Mergui before it fell into French hands. These
arrived in August 1687, and Yale, in the belief that Weltden with his
two ships was still blockading the port, at once despatched a frigate to
reinforce him, hoping that he would thus be able to force it to surrender. Sailing unsuspectingly into the harbour on 22 September in
chase of one of the Siamese commerce raiders under an English
captain, the frigate's commander found himself neatly trapped and had
to surrender to Dubruant, who had already taken over control there.
By this time Siam was officially at war with the East India Company.
The declaration was published in August 1687 and was the direct
consequence of Weltden's action at Mergui in the previous June and
July. It had, however, strangely little effect, for Phaulkon in handing
over Bangkok and Mergui to the French had fatally weakened his own
position in the government, and the Company after its failure at
Mergui was content to play a waiting game. That also had been the
policy of the Dutch throughout the period of King Narai's flirtation
with France. As his relations with the Court of Versailles had become
closer Phaulkon had gradually adopted a more uncompromising
attitude towards Dutch trade. Consequently in 1686 the position of
the Dutch factory had become so difficult that it was closed and
Phaulkon was told to deal directly with Batavia. When Desfarges's
expedition arrived in 1687 there were rumours of a Dutch declaration
of war on Siam, but nothing came of them. The astute Dutch waited
for the inevitable reaction which the presence of a foreign garrison
within striking distance of the capital must have upon the feelings of
the Siamese.
In any case the forces at the disposal of Desfarges were too small
and too widely dispersed to be of any use in case of serious trouble.

350

I'llH I'ARLIHK PHASt: OF KHROraAN EXPANSION

PT. II

To make matters worse, Phaulkon in supporting the demands of the

Jesuits quarrelled hopelessly with Bishop Laneau, the head of the
Missions Etrangeres at Ayut'ia, and a serious rift appeared in the
French camp. Then in March 1688 King Narai became so seriously
ill at Lopburi that he was unable to conduct business. This gave an
opportunity for an anti-foreign conspiracy led by Pra P'etraja, the
general in charge of the royal elephants, to gain control over the palace.
Too late Phaulkon summoned Desfarges to his aid; thousands of
armed Siamese were rallying to the cause of the conspirators. Pra
P'etraja was appointed regent, and in the middle of May he arrested
Phaulkon. The French, threatened by overwhelming numbers of
Siamese troops, were thrown upon the defensive and could do nothing
to save their ally. On July 5 he was publicly executed. In the next
month the king died and Pra P'etraja was raised to the throne.
All that Desfarges could now hope to do was to secure the best
terms possible for the evacuation of his small force and the safety
of the French residents at the capital. His fortified area at Bangkok
was besieged by a force large enough and well enough equipped to
have exterminated it; but the Siamese had a wholesome fear of the
sort of resistance they might meet, and preferred to negotiate. In
September an agreement was reached by which the French troops were
to be evacuated to Pondicherry while their missionaries and traders
were to retain their privileges. The Bangkok garrison departed towards the end of November, leaving behind the two sons of Desfarges
and the Catholic bishop as hostages. At Mergui Dubruant,,hemmed
in by hostile forces, fought his way out with severe losses and took
the remnant of his garrison to Pondicherry. Notwithstanding the
agreement made with Desfarges, the French missionaries and other
residents were treated with great severity, and many of them lost
their lives.
Late in 1689 Desfarges made an unsuccessful attempt to restore
French influence in Siam by seizing the island of Puket, better known
as Junk Ceylon, the European corruption of its Malay name Ujung
Selang. His foolish act caused a renewal of the severities against the
remnant of the French at Ayut'ia, and many of them, including the
bishop, were killed. To stop further slaughter Pere Tachard went to
Ayut'ia, proclaiming that he came to conclude peace on behalf of
Louis XIV, while Desfarges withdrew once more to Pondicherry and
eventually sailed for home. Nothing came of Tachard's negotiations,
and at the end of 1690 he left for Pondicherry. But the persecution
of Christians stopped, the French were released and the missionaries

LA LOUBkRE's MAP OF SIAM,

1691

352

THE EARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

PT. II

were permitted to continue with their work. France was now at war
with the Grand Alliance in Europe, and for the time being Louis XIV
had to drop his scheme for the conversion of Siam.
After the Peace of Ryswick one more attempt was made to negotiate
with Siam, and once again P^re Tachard went to Ayut'ia. But it was
all to no purpose. The reaction against the policy of King Narai and
Constant Phaulkon had caused such a powerful upsurge of antiforeign sentiment that until the days of Mongkut in the middle of the
nineteenth century Siam was to be very chary of granting privileges
to Europeans. A new agreement was indeed made with the Dutch
in November 1688 by which they recovered some of their commercial
concessions, especially those concerning the purchase of hides and tin,
but they had lost for ever the dominating position which had caused
Narai to throw himself into the arms of the French.
The war with the English East India Company died a natural
death. No formal peace treaty was made because the Company
refused to drop its claim to 65,000 which Weltden had presented to
the Siamese authorities at Mergui./ No attempt, therefore, was made
to reopen the English factory at Ayut'ia. A foothold at Mergui
rather than the conversion of Siam had all along been the real ambition
of the French Foreign Office. Early in the eighteenth century more
than one attempt was made to reopen the question of a naval repair
station there, but the Siamese remained adamant in their opposition.
Consequently the English turned their attention to the port of Syriam
in Burma and were followed there by the French.^
^ D . G. E. Hall, 'From Mergui to Singapore, 1686-1819', ' " JSS, xli, pt. i, July
I9S3,PP- 1-18.

CHAPTER 19

BURMA UNDER T H E RESTORED T O U N G O O DYNASTY,

1600-1752

the united kingdom of Burma fell apart in 1599 the condition

of the old Mon kingdom of Pegu was indeed -wretched. Not only was
the capital city in ruins but the whole countryside was laid waste by
the invading armies of Arakan, Toungoo and Siam. Syriam was in
Arakanese hands, and thither came Philip de Brito y Nicote, a Portuguese in the service of King Min Razagyi, to take charge of the customhouse and control the Portuguese living there under their own laws.
With him went two Jesuit missionaries, Pimenta and Boves, both of
whom wrote accounts of their experiences, translations of which were
published by Samuel Purchas in his Pilgrimes.^ Boves wrote: ' I also
went thither with Philip Brito, and in fifteen days arrived at Syriam,
the chief port in Pegu. It is a lamentable spectacle to see the banks of
the rivers set with infinite fruit-bearing trees, now overwhelmed with
ruins of gilded temples and noble edifices; the ways and fields full of
skulls and bones of wretched Peguans, killed or famished or cast into
the river, in such numbers that the multitude of carcasses prohibits
the way and passage of any ship.'^
De Brito formed an ambitious plan to gain control over Syriam and
hold it under the authority of the Viceroy of Goa. Together with a
Portuguese officer, Salvador Ribeyro, he erected a fort and expelled
the Arakanese governor. Then, leaving Ribeyro to hold the place, he
went to Goa to obtain official recognition and help. He received a
daughter of the viceroy in marriage and returned as captain-general
with six ships containing reinforcements and stores. During his
absence Salvador Ribeyro had beaten off successive Arakanese and
Burmese attacks and had cultivated such good relations with the Mon
chiefs that they offered to accept de Brito as king. The latter on
arrival accepted the offer on behalf of his sovereign, and Ribeyro then
retired into the background and soon left the country. His wisdom
in handling a difficult situation during his chief's absence gives the

WHEN

' Both accounts are in vol. ii of the 1625 edition of the work.
^ Op. cit., ii, p. 1748.
353

354

THJ^ EARLIER PHASE OF, EUROPEAN EXPANSION

PT. II

impression that had he remained in control t h e adventure might have

had a far better chance of success than it had under the impulsive
leadership of the over-ambitious de Brito. |At first, how^ever, success
followed success. A large Arakanese flotilla under the command of the
heir-apparent was defeated and the prince himself captured and held
to ransom. A further Arakanese attack in league with the Toungoo
Min was beaten off, and in 1604 both rulers came to terms with de
"Brito.
The strongest of the Mon chiefs, Binnya Dala, who held Martaban
as the vassal of Ayut'ia, made a marriage alliance by which de Brito's
son by a former wife married his daughter. For some years the
Portuguese adventurer was the unchallenged lord of much of the Mon
country, though Bassein and the western part of the delta remained
independent. As yet, however, no full-scale Burmese attack had been
launched against him. It was certain to come as soon- as the Burmese
found a leader capable of uniting them. But the Nyaungyan Prince,
a younger brother of Nanda Bayin, who was ruling at Ava when the
kingdom broke up, and took up the task of restoring the fortunes of his
family, died in 1605 while striving to bring the rebellious Shan states
of the north and east into subjection. And for some years afterwards
his son and successor, Maha Dhamma Raja, better known by his later
title of Anaukpetlun, was too busily engaged in the north to devote
attention to the south. De Brito should have concentrateid upon conciliating and uniting the Mons. Instead, however, he alienated them
by plundering pagodas and pressing ahead with deeply relented
measures for the mass conversion of Buddhists to Christianity. In
1608, having established his authority over the north, Anaukpetlun
captured Prome. Two years later he forced his cousin, the ruler of
Toungoo, to acknowledge his overlordship. De Brito chose to regard
this as an act of treachery, and in league with Binnya Dala of Martaban
he attacked Toungoo, captured the prince, plundered and burnt the
palace, and then retired. Thereupon Anaukpetlun, after the most
careful preparations, laid siege to Syriam early in 1613. De Brito was
caught unprepared, but the Burmese king had no heavy guns capable
of battering the fortifications. After a siege of a little over a month,
however, a Mon chief in de Brito's service opened one of the gates and
the Burmese captured the city. De Brito was impaled on an eminence
above the fort and most of his officers vfere done to death.' The
remainder of his Portuguese followers were sent upcountry to be
settled in a- number of villages between the Chindwin arid the Mu,
where for centuries afterwards their descendants formed a Catholic

CH. 19

BURMA UNDER THE RESTORED TOUNGOO DYNASTY

355

community with its own priests. They were enrolled in the royal
guard as musketeers and gunners.
Anaukpetlun next turned against the provinces of his grandfather's
kingdom which had been occupied by Siam. The warlike Pra Naret
had died in 1605 and had been succeeded by his unwarlike brother
Kkat'otsarat, who in turn had died in 1610. The latter's son Int'araja
(1610-28) sent an army to oppose the Burmese invasion of Tenasserini
and managed to halt it after Martaban and Ye had submitted without
a blow. In 1615, however, Anaukpetlun turned eastwards and struck
at Chiengmai, which he captured. There his canipaigns against Siam
stopped, and after placing one of his sons in charge of the kingdom,
which he reorganized as a Burmese province, he returned home.
He wisely refrained from attempting to reassert Burmese claims to
l.uang Prabang, but the fact that on his return from Chiengmai he
made Pegu his headquarters and was intent upon restoring it as the
capital of his dominions shows that he hoped for an opportunity ot
renewing the old struggle for the possession of Ayut'ia which had
brought so much humiliation to his dynasty. Hostilities continued
for some years, but they were mainly over the question of Chiengmai.
According to the Siamese account, both sides tried to enlist the support
of Goa but failed. Anaukpetlun certainly sent an envoy to Goa, but
his object seems to have been to explain away what had taken place
at Syriam and to offer help against Arakan, which a Goa fleet had
unsuccessfully attacked in 1615. But when a Goanese envoy in due
course appeared at Pegu the king refused to receive him. No reason
was given for this volte-face, and one can only assume that the king
had discovered that the Portuguese were not in a position to exact
vengeance for his treatment of de Brito.
Among the captives taken by the Burmese at Chiengmai was
Thomas Samuel of the East India Company's Ayut'ia factory. He
was taken to Pegu and died there. News of this reached Lucas
Antheunis at Masulipatam in 1617 through Indian merchants trading
with Burma. He sent over two of his assistants, Henry Forrest and
John Staveley, on an Indian ship to claim the East India Company's
goods in Samuel's hands at the time of his death. Anaukpetlun
promised to hand over the goods if the Company would open trade
with his country, and retained at Pegu the two young men as hostages
when he realized that it had no such intention. Eventually, however,
after long delay he restored the goods and sent the two factors back
to Masulipatam with a small present and a letter inviting the Company
to trade. His overture led to nothing. The Company was too deeply

356

THE EARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

PT. II

committed elsewhere under the Anglo-Dutch treaty of 1619 to open

new factories in countries where the chances of profitable trade were
highly doubtful; and as a result of its unsudcessful struggle with Jan
Pieterszoon Coen it was soon to begin drawing in its horns and closing
a number of its factories. Moreover, Forrest jand Staveley reported so
adversely on trading conditions at Pegu that the Masulipatam factory
was for many years opposed to the planting of a factory in Burma, and
it was not until after Fort St. George was founded at Madras in 1639
that the country came to be seriously considered as a field for English
commercial enterprise.
In 1628 Anaukpetlun completed the transfer of his household from
Ava to Pegu and began to plan an attack upon Ayut'ia. In the next
year, however, he was murdered and the throne seized by one of his
brothers, Thalun, who carried out a complete reversal of his policy.
The Siamese project was abandoned and in 1635 the capital was transferred from Pegu back to Ava. Immediately after his accession a
considerable Mon insurrection had broken out, and when it was
suppressed another mass exodus of/Mons into Siamese territory had
resulted. The idea of a united kingdom of Mons and Burmese which
Tabinshwehti and Bayinnaung seem to have cherished no longer
existed. The Burmese treated the Mons as a subject race, and as Pegu
had become useless as a port through silting the choice was between
Syriam and Ava. From the economic point of view Syriam would
have been a better capital, and by going there the government would
have maintained contact with the outside world. But no king after
Anaukpetlun appreciated the value of overseas intercourse, and Upper
Burma was essentially the Burmese homeland. So the dynasty
surrendered to traditionalism and isolationism, and its increasing
intransigence and xenophobia made Western trade with Burma on
any satisfactory scale, and even ordinary diplomatic relations,
impossible.
Thalun's policy was peaceable and conservative; he aimed at
restoring order and social organization. His reign, therefore, is chiefly
interesting for his administrative work. His minister Kaingsa compiled the Manusarashwemitty the first law-book in the Burmese
language. Thalun also reconstructed the administration of the Kyauks^irrigated area and the system whereby lands were held there by regiments of the royal army. His Revenue Inquest of 1638 was his biggest
achievement. It entailed the compilation of a Domesday survey of the
whole kingdom, which were it in existence today would be an invaluable historical record. Unfortunately, like most 'of the palm-leaf

CH. 19

BURMA UNDER THE RESTORED TOUNGOO DYNASTY

357

and parabaik records not only of this dynasty but also of its successor,
none of it has survived, and the little that is known of it comes from
the references to it in the compilations of a similar nature made during
Bodawpaya's reign in 1799 and 1802.
During Thalun's reign in 1635 the Dutch planted their first factory
in Burma. It was at Syriam, but their factors, Dirck Steur and Wiert
Jansen Popta, had to follow the Court up to Ava, where in September
of that year the king received them and treated them to 'sundry
spectacles of dancing, leaping and fighting'. Their trade in Burma was
managed from Pulicat, and they had come with the object of elbowing
out the Indian and Portuguese; merchants who ran the country's
foreign trade. Mon merchants and ships had carried on a substantial
amount of trade to foreign parts, and among the records of Lancaster's
first voyage on behalf of the East India Company there is a brief
word-list of the 'Pegu language' which seems to have been picked
up at Acheh. Hardly any Burmese, however, engaged in foreign
trade, which was left almost entirely in the hands of foreigners. And
there are no further signs of Mon activity. When the Dutch tried to
employ their well-tried methods for obtaining a monopoly Thalun
protected the Indian merchants against unfair competition and wrote
to the Governor of PuHcat telling him to abstain from hostile measures
against the Portuguese, who, he complained, were being prevented
from carrying on their accustomed trade with Burma. The Dutch
were so disappointed in the trade that in 1645 they seriously thought
of closing their factories, and only held on to them for fear lest the
English would step into their shoes.
The English, on the other hand, who planted their first factory in
Burma at Syriam in 1647, went there partly because of rumours of fabulous Dutch profits there. Before their factors arrived in Ava Thalun had
died (1648) and his son Pindale (1648-61) had succeeded. They found
the Dutch so well established that there was little hope of success;
and when the First Anglo-Dutch War broke out in 1652 and the
Dutch literally cleared the Bay of Bengal of English shipping their
factories in Burma were doomed. They were withdrawn in 1657.^
Pindale, a weak king, had to face an unprecedented situation
which arose out of the war in China when the Manchus drove out the
Mings. Yung-h, the last of the Mings, had in 1644 fled to Yunnan,
where for a long time he defied the Manchus. His heavy demands upon Hsenwi and Maingmaw for men and supplies led Pindale to send
a force to their assistance; and with some success, since in 1650 the
* T h e story is told in D . G. E. Hall, Early English Intercourse viith Burma, pp. 47-84.

358

THE EARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

PT. II

English factors in Burma reported to Madras that the Burmese had

defeated 'their plundering neighbours and the country was like to
be settled and in a peaceful condition'.^ In 11658 Yung-Li was driven
out of Yunnan and fled by the old Burma Road to Bhamo with 700
followers. They were disarmed and permitted to reside at Sagaing.
This caused a spate of raids by bands of Ming supporters who endeavoured to rescue their leader. A Burmese army was defeated at
Wetwin, and for three years Upper Burma was ravaged up to the walls
of Ava and as far south as Pagan. In 1661 the Dutch factors at the
capital reported that the confusion was so great that all trade had
stopped.^
Worse was to follow. Mon lewes summoned to the defence of Ava
deserted and there was a revolt at Martaban.* Then, fearing Burmese
reprisals, thousands of Mons fled into Siam. A Burmese force pursuing them was defeated by the Siamese at Kanburi, beyond the
Three Pagodas Pass, and the Siamese followed up their victory by
raiding deep into Lower Burma. The Dutch at Syriam reported that
they were taking special measures to protect theiir factory there.
Pindale seemed incapable of dealing with the situation. In 1661,
therefore, he was dethroned and his brother Pye placed upon the
throne. The disorder gradually subsided, but not through any action
the new king was able to take. The Siamese turned their attention to
Chiengmai, which they recovered, and Pye was too weak to attempt a
reassertion of Burmese authority there. The people of Chiengmai,
however, drove out the Siamese garrison and the Burmese returned.
I'he Manchus showed such energy in bringing Yunnan under control
that the Chinese raiders, unable to use it as a base of operations,
disintegrated. Then in 1662 the Manchu Viceroy of Yunnan marched
into, Burma and demanded the surrender of Yung-li. Pye had no
alternative but to hand over his embarrassing guest, who was taken
to Yunnanfu and publicly strangled with a bow-string in the marketplace. .

Burma had now entered upon a long period of stagnation. Pye died
in 1672, and his son Narawara, who succeeded him, died within a
year. A number of influential people at the Court thereupon took
possession of the palace and placed the youngest son of the-PrinCe of"-,
* T'oster, English Factories in India, 1650-4, p. 19..
- D. G. E. Hall, ' T h e Daghregister of Batavia and Dutch Relations with'Burma',
JBRS., xxix, pt. ii, p. 149. See also Pieter van Dam.
' Phayre (op. cit., p. 139) and Wood (op. cit., p. 193) place this incident in 1662 after
the accession of Pye to the throne of Ava. Harvey, however, assigns it to the ^ear 1661
before Pindale's deposition, and the references to it in the correspondence of the Dutch'
factors at Syriam seem to confirm his date (Hall, op. cit. sup., p. 150).

CH. 19

BURMA UNDER THE RESTORED TOUNGOO DYNASTY

359

Prome on the throne. Opposition within the royal family was crushed
by a considerable number of secret executions. Minrekyawdin, or
Sri Pawara Maha Dhamma Raja, reigned for nearly twenty-six years
(1673-98). He was little more than a figurehead; real power was in
the hands of a small coterie of ministers. Both internal and external
peace was maintained, but there was no leadership and consequently
no vigour. Outlying districts were lost because when encroachments
such as the occupation of the Kabaw valley by the Raja of Manipur
took place there was no one capable of expelling the intruders.
The narrow tradition-ridden poUcy of the Court had particularly
bad effects upon foreign trade. The Dutch finally lost their patience
and in 1679 closed their factories. They had been particularly anxious
to plant one at Bham'o, which was once again beginning to attract
large caravans of Chinese traders now that firm rule was restored in
Yunnan. The idea of opening up trade with western China through
Burma had great' attractions for them, and when the Court of Ava
flatly prohibited their project they decided that the trade of Burma
per se was not worth pursuing any further. The Dutch withdrawal
inclined the English East India Company to make another attempt
at trading with the country. Madras and the other Coromandel Coast
factories, which felt themselves threatened by the sweeping raids
of Sivaji and his Marathas, were arming and needed saltpetre and lead,
which Burma produced, for making munitions. It was Sir Streynsham
Master, the Governor of Fort St. George, therefore, who in 1680
started the ball rolling by sending an envoy to Ava.
There was another cogent reason for the move. The French had
opened a factory at Ayut'ia in 1680 and were hand in glove with the
Greek adventurer Constant Phaulkon, who was coming to be the
dominating personality in King Narai's government. The representatives of the East .India Company there were coming up against the
increasing hostility of Phaulkon and the English interlopers, who
swarmed at Mergui. Hence although the Company far preferred
Siam, whose attitude towards foreign trade was altogether more
enlightened than that of the Court of Ava, its unhappy position there
made it willing to try its luck once more in Burma. And it was prodded
on by James Duke of York, who was persuaded by a Dutchman named
Spar, previously head of the Dutch factory at Ava, that it was worth
while making a further attempt to exploit the overland trade route to
western China. The directors were extremely hesitant about embarking on such a scheme and were relieved when the evasive answers
made by the Burmese ministers to all the Company's proposals caused

360

THE EARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

PT. II

the negotiations to peter out. The Burmese would under no circumstances permit the export of saltpetre or lead. And Fort St. George
discovered that it could obtain all the supplies of other products of
Burma it needed through the operations of Indian, Armenian and
other private traders living under its jurisdiction at Madras.
Meanwhile the development of Louis XIV's Siamese project and
the piratical operations of the English private traders at Mergui had
brought on not only a severance of relations with Siam but a war of
reprisals, and late in 1686 the Fort St. George Council made an
abortive attempt to seize the island of Negrais, just inside the mouth
of the western arm of the Irrawaddy delta, with the intention of using
it as a naval station from which to threaten Mergui.* In the following
year in the course of a struggle to gain control of Mergui Captain
Anthony Weltden did actually visit the island, but the Company,
which had become involved in a quarrel with Aurungzeb, could spare
no forces with which to plant a settlement there. And although the
French managed to hold Mergui for a short time, their whole adventure
in Siam crashed in 1688 and the immediate need for strong action
by the Company on the eastern coast of the Bay of Bengal passed away.
Instead, therefore, the Fort St. George authorities turned their
attention to the port of Syriam, from which valuable cargoes of teakwood were coming regularly to Madras. The development of French
naval power in the eastern seas, and the lessons learnt from their brief
occupation of Mergui, pointed to the need for a repair station somewhere on the eastern side of the Bay. The Coromandel Coast had no
good harbour where repairs could safely be executed, especially during
the period beginning in October with the changeover from the southwest to the north-east monsoon. In any case it was impossible to keep
a fleet off the Coromandel Coast during the stormy weather of
October and November, so that the factories there and shipping in the
Bay might be at the mercy of an enemy fleet if one appeared while they
were denuded of naval protection. A naval repair station on the
opposite side of the bay would be of great value; and although the full
strategic significance of the question was not realized until the beginning of the great naval struggle with France for the mastery of the
Indian Ocean during the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-8), it"
is significant that soon after its failure to seize Mergui in 1687 Fort St.
George began to consider the possibility of establishing a dockyard
at Syriam. Thus in 1689 the frigate Diamond was sent there for
repairs.
* Hall, Early English Intercourse, p . 129-37.

CH. 19

BURMA UNDER THE RESTORED TOUNGOO DYNASTY

361

This initial experiment had no immediate resuhs, probably because

the directors at home had set their faces against any project for reviving
the English factory there. In 1692, however, the Burmese authorities
at Martaban seized a small sloop belonging to an Armenian resident
at Madras and imprisoned her crew; and as she was carrying a consignment of goods belonging to Nathaniel Higginson, the Governor
of Fort St. George, he decided to send an envoy to Ava to negotiate
the release of the captive merchant and his property. Higginson
guessed that if he could promise (Jie reopening of official trade between
the Company and Burma all would be plain sailing. But he was not
in a position even to send an accredited Company's servant, much
less make any offer which would involve the Company officially.
His agent, Edward Fleetwood, who made the journey to Ava in 1695,
was a private merchant of Madras whose expenses were paid personally
by Higginson. But he did his best to pass off the mission as an official
one and instructed Fleetwood to ask for ' free liberty of repairing and
building of ships' at Syriam. As he had expected, the Burmese
ministers let Fleetwood know quite plainly that if the Company would
reopen the Syriam factory all his requests would be granted; but if
not it was useless to negotiate.
Eventually a method of procedure was agreed upon which satisfied
them. Fort St. George was to appoint a Chief who was to take charge
of "an English dockyard at Syriam and be the responsible person in
charge of all the English merchants trading in Burma. As, however,
the Company could not be brought into the venture, Higginson, after
failing to form a private syndicate to take it over, appointed Thomas
Bowyear, a 'freeman inhabitant' of Madras, to reside at the English
dockyard at Syriam and superintend work there, and all Englishmen
trading to Burma were required to 'pay due respect and obedience'
to him. In practice the English Chief did not normally reside in
Burma; he went'out with the Madras skippers in September each
year and returned with them in March. The arrangement was an
unsatisfactory one: the Company had no control over the Chief, and
his control could be flouted by the private traders at Syriam. The
refusal of the captain and supercargo of an English ship which put
into Syriam for repairs in 1720 to recognize the authority of the Chief,
Captain George Heron, resulted in a brawl in which two of the ship's
company lost their lives.
Madras thereupon replaced the Chief by a Resident, who had to
pay down a large sum to the Madras Council as security money and
was given regular contracts for the construction and repair of ships

362

THE EARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

PT. II

on behalf of the Company. This experiment also was far from successful. Some of the Residents were unsatisfactory; one actually absconded. There were serious complaints about both the workmanship
and the cost of the ships built at Syriam, and in 1741 the P'ort St.
George Council decided to transfer its building orders to the Parsi
yards at Bombay. The dockyard, however, remained in use as a repair
depot until it was destroyed by rebellious Mons in 1743.
Meanwhile the French had followed the English example by opening a dockyard at Syriam. Dupleix, who had arrived at Pondicherry
in 1720, was soon awake to the importance of the Burmese ports in
the naval strategy of the Bay of Bengal. In 1727 he suggested the
planting of a dockyard at Syriam, and two years later it began work.
It was well managed by experienced shipwrights and built some
excellent teak ships. Plans for considerable extensions were under
consideration when the great Mon rebeUion broke out in 1740 and
forced it to close down.
Minrekyawdin died in 1698 and was followed by the last three
kings of the dynasty: Sane (1698-1714), Taninganwe (1714-33), and
Mahadammayaza Dipati (1733-52). Like him they were "nonentities
who rarely, if ever, left the capital and were practically palace prisoners.
Even the fact that under them Burma pursued a policy of peace reflects
no credit on their rule, since it was dictated by weakness alone. How
much power the Court of Ava exercised over the feudal lords who
administered the various parts of the country it is difficult to say. Its
control over Lower Burma probably did not extend beyond the
Irrawaddy highway, the city of Pegu apd the port of Syriam. '
The delta had never recovered from its appalling state of devastation
at the end of the sixteenth century. But the Mons had never lost their
desire for independence and were bound one day to make another
bid at restoring the kingdom of Pegu, should the opportunity occur.
It came in due course when the little mountain state of Manipur
began a series of raids upon Upper Burma which the enfeebled rulers
of Ava were quite unable to check. In the sixteenth century Bayinnaung had forced Manipur to recognize his suzerainty, but later it
reasserted its independence, and, as we have seen, in the reign of
Minrekyawdin succeeded in encroaching upon the Kabaw valley
running alongside the Upper Chindwin. Under Gharib Newaz
(1714-54) its expert horsemen became the terror of Upper Burma.
They destroyed villages and pagodas and got away with their loot
before they could be intercepted. On more than one occasion they
defeated Burmese armies sent to hold the frontier. They had recently

KAUNGHMUDAW PAGODA NEAR SAGAING

been converted to Hinduism, and their Brahmans incited them on with

the promise that they would obtain blessedness by bathing in the
Irrawaddy at Sagaing. In 1738 they camped near Sagaing, stormed
the stockade built to defend the famous Kaunghmudaw Pagoda
erected by Thalun, massacred its garrison and burnt every house and
monastery up to the walls of Ava. Plunder was their object, not conquest, and there was no leader in Burma strong enough to take the
situation in hand.
The degradation of the monarchy caused the disintegration of the
kingdom. It began in 1740 when a colony of Gw^ Shans at Okpo,
near Madaya in Upper Burma, discontented at the exorbitant taxes
demanded on their areca palms, rose in rebellion under a leader named
Gonna-ein. They united with a band of Mon deportees and drove the
Burmese out of their district. Almost simultaneously Lower Burma
rose in revolt. The Burmese governor of the province of Pegu aspired
to overthrow the government and marched on Syriam. But his trGops
mutinied and killed him, and when the king sent a force to restore
order the Mons rose en masse, defeated it, seized Syriam and Ma'rtaban
and massacred all the Burmese they could lay hands on. They then
proceeded to invest a king of their own, Smim Htaw Buddhaketi, in

364

THE EARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

PT. II

Pegu. He was the son of a Governor of Pagan who had failed in ah

attempt to seize Ava in 1714 and had fled to the hill country east of
Pegu. Smim Htaw Buddhaketi was a moJik when he was called to
occupy the throne. He proved an ineffectual leader, but such was the
weakness of Ava that his forces quickly occiipied Lower Burma up to
Prome and Toungoo and began raiding far up the Irrawaddy until
they threatened the capital itself.
The Burmese resistance to this new threat was seriously hampered
by the Manipuri raids, which continued until 1749. They could rarely
take the initiative and attack the delta because of the danger of leaving
the homeland unprotected. Not until they found a leader capable of
solving that problem were they in a position to turn the tables on the
Mons; and by that time Ava had fallen. The Governor of Prome did
indeed lead a raid in 1743 which gave him temporary "possession of
Syriam, but his followers then proceeded to get so drunk that a Mon
counter-attack soon cleared them out, and by a rapid follow-up of their
victory the Mons captured Prome. Thereafter the initiative lay with
them. During their occupation of Syriam the Burmese burnt the
Armenian, French and Portuguese churches there and destroyed all
the factories of foreign merchants save the English, which was defended
by a small force of sepoys sent over from Madras. The victorious
Mons, however, annoyed at the strict neutrality maintained by Jonathan Smart, the Resident, in face of their repeated requests for help,
compelled him to surrender and burnt the factory to the ground.' He
and his small company were permitted to return to Madras. '
In that same year Father Gallizia, who had been consecrated by the
pope as the first Bishop of Burma, arrived at Syriam with a small band
of assistant clergy bound for Ava. Unable to proceed to his destination
he went to Pegu, where he was permitted to reside. Not long afterwards six ships belonging to the Ostend Company put into Syriam
harbour bearing the staff and effects of their former factory at Bankibazar in Bengal, from which they had been expelled. The Mon
government at Pegu sent Bishop Gallizia to ascertain^heir intentions,
and when he learnt that their leader, de Schonamille, sought permission to open a factory at Syriam he prevailed upon him to go to
Pegu to lay his request before the king.- De Schonamille very unwi^l)^^
took with him a considerable armed escort, which roused the sus- ~
picions of the Mons to such a degree that a plot was fornied tomurder
the whole party. Gallizia, hearing of the plot, warned de Schonamille,
who made a desperate effort to escape. But he and all his following,
together with the bishop and two priests, were surrounded and

CH. 19

BURMA UNDER THE RESTORED TOUNGOO DYNASTY

365

massacred. Four survivors only escaped to the ships, which managed

to make good their escape .from Syriam.
Smim Htaw Buddhaketi was popular with the people, who appreciated, his kindly disposition; but his ministers became weary of his
incapacity as a leader. Matters, came to a crisis in 1747 when a Mon
attack up the Irrawaddy towards Ava was repulsed with heavy loss.
The king thereupon left Pegu and settled at Sittaung, where after some
deliberation he announced his intention to retire from his uncongenial
post. Then with a strong |5jjird he made his escape to Chiengmai, His
chief minister, Binnya Dala, was chosen king in his place and announced that he intended to revive the empire of Bayinnaung. For
such a project he had neither the resources nor the ability; and although he appointed as commander-in-chief Talaban, a soldier with
a great reputation among the Mons, the only result was an intensification of the raiding activities which had gone on unceasingly since
the achievement of independence. The Burmese, however, could put
up no effectual resistance, and soon the raiders were penetrating
beyond Ava, apparently with the aim of linking up with the Shans of
the upper Irrawaddy. At last in 1751, having assembled a large army
equipped :with arms procured from European traders at Syriam, Talaban made a full-scale invasion of Upper Burma which culminated in
April 1752 in the capture of Ava and the deposition of the last king
of the Toungoo dynasty.
The campaign had been carried through all too easily, and the Mons
were deceived into thinking that in taking the capital they had conquered the country. Hence, instead of concentrating upon stamping
out all possible centres of resistance, the heir-apparent, who had
accompanied Talaban upon the expedition, returned to Pegu with the
main body of the troops, leaving the commander-in-chief to exact the
allegiance of the chiefs of the Ava kingdom with inadequate forces at
his disposal. Before starting back the prince heard the disturbing
news that the Mon detachment sent to receive the allegiance of
the town of Moksobomyo ('the town of the hunter chief), some
sixty miles north of Ava, had been cut to pieces by the inhabitants.
But as he mistakenly supposed that trouble was brewing with Siam,
which had recently exchanged friendly missions with the deposed
King of Ava, he preferred to treat the incident as trivial and left with
the parting injunction to Talaban to make an example of the place.
Little did he realize that the Moksobomyo incident was the prelude
to a Burmese national uprising that was to clear the Mons out of
Upper Burma and destroy their kingdom utterly.

CHAPTER 2 0

T H E RISE AND FALL OF T H E K I N G D O M OF

MROHAUNG IN ARAKAN
stretches for some 350 miles along the eastern shore of the
Bay of Bengal to the south of the Chittagong division of East Bengal.
It is separated from Burma by a long, deep range of mountains, the
Arakan Yoma, through which there are only two serviceable passes,
the An connecting with Minbu on the west bank of the Irrawaddy,
and the Taungup connecting with Prome. The Arakanese call themselves Rakhaing and their country Rakhaingpyi. According to Sir
Arthur Phayre,' the word is a corruption of the Pali rakkhaso (Skt.
rakshasd) meaning 'ogre' (Burmese bilu) or guardian of the mansion
of Indra on Mount Meru. Sir Henry Yule^ identifies the Argyre or
Silverland of Ptolemy with Arakan. But Arakan produced no silver
and the previously accepted views of Ptolemy's data concerning the
Indo-Chinese peninsula are now open to question.*
The Arakanese of today are basically Burmese, though with an uhmistakable Indian admixture. Although mainly Buddhist, they have
been influenced by long centuries of contact with Muslim India. Their
language is Burmese with some dialectical differences and an older
form of pronunciation, especially noticeable in their retention of the
' r ' sound, which the Burmese have changed to ' y ' . The Bengalis refer
to them by the name Magh, a word adopted by seventeenth-century
European writers and written 'Mugg'. The name is also applied to a
class of people belonging to Chittagong who are Buddhists but speak
Bengali and are not Mongoloid. Much that is fancifQl~has been written
about its possible etymology,* but the question is as yet unsolved.
Buddhism would seem to have reached Arakan long before its arrival
in the interior of Burma, and the farrious Mahamuni image,_brought

ARAKAN

^ History of Burma, 1883, p. 41.

' Originally in his contribution to Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society,
November 1882.
^ See G. E. Gerini, Researches on Ptolemy's Geography of Eastern Asia, pp. 37-40,
for the stock view.
,
* See Phayre's note in op. cit., pp. 47-8, and the article s.v: Mugg in Hobson-Jobson.
366 - - -

'

CH. 2 0

THE KINGDOM OF MROIIAUNG IN ARAKAN

367

from Arakan by the Burmese in 1785, and now to be seen in the

Arakan Pagoda at Mandalay, may date from the early Christian era.
Inscriptions mention a Candra dynasty, which may have been founded
as early as the middle of the fourth century A.D.^ Its capital was called
by the Indian name of Vaisali, and thirteen kings of the dynasty are
said to have reigned there for a total period of 230 years. The Arakanese chronicles claim that the kingdom was founded in the year
2666 B.C., and contain lists of kings beginning with that date.^
The Burmese do not seem to have settled in Arakan until possibly
as late as the tenth century A.D. Hence earlier dynasties are thought
to have, been Indian, ruling over a population similar to that of Bengal.
All the capitals known to history have been in the north near modern
Akyab. It was a district subject to chronic raids from hill tribes
Shans, Burmese, and Bengalisand there were long periods when
settled government can hardly have existed. But the spirit of independence was always strong, and in the business of raiding the Arakanese could usually give as much as they received. Their main
activity was by sea into Bengal, and they developed great skill in sea
and riverine warfare. By the middle of the sixteenth century they
were the terror of the Ganges delta.
North Arakan was conquered by Anawrahta of Pagan (1044-77), but
was not incorporated in his kingdom. It remained a semi-independent
feudatory state under its hereditary kings. When Pagan fell in 1287
Arakan asserted its independence under the famous Minhti, whose
reign, according to the chronicles, lasted for the fabulously long period
of ninety-five years (1279-1374). His reign is also notable for the
defeat of a great Bengali raid. After his death Arakan was for a considerable time one of the theatres of war in the great struggle between
Ava and the Mon kingdom of Pegu. Both sides sought to gain control
over it. First the Burmese, then the Mons, placed their nominees on
its throne.
When in 1404 the Burmese regained control King' Narameikhla^
fled to Bengal, where he was hospitably received by King Ahmed
Shah of Gaur. During his exile he distinguished himself while assisting his host to repel an invasion, and when in 1426 Ahmed Shah died
* E. H. Johnson, 'Some Sanskrit Inscriptions of Arakan', Bulletin of the School of
Oriental and African Studies, xi, 2, pp. 357-85^ Phayre, op. cit., pp. 293-304, gives the whole list. Harvey, History of Burma,
pp. 369-72, gives it only from A.D. 146. For the legends concerning the foundation of
the kingdom see Phayre, op. cit., pp. 42-4. Phayre served in Arakan as senior assistant
to the commissioner from 1837 to 1846 and during that period published valuable
studies of its early history and antiquities.
' Phayre, op. cit., p. 79, calls him Meng Soamun and gives the date as 1406.
13

^68

THE EARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

PT. 11

and was succeeded by Nazir Shah the new ruler provided him with a
force for the recovery of his kingdom under the command of a general
called in the Arakanese Chronicle Wali Shah. This man, however,
turned traitor, and in league with a disloyal Arakanese chieftain imprisoned Narameikhla. The king managed to escape, and in 1430
regained his throne with the aid of a second force supplied by Nazir
Shah.
'
He thereupon built himself a new capital named Mrauk-u in Arakanese, but usually known by its Burmese name of Mrohaung. The
date of its foundation is given as 1433. King Narameikhla held his
kingdom as the vassal of Gaur, and in token of this he and his immediate successor, though Buddhists, added Mahommedan titles to
their Arakanese ones and issued medallions bearing the Kalima, the
Mahommedan confession of faith.
In 1434 Narameikhla was succeeded by his brother Min Khari,
also known as AH Khan, who declared his independence of Gaur. His
son Basawpyu, who succeeded him in 1459, took advantage of the
weakness of Barbek Shah of Gaur to seize Chittagong. He and his
successors continued to use Mahommedan titles, no longer as a sign
of vassaldom but as a token^ of their sovereignty over Chittagong,
which was recognized as lying beyond the geographical borders of
Arakan. Chittagong had for centuries been a bone of contention
between Arakan and Bengal and had often changed hands. It was
now to remain in Arakanese hands until 1666, when the Mughals
recovered it permanently for India.
Basawpyu was murdered in 1482 and his country entered upon a
half-century of disorder and dynastic weakness. No less than eight
kings came to the throne; most of them were assassinated. Then in
1531 a capable young king, Minbiri, came to the throne and Arakan
entered upon a new era. It was in his reign that the first European
ships made their appearance, as raiders, and that the Portuguese freebooters (Jeringhi) began to settle at Chittagong. It was in his reign
also that Tabinshwehti revived Burmese power, conquered the Men
kingdom of Pegu, and threatened the independence of Arakan. With
great foresight Minbin strengthened the defences of his capital, with
massive earthworks and dug a deep moat, which was filled with tidalwater from the river. Hence in 1544, when the^'ineyitable Burmese
attack came, although Minbin could not defeat the invaders in the
open, the defensive works of Mrohaung proved an obstacle against
which even the great Tabinshwehti could not prevail when he appeared before them in 1546. While the siege was on the Raja of

CH. 2 0

THE KINGDOM OF MROHAUNG IN ARAKAN

369

Tipperah raided Chittagong and Ramu with his wild tribesmen. But
again victory was on the side of the Arakanese.
When Minbin died in 1553 he had a force of Portuguese mercenaries. His sea-power, based on Chittagong, was the terror of the
Ganges region, and his country was on the threshold of the greatest
period of her history. But her somewhat spectacular rise was hardly
due to the genius of her rulers. It coincides with a period of weakness
in Bengal, when, before the gradual extension eastwards of the Mughal
power, the native governments of that region were tottering. The
possession of Chittagong was the key to the situation; for Minbin
leased to the feringhi who took service under his flag the port of Dianga
on the sea-coast south of the mouth of the river Kurnaphuli, some
twenty miles south of the modern city of Chittagong. The place soon
attracted a large European and Eurasian population which drove a
thriving trade with the ports of Bengal. But piracy and slave-raiding
were the chief occupations of the feringhi, who gathered there in
increasing numbers and before long became as great a source of embarrassment to the King of Arakan as to the Viceroy of Goa.
Matters came to a crisis during the reign of Min Razagri (15931612). He was the king who employed Philip de Brito in his attack
. on Nanda Bayin of Pegu, thereby opening the way for the feringhi
leader to make himself master of Syriam. When de Brito defeated
the Arakanese flotilla sent to dislodge him from the Mon port and
captured the crown prince, Min Razagri decided that he must break
the power of the Portuguese at Dianga. For that port also was coveted
by de Brito; he planned to use it as a base for the conquest of Arakan.
In 1607, therefore, the king sent an expedition which attacked Dianga
by land and massacred its- inhabitants without mercy. Six hundred
Portuguese are said to have fallen. ^
Among those who escaped was the egregious Sebastian Gonzales
Tibao. He had been engaged in the salt trade. Now with other
refugees he took to piracy, and in 1609 made himself 'king' of Sandwip Island by exterminating the Afghan pirates who had made their
nest there. At Sandwip he received a refugee Arakanese prince who,
as Governor of Chittagong, had quarrelled with his brother. King
Razagri. Tibao married the prince's sister and when he died suddenly,
probably from poison, seized all his treasure. Soon afterwards the
Mughal Governor of Bengal began an attack upon the district of
* That is the number given by the king in a letter to the Dutch at Masulipatam in
1608. De Jonge, Opkomst van het Nederlandsch Gesag in Oost-Indie (1595-1610), iii,
p. 291.

370

THE EARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

PT. II

Noakhali, east of the Ganges mouth, which had submitted to Arakan.

This threw Tibao and Min Razagri into one another's arms. But
while his ally was conducting an unsuccessful land campaign Tib3o
took possession of the Arakanese fleet by luring its leaders to a
conference and murdering them. Then he raided up the Lemro
river to the very walls of Mrohaung, capturing the royal barge as a
trophy.
When in 1612 Min Razagri died his successor, Minhkamaung (161222), decided that the power of Tibao and his ruffians must be finally
broken. His first effort failed because the Raja of Tippera raided at
the crucial moment and he had to withdraw his forces. Tibao, aware
of his precarious position, with hostile Bengal on one side and revengeful Arakan on the other, appealed to Goa, urging the viceroy to avenge
the massacre of Dianga. He suggested a joint attack on Arakan and
offered to pay annual tribute to the Portuguese crown for his island
' kingdom'. The viceroy sent a fleet of fourteen galliots, which arrived
off the coast of Arakan at the end of the wet monsoon in 1615. Mrohaung was attacked, but partly through faulty arrangements for cooperation and partly through the help given to the Arakanese by a
Dutch ship lying in the harbour^the Portuguese failed to effect a landing and sailed away. Two years later Minhkamaung captured Sandwip, wiped out the feringhi settlement and destroyed its fortifications.
Tibao is said to have escaped, but is heard of no more.
The feringhi had now shot their bolt. Philip de Brito's escapade at
Syriam had already come to its sorry end in 1613. So they made their
peace with the king and settled down once more to assist him in his
efforts to gain control over the south-eastern parts of Bengal'the
conquest of the middle land', as the Arakanese Chronicle euphemistically calls it. There was no conquest in the real sense, though for a
time Arakan held the districts of Noakhali and Backergunge and some
of the Sunderbunds delta. What chiefly took place was slave-raiding,
and it; was on so extended a scale that Dacca itself was threatened and
in 1625 even captured and held for a short time. This kind of thing
could never have occurred had it not been for the crisis in the Mughal
empire resulting from Shah Jahan's rebelhon in 1612 against his father
Jehangir. Year after year the feringhi armada returned to Dianga"
bringing thousands of Bengali slaves. Before long not a house was
left inhabited on either side of the river.s between Chittagong and
Dacca.
Min Razagri's attempt to rid himself of the Portuguese coincided
with the first Dutch trading voyage to Arakan. I n 1605 they had

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THE KINGDOM OF MROHAUNG IN ARAKAN

371

planted factories at Masulipatam and Petapoli on the Coromandel

Coast. From these two centres they began to explore the possibility
of establishing trading relations with Bengal and Arakan. An invitation from Razagri led to the despatch of two merchants, Pieter Willemsz.i and Jan Gerritsz. Ruyll, to Mrohaung in 1607, the year of the
Dianga massacre. The king, like so many other rulers in South-East
Asia, received them with delight, offered them customs-free trade in
his dominions, and expressed the hope that they would assist him 'to
drive the Portuguese out'.
He asked particularly for their help against Philip de Brito at
Syriam. 'So would he give us to wit the aforesaid Castle in Pegu, the
island of Sundiva, Chittagong, Dianga, or any other places in Bengal,
as he had given the same previously to the Portuguese,' wrote Pieter
Willemsz. in his report.^ And he went on to represent that if the
opportunity were not seized the Portuguese would 'determine it so
well for themselves that it would be to the great detriment of the
Company'. But the Dutch wanted trade, not war, even against the
Portuguese, in this region, for, with their hands full with the struggle
to gain control over the spice-bearing areas, they were unwilling even
to contemplate an expedition against Syriam.
The envoys returned to Masulipatam in May 1608. In September
1610 van Wesick, the Dutch chief of the Coromandel factories, decided
to make a trial venture with an established factory at Mrohaung.
Jacob Dirckszoon Cortenhoof went to take charge of it. The king,
however, wanted military help rather than trade and pressed hard for
it. He wanted the Dutch to build a fort at Dianga. In 1615, as we
have already seen, they played an important part in warding off the
attack of the Portuguese fleet on Mrohaung.* They had, however, no
desire to become involved in Minhkamaung's wars, arid especially in
his projected operations against Tibao, because, as they put it, 'of the
small profitSji which could be made there, and the great "expenses the
Company must first be put to, in order to establish the king again in
his kingdom, which at present is much in trouble'.* The factory was
accordingly withdrawn in 1617.
Later he left the Dutch service and joined the English East India Company,
returning to the East in 1611 as one of the leaders of the Seventh Voyage. T o the
English he was known as Peter Floris. An English translation of extracts from his
Journal, written in 1613, was published by Samuel Purchas in his Pilgrimes. T h e
complete Journal was published by the Hakluyt Society in 1934.
' De Jonge, op. cit., iii, 287-91. T h e castle in Pegu is Syriam, or San Jago, as the
Portuguese appear to have called it. Sundiva=Sandwip.
' Professor Gehl has stated that the Portuguese attack on Mrohaung in 1615 was
made ' to expel the Dutch' (Camb. Hist. India, v, 34).
J. E. Heeres, Corpus Diplomaticum Neerlando-Indicum, i, 412.

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But Arakan remained on the programme, and from 1623 Dutch

ships were going there to buy the BengaH slaves captured by the
marauding/cring'Ai, and the surplus rice that the country produced as
a result of the abundant slave labour available for cultivating the
fields.^ Early in 1625 the Dutch planted another factory at Mrohaung,
with Paulas Cramer Heyn as its Chief. J t came about through an
expedition under Anthonij Caen which had been despatched from
Batavia in September of the previous year* to attack Portuguese
vessels. He was instructed to call at Mrohaung and discuss with King
Thirithudamma (1622-38) the possibility of co-operation against 'our
common enemy', and to conclude an agreement for the export of rice
and slaves. Little came of the negotiations, although the king sent an
envoy to Batavia in 1627, and as the slave trade did not go well Jan
Pieterszoon Coen issued orders for the factory to be closed for the
second time.
Trade, however, continued. The free burghers of Batavia were
allowed to have a share in it, and envoys passed frequently between
Batavia and Mrohaung. The Dutch, having completely depopulated
the Banda Islands and given over the land there to Company's servants
to cultivate with slave labour, were anxious to buy all the slaves that
Arakan could spare from the proceeds of the feringhi raids. So the
factory was soon reopened; again only for a short time. In 1631
Cornelis van Houten, the chief factor, reported that trade had been
brought to a standstill by a terrible famine and pestilence. He was
accordingly withdrawn and the trade again thrown open to private
merchants.
Meanwhile Dianga and the feringhi had once more come into the
limelight. In 1630 Thirithudamma appointed a new Viceroy of Chittagong, who took so violent a dislike to the feringhi that he sent an
alarmist report to Mrohaung alleging a Portuguese plot to admit the
forces of the Mughal Viceroy of Dacca into Chittagong. His intention
was tto persuade Thirithudamma to administer-to Dianga a further
dose of the medicine given in 1607. As the feringhi fleet was away upon
its annual slaving expedition, the inhabitants, who got wind of the
scheme, deputed two envoys to hurry to the capital to persuadenhe
king that the rumour was without foundation. They were 'a feringhicaptain, Gonzales Tibao, a relative of the erstwhile 'king' of Sandwip,
and Fra Sebastiao Manrique, an Augustinian friar of Oporto, who had
' F . W. Stapel, GesMedems van Nederlandsch-Indie, iii, p. 213.
Stapel, loc. cit., gives the date as 1625, but the enby in the Daghregister shows that
Caen left Batavia on 3 September 1624. D . G. E. Hall, 'Dutch Relations with King
Thirithudamma of Arakan', JBRS, xxvi 1931, pt. i,.p. 3.

CH. 2 0

THE KINGDOM OF MROHAUNG IN ARAKAN

37.

recently arrived in Dianga as its vicar under the jurisdiction of the

archbishopric of Goa. Years later, after his return home to Portugal,
Manrique told the story of his travels in detailed memoirs which are
of exceptional interest and value. ^
The mission was successful. The king called off a large expedition
he was preparing for the punishment of Dianga. He also gave permission for the construction of a Catholic church in the suburb of
Daingri-pet, on the western side of the capital, where the Portuguese
mercenaries of the royal guard lived. The outspoken friar, who did
not fear to adjure the king to abandon his false religious beliefs and
become a Christian, was treated as an honoured guest. He was shown
the loot taken from Pegu in 1599 and was greatly impressed by the
white elephant. Nanda Bayin's daughter, who had been carried off
to Mrohaung and married to King Razagri, received him and related
the story of her sufferings with deep emotion. Early in 1631, after a
stay of six months, Manrique returned to Dianga.
In the following year Shah Jahan, now the Great Mughal, decided
to wipe out the Portuguese settlement at Hugh. He suspected it of
being implicated in the intolerable slave-raids of the Dianga freebooters. His religious fervour also had been deeply stirred by the
abduction in 1629 by the feringhi of the wife of a high official near
Dacca and her subsequent conversion to Catholicism by Fra Manrique. The town put up a desperate resistance, but without timely
help could not possibly hold out. Some of the defenders cut their way
out, boarded their ships and got away to Saugar Island, just outside
the river mouth, where they proceeded to establish themselves. At
the same time they sent a Jesuit, Father Cabral, to ask King Thirithudamma for help. News of the siege, however, Rad already reached
him long before Cabral's arrival, and he had ordered the feringhi
armada of Dianga to make a surprise attack upon the Mughal fleet in
the Hugh river. The armada was held up by bad weather, and when
at last it was able to sail it arrived too late to save the city. It managed,
however, to follow up the Mughal fleet and destroy it. Then it fell
back on Saugar to await reinforcements.
In launching this attack the king appears to have had a double
object. He aimed at preventing the Mughals from attempting the
capture of Chittagong; he naturally expected this to be their next
objective after taking Hugh. He hoped also that a decisive victory
' See the Hakluyt Society's edition of the Travels of Fray Sehastieti Manrique,
1619-1643, edited by Lt.-Col. C. E. Luard, 2 vols., 19*7. Manrique's adventures at
Dianga and Mrohaung are also the subject of Maurice CoUis's Lattd of the Great
Image.

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THE KINGDOM OF MROHAUNG OF ARAKAN

375

over the Mughal fleet would enable him to persuade the Viceroy of
Goa to join forces with him in an invasion of Bengal. The viceroy
was indeed willing to discuss matters, and in 1633 deputed Caspar de
Mesquita to proceed to Mrohaung for this purpose, with Fra Manrique as his adviser. The negotiations, however, came to nothing. The
king's grandiose scheme for the conquest of Bengal had to be dropped.
The Goanese envoy sailed away, but Manrique had to remain
behind. The king liked him. Moreover, he knew too many state
secrets to be allowed to return at once to Dianga. Not until two years
later, in 1635, was he permitted to depart. His book tells of further
strange adventures while at Mrohaung. He gives also a vivid description of Thirithudamma's coronation, which was not celebrated
until 1635 because of a prophecy that he would die within'a year of it.
Before it took place barbarous propitiatory sacrifices were made to
avert this fate. But three years later his chief queen procured his
murder and placed her lover on the throne. He was King Narapatigyi (1638-45).
Manrique makes no mention of Thirithudamma's relations with the
Dutch. In 1633 he had sent two envoys to Batavia to invite them to
reopen their factory. They were engaged upon the blockade of
Malacca and needed the food supplies that could be obtained from
Arakan. Two Dutch ships, therefore, with cargoes of goods for sale
escorted the Arakanese envoys home, and in 1635 Adam van der
Mandere reopened the factory. At first trade went well. But soon
difficulties arose. The king wanted a military alliance, and when he
heard that Mughal ambassadors had been received at Batavia he sent
an angry letter to warn the governor-general that the Mughals were
his enemies. Moreover, van der Mandere's relations with the king
were bad. The king established a royal monopoly over rice, and when
van der Mandere objected to the price and attempted to buy his
supplies in the open market serious trouble resulted.
Van der Mandere's conduct was considered undignified by GovernorGeneral Anthony van Diemen and his books were found to have been
carelessly kept. He was accordingly transferred elsewhere, and van
Diemen directed that in future ' men of good bearing and not slovens'
should be appointed to Mrohaung. The next Chief, Arent Jansen van
den Helm, got on extremely well with the usurper Narapatigyi as a
result of lavish presents of wine and spirits, which the latter much
appreciated.^ But in 1643 the king's health broke down and he lost
' A firman granted to van den Helm by ' Narabidrij' in August 1643 is printed in
Heeres, Corpus, i, p. 414.
13*

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control over affairs. Then an incident occurred which caused the

Dutch to close the factory once .more. A frigate belonging to a Dutch
free burgher, bound for Chittagong with' a valuable cargo of piecegoods, was decoyed into Mrohaung harbour, its cargo confiscated and
its captain and crew imprisoned. When efforts for their release failed
and several of them died in prison the Dutch broke off relations. For
eight years the factory was empty, and the Dutch subjected Arakanese
shipping to severe reprisals.
Narapatigyi's nephew Thado, who succeeded him in 1645, was a
nonentity and reigned for only seven years. But his son Sandathudamma, who came to the throne in 1652 and reigned for thirty-two
years, became famous as one of the best of the Arakanese monarchs.
Although he was quite young at the time of his accession,^ it soon
became known at Batavia that he had a more enlightened attitude
towards trade than his predecessors. And as the directors of the
V.O.C. were urging Batavia to reopen trade with Arakan, a Dutch
envoy, Joan Goessens, left in October 1652 with a long Hst of stipulations for negotiations with the new king. Agreement seems to have
been easily reached, and the terms, embodied in the form of a treaty,
were accepted by both parties in 1653.^ Its main provisions were to
the effect that the Dutch were to enjoy customs-free trade under royal
licence and be exempt from the necessity of buying and selling through
the king's agents. Goessens was much impressed by the riches and
splendour of the Court.- There can be no doubt of the prosperity of
the kingdom at this time.
The Dutch factory, thus reopened in 1653, carried on successfully
until 1665, when it was again closed, this time for a political reason.
Shah Shuja, the second son of the; Great Mughal Shah Jahan, had
been appointed Viceroy of Bengal in 1639. I'^ ^^S7> when the emperor
fell so seriously ill that there were premature rumours of his death,
a struggle for power began between, his sons. It was won by Aurangzeb, who deposed his father in 1658 and became emperor himself.
Shah Shuja refused to accept this arrangement but was defeated by
Aurangzeb's general Mir Jumla, and after failing to hold Bengal fled
from Dacca to Chittagong, together with his family and a bodyguard of
some 500 faithful followers. Sandathudamma granted him-permissionto continue his journey to Mrohaung on condition that his followers
' T h e Dutch estimate of thirteen or fourteen in the Daghregister is surely wrong.
Walther Schouten, who saw him in 1661, estimated his age at about twenty-eight.
' A full account of the negotiations is in the Daghregister for 1653, pp. 98-103.
Valentijn prints the terms of the treaty in his Oitd en Nieuw Oost-Indien, v, i, p p .
140-6.
/

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THE KINGDOM OF MROHAUNG IN ARAKAN

-^-.y

surrendered their arms. He arrived there on 26 August 1660 and^was

favourably received by the king, who assigned him a residence near
the city on the right bank of the Wathi Creek at the foot of Bahbudaung Hill. He asked for ships to convey him and his people to
Mecca and was promised that they would be supplied.
But the promise remained unfulfilled and the fugitive prince soon
found his situation intolerable. Repeated demands for his surrender
came from Mir Jumla, and Sandathudamma, expecting trouble,
posted his fleet off Dianga and sent up reinforcernents. A state of
alarm developed and a rumour spread that Mir Jumla had taken
Dianga. Moreover, the king asked for one of Shah Shuja's daughters
in marriage and his request was indignantly rejected. Thus were bad
relations fomented; deliberately, suggests Phayre, in order that
Sandathudamma might have a specious cause for quarrel, since he was
only too conscious of the contempt in which the haughty Mughal held
him and was greedy to get possession of the rich hoard of treasure the
other had brought with him.
Shah Shuja, realizing his peril, made a desperate attempt to escape
from the country. But his plans miscarried, and when the populace
set upon his followers the latter ran amok and set fire to a large part of
the city before they were rounded up and massacred. That was in
December 1660. It -was given out that he had attempted to seize the
palace. The king, it was said, had only been dissuaded by his mother
from having him killed. She argued that killing princes was a dangerous
sport for which his own subjects might acquire a taste. But on 7
February 1661 Shah Shuja's residence was attacked and there was
another massacre. Shah Shuja was never seen again. It was rumoured
that he had fled to the hills with his sons but had been caught and put
to death. Not until months afterwards did Gerrit van Voorburg, the
Chief of the Dutch factory, discover what had happened. His report
is summarized in the Daghregister thus:
' The prince Chasousa, of whom in the previous Arakan advices of
22 February last it was said that he was a fugitive, and had not been
found either alive or dead, is believed, though with no certainty, to
have perished in the first fury, but his body was made unrecognizable
by the grandees in order the better to be able to deck their persons
with the costly jewels which he wore. His three sons together with
his wives and daughters have been taken; the wives and daughters
have been brought into the king's palace, and the sons, after being
imprisoned for some time, have been released and permitted to
live in a little house. Every day the gold and silver, which the

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Arakanese have taken, are brought into the king's treasury to be

mehed down.'^
As soon as the Viceroy of Bengal heard, through the Dutch factory
at Dacca, of Shah Shuja's murder he commandeered a Dutch ship
to carry an envoy to Mrohaung with a peremptory demand for the
surrender of his children. It was refused,, and the king protested to
Batavia against the use of a Dutch ship b y a Mughal envoy. As the
threat of war increased, so did the Dutch position as neutrals become
correspondingly more uncomfortable. In July 1663 a desperate
attempt to rescue the three captive princes failed. Thereupon the king
burnt his boats by having them beheaded and slaughtering a large
number of Bengalis and Moslems at the capital. Early in the next
year the fertnght fleet sailed up the river towards Dacca, put to flight a
Mughal flotilla of 260 vessels, destroying more than half of them, and
carried away hundreds of people into slavery.
The time was now past when that sort of thing could go on with
impunity. Shayista Khan, Aurangzeb's maternal uncle, had just been
appointed Viceroy of Bengal and was determined to burn out the pirate
nest at Dianga. He called on the Dutch for assistance and threatened
them with expulsion from all their Bengal factories if they refused.
At the same time the King of Arakan, who was preparing yet another
great raid on Bengal, ordered them to lend their ships for service
with his armada. Luckily for them, a storm shattered his fleet before
it sailed, and while he was repairing the damage the Dutch ships got
away. When at last it did sail it carried out an even more devastating
raid than the previous one.
In July 1665 the Council of the Indies at Batavia held a special
meeting at which secret orders were passed for the abandonment of the
Mrohaung factory. The king was cleverly hoodwinked, and on a dark
night in November the factors hurriedly loaded ever5rthing that could
be carried away on four ships and decamped. At the mouth of the river
they were overtaken by a special messenger bearing a letter from the
king for delivery to the governor-general. Why, he asked, were the
Dutch so much afraid of the Viceroy of Bengal ? It would be easier
for him to build the Tower of Babel than conquer Arakan.
"
But the feringhi navy was to raid Bengal no more. Shayista Khan^
who had built and equipped a new fleet, had already seized Sandwip
Island as a base for an attack upon Dianga. What would have happened
had the feringhis decided to fight it out it is hard to say, for they were
more than a match for the Bengal navy. But at the crucial moment
^ Hall,' Studies in Dutch Relations with Arakan Viii, JBRS, xxvi (1936), pt. i, p. 24.

CH. 2 0

THE KINGDOM OF MROHAUNG IN ARAKAN

371;

they quarrelled with the Arakanese, and when Shayista Khan sefeed
the opportunity to invite them to change sides most of them did so.
Then early in 1666 he assailed Dianga by land and sea. In February
he defeated the Arakanese fleet in a fierce fight. Dianga surrendered,
and the whole of the Chittagong district down to the River Naaf was
annexed to the Mughal empire.
Shorn of its powerful fleet the Arakan kingdom declined rapidly
after 1666. Some years later the Dutch returned and reopened their
factory, but we know little about it. The Daghregister for 1682 contains a letter from Governor-General Cornelis Speelman to King
Sandathudamma announcing that owing to the lack of trade the
factory was to be 'reduced'. A resident factor would no longer
remain there after the business of collecting outstanding debts had
been completed. He hoped, however, to send one or two ships
annually for the purchase of rice.^
When Sandathudamma died in 1684 the country became a prey to
internal disorder. As Harvey puts it: ' the profits of piracy had gone
but the piratical instinct remained, rendering government impossible.'^
Many of Shah Shuja's followers had been taken into the royal service
as Archers of the Guard. Their numbers were maintained by a constant supply of recruits from north India. In 1685 they murdered
Thirithuriya, Sandathudamma's son and successor, plundered the
treasury, and placed his brother Waradhammara^a on the throne.
When he was unable to give them their promised pay they mutinied
and set the palace on fire. Then they roamed about the country doing
as they pleased. After some time they came to terms with the king,
and he returned to his capital. But in 1692 they deposed him and
placed his brother Muni Thudhamma Raza on the throne, only to
murder him some two years later and place another brother on the
throne.
So things went on until 1710. In that year an Arakanese chieftain
Maha Danda Bo, with the support of a band of devoted men, overcame
the Archers and deported them to Ramree Island, where their descendants still live, speaking Arakanese and retaining their Mahommedan religion. Maha Danda Bo became king Sandawizaya and
reigned until 1731. But he spent little of his, time on constructive
work and much of it in raiding his neighbours. He made war on the
Raja of Tippera and collected booty and prisoners. He took advantage
^ Vol. ii of 1682, pp. 1127-8. Pieter van Dam, in his Beschryvinge van de Oostindische Compagnie, makes no mention of Arakan after the Shah Shuja episode.
Op. cit., p . 148.

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of the weakness of the Toungoo dynasty's hold on central Burma to

cross the mountains and raid Prome and Malun. The decline of the
Mughal power after the death of Aurangzeb in 1707 tempted him to
push his authority towards the north and raid Sandwip Island. But
nothing came of all these efforts, and when he was murdered in 1731
the country relapsed into chaos.
^
Fourteen more kings came to the throne before King Bodawpaya's
armies entered the kingdom and deposed the last king Thamada in
1785. Long before that event Arakanese chieftains were fleeing to the
Court of Ava and urging Burmese intervention. When at last it came
it brought such evils that half the population of Arakan fled into the
Chittagong district and a situation was created that again challenged
the security of Bengal, this time with consequences of far greater
moment. For it was one of the main causes of the first Anglo-Burmese
war of 1824-6.

CHAPTER 2 1

T H E B E G I N N I N G S OF T H E KONBAUNG DYNASTY IN
BURMA, 1752-82
he returned to Pegu the Yuva Raja left Talaban with inadequate
forces to deal with a rebellion on a big scale. This was precisely what
the Moksobomyo rebel leader's successful resistance created within a
surprising short time. Calling himself Aungzeya, 'the Victorious',
and 'inspired by the good Nats who observe religion', as the Mahayazazvin puts it, he found himself the leader of a national movement. In
May 1752 he defeated an attack upon his stronghold led by Talaban
in person. I n the following month he went over to the offensive and
attacked a Mon stockade set up to cut off his supplies. Its garrison
abandoned it in a panic, leaving all their equipment behind. He was
now a minlaung or claimant to the throne, styling himself Alaungpaya,
or 'embryo Buddha', and provided with a pedigree connecting him
with Mohnyinthado, who had reigned at Ava from 1427 to 1440.
Everywhere he went he exacted the oath of allegiance. Moksobomyo,
'the town of the hunter chief, became Shwebo, 'the town of the
golden leader', and there he began to build a palace in the approved
traditional style.
But the Mons were not easily driven out of Upper Burma, and they
were joined by the Gwe Shans of Madaya-Okpo. It was a war of
stockades and in its course the patriot forces suffered many setbacks.
Not until December 1753 was Alaungpaya able to encircle Ava, but
by that time he. had formed a considerable flotilla, mainly of boats
captured from the enemy. The Mons, after failing to capture his main
stockade, lost heart. There was no sign of reinforcements from Pegu,
and they feared that the Burmese and Shan inhabitants of the city
would join hands with the besiegers outside. Accordingly they
abandoned it by night with the greatest secrecy and made their escape
downstream before the Burmese realized what was happening.
Alaungpaya was not in a position to pursue the retreating Mons or
stage an attack upon the south. He had first to make sure of the
allegiance of the Shan sawbwas of the north. While he was engaged
upon this task King Binnya Dala of Pegu launched an attack in great
force upon the Ava region. Had it been delivered earlier, while the
WHEN

381

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Mons Still held the city, it might easily have tipped the scale against
Alaungpaya. But the Yuva Raja, the commander-in-chief of the Men
forces, was an incompetent leader; and I although he defeated a
Burmese army at Talokmyo and ravaged the country as far as Kyaukmyaung, close to Shwebo, a counter-attack delived by Alaungpaya
from Shwebo, and a sortie on the part of the beleaguered garrison in
Ava, inflicted such losses that in May 1754 the whole invading force
began a hasty retreat which did not stop before Prome was reached.
Meanwhile discontent in the Mon kingdom had come to a head in a
plot aiming at the restoration of the captive Mahadammayaza Dipati,
who was at Pegu. When it was discovered, and the deposed king,
three of his sons and many others implicated were done to death, the
delta Burmese rose in revolt and rushed the town of Prome, which
they proceeded to hold, even though it was invested by the Mon
forces retreating from Ava.
But the siege was not pressed with vigour, and early in 1755
Alaungpaya, having collected a great force for the conquest of the
Pegu kingdom, relieved its Burmese defenders without difficulty. The
Mons, however, had constructed a strongly defended earthwork just
to the south of the town, and there was much heavy fighting before
this was finally stormed. This success enabled him to claim the
allegiance of central Burma, and he spent some weeks at Prome engaged upon the task of pacification. Then he pushed on southwards
to meet the Mons at Lunhse in the Henzada district. The decisive
victory which he gained inspired him to rename the place Myanaung,
'Speedy Victory'. Here amidst scenes of festival and rejoicing he
received the submission of Toungoo, Henzada, Myaungmya, Bassein
and even the Arakanese district of Sandoway. Finally, pushing on
through Danubyu, he drove the Mons out of Dagon at the beginning
of May and celebrated the close of his campaign with a festival at the
Shwe Dagon Pagoda. He planned to make the place the chief port of
his kingdom and began work on the foundation of a new city, which he
optimistically named Rangoon, 'the End of Strife'.
The strife, however, was by no means ended. The capital, Pegu,
still maintained its independence, and Syriam, its port, the headquarters of European trade, where the main Mon force was -concen-f'
trated, close to Rangoon, was far too strongly defended for him to risk
an attack upon it. Moreover, the Mons were aided by a,brilliant
Frenchman, the Sieur de Bruno, whom Dupleix had sent some years
earlier to Pegu as his agent.
At the end of the War of the Austrian Succession, while Dupleix

CH. 2 1

THE KONBAUNG DYNASTY IN BURMA, 1 7 5 2 - 8 2

383

as Governor of Pondicherry was busy with schemes for extending

French influence at the expense of his British rivals, the Court of Pegu
was looking for a European ally from whom it might obtain the firearms which would give it a decisive advantage over the Burmese.
After the closing of the European dockyards at Syriam during the early
stages of the struggle for independence, while the British were represented by a few private traders who counted for little, French interests
had been left in the hands of an Italian priest, Pere Vittoni, who was a
persona grata with the Mons. At his suggestion a Mon mission was
sent in 1750 to sound Dupleix regarding assistance. Hence it came
about that a few weeks after one agent, Bussy, left Pondicherry to
establish French influence in the Deccan, another, Bruno, departed
for Burma on a similar mission. He arrived at Pegu in July 1751 and
had no difficulty in negotiating a treaty by which, in return for commercial concessions, the Mons were to receive substantial French aid.
On his return to Pondicherry he convinced Dupleix that a dazzling
opportunity awaited the French in Burma if he was prepared for
armed intervention in the Mon-Burmese struggle. With 500 or 600
Well-equipped French troops, he said, it would be a simple matter to
gain contirol over the Mon kingdom. Dupleix at once wrote home
commending the plan and asking for the necessary reinforcements to
put it into execution.
Meanwhile the British at Madras had become highly suspicious of
French designs upon Burma. Even before Bruno's mission Thomas
Saunders, the Governor of Fort St. George, had reported home a
rumour that the French intended to seize the island of Negrais^ and
had urged the East India Company to forestall them by planting a
settlement there. The directors gave their full approval to the plan.
Their reply was despatched in December 1751, long before news of
Bruno's mission to Pegu could have reached London. Before Saunders
received this despatch he had word, through English private traders
at' Syriam, of Bruno's treaty with the Mon government, and at once
took action on his own authority. He sent a small expedition under
Thomas Taylor to survey the island and commissioned Robert Westgarth, a private trader at Syriam, to negotiate with the Court of Pegu
for its cession to the East India Company.
Taylor found the local officials extremely hostile, and after a
cursory survey went on to Pegu to join forces with Westgarth. They
found the Mon government resolutely opposed to any settlement on the
island. While they were there, in November 1752, Bruno returned as
> D . G. E. Hall, ' T h e Tragedy of Negrais', JBRS, xxi (1931), pt. iii, p. 63.

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Dupleix's resident agent; and since it becanie only too obvious that
his influence with the Mons was supreme, negotiations were broken off
and Taylor returned to Madras, After leaving Negrais he had sent off
a very unfavourable report on the island, which had caused Saunders
to have doubts as to the wisdom of going oii with the scheme, notwithstanding the enthusiastic sanction accorded to it in the directors'
despatch. But when Taylor arrived in Madras with the story of
Bruno's ascendancy at Pegu, Saunders cast all doubts aside and sent
a strong expedition which took possession of the island on 26 April
1753. Had he known that the directors of the French Company had
already turned down Dupleix's proposal, he might have acted differently. In a letter dated 2 January 1753 they had advised Dupleix
that the shipbuilding concessions at Syriam granted in the treaty of
1751 were adequate; anything involving military commitments would
be certain to provoke a further contest with the British.
Taylor had reported that the island was very unhealthy and would
be useless as a trading station. His estimate proved only too true;
it was flooded during the rainy season and malaria-ridden. No
attempt was ever made to develop it as a naval station. But although
disease took a terrible toll of its staff, both European and Asian, and all
its supplies of food and labour had to be brought across from Madras,
there could be no thought of abandoning the settlement while Bruno
remained at Pegu.
The rise of Alaungpaya, on the other hand, caused both Dupleix
and the Mons to have second thoughts regarding their alliance. The
former sent a present of arms to Alaungpaya. The latter asked the
English East India Company for military aid and offered to cede
Negrais. These were manoeuvres, but the Mons certainly needed far
more help than Pondicherry could afford. When, late in 1754,
Dupleix was recalled to France, the hope of any real French help to the
Mons faded out, though Bruno remained at Pegu. At almost the same
time Thomas Taylor returned to Madras from Negrais completely
convinced that Alaungpaya's success was assured, and that the Company should cultivate good relations with him. And a- few months
later, when the Burmese king, in the course of his rapid thrust down the^
Irrawaddy, sent envoys to Negrais asking for arms, Hienry Brooke, -"
the Company's agent there, wrote to Fort St. George urging that all
possible assistance should be given to him. But Madras could no
more afford to satisfy Alaungpaya's demands for arms than could
Pondicherry those of the Mons, and for the simple reason that a new
Anglo-French struggle in India was imminent.

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Alaungpaya's final victory, however, was by no means assured

when his campaign came to a hah at Dagon just before the onset of the
wet monsoon of 1755. He had totally inadequate siege equipment
with which to assault such strongly defended cities as Syriam and
Pegu. Serious trouble had broken out in the north. The Manipuris
were raiding again, the Shans were restive, and there was some fear
that a member of the old Toungoo royal family who had taken refuge
in Siam was planning to recover the throne of his fathers. Alaungpaya
had perforce to return to deal with these threats, knowing full well
that as soon as his back was turned the Mon army at Syriam would
strive to defeat his holding force at Rangoon.
This indeed happened, but the Mon attacks were made with so
little determination that they failed dismally, although the Mon heirapparent and Bruno, who directed them, received a certain amount of
unwilling assistance from a number of English ships that had come to
Syriam for trade. One of them happened to be a Company's vessel, the
Arcot, whose entirely unauthorized action caused grave concern to the
Fort St. George authorities, for when Alaungpaya heard of it he at
' once suspected the good faith of the Negrais factory, which had agreed
to negotiate with him.^ Hence, when Captain George Baker, who had
been deputed by Henry Brooke to negotiate an agreement, appeared
at Shwebo, he found the king in no mood to come to terms. The handsome present of cannon which Baker brought with him, and the promise to supply him with all the military stores the Negrais settlement
could spare, somewhat mollified the king's anger, but the utmost concession he would make was that negotiations might be resumed when
he returned to Rangoon to direct operations aganst Syriam.
Alaungpaya tackled the problems which had brought him back to
his homeland with characteristic vigour. A punitive expedition, the
first of many, against Manipur wrought fearful havoc. A strong
detachment went to the Shan states and received tokens of submission. The Viceroy of Yunnan accorded the king official recognitijjn.
Then with a large force, which included Shan and Chin levies, he
returned to the Mon country. At Rangoon Ensign John Dyer and Dr.
William Anderson met him and concluded an agreement whereby in
return for military stores he recognized the Negrais settlement and
gave permission for a factory to be established at Bassein. The terms
were recorded in a royal letter on gold-leaf, directed to the King of
England. It was beneath Alaungpaya's dignity to deal with a Governor
^ 'Account of the English Proceedings at Dagoon, 1755', in Dalryniple's Oriental
Repertory, vol. i, pp. 177-200.

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of Madras representing a mere trading company. The missive was

delivered through Mr. Secretary Pitt, Britain's great war minister,
early in 1758. By that time the East India Company had thoroughly
repented of its rash action in seizing Negrais. Orders had already been
sent out for complete withdrawal from Burma.
In February 1756 the siege of Syriam began in earnest. Everything
now depended upon whether Bruno's urgent appeals would move
Pondicherry to send the necessary help. Had the relief expedition
which was at last despatched only arrived in time the city could have
been saved. The first two ships bringing it arrived just two days too
late, when Alaungpaya had captured the place by a surprise attack.
T h e third ship, sent from Pondicherry, was delayed by bad weather,
and on arrival at the river-mouth learnt of the fall of the city in time
to turn homewards. The other two, ignorant of what had happened,
were decoyed up the river by a false message which Alaungpaya forced
the captive Bruno to write before executing him. They were neatly
run aground by their Burmese pilots, and forced to surrender. The
guns, muskets and ammunition they were bringing for the Mons
were a godsend to Alaungpaya: even more so the 200 fighting men he
impressed into his service.
He could now tackle the defences of Pegu. The city, however, put
up a dogged resistance and was not finally taken until May 1757.
During its long siege Alaungpaya was insatiable in his demands on
Negrais for munitions and threatened to treat the settlement in, the
same manner as Syriam if they were not met. But with the elimination
of French influence in Burma the Negrais settlement had lost its
yaison d'etre, and with the Seven Years War in progress it had become
urgent for the British to concentrate upon the French threat in India.
As early as March 1757 the directors of the Company had issued
orders for the liquidation of the Burma venture. Some months, of
course, elapsed before they were received in Madras. When they did
arrive Fort St. George was not in a position to carry them out, for
Lally's operations in the Carnatic absorbed its whole attention.
Indeed, throughout the whole of 1758 the British were on the defensive
in that region, and from December of that year until the followingFebruary Madras itself was besieged by the French.
>
-In the meantime Alaungpaya, having completed the conquest of
the Mons, sent peremptory orders for the Chief of Negrais to.attend
on him at Prome while on his way back to his capital. But Captain
Thomas Newton deemed it unwise to go in person and deputed
Ensign Thomas Lester instead. Lester describes in detail his interviews

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387

with the king in a journal which is one of the most interesting of

the many documents which have survived from this period of British
contact with Burma.^ He found Alaungpaya somewhat piqued that
George II had failed to reply to the gold-leaf letter he had despatched
in the previous year. But his victory had put him in a very good
humour, and he agreed to make a 'treaty' recognizing the British
position at Negrais and Bassein in return for an annual present of
munitions and a promise of military aid against his enemies. The
'treaty', was, of course, valueless, since the Burmese king could not
bind himself in such a way, he could only issue orders, and in any case
they were not binding on his successor. Aitchison significantly
omitted the document from his collection of the East India Company's
Treaties, Sanads and Engagements.^ Nevertheless under its second
clause, which granted the British a site ' on the bank of the Persaim
River, opposite to the Pagoda Hill, and the Old Town of Persaim', a
factory was actually constructed at Bassein in 1757 and became an
agency for the purchase of teak timber.
With Madras unable to carry out the directors' order to evacuate
the Negrais settlement, the task devolved upon the Governor of Fort
William, Calcutta. The main operation of bringing away Captain
Thomas Newton and the garrison was performed in April 1759. But
at both Negrais and Bassein the collected timber and stores were more
than the ships could carry away. Lieutenant Hope and a small guard
were accordingly left behind in charge of them. During the cold
season of 1758-9 Alaungpaya was absent on a campaign in Manipur.
His absence was the signal for a desperate effort on the part of the
Mons'to throw off the Burmese yoke. They massacred the Burmese in
several districts, defeated the Burmese viceroy and drove him into
Henzada. Alaungpaya had to abandon his campaign and hurry to
' Rangoon. When, he arrived there, however, the local forces had
mastered ftie rebels. An Armenian in the royal service whispered to
the king a rumour that the Chief of Negrais had helped the Mon
rebels. A few months later Burmese troops surprised the settlement,
massacred its personnel, and destroyed its buildings.
The cause of this treacherous act was at the time thought to have
been the king's fury at what he must have taken to be a second case
of British perfidy. But it was not the reason given by the king himself
to an English survivor of the massacre at a subsequent interview. He
said it was because the King of England had not replied to his letter,
^ Dalrymple, op. cit., vol. i, pp. 201-22.
^ His comments on the ' treaty' are in vol. i, p. 325.

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and that he had come to the conclusion that 'the EngUsh and the
Company looked on him and his people as fools'.^ One must bear in
mind that the rumour cannot have reached I Alaungpaya latei: than
May 1759, and the massacre did not take place until the following
October. It is not without significance also that the Bassein factory
was unharmed. The story itself was a canard aeliberately invented by
the Armenians, who took every possible opportunity at this time to
bedevil the British because of a pathological jealousy of their increasing influence in India and elsewhere in the East. The evidence
goes to show that Alaungpaya was all along determined to evict the
British from Negrais. He wanted them closer under his control. To
achieve his aim by means of a massacre, however, was not his intention.
It was deliberately planned and carried out by the French officer in
charge of the troops sent to seize the settlement, presumably as an act
of revenge for the defeats sustained by his country at British hands*
Alaungpaya's expedition against Manipur, from which he had been
recalled by the Mon rising, inflicted upon that country one of the
worst disasters in its history. Thousands of people were deported and
settled in the Sagaing and Amarapura districts of Upper Burma.
From this time the astrologers at the Court of Ava were Manipuri
Brahmans, while Manipuris formed a cavalry regiment in the Burmese
army.
The last exploit of Alaungpaya's stormy career was an invasion of
Siam. The destruction of the Mon kingdom had caused a further
great exodus of its inhabitants to Siam, and the border districts in
consequence were in a state of constant disorder. In reviving the old
struggle with Ayut'ia Alaungpaya's motives were strikingly similar to
those which had inspired Bayinnaung in the sixteenth century. He
hoped to regain control over Chiengmai. He seems also to have
planned to repopulate the delta districts by large-scale deportations
from Siam.
The Siamese were expecting his invasion and had massed to defend
the westward approaches to their capital. The Burmese; however,
took them by surprise by an attack from the south. Alaungpaya's
force went by way of Tavoy to Tenasserim, crossed over to the Gulf,
of Siam, and then marched northwards to Ayut 'ia, which it encircled ~
in April 1760. During the following month the king was desperately
wounded by the bursting of a siege-gun while he was directing the
fire of a battery. The siege was at once abandoned and the army began
a hurried retreat homewards. The king died at Taikkala just before
' Hall, o/).t., p. 116.

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389

reaching the Salween. His body was borne back to Shwebo and
buried there in the presence of a vast concourse of his mourning subjects. He had been a great leader who had restored the self-respect of
the Burmese after the disasters they had suffered at the hands of the
Manipuris, the Shans and the Mons. He had also given them a taste
for military glory which for over half a century was to make them the
terror of their neighbours.
Naungdawgyi,' Alaungpaya's son and successor, had a short and
troubled reign, full of rebellions. The most serious was led by one of
his father's generals, Minkaung Nawrahta, who seized Ava and
planned to restore the Toungoo dynasty. While the siege was in progress Captain Walter Alves arrived from India to seek permission to
remove the East India Company's effects at Bassein, and to request
the surrender of a number of English prisoners. The new king was
most anxious for the Company to resume trading operations in his
country and sent Alves back to Calcutta to ask Fort William to reconsider the decision to withdraw. But it was to no purpose; the
Governor of Bengal was under firm orders from home to liquidate the
Burma venture. When Alves returned to Burma in the following
year his requests were granted. With his departure relations between
the Company and the Court of Ava ceased for a long terni of years.
Naungdawgyi's brother and successor, Hsinbyushin (1763-76),
transferred his capital from Shwebo back to Ava. The troubles during
his predecessor's reign taught him that it was essential for the capital
in Upper Burma to be near to the vital Kyaukse district. And although
he revived his father's project of conquering Siam, neither Pegu nor
Rangoon in the disaffected Mon country was considered suitable as a
capital. His plan was to exploit the northern approach to Ayut'ia by
subduing the Laos country and using it as a base of operations. Hence
in 1764 the war .began with campaigns which resulted in the conquest
of Chiengrnai aod Vien Chang (Vientiane). Early in 1766 Ayut'ia was
besieged. It made a long and stubborn resistance. When at last it fell,
in March 1767, the Burmese reduced it to a heap of ruins. Even the
royal records were burnt. Thousands of captives and vast booty were
deported. ' T h e King of Hanthawaddy [i.e. Bayinnaung] waged war
like a monarch,' comments the Siamese chronicler, ' but the King of
Ava like a robber.'
But again the Burmese were unable to hold Siam in subjection.
Their incursion into the Laos country caused such a ferment among
the states bordering on Yunnan that the Chinese were forced to intervene, and between 1766 and 1769 Burma had to defend herself against

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a series of Chinese invasions. This diversion weakened her hold upon

Siam and enabled the Siamese under a leader P 'ya Taksin (' Paya Tak'
in the Burmese chronicles) to stage a rapid repovery, and while Burma
was straining eyery nerve to repel the Chinese he began systematically to exterminate their garrisons, and, by the end of 1768 had
regained Ayut'ia.
The Shan states had been disturbed for some years before 1764.
The Gwe Shans of Okpo-Madaya, the prime movers in the revolt of
1740 which had brought the downfall of the Toungoo dynasty, had
caused so much trouble by raiding the northern states that in 1758-9
Alaungpaya himself had sent a punitive expedition against them. The
survivors settled in Mongmit, Hsenwi and Menglien, a trans-Salween
state, whence they carried their raids across the Chinese border.
The Chinese began to suspect that the Burmese were at the bottom of
the trouble, especially when in 1764 a Burmese army marching
against the Laos states passed through Kengtung, which was at loggerheads with Kenghung, a tributary of China. So much uneasiness was
caused by the Burmese invasion of Chiengmai and Vien Chang that
when in 1765 they sent a general to collect tribute from some minor
Salween states these complained^to China. There was nothing unusual in the Burmese demand. For centuries these states, though
under Chinese protection, had been accustomed to pay tribute to the
more powerful kingdoms near their borders. Hsinbyushin 's ambitious
policy, however, filled them with alarm.
The war began in 1766 with a punitive expedition directed by the
Yunnan viceroy against Kengtung, the largest and most easterly of
the Shan states subject to Burma. With Burmese help the sawbwa
drove out the Chinese. This disaster caused the Viceroy of Yunnan
such loss of face that he committed suicide. Imperial China therefore
decided that Burma must be taught a severe lesson. Late in the same
year, in obedience to orders from Peking, a new viceroy, Yang Yingchu, led an invading force over the well-worn trade route through
Bhamo, only to be held up by Burmese frontier forces at Kaungton on
the Irrawaddy, south of the town. The arrival of reinforcements from
Ava enabled the defenders to take the offensive, and the Chinese were^
pushed back over their frontier. A larger Burmese force marched ~
through Mohnyin and Mogaung to Waingmaw, south of Myitkyina,
and thence to the Nammyin Creek, where it defeated a Chinese detachment. Both Burmese forces thereupon entered Chinese territory.
These embarrassing failures led to another change in the Yunnan
viceroyalty. Ming Jui, a son-in-law of the emperor; now took Yang

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391

Ying-chu 's place. His plan was to launch a double attack on Burma
as soon as the rainy season of 1767 ended. While one force was to
attack through Bhamo, the main attack, directed by Ming Jui in person, was to proceed by a more southerly route, passing through
Hsenwi and Hsipaw, which the Manchu force had used a century
earlier when chasing the last Ming emperor Yung-li. This nearly
succeeded. After defeating two Burmese armies Ming Jui got to Singaung, within thirty miles of Ava, and the situation became critical
(February 1768). But although large Burmese forces were tied up in
Siam, a third army managed to cut Ming Jui's communications through
the Shan states. And when he turned to deal with the threat he got
into such difficulties that he lost the main body of his army in trying to
cut his way out of the trap that closed round him. The other Chinese
army, which should have come to his assistance, wasted precious time
trying to reduce the Kaungton stockade, and finally gave up the task
and retreated homewards. A frightful example was made of its commander for his part in the general debacle. Ming Jui could have
escaped, but rather than face his emperor he cut off his pigtail, sent it
to him, and then committed suicide.
In 1769 the Chinese made a final attempt to wipe out these disasters.
This time their army made a third attempt to reach Ava by the Bhamo
route. Once more it was held up by the Kaungton stockade. Unable
to take it, the Chinese built a great fortified camp at Shwenyaungbin^
When the Burmese stormed this and drove them out they asked for
terms, and a peace treaty was signed on the spot early in 1770. Under
its terms, which were never ratified by King Hsinbyushin, the Chinese
were to withdraw, trade was to be restored, and decennial missions
were to be exchanged. The king was furious when he heard that the
Chinese were to be allowed to return home, and the victorious commanders dared not return to face his wrath. To appease it they led
off their forces to attack Manipur. There they won a decisive victory
which caused the raja touflee to Assam. Then, having placed a Burmese
nominee on the throne, they deported thousands more Manipuris to
Burma.
The Kaungton Treaty was a statesmanlike measure. Once more the
large caravans )vith hundreds of pack animals began to traverse the
'Old Burma Road', while Sino-Burmese relations gained a new
cordiality which lasted until the end of the dynasty, and beyond. Burma
took immense pride in this fine achievement: it stimulated her expansive, ardour to a dangerous level. The remainder of Hsinbyushin's
reign, however, provided little glory and much evidence of the need

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for a new policy. The war with Siam, which only ceased with Hsinbyushin's death in 1776, saw nothing but disasters for the Burmese.
Paya Tak drove them out of the Laos countiy, recovered Chiengmai
and reunited Siam. In 1773 there was another sudden Mon rising,
which showed how precarious was the Burmese hold on the south
country. Rangoon was burnt, together with, a number of ships that
were being built there Jby French shipwrights. When the Burmese
recovered their strength and put down the rebellion thousands again
fled into Siam, where they were well received. A Burmese force
which pursued them along the Three Pagodas route was surrounded
and captured by the Siamese. In the following year HsinbyuShin
made a state progress down the Irrawaddy to Rangoon. There he
put to death Binnya Dala, the captive Mon king, who had been taken
in 1757 when Pegu fell.
When Hsinbyushin died in 1776 his chief commander, Maha
Thihathura, had just suffered a disastrous defeat in Siam. His son
Singu, who succeeded him, decided to bring the war to an end and
ordered the Burmese forces to evacuate Siamese territory. He was an
inefficient young man who was bored with palace routine and spent
his time making pilgrimages to pagodas. In 1782, while he was absent
on one of these expeditions, a palace intrigue brought to the throne a
younger brother of Hsinbyushin, the Badun Min, better known as
Bodawpaya, 'the great-grandfather king', the epithet applied.to him
in the Konbaungset Chronicle, compiled in the reign of his great-grandson Mindon Min.

CHAPTER 2 2

ANNAM AND T O N G K I N G , 1620-1820

(a) The struggle of Trinh and Nguyen, 1630-1777
T H E rivalry between the Trinh and the Nguyen led to over half a
century of warfare in the seventeenth century. The wearisome indecisive struggle went on from 1620 to 1674. On paper the Trinh
should have won comfortably. According to the accounts of the
Christian missionaries, they could muster 100,000 men, 500 elephants
and 500 large junks; and the numbers do not seem to have been
exaggerated. War was the sole occupation of the mandarins, and the
social system of the country was organized upon a military basis. But
the Nguyen army, though much smaller, was better equipped with
arms procured through the Portuguese. The Nguyen fought defensive
wars and could count on the loyal support of their people. North of
Hue they built two great walls to block access from the north, and
for a long period these proved a serious obstacle to the Trinh forces.
Moreover, the presence of the small Mac principality in the north,
weak though it was, was felt as a constant threat to Tongking.
The war began over the withholding of the revenues of Than-hoa
and Quang-nam from the capital by Nguyen Phuc-Nguyen (1613-35),
better known to contemporary European writers as Sai Vuong. In
1630, after a long period on the defensive, he took the offensive and
occupied southern Bochinh, now the district of Ha-tinh. This remained for many .years the great bone of contention between the two
sides. It was temporarily recovered by the Tongkingers from Cong
Thuong Vuong (1635-48), Sai Vuong's successor, but lost again in
1648 after their serious defeat at the wall of Truong-duc, the more
southerly of the two great defence-works north of Hue. In 1655 they
made another attempt to recover it which brought so strong a reaction
on the part of^the Nguyen that in the following year the situation
became serious for the Trinh. But the Nguyen could not gain a
decisive, victory and the struggle continued for year after year with no
advantage to either side.
In 1659 Trinh Tac, who had succeeded Trinh Trang two years
earlier, inflicted a double defeat on the Nguyen; but he in his turn
393

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was unable to follow this success up with a knock-out blow. In 1661

while attempting to deal one he was held up at the Dong-hri wall and
disastrously defeated. This brought a lull I in the fighting for some
years, since the Nguyen were quite unable to strike, back. In 1672
Trinh Can again took the offensive and a tremendous struggle took
place along the walls. But in the following year, finding Nguyen resistance unconquerable, he called off the invasion, and the senseless
struggle ended. For upwards of a century peace reigned between the
north and the south. The Trinh concentrated upon developing their
authority in Tongking, while the Nguyen devoted their attention to
southwards expansion at the expense of the Chams and Cambodians
and to the spread of Annamite influence.
The Portuguese had established regular trading connections with
both Annam and Tongking before the end of the sixteenth century.
They maintained no factories there, but used their settlement at Macao
in China as their base. They went to Tongking to buy raw silk for the
Japanese market, where the demand was so great that this commodity
had become one of the chief objects of trade in the Far East. Fai-fo,
close to Quang-nam, was the commercial port of the Nguyen dominions. It was a market rather than a city. When the Portuguese
began to trade there the Chinese and Japanese, who had long
frequented the place, formed the bulk of its population, living each in
their separate quarter under their own magistrates. The foreign trade
of Annam and Tongking was almost entirely in the hands of
foreigners, who were given easy access by the rulers in each case. The
natives themselves engaged only in the coastal trade.
During the sixteenth century the Dominicans, who were making
energetic though unsuccessful efforts to spread their faith in Cambodia, made sporadic appearances in Annam, but without result. In
the seventeenth century the Jesuits, expelled from Japan, began to
look to Indo-China as a new field for their activities. The practice had
been for Jesuits from Goa or Malacca to be trained for the Japanese
field at the Society's college at Macao. In 1614, in consequence of the
change of policy in Japan, several Jesuits found themselves immobilized at Macao. They gladly accepted the suggestion of-a
Portuguese merchant from Fai-fo that they should go'there instead;"
Early in the next year they commenced operations there under' the
leadership of Francesco Busomi, a Neapolitan, who remained in the
country until 1639 under the tolerant patronage of Sai Vuong.
By 1625 the mission to Cochin China, the Portuguese name for t h e ,
Nguyen territories, promised so well that it was decided to open

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395

another in Tongking. This was the work of the celebrated Alexander

of Rhodes, who went there in 1627; but after a promising start he was
expelled by Trinh Trang in 1630.
For some 200 years, until after the suppression of the Society in,
Europe, the Jesuits continued to work in the Vietnamese lands, often
up against bitter persecution, often secretly, living at Macao and
accompanying Portuguese trading ships disguised as merchants. The
Trinh at Hanoi were their declared enenaies, but the Nguyen, anxious
to obtain Portuguese support in their struggle for independence, were
less intolerant, though fundamentally hostile to the Christian faith.
Hien Vuong, who was annoyed because he had not received the hopedfor suppoirt from Europeans in the campaigns of 1655-61 against the
Trinh, stopped missionary work and killed many native Christians.
During the latter part of the century there were massacres of native
Christians, churches were burnt and missionaries imprisoned.
The early missionaries invented quoc-ngu, the Romanization of the
Vietnamese written language now in general use. Portuguese, the
commercial language used by Europeans of all kinds in their intercourse with the Vietnamese people, provided quoc-ngu with its basic
values. One of the earliest works to use it was Alexander of Rhodes's
Vietnamese Catechism printed in Rome in the middle of the
century.
It was through Alexander of Rhodes that the French entered the
Indo-Chinese mission field. His efforts to persuade the Pope to give
' the J^ar Eastern Christians an independent organization of their own
brought him up against such determined Portuguese opposition that
he turned to France for support. There he stimulated such enthusiasm
that the Societe des Missions Etrangeres was formed, as we have
noted in a previous chapter,^ and in 1662 established its base of operations at Ayut'ia. ,From there missionaries were sent to Cambodia,
Anham and Tongking. Notwithstanding the opposition of both the
Jesuits and the Portuguese, they made headway while Lambert de la
Motte and Pallu lived to direct their endeavours. But they did so only
by posing as merchants in the employment of the Compagnie des Indes
Orientaux. When in 1682 the Dutch forced all their European competitors to leave Bantam, and shortly afterwards Rome forbade
missionaries to engage in trade, a severe blow was dealt to French
influence in the Vietnamese lands. The failure of French intervention
in Siam was another cause of decline, and in 1693 the oriental vicarate
passed to the Spanish Dominicans at Manila.
> Supra, p. 340.

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Still, the Societe continued to operate in the Far East, though in the
eighteenth century suffering from serious lack of men and resources.
The quarrels between the various missionary societies became so
intense that in 1738 Pope Clement XII sent out a commission of
enquiry. As a result the decision was taken to assign separate territorial spheres to each. Under this arrangement the Jesuits received
Tongking and the northern provinces of Annam, while to the French
society was assigned the region from Hue southwards. But once again
the native rulers struck at the missionaries. The Trinh instituted
periodical persecutions and many missionaries lost their lives. The
Nguyen were less severe; and although in 1750 nearly all the missionaries were rounded up and deported, a few, who possessed expert
mathematical or Scientific knowledge, were retained as government
servants.
The Portuguese trade between Macao and Vietnam was challenged
in the seventeenth century by the Dutch. As soon as the latter were
established at Patani and Ligor, the Nguyen, always on the look-out
for foreign aid, invited them to come and trade. At first, however, the
main Dutch efforts in the Far East were made to secure direct trade
with China and Japan. Their first factory in the south was planted in
1636 at Qui-nam. In the next year they founded another in Tongking
at Hien-nam, and later a third at Ke-cho. Their connection with
Tongking, however, and the fear that they would listen to the appeals
for help made by the Trinh, led to trouble with the Nguyen. In 1641,
as the result of the harsh treatment given to the crews of two ships
which were wrecked near the Pulo Cham islands, they abandoned
their factory and for some years carried on a war of reprisals. An
attempt to come to terms was made after Hien Vuong succeeded his
father in 1648. A treaty was signed in 1651 and a new factory opened
at Fai-fo. But again quarrels broke out, and in 1654 the factory was
closed, this time finally.
The English made a disastrous attempt to open trade with the
Nguyen territories in 1613. Richard Cocks, the chief of the factory at
Hirado in Japan founded by John Saris, sent a junk to Fai-fo with a
letter and presents from James I to the Hue ruler. But as soon as tjie
agent, Walter Carwarden, and his interpreter landed they were-^
murdered by Annamites. A few years later the Hirado factory sent a
trading expedition to Tongking, but it also was a failure. For many
years Dutch hostility checked every attempt to open trade. In 1,672,
however. Bantam took the initiative and sent William Gyfford to open
a factory in Tongking. Gyfford was received b y ' L e Gia-Ton a n d '

CH. 22

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397

permitted to settle at Hien-nam. But the factory never achieved any

success, and after being moved successively to Ke-cho and finally to
Hanoi was closed in 1697. A letter written in 1680 complains of bad
debts which could not be collected because there was no direct approach
to the king and the mandarins took what they wanted without payment. There were the usual difficulties arising from Dutch opposition
and Portuguese intrigues, but the chiefs seem to have been incapable
and there were dissensions among the factors. And the expulsion of
the English from Bantam in 1682 was a blow from which the factory
never recovered. The chief cause of failure, however, lay in the
attitude of the ruling class, and it is significant that the Dutch also
failed to make their factory pay for the same reason and abandoned it
in 1700.

In 1695 Nathaniel Higginson, the Governor of Madras, sent Thomas

Bowyear to Fai-fo on what may be described as a reconnoitring expedition. Like Edward Fleetwood, who was sent to Ava in the same
year, Bowyear was a private merchant and had no power to conclude
an agreement on behalf of the East India Company. His proposals
were received with the same scepticism as the Court of Ava displayed
towards Fleetwood's. He was told that if the Company would establish
a factory suitable conditions of trade would then be discussed,
and he was entrusted with a letter couched in similar terms from Minh
Vuong to Higginson. His mission led to nothing, and soon after his
return to Madras he was sent to assume control over the dockyard at
Syriam fliat was opened as a result of Fleetwood's mission.
During the century of peace which ensued after the Tongkingese
defeat by the Annamites in 1673 both ruling families continued to
hold undisputed sway in their respective territories. In the north the
Trinh continued to make and unmake kings at will. Their rule was
firm and ensured, peace and stability everywhere. They had inherited
an administrative system which functioned adequately and was well in
advance of any other native administration in South-East Asia. But
they did much to improve it. Trinh Cuong (1709-29) commenced a
cadastral survey of land and renovated the taxation registers, thereby
reforming the collection of revenue from the products of the soil and
the mines.. He reduced the power of the mandarins by forbidding
them to create villages under their own exclusive feudal jurisdiction.
He also improved the procedure of the courts and reduced the severity
of the penal code. His successor, Trinh Giang (1729-40), carried
through further financial reforms by regulating the salt trade and the
exploitation of the mines. He sought to reduce Chinese influence by

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taxing Chinese settlers at a higher rate than the Vietnamese and prohibiting the sale of Chinese books. He also had editions of the Vietnamese canonical and classical works and 6i the Annals printed.
In the south the Nguyen, unlike the Trinh, had to create a largely
new administrative system in order to unify their diverse territories.
As might be expected, it was very similar to, the one which had grown
up under the Le dynasty. For instance, the census system and the
method of assessing the land tax established by Sai Vuong (1613-35)
were imitations of those introduced by Le Thanh-Ton in 1465. In
fixing the land tax account had to be taken of the area of the fields,
which was officially measured, the nature of the crops and the value of
the lands. Hien Vuong (1648-87) set up a bureau of agriculture which
classified cultivated lands and encouraged the cultivation of virgin
soil. Under Sai Vuong's census system the population was divided
into eight categories and personal tax fixed according to category.
Those inscribed in the first two categories owed military service. Great
attention was devoted to the army, which was organized on a territorial basis. Its basic unit was the thuyen, which was a platoon of
thirty to fifty men drawn from the same village or neighbouring ones.
From two to five thuyen went to make up a doi, or company. Doi in
turn would be grouped into a co, or regiment; though, more rarely,
the latter might consist of from six to ten thuyen without the interposition of the doi. The largest group was the dinh, or provincial army.
In the middle of the eighteenth century, after expanding their
control over the south down to the Mekong delta, the Nguyen organized
their territory into twelve provinces {dinh), with a governor {tran-thu),
treasurer {cai-bo) and judge (ki-luc) at the head of each. From about
1632 the provincial mandarinate was recruited by examinations based
upon the Chinese model. In 1675 Hien Vuong strove to improve upon
this by introducing a sort of practical examination on the current
situation.
From time to time the Nguyen made attempts, to secure recognition from China as independent rulers. On every occasion, however, the imperial reply was that tribute could not.be accepted, nor
investiture accorded, while a legitima.te Vietnamese dynasty was'in
existence.
j
.
After the defeat of the Chams by Le Thanh-Ton in the second half
of the fifteenth century, a few Cham districts, as we have seen, still
maintained their independence. These were gradually absorbed by
the Nguyen during the seventeenth century. They were formed into
the two dinh of Tran-bien and Thai-khang. A Cham kinglet still

CH. 2 2

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399

continued to exist. In 1692, no doubt as a protest against the rigour

with which the Vietnamese were imposing their cuhure upon the
south, the Cham king, Ba Tranh, rebelled. He was defeated and
put to death together with all his ministers. The territories he had
ruled became the dinh of Thuan-thanh, later renamed Binh-thuan,
and were placed under a Cham prince as provincial governor. But
Vietnamese influence increased and the Chams were harshly treated.
The Vietnamese expansion at the expense of Cambodia followed
much the same pattern as in the case of Champa. Exiles, deserters
and other vagabonds infiltrated into the country. In time their numbers enabled them to form colonies, the inevitable prelude to annexation. T h u s \ n 1658 the provincial governor of Tran-bien occupied
the colony of Moi-xui under the pretext that the King of Cambodia
had violated the Vietnamese frontier. When King Ang Chan resorted
to arms he was defeated and captured and sent in a cage to Hue.
There, on paying homage as a vassal, he was liberated and escorted
back to his capital. His two brothers, however, refused to accept the
situation, chased the Vietnaniese out of the disputed territory and set
themselves up as joint kings. In 1673 the inevitable succession dispute
gave the Vietnamese an opportunity to intervene effectively, and install
two_ tributary rulers, one as king at Udong and the other as second
king at Saigon.
The Saigon area, the Water Chen-la of the ancient Khmer kingdom,
was a tempting field for Vietnamese expansion. It had a population
of only about 40,000 families, so that there were vast empty spaces.
Ang Non, the ruler of Saigon, attempted to seize the Cambodian throne
in 1679, but his cousin Ang Sor called in Siamese aid and defeated
him. At the moment when he arrived as a fugitive in Annam a large
fleet of junks carrying 3,000 Chinese fugitives arrived at Tourane.
They were partisans of the defeated Mings under the command of two
officers, Yang and Ch'en, who asked permission to settle under
Vietnamese authority. Anxious to give them as wide a berth as
possible, Hieng Vuong passed them on to Ang Non, who led them
into his old appanage and settled them there. Ch'en and his followers
established thepiselves at Bien-hoa, which they made into a prosperous
agricultural centre; Yang went to Mi-tho on the eastern branch of the
Mekong, where his followers adopted the more adventurous role of
river pirates. With their help Ang Non made another bid for the
throne in 1682, but failed after some initial success. Some years later,
finding himself unable to control them, he called in Vietnamese help.
The Nguyen forces defeated the freebooters and killed Yang. They

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were then placed under the jurisdiction of the Bien-hoa chief, Ch'en.
The Vietnamese then forced King Ang Sbr to acknowledge Nguyen
overlordship. After this expedition the Water Chen-la passed under
Nguyen sway, and when Ang Non died his son Ang Em had to
admit a Vietnamese governor and his dominions were formed into
two dinhs.
This was not the end of Vietnamese expansion at the expense of
Cambodia. A third Chinese refugee leader, Mac Cuu, settled in what is
now the Ha-tien region on the Gulf of Siam. Colonists flocked to his
district and several prosperous villages were founded, notably Kampot.
In 1714 another succession dispute broke out at Lovek, and Siam
seized the opportunity to gain control. The Chinese settlement at Hatien was attacked and Mac Cuu fled to Hue. Minh Vuong (1691-1725)
invested him with the governorship of Ha-tien, and a further spate of
Vietnamese invasions of Cambodia gave the Nguyen two more
provinces, Dinh-tuong and Long-ho. When Mac Cuu died in 1735,
his son Mac Thien T u was confirmed in his place by Hue, and under
his competent rule Ha-tien prospered. In 1739 Cambodia attempted
to reassert its domination over the place, but Mac Thien T u drove out
the invading forces. This gave the Vietnamese a further pretext for
intervention, and in 1749 Cambodia purchased peace only by abandoning all the territory south of Gia-dinh up to the arm of the Mekong
which passes Mi-tho.
The Burmese threat to Siam which developed under Alaungpaya
(1752-60) gave the Nguyen a fair field for demanding more territory
from Cambodia, and the provinces of Bassac and Prea-pateny were
yielded. But the tide of Vietnamese expansion had now reached its
high-water mark. Ayut'ia was captured and destroyed by the Burmese
in 1767; but almost immediately afterwards, under the impact of a
series of Chinese invasions, the conquerors lost their grip on Siam,
while that country found a leader in P'ya Taksih, under whom it speedily
revived its strength. A misguided attempt by Mac Thien T u in 1769
to place a pretender on the Siamese throne brought^P'ya Taksin into his
dominions, and soon the Siamese king, having reduced Ha-tien ito
ruins, was essaying the role of kingmaker at Phnom Penh. The
Vietnamese thereupon invaded Cambodia and defeated the Siamese^
But although they replaced Ang Tong, the vassal of the Nguyen, on the
throne, he was unable to maintain himself ^here, and in 1773. retired
in favour of Ang Non, the Siamese nominee. And Mac Thien Tu made
his peace with P'ya Taksin, who withdrew the Siamese garrison from
Ha-tien. Everything was now set for a fresh trial of strength between

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ANNAM AND TONGKING, 162O-182O

4OI

Siam and the Nguyen for the control of Cambodia, and Ang Non
began to prepare to meet another Vietnamese invasion. But sudden
disaster had overwhelmed the Nguyen lands and it vsras to be some
years before the Vietnamese were again in a position to challenge
Siamese influence in Cambodia.
In 1765 when Vo Vuong died a Court intrigue raised up as his
successor a boy of twelve who was the son of a concubine. Power was
seized by a greedy minister, Truong-Phuc-Loan, who proclaimed
himself regent. He proved unequal to the task, and in 1773 in the
district of Tay-son a revolt began under three brothers, Nguyen VanNhac, Nguyen Van-Lu and Nguyen Van-Hue, which speedily attained
formidable strength. The rebel leaders, who, though bearing the
family name of Nguyen, were unconnected with the ruling dynasty,
seized the city of Qui-nhon and defeated the "government troops sent
against them.
In the following year the situation was made worse by a Tongkingese invasion launched by the Trinh, and early in 1775, while the
Nguyen army was engaged with the rebels, the Tongkingese seized
Hue. Trinh Sum, when launching the invasion, proclaimed that his
intention was to help the Nguyen, but beyond occupying Hue and the
old Cham province of Quang-nam his forces could make no further
progress. For a time, indeed, they were thrown on to the defensive,
since Van-Nhac, having inflicted another defeat on the Nguyen army,
made an all-out bid to gain possession of Hue. l a t h i s he failed, but he
next turned his attention to the south, where his brother Van-Lu was
engaged'in a struggle for the possession of Saigon. Early in 1776
Van-Lu had captured the city, only to be driven out by Mac Thien T u
of Ha-tien, who came forward as the champion of the Nguyen cause
and was joined there by the surviving members of the family. In 1777
the Tay-son leaders recaptured Saigon and hunted down the Nguyen,
killing three of them. The sole survivor, Nguyen Phuc-Anh, generally
known as Nguyen Anh, a boy of fifteen, got away to the island of
Pulo Panjang, helped by a French Catholic priest, Pigneau de Behaine,
who was later to play an important part in his restoration. For the
time being, however, the Nguyen cause appeared to be lost. Everywhere except in the Hue region the Tay-son brothers were dominant,
and Van-Nhac had even proclaimed himself' emperor'.
The story of Nguyen Anh's long struggle to recover his inheritance
and of his relations with Pigneau de Behaine belongs to a later section.
The present one must end with a brief reference to the attempts of the
European powers to re-establish commercial relations with the

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Vietnamese lands in the eighteenth century. The Enghsh had left

Tongking in 1697, the Dutch in 1700. The French were still represented by missionaries operating as traders', There were no European
factorie^in Cochin China, but the Portuguese of Macao continued to
send cargoes of porcelain, tea and tutenag and to receive in return
sugar, raw silk and eaglewood, while t\ie Jesuits remained active
participants in this traffic. During the long period of peace between
the two rival houses the princes no longer needed European help and
hence made no effort to attract the European trader.
The English, ever on the look-out for places where Chinese goods
might be purchased, planted a settlement in 1702 on the island of
Pulo Condore, lying off the western mouth of the Mekong. The
French East India Company had in 1686 commissioned its agent in
Siam to look fo'r a factory site on the route to China, and he had
reported that, since all the commerce of China, Tongking, Macao,
Manila and Cochin China must pass close to the island, Pulo Condore
possessed the combined advantages of the Straits of Malacca and
Sunda. By settling there in 1702 the English apparently forestalled a
French move to occupy the island. But three years later their factory
came to an early and sudden end. The Macassar troops of the garrison,
annoyed at being kept there beyond the term of their contract, mutinied
and slaughtered all the Europeans there save two, who made their escape
in a small boat to Johore. The French East India Company in 1723
sent an.agent to examine the island. He submitted a very adverse
report, and as it was known that the English had no intention of
returning there the Company dropped the scheme.
Nevertheless the French were anxious for a settlement in the China
Sea, since their factors at Canton found their position almost unendurable. In 1744 Dupleix's nephew Friel, one of the Canton
merchants, visited Vo Vuong at Hue and was encouraged to open trade
there. He went to Pondicherry to obtain Dupleix's support, but the
war with the English East India Company, that broke out as a, result
of the participation of Great Britain in the War of the Austrian
Succession, held up the project. In 1748, however, Dupleix sent an
agent to Cochin China. At almost the same time Pierre Poivre d i s cussed a similar plan with the Minister of Marine at Paris_and was
sent out to put it into operation. He arrived in Tourane in 1749
and went on to Hue, where he was well received by Vo Vuong, but
lost the major part of his cargo either by sheer theft or through
purchases without payment. His report caused the French East
India Company to abandon the idea of opening tra'de with the Nguyen

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403

lands. Dupleix, however, still cherished the plan; and although the
agent he sent there in 1752, a missionary of the Missions Etrangeres,
was arrested and expelled by Vo Vuong, he sent yet another, but in
vain. His own recall to France and the outbreak of the Seven Years
War caused the scheme to be put back once more into cold storage.
When the war ended, Choiseul tried to revive interest in it 'pour
compenser les pertes subies', as Maybon puts it,^ but failed to enlist
support. Then in 1774 Vergennes, who became Minister of Foreign
Affairs on the accession of Louis XVI, turned his attention to the
scheme. It was talked of as a way of freeing France from the supremacy
achieved by England in colonial wars by enabling her to intercept
English trade with China in time of war. As a result a ship was sent
in 1778 from Chandernagore to examine the situation. The report that
its commander brought back to Chevalier, the energetic commandant
at Chandernagore, led him to write home that the situation in Cochin
China offered a splendid career there for the French nation if intervention on behalf of the legitimate prince, Nguyen Anh, were undertaken. He suggested that the policy 'so happily pursued earlier' by
Dupleix in India should be applied in Indo-China.
-N
. At almost the same time the much-harassed Warren Hastings in
Calcutta was being urged to adopt the same plan. Late in 1777 an
English ship, the Rumbold, returning from China to India, put in at
Tourane and took on board two members of the Nguyen family who
Were anxious to rejoin Nguyen Anh at Saigon. Unable to make the
entrance; to the Saigon river, however, the master took his passengers
on to Calcutta, where they were received by Warren Hastings. They
were provided with a passage back to their country and were accompanied by an English agent, Charles Chapman, who was sent to
' examine the prospects of opening trade there. Chapman had an
adventurous voyage. He found the whole country in the hands of the
Tay-son brothers. He had an interview with Van-Nhac, who was
anxious to use his two ships in fighting Nguyen Anh, and only with
difficulty saved one from seizure. He returned to Calcutta in 1779
with an optimistic report. He strongly advised intervention with the
object of restoring Nguyen Anh, and stressed that if the English were
forced to abandon Canton and it became necessary to look for a place
where Chinese goods could be purchased they could be had in
Cochin. China cheaper than at Canton. He pointed to the strategic
value of the Bay of Tourane, which, he said, offered a splendid shelter
to ships and would be a useful base from which they could operate
' Ch. Maybon, Histcire d'Annam modeme, p . 170.

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against enemies. Finally, he warned Hastings that France intended to

gain influence in the country.
,
Neither France nor the East India Company could attend to these
suggestions; they were too deeply committed elsewhere at the time.
But the matter did not rest there. For,' as we have seen, a French
priest, Pigneavi de Behaine, had already been of service to the fugitive
Nguyen Anh, and out of their chance meeting a friendship was forged
which was to have immensely important results not only for the prince
but also, in the long run, for France.
{h) The establishment of the Nguyen empire of Cochin China,
Annam and Tongking, 1777-1820
The French missionary Pierre-Joseph-Georges Pigneau, who helped
the young Nguyen Anh to escape to Pulo Panjang after the second
capture of Saigon by the Tay-son rebels in 1777, was born in 1741 at
Behaine in the commune of Origny-en-Thierache, in what later
became the departement of the Aisne. He was trained as a missionary
in the Seminaire des Missions-Etrangeres and left France in 1765
for work in Cochin China. There he joined the college at Hon-dat
in Ha-tien, which had been set up by refugee missionaries forced by
the Burmese invasions to leave Siam. It was a wretched little collection
of bamboo huts with some forty Annamite, Chinese and Siamese
pupils. And it was not left long in peace, for in 1768 P'ya Taksin complained to Mac Thien Tu, the son of the founder of the Ha-tien
principality, that it had afforded shelter to a refugee Siamese prince,
and the missionaries were all thrown into gaol for three months.
In the next year Chinese and Cambodian pirates attacked the
settlement, massacred a number of the students, and burned down all*
the buildings. Pigneau managed to escape with some of his pupils
and made his way via Malacca to Pondicherry. In 1770 he set up
another seminary at Virampatnam close by, and while there was
nominated Bishop of Adran. .Four years later, having been consecrated Apostolic Vicar of Cochin China, he went to Macao to collect
personnel for staffing the Ha-tien mission, which he proposjsd to re-establish.
In 1775 he arrived in Ha-tien. He was; hospitably received/by Mac
Thien Tu and permitted to resume his work. Exactly how he came to
meet the fugitive Nguyen Anh the Annamite sources do not reveal,
and European writers do not agree. The young prince appears to have
been in hiding in a forest close to Pigneau's seminary at Can-cao

CH. 2 2

ANNAM AND TONGKING,

162O-182O

during September and October 1777 before getting away to p

Panjang. At the same time Mac Thien Tu, the champion of the Nguye
cause, deciding that all was lost, fled from Ha-tien, ultimately at the
invitation of P'ya Taksin making his way to the Siamese Court.
At the very moirient when he thus abandoned hope of the Nguyg
cause, Nguyen/Anh, learning that the main body of the Tay-son army
had left the Saigon region, quietly slipped across to the mainland,
rejoined his supporters and regained possession of the city. This
success was largely due to the efforts of a devoted supporter. Do ThanhNhon, who had raised a new army for the Nguyen cause after the
disaster at Saigon. During the year 1778 Do Thanh-Nhon again
proved his worth by clearing the rebel troops out of the province of
Gia-dinh and destroying their fleet. The situation began to look so
hopeful that Nguyen Anh despacched a mission to Siam to propose a
treaty of friendship.
Events in Cambodia, however, brought this move unexpectedly to a
halt. In 1779 the mandarins, under the leadership of Mu, Governor
of Bassac, rebelled against the Siamese puppet Ang Non and appealed
td Nguyen Anh for help. Do Thanh-Nhon, who was sent in response
to this request, assisted Mu to win a decisive victory, as a result of
which Ang Non was executed and Ang Eng, the infant son of his old
rival Ang Tong, placed on the throne, with Mu as regent. Do
Thanh-Nhon then returned to Saigon loaded with honours and began
to concentrate all his efforts upon the improvement of the Nguyen
navy.
Siam naturally could not allow the new set-up at Phnom Penh to go
unchallenged. In November 1780 three armies were sent to invade
Cambodia. In April 1781, however, just when, having won some
initial successes, they were about to meet a force sent by Nguyen Anh,
news came of P'ya Taksin's madness, and the invasion was called
off.
At this juncture Nguyen Anh ruined his chances of success for many
years to come by having Do Thanh-Nhon murdered. The cause of
this senseless criftie is obscure. The most likely suggestion is that
the distinguished general put his young master too much in the shade.
It was a most impolitic act; Do Thanh-Nhon was the one military
commander in the Nguyen service whom the Tay-son brothers really
feared. The eldest is said to have 'leapt for joy' when he heard the
news. The dead man's supporters at once rebelled, and the Nguyen
cause was so badly weakened that a few months later the Tay-son
brothers again captured Saigon. Pigneau de Behaine escaped into

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Cambodia. Nguyen Anh, after beating a fighting retreat into Ha-tien,

took refuge on the island of Phu-quoc. His supporters, however,
continued to carry on guerrilla warfare against the Tay-son.
In October 1782 fortune turned once again; the royal troops led by
Nguyen Man, Nguyen Anh's younger brother, succeeded in driving
the rebels out of Saigon. Nguyen Anh returned to the city, as also did
Pigneau. But the situation was very precarious, and it was obvious
to both that when the inevitable counter-attack came there was no
hope of holding it.
It came early in 1783, and .the Nguyen forces were defeated with
frightful losses. Prince Man was killed. Nguyen Anh again got away
to the island of Phu-quoc, but his hiding-place was discovered, and he
only just managed to escape the pursuing forces and take refuge on the
island of Koh-rong in the Bay of Kompongsom. Again his sanctuary
was discovered. Fortune, however, still favoured him, for when his
island was completely encircled by the Tay-son fleet a typhoon
suddenly blew up, and in the darkness and confusion he got away to
another island. ^
Pigneau fled first of all to his seminary, but the approach of rebel
forces caused him to take refuge in Siam. He arrived at Chantabun
in August 1783, and almost immediately afterwards received an
invitation to rejoin Nguyen Anh. The Annamite Chronicle says that
they had an interview, at which the prince asked the bishop to obtain
French help to enable him to crush the Tay-son; whereupon the
bishdp asked for a pledge and the prince gave him his son Canh, who
was just four years old. The real story, however, is not so simple, and
the details are difficult to piece together, for Pigneau had to observe
the greatest discretion in the matter. As a missionary he was expected
to avoid any participation in the politics of the country to which he
was posted, and there were already those who were expressing dissatisfaction with his conduct. Moreover, before anything was decided,
Nguyen Anh went early in 1784 to seek Siarnese aid. Siam was
favourable and provided a contingent with which e returned to the
contest. His campaign, however, failed, and he turned again to the
the question of French aid. The upshot was that in December 1-784
Pigneau and Prince Canh left the Nguyen headquarters on Pulo _
Panjang on the first stage of a journey that was to take them ultimately
to Versailles. Soon afterwards, in April 1785, Nguyen Anh and his
suite left Pulo Panjang in five junks for Siam. His object seems to
have been to await there the results of Pigneau's mission.
Pigneau and his young protege arrived at Pondicherry in February

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407

1785 to find Coutenceau des Algrains, the acting governor, uncompromisingly hostile to intervention in Cochin China, 'comme etant
contraire aux interets de la nation, a la saine politique, tres difficile et
tres inutile'. In any case Pondicherry could take no such action without instructions from home. Pigneau therefore asked for a passage
to France, and after a long delay Governor de Cossigny granted his
request. In July 1786 he and Prince Canh left Pondicherry on board
the merchantman Malabar.
Their arrival in France in February 1787 caused no little excitement
in the salons of Paris and Versailles. The w^orld of fashion made a
pet of the young prince. Pigneau' was received by Louis XVI and
submitted to the ministers his plan for an expedition to establish
Nguyen Anh on the throne, of Annam. It was turned down, chiefly on
the score of expense. France was tottering on the brink of the national
bankruptcy which was to bring on the Revolution. But the project
was seized on by a number of important people, at the head of whom
was Pierre Poivre, who had been to Hue in 1749 and had had a long
connection with Far Eastern affairs. Even with his enthusiastic
support, however, Pigneau could obtain no more than paper promises;
On 28 November 1787, in the namef Nguyen Anh, he concluded a
treaty of alliance between France and Cochin China. Ships, men and
arms were promised. In return France was to receive Pulo Condore
and territory in the Bay of Tourane. If French aid was vital to Nguyen
Anh, then his one ray of hope was the nomination of Pigneau de
Behaine as French Commissioner in Indo-China.
In December 1787 Pigneau and his charge left for Pondicherry.
They arrived there in May of the following year. Again there was a
long hold-up. De Conway, the governor, would not afford any help
and raised every possible obstacle to prevent the indomitable bishop
from collecting munitions and volunteers for the enterprise. But
with money he had raised in France from various sources, and help
received in Pondicherry, he managed to despatch four shiploads of
stores and several hundreds of volunteers. They arrived in September
1788 at an opportune moment, when Nguyen Anh had at long last
recaptured Saigon and needed to consolidate his position. The help
thus afforded turned the scale in his favour,
After Nguyen Anh went to Siam in April 1785 important developments had taken place in the Vietnam lands. Having made themselves
masters of Cochin China, the Tay-son brothers turned their attention
to Hue, which had been in Tongkingese hands for a good number of
years. In July 1786 they took the city. Their success emboldened
14*

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THE EARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

PT. II

them to strike northwards against Tongking itself, where the Trinh

still held sway and controlled the puppet Le emperor. With remarkable speed they occupied Quang-tri and Quang-binh, defeated the
army sent against them by Trinh Khai, and seized Hanoi. They then
set about partitioning the empire, Van-Hue taking Tongking and
upper Annam, Van-Nhac the centre with Hue as his capital, and VanLu Cochin China. Actually the Trinh were not yet disposed of, and
the war against them continued until late in 1788. When at last all
opposition was stamped out, Van-Hue proclaimed himself emperor at
Hanoi, and the last rot-faineant, Le Man Hoang De, escaped to China.
Nguyen Anh remained in Siam until August 1787. With a contingent of Annamite troops he served with distinction in the Siamese
war against Bodawpaya of Burma. When the Tay-son brothers
embarked on their campaigns to gain possession of Tongking their
garrison in Cochin China was weakened by the withdrawal of troops
from Gia-dinh. King Rama I offered Nguyen Anh help to regain the
province. In August 1787 he secretly left Siam for Cochin China. At
first he hoped to detach the Governor of Gia-dinh from the Tay-son
cause, but thfe plan failed. Then he seized Mi-tho, which he made his
base of operations, and began to build up his. strength for the reconquest of his patrimony. His early operations were directed against
Saigon. There was much stiff fighting before the city fell on 7
September 1788. The timely arrival of the help sent from Pondicherry
by Pigneau de Behaine enabled him systematically to reduce Cochin
China to obedience. When Pigneau himself arrived, on 24 July 1789,
its conquest had just been completed.
The help afforded by the French volunteers was of immense value
to the Nguyen cause. Some of them performed notable service in
helping to train and organize the army and navy. Thus Jean Marie
Dayot took command of the navy and welded it into a strong fighting
force, which showed its worth by destroying the Tay-son fleet at
Quinhon in 1792. Olivier du Puymanel took charge of the training of
recruits for the army and of the planning and construction of fortifications. The 'great master' himself became Nguyen Anh's chief
minister and conducted his foreign correspondence.
- .
For many years, however, the final outcome of the struggle lay in"
the balance. Not until 1792^ was Nguyen Anh strong enough to
attack the north. In that year Van-Hue, who had secured recognition
of China as Emperor of Annam, died and was succeeded by his son
Quarig-Toan. The greatest obstacle was the fortress of Qui-nhon. Up to
1799 it seemed impregnable, but in that year it capitulated to an army

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409

under the command of Prince Canh. Shortly- afterwards Pigneau de

Behaine died there of dysentery at the age of fifty-eight. By that time
victory was assured, though much hard fighting was still to come.
For the Tay-son recaptured the city, and it did not finally come into
Nguyen hands until 1801, when the last great Tay-son'counterattack was broken there.
Thereafter events moved rapidly. In June of that year Hue fell,
and Nguyen Anh was crowned there as King of Annam. He then
addressed himself to the task of overrunning Tongking. On 22 July
1802 Hanoi was taken and the work of conquest was complete. Just
before that final triumph, on i June 1802, Nguyen Anh proclaimed
himself Emperor of Vietnam at Hue and assumed the title of GiaLong. An embassy was despatched to China asking for formal investiture. This was granted in 1803 by the Emperor Kia-k'ing. He
stipulated that tribute must be sent every two years and homage
performed every four years. These conditions were faithfully observed by Gia-Long throughout his reign.
Nguyen Anh had fought almost unceasingly for a quarter of a
century. But the struggle had now'raised his family to a position it
ha'd never previously occupied. For by the conquest of Tongking he
had 'added the kingdom of the suzerain to the fief of the vassal, and
realized to the full a project that none of his predecessors had ever
dared to contemplate'.* By the ceremony enacted at Hue on i June
1802 he founded the dynasty which has continued to occupy the
throne until today.
T h e new state of Vietnam which thus came into existence comprised three main regions, each with its administrative headquarters.
The old patrimony of the Nguyen formed the central part of the
empire. It comprised nine provinces, five of which were directly
governed by the sovereign. Its capital Hue was also the capital of the
empire. Tongking, with the administrative seat of its imperial
governor-general at Bac-thanh, had thirteen provinces, and in the
delta the old officials of the Le administration were continued in
office. Away in the extreme south Gia-dinh, the administrative centre
of the four provinces of Cochin China, was also the seat of an imperial
governor-general (Tong-tran).
. . Under the emperor the central administration was divided among
six ministries: Public Affairs, Finance, Rites, War, Justice, and
Works. Each was under a president, assisted by two vice-presidents
and two or three councillors. The heads of the administration together
' Maybon, op. cit., pp. 349-50.

4IO

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PT. II

formed the Noi-cac or Supreme Council. A governor-general in

charge of a number of provinces was assisted by a treasurer-general
and a Chief of the Judicial Service. Th(roughout the empire the
provinces were classified into tran, i.e. first class, and dinh, i.e. second
class. They were divided into phu (prefectures) under tri-phu, and
these in turn subdivided into huyen and chau. These last two have
been described by French administrators as roughly equivalent to the
arrondissement and commune respectively.
The task of re-establishing settled administration after so long a
period of civil war was an immense one, but like Henry VII of
England Gia-Long was no innovator. He used the old familiar administrative framework and methods that were hallowed by long
tradition. In such a society once disorder was stamped out the power
of self-adjustment was considerable, but the supreme authority had to
be ever on the alert to see that the proper persons performed their
functions in the proper manner. The confusion which reigned everywhere has been vividly described by Maybon. ' T h e wheels of
administration were warped or no longer existed; the cadres of
officials were empty, the hierarchy destroyed; taxes were not being
collected, lists of communal property had disappeared, proprietary titles were lost, fields abandoned; roads, bridges and public
granaries had not been maintained; work in the mines had ceased.
The administration of justice had been interrupted, every province
was a prey to pirates, violation of law went unpunished, while even
the law itself had become uncertain.'^
With so complicated a task of reconstruction on his hands it is not
surprising that Gia-Long should have sought peaceable relations
with his neigbours. Perhaps his biggest,external problem was Cambodia. Bereft of her former provinces, through Annamite conquest
and colonization, in what had come to be known to Europeans as
Cochin China, she was only a pale shadow of her former self, and since
the middle of the seventeenth century had recognized the overlordship
of the Nguyen of Hue. Early in the eighteenth century Siam had
begun to compete with Hue for control over her, while both sides
were constantly looking for opportunities to filch slices of her territory.
True, Siam's ambitions of eastward expansion had been brought to atemporary halt by the Burmese destruction of Ayut'ia in 1,767. But her
rapid revival under P'ya Taksin had brought her back into Cambodia
just at the moment when Nguyen influence there was paralysed by the
Tay-son rebellion.
' Ihid., p. 350.

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ANNAM AND TONGKING, 162O-182O

411

T h e eclipse of Nguyen power seemed to offer Siam a wonderful

opportunity to work her will in Cambodia; but things did not go as
well for her as might have been expected. Nguyen Anh's survival,
and his temporary reoccupation of Saigon in 1777, enabled the
mandarin Mu of Bassac to replace the Siamese puppet Ang Nhon by his
nephew Ang Eng. And P'ya Taksin's attempt at intervention against
this arrangement was frustrated by the revolution which caused his
death and the accession of General Chakri to the Siamese throne.
Still, at almost the same time as Nguyen Anh lost Saigon the youthful
Ang Eng's supporters lost control over the situation and Cambodia
fell a prey to disorder. Then, while Siam was prevented from, intervening by King Bodawpaya's revival of the Burmese efforts to conquer
her, the Tay-son seized the opportunity to invade and occupy a large
part of the much,-sinned-agairist land.
This latest development played into the hands of Siam. The boyking Ang Eng, who had been placed on the throne by the pro Nguyen factiort, was now removed to Bangkok for safety and grew
to manhood at the Court of Siam. In 1794 he was crowned at Bangkok
and sent back to his own country with the support of a Siamese army
under the command of the mandarin Ben, Governor of Battambang,
previously a Cambodian province, which now, together with the
neighbouring province of Siemreap, once the heart of the empire of
Angkor, came under Siamese rule.
I n 1796 Ang Eng died, leaving a young son, Ang Chan, who had
been born in 1791. No successor, however, was appointed to the
throne" until 1802, the year in which Gia-Long completed the unification of the Vietnam lands. Then the eleven-year-old boy was granted
formal investiture by Siam, presumably in order to steal a march
upon Hue.
The new situation in Vietnam could not fail to have its effects
upon Cambodia. The young king's advisers were naturally most
anxious to prevent their country from again becoming a battleground
between Siam and Vietnam. They therefore did their utmost to
remain on good terms with both, and in the characteristic fashion of
small states in that region paid tribute and homage to both. In 1803
Gia-Long received at Hanoi a complimentary mission from Cambodia
and sent presents in return. Two years later Ang Chan asked to be
permitted to pay homage annually to the sovereign of Vietnam, and
his request was granted.
In 1806 he went to Bangkok for his coronation. This did not
prevent him from sending a mission to Hue in the following year

412

Tllli EARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

PT. II

bearing tribute and requesting investiture as a vassal of Gia-Long.

The emperor at once responded, by sending him an embassy bearing
the book of investiture together with a seal of gilded silver surmounted
by a lion. This evoked a further mission in 1808 from Cambodia
with thanks for the investiture thus accorded. Hardly a year went by
without a mission between the two Courts. So things might have
continued had it not been for the inevitable family squabble
which offered the ever-watchful Siam the longed-for opportunity to
intervene.
'
Ang Chan's brother Ang Snguon wanted to be nominated Second
King and receive part of the kingdom. When this was refused he
rebelled in 1812, and Rama II of Siam sent an army to support him.
Ang Chan thereupon fled to Saigon. In the following year Gia-Long
sent so large a force to reinstate him that the Siamese prudently
retired, taking Ang Snguon with them. He settled in Siam and died
there in 1822. As a guarantee against further disturbances aVietnamese
garrison was installed in the citadel at Phnom Penh.
Neither side allowed this incident to affect the strictly correct
diplomatic relations they had maintained with each other from the
moment when, having obtained possession of 'Tongking, Gia-Long
sent a mission in 1802 to announce the fact to Bangkok. A Siamese
mission was at once despatched to offer him formal congratulations,
and thereafter frequent embassies were exchanged throughout the
rest of his reign. Relations were never cordial, for Siam ;never
abandoned her hoperof regaining control over Cambodia. But she
would not risk a clash with a monarch who had given such ample
demonstration of his ability to wage war.
Of the French volunteers who had given such valuable assistance
to Nguyen Anh in his long struggle, four only remained in his service
after 1802. They were Philippe Vannier, Jean-Baptiste Chaigneau,
de Forsans, and the doctor Despiau. All were given high rank as
mandarins and special privileges. The Treaty of-Amiens was signed
in the year in which Nguyen Anh became the Emperor Gia-Long,
and Napoleon Bonaparte was urged by-the now aged Charpentier de
Cossigny, once commandant at Pondicherry, to re-establish diph)matic relations with Cochin China. Little came of the move, since"
the resumption of the European war and 'the activities of the British
navy prevented France from doing anything effective in so-distant a
quarter of the globe.
After the downfall of Napoleon, however, Louis XVIII's minister,
the Due de Richelieu was anxious to revive French commerce in the

CH. 2 2

ANNAM AND TONGKING, 162O-182O

413

China Sea, and in 1817 French merchantmen based on Bordeaux

began to trade with the ports of Vietnam. On one of the m Chaigneau
returned to France to discuss with Richelieu proposals for opening
official relations with Vietnam. Richelieu conferred on him the title
of consul and empowered him to negotiate a commercial treaty.
When, however, he arrived back in Hue he learnt that Gia-Long had
died in February 1820. Minh-Mang, his son and successor, held a
very different view of Europeans from his father's. Ifence the projected treaty never materialized. In 1825 Chaigneau and Vannier,
the last of Pigneau de Behaine's volunteers, left Vietnam to end their
days in France.

CHAPTER 2 3

'

!
T H E K I N G D O M OF LAOS, 1591-1836
WHILE the empire built up by Bayinnaung's military prowess was in
a state of disintegration and his son Nanda Bayin was deeply involved
in his struggle with Naresuen of Ayut'ia' the kingdom of Laos, far
away on the upper Mekong, had regained its independence under
Nokeo Koumane. He was proclaimed king at Vientiane in 1591, and
in the following year his forces overcame the resistance of Luang
Prabang and reunited the realm. The little state of Tran Ninh also,
with its capital Chieng Khouang close to the Plain of Jars, recognized
the revived strength of the Laos kingdom by sending the traditional
tokens of allegiance. Incidentally^ sandwiched as it was between two
states more powerful than itself, Laos and Annam, it paid tribute to
both. It is perhaps significant,that while its acknowledgement of the
suzerainty of Vientiane was accorded every three years, Annam received
it annually.
Nokeo Koumane reigned for only five years. His successor was
a cousin by marriage, Vongsa, who took the title of T'ammikarat and
reigned until 1622. His reign had an unhappy end. His son Oupagnouvarat became so popular and began to assume so much control
over the government that his jealous father drove him into rebellion.
The army supported the young prince, who overcame his father and
put him to death. A year later he himSelf disappeared and the country
was plunged into a series of dynastic struggles lasting until 1637.
During this period five kings reigned, but the dynastic annals are so
obscure that little is known of them.
,
The competition for the throne reached its climaxin 1637, when
Souligna-Vongsa, one of five warring claimants, defeated his rivals
and seized power. He proved himself the strong man that the factiontorn country needed. During his long reign of fifty-fivfe years not only,
was internal peace restored but excellent relations were cultivated with
all the neighbouring states. His firm and just rule gave his, kingdom
a reputation for strength which was sufficient to deter any would-be
aggressor from risking an attack upon it. He was thus able to negotiate
* Supra, chap. 13,,b.
414

CH. 23

THE KINGDOM OF LAOS, 1 5 9 1 - 1 8 3 6

415

a series of agreements with his neighbours by which the frontiers of

his kingdom were exactly defined.
A vivid account of a visit to Vientiane during his reign has come to
us from the pen of the Dutchman van Wuysthof, who went there in
1641 from the Dutch factory at Phnom Penh with two assistants.
Governor-General van Diemen at Batavia was anxious to tap the
resources of the 'land of gumlac and benzoin'. The difficult and
dangerous journey up the Mekong took from 20 July to 3 -November.
The merchants were well received by the king at the That-Luong
Pagoda and treated to a gala exhibition of dancing, jousting and boatracing which delighted them. The delivery of huge supplies of gumlac
and benzoin was promised. Van Wuysthof, profoundly impressed,
departed on 24 December, leaving his two assistants to follow later
with a Laos envoy and presents for van Diemen.
In view of the briefness of his stay it is difficult to know how much
value to attach to his statements about Laotian affairs, particularly
since his account of Souligna-Vongsa's accession is at complete
variance with the information given in the indigenous records.
Regarding the government of the country, he mentions three great
ministers as sharing the highest authority with the king. The first
was commander-in-chief of the army and commandant of the city
of Vientiane. Van Wuysthof calls him 'Tevinia-Assen', which seems
to indicate Tian-T'ala, the king's son-in-law, who was indeed the
chief minister. The second was the governor of Nakhone and was
viceroy over the southern part of the kingdom stretching down to the
Cambodian frontier. The third was the minister of the palace who
dealt with foreign envoys. There was also a supreme tribunal, composed of five members of the royal family, which dealt with civil and
criminal matters.
. Van Wuysthof was the first European ever to visit Vientiane. His
notions of the geography of the kingdom were inaccurate and his
ignorance of Buddhism profound; but his journal seems to paint a
faithful picture of the prosperity of the kingdom as well as of the
number and beauty of its pagodas and other religious buildings. It
appears as a Buddhist arcadia, attracting pilgrims from far and
wide.
One other European, the Piedmontese Jesuit Father GiovanniMaria Leria, arrived in Vientiane in the year after van Wuysthof's
visit. He tried without success to obtain permission to open a Christian
mission in the country. Against the stiff opposition of the Buddhist
clergy he managed to stay there for five years. His memoirs were used

416

THE EARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

PT. II

by another Jesuit, Father Merini, as the basis for his Relation nouvelle
et curieuse des royaumes de Tonquin et de Laos, published in Paris in
1666. Nothing came of this sudden intrusion by Europeans into the
unknown regions of the upper Mekong. The river itself, with its
rapids, narrows and shifting sandbanks, was a sufficient deterrent
to the establishment of European trade, arid Buddhism to the penetration of Christian missions. Not until 1861, apparently, was the
next European prospector, Henri Mouhot, to set foot in the secluded
kingdom, and he travelled to Luang Prabang by bullock-waggon.
Only one war disturbed the profound peace maintained by the
firm hand of Souligna-Vongsa. In 1651 the King of Tran Ninh
refused his request for the hand of his daughter Nang Ken Chan in
marriage. After the request had been made several times with the
same result Souligna-Vongsa sent a detachment of troops, but it was
repulsed. Hence in 1652 a stronger expedition was sent, which
captured the capital, Chieng Khouang, and compelled the king to
yield. This unhappy incident caused a long and disastrous feud between
the two states which lasted into the nineteenth century. Apart from
this the reign of the greatest of the Laotian sovereigns was mainly
distinguished by notable achievements in the traditional culture of thie
country. Music, architecture, sculpture, painting, gold and silver
work, basket work and weaving all flourished.
But even a king such as Souligna-Vongsa could not ensure the
continuance of stability after his death. His only son, the crown
prince, seduced the wife of the chief of the corps of royal pages, a
crime punishable by death. When the royal tribunal condemned the
young man to death his father refused to interfere with the course of
justice. The result was that when the king himself died in 1694 his
direct heirs, his grandsons King-Kitsarat and Int'a-Som, were too
young to rule, and the aged chief minister Tian-T'ala seized the throne.
Six years later, in 1700, he was dethroned and murdered by NanT'arat, the Governor of Nakhone, who himself^^became king.
News of this coup reached the ears of a prince of^the royal house
who had spent the whole of his life as an exile at Hue, .and since 1696'
had been agitating for Vietnamese aid for an invasion of the Laos
kingdom. He was Sai-Ong-Hue, the son of Souligna-yongsa!s eldest,
brother Som-P'ou, who had been defeated in the struggle for the
throne in 1637. In 1700 with a Vietnamese force, and strongly reinforced by partisans collected at Tran Ninh, he swooped down on
Vientiane, captured the city, put to death the usurper Nan-T'arat,
and proclaimed himself king.

CU. 23

THE KINGDOM OF LAOS, 1 5 9 1 - 1 8 3 6

417

When Tian-T'ala was dethroned in 1700 the two grandsons of

Souligna-Vo'ngsa, King-Kitsarat and Int'a-Som, had fled to Luang
Prabang. Sai-Ong-Hue, on gaining the throne from Nan-T'arat,
sent his half-brother T'ao-Nong to take possession of Luang Prabang
in his name. The two young princes, unable to resist, thereupon fled
to the Sip-Song-Panas, where their cousin Khamone-Noi, who ruled
there, took them into his safe keeping. In 1707 with an army of 6,000
men, raised by Khamone-Noi, they drove T'ao-Nong out of Luang
Prabang. King-Kitsarat was then proclaimed king and sent an
ultimatum to Sai-Ong-Hue that in future the Laos provinces north
of Chieng Khane would form a separate independent kingdorn. And
Sai-Ong-Hue, preoccupied with the task of making good his rule
over the southern provinces, was in no position to dispute the
arrangement.
The once-powerful kingdom of Souligna-Vongsa was no more.
From 1707 Luang Prabang and Vientiane were the capitals of two
separate and mutually hostile states. Each was decisively weakened
by the fact that the other was constantly looking for an opportunity
of restoring the former unity, and with this aim was seeking the aid
of neighbours such as Burma, Siam or Annam, all of whom at one
time or another during the next century or so adopted expansionist
policies.
Vientiane under Sai-Ong-Hue (1707-35) was in difficulties from
the start. Tran Ninh refused homage. An army was thereupon sent
to occupy -Chieng Khouang. The king fled and his younger brother
was raised to the throne. But as soon as the troops of Vientiane were
recalled' the deposed king recovered his throne. He then decided to
do the politic thing and make formal submission to Sai-Ong-Hue.
With Bassak and the provinces in the far south Sai-Ong-Hue was
less successful. Chao-Soi-Sisamout, who ruled there from 1713 to
1747, had close relations with Siam and Cambodia, and Sai-QngHue, with his attention fixed upon the dynastic troubles in Luang
Prabang, left him in virtual independence.
In 1735 Sai-Ong-Hue was succeeded peaceably by his son OngLong. His reign of twenty-five years saw great convulsions in Burma,
Siam and Luang Prabang, but he managed to pursue a policy of
'safety first' with success. When Alaungpaya, the Burmese conqueror, having crushed the independent Mon kingdom of Pegu, struck
eastwards in an attempt to revive the policy of Bayinnaung, Ong-Long
saved his kingdom from invasion by assisting the Burmese expedition
which brought Luang Prabang to its knees.

4.i8

THE EARLIER PHASE OF -EUROPEAN EXPANSION

PT. II

He had trouble, however, with Tran Ninh. It was the old story
of a refusal of tribute followed by an invasion by the army of Vientiane.
This time, however, Annam intervened to order the disputants to
cease fighting. Ong-Long therefore withdrew- his forces and invited
King Chom-P'ou of Tran Ninh to negotiate. Chom-P'ou, suspecting
a trap, waited three years before going to meet his overlord. When
he did at last go he was kidnapped and kept a prisoner at Vientiane.
Again in 1760 Annam intervened; Ong-Long was ordered to liberate
his prisoner, and did so. For the rest of his reign Chom-P'ou paid
his tribute regularly and went personally every third year to render
homage.
Ong-Long died just before the Burmese raised the siege of Ayut'ia
owing to Alaungpaya's fatal wound. His son Ong-Boun continued
his father's policy of supporting Burma. At first all went well. King
Hsinbyushin crushed the attempt of Luang Prabang to rebel and in
1767 destroyed Ayut'ia. But his own kingdom was invaded by the
Chinese, and he lost his hold not only on Siam but also on Chiengmai
and Luang Prabang. Vientiane was now in dire peril. In 1771 she
was attacked By Luang Prabang. Luckily for her Hsinbyushin had by
this time disposed of the Chinese invaders by the Peace of Kaungton
(1770) and was able to send a strong force which defeated Luang
Prabang.
But P'ya Taksin's movement to restore the power of Siam and.drive
the Burmese out of the Laos states met with increasing success,
notwithstanding the efforts of Hsinbyushin to recover the ground lost
during his struggle with the Chinese. When, therefore, in 1774
Int'a-Som of Luang Prabang allied with P'ya Taksin, Vientiane's only
safe course would have been to have abandoned her Burmese alliance
and to have made terms with Siam. Ong-Boun, however, chose the
foolish alternative of defiance, and in consequence lost everything.
In 1778 Siam seized on a convenient pretext to invade Vientiane.
After ,a few months' siege General Chulalok captured the city and
proceeded to place the country under military occupation. OngBoun escaped and made his way into exile.
Among the loot taken in Vientiane was the fabulous 'Emerald
Buddha', carved from green jasper, today one of the sights of-Bangkok"
Said to have been discovered at Chiengrai-in 1436, it had been housed
successively in Chiengmai and Luang Prabang befpre being carried to
Vientiane in 1564. In 1779 it came to shed lustre upon P'ya Taksin's
capital, Dhonburi. In due course, when the old royal palace was built^
at Bangkok, its present temple was" constructed for it in the palace

CH. 2 3

THE KINGDOM OF LAOS, 1 5 9 1 - 1 8 3 6

419

\
precincts. That was not the only loot taken away from the ravaged
city. According to Wood,i the Siamese on this occasion rivalled the
Burmese i n ' Rightfulness'.
In 1782, when P'ya Taksin disappeared from the scene and General
Chakri seized the throne of Siam, the fugitive Ong-Boun made
formal submission. He was then permitted to return to Vientiane, and
his eldest son Chao-Nan was invested with the government of the
kingdom as the vassal of Siam. In 1791 dynastic troubles in Luang
Prabang tempted ihe young man to interfere. He wo;i a brilliant
success, took the city by assault, and annexed the Houa P'an cantons.
His overlord Rama I, however, highly disapproved of his conduct.
On his return home, therefore, he was deposed and replaced by his
younger brother Chao-In (1792-1805).
Chao-In remained throughout his reign a loyal vassal. He assisted
the Siamese to expel the Burmese from Chiengsen. His brother, the
Oupahat Chao-Anou, distinguished himself in the fighting and received the congratulations of the Court of Bangkok. When, therefore,
Chao-In died in 1805, Chao-Anou was at once recognized as king by
Siam.
Chao-Anou was a man of outstanding ability, but his vaulting
ambition brought to his country the worst disaster of its whole history.
The military prowess he had displayed in Chiengsen endeared him to
the Siamese, but his great aim was to free his country from subordination to Bangkok. For many years he cleverly concealed this while he
strengthened his position and beautified his capital. In 1819 he put
down a revolt of the Khas in the Bassac region aind obtained for his son
Chao-Ngo the governorship of the province. He then instigated ChaoNgo to fortify Ubon under the pretext that it was a measure designed
for the defence of Siam. He sent tokens of allegiance to the Emperor
Gia-Long of Annam, and in 1820 offered Luang Prabang a secret
alliance against Siam. At his splendid new temple of Sisaket, founded
in 1824, he held twice a year a grand assembly of all his feudatories
to pay him homage.
In 1825 he journeyed to Bangkok to attend the funeral rites of Rama
II. There he made a formal request for the repatriation of the Laos
families deported to Siam during the struggles of the previous century.
The refusal of so unreasonable a request was a foregone conclusion;
it was made merely for the sake of obtaining a useful pretext for the
highly dangerous step of renouncing his allegiance to his overlord.
In the following year Captain Henry Bu'rney went to Bangkok to
' History of Siam, p. 268.

i^iL

's'Sfcff*

iA9KWtste*^SKiMi

GATEWAY AND ANCIENT CITY WALL AT KORAT

negotiate a treaty. While he was there an entirely baseless rumour

reached Vientiane that the negotiations had broken down and a
British fleet was about to threaten Bangkok. Anou at once decided
that now was the time to wring his independence from Siam at the
point of the sword.
His sudden attack caught the Siamese entirely unprepared. Three
armies simultaneously began a march on Bangkok: one under ChaoNgo from Ubon, a second under the Oupahat Tissa from Roi-Et, and
the third under Anou himself from Vientiane. Anou managed to get
as far as Korat by the simple device of proclaiming that he was marching to assist the King of Siam against a British attack. His advance
guards even threatened Saraburi, only three days' march from the
capital.
But the Siamese resistance soon began to stiffen and his donkey's
gallop was over. His advanced guards were driven back to Korat, and
the Siamese used the breathing space thus acquired to raise a large
army, which was placed under the command of General P'ya Bodin.
When this force advanced on Korat it met with no resistance: Anou
was found to be in full retreat northwards. His decision seems to

CH. 23

THE KINGDOM OF LAOS, 159I-1836

42I

have been taken as a result of the suprise and defeat of one of his
marauding detachments by a small Siamese force in the Samrit plain.
P'ya Bodin, with the initiative in his hands, carried out a systematic
campaign which involved first the storming qf Ubon and the capture
of Chao-Ngo, and finally in 1827 the decisive battle of Nong-BouaLamp'on, where, after a desperate fight lasting seven days, the
Siamese army forced the crossing of the Mekong. That was the end
of the struggle. Anou fled into the dense jungles, sending out vain
appeals for help to Chiengmai, Luang Prabang and Chieng Khouang.
The Siamese made a complete holocaust of Vientiane. They then proceeded methodically to devastate the whole kingdom, driving off the
population to repeople areas of their own country similarly treated by
the Burmese in the preceding period.
That was the end of the kingdom of Vientiane. In 1828 Anou,
chased across the Annamite Chain by the Siamese, appeared at Hue,
and the Emperor Minh-Mang prorriised to help him regain his kingdom. But most of the troops with which he set out on his return journey
deserted on the way. And as soon as he arrived in his ruined capital
the approach of a Siamese force caused him once more to betake
himself to flight, this time into the territory of Tran Ninh. King ChaoNoi therefore had to choose between offending either Siam or Annam;
and since Siamese forces were actually threatening his country, and he
himself had inherited the traditional hatred of his family for the rulers
of Vientiane, he captured the fugitive and handed him over to
Siam.
Anou died in Bangkok in 1835 after four years' captivity. Pallegoix
says that he was exposed in an iron cage and eventually died of the
ill-treatment he received. But there are other conflicting stories, and
the matter remains an unsolved mystery. On Chao-Noi of Chieng
Khouang the vengeance of Annam fell speedily and relentlessly.
Summoned to Hue to explain his conduct, he sought to appease the
anger of Minh-Mang by sending an envoy with rich presents. But it
was to no avail. A Vietnamese force seized him and took "him off to
Hue, where he was publicly executed. His kingdom, Tran Ninh,
became a prefecture of the empire of Annam.
The story of the Luang Prabang kingdom from 1707 onwards may
be more briefly told. Its early years were troubled by dynastic squabbles, through the attempts of Int'a-Som to oust from the throne first
his brother King-Kitsarat (1707-26) and then his cousin KhamoneNoi (1726-7). Khamone-Noi, an interesting personality whose adventurous wanderings are still the subject of much story-telling, had a

422

THE EARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

PT. II

passion for hunting. During one of his absences on a hunting expedition Int'a-Som,, whom he had carelessly allowed to live in complete freedom at the capital, notwithstahdirig one attempt already to
seize the throne, staged a palace revolution and made himself king.
Khamone-Noi, on learning what happeneid, went off to seek his
fortune in Chiengmai, which ten years earlier had rebelled against
Burma. There he gained control over the kingdom, routed a Burmese army sent against him in 1728, and was crowned as king.
Int'a-Som had a long reign which lasted until 1776, Internally it
was one of complete tranquillity. Externally, however, he was faced
by serious dangers. His isolation led him to enter into diplomatic
relations with China. The chronicles of his reign attach much importance to the two embassies he sent to Peking in 1729 and 1734. In
1750 Annam claimed tribute, and when it was refused sent a detachment of troops to collect it. These, however, were driven out of the
country, and there the matter ended. Internal troubles in Annam,
caused by the fact that the kings of the Le dynasty had lost all control
over affairs of state, have been taken to account for this display of
weakness.
But the greatest danger came from the revival of the Burmese power
under Alaungpaya (1752-60) and his successors. Luang Prabang, as
we have seen, was reduced to submission in 1753 and had to furnish
a large body of hostages, including Int'a-Som's son Tiao-Vong. When
Alaungpaya died Int'a-Som attempted unsuccessfully to regain his
independence. But the Chinese invasions of Burma and P'ya Taksin's
victories in Siam brought a more favourable situation, and he not only
renounced Burmese overlordship but in 1771 ventured to attack Vientiane, Burma's ally. A Burmese force defeated him at the battle of
Muong Kassy arid relieved the beleaguered city, but returned home
without doing anything towards restoring Burmese suzerainty over
Luang Prabang.
Int'a-Som was therefore emboldened to throw in his lot with P'ya
Taksin, and in 1774 entered into a defensive alliance with him against
the Burmese. He had unwittingly taken a step too far, for when in
1778 the Siamese captured Vientiane and wiped out its independence
they demanded of his son Sotika-Koumane (i776-8i)'the acceptance"
of conditions such as reduced Luang Prabang also to a position of
dependence.
~ y
In 1781 Sotika-Koumane's younger brother, Tiao-Vong, forced him
to abdicate in his favour. Six years later the new king died prematurely,
without issue, and for four years the country was distracted by a

CH. 23

THE KINGDOM OF LAOS, 1591-1836

423

succession struggle between the remaining brothers. This, as we have

seen above, tempted Chao-Nan of Vientiane to intervene. One of the
squabbling brothers, Anourout, Int'a-Som's second son, organized the
resistance to the invader, but failed to save the city. On its fall he
escaped to Bangkok, where for two years (1791-3) he lived as a state
prisoner.
Meanwhile King Chao-Nan, having carried out a large-scale
massacre in Luang Prabang, deported many households of people and
returned home. He would have pushed his conquest farther, but
feared to incur the wrath of his suzerain. By attacking at all, however,
he had gone too far, and in consequence was deposed and ordered to
live in Bangkok. Shortly after his arrival there the fugitive Anourout
was released at the request of imperial China and returned to rule
over Luang Prabang. There he busied himself with repairing the
ruins of the city and carrying out works of Buddhist merit. In 1817
' he abdicated in favour of his son Mant'a-T'ourat.
The new king, who was no longer young, having been born in 1775,
was content to follow in his father's footsteps and reign quietly. He
was far too cautious to be drawn into the anti-Siamese alliance proposed by Anou of Vientiane. The Siamese triumph over Anou, however, and the downfall of Vientiane caused him to attempt soine redirection of his policy. Hence in 1831, and again in 1833, he sent
missions to Hue oflFering the homage and traditional tribute of gold
and silver flowers which his grandfather had so brusquely refused in
1750.

But it was to no purpose. The Siamese yoke was firmly fixed on

his shoulders, and Minh-Mang of Hue discreetly pigeonholed the
letters borne by his envoys. Years later, however, they were a godsend to the French when they were seeking a pretext to extend their
control from Annam to the Laos lands across the Mekong.
When Mant'a-T'ourat died in 1836 a Siamese minister attended his
cremation and publicly proclaimed Siam's rights of sovereignty. His
son and designated successor, Souka-Seum, was then living as a
hostage at Bangkok. He was significantly kept waiting three years
before receiving official investiture from the King of Siam and permission to return to his country.

CHAPTER 2 4

SIAM FROM 1688 T O 1851

the usurper who saved his country from French
domination, had a troubled reign of fifteen years.* There were constant internal disorders and various parts of the kingdom were involved. They began with a dangerous attempt in 1690 by an impostor,
pretending to be a brother of King Narai, to seize Ayut'ia. He gained
much support in the districts of Nakhon Nayok, Lopburi and Saraburi; but during his attack on the city the elephant he was riding was
shot down and he himself wounded and captured. His followers then
dispersed. His defeat caused such panic in the rebellious districts that
there was a mass movement from them into Burma. In the next year
two provincial governors rebelled, one at Korat in the north and the
other at Nakhon Srit'ammarat^in the Malay Peninsula. The Korat
rising was dealt with first. After much trouble the city was subdued
by the novel method of flying kites, to which flaming torches were
attached,' over it and setting fire to the roofs of the houses. The
rebel governor escaped and fled to join the Nakhon Srit'ammarat
rebels. These were attacked in 1692, and, again with much difficulty,
subdued. The Governor of Korat was killed in the early stages of
the fighting. The Governor of Nakhon Srit'ammarat, a Malay and
an old friend of the admiral commanding the royal fleet, when
further resistance became impossible, killed his wife and family and
escaped in a boat with fifty followers by the connivance of his friend.
The admiral paid for this with his life, and hie head was set over the
city gate.
,
^-^-,.^_^
P'RA P'ETRAJA,

Korat provided yet another insurrection in 1699, tms"time led by a

magician, who with only twenty-eight followers at first completely
terrorized the governor and people with his magic powers. After some
time he was persuaded to transfer to Lopburi, whither he went witlf
a force of about 3,000 men. When threatened by the royal forces they
surrendered their leader and his original twenty-eight followers and
the movement collapsed.
' There is some conflict of opinion about the date of his de^th, which the P'ongsawadan gives as 1697. See Wood, History of Siam, p^223, n.2.
424

CH. 24

SIAM FROM 1688 TO 1851

425

In 1700 a serious succession dispute broke out in the Laos kingdom

which uhimately led to its division into two mutually hostile parts
ruled respectively by Luang Prabang and Vien Chang. The Nguyen of
Hue helped oiie candidate to the throne of Vien Chang on condition
that he should recognize their overlordship. According to the Siamese,
they also sent him help, in return for which a princess was presented
and became the wife of the Uparat.* From this time onwards Vietnam
and Siam became competitors for the control of the Laos country.
The Uparat, who succeeded his father as king in 1703, is known
to Siamese history as P'rachao Siia, ' King Tiger'. He was a cruel and
depraved tyrant about whose excesses many stories have been preserved. His reign contains nothing worthy of record.
The next reign, that of T'ai Sra (1709-33), P'rachao Siia's eldest
son, is notable for a big effort to combat the growing influence of Hue
in Cambodia. In 1714 King Prea Srey Thomea, called by the Siamese
Sri T'ammaraja, was driven out of his capital by his uncle Keo Fa
with the assistance of Vietnamese and Laotian troops. The king and
his younger brother fled to Ayut'ia. In 1715, and again in 1716,
Siamese forces sent to restore them were defeated. In 1717 two large
Siamese expeditionary forces attacked Cambodia. One, supported by
a large fleet, operated against the coastal districts; the other marched
overland against Udong, Keo Fa's capital. The southern force met
with disasterone of the greatest disasters in Siamese history, says
Wood,^ who blames it to the incompetence and cowardice of the commander. The fleet, he says, fell into a panic owing to the loss of a few
ships and put out to sea, leaving the land force to be mopped up by
the Cambodians. According to the Annamite account, however, the
expedition, after capturing Ha-tien, was destroyed by a storm.^ The
northern force, after defeating the Cambodians in a number of engagements, threatened the capital. Thereupon Keo Fa offered his allegiance
to Siam and was left in possession of the kingdom. Apparently he hoped
in this way to obtain Siamese help against Hue, whose expansionist
policy at the expense of his country was costing it dear. But Siam
appears to have made no attempt to assist him, and the Nguyen
proceeded to make themselves masters of further Cambodian
provinces.
When T'ai Sra died in 1733 a struggle for the throne broke out
between his younger brother, the Uparat, and his second son, Prince
^ Compare Le Boulanger, Histoire dii Laos Franfais, pp. 130-5, and Wood, op. cit.,
PI5. 222-3.
^ Op. cit., p. 228.
' Maybon, op. cit., p. 124.

426

THE EARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

PT. II

Ap'ai. It was won by the Uparat, who took the title of Maha T'ammaraja II, but is usually referred to as King Boromokot. He took a fearful
revenge on his opponents, but afterwards ruled so peaceably that his
reign, which lasted until 1758, is described in the Siamese histories as
a golden age. While he was on the throne dramatic developments
were in progress in Burma. The Mon rising of 1740 caused the
Burmese governors of Martaban and Tavoy to flee to Ayut'ia. As a
result friendly relations were established with Ava, and in 1744, for
the first time in over a century, a Burmese embassy was deputed to
Ayut'ia. Boromokot had refused to give a daughter in marriage to the
Mon king, Smim Htaw'Saming T'oh' in the Siamese rendering
and the Burmese hoped for help in subduing the rebels. But although
a Siamese return mission went to Ava in 1746, Boromokot maintained
strict neutrality. In the following year when 'Saming T'oh' lost his
throne he fled to Chiengmai. There, according to Wood,^ he recruited
an army with which he made an unsuccessful attempt to regain his
throne. Then in 1750 he made his way to Ayut'ia. But Boromokot
would not help him and eventually'put him on a Chinese junk bound
for China. He landed on the coast of Annam and made his way back
to Chiengmai. In 1756 with a small band of supporters heoffered his
services to Alaungpaya, who put him into safe custody until his death
two years later.
Boromokot was a peace-loving sovereign and a great patron of
Buddhism. In 1753 the King of Kandy'' invited him to send a deputation of Buddhist monks to purify Sinhalese Buddhism. A commission of fifteen under the leadership of a monk named Upali was sent
to Ceylon. The success of the mission is attested by the fact that the
sect which it founded, known as the Upaliwong or Sayamwong,
became the largest in Ceylon.
Before he died in 1758 Boromokot made his second son, Prince
Ut'ump'on, Uparat in preference to the elder one. But the new king
found his position so difficult that he retired to a monastery in favour
of his brother, who ascended the throne as Boromoraja (1758-67).
He was the last king to reign at Ayut'ia. In the year after his accession
Alaungpaya invaded Siam and besieged the capital. The ostensible
reason for the attack was the Siamese refusal to surrender Mdh rebels'
who had taken refuge in their country, but Alaungpaya was looking
^ Op. cit., p. 235.
' King Kirti Soi was an Indian, but he was a great supporter of the religion of his
kingdpm. Finding the Buddhist hierarchy decadent, he sent deputations to both
Burma and Siam asking for monks through whom he might stimulate a religious^
revival.

CH. 24

SIAM FROM 1688 TO 1851

427

for an excuse to revive the glories of Bayinnaung's reign. The Siamese

assert that even had the Burmese monarch not been mortally wounded
he would have given up the siege, since he was not prepared for a long
campaign and had decided to return home before the onset of the wet
monsoon of 1760. His death merely postponed the next invasion for
a few years.
As we have seen in a previous chapter,^ as soon as Hsinbyushin
succeeded Naungdawgyi in 1763 he began to prepare for another
assault upon Ayut'ia. And even before his main army began to
approach its objective by way of Chiengmai, another force, sent to
capture Mergui and Tenasserim, made such good progress that it
occupied all the Siamese states in the Malay Peninsula and its advance
was only checked at P'etchaburi by General P'ya Taksin,* who was
later to achieve renown as the saviour of Siam. When the full-scale
campaign began, late in 1765, Siam was invaded by three Burmese
'armies, one from Chiengmai, a second by the Three Pagodas route
and the third from the south. Gradually they closed in round the
capital. The siege began in February 1766. The onset of the rainy
season brought no respite, for the Burmese were well supplied with
boats with which to carry on the fight when the surrounding country
was flooded. At the end of the rains Burmese reinforcements poured
in, but the Siamese, who were refused an honourable surrender, held
out desperately until April 1767. Before the end came, P'ya Taksin,
who had come to loggerheads with the incompetent king, cut his way
out with 500 followers and escaped to Rayong on the Gulf of Siam,
where he proceeded to raise a new army. The Burmese destroyed
everything they could lay hands on, except what could be carried
away as plunder. The palace and principal buildings were burnt
along with thousands of private houses. The ruined city was never
rebuilt. When Siam recovered from the disaster a new capital arose
at Bangkok.
When Ayut'ia fell Burma was already involved in serious trouble
with. China. Early in 1768 Ming Jui's invasion threatened Ava and
the situation became critical. Siam was therefore presented with a
wonderful opportunity for recovery, provided the right leader was
available. During the final assault on the city King Borombraja had
disappeared and was never heard of again.
Several members of the royal family had survived the disaster, but
there was no P'ra Naret among them. It was P'ya Taksin who, though
^ Chap. 21.
^ Called 'Paya Tak' by the Burmese.

428

THE EARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

PT. II

half Chinese, became the leader of the resistance movement against

Burmese domination. Immediately after the fall of the city he had
begun to extend his control over the districts neighbouring Rayong.
In June 1767 he captured Chantabun. This success caused thousands
of followers to jpin him. In October he sailed up the Menam and
took T'anaburi (Bangkok), executing the Siamese governor placed over
it by the Burmese. Finally he boldly attacked the camp of the main
Burmese occupation force at Three Bo Trees, close to Ayut'ia, and
won a complete victory.
This success led him to assume the royal power. At first his idea
was to make Ayut'ia his capital, but to do so would have involved
greater resources than he had at his command as yet. His coronation,
therefore, was celebrated at T'anaburi. Siam, however, had fallen
apart. The peninsular provinces were under the Governor of Nakhon
Srit'ammarat, who had proclaimed his independence and assumed the
title of King Musica. Korat and the eastern provinces were controlled
by a son of King Boromokot, who also pretended to royal power. So,
too, did the Governor of P'itsanulok, who called himself King Ruang,
while in the extreme north of his province a Buddhist monk, Ruan,
had established a theocratic state called the kingdom of Fang. Moreover, at Ratburi on the Mekhlong river the Burmese had a strong force
and a fleet of boats.
When the Chinese retreat from the Ava region began in 1768,
Hsinbyushin ordered the Burmese Governor of Tavoy to link up with
the Ratburi force in an attack upon Bangkok. The plan failed completely; P'ya Taksin drove out the Governor of Tavoy's force and
captured Ratburi. The whole of the Burmese fleet stationed there fell
into his hands. He followed up this victory in May 1768 with an
attack on P'itsanulok. This time, however, he was unsuccessful.
Thereupon King Ruang staged a formal coronation and declared himself King of Siam. But he died immediately afterwards, and the monkking of Fang seized his territory.
At the close of the wet monsoon Taksin marched into the Korat
region, where Prince T'ep P'ip'it was assisted by a Burmese force.
Here again he won a decisive victory. The Burmese commander was
killed in battle, and the prince, while fleeing towards Vien Chang, was
captured and executed.
There was still much to be done before Siam was unified, but at
this juncture affairs in Cambodia demanded attention. A fugitive
king, Rama T'ibodi, better known as Ang Non, driven out by his
brother Ang Tong with the assistance of Cochin-Chinese troops, fled

RUINS OF PHRA MONGKHONBOPIT,

AVUT'IA

430

THE EARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

PT. II

to Bangkok. P'ya Taksin demanded tribute of the usurper, and when

this was refused sent his Korat force to occupy Siemreap and Battambang, as a first step towards restoring the exiled king. He himself was
at the time busy with preparations to reduce King Musica of Nakhon
Srit'ammarat, and hence for the time being had to leave events in
Cambodia to take their course. The operations against Nakhon
Srit'ammarat were speedily brought to a successful conclusion, but
when P'ya Taksin returned to his capital in March 1769 his armies
had been defeated and forced to leave Cambodia.
It was useless to attempt at once to reassert Siamese suzerainty
there; the Burmese were threatening from Chiengmai and the monkking of Fang had still to be dealt with. He decided to strike at Chiengmai first. But his attack failed, and while he was away in the north
Mac Thien-Tu of Ha-tien attacked Chantabun and Trat in September
1769. An attack of plague in the invading force, however, saved
the situation and enabled P'ya Taksin to regain the initiative. He himself led a large army to punish this incursion, while at the same time
sending an expedition to deal with the monk-king. The expedition
against P'itsanulok made short work of the kingdom of Fang. The city
itself was easily occupied, and when the monk-king's stockaded capital
of Sawangburi was attacked he fled away to the north and was never
heard of again. P'ya Taksin's expedition was directed first against
Ha-tien, which he took. Then he proceeded up to Phnom Penh, drove
out Ang Tong and replaced him with Ang Non. In 1772, however,
with Vietnamese help Ang Tong defeated the Siamese army and recovered his capital. But, as we have seen above,i he failed to maintain
himself there and the Siamese nominee in 1773 was once more installed as king. And before the Nguyen could attempt to reimpose
control over the distracted kingdom they themselves were overwhelmed by disaster at home. Siam, now rapidly regaining its
strength, remained the controlling power in Cambodia.
As soon as peace was made with the Chinese in 1770, Hsinbyushin
of Burma had begun to prepare fresh aggressive moves against his
eastern neighbours. In 1771 Vien Chang was besieged by the forces of
Luang Prabang and implored his help. At the approach of the Burmese army the siege was abandoned and a way was thus opened for
further interference in northern Siam. In 1772 and 1773 attempts
were made to capture P'ijai, but Siamese resistance caused both to fail
completely. The Mon rebellion of 1773 held up the Burmese plans
for a full-scale invasion of Siam for a time, and P'ya Taksin used the
i Page 400.

SIAMESE SHADOW PUPPET

15

THE EARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

PT. II

breathing-space thus afforded him by marching northwards to deprive

the Burmese of their Chiengmai base. In January 1775 he took the
city and immediately hurried south to undertake the defence of the
homeland. Various Burmese incursions across the border in pursuit of
Mon fugitives had been repulsed during 1774. In February 1775 a
new attack was in progress, and a Burmese force had driven back the
Siamese frontier guard to Kanburi and established itself at Ratburi.
P'ya Taksin's reappearance on the scene, however, soon restored the
situation. In April he captured Ratburi, taking a large haul of
prisoners, while another Burmese force, which was raiding to the
northwards, only just made good its escape. Late in the same year the
Burmese, who had made Chiengsen their base after losing Chiengmai,
made an attempt to recover the latter city, but a Siamese relieving
force drove them off.
At the end of the year the long-prepared full-scale invasion began
under Maha Thihathura. In January 1776 he defeated a large Siamese
army near Sukhot'ai and captured the city. He then besieged P'itsanulok and beat off P'ya Taksin's attempts to relieve it. Before its fall
the Siamese cut their way out, and the Burmese, suffering from
shortage of supplies, were soon forced on to the defensive. They had
to abandon the place and retreat homewards harried by the Siamese,
who inflicted defeat after defeat upon them. The remnant of their
army crossed the border in August 1776. In the previous June-Hsinbyushin had died. His son Singu, as we have seen, was opposed to
further adventures in Siam. But before calling a halt to the war he
made one further attempt to retake Chiengmah It nearly succeeded;
but in September 1776 the Siamese drove off the besiegers. By this
time the city was so impoverished that its governor and most of its
inhabitants left it and settled at Lampang. It remained practically
deserted for some twenty years.
P'ya Taksin had now reunited Siam and driven out the Burmese,
but his reign had been one long uninterrupted series of campaigns,
and the strain began to tell on him. He showed signs of mental disorder. Most of the victories in the Chiengmai struggle and the
operations against Maha Thihathura had been won by General
Chakri, and as the king's insanity developed he became more and more
the director of the national effort. , In 1778 an opportunity came to
assert Siamese overlordship over the two Laos kingdoms of Luang
Prabang and Vienchang. An incursion by the latter into Siamese
territory led to its conquest and at the same time the King of Luang
Prabang was forced to accept Siamese suzerainty.

CH. 24

SIAM FROM 1688 TO 1851

433

Soon afterwards the arrangements made by P'ya Taksin earlier in

his reign for the government of Cambodia broke down and an attempt
was made by the Cochin-Chinese to regain power by setting up the
infant son of the ex-king Ang Tong as king. In 1781 a Siamese army
led by General Chakri went to restore Siamese suzerainty and place
Prince In P'itok on the throne. Before he could carry out his mission,
however, Chakri had to hurry homewards. A serious rebellion had
broken out at Ayut'ia. The rebels declared their intention to kill the
insane king and place Chakri on the throne. An ambitious palace
official, P'ya Sank'aburi, h^d thereupon placed himself at their head,
entered Bangkok, taken possession of the king and forced him to
retire to a monastery. His object was to take advantage of Chakri's
absence to secure his own recognition as king.
Chakri received news of these events from the Governor of Korat,
P'ya Suriya, whom he ordered to repair at once to the capital and
restore order. He himself arrived there in April 1782 to find the
rebellion quelled and the would-be king a prisoner in P'ya Suriya's
hands. Chakri was at once hailed with joy by the populace and urged
to assume the crown. The chief difficulty lay in the continued existence
of P'ya Taksin. The mad monarch was still only forty-eight years old,
and after so glorious a reign might be expected to become a source of
serious internal disturbance. Accordingly in the general purge of rebel
leaders which ensued the restorer of Siamese independence was himself liquidated and General Chakri was elevated to the throne with
the title of Rama T'ibodi.
King Rama I (1782-1809) was the founder of the present reigning
dynasty at Bangkok. His reign was to see another great struggle with
Burma. In the month before he ascended the throne of Siam a palace
revolution at Ava brought to the Burmese throne Bodawpaya, the
ablest of the sons of the great Alaungpaya. A man of boundless
ambition, he aimed at forcing all the neighbouring states to yield to
his sway, and in 1785 the wearisome struggle between the two states
broke out once more and was to last for many years. But the Siam of
Rama I's time was no longer the state that had been reduced to chaos
by Hsinbyushin's devastating armies. It was a victorious power
governed by a tried leader of men, and the Burmese armies suffered
such disasters that the struggle gradually deteriorated into chronic
frontier raiding. The new King of Siam was too wise and too
wary to attempt a major invasion of Burma in reply to Bodawpaya's
disastrous expedition of 1785. He was anxious to turn his attention
to the consolidation of his kingdom and the reorganization of its

THE ROYAL BALLET, PHNOM PENH, CAMBODL\

administration. He did indeed seek to regain the Tenasserim

provinces of Mergui and Tavoy, upon which his country had real
claims. But after holding them for a brief period^ he had finally to
abandon them to Burma in 1792. And although Chiengmai and
Kengtung in the north and the island of Puket (Junk Ceylon) in
the south remained bones of contention between the two kingdoms,
such operations as took place were chiefly of the nature of raids by
local leaders.
Rama I was the founder of modern Bangkok. P'ya Taksin's capital
had been at Dhonburi, on the west bank of the river Menam. Rama I
built himself a palace on the opposite side of the river at Bangkok
proper and surrounded it with a double line of fortifications, and there
under the shelter of the outer wall the present city began to arise.
Much was done to settle not only the administration of the provinces
but also the development of the central government along traditional
lines. Long before he died his kingdom had so far recovered from the
devastation caused by the Burmese invasions and the subsequent
struggles of P'ya Taksin to assert his authority that at the beginning
of the nineteenth century Siam was more powerful than ever before.
And the time was soon to come when she would again pursue an

CH. 24

SIAM FROM 1688 TO 1851

435

expansionist policy aiming at extending her control over the Laos

kingdoms of Luang Prabang and Vientiane in the north, the ancient
Khmer kingdom of Cambodia to the. east, and the Malay states in the
south.
Rama I was offered an opportunity by the Tay-son rebellion, and the
long eclipse of the power of the Nguyen, to strengthen Siamese
influence in Cambodia. His early efforts were severely hampered by
Bodawpaya's attacks on his own country. But the pro-Nguyen boyking Ang Eng was a refugee at his Court. In 1794 he crowned him
king at Bangkok, and in the following year sent him back to Udong,
the capital of Cambodia, with a Siamese army under the command of
Ben, the pro-Siamese governor of the frontier provinces of Battambang and Siemreap (Angkor). For some years Siam was undisputed
master of Cambodia. She took advantage of her position to gain
control of the three Cambodian provinces to the north of Battambang
Mongkolbaurey, Sisophon, and Korat. She ' silently' annexed them
in 1795, writes Adhemard Leclere.* In 1795 also Battambang and
Siemreap (Angkor), under the semi-independent Ben, were transferred from Cambodia to Siam; presumably they were the price with
which Ang Eng purchased his restoration.
The foundation of the empire of Vietnam by Gia-Long in 1802 gave
Siamionce more a competitor for the control of Cambodia. The Cambodian ministers were resolved to give the Vietnamese no excuse for
turning their country once more into a battleground. They therefore
sedulously sent homage and tribute to both Bangkok and Hue, and
Rama I wisely accepted this curtailment of his authority.
This delicately poised situation lasted only until 1812. In that year
Rama II (1809-24) intervened in support of a rebel brother of the
then king Ang Chan, who fled to Saigon. A strong Vietnamese force
reinstated him in the following year, and the Siamese prudently
retired with their candidate, who lived out the rest of his days at
Bangkok. A Vietnamese garrison took over the citadel at Phnom
Penh, and for the time being Siamese influence there was in a state of
eclipse. But the Bangkok government remained ever on the alert for
an opportunity to regain control. Meanwhile it compensated itself by
sending an army in 1814 to Korat which proceeded to occupy all the
territory between the frontier of the province of Prohm-Tep and the
Dangrek mountains, and in addition the provinces of Mlou-prey and
Tonle-Repou, which were too far distant from Udong to be effectively
under the control of the central government. There was no opposition,
Histoire du Cambodge, p. 402.

43^

THE EARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

PT. II

and the Siamese army then proceeded to cross the Mekong and occupy
Stung Treng. By this operation Siam gained possession of a thick
sHce of territory in the north of Cambodia and drove a wedge between
that kingdom and the kingdom of Vientiane, which a few years later
it was to absorb (1828).
Save for this Cambodian adventure Rama IFs reign was free from
any major conflict. The Burmese war went on, but it was chiefly a
matter of raiding and counter-raiding, and it affected only the Malay
Peninsula. In 1810 the Burmese captured the island of Puket (Junk
Ceylon) and besieged Jump'orn, but they were expelled without
difficulty. Another Burmese attack was expected in 1819, but it did
not materialize. Their main energies were now concentrated upon
gaining control over Assam, and Siam had nothing more to fear from
them.
One result of this scare was the deposition of the Sultan of Kedah,
who was discovered to have been in correspondence with the Burmese.
Siam had never forgiven him for having ceded Penang in 1786 and
Province Wellesley in 1800 to the British. In 1821 Siamese forces
invaded his state and he fled to Penang. This was the beginning of a
period of more or less intensive Siamese pressure upon the Malay
states which alarmed the British and resulted in a good deal of activity
on both sides. The story, however, is more conveniently dealt with
in connection with the history of Malaya.^
Ever since the failure of the attempt of Louis XIV to gain control
over the old kingdom of Ayut'ia in the seventeenth century the
Siamese had become inordinately suspicious of Europeans, and every
possible restriction was placed on their trade. During the first half
of the nineteenth century this attitude was firmly maintained. But
one may discern the faint beginnings of change in Rama II's reign.
In 1818 he received a Portuguese envoy, Carlos Manuel Silveira, and
consented to make a commercial agreement whereby Silveira supervised Portuguese trade in Siam. Wood describes his position as that
of Portuguese consul;^ but as it was not until the reign of Mongkut
(1851-68) that any appointment of such a sort by a foreign power was
permitted, the definition cannot be accepted. Moreover, he was given ,
the Siamese title of 'luang' and seems to have carried on his work
entirely under Siamese authority. The East India Company was at
the same time seeking the removal of the restrictions upon the trade
of British subjects in Slam. Letters to this effect and presents were
sent to Bangkok by the Government of India in 1818 and 1819, but
' See chap. 27, a.

* History oj Siam, p. 276.

CH. 24

SUM FROM 1688 TO 1851

437

without avail. In 1821, therefore, Governor Phillips of Penang sent a "^

Singapore merchant named Morgan to Bangkok in a private capacity,
but with the object of collecting information and sounding the Siamese
ministers with regard to the possibility of alleviating conditions. But
the Government of India had also decided to move officially in the
matter, and in the same year John Crawfurd, whose mission is dealt
with in a later chapter,^ made his abortive attempt to break the impasse.
Nevertheless British trade did begin to expand. The Siamese, like the
Burmese earlier on, were unwilling to commit themselves to an agreement in black and white, but they were willing to permit individual
traders to settle in their country. An English trader, John Hunter,
who took up residence in Siam at this time is said to have been the
first of his kind to live there.
Rama II died in July 1824 shortly after the opening of the first
Anglo-Burmese war. Prince Maha Mongkut, his eldest son by a royal
mother, had been expected to succeed him. He was a Buddhist monk
at the time of his father's death. A strong party at Court, however,
placed the dead king's eldest son, though not by a royal mother, on
the throne, and he became Rama I I I . Mongkut was to succeed him
in 1851 and was one of the most remarkable personahties that ever
occupied the Siamese throne.
Rama I l l ' s reign has been described as a 'somewhat unprogressive'
one.2 He represented the old-fashioned traditionalist attitude, which
was becoming dangerously out of date. Britain at first hoped that Siam
would join her in the war with Burma, but Rama I l l ' s government
remained suspiciously aloof, conscious of its clash of interests with the
British in Malaya. This showed itself strongly in the reception
accorded to Captain Henry Burney, the second ambassador to be sent
to Bangkok by the East India Company. He did, however, manage
to conclude a treaty in 1826, which is discussed in its proper context
of Malayan affairs in a later chapter.^ There had been some thought
of offering to cede the conquered Burmese province of Tenasserim to
Siam, but the Siamese attitude on all matters was too intransigent, and
the subject was not even introduced into the negotiations. When
Burney went to Siam the Government of India was considering the
question of resurrecting the old Mon kingdom of Pegu in Lower
Burma. As it was known that there were thousands of refugee Mons
living in Siam, he was instructed to search for any members of the old
Mon royal family who might be amoag them, or any possible candidates for the throne from among the Mons holding high official posts
1 Chap. 27, b.

^ Wood, op. cit., p. 277.

Chap. 27, b.

438

THE EARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

FT. II

in the Siamese service. His report on this subject has considerable

interest, but he could find no traces of any members of the royal
family, nor any suitable candidate outside it.
In 1833 the United States of America sent an envoy to Bangkok
who managed to make a treaty regulating the treatment of American
citizens who might visit Siam. Both Burney and Roberts, the American envoy, tried hard to persuade the king to agree to the establishment of consuls, but to no purpose.
It was in Rama I l l ' s reign that the Laos kingdom of Vientiane was
extinguished and its capital destroyed.^ That was in 1828. This
success emboldened him to make an effort to restore Siamese control
over Cambodia. Accordingly, without any declaration of war, P'ya
Bodin, the conqueror of Vientiane, was sent in 1831 to lead an invasion,
which at the outset was completely successful. The Cambodian army
was defeated at Kompong-chhnang, King Ang Chan fled to Vinhlong, and the Siamese occupied in rapid succession Phnom Penh,
Oudong and Chaudoc. Then fortune turned against the Siamese. The
eastern provinces rapidly armed against them; bands of partisans cut
off and destroyed the detachments Bodin sent out to secure allegiance;
and in attempting to capture Vinh-long he lost his whole flotilla of
war-boats. The Emperor Minh-Mang sent 15,000 Vietnamese troops
who drove out the Siamese pell-mell and replaced Ang Chan on his
throne. When in December 1834 ^^S Chan died unexpectedly of
dysentery the Vietnamese Resident, Ong Kham-Mang, by order of his
emperor, summoned the Cambodian magnates to elect his successor,
since his only son had died a few hours after birth. Siam was not even
informed. And as under Ong Kham-Mang's direction a young princess, Ang Mey, was elected queen it was obvious that Minh-Mang
intended to absorb what was left of Cambodia into his empire. Indeed, he proceeded to reorganize the administration completely,
dividing the kingdom into thirty-three provinces, all with new names
attached to Cochin China. His aim was, as Leclere puts it, to decambodgienniser the country.^
The resentment which this policy inevitably caused played into the
hands of Siam. After seven years of suffering the Cambodians revolted, massacred every Vietnamese they could lay hands on, and the
magnates, meeting in secret, set up a provisional governing committee
whichappealed to Siam for help and offered the crown to Prince AngDuong, who was living under Siamese protection. The aged General
' The subject is dealt with in chap. 23.
" Histoire liii Comhodge^ p. 422.

CH. 24

SIAM FROM 1688 TO 1851

439

Bodin was thereupon in 1841 sent a second time to re-establish

Siamese influence.
- .
It was easy to install Ang-Duong as king. But the Vietnamese were
a tough enemy and there were four years of hard fighting before a
settlement was reached. They had built more than fifty forts with
which to hold down the country. These were all captured by the
peasantry, but the king and his mentor Bodin could not drive out the
Vietnamese army. In 1845, therefore, a compromise solution was
agreed to: Cambodia was to be under the joint protection of both Siam
and Vietnam. Two years later Ang-Duong was consecrated and invested with his royal regalia in the name of the sovereigns of Vietnam
and Siam by the deputies of those two rulers. Such a solution depended for its success largely upon the personality of the Cambodian
king, for neither Siam nor Vietnam abandoned their designs upon his
country. Luckily he was a man of wisdom and piety who was resolved
to give neither side the much-hoped-for opportunity for further
adventures at the expense of his impoverished and unhappy land. He
distrusted the Siamese, regarding them as his enemies; he hated the
Vietnamese. Therefore it was to Bangkok that he sent his eldest son
Ang Voteylater King Norodom, 1860-1904for his education.
Shortly before Rama I l l ' s death both Britain and the United States
made further efforts to obtain more reasonable terms for their merchants. The British were disappointed with the results of the Burney
treaty; they complained of royal monopolies, especially in sugar, and
the prohibition of the teak trade. Sir James Brooke of Sarawak was
the British plenipotentiary, and he arrived in Bangkok in August 1850.
The king was anxious for good relations with Britain, but was too ill
to take part in the negotiations. Brooke's attempts to negotiate a
satisfactory treaty, however, failed. The reasons for this sound
strangely irrelevant.' On the way up the Menam one of his ships
grounded on the bar at Paknam, and he had to ask for assistance to
refloat. Further, rumours were circulated of his own lack of success
in Borneo. Most important of all, his letters were two years out of
date and were signed only by Lord Palmerston, not by Queen Victoria
herself. But such things counted in dealing with monarchies such as
the Siamese of that time.
Brooke was followed by the American Ballestier, who arrived in a
United States sloop of war with a commission from his government to
represent the grievances complained of by American citizens and
obtain a new and more favourable treaty. He failed even more abjectly
than Brooke. He was refused an audience of the king and had to leave
15*

440

THE EARLIER PHASE OF EUROPEAN EXPANSION

PT. II

without presenting the president's letter. He was a merchant who, as

Bowring puts i t , ' had not been fortunate in his commercial operations
at Singapore',^ and the Bangkok ministefs deemed it beneath their
dignity to have any dealings with him. Both Brooke and Ballestier
advised their governments that in their opinion only a warlike demonstration would move the Siamese. But Rama III died in April 1851
and Siam entered upon a new era.
' Sir John Bowring, The Kingdom and People of Siam, vol. ii, p. 211.

PART III

THE PERIOD OF EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

CHAPTER 2 5

INDONESIA FROM T H E FALL O F T H E V.O.C. T O T H E

RECALL OF RAFFLES, 1799-1816
T H E disappearance of the 'Kompenie' made at first little difference
to the management of affairs in Indonesia. No mattei how loudly the
Batavian Republic might echo the French revolutionary doctrine that
liberty and equaj^y were the inalienable rights of men, it was not
prepared to do anything calculated to destroy the value of its East
Indian empire to the home country. The security of that empire, it
was firmly convinced, depended upon keeping its peoples in strict
subordination. Hence while Dirk van Hogendorp, an ex-governor of
the North-East Coast Province of Java and a determined opponent of
Nederburgh, pleaded for the separation of trade from government and
the abolition of forced deliveries and of the economic servitude known
as hierendiensten, Nederburgh's theory, that the native peoples were
naturally lazy and compulsory labour was therefore essential for
their own welfare as well as for Dutch commercial profits, was assured
of the stronger support.
The government took refuge in yet another committee, to which both
men were appointed. It met in 1802 and was charged with the task
of drafting a' charter for the Asiatic Settlements', which would provide
for ' the greatest possible welfare of the inhabitants of the Indies, the
greatest possible advantages for Dutch commerce, and the greatest
possible profits for the finances of the Dutch state'. Its nature may
easily be gauged from the fact that the draft accepted by the committee
was penned by Nederburgh. But it was never carried into effect.
The Napoleonic wars, which had temporarily ceased with the Treaty
of Amiens in 1802, were renewed in 1803 and put an end to all trade
between the Batavian Republic and the colonies. And although the
Charter, issued in 1804, was replaced by a slightly more liberal
Administrative Act, passed in 1806, the replacement of the Batavian
RepubHc by the kingdom of Holland under Louis Bonaparte rendered
that also a dead letter. Louis Bonaparte's one object was to strengthen
the defence of Java against the British, and at the suggestion of his
443

444

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

imperial brother he deputed Marshal Herman Willem Daendels with

dictatorial powers to carry out the task.
Meanwhile affairs in Indonesia had passed through critical phases.
Van Overstraten, who remained in office as governor-general after the
fall of the Company, was mainly concerned with the maintenance of
Java's independence against the threat of a British invasion. In rSoo
an English naval squadron actually blockaded Batavia, but failed to
effect a landing. British preoccupation, first with Napoleon's Egyptian
expedition and afterwards with the internal situation in India, prevented the organization of a force strong enough to deal with Java,
but the remaining Dutch warships at the disposal of Batavia were all
destroyed.
The Peace of Amiens in 1802 brought some relief, for all the Dutch
possessions previously taken over by Britain were restored, with the
sole exceptions of Ceylon and the Cape. The situation, indeed, was
better than might have been expected, for freed from the strict control
of the Board of Directors Batavia had been able to sell its products in
the open market for good prices. Owing to the slave revolt in Haiti,
West Indian coffee production was ruined and neutral shipping,
notably American and Danish, flocked to Batavia. The demand for
coffee was actually greater than Java could supply. Moreover,
relations with the native princes remained good. The Sultan of
Bantam rallied to the support of Batavia when the English attacked
in 1800. Surakarta and Jogjakarta also remained on good terms with
the Dutch. There was indeed serious trouble in Cheribon through
the succession to the throne of an illegitimate son of the sultan, who
died in 1797. But Dutch authority was not threatened, since the
hatred of the population vented itself upon the Chinese middlemen
employed by the sultan. Order was ultimately restored by the Dutch
governor of the North-East Coast Province, who re-established the
legitimate line.
When the European war was resumed in 1803 the British rapidly
reconquered most of the territories they had surrendered. During the
peace interval a Dutch squadron under Hartsinck was sent to Java;
but it arrived in bad condition and inadequately manned. In 1806 it
was destroyed in the roadstead of Batavia by a powerful English fleet
under Admiral Pellew, but no attempt was made to conquer the island.
The one aim of the Dutch authorities at Batavia was to avoid giving
any support to the French and thereby force the British to invade Java.
The accession of Louis Bonaparte to th^ Netherlands throne was
regarded by them with dismay. They wished for no change in the

CH. 25

INDONESIA, 1799-1816

445

position of semi-independence, which had brought them prosperity

and a full treasury. But now Daendels was appointed to reorganize
the administration and strengthen the military defences of Java in the
French interest.
The new governor-general had begun his career as an advocate at
Hattum, where he had headed the Patriots in their struggle against the
Princely Party. When the stadhoudership was restored, he had fled
to France and taken service in the French army. In 1793 he served
under Dumouriez as commandant of the Batavian Legion in the
abortive attack on the republic. He returned with the French in 1795
and proved such a mainstay of French power that Napoleon conferred
on him the rank of marshal. He was a great admirer of Napoleon, and
under his influence had developed from a revolutionary demagogue
into a full-blooded supporter of military dictatorship. He arrived in
Java on i January 1808 after a long and adventurous voyage via
Lisbon and Morocco.
Invested with special powers which made him supreme over the
Council of the Indies, Daendels took full advantage of the fact that all
communications with the homeland were cut to behave in a thoroughly
independent manner. With tremendous energy he set about the task
of strengthening Java's defences. The army was increased and
improved, and, since it was impossible to obtain reinforcements from
Europe, new regiments of native troops were enrolled and trained.
Stern discipline was enforced, but at the same time better measures
for the welfare of the troops were introduced than had ever been
known under the Company's rule. Barracks and hospitals were built,
a gun foundry was opened at Semarang and an arms factory at
Surabaya. Surabaya itself was fortified, while Batavia was strengthened
by the construction of new forts at Weltevreden and Meester-Cornelis.
To improve military communications a great mailroad was constructed
from Anjer to Panarukan, a distance of 1,000 kilometres. The overland
journey from east to west was thereby reduced from a matter of forty
to six and a half days, but the work had to be carried out by forced
labour and entailed immense loss of life. Possessed of no warships
owing to the destruction of Hartsinck's squadron in 1806, Daendels
built a fleet of^mall fast vessels based on Meeuwenbaai and Merakbaai
in the Sunda Straits, and in the east at Surabaya. This eastern base
was further strengthened by a second fort. Fort Lodewijk, which was
erected on an island in the Madura Straits.
Early on Daendels attempted a thoroughgoing reform of the administration of Java. His aim was naturally to introduce the most complete

^ 5

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

and rigid centralization, and in order to carry it out he had no compunction whatever in riding roughshod over everything that stood in
his way. Thus he aboHshed the governorship of the North-East Coast
Province and divided the land into five divisions and thirty-eight
regencies, all of which were brought directly under the control of
Batavia. The whole island was parcelled out into nine divisions under
landdrosts standing directly under the central government, and the
native chiefs, known as regents, previously semi-autonomous native
rulers, were declared to be officials of the Dutch government, given
military rank and paid salaries. The change, designed to safeguard
them in their relations with European officials, had the effect of
reducing both their incomes and their status in the eyes of their
people. The Residents in the native states, who had previously
received their instructions from the governor of the North-East Coast
Province, now came directly under the control of Batavia, with their
title changed to that of minister.
Daendels' instructions, besides laying special emphasis upon his
military mission, entrusted him with the task of examining the possibility of abolishing the compulsory cultivation of coffee and forced
deliveries, and of improving conditions of life among the native
peoples. How much serious attention he gave to these matters is
doubtful, for he seems to have unquestioningly accepted the stock
Dutch verdict on the Javanese as lazy. Instead of abolishing the compulsory cultivation of coffee he increased it to such an extent that the
number of coffee trees rose from 27 to 72 million, while the price for
the forced deliveries was reduced. But he did his utmost to suppress
illegal emoluments, and to see that all payments were made direct to
the cultivators. Inspectors were therefore appointed to check abuses,
and the coffee cultivator was freed from all other forms of hierendiensten. He also improved the lot of the blandong people, whose forced
labour in the teak forests was little better than slavery, by an issue
of rice and salt. But his belief was that the best means of ameliorating
the condition of the Javanese was to stamp hard enough on corruption.
That the organization and practice of the judiciary of Batavia had
long needed complete overhaul was recognized by the Charter of 1804.
In particular a proper system of justice for the native according to his
adat (i.e. customary usage) had never existed under the Company.
This shameful situation Daendels sought to end by establishing courts
in every regency and division (landdrostambt) wherein justice would
be dispensed according to adatrecht. These were separate from the
Councils of Justice established at Batavia, Semarang and Surabaya

CH. 25

INDONESIA, 1799-1816

447

which dealt with cases involving foreignersi.e. Europeans, Chinese,

Arabs and any who were not natives of Java. In these justice was in
accordance with Dutch-Indian law. In the lower native courts native
officials and priests sat on the bench. The prefecture courts were presided over by the landdrost with a Dutch official as secretary and a
number of native assistants. A system of appeal also from the lower
courts to the Councils of Justice was instituted. Daendels' method
of segregation in matters of justice took root and was further developed
by his successors. But he was in office for too short a time to do
more than lay its foundations. He had in practice little respect for
legal processes, even such summary ones as were conducted under
martial law.
Both in his lifetime and ever since opinion has been sharply divided
on the question of the quality of Daendels' work in Java. So powerful
were the accusations levelled against him that in 1814 he published an
apologia entitled Staat der Nederlandsche Oostindische bezittingen onder
het bestuur van den G. G. H. W. Daendels, together with two immense
volumes of documents. Through no fault of his, just when he was
doing his utmost to stimulate coffee production, the British blockade
was tightened to such an extent that the bottom fell out of the market
and he had millions of guilders' worth of unsaleable goods on his hands.
Unfortunately his administration cost more to run than any previous
one. The expense of his military and naval preparations alone was
staggering. But he had also given substantial increases of pay to
government officials as one means of reducing corruption. His first
issue of paper money failed because the government had no credit
with which to back it. Hence he resorted to the expedient of selling
land to private persons. On the plea that all land not in the possession
of the native princes was government domain, he sold not only large
estates of land but also the rights over the cultivators previously
enjoyed by the government.
One of his most spectacular deals was the sale of the Prabalingga
lands for a million rix-dollars ( = 2^ million guilders) to the KapiteinChinees Han Ti Ko under an agreement whereby the capital sum was
payable in instalments. But his need of ready money caused him to
issue so many paper notes on the strength of this deal that before
long his ' Prabalingga paper' was worth only a fraction of its face value,
and many people refused to accept it. In his frantic search for means
of acquiring an adequate revenue he floated forced loans, farmed out
opium dens and introduced a state rice monopoly, whereby all rice
had to be delivered to the government, which sold it at a profit to the

448

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

public. He even compelled the banks to hand over their coin to the
treasury in return for paper.
His greatest weakness showed itself in his dealings with the native
princes. His dictatorial and tactless methods alienated them to such
a degree that when the inevitable British attack came they ' emulated
each other in disloyalty' to the Dutch regime. His demands for labour
brought strife with the Sultan of Bantam. When some of the sultan's
Dutch guards were murdered together with their commandant,
Daendels personally led an army which stormed and plundered the
city. He shot the chief minister, banished the sultan to Amboina and
declared his state royal domain of the King of Holland. He issued new
regulations for 'ceremonial and etiquette' under which Dutch officials
were forbidden to pay the traditional marks of honour to the ruling
princes and must wear hats in their presence. This sort of treatment
did more to undermine their loyalty than almost anything else. His
high-handed treatment of Amangku Buwono H, Sultan of Jogjakarta,
threw that ruler into the arms of the British. A quarrel between the
sultan and the Susuhunan of Surakarta caused the former to increase
his army beyond what Daendels considered reasonable. He therefore
found an excuse to invade the sultan's dominions and depose him in
favour of the heir-apparent, who was appointed prince-regent. But
the deposed sultan had so much secret support that as soon as Daendels
was recalled to Europe he resumed his old position and entered into
correspondence with the British.
Daendels sacrificed everything to the defence of Java. Of the Dutch
stations in other parts of the Archipelago, those difficult to defend or
unprofitable, such as Banjarmasin in Borneo, were abandoned. Others,
such as Palembang in Sumatra and Macassar in Celebes, had their
garrisons reduced to a minimum. For the spice-bearing Moluccas he
sho\ved more concern, and Amboina was reinforced by the French
colonel Filz and 1,500 men. But the garrison lacked money and
provisions, and when the British attacked in iSio.the native troops
were disloyal and Filz had to surrender. He had done his best under
impossible conditions, but on his return to Batavia the Iron Marshal
had him court-martialled and shot. Mutiny among the native troops
was also the cause of the fall of Ternate to the British. Then speedily
all the remaining Dutch posts outside Java fell.
It was now Java's turn; but before Lord Minto's g;reat expeditionary
force appeared off Batavia in 1811, the Tuwan Besar Guntur ('great
thundering lord'), as the Javanese dubbed him, had been recalled. So
many complaints against him had been made by high officials to King

CH. 2 5

INDONESIA, 1 7 9 9 - 1 8 1 6

^ 449

Louis that he appointed General Jan Willem Janssens in his

stead.^ Janssens had been governor of Cape Colony when it fell for the
second time to the British. He was now faced with a second hopeless
task.
In August 1810 the English East India Company's Board of Control
issued instructions to Lord Minto, the Governor-General of India,
t h a t ' the enemy' was to be expelled from Java. There was no thought
in their minds of the permanent occupation of the Dutch empire:
their one object was to counter Napoleon's designs for the encirclement of India. The work of Daendels'in Java was the direct cause of
the expedition launched against the island in i S i i . Dutch historical
writers^ have represented this step as the result of the persuasive
powers of the young Thomas Stamford Raffles, a junior official at
Penang, who was employed by Minto to prepare the way for the
enterprise by establishing relations with discontented native princes
throughout the Archipelago.
Raffles was thirty years old at the time of the Java expedition. At
the age of fourteen he had entered the East India Company's office in
London as a clerk. His immense industry earned him rapid promotion,
and in 1805 he was sent to Penang as assistant secretary with a salary of
j(^ 1,500 a year. Penang had just been raised to the status of a presidency
with a governor and council and was expected to become a great
trading centre for the East Indian islands. On the outward voyage
he made an intensive study of the Malay language, and soon after his
arrival in Penang his proficiency in it was considered remarkable by
people who met him. Through personal contacts with Malays and the
study of their culture and history he became an expert in what was
then to the Britisher a little-known oriental field.
Lord Minto's attention was first drawn to Raffles by his fellowcountryman Dr. John Leyden, also an accomplished student of Malay,
and in 1810 Raffles himself took leave from his duties in Penang and
paid a visit to Calcutta, where he met the governor-general in person
and discussed with him the situation in the Archipelago. His knowledge and enthusiasm so impressed Minto that before the end of the
year he was appointed ' Agent to the Governor-General with the Malay
States'. Then, with his headquarters at Malacca, he began to make his
' On his return to Europe Daendels served with Napoleon's ill-fated Russian expedition of 1812. After Napoleon's fall he offered his services to King William I of the
United Netherlands, who sent him as governor of the Dutch settlements on the west
coast of Africa. There he died in 1818.
" See F. W. Stapel: Geschiedenis van Nederlandsch-Indie, 1930, p. 221. But Vlekke's
interpretation of the events leading to the conquest of Java is more acceptable (Nusantara, pp. 238-9). See also Coupland. Raffles of Singapore, p. 26.

CO

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT.

Ill

plans for the annexation of Java to the East India Company's eastern
empire.
Minto's objective was to give the coup de grdce to French influence
in the East, not to increase the British empire, and his plans envisaged
taking over the administration of Java with Dutch co-operation
wherever possible. Leyden and Raffles, however, were at one in their
belief that Dutch rule in the East was utterly pernicious, and that
British 'justice, humanity and moderation' should be used to give a
better life to the native peoples whom they had so long oppressed.
Raffles's oiriginal idea, therefore, was that the Indonesian princes
could be prevailed upon voluntarily to accept the superintendence of
the Government of India, which would exercise its control in the
form of a protectorate of much the same kind as was to be introduced
later in Malaya. It was in this spirit that he set about the task of
working upon the minds of the native rulers in the Dutch empire.
Janssens assumed the management of affairs in Java in the full
knowledge that the British were preparing an invasion. He found the
population restless and discontented, and the princes so embittered
by Daendels' behaviour that their support could not be relied upon.
The financial situation at Batavia was so desperate that he could
barely find the necessary money for the ordinary expenses of government, let alone any consideration of further defensive preparations.
To make matters worse, Jumel, the commander of the few French
troops he had with him, was totally unfit for his post.
At the beginning of August 1811 the British fleet of about 100
ships carrying an expeditionary force of some 12,000 men appeared
before Batavia. The city was occupied without a blow, since the
incompetent Jumel had taken up a defensive position at Meester
Cornelis. Janssens then took over the command, rejected Lord
Minto's call to surrender, and for sixteen days put up a splendid
resistance before being forced to beat a retreat in the direction of
Buitenzorg. The retreat, however, soon degenerated into a disorderly
flight; and despairing of making an effective stand in the west,
Janssens made his way eastwards with all speed to organize the defence
of central Java.
On I September he arrived at Semarang, where he took up a good
position on a hill to the south of the city and awaited reinforcements
from the Javanese rulers. In this, however, he was disappointed: the
preliminary work carried out by Raffles had completely undermined
the loyalty of the princes. When the British landed at Semarang,
therefore, he was in a very difficult position. His ttoops panicked and

CH. 25

INDONESIA, 1799-18x6

451

killed many of their Dutch officers. He himself with a small force

escaped to Tuntang, where he was forced to ask for an armistice'. By
the capitulation, signed at Semarang on 17 September, he agreed to
surrender Java and ail its dependent posts, including Palembang,
Timor and Macassar, to the British. It was further stipulated that all
officials who were willing to transfer to the British service might
remain in office.
Meanwhile Lord Minto had issued a proclamation setting forth the
principles upon which the new government was to be based. The
Bengal system of administration was to be established. The Dutch
legal system was to remain in force, but torture was to be abolished.
The paper money issued under Dutch rule would be recognized, but
not that issued by Daendels after the annexation of the kingdom of the
Netherlands by France. The native peoples were promised an amelioration of their condition, and in particular the abolition of contingencies
and forced deliveries.
Raffles, who had accompanied the expedition, was appointed
Lieutenant-Governor of Java and its dependencies, Madura, Palembang, Banjarmasin and Macassar. He was to work with the assistance
of an advisory council composed of the commander-in-chief Gillespie
and the Dutchmen Cranssen and Muntinghe. The last-named, with
a fine record of service under Daendels, proved the most influential
member of this group; his ability and wide knowledge of the Indies
were made full use of by Raffles, who was soon on such friendly terms
with his Dutch colleagues that Gillespie, already irritated at having
to serve under so young a Company's servant, became uneasy and
hostile. On 19 October Lord Minto left for Bengal. 'While we are in
Java', he said to Raffles,' let us do all the good we can.' Rarely in the
East India Company's history had a man of Raffles's age been called
to a position of such heavy responsibility. Owing to the distance of
Java from Bengal, his position was one of virtual independence.
The new lieutenant-governor's first efforts had perforce to be
directed to the establishment of relations with the princes. His agents
had supported a rebel chief, Pangeran Ahmed, against the puppet
Sultan Mahommed set up by Daendels when he made his spectacular
incursion into Bantam. He now decided to support Mahommed, and
accordingly arrested Alyned and banished him to Banda. Mahommed,
however, was regarded by many of his subjects as illegal and found
himself unable to quell the chronic unrest in his territories. In 1813,
therefore, he surrendered his powers to Batavia in return for a large
annuity and the retention of the courtesy title of sultan. Such was

^p^

RONUGENG OR DANCING GIRL

(Raffles: History oj Java)

CH. 25

INDONESIA, I 7 9 9 - 1 8 1 6

453

the end of the kingdom of Bantam. The Sultan of Cheribon received

similar treatment. He had caused the Dutch serious trouble on
account of his appalling misrule. Daendels had reduced him to
the rank of a regent. But his dominions remained in a state of
unrest and Raffles's action provided the only logical solution of
the problem.
In Jogjakarta the deposed Sultan Sepuh resumed office from his
son, the prince-regent, as soon as the British arrived. John Crawfurd,
who became Resident at his Court, soon reported that both he and the
Susuhunan of Surakarta were disloyal. In December 1811 Raffles
went to Semarang to deal with the affairs of the two states. There he
was met by the chief minister of the susuhunan; Sepuh, however,
sent only a letter couched in such terms as to arouse serious suspicions
regarding his intentions. Raffles went personally to Surakarta to
settle relations with the susuhunan. The affairs of Jogjakarta he
placed in the hands of the experienced Muntinghe. With the susuhunan Raffles made an agreement whereby he received back the
territories seized by Daendds, but subject to certain special conditions. He was to recognize British overlordship on the same terms
as he had previously made with the Dutch, to accept the central
government's jurisdiction over all non-Javanese inhabitants of his
realm and its supervision of his correspondence.
With Sepuh Muntinghe made a similar arrangement. The terms
were better than Sepuh might have expected, having regard to his
arrogant attitude. He was foolish enough to think bhat such mild
treatment was a sign of weakness. He began to increase his armed
forces and fortify his capital. Raffles therefore resorted to stern
measures. With an army of 1,200 men under Gillespie he entered
Jogjakarta, deposed and banished Sepuh, and placed the former
prince-regent on the throne as Amangku Buwono III. Sepuh's
treasury, containing Spanish dollars to the value of 2 million guilders,
was confiscated as war booty for the troops.
In the captured kraton Raffles discovered evidence of intrigues with
the susuhunan against British rule. He therefore marched on Surakarta and forced that princp to make a new agreement whereby he lost
the districts previously restored to him and had to reduce his army
to the strength of a mere bodyguard. He had also to agree to vest the
appointment and dismissal of his chief minister in the hands of the
central government. In all the native states contingencies and forced
deliveries were abolished, while tolls and the farming of opium were
taken over by the government in return for a cash compensation.

454

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

In asserting his authority over the dependent states such as Palembang, Madura, Bah, Banjermasin and western Borneo, with all of
which he had intrigued against the Dutch before the invasion of Java,
Raffles had to deal with one very ugly incident for which the Dutch
have laid much of the responsibility at his door. The Sultan of
Palembang, on learning of the British landing at Batavia, surprised
the Dutch garrison in his city and murdered them all, together with
the women and children. In the previous, year Raffles had indeed
written urging him to 'expel and annihilate all Hollanders'. When
Raffles's commissioner, ignorant of what had taken place, arrived to
demand the surrender of the Dutch fortress at Palembang the sultan
blandly announced that he had driven out the Dutch before the
capitulation of Janssens and was therefore independent. He refused
to make a treaty recognizing British overlordship. Raffles thereupon
announced publicly his intention to punish the sultan for the massacre.
In April 1812 Gillespie, at the head of an expeditionary force, captured
the city. T h e sultan escaped, and his brother Ahmed Najam was
placed on the throne in his stead. As compensation for the massacre
the new ruler had to cede the tin-bearing islands of Banka and Billiton
in return for a cash payment. Only when he had firmly established British authority was Raffles
free to apply himself to the tasb of administrative reform. A close
study of his measures shows that they were a blend of British-Indian
methods and of proposals already made by Dirk van Hogendorpion the
basis of the Bengal system. He divided Java up into sixteen landdrostampts, entitled Residencies, among which both Surakarta and
Jogjakarta were included. T h e Resident performed administrative
and judicial functions and in addition acted as collector of government
revenue.
The greatest innovation was the introduction of a general tax on
land. Raffles's aim was to substitute this for all compulsory services,
contingencies and forced deliveries. He declared the government the
sole owner of the soil. The Javanese inhabitants therefore became
government tenants paying rent for the laiid they cultivated. The
rent was levied not on individuals but on desas, and was to be assessed
according to the productivity of the soil. The most productive landwas to pay half its yield, the worst a quarter only. The average was
estimated at two-fifths. The cultivator had the free disposal of the
remainder of his produce, which was in most cases rice. He rnight
pay his dues in either rice or money. If the latter,,he could make it to
the desa headman, who paid it into the divisional office. If in rice.

CH. 25

INDONESIA, 1799-1816

455

he had to convey it at his own expense to the Residency headquarters.

Thus the local chief's opportunities for graft were reduced, since he
no longer had a personal interest in the yield of the crops and lost
much of his power of demanding fqrced services. As a government
servant he was to receive a fixed salary.
But such a revolution in the lives of the great majority of the people
could not be carried out by a stroke of the pen. It was not until late
in 1813 that preparations were far enough advanced for a start to be
made in practice. And it was found to be too difficult, or too inconvenient, to introduce it into the important coffee-producing districts
of the Preanger, where the system of compulsory cultivation and
deliveries was deeply rooted. At the time Napoleon had his back to the
wall in Europe, and the restoration of peace was calculated to cause a
boom in Java coffee. In view of the scarcity of money, therefore, it
looks as if the hope of selling the coffee at a huge profit was the real
determining factor in this case; for Java did not pay its way, and Raffles
well l^iew that there was no hope of persuading the British government
to hold on, to the island if he could not prove it to be an economic
proposition. In the teak-bearing districts also the old compulsory
services remained in force.
It was not long before Raffles realized that his new methods brought
neither the revenue increase nor the improvement in the position of
the cultivator that he had hoped for. In the system of desa assessment
the headman still possessed too much power in the apportionment of
lands among the inhabitantsj- Raffles therefore went over to the
method of individual assessment. But the relations inside the desa
were very complex, and without a detailed cadastral survey it was
quite impossible to work out individual assessments fairly. His
attempt to inti'oduce such a survey failed through lack of time and
qualified staff. For instance, in Surabaya only 50 out of 2,700 villages
could be. surveyed. Hence the revenue demand in most cases had to
be fixed according to the arbitrary estimates of the Residents. In
practice also the abolition of all compulsory services proved unworkable, and the previously existing arrangements for the maintenance
of roads and bridges by the people continued.
On the question of slavery Raffles, as a disciple of Wilberforce, had
strong views. The institution, however, was too firmly established
for him to attempt its complete abolition. Hence he had to take what
practical steps he could towards alleviating the lot of slaves and increasing their chances of liberation. He began in 1812 by imposing a
tax on the keeping of slaves, and by issuing an order whereby the

456

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

importation of new slaves into Java and its dependencies was forr
bidden as from the beginning of January 1813. Shortly afterwards
he passed a regulation prohibiting the slave trade throughout the
Archipelago. In 1815 he deprived the police of the power to hold an
unwilling slave under arrest at the requestj of the owner. One longstanding evil of native origin, the pandelingschap, whereby a debtor
with his wife and children could be seized by his creditor for an unpaid debt and made to work for him without pay, was wholly forbidden.
Finally, in the year of his recall home, he founded the Java Benevolent
Institution to carry on propaganda against slavery. The net result of
his campaign was that, although slavery still existed, there was a great
reduction in the number of slaves.
In his energetic overhaul of the whole range, of the existing administration Raffles reported that Daendels' reorganization of the judicial
system was 'complicated and confused'. Much of it, however, had
never been carried out. In order to simplify procedure he abolished
the old Supreme Court and Court of Aldermen and provided the three
large ports of Batavia, Semarang and Surabaya with a Court of Justice,
a Court of Requests and a Police Court. These courts administered
Dutch colonial law in civil cases, and in criminal cases used British
procedure with a jury. In all legal processes torture was abolished.
In the matter of native jurisdiction he abolished the courts set up by
Daendels and substituted for them sixteen .Land Courts, one for each
Residency. For criminal cases involving the death penalty he instituted
a Court of Circuit {Rechtbank van Ommegang), which conducted the
case at the place of the crime.
Finance had been one of the weakest features of Daendels' administration. In his own day Raffles was charged with financial inefficiency,
and the directors of the East India Company accused him of rendering
the occupation of Java 'a source of financial embarrassment to the
British government'. He believed that the introduction of the landrent system would provide a surplus which would covef expenditure.
Revenue did indeed increase, but expenditure-also increased, and
every year saw a deficit. He started off with one appalling handicap:
he had to carry out Lord Minto's promise to redeem the paper money
still in circulation from the Dutch period at the rat^ of zCper centdiscount. The burden this imposed on/the treasury prevented him
from carrying out his proposal to abolish the oppressive^toll-gates
and free internal trade. The estabUshment of a state monopoly in
salt together with an import duty of 10 per cent, on all imports into
Java failed to cover the deficit. Hence Jie had to adopt Daendels'

CH. 2 5

INDONESIA, 1 7 9 9 - 1 8 1 6

457

expedient of selling government land to private persons. But it

brought little profit, partly because the land was sold in very large
plots to purchasers with inadequate capital at their disposal. Moreover,
there was so much discontent with the landlords created by Daendels'
sales that he had to redeem much of the land sold to them. The land
sales, however, were rnerely a temporary expedient for dealing with
an immediate need. His land-revenue system must be judged by its
long-term results. It was retained by the Dutch when Java was
restored to them, and ultimately justified RafHes's own expectations.
As Furnivalll himself an expert in land-revenue matters, puts it,
RaflSes's calculations were not wrong but merely too optimistic.^
The range of, Rafiies's activities was too great for an adequate
survey to be attempted in a work of this kind. The literature that
has accumulated on the subject, in Dutch as well as in English, is
considerable,^ and to this the reader is referred for further light on
what'is only touched on here. General Gillespie, who repeatedly
disagreed with him, left for Bengal at the end of 1813, and soon
afterwards began a series of spiteful attacks upon him which caused
the directors of the East India Company to conduct an inquiry into
his administration. Although he was cleared of all the charges, both
the directors and Lord Moira, Minto's successor as GovernorGeneral of India, were so dissatisfied with his work that early in 1816
he was removed from office and returned home.
He had dreamed of making Batavia the centre of a new British
empire of the islands. But soon after the introduction of his land-rent
system Napoleon fell and the Netherlands regained independence.
Lord Castlereagh's announced aim, long before the meeting of the
Congress of Vienna, was to create a strong kingdom of the Netherlands
as part of his plan to render impossible any further movement of
French aggression in Europe. Hence he turned a deaf ear to suggestions
that Britain should retain .the Dutch eastern empire, and by the
Convention of London, signed in August 1814, Britain promised to
restore it to the Netherlands. But the Dutch hopes of receiving it
back were Ijemporarily shattered by Napoleon's escape from Elba,
t

^ Netherlands India, p. 77.

* See especially Lady RaiBes, Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir Thomas
Stamford Raffles (1930); T . S. Raffles, Substance of a Minute recorded on 11 February
1814 and other documents (1814). Biographies by Demetrius Charles Boulger (1897),
H . E. Egerton (1900), J. A. Bethune Cook (1918) and Sir Reginald Coupland (1926).
F. W. Stapel, Het Engelsche Tiisschenbestuur in vol. v of his Geschiedenis van Nederlandsch Indie (1940); M. L. Van Deventer, Het Nederlandsch gezag over Java en onderhoorigheden sedert 181,1 (1891); H. D. Levyssohn Norman, De Britische heerschappij
over Java en Onderhoorigheden i8ii-i8i6
(iSs7)-

458

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. I l l

and Raffles seized the opportunity to send home a comprehensive

exposition of Java's importance to Britain. The directors, hovs^ever,
faced by the undeniable fact that he had I so far failed to make ends
meet in Java, were in no mood to oppose Castlereagh's decision, and
after the final defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo arrangements were made
to hand over the Netherlands Indies. Before that took place, in
August 1816, Raffles had left Java, and it fell to his successor, John
Fendall, to carry out the promise n?ade two years earlier.
Some idea of the importance of Raffles's work in Java may be
gained from the fact thit on regaining control the Dutch accepted most
of his administrative and judicial reforms, though with certain changes.
But in the long run it was the spirit in which he had laboured that had
the most lasting effect, for it touched the imagination of the .more
liberal-minded Dutchmen and inspired them with his philanthropic
ideals. He had set the welfare of the native peoples as the supreme
end of government. Moreover, although he was in Java for slightly
less than five full years, he was able to accumulate a knowledge of its
people, languages, institutions and history which was beyond praise,
especially when one takes into account the fact that at the time they
were badly neglected by the Dutch themselves. It was he indeed who
ordered the first survey of the magnificent Borobodur and drew
attention to the need to preserve the ancient monuments that aroused
his admiration when he toured the island. He was not only a very
active president of the Batavian Society, of Arts and Science but he
gave powerful support to the researches of scholars such as Thomas
Horsfield, the American naturalist; John Crawfurd, the author of
many distinguished contributions to oriental knowledge;^ and-Colin
Mackenzie, who in the course of investigating land ownership collected
scientific material and studied Javanese antiquities. Raffles's own
History of Java, first published in 1817, was the first comprehensive
work on its subject. ' I n scientific acumen', writes F. W. Stapel,
'Raffles stands head and shoulders above earlier Dutch governors.'^
' His History of the Indian Archipelago was published in 1820. In 1856 he expanded
it to form his still valuable Descriptive Dictionary of the Indian Archipelago and Adjacent
Countries.
-~
' Geschiedenis van Nederlandsch Indie (1930 edition), p. 232.

CHAPTER 2 6

BRITISH BEGINNIN.GS I N MALAYA:

T O SINGAPORE

BACKGROUND

THE acquisition of Penang in 1786 by the English East India Company

was dictated by inotives of n ^ a l strategy.. Commercial considerations
were, of course, involved, but they bore small relation to the trade of
the Malay Peninsula, and the Company had no intention whatever of
expanding its political control over Malaya. Pitt's India Act of 1784
had firmly laid down the doctrine of non-intervention, and Warren
Hastings' successor, Lord Cornwallis, was determined to observe it
to the utmost of his ability. Moreover, since the abandonment of the
factory at Patani in 1623 the Company l^d lost interest in Malaya.
Great things had been expected of the Patani factory when it was
founded by the Globe in 1612.^ It was regarded as one of the key
places for trade in the East, along with Surat, the Coromandel Coast
and Bantam. Its function was envisaged as the headquarters of the
Company's trade in Siam, Cambodia, Cochin China, Borneo and
Japan. When Dutch competition forced its abandonment no further
effort was made to establish a trading post in the Peninsula, save for a
small, short-lived agency planted at Kedah in 1669 for the purchase
of tin.
Ever since about the year 1687 strategic considerations rendered it
increasingly necessary for the British to have a naval station on the
eastern side of the Bay of Bengal. Up till then the west coast of India
had been the chief centre of British power, and Bombay the sole important naval station. But in 1687, with the sudden appearance in the
Indian Ocean of a pftwerful French fleet bound for Siam, and the
subsequent French seizure of control over Mergui for use as a naval
repair depot,^ a new phase in the naval strategy of the East India
Company may be said to have begun. For Madras at once realized
the danger to the British factories on the Coromandel Coast that such
a depot constituted. And although Louis XIV's Siamese adventure
t

' Supra, pp. 278, 337. T h e most comprehensive account of European trade at
Patani is H. Terpstra's De Faitorij der Oostindische Companie te Patani, Verhandehngen van het Koningklijk Instituut, 's-Gravenhage, 1038.
^ Supra, pp. 34S-6i
459

460

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

came to a sudden and sorry end, it provided the British with an object
lesson, too little heeded at first, but later to become increasingly important when the Anglo-French struggle fpr the upper hand in India
was found to depend very largely upon the question of naval control
over the Bay of Bengal.
'
In this contest the east coast of India, and especially the Coromandel
Coast, became the centre of gravity. Now not only was there no good
roadstead for ships on the Coromandel Coast, but with the changeover
from the south-west to the north-east monsoon in October they all
became positively dangerous owing to the violent hurricanes which
blew up during that month and November. Hence a fleet must retire
to a safe port early in Octobernot later than the 12th, said naval
experts. During the south-east monsoon, which begins to show itself
early in May, the Coromandel Coast was quite safe for ships, though
at times the continuous high surf would prevent communication with
the shore. This might be very inconvenient for ships undergoing
repairs; for there was no dockyard available, arid repairs had to be
undertaken in an open roadstead. /Seriously disabled ships, therefore,
which could not be repaired while riding at anchor, must make theirway to Bombay,
^
During the eighteenth, century, with naval battles generally being
fought in the Bay of Bengal during the; period of the south-west monsoon, the need for a repair depot on its eastern coast became a matter
of urgency. For after the break imposed by the storms of October and
November the side which could have a squadron in the Bay the
earliest^and the Coromandel Coast was safe from January onwards
scored an immense,advantage in attacking the other's settlements and
sea-borne commerce. For the British this became a particularly
acute problem from 1740 onwards, when the development of the excellent harbour at Mauritius by Labourdonnais gave the French a
decided advantage, which Dupleix was quick to seize during the War
of the Austrian Succession.^ British experience showed that a fleet
could not leave the Coromandel Coast to refit at Bombay and be at its
station again before the beginning of April. In this way three valuable
months were lost, when an enemy fleet which had refitted at a more
convenient depot could dominate the Bay.
>
---'During the hostilities between the English East India Company and
Siam resulting from the depredations carried out by the Mergui freebooters in the sixteen-eighties, the Madras Council had considered the
island of Negrais, just south of the mouth of the Bassein river, as a
^ Dodwell, Dupleix and Clive; see also Cambridge History of India, v, pp. 119-23.

CH. 2 6

BRITISH BEGINNINGS IN MALAYA

461

possible naval repair station and a base from which to deal with enemy
activities on the eastern side of the bay. But the attempt to occupy
the island miscarried, and the decision was taken to seize Mergui
itself. After the 'Mergui massacre' of 1687 it was decided to give the
Mon port of Syriam a trial, and in September 1689 the frigate Diamond
was sent there for repairs. This was, as we have seen above.i the
beginning of a long association with the port as a repair depot.
The French also, at Dupleix's instigation, opened a dockyard at
Svriam, and between 1730 and 1740 both nations were building ships
there. Then came the Mon revolt, which offered Dupleix a tempting
opportunity to intervene, once his hands were freed by the conclusion
of the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in Europe. So we have the sorry story
of the British settlement at Negrais and the abortive French attempt
to save the Mon kingdom from disaster. Alaungpaya, the conqueror of
the Mons, destroyed both Syriam and the Negrais settlement, and the
East India Company cut its losses in Burma and concentrated on
defeating the French in India, for these events occurred during the
Seven Years War.
British experience in that war underlined the need for a repair depot
in at least a more convenient place than Bombay. In October 1758,
after a campaign on the Coromandel Coast against d'Ache's squadron,
the British admiral Pocock had to take his squadron off to Bombay for
refitting and was absent until the end of April 1759. During his
absence a French squadron appeared in the bay and Lally, attacking
Madras by land, was able to besiege the city for sixty-six days. Luckily
for the British, six Company's ships arrived from Europe on 16
February and Lally at once abandoned the siege. It is not surprising,
therefore, that when the war ended in 1763 the directors of the Company sent orders for a search to be made for a suitable port on the
eastern side of the bay.
Under these circumstances one might at first wonder why no suggestion is heard of a possible return to Burma. Alaungpaya, it will be
remembered, had died in 1760, and his successor, Naungdawgyi, had
tried to persuade the Calcutta authorities to reopen trade with his
country. The French indeed did go back after a discreet interval.
The prisoners taken from their ships decoyed up the river when
Syriam fell performed useful service to the Court of Ava, and some rose
to positions of responsibility. Through one of them, Pierre Milard,
who became Captain of the Royal Guard, good relations were established with Pondicherry, ^nd in 1768 a French envoy named Lefevre
''Chapter 19.

^62

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. I l l

obtained from King Hsinbyushin permission to open a dockyard at

Rangoon. Little is known of the history of this venture, but it
produced a number of excellent teakl ships, one of which, the
Lauriston of 1,500 tons, took part with some success in the French
naval operations in Indian waters during the War of American
Independence.
'
British attention, however, was now directed to quite a different
quarter. New factors resulting from the commercial revolution
which occurred in the Indian Ocean in the mid-eighteenth century
began to exercise a predominant influence. These were the rapid
expansion of trade between India and China on the one hand, and on
the other the weakening of Dutch control over the trade of Malaya
and Indonesia. The revolution was the work of British private captains and merchants, who,,while the East India Company was engaged
in defeating the French and laying the foundations of its territorial
dominion in India, gained control over h e r ' country' trade and played
a vital part in developing her commercial relations with China.
The expansion of India's trade with the Far East arose out of the
difficulties experienced by the European East India Companies in
finding means of financing their purchases of Chinese goods without
exporting silver from Europe. The 'country' traders helped to solve
their problem by exporting raw cotton from Bombay to China, by
taking Indian waresnotably Coromandel Coast piece-goods and
Bengal opiumto Malaya and Indonesia, where they exchanged
them for dollars or other commodities in demand at Canton and
Macao, and, in the end, by smuggling opium into China.^ Under
these circumstances the clear need in the second half of the eighteenth
century was for a harbour which would combine the advantages of
a repair station with those of a trading centre for the Malay Archipelago, and at the same time would lie on a main sea route to China.
When the Dutch forced the English East India Company to withdraw from Bantam in 1682, it planted a settlement at Bencoolen on the
west coast of Sumatra. Unfortunately this proved to be too far away
from the principal trade routes, and British ships in need had normally
to seek the shelter of Batavia. The exorbitant charges of the Dutch
there were the source of bitter complaints. Nor, Jas it -turned out,
could their friendship be relied on. Thus the expanding trade with
China could be threatened by their control over/the straits of Malacca
and Sunda.
' Holden Furber, John Company at Work (1948), chap. 5, T h e 'Country' Trade of
India.

CH. 2 6

BRITISH BEGINNINGS IN MALAYA

463

All kinds of projects for combating this difficulty came under consideration from time to time. One, which attracted the attention of
both the English and French East India Companies towards the end
of the seventeenth century, was to occupy the island known as Pulo
Condore lying off the western mouth of the Mekong. When the
British tried the experiment in 1702, however, it proved a failure.^
Another, which was fathered by the Madras authorities during the
Seven Years War, was to look for a site either in the Sulu Islands or in
the islands immediately to the north of Borneo. The idea arose out of
Commodore Wilson's discovery in 1757-8 of what came to be known
as the eastern or 'outer' passage to China. On a voyage to China in
the Pitt he had arrived at Batavia in 1757 too late to go to China by the
usual course through the South China Sea. He had therefore sailed
eastwards with a north-west wind through the Moluccas, and thence
by the coast of New Guinea in order to pick up the north-east wind in
the Pacific. With this he had then kept well to the eastwards of the
Philippines and passed between Luzon and Formosa, eventually reaching Canton in a shorter time than by the usual route. His report on the
islands he had seen or heard of induced the Madras Secret Committee
to send Alexander Dalrymple in the Cuddalore to establish relations
with the Bugis Sultan of Sulu and seek for an establishment somewhere in his dominions. He was also to report on the harbour used by
traders in the Nicobars.
Dalrymple left Madras in 1759. On 28 January 1761 he concluded
a treaty of friendship and commerce with the Sultan of Sulu, under
which the Company was granted permission to purchase ground for
a trading station on condition that it would assist the Sultan if he were
attacked. In the following November he made a separate agreement
with the Dato Bendahara, who was the principal merchant in Sulu,
whereby he was to bring a cargo of Indian goods, in exchange for
which he was to obtain a cargo of Sulu goods for sale in China. He
expected to make a profit of 400 per cent on his original outlay. It
seems doubtful if the venture realized the hopes placed in it, but
his second voyage, made in 1762 in order to carry it through,
enabled him to make up his mind as to the most suitable site to become
the Company's headquarters for trade in the Malay Archipelago. This
was the island of Balambangan in the Sulu Sea, just thirteen miles
distant from the most northerly point of Borneo.
In September 1762 he made a treaty vnth the Sultan of Sulu for the
cession of the island, and shortly afterwards went there and hoisted
* See above, chap. 22, a.
!16

-64

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

the Union Jack. In that same year Manila was captured from the
Spaniards by Cornish and Draper's expedition coming from Madras.
Dalrymple, who was present at the capture of the city, found that the
legitimate Sultan of Sulu, Alimud Din, was a prisoner there, and that
the sultan, Bantila, with whom he had been dealing was a usurper.
The legitimate sultan was so* delighted ak being set at liberty by the
British that he gladly confirmed all Bantila's concessions. Dalrymple,
to whom fell the task of restoring him to his throne, was able to
negotiate with him a new treaty containing still larger cessions of
territory. But it was some time before he could take any steps towards
realizing them in practice, for under the Treaty of Paris (1763), which
ended the Seven Years War, Manila was to be restored to Spain, and
in 1764 he was appointed provisional deputy governor for the purpose
of superintending the transfer. After carrying out this task he paid a
visit to Cantoa before returning to Madras.
T o his great disappointment Madras accorded a cold reception to his
proposals. He accordingly returned to England in 1765, hoping to persuade the directors of the East India Company to ratify his treaty and
establish a settlement on Balambangan. They, however, wanted a site in
a much less remote region. They were particularly interested in Acheh
in Sumatra, and missions had been sent there in 1762 and 1764. But the
sultan was unswervingly hostile to any plan for a European fort to be
erected in his country. Attempts to find a suitable site were made in the
Sunda Straits and to the south of them. But the search was fruitless.
The failure of all these attempts made the directors more amenable
to Dalrymple's arguments. Moreover, in 1767 he published a pamphlet,
'An Account of Discoveries in the South Pacific Ocean before 1764',
which probably helped his cause. Soon afterwards he applied for the
command of the expedition fitted out in 1768 by the Admiralty to
observe the transit of the planet Venus, but was turned down by Lord
Hawke in favour of Captain James Cook. Then it was that the directors
decided to plant a settlement on the island of Balambangan and
offered him the management of it.
Dalrymple, who, according to'Sir John Laughton,^ held ^higher
opinion of the value of his services than other people, now ruined his
chances of leading the expedition by quarrelling violently with the
directors regarding his powers, and further by publishing his version"
of the controversy in pamphlet form.^ He had been turned^down by
^ DNB, s.v. Alexander Dalrymple.
' 'An Account of what passed between the East India Company Directors and
Alexander Dalrymple', 1769.

CH. 2 6

BRITISH BEGINNINGS IN MALAYA

465

Lord Hawke for demanding a Royal Navy commission. Now he

insisted that the absolute management of the venture should be vested
in him without control. The quarrel culminated in March 1771 with
his dismissal on the grounds that he had failed to pay due deference
and obedience to the Court of Directors.^
The plan for a settlement, however, was actually carried through;
in December 1773 the Britannia, under the command of Captain John
Herbert, arrived at Balambangan to establish a settlement there.
Herbert's mismanagement of the business entrusted to him was
scandalous, but it was not the cause of the ignominious end of the
settlement a little more than a year after its foundation. The island
was found to be in the heail of a pirate-infested region, and in
February 1775 the settlement was surprised and completely wiped
out by Sulu pirates. Herbert and a few survivors got away to Brunei.
They persuaded the sultan of that state to cede the island of Labuan
to the East India Company, and in April 1775 actually took possession
of it. J n the following November, however, they were withdrawn
under orders from the directors.
The Balambangan scheme was to be revived later under very
different circumstances. But even if it had succeeded it would not
have solved the naval problem of t h e ' defence of British interests
in the Indian Ocean. It would have assisted the China trade and
provided an entrepot for the trade of the Malay world. There were,
however, those who hoped to find a place which would satisfy all three
requirements. In 1769 Francis Light came forward as an exponent
of this school of thought. He suggested that the island of Bintang,
south of Singapore, was from this point of view the best place for a
settlement.
Light was a merchant captain in the service of the firm of Jourdain,
Sullivan and De Souza of Madras, which carried on trade with the
ports in the Straits of Malacca. Like so many of the ' country captains'
of his time, he was an ex-naval officer. He'had an intimate knowledge
of the various Malay states, and the pressure he brought to bear upon
the East India Company did at last attract its attention to the region in
which he was interested. In 1771 the directors instructed Madras to
inquire into the nature of the trade that private firms were carrying on
with Acheh, Kedah and other places nearby, and consider making a
further approach to the Sultan of Acheh.
* T h e Balambangan story has been told by Johannes Willi of Gais in The Early
Relations of England with Borneo to 1805 (Langensalza, H. Beyer und Sohne, 1922),
a dissertation submitted to the University of Berne for the doctor's degree.

-56

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

Madras was naturally sceptical of the prospects of doing anything

in Acheh, but when, in 1771, Light was in Kedah he found the sultan
very anxious to secure European help against the neighbouring state
of Selangor, whose forces had invaded his territory. At Light's suggestion he wrote a letter to the Governor of Madras, but received a
noncommittal reply. Light therefore wrote to his firm asking them to
let Fort St. George know that in return for help the sultan was willing
to cede the port of Kedah to the Company. Then, finding that this
drew no response from the Fort St. George authorities, and fearing lest
the Dutch might get wind of the proposal, he wrote on 17 January 1772
direct to Warren Hastings urging immediate acceptance of the offer.
When at last, as a result of all this pressure, Madras did act, it sent
accredited agents to both Acheh and Kedah. Both missions failed.
The Sultan of Acheh refused to discuss the proposals submitted to
him by Charles Desvoeux. The Sultan of Kedah, on the other hand,
was only too anxious to co-operate in return for a guarantee of assistance in case of an attack by Selangor. Light negotiated an agreement in such terms, and knowing well that the Company would refuse '
to accept anything involving military commitments, yet at the same
time convinced the mere promise of help would be sufficient to deter
any would-be aggressor, skilfully persuaded the Madras agent, the
Hon. Edward Monckton, to initial it. But the Madras Council flatly
refused to confirm the agreement, oflFering as their excuse a baseless
rumour that the Sultan of Selangor, in anticipation of trouble, had
called upon the Dutch for help. And although Monckton went on to
sound the rulers of Trengganu and Riau, it was to no purpose, since
'the stuttering boy', as the disappointed Sultan of Kedah dubbed him,
could not bind the Company to the one condition without which no
Malay ruler would grant the facilities sought.
For twelve years Light's project languished. It was, of course,
shortly after the failure of the missions of Desvoeux and Monckton
that the ill-starred attempt to settle on Balambangan was made. Then
followed the War of American Independence with the consequent
revival of the Anglo-French struggle, not to mention the fourth AngloDutch war of 1780-4. Warren Hastings was far tod harasged with
other matters to pay attention to the project; and although LighFsaw
him personally in Calcutta in 1780, and this time urged the occupation~
of Junk Ceylon, where he had settled as a private trader on his own
account, neither troops nor money could be spared.
The renewed war vvith France was soon to furnish Hastings with
fresh object lessons, if indeed he needed any, of the dangers to which

CH. 2 6

BRITISH BEGINNINGS IN MALAYA

467

the Coromandel Coast was exposed when French naval operations were
directed by a leader as redoubtable as de Suffren. Between February and
September 1782 the French admiral fought a series of four indecisive
engagements with Sir Edward Hughes. Then he took his fleet off to
Acheh Roads to refit. Hughes remained off the Coromandel Coast
in case his opponent should decide on yet another attack. He stayed
too long. In the middle of October his squadron, was so severely
damaged by a hurricane that he had to make his way to Bombay to
refit. Before he could return in the following year, de Suffren had
driven British commerce out of the Bay of Bengal and nearly succeeded
in blockading Calcutta.
Another interesting incident occurred in 1783. The French Arrogant and the British Victorious fought a duel, after which the former
put into Mergui to refit, while her rival had to go all the way to Bombay. Thus does Mergui return to the picture. It had been wrested
from Siam by Alaungpaya in 1759. But its importance was slight now
that it was no longer the gateway from the Indian Ocean to Siam.
. The capture of the French settlements during the war had led to the
abandonment of the French dockyard at Rangoon. Mauritius therefore developed a close connection with Mergui. This was to cause the
British further trouble during the struggle with revolutionary France
which began in 1793.
As soon as the Peace of Versailles was concluded in 1783, Hastings
himself began to take positive action. In 1784 a further agent, Kinloch,
Iwae sent to Acheh, while another, Forrest, went to Riau. Several
other sites also came under reviewthe Andamans, the Nicobars,
Trincomalee in Ceylon, and the Hugh. In 1785 the directors appointed
a committee to examine the New Harbour in the Hugh. After sitting
for three years they reported that not only was the site unsuitable for
a naval base but also there was not one anywhere on the Indian side
of the Bay of Bengal.
Meanwhile both the missions sent to the other side of the bay in
1784 had failed. The Sultan of Acheh, when approached about the
base previously used by the French, was as hostile as ever. The Sultan
of Riau was under effective Dutch control. For the Dutch, thoroughly
alarmed by their naval weakness in the 'Fourth English War', were
engaged upon a series of efforts to restore their supremacy in Indo. nesian waters. Forrest therefore found himself forestalled at Riau by
van Braam's squadron.
It was at this juncture that Light came forward with his suggestion of
Penang. The acting Governor-General of India, Sir John Macpherson,

^g

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

had his eye on Junk Ceylon, but Light persuaded him that
Penang was preferable. It was closer to the Straits of Malacca and
only a week's sail from the Coromandel ICoast. Macpherson recommended the scheme to the directors and suggested the appointment of
Light as superintendent of the proposed settlement. The directors
agreed, but made it quite clear that they did not regard the occupation
of the island-as a solution of the naval question. To them it was a
move towards breaking the Dutch monopoly, a means of helping
Malay rulers to resist 'Dutch attempts to enslave them', and of
securing the greater safety of the China shipping. Naval opinion for
another ten years considered the Andamans preferable as a base. In
1786 the island was occupied by agreement with the Sultan of Kedah.^
It was during the war with revolutionary France that naval opinion
changed in favour of Penang. The French invasion of the Netherlands, and the consequent issue of the 'Kew Letters' of February'
1795, led to the British occupation of a large number of Dutch forts
and factories, including Malacca, Amboina, Banda and the stations on
the west coast of Sumatra. Penang and Bencoolen were used as bases
for the naval expeditions carrying out these operations. And when in
1797 it was decided to send an expedition commanded by Arthur
Wellesley to destroy Spanish shipping at Manila in the Philippines,
Penang was its rendezvous. Wellesley himself sent a highly favourable
report on the place to the Government of India. Every possible effort
was made to divert the trade of captured Malacca to Penang, and in
1800, in order to develop its harbour, the territory opposite on the
nainland was purchased from the SultaA of Kedah and became
Province Wellesley. The height of the boom period in the hopes
cherished for the port was reached in 1805, when it was raised to the
status of a fourth Indian presidency.
Then came gradual disillusion. Raffles, Ayho arrived there as
assistant secretary in September 1805, was not long in realizing that
it lay too far to the west of the Archipelago to become a great trading
centre for the islands: the pirate-infested waters of the Straits were
too grave a deterrent to native shipping. Moreover, so far as the
Dutch empire was concerned, Penang was' outside the gates'. Malacca
lay in the narrowest part of the Strait's, and in 1808, when-he visitedthe city, he was shocked by the efiForts that were being made to destroy
it as an emporium in favour of Penang. As a naval base also Penang
ultimately justified the scepticism expressed by the directors in 1786.
Dockyards could not be built there and the local timber was unsuitable
' Infra, chap. 27, a.

CH. 2 6

BRITISH BEGINNINGS IN MALAYA

469

for shipbuilding. In 1810 Malacca was the centre from which, as

agent-general for Lord Minto, Raffles organized the conquest of Java,
and in the following year the rendezvous of the expedition which
carried out the operation. In 1812 the plan for making Penang a naval
station was finally abandoned.
By that time Raffles, as Lieutenant-Governor of Java and its dependencies, was already planning the permanent substitution of British
for Dutch rule throughout the Malay Archipelago, and the whole
situation had become revolutionized. When later his dream was
shattered by the decision of the home government to restore the
Netherlands Indies to the new kingdom of the United Netherlands,
and the disappointed empire-builder was relegated to Bencoolen, the
new scheme that began to take shape in his fertile brain envisaged
once more the acquisition of a station that should be 'inside the gates'
of the Dutch empire.
There were now several schemes in the air. If we may go back a
few years, the Treaty of Amiens of 1802 had provided for the restora tion to the Dutch of all the powers and privileges they had possessed
before the year 1795. But the British posseission of the Moluccas had
proved of great value to the China trade. Hence in 1803, when faced
with the necessity of handing them back, Lord Wellesley, the GovernorGeneral of India, decided to reoccupy the island of Balambangan. It
had a good harbour for sheltering and provisioning a fleet in the
eastern seas, and he thought it might be a useful place from which to
keep a watch upon the Dutch in the Moluccas and the Spanish in the
Philippines.
Accordingly R. J. Farquhar, the British Resident at Amboina, on
receiving instructions to restore that island to the Dutch, was told to
take charge of an expedition to resettle Balambangan. This he accomplished at the end of September 1803. Then on 7 December he went
on to Penang to become its lieutenant-governor, leaving behind a commissioner in charge of the settlement. In the course of the next year
Balambangan was placed under the jurisdiction of Penang, and Farquhar drew up an outline scheme for the complete reorganization of
British trade in the Malay Archipelago. It involved the^fortification of
Balambangan and the formation of a network of treaties with all the
rulers of the Archipelago.
In 1805, however, the settlement was abandoned. The Court of
Directors had vetoed Wellesley's plan to reoccupy the island as soon
as the information reached them. The renewal of war with France
and the Batavian Republic involved the reoccupation of the Dutch

_0

EUKOPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

FT. I l l

islands and settlements, and troops and ships could not be spared for
such a venture. Farquhar protested against the abandonment of the
island and commented bitterly upon the Company's indifference to
the problem of piracy. Biit the attention of the Board of Directors was
concentrated upon India, and every question was examined purely in
the light of its bearing upon the British position there. Men such as
Raffles and Farquhar, with a South-East Asian, as distinct from an
Indian, outlook, laboured under a severe handicap.
Thus when the decision was made to restore the Dutch empire hot
only Raffles but Farquhar as well was on the look-out for a station
'inside the gates'. In 1818 while Resident at Malacca, Farquhar cast
his eye on the west coast of Borneo. The Dutch, however^ got wind of
his intentions and forestalled him at Pontianak, the only feasible place
for his purpose. He also visited Riau and advised the Bugis underking to surhmon British help immediately if the Dutch attacked.
In that same year Raffles paid a yisit to Calcutta and won over the
governor-general, the Marquess of Hastings, to his jjroject for establishing ' a station beyond Malacca, such as may command the southern
entrance to those Straits'. Riau was the place that both had in mind.
But in case the Dutch were to forestall him, as they had Warren
Hastings's agent Forrest in 1784, Raffles was instructed to 'open a
negotiation with the Chief of Johore' for a site in his dominions.
Furthermore, before dealing with the southern end oi the Straits
he was to make one more effort to persuade Acheh to permit the
Company to plant a settlement;
On arrival at Penang Raffles learnt that the Dutch had beaten him to
Riau. Bannerman, the governor, was violently opposed to the whole
scheme. Raffles therefore decided that no time must be lost in carrying
out the plan for a station to the south of the Straits: the Acheh negotiations must wait. He accordingly sailed southwards, picking up on his
way Colonel Farquhar, who, having surrendered Malacca to the
Dutch, had been instructed by Calcutta to postpone his departure on
furlough and join with Raffles in his mission.
Farquhar's suggestion was to try the Carimon Islands at the extreme
southern end of the Straits. But they were found unsuitable. So _also
was Siak on the coast of Sumatra. So thfey sailed, for? Johore, and on
the way, 'either by accident or design', says Swettenham,^ landed on
the island of Singapore on 28 January 1819. Raffles at once decided
that here was the ideal site for his purpose. The Malay chief there
was the Dato Temenggong of Johore. He was willing to permit the
' British Malaya, p. 66.

'

CH. 2 6

BRITISH BEGINNINGS IN MALAYA

4yi

British to plant a settlement on the island, and two days later a ' Preliminary Agreement' was signed by both parties. It was clear, however, that this could only have force of law if confirmed by the Sultan
of Johore. The question was, who was the Sultan of Johore ?
It will be recalled that at the end of the eighteenth century the
empire of Johore had split into three main divisions.^ The sultan had
become the puppet of the Bugis Raja Muda, the Governor of Riau,
and his effectual rule was limited to the Riau-Lingga Archipelago. The
sultan's continental dominions were divided between two great officers
of state, the Temenggong of Johore and the Bendahara of Pahang. In
1803 Sultan Mahmud II had installed the Bugis Raja Ali as Raja
Muda, or under-king, and entrusted him with the guardianship of his
younger son, Tengku Abdur-Rahman. The elder son, Hussein, who
was his destined successor, he had entrusted to Engku Muda to bring
up. The young man had married a sister of the temenggong and a
daughter of the bendahara, and, as Winstedt puts it, Mahmud had,
by marrying him to relatives of the two greatest Malay chiefs in the
empire, clearly planned to enable him as emperor to maintain the
balance of power against the Bugis.*
While Hussein was away in Pahang in 1812 for the celebration of
his marriage with the bendahara's daughter, however. Sultan Mahmud
died,,, and Raja Ja'far, who had succeeded Raja Ali as under-king,
persuaded Tengku Abdur-Rahman to accept the throne. When Hussein returned home he was unable to recover his rights. And the
Dutch, in obtaining control over Riau in 1818, ignored him and made
their treaty with Abdur-Rahman. Raffles ascertained that the provisions of the treaty applied only to Riau, and concluded that the
Dutch could lay no claim to Singapore. He chose, therefore, to regard
Hussein as the rightful sovereign and invited him to be installed at
Singapore as Sultan of Johore.
Hussein had no difficulty in leaving Riau, where he-had been living
in poverty, and on 6 February 1819 was proclaimed sultan at Singapore. On the same day he and the temenggong signed a treaty confirming the 'Preliminary Agreement' made on 30 January. In return
for granting the East India Company liberty to plant factories in his
dominionSj'he was to receive an annual allowance of 5,000 dollars and
the temenggong one of 3,000.
Thus did Raffles acquire Singapore for Britain. He installed Farquhar as its first governor and wrote home: 'What Malta is in the
West, that may Singapore become in the East.'
' Supra, chap. 17.

* History of Malaya, p. 168.

CHAPTER 2 7
I

T H E STRAITS S E T T L E M E N T S AND BORNEO, 1786-1867

(a) From the acquisition of Penang to the Anglo-Dutch treaty of 1824
Francis Light took possession of the island of Penang on 11
August 1786 and renamed it Prince of Wales Island he and Sir John
Macpherson, the acting Governor-General of India, were under no
illusions regarding the fact that the young Sultan of Kedah made the
grant almost entirely for the sake of obtaining assistance to maintainhis independence.! This had been made perfectly clear in a letter
written in the previous year by the sultan to the Government of India,
wherein he explained the terms upon which he was willing to permit
the British to settle on the island; In accepting the grant the Government of India sent the sultan assurances so worded as to induce him
to believe that it also accepted the obligation involved. Light himself
certainly hoped, possibly believed, that the sultan could count on the
assistance of the Company should the kind of occasion arise that was
envisaged, namely an attack by Siam. Soon after taking 9ver he.
assured the sultan that while the British v?ere there they would assist
him if distressed.
Nevertheless in January 1787 the Government of India decided not
to make a defensive alliance with Kedah. And although for the rest of
his life Light continued to urge that the Company was in honour
bound to grant the sultan's request, and the sultan himself became so
angry that in 1791 he made an abortive attempt to expel the British
from Penang, the Company firmly maintained its attitude. The
matter assumed real importance in 1821, when Siamesejorces invaded
Kedah, drove out the sultan, and indulged in an orgy of frightfulness
against his subjects. The Company refused to assist him; and n^otwithstanding the series of definite refusals by the Conjipany..from^ 17.87
onwards to commit itself to a defensive, agreement, the sultan contended that it had broken its word to him.
WHEN

' T h e matter is dealt with at length in Sir Frank Swettenham, British Malaya, pp.
36-54; L. A. Mills, British Malaya, 1824-186';, pp. 33-42; and Sir Richard Winstedt,
A History of Malaya, pp. 174-83.
472

CH. 27

THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS AND BORNEO, 1786-1867

473

The most striking thing is that his contention was supported by a

number of British officials, among whom were John Anderson, Robert
Fullerton and Raffles himself, besides the great majority of nonofhcial Europeans in Malaya. From the point of view of strict legality
the sultan was undoubtedly wrong, but there can be equally no doubt
that in occupying Penang the Company assumed a moral responsibility towards Kedah which it shamefully refused to recognize, and
thereby, to quote Swettenham's words, 'sullied the British name and
weakened its influence with the Malays for many years'. To a practical
man such as Light the Company's attitude was beyond comprehension.
'Two companies of sepoys,' he wrote to the governor-general, 'with
four six-pounder field pieces, a supply of small arms and ammunition,
will effectually defend this country against the Siamese.' His own
belief was that neithei" Siam nor Burma would attack Kedah so long
as they thought that Britain would support the sultan. The history of
Siamese relations with the Malay sultanates in the nineteenth century
goes far to show that his confidence was justified.
The original agreement under which Penang was occupied by the
British did not take the form of a treaty. When in 1791, after Light
had defeated the sultan's weak effort to retake the island, he signed a
treaty ceding it in return for a pension of 6,000 dollars a year, the
document contained no provision for the protection of Kedah by the
East India Company. In 1800 a second treaty was made by which
the sultan ceded a strip of land on the opposite mainland, and his
pension was raised to 10,000 dollars a year. Again there was no
mention of a defensive alliance. The Company merely bound itself
to refuse shelter to rebels or traitors from Kedah and to protect the
coast from 'enemies, robbers or pirates' that might attack it by sea.
The omission, however, did not mean that the sultan had abandoned
his claim to protection. He had defined his position in his original
letter of 1785 laying down the conditions upon which he was prepared
to permit the occupation of the island.
The question of whether Kedah in 1786 was an independent state
and had the power to cede territory to the East India Company has
also been the subject of much debate. The fact that Siam could allege
ancient claims to overlordship over the whole of the Pensinsula and
the states therein is of no consequence. China could make similar
claims to the whole of South-East Asia, including Siam herself. Burma
in 1786 actually claimed the allegiance of Siam by virtue of conquest as
recent as 1767 and was attempting to vindicate her claims by force of
arms. Kedah sent the Bunga Mas, the ornamental plants with leaves

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

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474
and flowers of gold and silver, every thr;ee years to the Siamese capital.
She might also be called on for contributions of men and money. But
such obligations must not be judged by European ideas of international
law. They were common practice throughout Indo-China; weaker
states would undertake them towards stronger neighbours as a form
of insurance against interference; often, as in the case of Cambodia in
her relations with Siam and Vietnam, with more than one superior
simultaneously. Exactly what the Bunga Mas signified cannot be
precisely defined, but Siam herself in sending it triennially to Peking
would have flouted the notion that she thereby demonstrated that she
was not an independent state. So much depended upon circumstances. In 1786 Siam had long before expelled her Burmese conquerors, but was still in no position to pursue a forward policy in
Malaya. Kedah was thus to all practical purposes independent. But
Siam was recovering rapidly and was soon to make a powerful effort
to assert her pretensions over the states of Malaya.
Under Francis Light as its first superintendent until his death in
1794 the new settlement flourished. Immigrants flowed in steadily,
and the system of free trade, which was in force up to 1802, enabled
it rapidly to become a valuable distribution centre, where the products
of India and Britain were exchanged for Straits produce such as rice,
tin, spices, rattans, gold dust, ivory, ebony and pepper. In 1789 the
total value of its imports and exports amounted to 853,592 Spanish
dollars and five years later was nearly double this figure. Light was
anxious to introduce the growth of spices. His attempts to grow
cloves, nutmeg and cinnamon failed, but with his encouragement and
financial support a Chinese introduced pepper plants from Acheh, and
the experiment was ultimately crowned with success. Penang's chief
weakness lay in the fact that it could not produce enough food for its
increasing population. Its dangerous dependence upon Kedah for
supplies was one of the reasons for the acquisition of territory on the
mainland in 1800. The hope was that sufficient rice could be grown
in Province Wellesley, as the new territory was nanied, to make it
independent of foreign imports.
Light had had no previous experience of administration.. He alienated land unconditionally and himself appropriated large estates. "No
land was reserved for public purposes and there was no land revenue.'
Owing to the heavy mortality rate much land came upon the market,
only to be bought up by the firm of Light's friend, James Scott, which
had almost a monopoly of the import and export trade and of banking.
Not until 1807 did Penang have legally established courts or a code of

CH. 27

THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS AND BORNEO, I786-1867

475

law. The Government of India in 1788, and again in 1794, issued a

few general rules laying down the mode of trial in criminal cases and
the nature of the punishments. Light had to preserve order by imprisonment and other common punishments. He could not deal with
murder or offences by British subjects. Each nationality on the island
had its own system of law, and petty civil cases were tried by the
captains of the different communities, Chinese, Malay or Tamil. More
important ones were dealt with by the superintendent's European
assistants. Not a single magistrate was a trained lawyer until John
Dickens, a Calcutta barrister, was sent to the settlement in 1800. He
stated that the only law in force was the law of nature; a later commentator more appropriately described it as a rough-and-ready application of the dictates of common sense. In 1807, after over twenty
years of chaos, the directors obtained the sanction of the British
Parliament to establish a Recorder's Court at Penang. Along with it
British civil and criminal law was introduced, subject to the proviso
that in its procedure the court must consult native religions and
usages in so far as they were compatible with the spirit of English
law.
From 1786 until 1805 Penang was a dependency of Bengal. During
the early part of this period the Company was unable to make up its
mind whether the island was suitable for a naval base. The capture
of Malacca in 1795 raised expectations that its trade would be transferred to Penang. Its use in 1797 as a rendezvous for the force intended for an expedition against Manila, and Arthur Wellesley's
glowing recommendation, caused opinion as to its prospects to swing
over from cautious hesitation to extravagant optimism. At last the
much-sought-for site for a naval base had been found. Hence the
acquisition of Province Wellesley in 1800 to give control over both
sides of the harbour and make Penang as far as possible independent
of external food supplies.
In 1805, when hopes for the future of the island were at their
highest, but when there were no public buildings save temporary
structures, no schools, no proper legal system, and the settlement was
far from paying its way, it was raised to the rank of a fourth Indian
presidency with more than fifty officials, among whom were covenanted civil servants from India. Naturally the extravagant hopes soon
began to give way to disappointment and disillusion. The harbour
was excellent, but it was found to be quite unsuitable for a naval base.
Dockyards could not be constructed there, and Burma was the nearest
source of good timber. Then its commerce did not develop according

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

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476
to expectation. It was badly placed for trade with the Archipelago;
it was too far to the west for native vessels to run the gauntlet of the
pirate-infested waters of the Straits whenl nearer harbours were available. As these disadvantages became clearer so did official alarm at the
cost of its upkeep increase. For it had fair too many officials and an
average deficit of ^80,000. Some pruning took place in 1826 when
Malacca and Singapore were transferred from Bengal to Penang, and
the presidency of the Straits Settlements was formed. Four years
later, however, the presidency was abolished. The Straits Settlements became a Residency under the Governor and Council of Bengal.
Then in 1832 their capital was transferred to the rapidly developing
Singapore.
The history of Malacca under British rule during the Napoleonic
period has yet to be written. In the year before the outbreak of the
French Revolution an Anglo-Dutch treaty was signed which provided
that should a European war break out either party might occupy the ,
colonies of the other as a defence against a common enemy. It was in
accordance with this agreement that the exiled Stadhouder, William
V, signed the 'Kew Letters' in February 1795 authorizing the Dutch
colonies to admit British forces, to prevent them from falling into
French hands. The consequent British occupation of Malacca was
unopposed by the Dutch. The Dutch governor and troops left, but
the council was retained in order that the administration might be
continued in accordance with Dutch methods. Already Malacca's
population had declined to 1,500 compared with Penang's level of
20,000 reached in that year.
Not only was everything possible done to attract trade from Malacca
to Penang, but in British hands the opportunity was seized of demolishing the splendid old fort A Famosa lest one day the British might have
to attack the city. Even more vandalism might have been committed
had not Raffles gone on a holiday there from Penang in 1808 and
written a report which, as Winstedt puts it, saved Malacca. Incidentally he vastly overestimated its strategic value when he advised
the Company that it should be retained 'until we are actually obliged
to give it u p ' . Malacca was to have been restored to the Dutch under
the Treaty of Amiens (1802), but the war with Napoli^on sfa'rted u p "
again before it was handed over, and it was not until 1818 that the
Dutch received it back.
Raffles's visit to Malacca in 1808 had more important consequences
than the salvaging of an ancient city, for his report aroused the interest
of Lord Minto, the Governor-General of India, in its writer and led

CH. 2 7

THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS AND BORNEO, 1 7 8 6 - 1 8 6 7

477

to his appointment in 1810 as Governor-General's Agent to the Malay

States. His task was to soften up Java's resistance to the projected
British invasion by estabhshing relations w^ith native rulers. Thus
was the way prepared for his remarkable career and its greatest
achievement, the foundation of Singapore.
The difficulties which beset the new settlement in 1819 were formidable. Not only might serious Dutch opposition be expected, but
there were many on Raffles's own side who were more than capable
of selling the pass. Some of his old colleagues in Penang were so
jealous of his meteoric rise that they had done their utmost to prevent
him from carrying out his scheme to plant a settlement south of the
Straits. Colonel Bannerman, the Governor of Penang, who had tried
hard to persuade him to abandon the scheme, was so consumed with
jealousy, both of Raffles and of what he rightly suspected was to prove
a successful rival to Penang, that when, in fear of a Dutch attack,
Colonel Farquhar, the Resident of Singapore, appealed to him for
reinforcements he refused them. He even went so far as to urge
Farquhar to abandon the place, and to advise Lord Hastings to restore
it to the Dutch, who, he averred, were its lawful owners. 1
T h e Dutch, as might have been expected, protested in the strongest
possible terms against Raffles's action. But their arguments regarding
the validity of their claims did not convince the governor-general,
though he was extremely annoyed with Raffles for involving him in a
quarrel with them. And their bluff, together with Bannerman's
obviQus jealousy, made him only the more decided that an immediate
withdrawal could not be countenanced. He delivered the Governor
and Council of Penang so crushing a rebuke that they despatched the
required reinforcements at once to Farquhar. And he also saved the
exasperated directors from allowing their feelings about Raffles's/aiY
accompli to get the upper hand to such an extent as to give an order
which they would have deeply repented afterwards.
For it soon became obvious that Singapore had a great future.
Never again would the Dutch be able to build up a monopoly such as
they had once exercised; Singapore as a free-trade port would break
the spell. No longer would it be possible for them to close the Straits
in the event of war and threaten the China trade. By June 1819 the
population numbered over 5,000, and a year later it was considerably
above 10,000.^ And right from the starfthe Chinese formed the great
' L. A. Mills, British Malaya, 1824-1867, p. 60.
^ T . Braddell, in Statistics of the British Possessions in the Straits of Malacca (1861),
thinks these figures, which represent Raffles's own rough calculation, an exaggeration.

478

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

FT. Ill

majority. Trade increased at an amazing rate; in 1823 the value of

imports and exports totalled well over 13 million dollars. More convincing even, from the point of view of a government perhaps a little
too much concerned with immediate questions of profit and loss, was
the fact that by August 1820 Singapore's feyenue was already adequate
to cover the costs of its administration. Hence it may be said with
all truth that Singapore won its own victory. The storm with the
Dutch blew itself out. The directors changed their minds about the
validity of the Dutch claims. And in 1824 hoth sides decided to put
an end to their constant friction in the East by making a treaty that
would fairly and squarely draw a dividing line between their respective
spheres of influence.
Under its first Resident, Colonel Farquhar, Singapore was administered subject to the general supervision of Raffles as LieutenantGovernor of Bencoolen. He paid his second visit there from October
1822 to June 1823 and worked like a Trojan to lay the foundations
of its future prosperity. The most pressing problem was that, with too
few officials and a painfully inadequate police force, lawlessness was
rife. He issued a regulation appointing twelve magistrates from among
the principal British merchants and drew up a provisional code of
law based upon English law, but with special provision for native
customs regarding such matters as religion, marriage and inheritance.
He drafted regulations for a land registry, for the management of the
port, for the prevention of the slave trade, for the police force, -for the
suppression of gaming-houses and cockpits and for an institution
which was to teach the languages of China, Siam and the Malay
Archipelago and serve as a means to the ' improvement of the moral
and intellectual condition of the peoples of those countries'. He also
busied himself with 'remodelling and laying out my new city', as he
put it. The wisdom of some of his efforts as a town-planner has been
called in question, and John Crawfurd, whom he appointed to succeed
Farquhar in 1823, successfully challenged the legality of his regulations
for the maintenance of law and order. But the problem"was so urgent
that any stop-gap arrangement was better than nothing, until such
time as the directors could provide a proper legal system. And -that
was not until 1826.
^
-
Before leaving in 1823 he arranged for Sultan Hussein to receive a
pension of 1,500 dollars a month and the temenggong 800 dollars,
in return for which they surrendered the monopolies and dues they
had previously imposed on trade and placed Singapore entirely under
British control. The provisions of the Anglo-Dutch treaty of 1824

CH. 27

THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS AND BORNEO, 1786-1867

479

rendered it necessary to revise this arrangement, for both men had

claims to territories placed finally within the Dutch sphere of influence. Hence in August of that year Crawfurd made a treaty whereby
the sultan and temenggong alienated the island of Singapore for ever
to the East India Company. In return the sultan received a lump sum
of 33,200 dollars and a pension of 1,300 dollars a month for life, and
the temenggong a lump sum of 26,800 dollars and 700 dollars a month
for life. They promised further to enter into no alliance with any
foreign power without the consent of the East India Company, and to
admit British commerce freely into all the ports of Johore on mostfavoured-nation terms.
The Anglo-Dutch treaty concluded in London on 17 March 1824
represents primarily an effort on the part of the British government to
secure the friendship of the kingdom of the United Netherlands in
European affairs by putting an end once and for all to the rivalry and
hostility of the two nations in the East. As such it was the natural
consequence of the Convention of 1814, whereby the Dutch empire
in Indonesia had been restored to the new kingdom. Under its
territorial provisions the Netherlands ceded to Britain all her factories
in India, withdrew her objections to the occupation of Singapore,
ceded Malacca, and engaged never to form any establishment on the
Malay Peninsula or conclude any treaty with any of its rulers. The
British ceded to the Netherlands Bencoolen and all the East India
Company's possessions in Sumatra, and pledged themselves never to
form any settlement on the island or make any treaty with any of its
rulers. They gave the same undertaking with regard to the Carimon
Islands, the Riau-Lingga Archipelago or 'any other islands south of
the Straits of Singapore'. None of the ceded territories was to be
transferred at any time to any other power, and if either of the parties
should ever abandon the ceded possessions the right of occupation
should at once pass to the other. For the future it was agreed that the
officials on both sides were to be warned ' not to form any new settlement on any of the islands in the Eastern Seas without previous
authority from their respective governments in Europe'. There was
thus a clear recognition of two quite separate spheres of influence,
and of the principle that each side must refrain from interference in
the other's sphere.
The commercial clauses of the treaty provided that the Netherlands
should make no attempt to establish a commercial monopoly in the
Archipelago and should never discriminate unfairly against British
trade. Both sides agreed to grant each other most-favoured-nation

480

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. I l l

treatment in India, Ceylon and the Archipelago, and general rules

regarding the amount of customs duty were laid down. Moreover,
they were to make no treaties with any native ruler in the Eastern Seas
aiming at excluding the trade of the other party from his ports.
Britain, however, agreed to exclude the Moluccas from the scope of
these provisions and recognized the Dutch right to the spice monopoly
in the islands. The concession was of little importance since Europe
now had other sources of supply and the trade had lost much of its
old value. Finally both powers bound themselves to co-operate
effectually in repressing piracy.
The territorial clauses of the treaty were of the utmost importance
in removing one of the greatest causes of friction. But for many years
afterwards there were constant complaints that the Dutch were
evading the commercial clauses and were hampering British trade
with the Archipelago wherever possible. In a material sense the Dutch
were the greater gainers by the treaty, for when it was made Sumatra
and many other islands in the Archipelago were as yet unoccupied by
them. But British poUcy was wise in forgoing the opportunity to
build a vast empire in the Archipelago, and in gaining thereby the
guarantee that the Dutch would refrain from all interference in the
Peninsula. On a point of detail Britain lost nothing by giving up the
moribund station of Bencoolen and gained little by taking over the
strategically worthless Malacca. The Straits were now dominated by
Penang at one end and Singapore at the other. And the commercial
development of both ports left Malacca with only a small fraction of
her previous trade. Her harbour was rapidly silting, and she became
little more than a collecting centre of Straits produce for Penang and
Singapore. Still, the exclusion of the Dutch from Malacca was a
great advantage; it had been their centre for extending control over
the Peninsula.
Winstedt's quip^ that the history of Singapore is written mainly
in statistics is an apt commentary upon the policy of its governors,
certainly up to the middle of the century. Their great concern was
to increase its commercial importance. It throve on the policy of free
trade laid down with almost religious fervour by Raffles. In its early
years it attracted to itself much of the commerce of the Netherlands _
Indies and developed important trading connections with China, Siam,
Indo-China and the Philippines. It was essentially an entrepot with
world-wide connections and depended hardly at all upon the trade of
the undeveloped Malay Peninsula.
' Malaya and its History p. 60.

CH. 2 7

THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS AND BORNEO, 1 7 8 6 - 1 8 6 7

481

With the treaty of 1824 the ghost of the former empire of Johore was
finally laid. The Lingga or Riau Sultan, as he was called, ruled over its
island possessions lying within the Dutch sphere, but could do nothing
to enforce his claims to Johore and Pahang. Hussein, known as the
Singapore Sultan from the fact that he lived there, exercised no
authority whatever. The temenggong ruled Johore and the bendahara
Pahang, and neither would allow him to interfere. The temenggong
died in 1825 ^"^^ was succeeded by his able son T u n Ibrahim.
Hussein died ten years later, after having moved his residence to
Malacca. His son Ali was too young to succeed and for twenty years
the title was held in suspense. This led to a duel of claims between
the young man and Ibrahim which caused the British administration
no little embarrassment. It was settled in 1855 by an arrangement
ceding full sovereignty over Johore to Ibrahim. Ali received the
sultan's title, a small strip of land between the Kesang and Muar
rivers and a pension. The title died with him in 1877, the land and
pensions passing to his heirs and successors in perpetuity.
Immediately after the occupation of Singapore Raffles had negotiated a treaty with the Sultan of Acheh. Nothing came of it, for the
central government in the state had broken down and the country
was passing through one of its recurrent periods of lawlessness.
Actually a flourishing trade grew up between Acheh and Penang
which was in no way connected with the treaty but was due to the fact
that the various vassal rajas of Acheh in asserting their independence
gladly threw open their ports to British trade. Under the AngloDutch treaty of 1824 Britain agreed to abrogate Raffles's treaty on the
grounds that it had been designed to exclude Dutch trade from
Acheh. In return the Dutch guaranteed to respect the independence
of Acheh. The Penang Council decided that it was unnecessary
to negotiate a further agreement with Acheh.
(b) The Straits Settlements from 1824 to 1867
The period from the conclusion of the Anglo-Dutch treaty of 1824
to the beginnings of the Residential system in Malaya has been somewhat inappropriately described as ' a half-century of inactivity'.* Until
in 1925 L. A. Mills published his careful study entitled British Malaya,
1824-1867 it tended to be neglected, presumably because after the
heroic period bf Raffles the developments and personalities of the
Rupert Emerson, Malaysia, A Study in Direct and Indirect Rule, New York, 1037,
p. 91.

482

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

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ensuing period seemed son\ewhat flat until the resumption of a forward

policy in the eighteen-seventies revived interest again. And, after all,
to the people of the period itself Malayali affairs seemed such very
small beer compared with the great events which were taking place in
India, or even with the struggles to open Ghina to British commerce.
Nevertheless one has only to glance through the many volumes of
records relating to the period to realize that even if there was little
or no spectacular achievement there was plenty of activity, and of a
sort which the historian is wise not to neglect.
Even if by 'inactivity' is meant the pursuit of a non-intervention
policy in native affairs, the term is misleading. If, however, it is
intended merely to indicate that the period was one in which Britain
made no further important territorial advances, then the same is true
of the Dutch; but even less than the British could they be described
as inactive at the time. It seems to be one of those words which
occasionally slip out from the pens of Americsin writers and unconsciously betray their conception of British imperialism.
It was a period during which' Singapore grew with astonishing
rapidity, Penang developed at a more modest rate, and Malacca
stagnated. But in addition to such things there were two outstanding
problems, Siamese activities and piracy, which forced the East India
Company, much against its will, to pursue an active policy. Its
constantly reiterated instructions to its servants forbade them to
intervene in the affairs of the Malay states. Increase of territory was
absolutely forbidden; political alliances with the sultans were frowned
on; in fact the Company was resolutely opposed to anything which
might in any way increase its responsibilities in Malaya. It was
ignorant of, or ignored, the fact that the Malay states were in a state
of chronic unrest, external and internal, and had become completely
incapable of putting their house in order. Intervention, therefore,
could not be avoided. There was indeed constant intervention,
notwithstanding all the rules to the contrary and all the thunders of
Calcutta and East India House.
The situation that was mainly responsible for this was that Siam at
the beginning of the nineteenth century had so far recovered from-the
Burmese invasions that she was reviving her ancient clafms to domihioii
over the whole Peninsula. Ever since her failure to prevent the rise
of the sultanate of Malacca they had been kept in cold storage. But
under the Chakri dynasty she was more powerful than at any other
time in her history, and the Governors of Penang feared that much of
the Peninsula would fall under her yoke, tjnder Bodawpaya Burma also

CH. 27

THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS AND BORNEO, 1786-1867

483

had ambitions to expand southwards at the expense of Siam into the

Peninsula. But from about 1816 her efforts were concentrated on Assam
and its neighbours and no longer constituted a serious threat to the
growing power of Siam. Still, she continued to intrigue with the Malay
rulers against Bangkok, and even in 1819 threatened to invade Siam.
Bangkok, therefore, did not lack excuses for interference in Malaya.
Had the East India Company not been so obtuse as to refuse to foHow
Francis Light's advice regarding Kedah, it might have saved its
servants a great deal of trouble at a later date. For in 1818 Bangkok
ordered the Sultan of Kedah to invade Perak, his neighbour, and force
its sultan to send the Buiiga Mas. Siam's claims to Perak were without
any foundation and there was no cause of quarrel between the two
Malay states. Then in 1821 the Sultan of Kedah was ordered to go to
Bangkok to answer a number of charges, including one of intriguing
with Burma. When he refused to obey, a Siamese army made a
sudden attack upon his state, conquered it and laid it waste with
frightful barbarities. The sultan took refuge in Penang. Thousands
of refugees poured into Province Wellesley, followed by the Siamese.
But as soon as a company of sepoys was sent to the scene of trouble
the Siamese fled headlong back into Kedah. The Raja of Ligor, who
was in command of the Siamese force, demanded the surrender of the
sultan, but the Governor of Penang flatly refused to take such a step.
The sultan, finding that the Company turned a deaf ear to his request
for-help in recovering his throne, got into touch with the Burmese
and preparations were made for a joint attack on Siam by Burma,
Selangor and othgr Malay states. This so disturbed the British
authorities at Penang that they reported the matter to the Raja of Ligor
and nothing came of the intrigue.
The Siamese conquest of Kedah caused much apprehension at Penang regarding its food supply. All attempts to make the settlement
self-sufficing had failed and it still imported most of its food from
Kedah. For some time also Penang had been attempting to obtain
more favourable trading conditions with Siam. It had an important
trade in tin with Perak, Patani and Junk Ceylon, all dependencies of
Siani, and difficulties had arisen in the case of Junk Ceylon, whence
its principal supply came. Hence Calcutta was persuaded to send a
full-dress mission to Bangkok to discuss all the outstanding questions.
For this task .John Crawfurd was chosen. He had already served
under Raffles in Java and was later to become Farquhar's successor
at Singapore. He had joined the Bengal Medical Service in 1803
and had become a recognized authority on Malayan affairs.

484

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

Crawfurd went to Bangkok in 1822 with instructions not only to

negotiate but also to collect as much information as possible about the
country. His attempts to obtain the restoration of the Sultan of
Kedah and the removal of restrictions upon British trade completely
failed, but indirectly he secured some sort of recognition of the British
possession of Penang. His reports were of the greatest value, as also
the book which he subsequently published in London entitled A
Journal of an Embassy from the Governor-General of India to the
Courts of Siam and Cochin-China (1828).^ He was able to show that
Siamese power was far weaker than the Penang government had
believed, and that there was nothing to be feared from the Siamese in
Kedah. Had the Company opposed by force the invasion of Kedah
in 1821, he said, the Siamese would have withdrawn.
In 1824 the Anglo-Burmese war began, and the Government of
India instructed the Penang authorities to approach Siam as a possible
ally. Penang sent a couple of envoys to try to persuade the Raja
of Ligor to send a force against Burma. They failed, but Lieutenant
Low in his report on the mission explained that the raja was not a
semi-independent ruler, as had been thought, but a Siamese official.
He warned Penang that.Siam aimed at gaining control not only over
Perak but over Selangor as well. When his report came into the hands
of Robert Fullerton, the energetic and capable new Governor of
Penang, he urged Calcutta to restore the Raja of Kedah and extend
British protection to all the threatened Malay states against. Siam;
But the Government of India refused to be swayed by his arguments.
Meanwhile Perak had regained its independence in 1822 with the
aid of Sultan Ibrahim of Selangor. Early in 1825 Fullerton learned
that the Raja of Ligor was about to send a fleet to conquer Selangor
and Perak. He accordingly warned the raja that the British, as the
inheritors of the previous Dutch treaty-rights with the two states,
might resist an attack upon them. His threat went unheeded. Hence
in May 1825, 01^ receiving news that the raja's fleet of 300 galleys was
about to set out from the Trang river, he sent gunboats to watch the
river' mouth. The ruse was completely successful; the expedition was
called off.
-.
Fullerton's envoy to Ligor was Captain Burney, a nephew-of Fanny::
Burney, Madame d'Arblay. He had been military secretary to the
Governor of Penang from 1818 to 1824 and had earned the^praise of
' Another book on the mission from the pen of its naturalist, George Finlayson, was
published in I^ondon in 1826, entitled The Mission to Siam and Hue, The Capital uf
Cochin-China, in the years 1821-22.

GH. 27

THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS AND BORNEO, 1786-1867

485

the Government of India for the valuable information he had collected

about the politics and geography of the Malay Peninsula. His mission
to Ligor paved the way for a second approach directly to Bangkok,
which Fullerton was strongly advocating, and a visit that *he paid to
Calcutta after his return from Ligor convinced the governor-general
that he was the best man to go to the Siamese capital should a
decision be taken to follow up Fullerton's suggestion.
Before anything was finally decided Burney was sent again to Ligor,
where he found that the raja was now preparing to send a land force to
' help' the Sultan of Perak against Sultan Ibrahim. Burney resorted to
the same kind of bluff as Fullerton had previously used. He warned
the raja that such a move would involve a quarrel with the British and
persuaded him to sign a preliminary treaty promising not to attack
Perak or Selangor in return for a British guarantee not to interfere
in Kedah. This was signed on 31 July 1825 on the understanding that
Burney would submit it personally to the Government of India, and
if it were approved would return with it to Ligor and go with the raja
to Bangkok, where it would serve as a basis for the negotiation of a
settlement of issues between the Company and Siam. Burney was
fully aware that his action in negotiating such a treaty was completely
out of step with the doctrine of non-intervention. Accordingly he wrote
to the Penang Council explaining that the policy he had pursued could
riot be avoided and its inconveniencies would be slight 'compared
with the greater evil of permitting Siam to overrun the territories of
our Selangor neighbours, to turn the inhabitants of them into pirates,
and to disturb for many years all native trade'. Furthermore, it would
not entail war with Siam. In negotiating the treaty he gained a further
valuable point by persuading the Raja of Ligor to leave the Sultan of
Perak free to decide whether or not to send the Bunga Mas to Bangkok.
Governor Fullerton was delighted with Burney's treaty and at once
sent John Anderson to settle the disputes that had arisen between
Perak and Selangor so as to leave no way open for Ligor to break his
promise. In both states Anderson was received with enthusiasm
and concluded treaties whereby each guaranteed not to interfere with
the other and agreed to the Bernam river as their common boundary.
The Raja of Ligor, however, made one more attempt to deal with
Perak. Under the pretence of sending an embassy to the sultan he
despatched a small armed force, which was a clear infraction of the
treaty. Fullerton ordered its recall, but the raja made an evasive reply,
and while the matter was still undecided news came from Calcutta
that Burney was to go as British envoy to Bangkok.

486

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

The Government of India fully approved the measures taken by

Burney and Fullerton. It even went so far as to ratify Barney's
preliminary treaty with Ligor. But it had no great hopes of the outcome
of his mission to Bangkok. It chief object in sending him was to
reassure the Siamese government that the British successes in the war
with Burma, and the conquest of Tenasserim, were in no way a threat
to Siam, and that the East India Company had no intention of extending its sway over the Malay Peninsula. Fullerton, who had been
authorized to add his own instructions to those of Calcutta, ordered
him to deal energetically with all the questions concerning the independence of the states in the area that came later under British control.
Burney arrived in Bangkok at the end of 1825 and remained there
until June 1826. Siamese fears of a possible British attack were so
great that everything he did was regarded with the utmost suspicion.
But his patience and firmness achieved more than Crawfurd had
succeeded in doing. He had to permit the ministers to draft the treaty
they were at last persuaded to concede in Siamese, and they introduced into it a vagueness which stood, out so prominently in the
English translation that the sceptical Fullerton refused to take any of
the concessions at their face value. The commercial clauses granted
British trade slightly more favourable terms than Crawfurd had
managed to obtain, but were so systematically violated afterwards by
the Siamese as to justify FuUerton's criticisms. Both sides guaranteed
Perak against attack, recognized the sultan's right to govern his
country according to his own will, and agreed that he should not be
prevented from sending the Bunga Mas to Bangkok if he desired to do
so. Burney failed completely to persuade the ministers to withdraw
the Siamese garrison from Kedah and permit the sultan to return.
And he had to give in to their demand that the British should prevent
him from attacking Kedah and remove him from Penang to some
place where he would be unable to be a nuisance to Siam. This raised
a storm of protest in Penang, but the Government of India ratified
it and the sultan was removed to Malacca.
~; There was almost as strong feeling against the agreement he finally
reached regarding Trengganu and Kelantan after months of wrangljng;
It read: ' Siam shall not go and obstruct or interrupt .commerce in the states of Tringano and Calantan; English merchants and subjects shall
have trade and intercourse in future with the same facility and freedom
as they have heretofore had; and the English shall not go and molest
attack or disturb those states upon any pretence whatever.'^ The fact
' Article X I I of the treaty.

CH. 2 7

THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS AND BORNEO, 1 7 8 6 - 1 8 6 7

487

that nothing was said about the Bunga Mas led the critics to declare
that it amounted to an admission of their dependence upon Siam.
Burney, however, contended that it gave the British the right to
prevent Siam from interfering in those states, and thus made them the
protectors of their independence. Fullerton remained unconvinced,
but the Government of India accepted Burney's interpretation.
After Burney's return to Penang it soon became obvious that the
Siamese did not intend to honour the agreement regarding Perak.
In September 1826, therefore, Governor Fullerton sent Captain James
Low with forty sepoys and a small warship to assure the sultan that he
need, not send the Bunga Mas if he had no desire to do so, and might
rely onBritish aid to maintain his independence. The sultan, who was
threatened by a pro-Siamese faction at Court and detachments of
Siamese troops in his country, was only too glad to take a firm line
provided the British guarantee were made in the form of a treaty. To
this proposal Low readily agreed, and on 18 October 1826 signed a
treaty of alliance with the sultan. It provided that in return for
British assistance against anyone threatening his independence the
sultan would have no communication with Siam, Ligor, Selangor or
' any other Malay state on political affairs, and would refrain from sending the Bunga Mas or any other form of tribute to Siam.
This treaty, coupled with the fact that on Low's advice the sultan
had dismissed all his pro-Siamese officials, settled the Perak question.
T h e Siamese troops left the state and the sultan regained his independence. But Low had, in his fervour for checkmating Siam, blithely
disregarded not only his instructions but also the express orders of the
Company regarding non-intervention. The grateful sultan offered
to cede Pulo Binding, Pangkor and other islands off the Perak coast.
. And before the Government of India's comments on Low's actions
arrived in Penang he had placed the sultan farther in debt to the
British by destroying a pirate nest on the Kurau river from which
raids were being made upon Penang harbour. The pirate chief,
Nakhoda Udin, who was captured, was as a Siamese subject sent to the
Raja of Ligor for trial. It turned out that he was a henchman of the
raja's engaged upon the task of destroying the authority of the Sultan
of Perak, and the enraged raja cajoled Burney into accepting a version
of the story, which "when reported to Calcutta led the Government of
India to suspeijd Low from all political employment.
Fullerton, however, had no difficulty in proving that nothing less
drastic than Low's action could have saved Perak's independence, and,
moreover, that Udin really was a pirate. He neatly spiked Burney's

488

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

FT. Ill

guns by using the latter's own report and map to demonstrate that
Kurau was in the territory of Perak. The Government of India therefore revoked its censure on Low; and although it continued for some
time to condemn his treaty as unauthorized, and never formally
ratified it, no attempt was made to negotiate a substitute. In time,
therefore, it came to be regarded as actually binding, and on no less
than three occasionsin 1844, 1853, and 1874^^when appeals were
made under it by Perak for British assistance, both Calcutta and
London recognized its validity.
After this incident the Siamese abandoned their attempts to gain
control over the Malay states on the west coast and transferred their
attentions to Kelantan and Trengganu on the east coast. But it was
not until much later, in 1862, that matters really came to a head there.
Over Kedah British assistance was frequently called on by the
Siamese because of the frequent attacks on them by supporters of the
exiled sultan and the alarming development of piracy, which they
could not check. The worst revolt was in 1831 and was planned in
Penang right under the noses of the British authorities. Governor
Ibbetson by his energetic blockade of the Kedah coast gave valuable
help to the Siamese in crushing the revolt, which might otherwise
have been successful.
Again in 1836 and 1838 Penang co-operated with the Siamese in the
ungrateful task of preventing Malays from recovering control over a
Malay state. But this series of revolts made the Siamese weary 61 their
resistance to the claims of the sultan, and when finally he was persuaded by the British to offer his submission to Siam, and his son went
to Bangkok with a letter from the Straits Government warning the
Siamese that they could expect no further help should another revolt
occur, the Siamese government accepted the situation and in 1842
reinstated him.
In the following year, with a perversity which forcibly illustrates
what has been described as the process of hara-kiri prevalent among
the Malay states after the fall of the Johore empire, he seized the
district of Krian from his neighbour Perak. The Sultan of Perak
would have fought, and appealed for British help under j h e How
treaty. But the Government of the Straits Settlements persuaded'
him to hold his hand, and eventually in 1848 compelled Kedah to
restore the occupied territory.
Meanwhile Kelantan and Trengganu were struggling against the
slow but persistent pressure of Siamese efforts at control. Kelantan
was stated in 1836 to have 'almost succimibed to the Siamese yoke'.

CH. 27

THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS AND BORNEO, 1786-1867

489

Trengganu for some time offered a successful resistance to the devious

and obscure manoeuvres which characterized Siamese policy. Then
in 1858 there broke out in Pahang one of those family quarrels which
have so often changed the history of states in South-East Asia. The
Bendahara of Pahang died and his two sons fought for the inheritance.
Colonel Cavanagh, the Governor of the Straits Settlements, offered
mediation, since the Singapore merchants were complaining of
stoppage of trade, but his offer was rejected, and finally in the middle
of 1861 the elder drove the younger son out. He made his way to
Bangkok, where he found another refugee pretender, a Sultan of
Lingga, banished by the Dutch; but by virtue of the fact that he was
a descendant of the Abdur-Rahman who had been recognized by them
in 1818, and repudiated by Raffles when he proclaimed his brother
Hussein sultan in 1819 at Singapore, he insisted that he was the rightful ruler of Pahang and Johore.
Colonel Cavanagh received information that strongly pointed to a
Siamese plan to obtain control over both Pahang and Trengganu,
using the two exiles as their tools. The ex-Sultan of Lingga was to be
substituted for the Sultan of Trengganu, who had refused to toe the
line. Wan Ahmad, the claimant to Pahang, was to be assisted to make
another attempt against his brother. In July 1862 the ex-Sultan of
Lingga was taken to Trengganu in a Siamese warship accompanied
by Wan Ahmad and a fleet of praus. Sir Robert Schomburgk, the
British minister in Bangkok, was assured that the ex-sultan was on a
purely personal visit to his mother. But the evidence against this bland
assertion began to mount up, especially when Wan Ahmad, at the
instigation of the ex-sultan, invaded Pahang. Before strong pressure
applied through Schomburgk by Cavanagh, backed up by the Government of India, the Siamese promised to remove the ex-sultan, but did
nothing towards carrying their promise into effect. It soon became
obvious that they were waiting for the change of monsoon in the middle
of November, which would render the east coast of Malaya dangerous
and so give them an excuse for not sending a ship to bring away the
ex-sultan. He and Wan Ahmad would thus have the period until the
following April in which to carry through their plans.
Cavanagh therefore yielded to the heavy pressure brought to bear on
him by the Singapore Chamber of Commerce and sent a warship to
threaten Trengganu with bombardment unless the ex-Sultan of
Lingga were handed over and the sultan promised to give no further
assistance to Wan Ahmad. When his ultimatum was rejected the
British warship shelled the sultan's fort. But the show of force

^go

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

miscarried: the ex-sultan fled inland; and although the coast was
blockaded for some weeks, it was without effect. Ultimately in
March 1863 the Siamese removed the ex-Sultan after protesting to
the British government that the bombardment was a violation of
their territorial rights. But Siam made no further overt attempts to
bring Trengganu under her control. As for the Pahang civil war, it
petered out; and when the bendahara died a few years later, his
brother Wan Ahmad succeeded him and the British government raised
no objection.
Cavanagh's action in bombarding the fort at Trengganu caused
something like an uproar in Britain. In i860 he had intervened in the
Menangkabau states of dungei Ujong and Rembau to protect Chinese
miners, and again in Perak in 1862 to force a settlement in the case of
the trouble that had arisen over the Chinese miners in the Larut
area. After two debates in the House of Commons he was given strict
orders against any further intervention. Small wonder that people
with interests in Malaya were agitating for the transfer of the Straits
Settlements from the India Office to the Colonial Office. They felt
that Malayan affairs were neglected. For many years men on the spot
who realized the need for a stronger policy in relation to the native
states pursued it not only at their own risk, but with odds against
them so far as their own government was concerned. The fact was
that the Government of India was not interested in Malaya.
The agitation for transfer was mainly the work of Singapore, and it
drew its impulse from the feeling that British interests were being
foolishly sacrificed so long as the keystone of her commercial supremacy in Eastern Asia was treated as ' a third-rate Residency in an isolated
quarter of the Indian Empire'.^ In face of the growing strength of the
Dutch in Indonesia and the appearance of France as an imperialist
power in Indo-China, control by the Government of India and the
India Office, with the consequent fettering of the hands of the Singapore government in its relations with the Malay-states, became an
intolerable grievance. But the immediate cause of the agitation which
led to the actual transfer in 1867 lay in the misguided attempts of the
Indian government to interfere with the policy of free trade, which
was the cardinal point in Raffles's plans for the development of Singapore and the chief cause of its miraculous success.^
^ L . A. Mills, op. cit., pp. 263-4.
' Mills, op. cit., chap, xiv, gives a detailed analysis of the factors involved.

CH. 27

THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS AND BORNEO, 1786-1867

491

(c) Borneo to 1839

Borneo, the largest island in the Malay Archipelago, and the third
largest in the world, occupies a place in history quite disproportionate
to its immense area. Its interior is still largely covered by dense forest,
'imperfectly known and scantily populated. The home of the Dyak,
it has received as colonists during the many centuries before the arrival
of the European Malays, Javanese, Bugis and Sulus, whose largely
unchronicled activities resulted in the formation of a ring of states around
its coasts. Traces have been discovered in both Kutei on the east coast
and Sambas on the west of early states with Indianized courts.
Srivijaya's influence and sway were probably acknowledged by west
coast ports participating in the trade between Indonesia and China
concerning which records begin to appear in the fifth century A.D.
Some of the Bornean states must have paid tribute to the Javanese
empire of Majapahit during its hey-day in the fourteenth century. It
is only with the arrival of Islam, however, that a relatively clear picture
of the political set-up of the island begins to emerge. The Muslim
sultanate of Brunei, from which the island takes its name, was founded
at the end of the fifteenth century. During the following one Muslim
dynasties appeared at Sambas, Sukadana and Landak on the west coast,
and at Banjermasin on the south. Brunei was a rich and powerful
state when visited in 1521 by Antonio Pigafetta, the historian of Magellan's voyage, who wrote the earliest first-hand account of Borneo.
Banjermasin and Sukadana tended to come under the political dominance of the north Javanese powers Demak and Surabaya during their
brief periods of greatness after the disappearance of Majapahit. Sambas
had close ties with Johore on the Peninsula.
The Portuguese at Malacca developed commercial relations with
Brunei. After the foundation of Manila the Spaniards, in rivalry with
the Portuguese, sought to play the part of kingmaker there, but without
success. The Dutch became interested in Banjermasin because of its
pepper production, but their attempts to obtain control over the trade
led to bloodshed and reprisals. Monopoly contracts were signed by
the sultan in 1635 and again in 1664, but both were broken, and in
1669 the Dutch withdrew from the south coast. Only by planting
permanent garrisons there could deliveries be enforced, and the trade
was not worth the expenditure involved. On the west coast the Dutch
planted factories at Sambas and Sukadana, but local opposition soon
led to their liquidation. In 1608 through their control over Bantam
they were drawn into a war waged by Bantam's vassal Landak against

^^02

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. I l l

Sukadana, and after its successful conclusion gained a sort of theoretical

suzerainty over the west coast states which recognized Bantam's
suzerainty. But this meant little in practice'^
The Dutch failure was mainly due to the Chinese, who had a wellestablished trade with the ports of Borneti, buying up not only the
pepper, gold and diamonds sought by European traders but a whole
range of other products such as camphor, rattans, wax, resin, timber
and the popular table-delicacies agar-agar, tripahg, sharks'-fins and
edible birds'-nests. The Dutch could frighten local rulers into signing
empty contracts, but the Chinese paid higher prices and got the goods.
The English East India Company merchants also triedand failed
to develop trade with the Borneo ports, at which spices were to b e '
obtained, after the Dutch had driven them out of the Moluccas and
Bandas. Then, during the eighteenth century their main interest
switched to the China trade and tea, and Borneo acquired a new value
for them as a possible site for a commercial entrepot on the way to
China. Hence Alexander Dalrymple's plan to establish a settlement
on the island of Balambangan, which, as we have seen above, ^ came to
a sorry end in February 1775.
The Dutch during the eighteenth century made' further efforts to
gain control over the trade of Borneo. In 1747 they made a new pepper
contract with Banjermasin, this time providing for the erection of a
fort at Tibanio to ensure deliveries. A dynastic upheaval in 1785
enabled them to gain a stronger hold by placing their candidate upon
the throne, and two years later he recognized the Dutch East India
Company as his sovereign lord. On the west coast during the seventeenseventies they utilized Bantam's dormant sovereign rights to enable
them to plant a factory at Pontianak, and -in 1786 with the aid of the
sultan they established their influence over Sukadana and the Bugis
settlement of Mampawa. But all these advances came to nothing as a
result of their setback in the war of 1780-4 with Britain. Batavia decided
that the west coast settlements were 'useless andjntolerable nuisances',
and in 1791 they were abandoned.
There was a similar withdrawal from Banjermasin in 1797 in consequence of which one small fort at Tatas on the south coast was=.the
sole remaining Dutch settlement on the island. In 1809 even-this was,
evacuated when Marshal Daendels concentrated upon the defence of
Java after the Dutch naval defeats off its coast in 1806 and ,1807, followed by the British capture of the Moluccas in 1808. The sultan,
fearing that he might now be unable to defend his kingdom against
^ Supra, pp. 463-6.

CH. 2 7

THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS AND BORNEO, 1 7 8 6 - 1 8 6 7

493

attacks by his neighbours, applied to Penang for British protection.

His application was supported by Raffles, and after the surrender of
Java Alexander Hare with the approval of the Calcutta government was
commissioned to plant a British settlement at Banjermasin. Raffles,
of course, had his eye on the possibility that were Java to be handed
back to the Dutch Britain might retain her hold upon Borneo.
In a treaty signed on i October 1812 the sultan ceded to the East
India Company the former Dutch forts of Tatas and Tabanio together
with the Dyak provinces of south Borneo and the districts subject to
them on the south and east coasts. Among a number of potential commercial concessions he granted the pepper monopoly. The Company
in its turn was to station a force of light armed vessels off his capital
adequate for its defence against his enemies. It also released him from
all obligations to the Dutch. In its provisions, and in their precise
value, which was slight, the treaty was very similar to those the sultan
had made earlier with the Dutch.
Hare as President of Banjermasin obtained for himself personally
1,400 square miles of land south of the capital, and proceeded to live
the life of an oriental potentate, complete with harem. He was the
moving spirit behind the move to secure British protection for Banjermasin, and his sole aim had been to further his own schemes of
personal aggrandisement. The settlement proved a fiasco, and Raffles's
reputation was injured by his misplaced trust in a plausible rogue.
T^e scandalous story of the labour force, recruited with official backing
in Java to work in Hare's rice-fields and pepper gardens has been told
by Graham Irwin in his able study of nineteenth-century Borneo.^
Equally scandalous was the administration of the settlement, and in
1816 the East India Company, faced with a deficit of ^f 60,000 on its
running costs, decided to abandon it and ship the settlers back to Java.
Before the withdrawal was effected, Raffles's successor at Batavia,
John Fendall, had to make it quite clear to the Dutch that in view of
Daendels's formal abandonment of all Dutch possessions in south
Borneo in 1809 and the treaty freely negotiated with the sultan in
October 1812, their claim to Banjermasin as of right could not be recognized. When therefore, a few days after the departure from the place of
the British commissioners sent to superintend the withdrawal, a Dutch
warship arrived with an officer gazetted as ' commissioner for the purpose of taking over the establishment at Banjermasin', Anglo-Dutch
relations in Batavia were not improved.
Nineteenth-Century
pp. 19-21, 35-41-

Borneo; A Study in Diplomatic Rivalry, 's-Gravenhage, 1955,

494

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. I l l

The disappearance of the Dutch fleet from the eastern seas had been
followed by an upsurge of piracy, and while Raffles had been stationed
at Malacca in 1810 as Governor-General's', Agent to the Malay States
the menace to British shipping had forced him to turn his attention
to the piratical activities of the rulers, of Sarawak and Sambas. With the
decline of the power of the sultanate of Sukadana, Sambas and Pontianak
had become rivals for the control of the west coast of Borneo. Pontianak
was willing to carry on peaceable trade, and hence was favoured by
Europeans. In 1812 Raffles attempted to put an end to the power
of Sambas, but the expedition was a disastrous failure. He planned
therefore to back Pontianak's ambitions. He wanted no further settlement in Borneo: his eff'orts were to be directed solely to the promotion
of legitimate trade and the suppression of piracy. Accordingly in 1813
he established a Commercial Agent at Pontianak; next he captured
and crippled Sambas; then he declared a blockade of all the ports of
Borneo except Brunei, Banjermasin and Pontianak, and at the same
time sent Captain R. C. Garnham to tour the west coast as ' Special
Commissioner to the Borneo Ports and Macassar' with the object of
encouraging trade and warning the local rulers against indulging in
piracy. Within a short time the Sultan of Sambas had accepted a British
protectorate and the other leading states had recognized British
suzerainty.
Obviously, however, these moves were not inspired merely by a
desire to safeguard trade. There was a deeper motive. Raffles himself
described them as part of a ' grand design' which envisaged the ' permanent political ascendancy' of British authority in Soutli-East Asian
waters and the exclusion of Dutch power. This, however, was certainly
not in accord with the wishes of his masters. In the first place Lord
Minto's successor at Calcutta, Lord Moira, called a halt to Raffles's
plans for Borneo: they were too expensive and involved waste of troops,
and he made it quite clear that he was opposed to any design for
' advancing policies inimical to Dutch interests' during their ' temporary
absence'.^ So all the plans for blockading Borneo had to be (Jailed off.
The Directors of the East India Company also were equally firm in
their opposition to a policy of aggrandisement in Borneo: ' trade, Jiot
territory' east of the Straits of Malacca was, they emphasized, their,,
guiding principle, and it was in complete accord with the British
government's unwavering determination, as displayed in the Convention
of London of 13 August 1814 to restore the Dutch 'colonies, factories
and establishments' at the end of the war with Napoleon. The case of
^ Irwin, op. cit., pp. 30-1.

CH. 2 7

THE STRAITS SETTLEMENTS AND BORNEO, 1 7 8 6 - 1 8 6 7

495

Sambas must have afforded Raffles especial humiliation, since the

sultan, with whom he had made his treaty, died at the very moment
when the blockade policy had to be dropped, and he had to recognize
as the new sultan Pangeran Anom, the pirate leader, who had been the
cause of the action he had taken in 1813.
The Dutch, on returning to Banjermasin, concluded a treaty in
double-quick time with the sultan whereby, in return for a promise of
aid against all rative and foreign enemies, he granted them a vast _
amount of territory 'in full ownership and sovereignty', extensive
commercial concessions and a degree of control over his affairs that in
eiTect established their indirect rule, over his state. The protests of the
'white raja of Moluko', Alexander Hare, at this invasion of his kingdom
were in vain: Calcutta told the Batavia authorities that they regarded
him as a delinquent; and although the India Board represented to Lord
Castlereagh that Hare's forcible dispossession of his property by the
Dutch was inequitable, since the sultan was a free agent when he alienated the land to Hare, the British Treasury turned a deaf ear to all his
memorials.
The establishment of Dutch sovereignty over Banjermasin in January
1817 was soon followed by invitations from Pontianak and Sambas for
their assistance. Accordingly in 1818 a Dutch expedition sailed from
Batavia to show the flag on the west coast of Borneo, and the formalities
bringing the two states under Netherlands sovereignty were concluded.
The expedition, arriving unexpectedly at Sambas, surprised the sultan
in the act of leading a piratical raid against Pontianak, and he had
somewhat quickly to cancel his plans.
The energy with which Batavia went ahead with the restoration of
Dutch influence in Borneo and elsewhere, where for c^er a generation
British merchants had traded without hindrance, aroused Penang's
fears regarding a reintroduction of the former Dutch monopoly system,
and both London and Calcutta became alarmed lest a threat to the
East India Company's cherished trade to China might arise. In June
1818 Governor Bannerman, under pressure from the Penang merchants,
sent Major John Farquhar, the Resident of Malacca, to negotiate commercial treaties with Riouw, Lingga, Pontianak and Siak. Farquhar
found the Dutch already at Pontianak, but was able to conclude treaties
with the rulers of the other three places.
By this time Governor-General Lord Hastingswho as Lord Moira
had countermanded Raifles's plans for Borneo in 1814was changing
his mind about the Dutch, and Raffles himself from Bencoolen was
bombarding the East India Company in London with suggestions for
17

496

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. I l l

the protection of British interests against, Dutch expansionism.. He

demanded that a Hne should be drawn against Dutch aggression, and
insisted that they had no claims on Borneo. Hastings was shocked by
the Dutch occupation of Banjermasin and Pontianak, and in particular
by their complete disregard of Marshal Daendels's formal annullment
of their former treaty with Banjermasin. , Such was the climate of
opinion in which Raffles was able to carry out his Singapore exploit
early in 1819. This, of course, had no direct connection with the
Borneo question, but, as Graham Irwin has shown, in the angry
exchanges between The Hague and London, which followed that
event, Lord Castlereagh laid down two principles as of vital importance
in relation to Dutch claims anywhere in the Archipelago. The British
Government, he wrote, 'cannot acquiesce in a practical exclusion, or
in a mere permissive toleration, of British commerce throughout the
immense extent of the Eastern Archipelago; nor can they consent so
far to expose the direct commerce of this country with China to all the
obvious dangers which would result, especially in time of war, from
all the military and naval keys of the Straits of Malacca being exclusively
in the hands of the Netherlands Government'.^
The Netherlands government at The Hague expressed itself unable
to concur. Nevertheless it was anxious to come to a permanent settlement with Britain, and so it was that in the middle of 1820 the discussions began which ultimately led to the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of
1824.^ On the subject of Borneo Britain made it clear that she would
be prepared to recognize the treaties made with Bornean states by the
Dutch since 1817 provided that they contained no article excluding
British trade. A Dutch attempt to assert a claim to supremacy over
the whole island caused such a sharp British reaction that the Dutch
representative issued an emphatic disavowal of any such pretension.
Also, the question of where Borneo stood in relation to the imaginary
line delimiting the two respective areas of aspiration which the Dutch
wished to draw caused such a divergence of view between the two sides
that it had to be dropped. It was finally agreed that Borneo should
not be mentioned, and that the demarcation line should not extend
beyond the Singapore Straits. Thus, when Article Twelve of the treaty
recognizing the British possession of Singapore wenf on to'prohibitthe British from setting up any establishments on, or concluding any
treaties with the rulers of, any of the remaining islands belonging to
the ancient kingdom of Johore ' or any of the other islands south of the
Straits of Singapore', both sides understood it as referring only to the
1 Irwin, op. cit., pp. 56-7.

^ " Supra, pp. 479-81.

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immediate area of Singapore. Neither Borneo nor any of the other unoccupied territories of the vast island world were included within its
scope.
While the talks were in progress the Dutch were busy strengthening
their hold on Borneo. They installed residents at Banjermasin, Pontianak and Sambas, and induced the more important rulers of the west
and south coasts to recognize Netherlands suzerainty. Then, in 1825,
their progress was cut short by the outbreak of the Java war, which
seriously aggravated a financial situation already giving cause for rnuch
alarm. Once again as in Daendels's time the most drastic reductions
had to be made in their Borneo establishments. By 1830 on the west
coast only a Resident at Pontianak, an Assistant-Resident at Sambas
and a couple of customs inspectors at Tajan, and on the south coast
only the Resident at Banjermasin and a single European clerk, were
left to represent their authority.
During the next ten years, with their main attention focused upon
the development of the Culture System in Java, they showed practically
no interest in their Borneo establishments, and none whatever in the
vast northern part of the island, which, as Dr Irwin points out, 'lay
open to colonization by other European powers'.^ Thus they could
not be bothered to take appropriate action in 1831, when their west
coast Resident urged that a treaty should be negotiated with the sultan
of Brunei to forestall such a possibility in his dominions, or again in
1838, when their Assistant-Resident at Sambas drew attention to the
fact that British ships were using Sarawak to ' smuggle' goods into the
interior of Sambas. Indeed, in February 1839 he was instructed that
nothing need be done about British trade in Sarawak. That was exactly
six months before the arrival there of James Brooke.

{d) Piracy and the work of Raja James Brooke

By Article V of the Anglo-Dutch treaty of 1824 the two powers
bound themselves 'to concur effectually in repressing' piracy. How
great had become the need for concerted action against this appalling
evil may be realized merely by glancing through the indices to the
many volumes of the Straits Settlements records. It is one of the most
prominent subjects of correspondence. In the Malay world it was an
evil so old, so widespread and with so many facets that even when the
European powers in the nineteenth century decided that it must be
' Op. cit., p. 68.

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EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

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Stamped out it baffled all their eflForts for, many years. For it was an
honourable profession which was connived at, promoted, or even
directly engaged in by the highest potentates in that strange Malay
world of Raja Brooke's memoirs and Joseph Conrad's early novels.
And nowhere else in the world is geographyiso favourable to piracy.
There can be no doubt, however, that the particular phase that was
acute in the eighteenth century and 'a great and blighting curse' in
the nineteenth arose mainly out of the disorganization of the native
commerce in the Archipelago by the impact of the Portuguese ai^d the
Dutch in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. And by comparison
with the Portuguese filibustering methods of enriching themselves, the
systematic and carefully calculated methods by which the Dutch built
up their trading monopoly caused so much ruin to the native peoples
and disintegration to their governments as to have constituted the
biggest single factor in the situation. Thus it was that, with the weakening of the control of the V.O.C. itself over its island empire during the
eighteenth century, the way was open for piracy to increase to what
must have been unexampled proportions. And it is ridiculous to
attempt to explain it away by the argument that it was only in the
eighteenth century thaf European writers began to make a clear
distinction between a pirate and an honest trader.^
In the eighteenth century the Bugis, who gained so great an ascendancy in the Malay states and were described by Francis Light as 'the
best merchants among the eastern islands', 'were also the terrorlof the
Archipelago as pirates. It was the Dutch treatment of Macassar in
1667 and the ruin of the Moluccas which started them on their career
as freebooters. And it was a passing phase; for in the nineteenth
century no more is heard of them as pirates.
Even more formidable were the Moros or Illanos of the Sulu
Archipelago. In the nineteenth century they were referred to as the
Balanini, trom the island group which was their home. Like the,
Lanuns, or 'Pirates of the Lagoon', who came from the great bay
of that name in the south of the island of Mindanao, they used
praus of 40 to 100 tons with crews of 40 to 60. These were, in fact,
the regular native war-boats in use all over South-East Asia. The
Lanuns and Balanini sent out fleets of several hundreds of them every _
year. The smaller junks and the native trading praus were their prey;
they seldom attacked European ships or even the larger Chinese junks.
Sulu was their commercial headquarters. By far their worst raids, for
slaves and booty, were upon the Philippines; and although the Spanish
/
^ VIekke, Nnsantara, pp./igS-g.

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499

sent many punitive expeditions which destroyed their strongholds and

burnt their villages, they could never bring them under effective control.
For their operations against the Malay Archipelago the Lanun
fleets sailed first to Tampassuk on the coast of north-west Borneo,
where they divided into squadrons, each with its own special beat.
Every year the 'pirates' wind' brought them to the Straits of Malacca
to lie in wait for praus bound for Singapore. The Riau-Lingga
Archipelago was a regular hunting-ground for them, and whole islands
were depopulated by their slave raids. They visited Penang and the
Kedah coast as late as 1835. They wrought incalculable havoc and
damage.
The most bitter enemies of the Lanun and Balanini were the Malay
pirates of the Riau-Lingga Archipelago, the Carimons, and other
islands near the southern entrance of the Straits of Malacca. Pulo
Galang was their principal market for the sale of captured goods and
slaves. The Lingga Sultan was suspected of encouraging them; his
chief officers equipped pirate fleets, as also did the sultans of Sumatra
and the Peninsula. Pirate praus would seem to have been fitted out
even at Singapore. The Malay praus, however, were much smaller
than the large Lanun and Balanini war-boats and carried fewer men.
Compared with the operations of their rivals, Malay piracy was on a
much smaller scale.
In the early part of the nineteenth century the north-west coast of'^
Borneo was one of the most notorious pirate centres. The actual
piracy was carried on by the Sea-Dyaks, the Orang Laut, but they
were employed and directed by the Malay chieftains and individual
Arabs who had settled among them. They and the Lanuns, whose
strongholds were north of Brunei, were the pirates against whom the
efforts of Raja James Brooke came chiefly to be directed.
As in the case of the Moorish corsairs of the Mediterranean in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it was the lack of concerted action
against them by the European naval powers that enabled piracy to
survive as long and as successfully as it did. The co-operation provided
for in the Anglo-Dutch treaty of 1824 never materialized. The
British for long had inadequate naval forces at their disposal because
the East India Company after 1833, when it ceased to be a trading
concern, was unwilling to incur expense on the Straits Settlements,
from which it received no revenue. The Dutch, who had far more
warships in the Archipelago than the British, did more than any other
nation to suppress piracy, but they confined their efforts to their own
area. The Spanish in the same way concentrated upon protecting the

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EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

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Philippines against the Lanuns. In 1848 they expelled the Balanini

from their islands. In 1851 they captured Sulu and forced the Lanuns
to transfer their trading centre elsewhere, feut it was only later, when
they gradually brought the Sulu Archipelago and Mindanao under
their control, that the Lanun raids on the I^hilippines came to an end.
The development of Singapore brought so much native trade there
that it increased the prosperity of the pirate profession. From 1819 to
1830 the Straits Settlements had only a few gunboats and schooners,
which were quite inadequate to cope with the evil. The Bugis
merchants of Singapore complained of their inadequate protection
in 1831 and threatened to abandon their voyages. So difficult was the
situation that in 1832 the Chinese of Singapore were permitted to
fit out four ships of their own for service against pirates. In 1835
petitions for better protection were made to the British parliament
and the Government of India by the European and Chinese merchants
of Singapore and the Bengal Chamber of Commerce. As a result
H.M.S. Andromache was sent out to the Straits of Malacca, while her
captain and the Governor of the Straits Settlements were appointed
joint commissioners for the suppression of piracy. In 1836 two more
warships and three gunboats were sent to Singapore, and as a result
of their efforts severe blows were dealt at Malay pirate centres. In
particular the Galang centre was destroyed. In 1837 the Government
of India stationed a permanent force of two Royal Navy ships and five
gunboats in the Straits. But more important still was the arrival of
the small steamship Diana there in that year. It was steam power
alone that could cope adequately with the galley, which could outmanoeuvre the sailing ship by using its oars.
For some years there was a notable decrease of piracy near the
Straits Settlements. But in 1843 a great recrudescence of Malay and
Lanun activities occurred. In the meantime, however, a new personality had arrived QI\ the scene in 1839, and under his inspiring
leadership the operations against piracy took on a vigour which in a few
years reduced it to insignificance. James Brooke was the son of a
member of the Bengal Civil Service and had himself served in the East
India Company's army in the Assam operations during the first AngloBurmese war. A serious wound in an engagement near-Rangpur_
caused him to return to England in 1826^ and soon afterwards he left
the Company's service. In 1830 he sailed to China, and while passing
through the Malay Archipelago he was so deeply impressed with its
beauty and the devastation wrought by piracy and internecine warfare
that when his father died, leaving him a large property, he invested in a

CH.'27

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501

yacht, the Royalist of 140 tons burden, trained a picked crew, and in
1839 arrived in Borneo with the immediate object of carrying on exploration and scientific research.
He found the district of Sarawak in revolt against the Sultan of
Brunei, whose uncle, Pangeran Muda Hashim, had just failed to suppress the rebellious Dyaks. Muda Hashim and Brooke became firm
friends, and in the following year Muda Hashim offered him the
governorship of Sarawak in return for his proffered help in dealing
with the rebels. Brooke not only crushed the rebellion but won the
allegiance of the Malays and Dyaks, who had long suffered under the
misrule of Brunei. After some delay, due to the opposition of the
existing governor, he received his appointment in September 1841,
and in the following year it was confirmed by the sultan.
While engaged with conspicuous success upon the task of introducing
just and humane government into the territory entrusted to him he was
busy trying to interest the British government in Brunei. With the
growth of steamship traffic to China the need had arisen for a coaling station between Singapore and Hong Kong, which had been
acquired in 1841. In those days ships consumed such large quantities
of coal that its storage took up valuable cargo space, and it. was
essential to have coaling stations at not too great a distance from each
other so as to reduce the amount,that it was necessary to carry. Brunei
itself and the island of Labuan both possessed seams of excellent coal,
and Brooke learnt that the Dutch, were casting longing eyes upon
them. In 1844 Sultan Omar offered to cede Labuan to Britain, and
Brooke suggested that not only should the offer be accepted but also a
British Resident should be appointed to Brunei as adviser to the
sultan. The idea that was germinating in his mind was something
along the lines of the Residential system that was later introduced into
Malaya. And it is of no small significance that Sir Hugh Low, who
in 1877 became Resident of Perak and was the real creator of the
Residency system in Malaya, served his apprenticeship under Brooke
in Sarawak.
Meanwhile in 1846 matters came to a crisis in Brunei. The sultan,
under the influence of the piratical faction of the Malay nobles, who
saw in Brooke's measures against piracy the end of their profitable
enterprise, had Pangeran Muda Hashim and all his supporters
murdered. He attempted to procure Brooke's murder also and to
kidnap Admiral Cochrane, whose squadron had in the previous year
dealt Borneo piracy its heaviest blow by the capture of the Lanun
stronghold of Marudu. The Lanun leader, Sharif Osman, who had

502

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

been killed in the fight, was the ally of Pangeran Usop, the sultan's
favourite. Usop himself had in 1845 led an attack on Muda Hashim,
but had been captured and put to death.
|
The measures against piracy which brought matters to a head in
this way had begun with the decisive defeat of the raids of the SeaDyaks on Sarawak. The sultan's governors/of the Sea-Dyaks were
four Arab sharifs, who were pirate chiefs and slavers. They planned
a big attack on Brooke in 1843 and were supported by Usop and
Makuta, the ex-Governor of Sarawak, whose misrule had caused the
rebellion into which Brooke had run in 1839. Their plot, however,
misfired, because before it could be carried out Captain Keppel
arrived in H.M.S. Dido to investigate attacks that had been made on
Singapore praus off the Borneo coast, and Brooke at once advised an
attack on the Serebas and the Sekarran, the two tribes into which the
Sea-Dyaks were divided. Thereupon the Dido, with Brooke's
flotilla of Sarawak Malays, set about destroying the strongholds of the
Serebas. Before the fight could be carried into the Sekarran country
the Dido had to proceed to China. But she returned in 1844 ^"^^
dealt with the Sekarran in the same way as she had with the Serebas.
Then in the following year, as we have seen. Admiral Cochrane's
squadron dealt the Lanun a staggering blow by destroying their
fortified settlement at Marudu.
The triumph of the piratical party at Brunei in 1846 was shortlived. Brooke and Cochrane appeared at the entrance to the river on
which Brunei town stands, the sultan refused to negotiate, and after
a short sharp fight the town was captured and the sultan fled inland.
He was allowed to return, since the piratical party which had forced
his hand was now powerless and he was willing to co-operate with the
British for the suppression of piracy and slaving. Hence, leaving
Captain Mundy behind to negotiate. Admiral Cochrane departed
for China. On his way his squadron destroyed the two important
Lanun settlements of Tampassuk and Pandassan. At the same time
Mundy, in H.M:S. Iris, completed the work of stamping out the
Lanun power in north-west Borneo by the systematic destruction
of the settlement that Haji Saman, one of the leaders of the piratical
party at Brunei, had established in the Mambakut riv;er. As_a result
every Lanun settlement in north-west Borneo was abandoned, and the
refugees made their way round to the north-east coast to establish a
new centre at Tunku.
On being restored to his throne Sultan Omar ceded Sarawak in full
sovereignty to Raja Brooke. Almost at the same time a despatch from'

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503

Lord Palmerston authorized the acceptance of the sultan's offer to

cede Labuan and the conclusion of a commercial treaty, but rejected
the proposal for establishing a British Resident at Brunei. The
treaties that were signed in 1846 as a result of the ensuing negotiations
pledged the sultan to suppress piracy and slavery, granted British
commerce most-favoured-nation treatment, and provided that there
should be no alienation of territory by the sultan without British consent. Brooke then returned to Britain in triumph. He was knighted
and appointed Governor of Labuan and commissioner and consulgeneral to the sultan and independent chiefs of Borneo.
Right from the start the Dutch had watched Brooke's actions in
north-west Borneo with'growing apprehension. In the years 1845-6
in a series of notes to the British Government they put forward the
surprising contention that the British operations in Brunei, and in
particular the acquisition of Labuan, constituted a breach of the treaty
of 1824. The correspondence became somewhat heated, since Britain
not only refuted the Dutch claim by pointing out that the treaty
guaranteed the Netherlands' rights south of the Malacca Straits, and
that Sarawak and Brunei were situated on a higher degree of latitude
than Singapore, but reminded the Dutch of their own continual
violations of the commercial provisions of the treaty. On the subject
of Borneo the Dutch put forward an argument which went much
farther than mere questions of latitude; they claimed that wherever
there was a Dutch post on an island in the Archipelago the British
might not plant an establishment anywhere on the same island,
even in an independent state.
The Lanuns had been driven away from the north-west coast of
Borneo, but Sea-Dyak piracy once more lifted its head in 1847. The
reason was that once again Brooke had inadequate forces at his command, and the China squadron, which had given such effective help
in the previous period, was too small to carry out all the duties
required of it. At the very time when Malay and Lanun piracy was
being suppressed Chinese piracy began to rise to formidable proportions, and from about 1840 to i860 the native trade of the Straits
Settlements suffered from the attacks of their large well-armed junks,
which even attacked European vessels. Not until 1849 could Brooke
again secure the help of a British warship.
Early in 1849, at the request of the Sultan of Brunei, Brooke and
his Malays, with the boats of the H.C. steamer Nemesis,^ raided the
' H.C. (' Honourable Company's') was used to distinguish the East India Company's
ships from those of the Royal Navy.
17*

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EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. HI

Sea-Dyak country, but were too yvezk to inflict a decisive blow. Soon
afterwards, however. Admiral Collier, in command of the China
squadron, managed to send two Royal Navy warships and two Company's steamers, and with these Sea^Dyak piracy was ruthlessly
stamped out. The decisive action took place at Batang Maru, where
a pirate fleet of over a hundred war-boats, was ambushed and destroyed. Then over a wide area Serebas and Sekarran villages were
burnt and the country ravaged. Out of 4,000 pirates, their total loss
was estimated at no more than 800. It would have been at least three
times that number had not Brooke deliberately allowed large numbers
to escape. The Serebas and the Sekarran made their submission,
the chiefs who were opposed to piracy regained power, and in order
that a firm hand might be kept on the Sea-Dyaks, to prevent the
piratical party from organizing their forays once more, the Sultan
of Brunei ceded their land to Brooke in return for half its surplus
revenue.
The efl'ect of this victory on the trade of the Straits Settlements was
marked. For not only was the native trade freed, but also Singapore
developed a new trading connection of great value with Sarawak and
Brunei. Brooke, however, found himself the object of a furious press
attack in Singapore and London for his action against the Sea-Dyaks.
It began in the Straits Times in 1849 and was taken up by the London
Daily News. Ultimately David Hume, the Peace Society, the Aborigines Protection Society, Sydney Herbert and Gladstone himself were
drawn into the fray against Brooke, and The Times, Lord Palmerston,
Lord Grey, Keppel and Mundy in his defence. In 1854, however, he
was completely cleared by a royal commission. What had happened
was that Brooke's former agent, Henry Wise, had put up a needy
journalist, Robert Wood, to print a flagrantly false account of the
Batang Maru operation in the Straits Times, which was copied by the
Daily News. Wise had also managed to obtain the confidence of David
Hume, who welcomed the opportunity of gaining notoriety by attacking the much-lionized hero. Brooke had broken with Wise in 1848 for
fraudulent dealings in connection with the latter's Eastern Archipelago
Company, founded in 1847. The carnpaign, therefore, was inspired
by Wise's desire for revenge on Brooke because of his^ refusal; in his"
own words, 'to shut my eyes, say nothing, and see what God will send
me'. In 1853 Brooke successfully prosecuted the Eastern Archipelago
Company for fraud. As a result its charter was cancelled and the
company dissolved.
One lamentable result of this attack on .Brooke was that the belief

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505

became current in Sarawak that in case of further trouble he would

receive no support from the British Navy. Hence in 1857 the Chinese
secret society there stimulated a revolt. Kuching, the capital of Sarawak, was burnt and many Europeans and natives butchered before it
was suppressed. Two years later some discontented Malay chiefs
attempted a rising. It is significant that throughout these troubles the
Sea-Dyaks remained staunchly loyal to the man who had cured them
of piracy.
Besides contesting through diplomatic channels Raja Brooke's right
to establish himself at Sarawak, the Dutch began to take special
measures to place their sovereign rights in Borneoand the rest of their
' Outer Possessions' also^wherever possible, beyond doubt. They had
indeed cut to the bone all expenditure upon activities in Borneo, but
in November 1843 the authorities at The Hague authorized the adoption of tentative measures aimed at extending their power there. A
few months later the disastrously unsuccessful attempt of a British
private merchant, Erskine Murray, to open up trade with the Sultan of
Kutei, brought the east coast to Batavia's notice. Accordingly, a small
naval expedition was despatched there in March 1844, and new contracts made with the sultans of Kutei and Pasir. Treaties were also
negotiated with the rulers of Bulungan, Gunong Tabur and Sambaliung
whereby, among other things, they undertook to forbid non-Dutch
Europeans to establish themselves in their territories. How much such
agreements were worth in fact was demonstrated shortly afterwards,
when Captain Sir Edward Belcher in the H.M.S. Semarang, going to
the rescue of a British merchantman wrecked off Gunong Tabur,
took the opportunity to negotiate treaties with its ruler and the
sultan of Bulungan. The British government, however, did not confirm
them.
All these threats of foreign interference in their own preserves, as
incidents of such a kind were in Dutch eyes, made it obvious to
Governor-General Rochussen, when he took over in 1845, that more
effective control must be established over Borneo. The measures he
took towards that end, however, were totally inadequate, since without
effective occupation, which he was not in a position to carry out, they
were seen to be mere paper schemes. His appointment of a ' Governor
of Borneo and Dependencies' with his capital at Sintang three hundred
miles up the River Kapuas in western Borneo, and his efforts to extend
Dutch influence over the east coast through contracts negotiated with
its rulers by an 'administrator' {gezaghebber) stationed at Kutei, were
of course intended primarily to impress foreign powers. But the chief

506

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

foreign power, Britain, rejected with contempt the Dutch attempts

to twist the meaning of the Treaty of 1824 ^^ their own advantage, and
reserved the right to found colonies in Boilneo, should she so desire.
Then also Sintang was found to be useless as a capital, and the plan
for a unified administration had to be abandoned. Moreover, the
political situation in Europe during 1848, the 'year of revolutions',
convinced the statesmen at The Hague that friendly relations with
Britain were essential. So the British treaty of 1847 with Brunei was
silently swallowed, and in 1850 it was decided to acquiesce in Britain's
actions on the north coast.
Once more the Dutch reorganized their Borneo administration,
this time into a Western Division and a Southern and Eastern Division.
Then within these more restricted limits they began gradually, and
more effectively, to strengthen their hold. Dutch private enterprise
was granted free access to the mineral wealth of the Archipelago except
Java and Banka, and although it achieved little before 1880, the way
was opened for bigger steps later. From 1850 onwards also force was
resorted to in order to bring under/direct rule parts of Dutch Borneo
hitherto unsubdued. TJie Chinese gold-mining kongsis of the Western
Division, which had always flouted external authority, were reduced to
submission, and in 1854 formed into a new Dutch province. And some
years later, when a Dutch attempt to place their candidate upon the
throne of Banjermasin led to a general revolt, the conquest of the state
was put in hand. It took several years, even after the Dutch gained
the upper hand in 1862; but military actions supplied an excellent
pretext for establishing direct rule.
While the Dutch were strengthening their hold on western and
southern Borneo, British interest in the island was waning. The
Labuan settlement, which had resulted from Brooke's negotiations with
the sultan of Brunei in 1846, was conceived as a coaling depot for
ships on the Far East run, a centre for action against piracy and an
entrepot for the north-west coastal trade. It proved a dismal failure.
The coal-mining companies were badly run, and coal from Britain
could undercut their prices in Singapore. It played practically no part
in the suppression of piracy which was carried out by the Dutch,
Spanish and British naval forces; indeed, British warships found"Kuching a more convenient base, and Labuan had no gunboat of its
own until 1877. Its trade remained negligible, since few European
ships visited it on account of its inadequate wharves and warehouses.
But it was retained: for some reason or other the Colonial Office was,
persuaded that it might one day become useful in connection with the

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507

expanding British trade with China. On the other hand, the rigours
of official economy made such inroads upon its administrative staff
that by 1888 only an acting-governor and a gaoler were left to run the
place on the spot. Finally in 1890 it was placed under the administration
of the British North Borneo Company.
During his later years as ruler of Sarawak Brooke was much occupied
with the question of the status of his principality. In 1852 he approached
the British Foreign Office regarding his recognition as an independent
ruler. This," however, seemed hardly compatible with his obligation
to make certain money payments, tributary in nature, to the sultan
of Brunei, and, moreover, the Foreign Office held that as a British
subject he could not acquire independent sovereignty without the
consent of the Crown. The Chinese insurrection of 1857 made him
regard the matter of recognition as one of real urgency: he felt that he
needed the protection of a European power. At one moment of panic
he even toyed with the idea of seeking Dutch suzerainty. Further
approaches to the Foreign Office in the course of the year 1858 again
brought no result. Both the British government and the electorate
were convinced that Britain already had too many colonial commitments, and should cut down rather than increase her responsibilities
in this field. Besides, the failure of Labuan did not inspire confidence
in Sarawak, and it was realized that Brooke's financial difficulties were
one impelling reason for his search for a suzerain.
In 1859, when he was again toying with the idea of surrendering
Saravvak.to the Dutch, Miss Angela Burdett-Coutts, the well-known
philanthropist, 'came to his aid. But in the following year he actually
approached Napoleon III of France and the government of Belgium in
turn. Nothing came of all these moves, and indeed his nephew and
heir-designate, Captain James Brooke Brooke, who took charge of the
Sarawak internal administration in 1858, was thoroughly opposed to
cession. In 1863,- through the personal intervention of the prime
minister. Lord Palmerston, a British consul was appointed to Kuching,
and in his official documents 'Sir James Brooke, Raja of Sarawak' was
named, with the implication that he was an independent ruler. Nevertheless the Foreign Office doctrine continued to be that no such
recognition had in fact been given.
James Brooke left Kuching for permanent retirement in England on
24 September 1863, the twenty-second anniversary of his assumption
of the title of raja. He had been a poor administrator and incompetent at finance, writes Sir Steven Runciman.^ but he had profoundly
^ The White Rajas, Cambridge, i960, p- 156-

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. I l l

changed for the better the lives of the Land Dyaks and other peoples
who had come under his aegis. He died' in June 1868 leaving to his
successor ' a disorganized and impoverished state'. ^
Ibid., he. cit.

CHAPTER 2 8

T H E RESTORED D U T C H REGIME I N INDONESIA

AND T H E C U L T U R E SYSTEM, 1816-48
AFTER Napoleon's defeat at Leipzig in 1813 the Dutch had joined in
the general revolt against him. Van Hogendorp's younger brother^
organized a provisional government and recalled William VI of Orange,
the son of the old Stadhouder, from England. As sovereign prince
under the new Fundamental Law adopted in 1814, he was given
extensive powers, which included not only the management of the
state's finances but also ' exclusive control' over the colonies. In the
following year, when by the union of Belgium and Holland the kingdom of the United Netherlands was formed under the provisions of
the Treaty of Vienna, William's rank was raised to that of king.
By the Convention of London, accepted by both sides on 13 August
1814, provision was made for the restitution by Britain of all the
former colonies of the Dutch East India Company 'conquered from
Holland since,1803', save the Cape Colony. Ceylon was.excluded
from this agreement, since it had already been ceded to Britain in 1802
by the Peace of Amiens. The tin-bearing island of Banki off the east
coast of Sumatra, which had been conquered in 1812, was exchanged
for Cochin on the Malabar Coast of India. The remark was once made
that Britain acquired her empire in the nineteenth century in a fit of
absentmindedness. In much the same vein is Stapel's suggestion that
the reason why there was no opposition in Britain to the restitution
of Java Was because the British had no idea of its value and beauty.*
To take over the government of the Dutch islands the king appointed three commissioners-general: Cornells Theodorus Elout,
Baron van der Capellen, a statesman of high reputation, and A. A.
Buyskes, previously lieutenant governor-general under Daendels.
Elout, the chairman, was a liberal of the orthodox school of the day
i.e. a humanitarian and a follower of Adam Smith. When the others
returned home van der Capellen was to remain behind as governorgeneral. In January 1815 the king furnished the commissioners with
^ Gijsbert Karel. T h e colonial reformer was Dirk.
' In his single-volume Geschiedenis van Nederlandsch Indie, 1943 edition, p. 225.
509

510

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

FT. I l l

a Regerings-reglementi.e. constitutional regulationmodelled on the

charter of 1803 and based on the principle of freedom of cultivation
and trade. A month later he issued a decrqe throwing open the trade
of the Netherlands Indies.
Napoleon's return from Elba and the Waterloo campaign delayed
the departure of the commissioners, and when they arrived in Java,
in April 1816, John Fendall, Raffles's successor, had received no
instructions to hand over. Not until 19 August did the official ceremony of rendition take place. There were further difficulties and
delays in the case of the other possessions, especially those in or'about
Surpatra, for in March 1818 Raffles returned to the scene as Lieutenant-Governor of Bencoolen and began to work with might and
main against the restoration of Dutch power there. Calcutta, however, supported the Dutch against him, and after the surrender of
Malacca in September 1818 all their old stations were handed over
speedily except Padang, which Raffles managed to retain until May
1819.

The new government found its task a heavy one. The Dutch had
lost much of their old prestige. The home country was too poor to
give adequate financial support, and the commissioners had no fleet
at their disposal and only a very small arniy. Overseas trade was
mainly in British and American hands. Moreover, under the liberal
system introduced by Raffles the cultivation of export crops, which
had been the chief aim of the old Dutch administration, had fallen
into decay.
The financial question was perhaps the most pressing one. Under
both Daendels and Raffles the colony had failed to pay its way. Elout
found that the British 'taxation system', as opposed to the Dutch
'trade system', was much more profitable for the individual than for
the state. As a liberal he was predisposed to favour free peasant cultivation. So, he found, was Muntinghe, when the question was referred
to the Council of the Indies. Hence, after a prolonged tour of inspection, the decision was taken to retain Raffles's landi^rent system,
using the desa method of assessment. The system was_ to be gradually
improved by measuring up and valuing the land, and in order to help
the taxpayer to keep out of the hands of the moneylender he_was to be.
free to pay his tax in either money or kind.
These principles were embodied in Land-rent Ordinances published in 1818 and 1819. They determined the framework of the
system of territorial administration which was laid down by the
commissioners-general in a Regerings-reglement issued in December

CH. 2 8

THE RESTORED DUTCH REGIME IN INDONESIA

511

1818. This retained Raffles's framework of Residencies, Districts,

Divisions and Villages, with the District renamed ' Regency' and the
Division ' District'. But whereas Raffles's system had tended towards
direct rule, with the Regent and his native staff subordinate to the
Resident, the new arrangements reverted to the method of 'supervision', the old dual system, whereby the Regent, though shorn of
many of his attributes as a hereditary noble, was in charge of a separate
branch of the administration, i And his subordination to the Resident
tended once again to become feudal rather than administrative. He
was to be treated as a 'younger brother'i.e. a vassal ruler in the
accepted meaning of a term that was current throughout South-East
' Asia. These arrangements applied only to Java. Elsewhere, in what
the Dutch called the 'Outer Provinces', the native peoples remained
under the rule of their own chieftains, who themselves were under the
supervision of the Dutch provincial governors.
The system of justice underwent a more thoroughgoing revision,
though here again much of Raffles's system was retained. The old
dual system of different law and separate courts for Europeans and
natives was revived and strengthened, and where Raffles had appointed
a single judge or magistrate, sitting alone with either a jury or assessors, the old method of a bench of judges, each with a vote, was
restored. For natives the Residency Courts and Circuit Courts of the
Raffles regime were retained. The former was renamed Landraad and
consisted of a bench of native judges under the presidency of a Dutch
official. For Europeans the Courts of Justice established by Raffles at
the ports of Batavia, Semarang and Surabaya were retained, while
others were set up at Amboina, Macassar, Malacca and, in 1825,
Padang. That of Batavia became a High Court with general appellate
jurisdiction for the whole of the Netherlands Indies.
The commissioners-general made all manner of regulations for the
protection of the native. Native officials were to be remunerated by
the method of fixed salaries instead of by assignments of land worked
for them by serf labour. They might not engage in trade or industry,
nor might desa headmen hire out the labour of their villages under
any pretext whatever. The slave-trade was forbidden, and Raffles's
regulations regarding slavery were confirmed. Unfortunately, however, the safeguarqs were more honoured in precept than in practice.
And, like Raffles, the restored Dutch regime found it necessary to
retain the forced coffee culture in the Preanger, and the blandong
' See Fumivall's analysis of the principles applied by the Regerings-reglement of 1818
in Netherlands India, pp. 87-92.

512

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

people's serfdom in the teak forests. Worse still, in 1830, with the
introduction of the Culture System, the principle of free peasant
cultivation was abandoned completely.
|
By the beginning of 1819 nearly all the Dutch possessions outside
Java had been handed over and the work of the commissioners-general
was finished. Elout and Buyskes therefore' returned home, leaving
van der Capellen behind as governor-general. He was the least progressive of the three, and as early as 1820 gave the native chiefs greater
powers over their people, in direct contravention of the policy laid
down by the Regerings-reglement. He disliked the fact that an increasing number of Europeans was taking up planting in Java. He refused
to allow them to settle in the Preanger, for fear of their competition
with the government's system of coffee culture, which he was extending considerably. And because those who already owned estates there
paid higher rates for their Javanese labour than the government, he
forced them to sell their coffee to the government at the same price
as the Javanese himself.
He was on stronger ground in excluding Europeans and Chinese
from all trade in the Preanger. By advancing money to the cultivators
they could buy their crops at much lower prices. This practice,
besides impoverishing the cultivator, hit the government, for he was
unable to pay his taxes in full and tended to sell to private capitalists
coffee that was really government property.
In 1822, while on a tour of Java, van der Capellen found that
Europeans unable to obtain land from the government could rent it
in the native states under agreements known as 'contracts of landtenancy', which gave the tenant not only the use of the land but also
power to exercise the lord's rights over the cultivators attached to it.
In the following year he decreed that all such contracts were to become
null and void as from i January 1824. His action aroused great
indignation. Most of the contracts were long-term ones, in respect of
which the native chiefs had received large advances, which they would
now have to repay. And since they had already spent the money, they
could only discharge their debts by further pressing the already depressed cultivator. This bred much discontent and a spirit of resentment against the government, especially in the Jogjakarta area.
To make matters worse, the post-war boom, which had raised the
prices of coffee and sugar and brought an increasing number of ships
to Javanese ports, gave way to a slump, and hence revenue, which
had shown a surplus up to 1822, began to show an annual deficit
thereafter. Incidentally, it is interesting to note* that land-revenue

CH. 2 8

THIi RESTORED DUTCH REGIME IN INDONESIA

513

continued to increase; it was a fall in revenue from other sources

that caused the deficit.
Part of the trouble lay in the fact that the new administration was far
more costly than that of Raffles and spent money too freely on roads
and other public works. And it so happened that just when a poUcy
of retrenchment was urgently needed van der Capellen had to deal
with a number of outbreaks of unrest in the Moluccas, Borneo, Celebes, Palembang and on the west coast of Sumatra, all of which were
a drain upon his diminishing financial resources.
From the point of view of most Dutchmen the chief source of
grievance was the fact that overseas trade was mainly in foreign hands.
Dutch trade was specially favoured by the preferential system of
customs duties adopted in 1817; but the superiority of English piecegoods over those produced in the Netherlands enabled British merchants to retain their dominating position. In the hope of dealing a
blow at British competition Muntinghe suggested that the Dutch
n>erchants should pool their resources by setting up a big national
company with the king at its head. William jumped at the idea, and
in 1825 the Nederlandsche Handelmaatschappij came into existence
with a capital initially fixed at 37 million guilders, a guaranteed
dividend of 4J per cent, and the king himself as a principal shareholder. It was a far more ambitious project than Muntinghe had
envisaged. In its early years at least it proved just as incapable as the
private merchants of combating British competition.
Van der Capellen's efforts to help the native peoples led him to
attempt to reduce the evil effects of the spice monopoly upon the
Moluccas. He paid the islands a visit in 1824 ^'^^ announced the
abolition of the hated hongi-tochten, by means of which the number
of spice trees had been kept down to the level required for restricting supply and maintaining prices. He hoped to persuade
the home government to abolish the monopoly altogether, but
failed to do so.
Van der Capellen also failed to make ends meet. Hence in 1825 it
was decided to remove him from office on the score of the inefficiency
of his financial administration. King William felt that a special effort
was needed to cope with the continued annual deficit, and to this end
conferred on his successor, Du Bus de Gisignies, the rank of commissioner-general with special powers to carry through such reforms
as he might consider necessary. Van der Capellen should have returned
home in 1825, but his departure was delayed by the outbreak of a
serious rebellion in central Java.

514

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

The Java War of 1825-30 arose from a variety of causes. Discontent

had risen to a high pitch in the native states, and particularly in Jogjakarta, where the consequences of van der Capellen's cancellation of
contracts for land-lease had hit all classes of people. Another strong
grievance was over the tolls levied at the> boundaries between native
and government territory, and the vexatious exactions of the Chinese
to whom they were farmed. The general unrest came to a head under
the leadership of a prince of the royal house of Jogjakarta, Dipo
Negoro, who had personal reasons for hating the Dutch.
Pangeran Anta Wiria, better known as Dipo Negoro, was the eldest
son of Amangku Buwono III, who had been placed on the throne by
Raffles when in 1810 his father, Sultan Sepu, had been banished to
Penang. Amangku Buwono III had died in 1814, and in accordance
with Javanese adat law had been succeeded by a younger son Djarot
because his mother was a queen of higher rank than Dipo Negoro's.
But Raffles, in order to pacify the elder brother, who was a man of
outstanding influence, had promised him the eventual succession in
the event of Djarot's previous death. When, however, Djarot (Amangku Buwono IV) died in 1822, the Dutch government passed over
Dipo Negoro's claim and recognized the dead sultan's two-year-old
son as Amangku Buwono V. They would appear to have been genuinely ignorant of Raffles's promise, for they appointed Dipo Negoro
and another member of the royal house, Mangku Bumi, as joint
guardians of the young sultan.
Not long afterwards Dipo Negoro fell foul of the Dutch Resident
over an incident which occurred as a result of van de Capellen's
abolition of land-lease contracts. But what finally caused him to raise
the standard of revolt was the decision of the government to make a
road over some of his property where a sacred tomb was situated. He
was a religious fanatic, given to solitary meditation in sacred caves,
and felt himself deeply injured when the Dutch refused to recognize
him as religious head of Java. As the chosen of Allah to drive out the
'kaffirs' he aroused widespread sympathy among the, common people,
who saw in him the prince-liberator of ancient legend-.
The revolt began when Dipo Negoro, his co-guardian Mangku
Bumi and other discontents 'went to the mountains'. -When h_
suddenly appeared before Jogjakarta with a powerful force the population rose in his support, the Dutch carried away the young sultan,
and there was a massacre of Europeans and Chinese toll-farmers. The
: Dutch were caught on the wrong foot, for a large part of their army
was away on an expedition to Palembang and Bom. General de Kock

CH. 2 8

THE RESTORED DUTCH REGIME IN INDONESIA

515

was sent to central Java with so small a force that he could do little
to prevent the spread of the conflagration. He did, however, by
negotiation persuade the Susuhunan of Surakarta from making
common, cause with Dipo Negoro.
There were no pitched battles; Dipo Negoro and his nephew
showed themselves adepts in guerrilla tactics, and even after de Kock
was reinforced, continued to maintain the upper hand. In vain did
the Dutch restore to the throne Sultan Sepuh, whom Raffles had
deposed. He could gain no support and died in 1828.
Gradually, however, de Kock learnt how to deal with the revolt.
He began to establish a system of strong-points {bentengstelsel) in
territory recovered from the rebels. These were linked up by good
roads on which flying columns operated. Du Bus de Gisignies disliked the high cost of the system, but de Kock was adamant in defending it, and it produced decisive results. In 1828, notwithstanding his
assumption of the rank of sultan, Dipo Negoro was losing ground
rapidly, the devastation was appalling, and there were frightful outbreaks of cholera. In 1829 Mangku Bumi and Sentot, Dipo Negoro's
principal lieutenants, finding their position hopeless, deserted to the
Dutch. In the next year Dipo Negoro offered to negotiate. At the
conference he refused to give up the title of sultan and protector of
Islam in Java, and after much delay de Kock broke the impasse by
arresting him. He was banished to Menado in the north of Celebes,
and later removed to Macassar, where he died in 1855.
To prevent a recurrence of trouble the Dutch annexed much territoryBanjumas, Bagelen, Madiun and Kedirifrom Jogjakarta and
Surakarta. Compensation was paid to both rulers for the loss of
territory, but the susuhunan, indignant at the shabby treatment he
had received in return for his loyalty, left his kraton and went into
retreat. The Dutch, fearful of another outbreak, banished him to
Amboina. His successor, Pakubuwono VII, without ado signed the
treaty off^ered him by Batavia, and there was no further trouble.
The Java War prevented any real restoration of the financial situation by Du Bus de Gisignies. It had cost 20 million florins and had
been financed entirely by loans. He did manage to effect some muchneeded reduction in the cost of administration and the number of
Residencies; and the establishment of the Java Bank and a new
currency was calculated to bring good results in the long run. He
also withdrew the prohibition of the land-lease contracts which had
caused so much unrest. But at the moment when the financial
situation in Java was working up to a crisis Belgium revolted

5l6

EUROPEAN TEKKITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

against Holland, and the home government was threatened with

bankruptcy.
This final development, however, wasl unforeseen when King
William, aware that some quite new approach must be made to the
problem of the Java finances, had appointed Johannes van den Bosch to
succeed Du Bus de Gisignies as governor-general and, acting on his advice, had in 1829. issued a Regerings-reglement which was to usher in a
change of profound importance in economic policy. Van den Bosch
was a self-made man who had risen from the ranks of the army in Java,
reclaimed a derelict estate near Batavia, quarrelled with Daendels and
been deported to Europe in 1810, spent two years as a prisoner-of-war
in England, risen to be Chief of the General Staffs in the kingdom of
the United Netherlands, and then retired to study political economy.
In his writings he was a great critic of the ' perverted Liberalism' of
Daendels and Raffles. He was a practical reformer rather than a philosopher, and as the founder of the Benevolent Society did much to
relieve the appalling urban poverty in his own country by settling
self-supporting colonies in the less cultivated districts of Friesland and
Drente. In 1827 he was sent on a special mission to restore prosperity
in the Dutch West Indies, and a year later returned with a report in
which he showed how to make them yield a large annual profit to the
mother country. This so impressed William that he appointed him as
the successor to Du Bus de Gisignies in order that he might try out
in the East Indies the ideas he had expounded.
The new governor-general landed in Java in January 1830 and
proceeded at once to carry into, effect a project that became known as
the 'Culture System' (Cultuur-stelsel). In many ways it was the old
system of forced deliveries and contingencies with a new look. The
Javanese peasant was held to be too ignorant to make the best of his
land; he must therefore be compelled to devote a portion of it to the
cultivation of export crops as directed by the government, and the
latter would take the product in lieu of land-rent in cash. The supplies
thus raised were to be handled by "Dutch merchants, shipped in Dutch
vessels, and sold in the Netherlands, which would by this means
become once more a world market for tropical produce. At the sa^ne
time home industry was to be stimulated by being .given _a closed,
market in the colonies.
The principles of the system in its application to the cultivator
were outlined thus by van den Bosch i^
' Quoted from the Indisch Staatsblad by Colenbrander, Koloniale Geschiedenis, iii,
pp. 37-8.
''

Cir. 2 8

THE RESTORED DUTCH RiEGIME IN INDONESIA

517

1. Agreements are made with the people for setting apart a portion of their rice-fields for the cultivation of products suitable for
the European market.
2. The portion set apart shall amount to one-fifth of the cultivated ground of each desa.
3. The cultivation of products suitable for the European market
must not entail more labour than the cultivation of rice.
4. The land set apart is free of land-rent.
5. The cultivated product is delivered to the district, and whenever its assessed value is greater than the land-rent that has beien
remitted the difference is credited to the people.
6. Crop failure, when not due to lack of zeal or industry, is the
government's liability.
7. The native works under the direction of his chiefs. Supervision by European officials is limited to the control of the working
of the fields, the harvesting and transport of crops on time, and the
finding of a suitable place.
8. The labour must be distributed in such a manner that a part
of the people is responsible for bringing the crop to maturity,
another part for harvesting it, a third for its transport, and a fourth
for work in the factory, but the last only if there are insufficient free
labourers available.
9. Where the system still encounters difficulties in its practical
application, freedom from land-rent shall be firmly maintained, and
the people shall be considered to have discharged their obligation
when they have brought the product to maturity; the harvesting and
finishing shall then be the subject of separate agreements.
The system was introduced under favourable circumstances, for the
Java War had brought much new territory under Dutch rule. Van den
Bosch began with indigo and sugar. The Residents held conferences
of heads of desas and elders and explained the system. Contracts were
made with Chinese and Europeans to receive the produce for delivery
to the government at fixed prices. The experiment was a success, and.
accordingly van den Bosch added coffee, tea, tobacco, pepper, cinnamon, cotton and cochineal to the list of products to be cultivated for
the government. There was opposition to the scheme from the highest
to the lowest, but the enormous cost of the Belgian war provided
an unanswerable argument for its continuance. In 1832, therefore,
van den Bosch was invested with dictatorial powers, and his system
became 'the lifebelt on which the Netherlands kept afloat'. This

,jg

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

unfortunately changed its character; it had come into being as an

expedient for saving Java from bankruptcy. It now became one for
saving Holland, and, in time, for enriching her at Java's expense.
From 1832 onwards the element of compulsion was increased.
Each Residency must deliver export prctduce to the value of two
guilders a head of its population. From January 1833 all coffee
produced in addition to the government quota must be sold to
the government at a fixed price. This was in direct contravention of
the original promise that after the cultivator had satisfied the requirement to cultivate an agreed government product on one-fifth of his
land he was free to do what he liked with the rest and could dispose of
its produce how he liked. Moreover, although van den Bosch's third
principle laid down that the cultivation of government products must
not entail more labour than the cultivation of rice, in practice, since
the cultures were in several cases new to the Javanese, they cost
him more time and trouble than rice cultivation, and in any case the
cultivation of coffee, sugar and indigo demanded more labour than rice.
The government in its need for money turned a blind eye to such
things as these; in fact all the safeguards provided in the original
scheme were thrown overboard. The European and native officials
who superintended the system received a percentage of the products of
their districts; hence they were anxious to raise the proceeds as high
as possible and used means forbidden by government decrees and
promises to the people. For instance, often more than one-fifth
of the acreage of a desa was set apart for government cultures, and the
best land was chosen for the purpose. Worse still, the cultivator must
cultivate government land before starting on his own. Food production therefore diminished because the Javanese had insufficient
time to cultivate their own sawahs. For although van den Bosch
laid down that a- maximum of sixty-six days a year was necessary for
labour on land set apart for government cultures, at least ninety days
were required by coffee cultivation; and since the hierendiensten
(forced labour) remained in force for the upkeep of roads and bridges,
in some districts the cultivator had to work more than 200 days a
year for the government. During the years 1848-50 there was widespread famine in central Java for this reason. Stapel suggests that^
the worst abuse lay in the fact that, in spite of the clear prohibition
contained in the fourth and ninth principles, land-rent was collected
almost without exception.
The financial results of the new system right from the start fulfilled expectations to the utmost. As early as 1833 a profit of 3 million

CH. 2 8

THE RESTORED DUTCH REGIME IN INDONESIA

519

guilders was paid to the Netherlands. It came to be known as the

batig saldo, the surplus, and it has been estimated that in all the home
country's exchequer benefited to the extent of some 900 million
guilders. It was used for the repayment of the national debt and the
construction of the Dutch railways. The Culture System also revived
the fortunes of the Nederlandsche Handelmaatschappij, which obtained the sole right to ship the government products to Holland.
The Government of the Netherlands Indies shared in this prosperity,
for under an arrangement known as the 'Consignment System' a
portion of its proceeds had to be made over to the treasury at Batavia.
' T h e Culture System', writes FurnivalV 'was succeeded by a
Liberal reaction, and the writers of this .school depicted it in its
darkest colours; since then it has never been critically re-examined.'
This fact has been too often overlooked by Dutch historians. ' T h e
Indies gained nothing; but the consequences were prejudicial,' seems
to reflect the general view. It is about as true as the statement that
George I I I lost the American colonies. The population of Java increased under the Culture System from 6 millions to 9^^ millions. The
rice export figures show that its cultivation must have increased.
There was a rise in the revenue from salt and bazaar dues, and a large
increase in the import of cotton textiles. The introduction of many
new export crops, and the experimentation carried out by the Department of Agriculture, especially in tea cultivation, was of undoubted
benefit to Java.
One must beware of generalizations. In some areas, notably East
Java, where the officials paid as much attention to rice as to sugar, there
was prosperity. In others, where they attended only to the cultivation
of export crops and neglected rice, there was famine. There were
good officials who thought in terms of the welfare of the people;
unfortunately there were too many who allowed their commission on
export crops, or their good repute with the government to dominate
their outlook. From the point of view of Indonesia as a whole, during
the period of the full application of the system, roughly from 1830
to i860, two very serious charges may be levelled at Dutch rule.
The Outer Possessions were neglected: the Dutch concentrated on
Java more than ever, and in the middle of the century showed little
concern for the other islands. They also failed to tackle systematically
the vast problem of piracy.
It was the series of rice famines between 1843 and 1848 that first
brought people up against the fact that something was seriously
' Netherlands India, p, 135.

520

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

wrong. The trouble began in Cheribon, a rice-growing area, which

under the Culture System was forced to produce coffee, sugar, indigo,
tea and cinnamon. In 1843 "'^^ ^^^ included among the export
crops, and the tax on rice-land was collected in kind. This caused a
serious famine and a large exodus of people. Other areas in central
Java experienced even worse conditions in the succession of famines
which followed. These caused an agitation against the system which
little by little grew in intensity. Governor-General Rochussen was
forced to reduce the cultures in the affected areas and did his utmost to ;
see that van den Bosch's original instruction, that due attention should
be paid to rice cultivation, was carried out.
But of far greater effect in the long run was the fundamental
constitutional change that took place in Holland in 1848 under the
influence of the revolutionary movements which shook all Europe
during that year. A constitutional revision took away from the king
the sole responsibility for the colonies and vested it in the StatesGeneral. This enabled the growing opposition to come to a head
under the leadership of Baron van, Hoevell in the Second Chamber.
Liberal opinion was that the system had been out of date by 1840.
There was a long road to be travelled yet before it was finally abolished,
and, some would say, before anything really effective was done to
mitigate its evils. But the chorus of voices demanding that the
interests of the native peoples should be the first care of the government was rising; and notwithstanding a succession of reactionary
governments at The Hague, the Colonial Opposition began to work out
a constructive Liberal policy. This was in due course to sweep away a
system which, as the antithesis of private enterprise, the Liberal
panacea, was to their way of thinking 'rooted in unrighteousness'.

CHAPTER 2 9

' T H E BRITISH FORWARD MOVEMENT IN MALAYA

AND BORNEO
THOSE people who had agitated for the transfer of the responsibility
for the Straits Settlements from the India Office to the Colonial
Office must have been disappointed at the immediate results of the
change, for during the term of the first Colonial Office governor, Sir
Harry Ord, from 1867 to 1873, the policy of non-intervention was
maintained even more rigidly than before. Ord himself was the unwilling instrument of the home government in this matter and complained later that he had been unduly hampered in his dealings with
the Malay rulers. For he was a helpless spectator of the growing
disorder and disintegration to which most of the Malay states were a
prey, and was only too well aware of the strong feeling among the
mercantile communities in the Straits Settlements that the interior of
the Peninsula was rich in natural resources and, given peace and order,
was capable of far greater trade than then existed.
Besides the internecine feuds among the Malay chiefs themselves,
there was the growing problem of the mass invasion of Chinese miners
in the tin areas from the middle of the century. Mining camps with
thousands of miners had sprung up at Larut in Perak, Kuala Lumpur
and Klang in Selangor, and Sungei Ujong in the Negri Sembilan, the
loose confederation of nine Minangkabau states. Larut had been
governed from 1850 by a chief, Long Ja'far, who had persuaded
thousands of Chinese to come to the tin mines there. They were
divided between two great hostile societies, the Ghi Hins and the Hai
Sans, and under his son Ngah Ibrahim's rule their faction fights had
become intolerable. Moreover, there- was serious danger of Penang
becoming involved, since the headquarters of both societies were
there, and it was through Penang that they imported arms and
supplies. Piracy became rampant on the Perak coast, and there were
clan fights in the streets of Penang itself. T o make matters worse, the
sultan died in 1871 and a quarrel broke out regarding the succession.
And when Sir Harry Ord, in the hope of securing a cessation of the
hostilities, suggested summoning a meeting of the chiefs to settle the
matter they refused to come, and he was powerless to interfere further.
521

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PT. Ill

The normal state of Selangor has been described by Sir Frank

Swettenham as one of 'robbery, battle and murder'. In Ord's time a
bloodthirsty struggle was in progress betwefen Raja Mahdi, a member
of the ruling family, and the sultan's progressive son-in-law, a brother
of the Sultan of Kedah, whom he had created viceroy. In 1871 an act
of piracy by Chinese from Kuala Selangor against a junk trading
under British colours brought the intervention of H.M.S. Rinaldo.
Other Malay states joined in the faction fight, and the disorder became
so serious that the tin supplies of the Malacca and Singapore merchants
were threatened. Again Ord's attempt to negotiate a settlement
failed. When the Singapore Chamber of Commerce complained
about the impossibility of trading in the Peninsula, the. Secretary of
State instructed him to tell them that no interference was possible
except to suppress piracy or repel aggression against British persons
or territory.
In 1873 he received a petition from 248 Chinese, who included
every leading Chinese merchant in the Straits Settlements, asking for
protection for their legitimate trade, and in reporting the matter to
Lord Kimberley, the Secretary of State for the Colonies in the Gladstone administration, he used almost their exact words: ' In fact the
present state of affairs in the Malay Peninsula is . . . that the richest
part of it is in the hands of the lawless and turbulent and, with the
exception of Johore, it is only in those states dependent in a certain
degree on Siam that order is preserved.'
In 1863 Britain began what has been called a 'serious diplomatic
battle'^ with the Dutch concerning their alleged violations of the
treaty of 1824 by extending their possessions in Sumatra. The Singapore Chamber of Commerce had complained that in bringing under
control certain east-coast ports which were open to British trade the
Dutch had told the rajas that the engagements entered into by their
predecessors were no longer in force. In the course of the exchanges '
it transpired that the Dutch were willing to meet the British demands
in return for a free hand to deal with Acheh, whose piracies had
caused trouble to both sides for half a century.
The matter became all the more important to the Dutch when they
learnt that in 1869 the Sultan of Acheh had unsuccessfully applied to"
Turkey for help against them. In that year, also, with the opening of
the Suez Canal the position of Acheh at the northern tip of Siimatra
became of far greater strategic importance than ever before. In 1871
a bargain was struck by which, in return for the cession of the Dutch _
' Rupert Emerson, Malaysia^p. 380.

CH. 2 9 THE BRITISH FORWARD MOVEMENT IN MALAYA AND BORNEO

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possessions on the Gold Coast in West Africa, the Dutch were

given a free hand in Sumatra, on the understanding that the British
trade in the Archipelago was to be treated on exactly the same basis as
Dutch.
The Sumatra Treaty, as it was called, was signed on 2 November
1871 and inaugurated a new forward movement by the Dutch in
Indonesia. In 1873 they began a long war of conquest in Acheh. In
September of the same year Lord Kimberley inaugurated a change
of policy in Malayan affairs which involved the open abandonment of
non-intervention. In his instructions to Ord's successor as Governor
of the Straits Settlements, General Sir Andrew Clarke, he told him
to use his influence with the native princes to rescue ' their fertile and
productive countries from the ruin that must befall them if the present
disorders continue unchecked'. The change was not in any way due
to the adoption of a forward policy by the Dutch, though it coincided
so closely with it in point of time. It was due entirely to local conditions. But, as Rupert Emerson puts it,i both the Dutch and the
British advances to establish greater control in their respective spheres
of interest' were symptomatic of the new imperialist spirit which was
beginning to be felt at the time', and was likewise manifest in the
renewal of the French advance in Indo-China at exactly the same
time.
A further paragraph in Sir Andrew Clarke's instructions contained
a definite suggestion regarding a line of approach to the problem.
After requesting him to ascertain the actual condition of affairs in
each state and report on possible steps to be taken to restore order and
protect trade. Lord Kimberley went on: ' 1 should wish you especially
to consider whether it would be advisable to appoint a British Officer
to reside in any of the States. Such an appointment could, of course,
only be made with the full consent of the Native Government, and
the expenses connected with it would have to be defrayed by the
Government of the Straits Settlements.' A request for a British
officer to teach him how to rule the country had already been made to
Sir Harry Ord by Abdullah, one of the claimants to the sultanate of
Perak. He was induced to repeat it to Sir Andrew Clarke. It was in
Perak, therefore, that the first steps were taken.
Clarke was a man of action; he did not send in proposals and wait
for instructions. His first enquiries showed that the problem of the
Chinese immigrants was more than the Malay rulers could tackle.
Accordingly he sent his officer in charge of Chinese affairs, W. A.
^ op. cit., p. 112.

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ntlROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. I l l

Pickering, to Penang to persuade the heads of the warring Larut

factions to accept his arbitration. When they agreed, he called a joint
meeting of Perak chiefs to be held on the island of Pangkor, off the
mouth of the Perak river, in January 1874. There he proceeded to
recognize Abdullah, the legitimate claimant, as sultan, notwithstanding
the fact that he commanded little support in the country, and to
negotiate the famous Pangkor Engagement by which he accepted a
British Resident.
This important document, which ushered in the new order,
provided for British intervention to protect Perak and assist its rulers.
Two clauses established the basic principles of the Residential system.
Clause 6 laid down 'that the Sultan receive and provide a suitable
residence for a British Officer, to be called Resident, who shall be
accredited to his Court, and whose advice must be asked and acted
upon in all questions other than those touching Malay religion and
custom'. Clause 10 provided 'That the collection and control of all
revenues and the general administration of the Country be regulated
under the advice of these Residents'.
The heads of the Chinese factions were also present at the meeting
and signed a bond undertaking, under a heavy penalty, to disarm
completely and keep the peace. The Mantri of Larut, who had been
appointed by Abdullah, with the subsequent approval of Sir Harry
Ord, was confirmed in his appointment and provided with an Assistant
Resident. Having acted, Sir Andrew Clarke reported his proceedings
to Lord Carnarvon, the new Secretary of State for the Colonies in
Disraeli's recently formed administration. Needless to say, he had
gone a considerable distance beyond anything envisaged by Lord
Kimberley in starting the ball rolling. .But the arrangements set down
on paper had yet to become established in practice.
Selangor was next dealt with. The 'immediate excuse', says Sir
Richard Winstedt, 'was a particularly atrocious piracy at Kuala
Langat against a Malacca boat, resulting in -the murder of eight
British subjects by pirates in the employment of a son of the sultan'.
In February 1874 Sir Charles Shadwell, the Admiral of the China
Fleet, was invited to join Sir Andrew Clarke in a naval demonstration,
as a result of which the sultan consented to the triaPof the-accused,
men, though attempting to dismiss the affair as 'boys' .play', and to
receive a Resident. In this case Clarke's first action was, to leave
young Frank Swettenham as informal adviser. There was no formal
agreement like the Pangkor Engagement, but Swettenham's tact and
understanding so won the heart of the sultan that he wrote to the

CH. 2 9 THE BRITISH FORWARD MOVEMENT IN MALAYA AND BORNEO

525

governor: ' I should be very glad if my friend would set my country

to right and collect all its taxes'. An official Resident, J. G. Davidson,
was therefore appointed with Swettenham as his Assistant Resident.
The third state to come into the new system was Sungei Ujong, the "
most important member of the Minangkabau Negri Sembilan confederation lying behind Malacca. Illegal tax-gatherers were pestering
Chinese miners on the Linggi river, and in April 1874 Clarke intervened and persuaded the Chiefs of Sungei Ujong and Linggi to sign
a bond to abandon the practice and keep the peace in feturn for
British protection. The Dato Klana Putra of Sungei Ujong thereupon asked for a British officer, and Captain Tatham was appointed
Assistant Resident in his state. Civil war resulted, since the Dato'
Ban.dar, who had drawn his revenues from oppressing the Chinese
miners, naturally objected to the new arrangement. A small British
force, therefore, had to be sent to deal with the trouble, and after
some guerrilla skirmishing the region was brought under control.
In the following year firm action had also to be taken in Perak,
where on 2 November J. W. W. Birch, its first Resident, was murdered.
Sir Andrew Clarke had left Singapore in the previous May to become
a member of the Governor-General's Council in India. His successor.
Sir William Jervois, was anxious to move somewhat faster in deaHng
with the old privileges and rights of the chiefs, which were the main
obstacle to any improvement in the condition of the people, and Birch,
when he should have shown tact and caution, had proceeded to
ride roughshod over them in his zeal for cleaning up what from the
point of view of a European administrator was an Augean stable of
abuses.
He travelled all over the state with boundless energy enquiring into
cases of oppression, particularly the institution of debtor-slavery,
which was intrinsically bad in any case, but in Perak was exploited in
such a way by Abdullah and his chiefs as to be a foul and intolerable
evil. The measures he took against it and for the proper collection
of taxes led to a conspiracy on the part of the offended chiefs to get
rid of him. But lest it should be thought that Birch's own attitude
and actions were the cause of his undoing, it must be clearly stated
that the conspiracy was rather against the Pangkor Engagement itself
than against the agent chosen to carry it out. The chiefs who entered
the Engagement, it has been well said,^ either did not fully realize
what was involved or, if they did, had no serious intention of honouring
the contract.
^ The Lieutenant-Governor of Penang, quoted by Emerson, up. cit., p. 125.

526

fUKOPKAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. I l l

The rising was suppressed by a strong expedition which hunted

down the murderers and their abettors. For a time there was danger
of a general Malay rising and it took several years to restore law and
order. Three chiefs were hanged; three others, including Sultan
Abdullah himself, were banisheds Governor Jervois, who had
advocated annexation, or, failing that, the conversion of the Residents
into Queen's Commissioners, governing the states in the name of the
sultan's, was censured by Lord Carnavon for giving the Residents
powers greater than the Colonial Office had sanctioned. The result
was an acrimonious struggle between the governor and the Secretary
of State over the functions of Residents. The governor's position
was that the system was unworkable if Residents were to be mere
advisers; and although Lord Carnavon refused to alter his theory
concerning the fundamental principles of indirect rule, in practice the
Residents became more and more the actual rulers in their states.
In 1878, when a Resident was held to have exceeded his powers
in a particular case, the governor laid down the rule that if a Resident
disregarded the principle by which he was an adviser only and exercised
the functions of a ruler he would be held responsible for any trouble
arising therefrom. This was approved by the Secretary of State, and
there the matter ended so far as the home government was concerned.
For after the Perak War there was no further trouble. The Malays
gave in, the rebellious chiefs had been removed, and the Residents
were able to go ahead with the task of reconstruction under much
more favourable conditions.
In Selangor the new system got under way without any difficulty,
since the viceroy and Davidson were old friends. A government
treasury was set up with a proper system of accounts, a police force
was organized, and the Kapitan China loyally maintained order in the
mining community of the Kuala Lumpur area. In Sungei Ujong the
Dato' Klana seems to have been only too anxious to do everything
according to British methods. Moreover, the intro.duction of British
administration brought prosperity such as had not" been known
previously. The abolition of slavery and of the many vexatious
imposts that had fettered trade, the maintenance of order by a reliable
police force, and the substitution of fixed allowances^ for the sultanSand other chiefs in place of arbitrary exactions, not to mention the
beginnings of education and the introduction of modern public health
measures, did much to improve the lot of the ordinary people.
Perak after so disastrous a beginning was transformed into a peace;
ful and flourishing state by Mr. (later Sir)JH[ugh Low, whose methods

CH. 2 9 THE BRITISH FORWARD MOVEMENT IN MALAYA AND BORNEO

527

during his long tenure of the Residency (1877-89) provided the model
for the administration of all the other protected states. ' How much
of his policy was original,' writes Winstedt.^ 'how much was due to
the governor and how much to Downing Street has not yet been
explored.' His method was never to dictate but to gain the cooperation of the chiefs by establishing close friendly relations with
them.^ The difficulties which he had to face on taking office were
immense, since although the rebellious chiefs had been removed
there were others who could stimulate quite effective passive resistance. Moreover, he himself was a stranger to Malaya when he went
to Perak. His previous service had been in Borneo.
One original cause of trouble had been the loss by the chiefs of
their feudal dues without compensation. Low sought to remedy this
injustice by giving them adminstrative posts and a percentage of the
government revenue collected in their districts. Another measure
which greatly improved relations was the establishment of a State
Council on the model of the Indian councils created by the Act of
1861. The sultan was its president; the Resident, the major Malay
chiefs and two or three leading Chinese businessmen were members.
The business was conducted in Malay, and the Council discussed all
important matters. Its work was mainly legislative and it passed all
the state legislation. The annual estimates of revenue and expenditure
were laid before it. All death sentences had to be referred to it for
confirmation or modification. The appointments and salaries of all
Malay chiefs and headmen were subject to its decision. It served its
purpose so well that similar councils with identical procedure were
instituted in other states.
The greatest innovation was the institution of courts of justice
presided over by European magistrates, often with the assistance of
Malay magistrates. The Penal Code of the Straits, which was adapted
from the Indian Penal Code, was administered, together with codes
of criminal and civil procedure drafted according to Indian and
colonial patterns. Each state was divided into districts under European
and Malay magistrates. The districts in turn were subdivided into
Mukim and villages with Malay headmen. As a measure of economy
police duties were given to headmen. This enabled the police force
to be reduced and many village poUce stations to be closed. It signified
the abandonment of a policy of intimidation for one of co-operation.
^ Malaya and its History, p. 69.
^ Swettenham makes the following penetrating comment on Low's methods: ' T o
gain their co-operation it is necessary to show them at least as much consideration as if
hey were Europeans, and infinitely more patience' (op. cit., p. 253).
18

C28

liUKOPEAN TliRRITORlAL liXPANSlON

1>T. lU

Debtor slavery was still the great evil when Low became Resident;
it was not abolished until i January 1884. In the other states it was
more easily got rid of. The establishment of the state finances on a
satisfactory basis also presented great difficulties. The state was
saddled with a debt of ^160,000 in 1877. Low's achievement in
paying this off in six years was a notable one. The rapid increase of
Perak's population was a further tribute to his work. The official
estimate was 80,000 in 1879 and 195,000 in 1889. The census in 1891
showed a population of 214,254.
In Larut Captain Speedy had practically a free hand. There were
almost no Malays in the neighbourhood, hence, although he consulted
the Mantri, who was the local chief, in every matter of importance,
he made his own decisions and acted accordingly. His measures
included the creation of a police force, the establishment of a magistrate's court, a treasury, a customs service and a Land and Survey
Office. Larut prospered; the Chinese were only too glad to settle
down to work, and the community was unaffected by the disturbances
which shook the rest of Perak. In' 1884 the first railway to be built in
Malaya connected Taipeng, the Larut mining centre, with Sa-petang
on the Larut river, a distance, of eight miles. Incidentally Selangor
immediately followed it up, constructing one from its mining centre,
Kuala Lumpur, to Klang, a matter of twenty-two miles.
As all the protected states depended upon their tin mines for a
revenue, everything possible had to be done to provide them with
means of transport. Pending adequate provision of roads, use was
made of many navigable streams by clearing them of the accumulation
of forest trees which had fallen across them in the course of the ages.
But every possible effort was put into road construction and all surplus
revenue devoted to it.
Until practically the end of the century the economic development
of the Peninsula was almost exclusively in Chinese hands. Their
capitalists did much to develop the protected states. Tin-mining was
their chief occupation, and their primitive methods were most
effective. The lack of labourers was a great difficulty and led to
negotiations with the Government of India for the recruitment'of
Indian coolies. In 1884 agreement was reached v^hich "permittedrecruitment for the protected states. Efforts were made to induce
European miners and planters to open up the country, but at first
these met with little response. A French company began to mine
tin in the Kinta district of Perak in 1882, and later extended its
operations elsewhere. Other European companies followed, but the

CH. 2 9 THE BRITISH FORWARD MOVEMENT IN MALAYA AND BORNEO

529

great obstacle to European enterprise in these early years before

federation seems to have been the inadequacy of the labour supply.
The earliest Residents spent most of their time touring the country
and from time to time reporting to the Governor of the Straits
Settlements. They built up the administration of their states with
little interference from above and with merely routine references to
the governor. At first the Resident was quite alone. Then he recruited
a clerk or two, an N.C.O. in charge of his police, a Eurasian apothecary
for the first hospital to be established, and a^ Malay warder to look
after prisoners. So writes Swettenham, who was closely associated
with the evolution of the Residential system from its inception.^
Owing to lack of communications it was very difficult for Singapore
to control and co-ordinate the work of its servants in the three states.
From 1876 to 1882 the governor had a Secretary for Malay Affairs
who periodically visited the states to audit accounts and to secure
uniformity of method, but after 1882 there was no one in the Singapore secretariat with enough personal knowledge of the Malay states
for this procedure to be continued.
During the first ten years of the system Residents kept daily journals
as a method of supplying information to the governor, but as their
work increased no time was left for continuing the practice. Their
annual budgets had to be regularly submitted for the approval of the
governor. Besides furnishing this and his annual report, says Swettenham, ' the correspondence of the Resident with Singapore was mainly
occupied with the appointment, promotions, salaries, and complaints
of Government officers'. There was only one way for a governor who
was interested in the Malay states to exercise any influence over their
administration, and that was by visiting them and studying conditions
on the spot. Until 1903, when the main trunk railway line came into
operation with its terminus in Province Wellesley, the difficulties of
correspondence between the states and Singapore, as well as with each
other, forced each Resident largely to follow his own line. Sir
Frederick Weld (1878-87), who spent much time travelling in the
states, came to the conclusion that the large authority the Residents
had gradually acquired could be safely left in their hands. There was
to come a time, however, whien the lack of co-ordination resulting
from the.abolition of the Secretaryship for Native Affairs was to bring
such differences between states as to lead to federation.
In 1888 the number of protected states was augmented by the
addition of Pahang, a very large but underdeveloped state with a
' British Malaya, pp. 245-71.

530

EUROPPAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. I l l

population of only 50,000 Malays and a few hundred Chinese. Misgovernment was so rife there that in 1887 Weld had persuaded the
sultan to make a treaty under which he received a. British consular
agent. In the following year, however, the murder of a Chinese
British subject led to further pressure fronJ Singapore, as a result of
which the sultan, very unwiUingly, requested the appointment of a
Resident. The application of the new system caused some of the
chiefs to rebel and resulted in long and expensive operations which
ended only with their being hunted out into the Siamese states of
Kelantan and Trengganu, where the survivors were captured and
deported to Siam. YouUg Hugh Clifford, who later rose to positions of
great distinction and produced valuable studies of the work and
experiences of the pioneers who opened up Malaya and Indo-China,
took a prominent part in these operations.
Similar pressure to that brought to bear on Pahang was exerted in
the case of the Minangkabau states, with the result that by a treaty
made in August 1895 all nine agreed to form the confederation of
Negri Sembilan under British protection, and to follow the advice of
a British Resident in all matters of administration save those touching
the Mahommedan religion. This new turn of policy came largely as
the result of a careful review of the Residential system made by Sir
Frederick Weld in 1880. The alternatives, he said, were to retire or to
annex. The former was out of the question, since immigration and the
investment of foreign capital were taking place in the confidence that
British control would remain. Annexation he was opposed to on the
grounds that a colonial system of government was inappropriate to
the states in their existing condition. Hence he recommended the
extension of the Residential system to further states and the open
recognition of the real functions of Residents.
Weld made it clear that annexation vi'as not the proper solution of the
problems of Malaya.. But it was Swettenham who made it equally
clear that the Residential system could not be left to develop indefinitely without co-ordination. In 1893 he submitted a scheme for
federation to Governor Sir Cecil Clementi Smith. This went up to
the Colonial Office, with the result that Smith's successor. Sir Charles
Mitchell, was asked to report on the proposals. After two years^
consideration Mitchell in 1895 recommended that, subject to the
approval of the Malay rulers concerned, the scherrie should be
adopted.
He argued that the four protected states were drifting seriously
apart in matters of justice, taxation and land settlement, and that in

CH. 2 9 THE BRrXISH FORWARD MOVEMENT IN MALAYA AND BORNEO

53 I

the absence of some centralizing power administrative uniformity

was impossible. A governor, he pointed out, dealing with four
sepatale. R^-sidente either left thersv to thew ovia devices ot vfas overwhelmed with work. He therefore recommended that a ResidentGeneral should be appointed as chief executive officer to supervise
the administration of the states, but to act only through the individual
Residents; that while legislation should be left in the hands of the
State Councils there should be occasional meetings of an assembly of
chiefs and Residents with a competence entirely advisory. Instead of
appointing officers to separate states there should be a common civil
service acting under the departmental heads, of the federal government. Each state, however, should remain financially autonomous.
Frank Swettenham, then Resident of Perak, had the task of persuading the rulers to accept the plan and was instructed by the
Secretary of State to explain that in so doing they would in no way
diminish their own powers and privileges, nor curtail the rights of
self-government which they enjoyed. On this 'fictitious basis', as it
has been described, Swettenham easily performed his task, and the
Treaty of Federation was concluded whereby Perak, Selangor,
Pahang and Negri Sembilan were united to form the Federated Malay
States. Its glaring inconsistencies from the point of view of constitutional theory are obvious. There was no differentiation between
the respective powers of the states and of the Federation as in the
normal federative enactment. It provided against the curtailment of
the powers of the ruler but placed a Resident-General in control
of ' matters of administration other than those touching the Muhammedan religion', though the actual word ' control' is carefully omitted.
It expressly stated that the new arrangement did not alter the existing
relations between the individual states and the British empire, but in
fact tViey were made into an a(im.inistrative vmion.
But notwithstanding the discrepancies between theory and fact
the sultans were satisfied. They retained their offices with added
guarantees, larger incomes and enhanced pomp and ceremony. And
the British built up at Kuala Lumpur a large and efficient central
administration, in the approved modern style, in which the sultans
had little or no say. Yet against the claims of the rapidly increasing
Chinese population the theory that they were Malay states under
sovereign Malay rulers was a most convenient device for refusing to
take action likely to be resented by the Malays.
Sir Frank Swettenham became the first Resident-General when
the Federation was inaugurated on i July 1896. His administration

532

KUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

soon blossomed out with a Legal Adviser, a Secretary for Chinese

Affairs, a Financial Commissioner, a Judicial Commissioner, a
Commissioner of Police and a Director of Public Works. As time went
on other departments were added. The Resident-rGeneral himself,
though subordinated to both the Governor of the Straits Settlements
in his function as High Commissioner of the Federation and the
Secretary of State for the Colonies, managed in practice to maintain
great freedom of action. And since the treaty placed no Hmits on his
competence, save in the matter of the Mahommedan rehgion, the
real substance of legislative power was in his hands.
The first of the promised conferences of Malay rulers was held at
Kuala Kangsar, in Perak, in 1897. Never before in Malay history
had such an assembly met, and as the proceedings were in Malay
the Malay members took a full share in the debates. A number of
important subjects for legislation came up for discussion, and as they
were unanimously agreed to, they were passed on to the State Councils
for legislative enactment in identical terms. Thus Kuala Lumpur
became the legislative as well as the administrative centre, and the
position of the State Councils, which had been so vital a feature of
the old Residency system, necessarily deteriorated before the inevitable
growth of centralization.
The second conference of Malay rulers, held at Kuala Lumpur in
1903, brought up the question of Malay participation in the government, and the Sultan of Perak regretted that no way had been found
of handing over to Malays any considerable portion of the administration. He also made a dignified and fair-minded protest against
overcentralization which drew attention to the growing need for
reforms in the federal structure. The departmentalization of the
government and the urge for uniformity could have only one result,
the tightening of central control. For the Judicial Commissioner
framed the procedure of the state courts, the Financial Commissioner
reorganized the whole financial system, the Publi^Works Departments.
in all the states were fused into one under the Director at Kuala
Lumpur, railway construction came under the Federal Director of
Railways, forest conservation was systematized under the central
Forest Department, and agriculture and education under federal,
directors.
The increase in efficiency was marked and the records of prosperity
impressive. The population of the four states rose from 424,218 in
1891 to 678,595 in 1901. The revenue increased from just under 8^
million dollars in 1895 to just under 24 million 'dollars in 1905 artd

CH. 2 9 THE BRITISH FORWARD MOVEMENT IN MALAYA AND BORNEO

S33

there was an appreciable surplus of revenue over expenditure. In

1874 the states did not boast of a single post office. In 1904 their
postal services dealt with 10 nnillion covers, issued money orders for
more than i J miUion dollars, had in their savings banks deposits of
275,000 dollars, and maintained over 2,000 miles of telegraph wires.
There were hospitals treating many thousands of patients and schools
attended by 13,000 children. There were over 2,400 miles of good
roads and 340 miles of railway built out of current revenue. ' I t may
be questioned', wrote Sir Frank Swettenham with justifiable pride,
'whether it is possible to find, in the history of British administration
overseas, a parallel to this record.'^
But the opponents of centralization argued that British pledges to
the sultans had been ignored and that there was a tendency to forget
that the powers exercised by the government were derived entirely
from their gift. There was an uncomfortable feeling that the ResidentGeneral was not under any effective control. And, moreover, the
rapid increase of the commercial, mining and planting communities
had led to a desire on their part to obtain representation in the government. Hence in 1909 an Agreement for the Constitution of a Federal
Council was laid before the rulers and accepted by them.
The new body was to be under the'presidency of the High Commissioner. Its membership comprised the Resident-General and the
four Residents, the four sultans and four unofficial- members to be
nominated by the High Commissioner with the approval of the king.
The High Commissioner was also empowered, if he thought it
desirable, to add to the Council one or more heads of departments,
but if he made an official addition in this way he must add another
unofficial member. The Council was given the task of dealing with
the draft estimates of revenue and expenditure of each state. It was a
legislative body, but its legislative powers are referred to only incidentally and indirectly in the document. There is a statement in the
preamble about the proper enactment of all laws intended to have
force throughout the Federation, or in more than one state, and the
provision in the body of the document that laws passed by the State
Councils were to continue to have full force and effect, save where
repugnant to laws passed by the Federal -Council. The exclusive
jurisdiction of ^he State Councils over questions concerning the
Mahommedan religion and certain matters involving Malay customs
was confirmed, with the addition of the words ' and any other questions
which in the opinion of the High Commissioner aff^ect the rights and
' op. n'f., p. ^01.

^24

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. I l l

prerogatives of any of the above-named Rulers or which for other

reasons he considers should properly be dealt with only by the State
Councils'.
i
There has been much comment on the legal inconsistencies of the
document, about the propriety of the governor of a Crown Colony
acting as president of a council controlling the affairs of a federation
of protected states under their own rulers, and about the fact that the
nominated members of the Council were to be appointed subject to
the approval of the Crown and not of the rulers of the states. But the
practical effect of the measure was further to decrease the importance
of the sultans and of the State Councils. On the Federal, Council the
sultans were reduced to the same level as any ordinary member. They
could not preside over it; they had no veto; the Council legislated
whether they were present or not, and the bills passed were signed
by the High Commissioner and not by them. As for the State Councils,
their new position has been summarized thus: ' T h e Federal Council
apportioned the combined revenue of the four states as it saw fit
and later informed the State Councils of its decisions. The legislative
function of State Councils ended, since all laws of any importance
were henceforth passed by the Federal Council. '^
The High Commissioner, Sir John Anderson, who introduced these
changes, which had an effect so different from what he had intended,
followed them up by changing the title of the Resident-General to
Chief Secretary, hoping thereby to reduce the independence of t h e
holder of the post. But this measure also misfired. Of the four
non-officials there were three British and one Chinese. In 1913 the
Legal Adviser and a further unofficial member were added and in
1920 the Treasurer and anotlier official member. Ultimately before
the reform of the Council in 1927 .there were eight non-official
members: five Europeans, two Chinese, and a Malay chief.
The main factor which was instrumental in producing the change
in the position of the Malay rulers was the economic revolution which
during'the first twenty years of the twentieth century brought Malaya
right into the forefront of world commercial development, and her
states face to face with conditions that their rulers with their mediaeval
outlook were unable to grasp. Malaria control, agricultiyal chemistry, .^
modern educational policy, the world price of tin and rubber, and
suchlike questions became the main concern of the government, and
they could no longer be dealt with by the old method of a Resident
using his persuasive powers upon sultans and chiefs. Everywhere
' L. A. Mills, British Rule in Eastern Asia, p. ,Jo.

CH. 2 9 THE BRITISH FORWARD MOVEMENT IN MALAYA AND BORNEO

Cie

throughout the world it was an ' era of greater, rather than less
centraHzation.
During the last ten years of the nineteenth century tin mining was
beginning to pass from the primitive form of open-cast extraction to
that of large-scale excavation by modern Western machinery. The
world demand for tin became so great and the price so high that a
vast amount of foreign capital, mainly British and Chinese, was
invested in.the industry, and a huge immigration of labour, mainly
from China, was stimulated. Malaya's exports, which had risen to
26,000 tons in 1889, were 51,733 tons in 1904 and just under 70,000
tons in 1929. By the beginning of the century Malaya's output of
tin was over 50 per cent of the total world output.
Her tin industry, however, was now rivalled by rubber, the production of which was stimulated by the invention of the motor-car
using rubber tyres and the universal popularity of the bicycle. Rubber
had been introduced to Malaya as early as 1877, when the Royal
Botanic Gardens at Kew had sent two cases of seedlings to the
Botanic Gardens at Singapore for experimental purposes. But
although,government nurseries were established and seedlings offered
to planters little headway was made, and by 1897 only 345 acres were
under rubber. By 1905 the acreage under rubber had risen to 50,000,
and 200 tons were exported. That was a mere drop in the ocean
compared with the 62,145 tons of jungle rubber produced elsewhere
in the world. Then came a period of rapid development, stimulated
by Brazilian speculators, who forced up the price so that immense
profits were made by existing plantations, and there was a rush to
float new rubber companies in London. That was during the great
boom of 1910-12. Land was easily available, and by 1914 the Malayan
plantation could deliver rubber in New York at a price lower than
that of jungle rubber from South America.
In 1920 Malaya exported 196,000 tons of ru|Dber, or 53 per cent
of total world production. In the plantations the'need for labour was
met by the recruitment of thousands of immigrant coohesIndian
in this case. In the newly developed areas the Malay was in a minority.
His country was dominated by British and Chinese entrepreneurs,
capitalists and businessmen. Its labour force was composed mainly
of Chinese and Indians, who were ultimately to form a majority of the
population, while the bulk of the Malays remained small rice farmers
growing in addition some robber and coconuts as cash crops. The
racial character of the Peninsula had been changed within one generation,' and the Malays, unable to adapt themselves to the sudden
18*

536

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. I l l

change, found themselves both politically and economically 'pushed

out of their own house on to the. doorstep'.^
The greater part of the tin mines and rubber plantations were in the
four federated states. In 1913 their total exports had risen to the value
of 154,974,195 Straits dollars and their', government revenues to
44,332,711. In the general rush of development and the consequent
increase of prosperity political issues dropped into the background.
Not until after the First World War did the old issues concerning
centralization, bureaucracy and the position of the Malay sultans
return again to the forefront.
Against this background it is significant that when in 1909 the
four northern states of Kedah, Perlis, Kelantan and Trengganu came
under British control, under the terms of the Anglo-Siamese Treaty
of that year, their rulers all refused to join the Federation. Actually,
in taking them over Britain confined her power to the right to advise,
thereby conferring on them a large degree of internal independence.
They enjoyed privilegesnotably that of financial autonomythat
contrasted strongly with the subjection to Kuala Lumpur that was the
lot of the federated states.
Johore also would have no. part in a federation. Ever since the
foundation of Singapore in 1819 it had been closely associated with
the British. Not until 1914 did it have, a General Adviser, but in 1895
its sultan,. Abubakar, gave it a written constitution that was drafted
by British lawyers. This, with its one amendment introduced in 1914,
became the pattern of what in Malay opinion should have been the
constitution of all protected states. In its original form it had a Council
of Ministers, all of whom must be Malays professing the faith of
Islam, and a Council of State, membership of which was limited to
Johore subjects irrespective of race or religion. In 1914 membership
was thrown open, and British officials could sit on it without taking
the oath of allegiance to the sultan. The Council of Ministers was a
purely consultative body; the Council of State enjoyed the functions
of a legislative council. In 1912 a third body, an Executive Council,
was added. It was modelled on the executive councils in British
colonial administration.

All the Unfederated States had Advisers whose^ functions wefedifferent from those of Residents. The, Adviser had the right to be
consulted by the ruler on all questions, but did not issue any orders.
He could insist that the ruler should follow his advice, but usually
^ L. A. Mills and Associates, The New World of Southeast Asia, Minneapolis arid
London, 1949, p. 177.
' -

CH. 2 9 THE BRITISH FORWARD MOVEMENT IN MALAYA AND BORNEO

537

made an effort to persuade him to accept his view and used his power
as little as possible, even giving way if the matter were not one of
prime importance.
There were thus up to the Second World War three types of constitution in Malaya:
The Straits Settlements, a British Colony, comprising Singapore
Island, Penang and Province Wellesley, and the territory of Malacca,
including Naning:
The Federated Malay States of Perak, Selangor, Negri Sembilan
and Pahang and:
The Unfederated Malay States of Kedah, Perils, Kelantan, Trengganu and Johore.
The second Raja Brooke, Charles Johnson, who succeeded his uncle
in 1868, was the younger brother of Captain James Brooke Brooke, who
had originally been designated heir apparent, but was subsequently
disinherited for insubordination. He inherited a principality stretching
from Cape Datu on the Sambas border in the south to Cape Kidurong
just north of the mouth of the River Bintulu in the north. This was
much larger than the original territory created by the sultan of Brunei.
In 1853 the Rajang basin had been acquired, and in 1861 the land between the Rajang and the Bintulu, the sultan being compensated for
loss of territory by a payment of 4,500 Straits dollars annually. The
expansion had been dictated by economic considerations. The additional
territories produced most of the sago exported from Kuching to Singapore, and the local Brunei chiefs, by oppressing the native traders
handling the commodity, were threatening a trade of vital importance
to Sarawak's prosperity. Charles Brooke in 1868 asked for a further
hundred miles of coastline. The sultan objected, and had the support
of the British Foreign Office, which saw itself as the protector of
Brunei against the 'restless aspirations' of Sarawak.
But it soon appeared that foreign competition was likely to be more
dangerous than Brooke to the integrity of Brunei. Already in 1865
the sultan had leased most of North Borneo to an American speculator,
who had sold his rights to the 'American Trading Company of Borneo'.
But the small trading settlement planted by the latter on Kimanis
Bay had soon petered out. Then, in the early eighteen-seventies, there
was an Italian plan to establish a penal colony in Gaya Bay, but this
also came to nothing. The situation was next complicated by the
decision of the Spanish government of the Philippines finally to crush

538

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. I l l

the power of its old enemy the suhan of S'ulu. In 1873 Spain began
the blockade of the Sulu ports in preparation for their conquest. The
trade of Sulu was mainly in the hands of British and German firms in
Singapore, and their respective home governments began to threaten
joint action to restore freedom of trade. Their threats combined with
the success of enterprising blockade-runners, ultimately forced Madrid
in 1877 to grant free access to the Sulu Archipelago. In the following
year the sultan was forced to capitulate, and Spanish sovereignty was
proclaimed over all his dominions. This involved Borneo, since the
sultans of Sulu were hereditary suzerains of the whole of the north-east
coast of Borneo from Bulungan to Maruda Bay, and of the north-west
coast as far south as Pandasan. Spain therefore now claimed suzerainty
over an enormous area of northern Borneo.
In the meantime, however, a Labuan Trading Company had received
the permission of the sultan of Sulu to establish a depot at Sandikan
on the north-east coast with the object of smuggling arms, opium,
tobacco and other things into Sulu. Thereupon a certain Joseph Torrey,
representing the now-no-longer-operating American Trading Company
had laid claims to the area, thereby arousing the interest of Baron von
Overbeck, the Austro-Hungarian consul at Hong Kong. He, having
failed to interest his own government in Vienna in the commercial
prospects of north Borneo, proceeded to purchase Torrey's rights and
went into partnership with Alfred Dent, a son of his previous employer
in Hong Kong. In December 1877 the two of them obtained from the
sultan and the pangeran temenggong of Brunei the cession of all the
territory between Kimanis Bay on the north-west coast and the Sebuku '
River on the east coast. In return the sultan was to receive 12,000
Straits dollars annually and the temenggong 3,000. The sultan, be it
noted, was actually giving away territory over which he did not exercise
any effective authority whatever, and, indeed, as von Overbeck soon
discovered, not only was the whole of the north-east coast claimed by
the sultan of Sulu, but his was the only authority, recognized by the
local chiefs. Hence it is not surprising that within a niatter of weeks
(22 January 1878) the enterprising baron had negotiated a further
agreement with the sultan of Sulu whereby, in return for an annual
payment of 5,000 Straits dollars, he received the cessiorfof all the lands'
between the Sebuku and Pandasan rivers, and recognition as ' supreme
and independent ruler' over them. He and his partner Dent thus
acquired ownership of some 30,000 square miles of territory' with
about 850 miles of coastline. They began immediately to establish
administrative posts at various places, and to search for the requisite

CH. 2 9 THE BRITISH FORWARD MOVEMENT IN MALAYA AND BORNEO

539

capital to go ahead with their enterprise. Von OVerbeck failed a second

time to gain the support of the Austrian government, and finally sold out
his share to Dent, who with his associates in London floated a ' British
North Borneo Provisional Association Limited', and sought official
recognition of the British Government for their undertaking.
They certainly needed it. Spain, the Dutch and the raja of Sarawak
all regarded with concern their intrusion into Bornean affairs. In
September 1878 a Spanish warship arrived oif their new settlement
at Sandakan and announced to the resident, W. B. Pryor, that in accordance with the Spanish treaty of the previous July with the sultan of
Sulu the whole of north-east Borneo, from Maruda Bay to the Dutch
border, belonged to Spain. Pryor, however, presented a determined
front to both arguments and threats, and eventually the Spaniards
sailed away to leave the respective home governments to argue the matter
out. The dispute was finally settled by a protocol of 7 March 1885 in
which Spain abandoned all territorial claims in Borneo in return for
the recognition by Britain and Germany of her sovereignty over the
whole Sulu Archipelago. Incidentally, in August 1899 this passed into
the possession of the United States of America.
Exactly twelve months after the Sandakan incident the Dutch made
their first move. A Dutch gunboat appeared at Batu Tinagat, forty
miles within the new company's territory from the Sebuku River. At
the time Pryer could do nothing, but later he managed to lodge a protest
with a visiting Dutch commander. The Dutch government at The
Hague then took upon itself to warn London that anything of the nature
of a British protectorate over the area would be contrary to the spirit
of the treaty of 1824; whereat London at once repliedquite correctly
that the treaty had never applied to Borneo. It soon appeared,
however, that Dutch opposition to Dent's enterprise was much weaker
than it had been to Raja Brooke's. The Dutch Liberals, who were
in power, were aware that by accepting the British treaty of 1847 with
Brunei the Netherlands was in no position to oppose this new extension
of British influence. When, therefore. Dent's association, which had
powerful backing in Britain, managed to persuade the British Government to grant it a royal charter (i November i88i), the Netherlands
Government, as Graham Irwin puts it, 'accepted the fait accompli'.^
It had been shown the document some months earlier, but all its objections had been summarily rejected.
Dutch concern now came to centre upon their frontier in eastern
Borneo. In 18S4 an agreement was reached for the establishment of a
' Op. cit., p. 205.

c^O

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. I l l

joint frontier commission. It began its work in July 1889, and an

Anglo-Dutch frontier convention was signed in 1891. The line, however, could not be drawn in detail because of the complete ignorance
of both sides about the geography of the interior. Not .until 1912 was
the work completed by an Anglo-Dutch survey team. These dates
form an intriguing commentary upon the urgency of the matter.
Raja Brooke II's opposition to the cessions of territory was, unlike
the Dutch, well based. He claimed that they were contrary to the treaty
of 1847 with Brunei, which had forbidden the sultan to cede territory
to 'any other nation or the subjects or citizens thereof without the
consent of her Britannic Majesty'. Von Overbeck, he pointed out, was
a foreign subject, and the cessions were made without the British
Government's knowledge. But the British Government refused to
withdraw its support from Dent's proposals. In its view the real
danger was lest another foreign powerSpain, Germany or the Netherlandsmight annex North Borneo; and Gladstone, who assumed
office in 1880 while the discussions were in progress, believed that
under the circumstances, with the, cession of the territories already a
fait accompli, the grant of a royal charter would be the only means of
ensuring that the Government could exercise a restraining influence
over the company. The charter itself, indeed, imposed a number of
restrictions upon the company's freedom of action. For instance, it
might not alienate its territories without the consent of the British
Government, and its relations with foreign governments were to be
subject to the British Government's control. Moreover, it was under
obligation to abolish slavery in its dominions, preserve native religion,
and custom, and administer justice with due regard to native law.
The British North Borneo Company, as is well known, was the first
of a new series of chartered companies created during the eighteeneighties for the commercial exploitation of vast tracts of territory,
mainly in Africa. The grant of the charter made it impossible for the
British Government any longer to maintain its ban on Sarawak's
acquisition of more territory. Hence, in 1882 Raja, Charles Brooke
obtained the cession of the large area forming the basin of the Baram
River. The Brunei sultanate was now so weak that intense rivalry grew
up between Sarawak and the North Borneo Company for control over.,
the rest of its territories. And with the French under Jules Ferry's
leadership pushing ahead in Tongking, and the Germans acquiring the
Caroline Islands and north-eastern New Guinea, there was the further
fear that the distracted state of Brunei might tempt the interference of
the one or the other. So in 1886 the decision was taken to extend

CH. 2 9 THE BRITISH FORWARD MOVEMENT IN M A L A V A AND BORNEO

541

British protection to North Borneo and Sarawak, and in 1888 protectorate agreements were negotiated with them and jvith the suhan of
Brunei. It was a guarantee of stability and security which all welcomed,
the sultan not least, since he could now put up a more effective resis-..
tance to the greedy concession-hunting of which he had been the
unwilling victim.

CHAPTER 3 0

T H E D U T C H FORWARD MOVEMENT IN INDONESIA

UNDER Article 59 of the Dutch constitutional revision of 1^48, while
the king was recognized as the supreme authority over the colonies the
stipulation was added that a colonial constitution must be established
by law, and that the chambers of the Dutch Parliament were to have
specific rights of legislation over colonial currency and finance and such
other matters as might be necessary. Article 60 laid down that the king
must report annually on colonial affairs. These important changes in
the relationship between the mother country and the colonies had at
first very little effect upon conditions in the Indies. The Colonial
Department was in the grip of officials with a conservative outlook, and
the chambers for some time had^ too little knowledge of colonial affairs
to exert any effective influence. But the Regerings-reglement, or Constitutional Regulation, which was passed in 1854 and came into effect
in 1856, made one significant change in the colonial government by
entrusting the chief power in the Indies to the governor-general and
Council. This abolished the rule introduced in 1836, whereby the
Council had been reduced to the position of a mere advisory body.
Moreover, the Regulation looked forward to the ultimate abandonment
of the Culture System and showed clearly that state cultivation was no
longer to be fostered by the government. The governor-general was
instructed to see that the cultures did not interfere with the productionof adequate means of subsistence, and that the oppression connected
with them was removed.
Still, the movement for reform moved incredibly slowly: Baron van
Hoevell, a past president of the Batavia Society of Arts and Sciences
and the founder of the newspaper Tijdschrift van Nederlandsch Indie,
who had stoutly opposed corruption in. giving contracts^in Java; was a"
member of the Second Chamber from 1849 to 1862. There he not only
championed the cause of the Javanese people but helped to form what
came to be known as the 'Colonial Opposition'. But for a long time
the Conservatives dominated the home government and there was _
painfully little progress in actual reform.
542

CH. 3 0

THE DUTCH FORWARD MOVEMENT IN INDONESIA

543

In i860 the struggle against the Culture System received new life
as a result of two publications. One was a novel, Max flavelaar,
written by Edward Douwes Dekker under the pseudonym of ' Multatuli'. In it Dekker tells the story of his career as an insubordinate
official in West Java who had been dismissed, according to his account,
for defending the Javanese against the oppression practised against
them under the Culture System. Quite apart from its propaganda
value, it is a work of high literary value, one of the most striking contributions to Dutch prose literature in the nineteenth century. It
stirred up wide support for the Liberal campaign against government
control over cultures in Java. Its effect was enhanced by the pamphlets
of Isaac Fransen van der Putte, and especially one entitled The ReguJation of Sugar Contracts in Java. He had been employed by a sugar
factory dealing with the product of cultures and had afterwards, as a
tobacco planter in the extreme east of Java, become acquainted with
free cultivation. He showed in his writings so intimate a knowledge of
conditions there that in 1863 the Liberal leader Thorbecke appointed
him Minister of Colonies in his Cabinet.
During van der Putte's term of office (1863-6) things began to move
in the flirection of free enterprise, the Liberal specific to end economic
oppression. His own view was that direct taxation should take the
place of deliveries under forced culture, and that private enterprise
should have free access to land and labour. What he and his supporters did not advocate was the abolition of the infamous batig saldo.
Moreover, the cultures that were abolished during this period
pepper in 1862, cloves and nutmeg in 1863, indigo, tea, cinnamon and
cochineal in 1865, and tobacco in 1866were no longer profitable.
The forced culture of sugar and coffee, the chief source of Dutch
profits, was retained. Some serious abuses, however, were removed.
The percentage system, for instance, whereby European officials received commission on the proceeds of the forced cultures, was
abolished, and it was forbidden for more than one-fifth of the cultivator's land to be used for government crops. A big step forward
wa^ made by the passage of the Comptabiliteitswet (Accounts Law) of
1864, which provided that from 1867 onwards the budget for the
Indies must be passed annually by the home parliament. Another
useful measure was the abolition in 1865 of compulsory labour in the
forest districts.
De Waal's Sugar Law of 1870 represents the culminating point of
the struggle against the Culture System. It provided that the
government was to withdraw from sugar cultivation in twelve

544

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. I l l

annual stages beginning in 1878, and permitted the free sale of

sugar in Java. Again one notes the exceptional caution shown
by the Dutch in this matter, and the| striking fact that coffee,
which brought by far the greatest profit from the system, remained a forced culture until i January] 1917. The same almost
incredible slowness was shown in the case of the various profitable
monopolies which inflicted so much hardship on the people. The
revenue from the sale of these in the eighteen-forties was over
15 million guilders. A beginning was made by Governor-General
van Twist (1851-6) by the abolition of the much-detested farming
of bazaars, and fishery auctions. But the opium and pawn-shop
farms, which were the most profitable, continued. By 1927 the
gross revenue from the monopolies of opium, salt and pawnshops
amounted to no less than 82.6 million guilders. It is obvious, therefore, that Dutch Liberalism differed very considerably from its contemporary Gladstonian Liberalism in Britain.
The Dutch outlook, in fact, in the matter of colonies was completely different from the British. ,Even the Liberals regarded them as
a business concern, and their advocacy of private enterprise in place
of government-controlled cultures was largely,inspired by the desire
of the individual Dutchman to have a greater share in the concern.
More and more privately owned or run estates were coming into
existence, and the private capitalists were demanding the removal of all
restrictions to their activities. Van Twist, who was anxious to open
up Java to private capital, allowed them to make collective contracts
with the villages for labour. But the practice gave rise to such abuses.,
through advances of money to village headmen, that it had to be
abolished in 1863. The truth was that the Liberals had two largely
contradictory objectsto free the native from oppression and to
make the Indies safe for the individual capitalist.
De Waal's Agrarian Law of 1870 ushered in the great age of private
enterprise. It aimed at giving greater freedom and security to private
enterprise by enabling capitalists to, obtain from the government heritable leases for periods up to seventy-five years, and to hire land from
native owners on short-term agreements subject to certain conditions.
This opened the door for an immense'expansion of private .enterprise,
and the export figures for plantation products are illuminating, as the
following table shows:

CH. 3 0

THE DUTCH FORWARD MOVEMENT IN INDONESIA

545

COMPARATIVE VALUE OF STATE AND PRIVATE EXPORTS IN MILLIONS

OF GUILDERS^

1856
1870
187s1885

State
64.4
46-5
41.4
16.3

Private
34-3
61.2
130.7
168.7

Even more important by coniparison with what happened in French

Indo-China and British Burma was the clause which prohibited the
selling of land belonging to Indonesians to non-Indonesians. The.
immediate reason was that there was such a rush on the part of
Europeans to cultivate culture products for the home market that
there was a danger that land needed for the production of food stuffs
for the native population Would be used for other purposes.
In 1869 the Suez Canal was opened. The development of largescale cultivation combined with the increasing use of steamships to
produce a constant expansion of trade. It was in this period that the
Netherlands Steam Navigation Company (1870) and the Rotterdam
Lloyd (1875) were founded.
The development of Java between 1830 and 1870 is in striking contrast to the neglect of the Outer Possessions that characterizes the
same period. The Java War followed by the struggle with Belgium
prevented an energetic policy from being carried out. It was only with
the greatest difficulty that General Cochins was able to muster
adequate strength to bring the Padri wars to an end in 1837 with the
siege and capture of Bondjol. Then the home government sent instructions that in the future there was to be as little interference as
possible with the powers of the native chiefs outside Java. The native
populations were thus left the victims of despotic or quarrelsome
chiefs, who lost respect for a government which failed to intervene.
.'Worse still from the Dutch point of view were the activities of Raja
James Brooke in Sarawak and Brunei and the acquisition of the island
of Labuan by Britain. Governor-General Rochussen (1845-51) feared
lest this might open the door for other powers to occupy parts of the
Archipelago. He proposed, therefore, that Dutch power should be
effectively established over the whole of Indonesia. For financial
reasons alone the home government could not permit so ambitious a
' Taken from Furnivall, Netherlands India, p. 169.

546

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. I l l

scheme. It was willing to sanction a display of military powers where

the circumstances warranted it, but the Batavian authorities pointed
out that punitive expeditions were useless unless followed up by
continuous occupation.
Nevertheless the establishment of British power in north-west
Borneo did stir the Dutch to adopt a more energetic policy. The age
of steam led to a search for coalfields, with rewarding results. Mines
were opened in south-west Borneo near Banjermasin and in the east
of the island at Kutei, and when the working of the Banjermasin
mine led to a quarrel with the sultan and a war (1859-63) his dominions
were annexed. The Dutch were taking no chances in that region. In
1854 and 1855 they intervened to stop the disorders in the sultanates
of Sambas and Pontianak caused by the feuds between the Chinese
gold-mining kongsis. Moreover, the discovery of rich tin deposits
in the island of Billiton led to its occupation in 1851 and the exploitation
of its tin by the Billiton Tin Company.
Elsewhere there was enough activity to make it clear that the Dutch
were becoming more and more' aware of the need to maintain a
dominant position in the Archipelago, if only to prevent outside
interference. They were worried by the proud, independent attitude
of the rulers of Bali, whose internecine war and slave trade went on
unchecked. Dutch expeditions to the island in 1846 and 1849 encountered fierce resistance. In consequence of the latter they annexed
some territory, and the chiefs of the remainder made formal recognition
of Holland's suzerainty. The Bugis rulers in Celebes also gave much
trouble, and there was heavy fighting in 1858 and 1859 against Boni
before Dutch authority was made more or less dominant over the
south-west parts of the island, mainly through the loyalty of the dynasty
of the Aru Palaccas. But more trouble was to come later.
It was on Sumatra, however, that Dutch attention came to be
chiefly focused as time went by. Piracy and the slave-trade were rife
in Acheh, Palembang, Bencoolen arid the Lampongs. From 1856
onwards the Dutch began a series of moves designed to bring more
and more of the island under control. In that year the Lampongs
districts were subdued. Two years later the Batak districts received
similar treatment, and in 1868 Bencoolen. Palembang :had been broughtunder direct Dutch rule in 1825, but like Bencoolen^ had become a
prey to disorder. So Dutch control had to be tightened there. Siak
gave the Dutch a severe shock in 1856 when its sultan, at loggerheads
with his brother, the vice-sultan, called in the help of an Englishman
named Wilson, who enlisted a force of Bugis in Singapore, defeated

CH. 3 0

THE DUTCH FORWARD MOVEMENT IN INDONESIA

547

the vice-sultan and took control over the state. The Dutch had to
send a warship to enforce his expulsion. Then in 1858 they made a
treaty with the sultan whereby his state and its dependenciesDeli,
Serdang, Langkat and Assahancame under their sovereignty. The
acquisition of this territory to the north of Siak was an immense step
forward for Dutch power on the east coast of Sumatra. Soon European
enterprise was to make a start there with tobacco-planting, which was
to make that region one of the richest districts in the Netherlands
Indies.
But the Siak Treaty brought strained relations with Acheh, which
claimed the state as one of its dependencies. The weak spot there
was that Acheh was not strong enough to control effectively the places
over which she made such claims, though they had at one time
recognized her overlordship. The way in which the Dutch enforced
their control over these places affected adversely the trade that had
long been carried on by the merchants of Singapore and Malacca,
and their loud complaints forced the British government to take
action. Its protest at The Hague led to the negotiations which produced the epoch-making treaty of 1871, dealt with in the previous
chapter. With its signature a new period of Dutch expansion in
Indonesia begins. It was happily one in which, with the passage of
van der Putte's Tariff Law abolishing differential rates of customs
duties between Dutch and foreign trade, better relations grew up
between Holland and Britain.
Acheh, the sworn enemy of the Portuguese in the sixteenth century,
had become under Sultan Iskander early in the seventeenth century
a powerful state ruling much of Sumatra. After his death the kingdom
declined. In the nineteenth century it was divided into several states
under practically independent chiefs. The sultan's capital was at the
present town of Kutaraja; his main revenues came from port dues.
The Treaty of London (1824) had given the Dutch the task of safeguarding the seas around Acheh against piracy, but they argued with
cogency that as the Achinese were the chief pirates there they could
not carry out their task satisfactorily without occupying the principal
ports of the country. Under the treaty they could not do so because
they had undertaken to respect the sovereignty of the state. The
number of piratical attacks on shippingoff Sumatra's west coast in
particularwas legion, and British, Dutch, American and Italian ships
were plundered.
Matters came to a head through the attempts of the sultan to obtain
foreign aid against the Dutch. His application to the Forte failed

548

liimOPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

because Turkey at the time needed European help against the threat
of Russia. After the treaty of 18.71 the Government of Batavia made
an attempt to settle matters with Acheh by negotiation. The sultan
sent an embassy for talks with the Dutch ^Resident on the island of
Riau. On its return journey the mission stopped at Singapore, where
the envoys entered into secret discussions with the American and
Italian consuls. The Italian consul turned down their proposals, but
the American consul-general, Mr. Studer, drafted with the envoys
the preliminaries of a commercial treaty. The Dutch consul-general
sent to Batavia what later turned out to be a false report that Studer
had asked for warships to be despatched to the Sumatran coast to
protect American interests. This led to a sharp passage of arms
between The Hague and the American Secretary of State. It led also
to a final attempt on the part of Batavia to obtain an agreement with
the sultan, and, when the latter's attitude proved uncompromising,
to a declaration of war.
The war proved to be one of the longest and toughest in Dutch
colonial history. It also attracted more public interest in Holland than
any previous colonial struggle. It began in April 1873 with the despatch
of a small Dutch expeditionary force, which was too weak for its
task and had to withdraw. In December of the same year a larger one
under General van Swieten landed in Acheh and in a few weeks
captured the sultan's kraton. Whe^, shortly afterwards, he died
operations were suspended in the hope that his successor would sign a
treaty accepting Dutch sovereignty subject to a guarantee of his
autonomy in internal affairs. Instead, however, the Dutch found
themselves faced by a general revolt, in which the local chiefs and the
religious leaders everywhere took the lead. Guerrilla fighting became
the order of the day, and the Dutch found themselves faced by a
seemingly insoluble problem. When, they won a few successes and
tried to negotiate, the fighting would break out afresh. Their troops
were.decimated by cholera, and the hands of their commanders were
tied by orders from above to limit military operations as far as possible.
Between 1878 and 1881 General Karel van der Heyden forced so
many chiefs to submit that Batavia jumped to the conclusion that-the
resistance was broken. It began, therefore, to set up civil governmentrThe decision was a disastrous one; the fighting flared up again with all
its old vigour, and the religious leaders proclaimed a holy war against
the infidel.
The Dutch had once again to pour into the country a very large
force and undertake immensely costly operations. As a measure of

CH. 3 0

THE DUTCH FORWARD MOVEMENT IN INDONESIA

549

economy it was decided to concentrate the forces in a strong defensive

positipn, and a line of strong-points connected by a railway was
established, stretching across from the east to the west coast in the
form of a ring covering Kutaraja. The system was completed in
March 1885 and the Dutch troops were withdrawn behind it, not
without suffering severe casualties. But the hope that this would
enable the Dutch to negotiate from strength a plan for the restoration
of the sultanate proved vain, since the chiefs looked upon the new
defensive system as a sign of weakness.
Meanwhile the years were slipping by and Dutch policy changed
with each new governor of Kutaraja. Governor Demmeni tried
pacification by lifting the naval blockade of the coastal regions; but
this only made matters worse. His successor, van Teijn (1886-91),
reversed this policy and coerced many of the chiefs into submission.
Pompe van Meerdervoort, who next held office for a few months
(1891-2), reverted to the policy of leniency; the Achinese response,
however, convinced Batavia that only by force could a solution be
achieved. But how could force be employed with effect.'
Colonel Deykerhoff, who took office in January 1892, believed that
the best method was to win over a powerful chief and provide him
* with the supplies necessary to enable him to conquer the recalcitrant.
In 1893 Tuku Uma, a chief who had submitted, was taken into the
pay of the government and allowed to form a well-armed legion of
250 men. His operations were successful, and the Dutch forces
occupied the reconquered districts and established a new line. Then
suddenly in March 1896 he with his legion went over to the enemy.
The Dutch now realized that nothing short of an all-out effort of
conquest would suffice. Two books of a very different size and nature,'
which achieved a wide circulation at this time, helped to put an end to
hesitancy. The first, De Atjehers, written by the famous Arabic
scholar Dr. Snouck Hurgronje, appeared in 1893. It was in the form
of a report put together by him as a result of a visit to Acheh in 1891-2.
Quite apart from its influence upon the conflict through its advocacy
of ^frong measures, the book has immense intrinsic value as a description of native customs and institutions. It is a classical work of cultural
anthropology.
The other book was a brochure written by Major Joannes Benedictus van Heutsz, who had been van Teijn's chief of staff. In it he
explained the methods which he advocated for the complete conquest
of the country, without using more troops than were already in
occupation of the 'concentrated system'.

CH. 3 0

THE DUTCH FORWARD MOVEMENT IN INDONESIA

549

economy it was decided to concentrate the forces in a strong defensive

positipn, and a line of strong-points connected by a railway was
established, stretching across from the east to the west coast in the
form of a ring covering Kutaraja. The system was completed in
March 1885 and the Dutch troops were withdrawn behind it, not
without suffering severe casualties. But the hope that this would
enable the Dutch to negotiate from strength a plan for the restoration
of the sultanate proved vain, since the chiefs looked upon the new
defensive system as a sign of weakness.
Meanwhile the years were slipping by and Dutch policy changed
with each new governor of Kutaraja. Governor Demmeni tried
pacification by lifting the naval blockade of the coastal regions; but
this only made matters worse. His successor, van Teijn (1886-91),
reversed this policy and coerced many of the chiefs into submission.
Pompe van Meerdervoort, who next held office for a few months
(1891-2), reverted to the policy of leniency; the Achinese response,
however, convinced Batavia that only by force could a solution be
achieved. But how could force be employed with effect.'
Colonel Deykerhoff, who took office in January 1892, believed that
the best method was to win over a powerful chief and provide him
* with the supplies necessary to enable him to conquer the recalcitrant.
In 1893 Tuku Uma, a chief who had submitted, was taken into the
pay of the government and allowed to form a well-armed legion of
250 men. His operations were successful, and the Dutch forces
occupied the reconquered districts and established a new line. Then
suddenly in March 1896 he with his legion went over to the enemy.
The Dutch now realized that nothing short of an all-out effort of
conquest would suffice. Two books of a very different size and nature,'
which achieved a wide circulation at this time, helped to put an end to
hesitancy. The first, De Atjehers, written by the famous Arabic
scholar Dr. Snouck Hurgronje, appeared in 1893. It was in the form
of a report put together by him as a result of a visit to Acheh in 1891-2.
Quite apart from its influence upon the conflict through its advocacy
of ^frong measures, the book has immense intrinsic value as a description of native customs and institutions. It is a classical work of cultural
anthropology.
The other book was a brochure written by Major Joannes Benedictus van Heutsz, who had been van Teijn's chief of staff. In it he
explained the methods which he advocated for the complete conquest
of the country, without using more troops than were already in
occupation of the 'concentrated system'.

550

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

But before a forward move could be niade the damage caused by

Tuku Uma's treachery had to be repaired. The whole populace, both
within and without the Geconcentreerde Lime, as it was called, had
gone over to his side. General Vetter, who took command in April
1896, commenced a series of large-scalei operations with a greatly
augmented army which by March of the following year gave him
control over the area terrorized by Tuku Uma and forced the latter
to flee to Daya on the west coast. Van Heutsz played a distinguished
part in these operations, and it was finally decided to put him in
charge of the whole campaign. In March 1898 he was appointed
Governor of Acheh, with Snouck Hurgronje as his adviser for native
afl^airs.
Heutsz completely revolutionized the morale of the Dutch troops.
His first operations resulted in the conquest of the district of Pidie,
the very heart of the rebellion, where the claimant to the sultanate,
Tuku Uma, and Panglima Polem, another leader, had joined forces.
By the beginning of 1899 the Dutch dominated Acheh proper and
the rebellious chiefs were being chased into the outer territories of the
Gayo and Alas lands. Early in the year Tuku Uma, a fugitive since
the conquest of Pidie, was ambushed on the west coast and killed.
During that year and the following one all resistance was crushed and
large-scale operations were abandoned. Lightly armed flying columns
were then organized alike for the maintenance of internal peace and
the harassing of the chiefs who still held out. Repeated expeditions of
this sort had to be sent to the Gayo lands, where the claimant to the
sultanate had taken refuge. In January 1903 he made his submission,
and at about the same time the great Panglima Polem surrendered.
The final operations were then handed over by van Heutsz to
Lieutenant-Colonel van Daalen. In June 1904, when van Heutsz left
Acheh to become governor-general, most of the more important chiefs
had submitted, but the opposition had still not been stamped out.
Insurrectionssome of them seriouscontinued until 1908, and
were only brought to an end by the exile of the claimant to the
sultanate and a number of other chiefs to Amboina. Even then it was
necessary to maintain military government for another ten years. ,^
The outbreak of the war had caused something like a sensationan_
the Islamic world, and, followed as it was by the victories of the Mahdi
of Kordofan in the Sudan, played its part in stimulating a revival of
Muslim fanaticism in Africa and Arabia. Thousands of Indonesian
pilgrims went to Mecca annually, and Snouck Hurgronje found a.large
colony of ' Djawahs' in the holy city wheri he visited it in 1885. Hence

CH. 3 0

THE DUTCH FORWARD MOVEMENT IN INDONESIA

551

one essential element in the pacification of Acheh was for the Dutch
to cultivate good relations with Mecca. This they did by encouraging
the pilgrimages which brought such profits to the Meccans, and by
appointing an Indonesian vice-consul as the representative of Batavia
there.
The Dutch forward movement in the latter part of the nineteenth
century did not confine itself to the task of conquering northern
Sumatra, heavy though it proved to be. Notwithstanding the opposition of the home authorities to any expansion of territory there, much
was done to open up the Outer Possessions. Governor-General
Lansberge (1B75-81) gave much attention to the Moluccas and the
Lesser Sunda Islands, where piracy, wrecking and the slave trade
were still rife. Much also was done to consolidate the Dutch hold on
the rest of Sumatra outside the Acheh territories. They were constantly apprehensive of attempts by foreign powers to establish
settlements in their preserves, and kept an eagle eye on the small
islands fringing Sumatra. In the interior, to the south of Lake Toba,
the work of the Rhenish Missionary Society in converting the Battak
region of Silindung caused strife with the Padri sect, and in 1878 Si
Singa Mangaraja, a local chieftain who threatened the Christians, was
driven out by the Dutch and a new Residency, Tapanuli, formed.
Bali, which had taught the Dutch expensive lessons on the subject
of interference with its independence, caused Batavia much heartburning from time to time owing to its Cruel oppression of the Sasaks
of Lombok, who were Mahommedans. A general rebellion broke out
in 1891, and after fruitless attempts at mediation a Dutch expedition
in 1894 established control over Lombok. This marked the final
abandonment of the policy of non-intervention. Van Heutsz in 1898
had introduced a new system in Acheh, known as the ' Short Declaration', whereby a chief who recognized the authority of Batavia was
confirmed in his rule. In the period up to 1911 this was used so
extensively that some 300 self-governing states came under Dutch
control. It was during this period that the remainder of Bah was
brought to heel.
The extension of Dutch rule in these territories resulted in an
immense amount of survey and development work. The Topographical Service laid out roads and mapped previously uncharted
regions. Experts carried out researches into the manner of life, the
customs and religion of the various peoples, as well as into the nature
of the soil and of the vegetable and animal life. The expeditions of
A. W. Nieuwenhuis to the interior of Borneo (1893-8) and the

552

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. I l l

researches of the Swiss scholars Paul and Fritz Sarasin in Celebes

(1893-1903), under the auspices of the Royal Netherlands Geographical Society, opened the way for trade and industry and made valuable
contributions to knowledge.
From 1870 onwards the economic development of the Netherlands
Indies was impressive. Much land previously cultivated for the state
was handed over to private planters; there was a rush to produce sugar,
and many new factories were built. Tobacco-growing also expanded
rapidly. Coffee held its own, and copra, palm-oil, fibres, pepper,
cassava, kapok, tea and cocoa provided important exports to world
markets. Save for the sugar factories there was little large-scale
industry. The most important native industries to survive the
competition of European manufactured goods were pottery, spinning,
and weaving.
Construction on the first railwaysfrom Semarang to Surakarta
and from Batavia to Buitenzorgwas begun in the 'sixties, but the
two lines were not completed until 1873. The planters everywhere
clamoured for railways, and in 1875 a state railway to open up the
sugar area from Surabaya to Malang was begun. At about the same
time the strategic line in Acheh was constructed. In 1883 the prosperous Deli Tobacco Company began to build a railway on the east
coast of Sumatra, and in 1887 a state railway was constructed between
the Ombiliri coalfield and Padang. Between 1890 and 1900 much
greater progress was made and the total length rose from 1,600 to
3,500 kilometres.
The first inland telegraph service was opened in 1856, and the
inland postal service commenced operations in 1866. In the next
period the greatest progress was made with the development of
telephonic communications. The first telephone company was founded
in 1882, to be followed in the next few years by no less than thirty-four
more. The state thereupon intervened in 1898 and took over the
whole service.
The opening of the Suez Canal and the freeing of the sugar trade
wrought a revolution in the Dutch shipping trade. The Dutch sailing
ships had to face the competition of steainships, mostly flying the
English flag. Even the Netherlands-Indies Steamship Company'was
linked up with the British-India Steam Navigation Company and all its
repair work executed at Singapore. The Dutch therefore had to set
about building an entirely new flleet; and although the Nederland
Steamship Company was founded in 1870, it had for many years to
buy its steamers from abroad and engage foreigners to run them.

CH. 3 0

THE DUTCH FORWARD MOVEMENT IN INDONESIA

553

Until 1891, when the last contract of the Netherlands-Indies Company

expired, it enjoyed a practical monopoly of the inter-island traffic..
Then the contract was transferred to the Koninklijk Paketvaart
Maatschappij, which had been founded in 1888.
The growth of steamship traffic called for a vast improvement in
harbour facilities. In 1873 a beginning was made on building a new
harbour for Batavia at Tanjong Priok. This was completed in 1893.
By that time similar work was going ahead at Surabaya, Macassar,
Belawan, Emmahaven (for Padang) and Sabang.
In 1883 the first concession for the exploitation of petroleum was
made to the Royal Netherlands Company. Oil had then been discovered in paying quantities in Sumatra, Java, and Borneo. But it was
not until the next century that the great advances were made. The
development of coal-mining, however, made great progress during the
second half of the nineteenth century in western Sumatra, south
Borneo and the Palembang area. Efforts to persuade private capital
to exploit the tin that was found in great quantities in Banka, Billiton
and Singkep met with little response, notwithstanding the rich profits
made by the largely government-owned Billiton Company, which was
founded in 1852. The Singkep Company was founded in 1889, but
achieved little during its early years.
The results of all this progress, expressed in terms of imports and
exports', show the export trade more than doubled in value between
1870 and 1900, and the import trade quadrupled. The total value of
exports rose from 107-57 million guilders in 1870 to 258-23 million in
1900; that of imports rose from 44-45 million guilders to 176-07 million
over the same period. The great feature in the expansion of imports
lay in the fact that it was mainly accounted for by such goods as
fertilizers, iron, steel, machinery and tools, which all tended to enhance
Indonesia's productive capacity.

CHAPTER 31
I

T H E REIGN OF BODAWPAYA AND T H E F I R S T

ANGLO-BURMESE WAR, 1782-1826
THE king known to history as Bodawpaya used a great variety of titles
during his own reign. The one which came to be most commonly
applied was Mintayagyi Paya, 'Lord of the Great Law'. He was the
third son of Alaungpaya and possibly the ablest statesman of his line.
But Michael Symes, who was twice deputed to his Court as the
representative of the Government of India, described him as 'a child
in his ideas, a tyrant in his principles, and a madman in his actions'.
His long reign, which lasted until i8iq, had a decisive influence upon
his country's history.
It began with a blood-bath, in which he made a clean sweep of all
possible rivals in the royal family. But a brother who escaped the
ceremonial massacre plotted with Maha Thihathura, one of Hsinbyushin's most distinguished generals, to overthrow him. This
caused a second blood-bath, in which they, with every member of
their families-and all their servants, were done to death. Late in the
same year 1782 a pretender, Nga Myat Pon, who claimed descent
from the Toungoo dynasty, scaled the palace walls with 200 desperate
men. He and his band were overcome and killed by the palace guard.
Then the district of Paungga near Sagaing, where they had hatched
their plot, was punished by the destruction of every living thinghuman beings, animals, fruit trees and standing cropssave for a
few people who were made pagoda slaves.
To atone for so much bloodshed the king built a new pagoda at
Sagaing. He also abandoned the palace at Ava, fearing that it had
come under an evil spell. A new royal city was laid out at Amarapura,
about six miles north-east of Ava, and thither the Court was transferred
with due ceremonial in May 1783. In the following SeptemUer Mbnsof the Bassein province made a surprise attack on Rangoon, which they
captured and held for a time, intending to revive their old rnonarchy.
A Burmese counter-attack was successful, and the city was retaken
after desperate fightingonly just in time, for it s^oon became obvious
that a much wider movement had been nipped in the bud.
554

CH. 31

BODAWPAYA AND THE FIRST ANGLO-BURMESE WAR

555

One of Bodawpaya's earliest acts after restoring order in his turbulent

kingdom was to institute a general revenue inquest. The register that
was compiled by his commissioners, after taking the evidence of
myothugyis and village headmen throughout the land, has been called
the Burmese Domesday Book. It provided the king with a record of
his country's taxable capacity, and the first use to which he put it
was for an extraordinary payment towards the repair and regilding of
pagodas and monasteries of royal foundation. Not since Thalun*s
reign (1629-48) had such a survey been made, and, unfortunatelyjor
students of history, none of its original records survives. Boda\^aya
followed up his survey of 1784 with a further one in 1803. Many of
the records on palm-leaf and parabaik} thus collected are still extant
and afford first-hand evidence, of a sort too rarely encountered in
South-East Asia, of social and economic conditions.
Bodawpaya's next big enterprise was the conquest of Arakan.
There had been no let-up in the long anarchy which had prevailed
ever since the murder of Sandawizaya in 1731. Village fought against
village, and everywhere dacoity was rife. From time to time refugee
leaders appeared at the Court of Ava seeking help. In 1784 Bodawpaya
decided that the time was ripe for annexation: the country would be
an easy prey. Nevertheless he made careful preparations. In October
Arakan was attacked by three land columns and a powerful flotilla of
war vessels. By the end of December the conquest was complete and
King Thamada a fugitive in the jungle. A month later he was captured,
'and in February 1785 he, his family and no less than 20,000 of his
people were deported to Burma, together with the famous Mahamuni
image, now in the Arakan Pagoda at Mandalay, Arakan became a
province under a viceroy supported by a Burmese garrison. Its
subjugation was the most far-reaching event of Bodawpaya's reign;
it brought the frontier of Burma up to that of British India and ushered
in a new period of Anglo-Burmese relations with immense conse
quences,
Bodawpaya's easy success in faction-torn Arakan seems to have
gone to his head, for before the year 1785 was out he launched a fullscale invasion of Siam. The chronicles of his reign are full of the
white-elephant myth. He was publicly proclaimed as Arimittiya,
the coming Buddha, and it may be that for a short time he really
believed himself destined to be a world conqueror. If so, the illusion
was soon rudely shattered. His grandiose plan to overwhelm Siam
by four simultaneous attacks came to grief mainly through his own
' A very stout local-made paper.

556

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. I l l

incompetence as a commander. For though completely lacking in

military training or experience, he personally led the main attack over
the Three. Pagodas Pass, and through his ignorance of even the
elementary principles of logistics suffered disaster so overwhelming
that he himself barely escaped capture.
Two of his attacking forcesone marching overland from Tavoy
and the other going by sea to occupy the island of Junk Ceylon
aimed at cutting off the Siamese provinces in the Malay Peninsula.
In expelling them the Siamese reasserted control over Patani, Kedah,
Kelantan and Trengganu. It was during this campaign in 1786 that
the Sultan of Kedah, hoping for British support against Siam, handed
over the island of Penang to the East India Company.
The fourth Burmese force, operating in the Chiengmai region,
won some initial successes, occupied Chiengsen and Chiengrai, but
got no further. For many years there was backwards-and-forwards
fighting throughout this area. Chiengmai was the main Burmese
objective. They staged two fairly large-scale offensivesone in 1787
and the other in 1797but both failed. Finally in 1802 the Siamese,
based on Chiengmai, cleared their Laos provinces of the Burmese.
But by that time the state of Chiengsen was so depopulated that it
never recovered. In the south the Siamese made great efforts to regain
the Tavoy and Mergui regions, but failed. Their raids into the area
continued until after the British occupation of Tenasserim in 1824.
The effect of all this upon the king was to increase his religious
mania. He persecuted heretics, and even decreed the death penalty
for such things as drinking intoxicants, smoking opium and killing
an ox or a buffalo. When the Buddhist clergy attempted to moderate
some of the worst of his excesses he announced plans to reform the
Order and confiscated monastic lands. He built dozens of pagodas,
and at Mingun, on the west bank of the Irrawaddy some miles to the
north of his capital, he began to erect an enormous pagoda which,
if finished, would have been 500 feet high. For seven years thousands
of Arakanese and other deportees worked on its construction under
his personal supervision. His wars and his buildings made him
insatiable in his demands for man-power. The drain on Upper Burma,
as well as on the Mon country, was so serious that, as Harvey puts'it,'the framework of society cracked'. No proper arrangements were
made for the supply of food and necessaries to his armed forces or his
labour gangs. Thousands died of starvation, there was wholesale
desertion, whole villages fled to the jungle to escape enrolment, and
dacoity became widespread.
^C

CH. 31

BODAWPAYA AND THE FIRST ANGLO-BURMESE WAR

557

It was in Arakan that the most serious consequences of this extravlar

gant and cruel poHcy showed themselves. There the inordinate
demands for forced labour and conscript service drove the tough and
unruly Arakanese into open revolt. In 1794 a general rising broke out
and the rebels were assisted by armed bands from the Chittagong
district, where some thousands of refugees had already settled.
Against the strong reinforcements sent from Burma the rebellion
collapsed, and again large numbers of refugees poured into British
territory. They were closely pursued by a large Burmese force,
which crossed the river Naaf and established a base on the British
side of the frontier. Colonel Erskine was sent by Calcutta to deal with
the incursion. The Burmese commander offered to retire peaceably
if three refugee leaders were apprehended and handed over. Erskine
had too small a force to take strong measures. He promised, therefore, to arrest the three wanted men; and if on investigation the charges
against them were deemed to be true, to surrender them. This was
done and the Burmese returned to their own territory with their prey.
This disturbing incident caused the British-Indian government
to awake to the fact that the Arakan frontier constituted a serious
potential danger. Sir John Shore, the governor-general, accordingly
took the precautionary step of addressing a letter to the Court of Ava
with a detailed analysis of the situation as it appeared to him. After
waiting in vain for several months for a reply he decided that the
mattef was one of sufficient urgency for him to break the long diplomatic impasse that had lasted ever since the withdrawal of the Bassein
factory in 1762. He feared that unless some approach were made to
the Burma government the French, who were again at war with
Britain, would seek to use Burmese ports as bases against British
shipping in the Bay of Bengal.
This was indeed what had happened during the War of American
Independence.1 And although the French dockyard at Rangoon had
had to be abandoned. Admiral de Suffren and Charles Castlenau de
Bussy, who had been sent out in 1782 in a vain attempt to restore
French fortunes in south India, had made a determined effort to
persuade Versailles that Burma offered a more inviting field than India
for an expansionist policy and was the best place from which to attack
the British in India. In 1783 de Bussy had sent an envoy to conclude
a commercial treaty with Burma. Nothing had actually come of these
1 On this subject see Sonnerat, Voyage aux Indes Orientales et a la Chine (1782), vol.
ii, p. 4 3 ; Henri Cordier, Historique abrege des relations de la Grande Bretagne avec la
Birmanie (1894), p. 8; and Edmond Gaudart, Catalogue des Manuscrits des Anciennes
Archives de I'lnde Fratiftiise, vol. i, Pondich^rj', 1690-1789'.

CH. 31

BODAWPAYA AND THE FIRST ANGLO-BURMESE WAR

559

moves, but the French in Mauritius had used Mergui as a repair

depot since its transfer from Siamese to Burmese hands.
Shore's envoy, Captain Michael Symes, who went to Burma in
1795, was charged with the task of removing the causes of misunderstanding over the Arakan frontier incident, and of persuading the
Court of Ava to close its ports to French warships. In particular he
was to negotiate a commercial treaty under which a Company's agent
would be permitted to reside at Rangoon to supervise British trade.
Symes was treated with a mixture of studied rudeness and friendly
hospitality. He was given clearly to understand that it was beneath
the dignity of the Court of Ava to treat on terms of equality with the
representative of a mere governor-general.
He took back with him a royal letter, in which the king informed the
Calcutta authorities that it was understood that in future Arakanese
refugees settled in Chittagong who crossed over the border to commit
crimes in Burmese territory were, on written application, to be
surrendered. Permission was granted for the Company 'to depute
a person to reside in Rangoon, to superintend mercantile affairs,
maintain a friendly intercourse, and forward letters to the Presence'.
But the king flatly refused to close his harbours to French vessels.
Symes published the account of his mission in a delightful book
which was the first full-scale account of Burma ever to appear in a
European language.^
In October 1796 Captain Hiram Cox arrived in Rangoon to take
up his duties as British Resident in accordance with the agreement
made by Symes. Before leaving Calcutta he had had a sharp tussle
with his government regarding his status. He had refused to accept
the Burmese definition of it as set down in the royal letter and contended that a Resident was equal to an envoy or minister of the second
class, and far above an agent or consul.^ The Government of India,
however, had told him plainly that he was not an ambassador and had
specifically warned him not to attempt to procure any relaxation of
ceremonial 'as practised towards Captain Symes'.
Nevertheless he went to Burma determined to uphold his own
interpretation of his status, and, what was more, to refuse to repeat
what he termed 'the humiliating concessions' to Court etiquette made
by Symes. He thereby played into the hands of suspicious officials,
who, in his own words, regarded his appointment as 'an attempt to
' An Account of an Embassy to the Kingdom of Ava sent by the Governor-General of
India in the year 1795, London, 1800.
- Bengal Political Consultations, 2 March 1798, no. 5.
19

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EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

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smuggle the wooden horse of Troy into their Dominions'. After a

long and increasingly unhappy sojourn at Amarapura/ whither he
had gone in a vain endeavour to persuade|the Court to accord him the
kind of recognition he sought, he announced his intention to leave
the country, only to find on returning to'Rangoon that a royal order
for his arrest had been publicly proclaimed. His defiance of the
local officials caused them to declare a state of emergency, and in a
moment of despair he sent an urgent message to Calcutta asking for
the despatch of an armed frigate to rescue him, since his life was in
danger.
The Government of India on receiving this news proceeded with
the utmost caution. It was convinced that his conduct had been
provocative. An order was therefore sent recalling him, and he was
strictly charged to avoid all unconciliatory language or anything that
might lead the Court of Ava to suspect that hostile action might be
taken against it. At the same time the king was requested to facilitate
Cox's departure; the letter to him, though guardedly phrased, was
apologetic in tone. But long before the arrival of these missives the
excitement at Rangoon had died down, and by the time of Cox's
departure in April 1798 his relations with the local authorities had
become most friendly.
On returning to Calcutta he warned the Government of India that if
the Arakan frontier question were not dealt with according to their
wishes the Burmese threatened to invade Bengal, and that the king
was actually planning intervention in Assam. He attributed his failure
partly to the fact that he had incurred the hostility of the party at
Court that was behind these schemes, since he had warned them that
pursuit of such a policy would force the British to intervene.
But the chief cause of his troubles, he claimed, lay in the fact that
Captain Symes had grossly misled the Government of India regarding
the Burmese. ' It appeared to me that he had wandered in a maze of
error from the beginning to the end of his iiegociation, and ,ii some
glimmerings of light occasionally reached him, that it had been
quench'd by false shame, which forbid his revealing it', he wrote in
a most intemperate attack upon his predecessor. Shore was only too
well aware of the extent to which Cox had been perspnally.responsiblefor the difficulties he had encountered, but Lord Wellesley, who had
become governor-general when Cox arrived back in Calciitta, had
expressed his entire satisfaction with his conduct. He felt it to be
unwise, however, to court further insults by sending another Resident
' Captain Hiram Cox, jfournal of a Residence in fhe Bumihan Empire, London, 1821.

CH. 31

BODAWPAYA AND THE FIRST ANGLO-BURMESE WAR

561

to Rangoon. His attention was concentrated upon the flirtation of Tipu

Sultan of Mysore with Mauritius and Paris. He fondly hoped,
therefore, that a policy of inaction in regard to the Arakan frontier
might prove the safest way of avoiding complications.
While the governor-general was away in Madras superintending
preparations to invade Mysore trouble again flared up in Arakan.
An influential Arakanese chieftain, when ordered to comply with a
Burmese demand for a large contingent for service against Siam, fled
to Chittagong. His flight started another mass exodus. Once more a
Burmese pursuit force crossed the frontier and stockaded itself on
British territory. The magistrate at Chittagong attempted negotiations, but they broke down. Next he sent a small force of sepoys to
attack the Burmese position, but they were repulsed. Then suddenly
the B u r m ^ e decamped and returned to their side of the border.
Wellesley, with his hands full in India, sent Captain Thomas Hill
to parley with the Burmese Viceroy of Arakan at Mrohaung. That
was in June 1799. Meanwhile the plight of the refugees was so
desperate that Captain Hiram Cox was deputed to Chittagong to
superintend relief measures and settle the immigrants in the neighbourhood of the Bagholi river, where land was available for cultivation.
Cox's Bazar, named after him, remains today a, memorial of his
labours, and of his death while engaged upon them.
Hill found that the viceroy would consider no other settlement of
the problem than the total expulsion of the immigrants from British
territory. When he broke off negotiations the viceroy sent a delegate
to Calcutta in March 1800 to present the demand to the governorgeneral. Wellesley in reply pointed out the impossibility of carrying
out the request, but promised to close the frontier to all further
immigrants from Burmese territory. He was playing for time; for
although Tipu Sultan had been disposed of in the shambles of
Seringapatam, his attention was now absorbed by the growing
anarchy in the Maratha dominions. He began, however, to contemplate a further embassy to the Golden Feet, and commissioned Major
William Francklin, an orientalist of some repute, to study the Burma
files and suggest a new method of approach to the Court of Ava.
Francklin's report, submitted in July 1801, advised that the discontented Arakanese leaders likely to disturb the peace of the frontier
should be removed to the interior of Bengal, and that an offer of
subsidiary alliance should be made to Burma by an ambassador provided with an escort of such magnificence as would demonstrate to the
Court of Ava the full dignity and power of the Government of India.

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EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

Wellesley, however, pigeon-holed the report and seems to have

deHberately returned to the poUcy of procrastination.
He had reckoned without the Burmese^ In January 1802, while he
was on a visit to Cawnpore, a letter was .forwarded to him from the
Viceroy of Arakan demanding in the kingfs name the expulsion of all
the Arakanese from Chittagong, and threatening armed invasion
should the demand be rejected. Wellesley at once ordered the frontier
guards to be strongly reinforced, and called on Symes, who had just
returned from a long furlough in England and was in Cawnpore with
his regiment, to undertake a second mission to Amarapura. Why he
chose Symes in preference to Francklin the records do not say. Why
he chose Symes at all, after the strictures passed upon his first mission
by Hiram Cox, is a matter for surmise. All that is known is that after
a personal interview he announced the appointment of Symes with
the intriguing remark that his ' abilities, personal experience, and complete knowledge of the affairs of the Government of Ava' qualified him
'in a peculiar degree' for the task with which he was charged. Events
were to show that he could not have made a more appropriate choice.
Symes arrived in Burma at the end of May 1802 with the embarrassingly large escort suggested^ by Francklin, and a draft treaty of
subsidiary aUiance in his portfolio. His immediate task was to seek
some clarification of the Arakan viceroy's threat to invade Bengal,
and to give the Court of Ava an opportunity to disclaim responsibility
for it. He was also to explain why the Government of India could not
agree to the demand for the total expulsion of the refugees. Regarding
the subsidiary alliance proposal, a special set of additional instructions
of a highly confidential nature informed him that there was reason to
believe that King Bodawpaya seriously contemplated abdication, and
that in such an event the Toungoo Erince might be expected to
attempt to deprive his brother, the heir-apparent, of the succession.
He was therefore to offer military support to the heir-apparent against
such a contingency. On this last point it may be remarked here that
Symes's enquiries showed that the rumour of the king's intended
abdication was baseless, and he was far too discreet to pursue the line
laid down in his instructions.
^
On arrival at the capital he was kept for a matter of months waitings
for recognition. He learnt that the king had only with difficulty been
persuaded from sending him ignominiously back to Calcutta. His
instructions permitted him to wind up his mission and leave the
country should his further stay there appear to be useless. But he
decided that such action would render war inevitable, and that the

CH. 31

BODAWPAVA AND THE FIRST ANGLO-BURMESE WAR

563

utmost patience and forbearance must be his best weapons. It turned

out that before paying any attention to him the king proposed to stage
the pantomime of receiving a bogus French mission, specially rigged
up for the occasion. Symes's dignified restraint, however, won him
the support of the heir-apparent and the most influential people at
Court, and their advice ultimately prevailed. The French 'mission'
was received without ceremony and hastily dismissed. Then Symes
was accorded a full-dress reception, at which the king departed from
the usual procedure by making a short speech. He paid Symes a
personal compliment and remarked that, having seen his face again,
he would 'forget every cause of umbrage'.
Symes returned to Calcutta with an official letter, the contents of
which he summed up thus: ' The King was displeased at the conduct
of Capt. Cox . . . but he is now pleased to be reconciled.' It contained
no reference to the Viceroy of Arakan's threat of war: that matter was
disposed of by a 'verbal communication' made to Symes in the king's
name assuring him that the viceroy had not been instructed to demand
the fugitives in such terms as he had used, and renouncing for ever
the claim for their wholesale expulsion. Symes's advice to his government was t h a t ' a paramount influence in the government and administration of Ava, obtain it how we may, is now become indispensably
necessary to the interest and security of the British possessions in
the East'.
The king's letter permitted the re-establishment of a British
Resident at Rangoon, and Lieutenant John Canning, who had
accompanied Symes to Ava, was deputed to go there in that capacity.
But so as to avoid involving the Government of India, should things
go wrong, he was sent as Symes's private agent and not as an official
delegate of the East India Company. He arrived at the end of May
1803. The Viceroy of Hanthawaddy, who had been a good friend to
Symes, had been recalled to the capital, and his deputy made things
so difficult for Canning that in the following November the latter
returned to Calcutta.
The expedient of maintaining a Resident in Rangoon was thereupon abandoned as useless. The Arakan frontier, however, remained
at peace for some years. The firmer control exercised by the British
authorities was mainly responsible for this. Moreover, the Burmese
kept their word: there were no further demands or threats. The
Burma question receded into the background. The evidence of both
Symes and Canning showed that French inffuence and activities
there were negligible. In 1809, when Lord Minto instituted a blockade

564

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

of Mauritius and Bourbon before proceeding to conquer them, Canning was agajn deputed to Burma, this time to reassurf the Court of
Ava regarding British poHcy. He was | received with the greatest
cordiality. He discovered that for some years there had been a complete cessation of relations between the islands and Burmese ports.
From the signs of depopulation and misfery that he saw on his way
to and from the capital he came to the conclusion that Burmese power
was in rapid decline. Nevertheless he warned his government that
King Bodawpaya cherished as one of his aims the ultimate conquest
of Chittagong and eastern Bengal.
Had the Calcutta authorities but paid serious attention to his warning
much trouble might have been saved. But the Arakan frontier region
was one of dense jungle intersected by innumerable creeks, and a
breeding-place for the most malignant forms of malaria. Hence at an
early date the additional forces stationed there in 1802 were withdrawn
and the policy of neglect resumed. After years of deceptive calm the
inevitable nemesis came in 1811. A new Ipader, Chin Byan,^ scion of
an important myothugyi family of northern Arakan, secretly collected
a powerful force on British territory and made a surprise attack on
Mrohaung, which he captured. From the ancient capital he sent an
urgent appeal for help to Calcutta, offering in return to hold the
kingdom under British suzerainty.
The Government of India flatly refused his offer and in September
1811 sent Captain Canning once more to Burma, this time to assure
the Court of Ava that the British authorities had in no way instigated
or aided the rising. Canning was confronted by the Burmese with
evidence which they considered proof positive of British aid to the
rebels. It certainly pointed to serious negligence on the part of the
local officers at Chittagong. To make matters worse, while Canning
was at Amarapura assuring the ministers that effective measures
would be taken to prevent any further movement of refugees across the
frontier the Burmese forces in Arakan proceeded to crush the rebellion,
and Chin Byan, with a large body of his followers,, escaped back into
British territory with the greatest ease.
Once more Burmese pursuit parties crossed the frontier, and the
Viceroy of Arakan threatened to invade Chittagong with- a forcer'of80,000 men if the fugitives were not handed over, together with Dr.
McRae, the civil surgeon at Chittagong, whom he accused of aiding
Chin Byan to make his original incursion. The British rushed reinforcements to the centre of disturbance and made frantic efforts to
' B. R. Pearn, ' King-bering', JBRS, vol. xxiii, 1933.

CH. 31

BODAWPAYA AND THE FIRST ANGLO-BURMESE WAR

565

capture the elusive rebel leader. But he evaded all his pursuers, and
with the approach of the wet monsoon of 1812 the Burmese retired to
their own territory and the British gave up the chase.
No sooner had they done so than Chin Byan occupied one of the
frontier posts from which the Company's troops had just been withdrawn, and, using it as his headquarters, made an attack upon Maungdaw. This time the Magistrate of Chittagong sent a timely warning
to the Burmese, who routed the invaders. As refugees came seeping
back into British territory the Company's forces arrested many of
them. But through the connivance of the local population Chin
Byan and most of his lieutenants escaped and were soon plundering
the countryside for food.
This sort of thing continued throughout the years 1812, 1813 and
1814. Late in 1812 the British crippled Chin Byan's ability to wage
large-scale operations by capturing his whole fleet of 150 war boats.
But they could neither stop him nor capture him. And the Burmese,
though able to defeat all his incursions, failed equally to lay their
hands upon him. Nevertheless, before the double pressure of the
Burmese and the Company's troops the rebellion was obviously
petering out by the end of 1814. When, therefore, in January 1815
Chin Byan died the movement collapsed completely.
It had wrought irreparable harm to Anglo-Burmese relations. The
Burmese, unable to realize the extent to which the hands of the
British were tied by commitments elsewhere, in Java, the Maratha
country and Nepal, developed an unfortunate contempt for their
power, which one determined patriot leader had so long so impudently
defied. After Captain Canning's return from Amarapura in 1812 no
further attempts were made to establish settled diplomatic relations
between Fort William and the Court of Ava. Both sides became
increasingly suspicious of each other. The seeds of the first AngloBurmege war had already been sown; but Bodawpaya was far too
shrewd to provoke war with the British, and until the Marathas had
been finally dealt with the Government of India was not in a position
to adopt a strong line with Burma. In 1819, however, Bodawpaya
died and the last disorderly elements in central India were crushed.
By that time Burmese policy had created in Assam a situation
essentially the same as in Arakan. The Ahom monarchy had been
sinking into decline since the seventeenth century. In the later years
of the eighteenth century the rebellion of the persecuted sect of the
Moamarias, who denied Brahman supremacy, and the incapacity of
the imbecile Gaurinath Singh (1780-Q4) brought so intolerable a

566

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. I l l

State of disorder that British help was sought. But Captain Welch,
sent there in 1792 by Lord Cornwallis, reported that nothing effective
could be done short of complete annexation. That was out of the
question, and he was accordingly withdrawn.
Conditions, however, showed no signi of improving, and in 1798,
as we have seen. Captain Hiram Cox reported that King Bodawpaya
was contemplating intervention. But he held his hand for a considerable time, possibly because Cox had warned him that such action on
his part would be strongly resented by the British. Shortly after
the close of the Chin Byan affair the Bar Phukan, who had fled from
Assam, appeared at Calcutta to solicit British aid against the Burha
Gohain. When Fort William turned down his request he appealed
to Bodawpaya. This time the Burmese king decided to act. In March
1817 a Burmese army marched to Jorhat and placed his nominee on the
throne. As soon as the Burmese left, however, their candidate was
deposed. In 1819 they returned, reinstated the original raja, Chandrakanta Singh, and again went home. Again as soon as their backs
were turned disorder broke loose, and Chandrakanta, unable to
maintain himself, fled to British territory.
The situation in Burma had now radically, changed. Bodawpaya's
weak and amiable grandson Bagyidaw had succeeded to the throne,
and under the influence of the brilliant and ambitious general Maha
Bandula he had no scruples about a forward policy in Assam. So a
Burmese army returned there once again, this time to stay, and,Bandula
assumed control over the country. When this happened two Assamese
pretenders, Chandrakanta Singh and Purandar Singh, both refugees
in British territory, were engaged upon collecting troops and arms in
order to drive out the Burmese, and the British magistrate at Rangpur
was vainly urging Calcutta to assist one or the other. Both invasions
failed, and, as in the case of Arakan, Burmese troops chasing refugees
crossed the frontier into British India. That was early in 1822. In
July of that year Maha Bandula sent an envoy to Calcutta to demand
the surrender of the Assamese leaders, who were sheltering in British
territory.
Assam, however, was not the only state suffering from thisJ'resh
outbreak of Burmese pugnacity. The failure of the? Raj a-of Manipurto attend Bagyidaw's coronation was used as an excuse to dethrone
him and devastate his country. He and thousands of his people fled
into the neighbouring state of Cachar. The Raja of Cachar, with his
state plundered by hordes of desperate refugees and threatened by the
Burmese, thereupon fled to British territory anfl besought aid of the

CH. 3 1

BODAWPAYA AND THE FIRST ANGLO-BURMESE WAR

567

Government of India. Fort William, bearing in mind that with the

passes of Cachar in their possession a Burmese attack upon eastern
Bengal would be greatly facilitated, decided that the time had come to
make a firm stand. Hence a British protectorate was declared over
both Cachar and its northern neighbour, the little hill state of Jaintia,
which was also threatened by the Burmese.
Bagyidaw's accession to the throne was also the signal for an outbreak of further trouble on the Arakan frontier. Burmese troops
began to cross into the Ramu region and seize the East India Company's elephant hunters on the pretext that they were trespassing on
Burmese territory. These and other incidents caused the British to
strengthen their frontier post at Tek Naaf and station an outpost on
the island of Shahpuri at the river mouth. The Burmese repHed by
seizing the island in September 1823. A British force reoccupied it,
but an effort to set up a boundary commission failed and further
outrages occurred.
Meanwhile fighting had already begun in Cachar. Notwithstanding
a warning from David Scott, the British frontier officer, that the state
would be defended by the British, the Burmese staged a full-scale
invasion. Greatly outnumbered, the British forces there could barely
hold their own, but their fighting retreat was enough to cause the
Burmese to call off the operation and retire into Manipur. That was'
in February 1824. In the previous month Maha Bandula had assumed
command in Arakan and begun operations preparatory to an attack
on Chittagong. Lord Amherst, the governor-general, now realized
that the Burmese were bent on war. Hence on 5 March 1824 Fort
William declared war on Burma. The truth was that Bandula, ever
since taking control in Assam, had been directing the frontier moves
from the Brahmaputra to the Naaf as a co-ordinated plan for the
conquest of Bengal.
The British: plan of campaign was to draw away Bandula's forces
from the Indian frontier by concentrating upon a large-scale seaborne invasion of Lower Burma, while conducting subsidiary operations for the conquest of Assam, Manipur, Arakan and the Tenasserim
coastal strip. The main drive was to proceed up the Irrawaddy in the
direction of the capital. The expeditionary force, secretly assembled
at a rendezvous in the Andaman Islands, achieved a complete strategic
surprise when on 10 May it passed up the river to occupy Rangoon
without a blow. Meanwhile, completely unaware of what was afoot,
Bandula had crossed the Naaf and gained a success against a detachment of Company's troops, causing something like panic in Calcutta.
19*

568

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

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That was as far as he was to go, for the news of the British capture of
Rangoon caused him to halt his offensive and hurry off southwards.
But the campaign, which had' begun s^o well for the British, soon
began to show serious defects of planning. Sir Archibald Campbell's
force, was so badly supplied with transport that it was tied down to
Rangoon, unable to press through to Upper Burma before the wet
monsoon rendered a campaign up the Irrawaddy impossible. It had
been rashly assumed that the Mons of the delta region could be relied
upon to supply not only the necessary transport but plentiful fresh
food as well. But the Mons, fearing Burmese vengeance, did not stir
a finger to help. Thus for six months during the height of the rains
the invaders were held up at Rangoon, while dysentery and fever
wrought such havoc that out of the original force of ii,ooo men only
some hundreds were fit for operations.
The Court of Ava's initial plan seems to have been to contain the
British in Rangoon by building a ring of stockades placed at strategic
points between Kemmendine and the Pazundaung river, in the hope
of forcing them to abandon the campaign. But when two successive
commanders, the Thonba Wungyi and the Kyi Wuhgyi, had failed
before British attacks on their stockades it was realized that an all-out
effort was needed. Bandula was then thrown in with a force of 60,000
men and a considerable artillery train. Against him the British could
muster less than 4,000 men, supported by gunboats on the Rangoon
river and the Pazundaung creek.
On I December 1824 Bandula attacked and was decisively repulsed.
A few days later his main position at Kokine was stormed and his army
began to disintegrate. With 7,000 picked men he retired on Danubyu.
By this time reinforcements were rapidly arriving for Sir Archibald
Campbell, and he was able to organize a field force with Prome as its
objective. On i April 1825 Bandula, was killed while trying to make a
stand at Danubyu and his army fled in disorder. The British then
occupied Prome and went into cantonments for the rainy season.
Meanwhile, in the other theatres of war much progress had been
achieved. During the hold-up in Rangoon forces were detached which
occupied Syriam, Martaban, Ye, Tavoy and Mergui. Soon it_was
possible to send supplies of fresh food to the beleaguered army-inRangoon. Early in 1825 the Arakanese capital of Mrohaung was taken
and the systematic occupation of the country carried out.' But the
hope that an attack on the Burmese capital could be launched across
the Arakan Yoma had to be abandoned owing to the lack of a practicable
route across the mountains.
'

CH. 31

BODAWPAYA AND THE FIRST ANGLO-BURMESE WAR

569

Captain Canning had made the interesting suggestion that Amarapura might be reached by a column marching through Manipur to
the Chindwin valley. But when the Burmese had been driven out of
Cachar, which they had again invaded, the attempt to follow them up
through Manipur was abandoned because of the difficulties of the
country and the heavy rains. Instead the exiled raja was provided
with troops and some British officers, and with their aid gradually
recovered his principality. Other forces drove the Burmese out of
Assam with little difficulty.
Bandula's death and the British occupation of Prome caused the
utmost consternation at Amarapura. Feverish efforts were made to
raise fresh armies. In 1825, at the end of the rains, under cover of
armistice proposals the Burmese tried to launch a surprise attack on
Prome. But the ruse was discovered, and after some heavy fighting
the Burmese army was again defeated. The way to the capital now
la.Y otpea*, tke last aerious tesis.taa.ce had been. c^iieUed-. Moreover, Sic
Archibald Campbell now had adequate river transport, and rapid
progress was made upstream.
At Malun peace talks were resumed.. But the British peace terms
the cession of Arakan, Tenasserim, Assam and Manipur, together
with the payment of an indemnity in rupees equal to a million sterling
so staggered the Burmese commissioners that they tried every
possible means to persuade the British to reduce their demands, and
especially to delete the clauses relating to Arakan and the indemnity.
But the British were adamant, and the advance on the capital was resumed. Not until the British army arrived at Yandabo, only a few
days' march from the capital, did the Burmese finally accept the
terms. On 24 February 1826 the Treaty of Yandabo was ratified
and the British advance came to a halt. In addition to the large
cessions of territory and the crippling indemnity-for Burma had no
coinage and the royal revenue came mainly in kindthe Court of Ava
had to promise to refrain from all interference in the states on the northeastern frontier of British India, to receive a British Resident at
Amarapura, and to depute a Burmese envoy to reside in Calcutta.
It was also stipulated that immediate negotiations were to begin for
a separate treaty to regulate commercial relations.
The war, strategically so well conceived, operationally so mismanaged in its early stages, had been won at a very heavy cost in men
and treasure. No less than 15,000 out of the 40,000 men serving in
the British expeditionary forces died, the vast majority from fever
and dysentery. But it had also exposed the weakness of Burma after

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EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. I l l

three-quarters of a century of expansionist efforts which had completely

exhausted her. Not even the genius of Bandula, had he survived,
could have saved her.
I
Burmese history was now to take an entirely new turn. She still
kept her three chief ports of Bassein, Rangoon and Martaban. But
she had lost her two large coastal provinces to the expanding British
empire in India with its sea-power now dominating the Indian Ocean.
Could she adjust herself to this strange situation, or must the traditionalism, pride and ignorance of the Court of Ava provoke the British
to further intervention?

CHAPTER 3 2

BURMA FROM T H E TREATY O F YANDABO T O T H E

CREATION OF. T H E PROVINCE O F B R I T I S H BURMA,
1826-63

defeat in her war with the British had far-reaching consequences. Her territorial losses were great, but even greater was the
blow to her national pride. Her military power, once the terror of all
her neighbours, was broken beyond recovery. The British, having
wrested from her Tenasserim and Arakan, not to mention her more
recently acquired territories in Assam and Manipur, were in 1852 to
take from her the rich province of Pegu, and finally in 1885 to bring
the Alaungpaya dynasty to an end and annex all that remained of its
dominions.
Yet such was not the intention at the outset; no Macchiavellian
policy of expansion was involved. British official records show only
too clearly that just as they had striven to avoid war before 1824, ^o
after Yandabo they continued to search for ways arid means of
establishing peaceable relations. What they failed to realize was that
once they had a foothold in the country the sheer force of circumstances was bound ultimately to bring about complete annexation,
no matter how unwilling they were to extend their territorial commitments. The only way of avoiding it would have been to hand back all
the conquered territories that could reasonably be considered to belong
to the kingdom of Burma; but while this would have been an easy
matter, in the case of Tenasserim, the safety of India's north-east
frontier demanded the retention of Arakan. The Company hoped that
peace could be established on a basis of direct relations and, notwithstanding the failures of the pre-war period in this respect, stipulated
in the Treaty of Yandabo that a British Resident must be entertained
in the Burmese capital and a Burmese ambassador in Calcutta.
BURMA'S

Such a stipulation assumed that the shock of defeat would have a

salutary effect upon the Court of Ava and lead it to mend its ways.
Quite the reverse happened. King Bagyidaw became subject to
recurring fits of melancholia, which ultimately led to insanity. The
cruel loss of face that it had suffered made the Court not lessbut more
571

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EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

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arrogant. There was the same elementary ignorance of the outside

world, the samp refusal to learn. Above all, Burmese pride continued
to revolt against the humiliation of havii^g to carry on diplomatic
relations with a mere viceroy. Hence the ministers found excuse after
excuse for failing to open an enibassy in Calcutta, and no amount of
persuasion could prevail upon them to carry out this item of the
treaty.
There was considerable delay in appointing a British Resident to
the Court of Ava. He should have been put upon a proper footing
before the British army left Yandabo. Instead, however, the expedient
was adopted of sending an envoy to negotiate the separate commercial
treaty provided for at Yandabo and report on the feasibility of
establishing a permanent Residency. The envoy chosen was RafHes's
old colleague John Crawfurd, who had been Resident at Singapore
from 1823 to 1826, and thereafter had spent six months as Civil
Commissioner at Rangoon.
He arrived at the capital on 30 September 1826 to find that the
Court had already begun to recover from its first fright, and that all
the old arts of subterfuge and evasion were once more to be employed
to render his business nugatory. He was a distinguished scholar but
a bad negotiator. Hence while, as in the case of his previous mission
to Bangkok, the treaty he negotiated was practically worthless, the book
he wrote on his experiences was extremely valuable. It takes its
place with the works of Symes and Yule as one of the best accounts of
the old kingdom of Burma. ^
Crawfurd's reception by the king took place on an ordinary kodaw
i.e. 'beg-pardon'day, when his vassals assembled to make
customary offerings. The official presents from the governor-general
were described as a token of his submission to the Golden Feet and
his desire for pardon for past offences. Over the extremely simple
and innocuous draft commercial treaty which Crawfurd presented to
the ministers they haggled for weeks, seeking to barter commercial
concessions against the cancellation of the unpaid, portion of the
indemnity and the restoration of the ceded territories. Of the original
twenty-two articles, four only appeared in the final treaty that was
signed on 24 November 1826.
'

In the discussions the ministers brought up a whole list of matters

arising out of the fact that the Treaty of Yandabo had been^ clumsily
drafted with regard to frontier lines. There were genuine problems
^Journal of an Embassy from the Governor General of India to the Court of Ava in the
year 1827, London, 1829.

CH. 3 2

THE CREATION OF THE PROVINCE OF BRITISH BURMA

573

to be settled. But Crawfurd, with his rigid ideas of diplomatic

correctness, had become weary of Burmese methods. He pleaded that
his instructions did not permit him to deal with political matters
arising out of the treaty. On his return to Calcutta, however, the
Government of India did not take the same narrow view of the scope
of his powers and criticized him for not having made a better attempt
to establish political relations on a proper footing before leaving the
country.
His advice^that it was inexpedient to appoint a permanent Resident
. led the Government of India to shelve the matter for the time being.
He argued that an officer no less than 1,200 miles distant by water
from Calcutta would be an object of perpetual jealousy to a government ' indescribably ignorant and suspicious', and his position would
be 'little better than honourable confinement'. He thought that
relations with Ava could be carried on by a political officer stationed
at Moulmein, the capital of the new British province of Tenasserim.
But the fate of Tenasserim was in the balance. The original idea
had been to offer it to Siam. But the Siamese attitude towards the
various matters at issue in their relations with the British had caused
that idea to be dropped. Now the directors, finding that its revenues
were quite inadequate to meet the cost of its establishment, were
anxious that its possible retrocession to Burma should be considered.
There were other matters also which could only be properly dealt
with by a duly accredited representative at Amarapura. For instance,
when a Burmese mission appeared in Calcutta to go into the questions
which Crawfurd had refused to discussthe unpaid half of the indemnity and the frontiers of Arakan and Manipurit was found to
have no power to settle the points at issue but must refer everything
back to Ava.
The boundary questions caused no little friction. The Burmese
claimed the Kabaw valley between the river Chindwin and the Manipur mountains, which had been occupied by Gambhir Singh when he
had driven them out off his country during the war. An AngloBurmese'boundary commission failed to agree, and Pemberton, the
British expert on the north-east frontier regions of India, declared
that the map used by the Burmese commissioners was a fake. When
a further meeting to check up the map was arranged the Burmese did
not turn up, and the Government of India proceeded to give its
decision in favour of the Raja of Manipur. When, a year later, the
commission did meet again and the Burmese found that the British
had planted boundary flags on the right bank of the Chindwin their

574

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

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protests were so strong that the government postponed further action

until the matter could be thoroughly investigated in the Burmese
records at the capital.
I
By the end of the year 1829 it had become quite clear that matters
of this sort could not be dealt with by a political agent in Moulmein,
but only by the Resident provided for in the Treaty of Yandabo. For
this task the Government of India chose Major Henry Burney, who
had already won its high praise for his tactful handling of the Raja
of Ligor and the Court of Bangkok. He arrived at Amarapura in
April 1830, charged with the duty of dealing with all outstanding
mattersthe indemnity, the frontier questions, the retrocession
suggestion, and trade. And, as every previous attempt to place
relations between Ava and Calcutta on a satisfactory footing had
failed, the situation with which he had to cope was enough to daunt
the most sanguine man.^
In matters of Court etiquette his attitude was firm but reasonable.
He made it quite clear, however, that he would not be received on a
kodaw day. He won his point. Before long he had established such
cordial relations with the ministers of the Hlutdaw, the supreme council
of the realm, that they would come to the Residency to dine with him.
King Bagyidaw himself went so far as to have frequent private
conversations with him. In February 1831 their relations were so
friendly that the king conferred on him the rank of Wundauk.^
On the main matters in dispute discussions took place in both Ava
and Calcutta. The Burmese attempts to scale down the amount of
the indemnity failed, and the final instalment was handed over in
October 1832. A Burmese deputation went to India and waited upon
the governor-general to appeal against the Kabaw valley decision. In
1832 Burney was recalled to Calcutta to join in the discussions. His
study of the records of the Court of Ava had led him to the conclusion
that the Burmese case was a sound one, notwithstanding Pemberton's
opposition. In March 1833 the Government of India accepted his
argument and the valley was restored to Burma, although it had been
occupied by the Manipuris Since the end of the war.'
On the subject of Tenasserim he could not persuade the ministers
to offer reasonable terms for its retrocession. They* were aware tlfat:'
' For a detailed study of Burney's mission based on the India Office^records see
W. S. Desai, History of the British Residency in Burma, i8s6-i8^.
University of
Rangoon, 1939.
* Minister of the Second Class, next in rank to Wungyi. See Handbook of Oriental
History (C. H . Philips, editor), Royal Historical Society, Kondon, 1951, pp. 120-1,
s.v. Ministers of St.ite (B).
/^

CH. 3 2

THE CREATION OF THE PROVINCE OF BRITISH BURMA

575

financially it was a dead loss to the East India Company, and mistakenly supposed that they had only to wait long enough for the
Company to hand it back as a free gift. Even the warning that the
Siamese might be willing to make a good offer for the territory failed
to shake their resolution. Burney failed also to persuade them to
appoint a resident minister in Calcutta. The argument that it was
contrary to Burmese custom was final in their eyes, and nothing
he could tell them about diplomatic practice elsewhere availed.
To make matters worse, before the end of 1831 King Bagyidaw
began to display symptoms of the insanity that was later to incapacitate
him. Power therefore tended to get more and more into the hands of
the chief queen and her brother, the Minthagyi, both of low origin,
who dominated the Council of Regency. Under the strain of his
difficult task Burney's health broke down. In a letter written in 1834
he indicated clearly the impossible situation with which he was faced:
' When any important event or discussion arises here, the consideration
that there exists no certain means of communicating with your own
Government, which possesses less knowledge of the real character and
customs of this than of any other Indian Court, greatly enhances, in
such a climate and situation, near a crazy King, and an ignorant and
trembling set of Ministers, the mental anxiety which preys upon the
health of a public servant holding a responsible office.' He was
granted furlough.
In July 1835, when he returned to Burma, though his reception by
the ministers was flattering to a degree, the king's malady had become
so severe that he could no longer bear to meet the representative of
the power that had caused him such acute humiliation. Matters came
to a climax early in 1837, when the king's brother, the Tharrawaddy
Prince, convinced that the Minthagyi aimed at seizing the throne,
fled to Shwebo and raised the standard of rebellion. He was a friend
of Burney's and hoped for his support. Burney had to explain that
the rules of his government forbade him to interfere.
His one wish now was to retire from the capital and leave the
opposing sides to fight it out. But the panic-stricken ministers refused to let him go. He then undertook the role of mediator and
negotiated the surrender of the capital on condition that there should
be no bloodshed. On obtaining possession of Amarapura Tharrawaddy broke his promise, and Burney had again to intervene to stop
the executions. But five ministers had been done to death, and the
wife and daughters of the Minthagyi horribly tortured, before his
protests availed. 'These hat-wearing people cannot bear to see or

576

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

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hear of women being beaten or maltreated,' was Tharrawaddy's

contemptuous comment, and he never forgave Burney for interfering
with his royal right to break a promise. I
During the war of 1824-6 Tharrawaddy had been in favour of ah
early termination of hostilities, and he regarded the hard terms of the
Treaty of Yandabo as due to his brother's refusal to take his advice.
On coming to the throne, therefore, he announced his repudiation
of the treaty, and Burney learnt with consternation that there was a
party at Court which advocated the recovery of the lost provinces by
force of arms. His position had become intolerable; he was completely
cold-shouldered by the king. In June 1837, therefore, on a plea of
ill-health, he removed the Residency to Rangoon. He had become
afraid that if it remained at Amafapura some outrage would occur
which would endanger peace. He advised Calcutta that it should not
be re-established at the capital until the king undertook to recognize
the Treaty of Yandabo. He reported that Tharrawaddy was buying
arms and calling up more men to the colours than were necessary in
peacetime. He recommended, therefore, that some form of coercive
military action should be undertaken.
Lord Auckland, the governor-general, refused to consider such a
course of action. He was far from satisfied with Burney's conduct in
leaving Amarapura. Burney was accordingly recalled and a successor,
Colonel Richard Benson, appointed with instructions to re-establish
the Residency at the capital. When he arrived there his official
position was ignored, and he was assigned a residence on a sandbank
which was flooded to a depth of several feet by the overflow of the
Irrawaddy during the wet monsoon. He complained to Calcutta that
his treatment was ' such as no English gentleman, or, more extensively,
no British subject, ought to be exposed t o ' .
In March 1839, on a plea of ill-health, he retired to Rangoon,
leaving his assistant. Captain William McLeod, in charge at Amarapura. , When the monsoon broke and the ministers refused to find
him more suitable quarters he also left for Rangoon, in July 1839.
By that time the breakdown of every Resident's health at his capital
had become one of Tharrawaddy's stock jokes. Early in the following
year the Government of India withdrew the Residencyand seveted^
diplomatic relations with the Court of Ava.
>
Was war now inevitable? Benson, like Burney, warned Calcutta
that nothing short of invasion would bring the Burmese government.
to its senses. But the Afghan War made it impossible to take a firm
line with the Court of Ava. On the other hand, the British disasters

CH. -32

THE CREATION OF THE PROVINCE OF BRITISH BURMA

577

in that war were seized on by the war party at Tharrawaddy's Court '
as arguments iii favour of a more energetic policy. Two rebellions
one in Lower Burma in 1838, and the other in the Shan country in
1840gave the king an excuse to get rid of all the people he had
intended to put out of the way in 1837 when Burney had intervened
to save their lives. The ex-queen was trampled to death by elephants,
and her brother, the Minthagyi, even more barbarously executed.
A significant outbreak of dacoity in the Salween neighbourhood gave
rise to wild rumours of a Burmese plan to invade Tenasserim. A
royal visit to Rangoon in 1841, which was of the nature of a military
demonstration, caused so much apprehension that the British garrisons
in Arakan and Tenasserim ware reinforced.
Nothing came of these incidents. Tharrawaddy was playing with
fire, but v^as shrewd enough not to push things too far. Blundell,
the Commissioner of Tenasserim, warned the Government of India
that the dacoities in the Salween area were officially instigated in
order to spread alarm on the British side of the frontier; and that no
matter how forcibly he might stamp them out, action of a far more
comprehensive kind was really called for. But the Government of
India, having brought the Afghan War to an end, had its attention
fixed on Sind and the Sikhs and was unwillihg to risk adventures in
Burma.
How long the uneasy peace would have continued had Tharrawaddy continued to direct affairs is a matter for surmise. But like his
brother he became insane. His madness showed itself in fits of
ungovernable rage, during which he committed abominable cruelties.
These became so serious that in 1845 his sons put him under restraint.
The struggle for power which then ensued was won by Pagan Min,
who killed off those of his brothers whom he considered dangerous,
together with every member of their households.
In 1846 Tharrawaddy died and Pagan Min became king. His
tyranny* and atrocities were far worse than those of Thibaw and
Supayalat which so shocked a later generation of Britishers. His first
chief_ ministers, Maung Baing Zat and Maung Bhein, carried out a
systematic spoliation of his richer subjects by procuring their deaths on
trumped-up charges. During their two years of power more than
6,000 people are said to have been put out of the way, and the public
fury at last rose to such a pitch that to save himself the king handed
over his favourites to be tortured to death. He rarely attended to
business, and' local officers could do much as they pleased so long as
the due amount of revenue was paid regularly to the capital. Local

578

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

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officers like Gaung Gyi of Tharrawaddy, later a famous dacoit leader

against the British regime, were as independent as mediaeval marcher
lords in Europe.
1
It was this -breakdown of central contrpl which was finally instru mental in bringing on the long-threatened war with the East India
Company. After the withdrawal of the Residency in 1840, Calcutta
began to be plagued with complaints about the ill-treatment of British
subjects at Rangoon. Some were frivolous, others exaggerated, but
Maung Ok, the Governor of Pegu appointed by Pagan Min at the
beginning of his reign, gained a bad name for extortion. In July and
August 1851 two particularly bad cases of this occurred, in which,
by allowing frivolous charges of murder and embezzlement to be
brought against two British sea-captains, Sheppard of the Monarch
and Lewis of the Champion, and members of their crews, he collected
from them sums totalling just short of 1,000 rupees. His acts were
not mere clumsy attempts to enrich himself: his aim was publicly to
degrade Britishers.
It was a singularly inopportune moment to stage an anti-British
demonstration. When claims for damages were submitted by the
injured parties to the Government of India Lord Dalhousie was
governor-general and had recently defeated the Sikhs. Compared with
all the provocations of the earlier period the affair was trifling, but he
knew that the Court of Ava would most certainly reject a demand
for reparation made in the ordinary way, and he felt that if this kind of
thing were permitted to continue it might seriously affect British
prestige in the East. ' T h e Government of India', he wrote in a
minute, 'could never, consistently with,its own safety, permit itself to
stand for a single day in an attitude of inferiority towards a native
power, and least of all towards the Court of Ava.' Hence he decided
to serve the claim in such a way as he believed would make it impossible
for the Burmese government to reject it. He sent Commodore
Lambert, the deputy commander-in-chief of the.East India Company's
naval forces, in H.M.S. Fox, together with two Company's warships,
the Proserpine and the Tenasserim, to Rangoon with a demand addressed
to the king not only for compensation but also for the removal of
Maung Ok.
'
-'
^-~~
The Government of Burma promised redress and promptly recalled Maung Ok. The appearance of British warships in Rangoon
harbour, however, caused a state of alarm. Large detachments of
troops were sent to Bassein and Martaban, and Maung Ok's successor
brought with him a considerable force.- Unfortunately he belonged

CH. 32

THE CREATION OF THE PROVINCE OF BRITISH BURMA

579

to the violently anti-British party at the capital and came with the
intention of adopting an uncompromising attitude, regardless of
consequences. When Commodore Lambert sent an official deputation
to wait on him to discuss the claim to compensation it was refused
admission in a grossly insulting manner, and the governor sent a
written protest to the commodore complaining that a party of drunken
officers had rudely attempted to interrupt his siesta.
The 'combustible commodore', as Dalhousie later described
Lambert, at once declared a blockade of the port and proceeded to
take reprisals on Burmese shipping. When the shore batteries fired a
few shots he silenced them with a broadside from the Fox. Then,
having destroyed every Burmese war-boat within reach, he returned
to Calcutta. 'So all that fat is in the fire,' commented the governorgeneral, and preparations for war were at once set on foot. 'We can't
afford to be shown to the door anywhere in the East,' he wrote Jo a
friend.
His next step was to despatch a strong expeditionary force to
Rangoon. It bore with it an ultimatum demanding compensation,
this time to the tune of ten lakhs of rupees, ^ the estimated cost of the
war preparations. His letters show that he still hoped against hope
that the Court of Ava would consent to negotiate. But on i April
1852 the ultimatum expired without a sign from the Golden Feet.
A few days later Rangoon and Martaban were occupied. Richard
Cobden in a famous pamphlet^ strongly censured the Government of
India for sending a commodore of the Royal Navy to negotiate in the
first place, and then for raising the sum demanded as compensation to
a hundred times the original amount. Dalhousie admitted his error
in the choice of an ettiissary, but contended that Lambert was not the
cause of the war. In his view war had long been inevitable. Actually
he had disapproved of Lambert's action and reprimanded him.
The war which followed was in complete contrast to the previous
one.* ITalhousie tackled with masterly zeal the problems of organization, transport and co-operation created by the employment of two
separate naval and military servicesthose of the Crown and those
of the Company. His measures for safeguarding the health of the
expeditionary force were so effective that the mortality from sickness
' Then worth 100,000.
^ 'How wars are got up in India', Political Writings of Cobden, London, 1867, vol.
ii, pp. 25-106.
' T h e best concise account of the war is in Sir William Lefe-Warner's Life of the
Marquess of Dalhousiei London, 1904, chap. xii. For the settlement after the war see
D . G . E. Hall (ed.), The Dalhousie-Phayre Correspondence, 1852-1856, London, 1932.

580

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

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was actually lower than the peacetime average in India. Materials

were prepared ahead for the rapid construction of barracks. Plentiful
supplies of fresh food were collected at Amherst, hospitals built there,
and a regular service of fast steamers kept, them in close touch with the
expeditionary force. His biggest difficulty lay in the personality of
the commander-in-chief, General Godwin, a septuagenarian, who
disagreed with the whole plan of campaign and was notorious for
his jealousy of the Navy, on whose co-operation he was entirely
dependent.
The initial plan of campaign was to seize Rangoon, Martaban and
Bassein before the onset of the wet monsoon, and thus force Pagan
Min to negotiate. There was no intention tq annex more territory.
But as the rains dragged on their weary course and the Court of Ava
made no move Dalhousie realized that the Burmese also were playing
a waiting game. In July 1852 he went personally to Rangoon to
confer with General Godwin and Commodore Lambert. Godwin
wanted to dictate terms in Amarapura itself and was loudly supported
by the London press. Dalhousie, however, preferred a more limited
objective. It was useless to hold the three captured ports without a
hinterland. Hence he suggested to London the feasibility of annexing
the old kingdom of Pegu. This would strengthen the British position
in Burma by linking up Arakan and Tenasserim, and reduce the Court
of Ava to impotence. The brilliantly reasoned minute in which he
conveyed this proposal to the home government won its complete
assent.
When, in November 1852, its reply arrived Godwin had occupied
Prome, after sweeping aside the main Burmese army under the
amiable but incompetent son of the great Bandula, who prudently
surrendered rather than face the fate of a defeated commander at the
hands of his own government. During the next few weeks the remainder of the province of Pegu was systematically occupied against
slight resistance. The home government, in sanctioning the annexation, stipulated that the Court of Ava must be made" to sign a treaty
recognizing the fact. Dalhousie, on the other harfd, was convinced
that a King of Burma would never sign away territory unless his
capital were directly threatened; and as he considered a"march "on"
Amarapura would serve no useful purpose, the only thing to do was
to proclaim the annexation of Pegu and present the Court of Ava
with zfait accompli. On 20 December 1852 the proclamation was read
with due ceremonial at Rangoon by Major Arthur Purves Phayre,
whom Dalhousie had chosen to be the first Commissioner of Pegu.

CH. 3 2

THE CREATION OF THE PROVINCE OF BRITISH BURMA

581

Still no sign came from the Golden Feet. Dalhousie therefore began
most reluctantly to make plans for a march on the capital. Actually,
however, all unknown to him, a revolution was in progress in Upper
Burma. The Mindon Prince, half-brother to the king, was the leader
of a party at Court which had opposed the war from the start. The
news of the British advance to Prome made him a popular idol, who,
it was hoped, would restore the situation. The king therefore tried to
get rid of him, but on 17 December 1752 Mindon and his brother, the
Kanaung Prince, fled to Shwebo, as Tharrawaddy had done in 1837,
and raised the standard of revolt. After confused fighting lasting for
some weeks the Magwe Mingyi, Pagan's chief minister, suddenly
declared for Mindon on 18 February 1853, took possession of Amarapura and deposed the king. Mindon thereupon left Shwebo and was
crowned at the capital amidst general rejoicing.
The new king was a sincere Buddhist who hated bloodshed. He
permitted Pagan Min to retire into honourable captivity. He
survived until 1881. He also signalized his accession by releasing all
the Europeans imprisoned at the capital and sending two of them, the
Italian priests Father Domingo TaroUy and Father Abbona, post haste
down the Irrawaddy to meet the British commander-in-chief with the
announcement that a peace delegation would be despatched as soon
as possible. They found him not at Prome, as they had expected, but
fifty miles higher up the river at Myede. In the absence of any word
from Amarapura, it had been decided to annex yet another slice of
Burmese territory, which included a rich belt of teak forest. The
envoys were sent back to Mindon with a copy of the proclamation of
annexation and an invitation to accept the inevitable.
Mindon Min could not believe that the British seriously intended to
keep Pegu. At the end of March 1853 the Burmese peace delegation,
headed by the Magwe Mingyi, met the British commissioners,
Phayre, Godwin and Lambert, and begged them to give back the
territory they had taken. They pleaded that the new king was an
entirely clifFerent kind of man from his predecessor and was only too
anxious, to be on friendly terms with Britain. As a forlorn hope Dalhousie authorized the commissioners to offer to give up the additional
territory that had been occupied north of Prome in return for a treaty
recognizing the British possession of Pegu. But as he had prophesied
earlier, when the treaty question was first mooted in London Mindon
would on no account sign a treaty yielding Burmese territory to a
foreign power. So in May 1853 the negotiations were broken off and
the Myede boundary was retained.

582

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

At first the alarmists prophesied a renewal of the war. The Kanaung Min, who had become heir-apparent, was in favour of it. But
Mindon, who had more political sagadty than any of his advisers,
vetoed any hostile move and sent a reassuring letter to Phayre telling
him that frontier officials had been ordered to prevent any further
hostilities. Lord Dalhousie accordingly announced the official termination of hostilities. ' All that is known of his character and past history',
he wrote of Mindon, ' mark him among Burmese rulers as a prince of
rare sagacity, humanity and forbearance, and stamp his present
declarations with the seal of sincerity.'
But the army in Pegu had to remain on a war footing. Rebellion
flared up everywhere in the annexed territory. Local myothugyis, the
heads of the old district administration, became the leaders of a
stubborn resistance movement which seriously hindered attempts to
establish civil government, while Burmese officials from across" the
border raided frontier villages. Myat T u n and Gaung Gyi, the two
most daring leaders, put up a magnificent fight which wrung admiration from Dalhousie himself. Ittook three years to bring the province
under control.
Meanwhile both Dalhousie and his able lieutenant Phayre had come
to the conclusion that positive action must be taken to prevent a drift
back into war. On both sides of the frontier the air was full of alarmist
rumours. It remained to be seen also whether Mindon could maintain
himself on the throne. If the diplomatic impasse could not be broken
it was urgent to find some informal means of direct contact with the
new king so that trustworthy intelligence could be purveyed by each
side to the other and mutual confidence built up. Among the Europeans released by Mindon was a burly bearded Scottish trader named
Thomas Spears, with a Burmese wife and a good reputation in
Amarapura. Phayre interviewed him at Rangoon and was so impressed
with his matter-of-fact good sense that he suggested to Dalhousie that
Spears should be appointed unofficial news-writer at the Burmese
capital. Dalhousie at first fought shy of the proposal. Spears in such
a position, he felt, might be liable to outrage and thus involve the
Government of India in unwelcome responsibilities. Other possible
candidates were considered and turned down. Late in-1853, on.his
second visit to Rangoon, Dalhousie met Spears and decided to try the
experiment, provided it met with Mindon's full approyal.
Happily Mindon knew Spears well personally and welcomed his
appointment. His task was simply to keep Phayre, as Commissioner of
Pegu and Governor-General's Agent,, informed of conditions at the

CH. 32

THE CREATION OF THE PROVINCE OF BRITISH BURMA

583

capital. But his position demanded almost superhuman tact, for not
only did Mindon give him absolute liberty to vi^rite completely uncensored despatches but he constantly sought to use him as his official
channel of communication with the British. There were occasions
when the wary Dalhousie had to warn Phayre that Spears was merely
a news-writer without any official standing. Nevertheless both Mindon
and Phayre came to rely absoliitely upon his good judgment and common sense. Mindon discussed with him every matter affecting British
relations before taking action, and Phayre apprised him of everything
of importance from the British side for the information of the king.
And although the king never acquiesced in the loss of Pegu, frontier
peace was gradually established and friendly relations promoted between Rangoon and the Court of Ava. This excellent arrangerhent
lasted without interruption until 1861, when Spears went home on
furlough.
In March 1854 Dalhousie was able to write home to his friend Sir
George Couper: 'There is perfect quiescence, and the King is
actually withdrawing from the frontier his whole troops.'
During that year relations improved so well that Mindon sent a goodwill mission to Calcutta headed by the Dalla Wun. Its real object was
to persuade the governor-general to consider the retrocession of Pegu,
which Mindon felt he could reasonably expect after the practical
demonstration he had given of his peaceable intentions. And although
Lord Dalhousie's uncompromising refusal was deeply disappointing,
the report taken back by the Burmese delegation of their courteous
treatment at Calcutta so impressed Mindon that he at once invited the
Government of India to depute a return mission to his capital. Photography was coming into vogue, and the king was much interested in the
collection of photographs the envoy and his suite brought back with
them.
The return mission, headed by Phayre, to the Court of Ava in 1855
achieved fame through the splendid volume from the pen of its
secretary7 Colonel (later Sir) Henry Yule, who not only reported its
proceedings fully but also included in his scope a vast amount of information of every kind about Burma and the Burmese. ^ From the
point of view of the East India Company, which constantly harped
on the subject of a treaty, the mission was a failure. For, notwithstanding long private talks with the king, Phayre was unable to persuade him to sign even a general treaty of friendship, making no
' A Narrative of the Mission sent by the Governor-General of India to the Court of
Ava in 1855, London, 1858.

584

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT.

Ill

allusion whatever to any loss of territory. On the other hand, as a step

towards better Anglo-Burmese understanding the mission was an outstanding success. Never before in Burmese history had so. genuinely
friendly a welcome been bestowed upon the envoys of a foreign
power.
[
Much of the credit for this must go t6.,Phayre himself, who spoke
Burmese fluently, had an intimate knowledge of the literature, religion
and history^ of the Burmese, and a great reputation with them for
courtesy and kindliness. But an equal share must be given to Mindon.
The Crimean War was in progress, and the Armenian community at
Amarapura was busily engaged in spreading rumours that a great
Russian invasion of India was imminent and British rule there was
' finished'. Shady French adventurers also, such a s ' General d'Orgoni',
were capping this by playing up British weakness in the Crimea and
representing that it was only the French army that was saving them
from defeat. But the king's shrewdness was proof against such assaults;
he was convinced that the only safe policy was to cultivate good
relations with the British. And he found the sound common sense
of Thomas Spears an unerring guide.
Lord Dalhousie was more than satisfied with the results of the
mission. In his minute summing them up he wrote: ' From its first
entrance into Burmese waters until its return to our frontier the
Mission was treated with the highest distinction and with the utmost
hospitality and liberality . . . and I desire to record my firm conviction
that peace with Burma is to the full as secure as any written treaty
could have made it.' The good understanding born of these friendly
exchanges survived the even greater strain of the Indian Mutiny of
1857-8. When the British garrison in Lower Burma was depleted
through India's need for reinforcements Mindon was urged by his
advisers to invade Pegu. 'We do not strike a friend when he is in
distress,' he is reported to have said.
The India Office records contain a vast mass of material on his reign,
and it shows quite clearly that his position was never an easy one. The
traditionalist elements at his Court constantly worked against him, and
in the face of the plots and disorders that were rife throughout his
reign his hands were weakened by the crippling loss his kingdom hadsustained in the war. He needed peace for the task o setting his own
house in order, and of coming to terms with the new order that the
European impact was forcing upon Asia. Like his contemporary,
Mongkut of Siam, he felt the challenge of the West, but in his
' His History of Burma, London, 1883, is a remarkable jsiece of pioneer work.

CH. 32

THE CREATION OF THE PROVINCE OF BRITISH BURMA

585

land-locked kingdom, now more than ever isolated from the outside world, his handicap in the effort to meet it was immeasurably
greater.
When Arakan and Tenasserim were annexed in 1826 they were
separately administered under the direct supervision of the Government of India. In Arakart's case the arrangement did not last very
long, for it was found to be more convenient to transfer it to the Bengal
administration. From 1828 it was under the charge of a superintendent, who worked under the supervision of the Commissioner of
Chittagong. Tenasserini remained directly under the Government of
India until 1834. But its connection with India was slight, since its
European administrators up to 1843 came from Penang. Thus while
Indian administrative methods were speedily introduced in Arakan, in
Tenasserim's case, partly because for some time the question of retrocession was in the air, Burmese officials and administrative methods
were largely retained.^
It was the age of Liberalism, when men such as Sir Stamford
Raffles, Sir Thomas Munro, Mountstuart Elphinstone and Lord
William Cavendish-Bentinck, who was Governor-General of India
from 1828 to 1835, accepted the ideals of economic freedom, equality
before the law, and the general welfare of the governed as the guiding
principles of government. A. D. Maingy, the first Civil Commissioner
of Tenasserim, was an enthusiast for these things; and although he
found that Liberalism and Burmese custom did not always agree, and
that where they clashed the latter tended to prevail, he was able to
introduce administrative methods which contributed to the welfare of
the people. And whatever may be said in criticism of the new administration, the fact remains that in both Arakan and Tenasserim
official oppression and extortion became illegal, banditry was suppressed far more energetically than before, while security of life and
property became established features of the governmental system.
Under the Burmese system, while the heads of the provincial
government were appointed by the king, actual administration was
largely in the hands of hereditary local magnates such as the myothugyis. Thus in Tenasserim at first the system of administration
was akin to the indirect rule of the Dutch in Java, with Europeans
supervising a native administration functioning on traditional lines.
In 1834, however, the judicial and revenue administration came under
Bengal, and in consequence standardization on Indian lines was
' The early administrative history of Tenasserim is treated in detail in J. S. Furnivall's ' T h e Fashioning of Leviathan' in JBRS, vol. xxix, 1939.

586

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

increasingly applied. Still, a surprising amount of the older Burmese

practice managed sturdily to survive.
When Pegu was annexed in 1852 itbecahne a separate commissionership under the governor-general. Phayre framed its administration
on the Tenasserim model. The provihce was divided into five
districts under deputy commissioners. jThese in turn were subdivided into townships under myo-oks. Each township comprised a
number of ' circles' under taikthugyis, who supervised the subordinate
officials in the villages. As, however, most of the British officers
appointed to administrative posts had held commissions in the Bengal
and Madras armies and spoke little or no Burmese, the administration
tended to develop more and more along the approved Indian lines.
The method of three separate commissioner's divisions was costly
and inconvenient. Hence in 1862 they were amalgamated to form
the province of British Burma, of which Rangoon was the capital and
Phayre the first Chief Commissioner.. This naturally resulted in
greater uniformity of administration. It was also the beginning of the
gradual reorganization of the government into departments. But,
significantly enough, the circle under the taikthugyi remained the
real unit of local government, as it had done under Burmese rule.
Indirect rule thus continued to be the general practice, and the life of
the ordinary' villager went on much as it had done under Burmese
rule.
Tenasserim and Arakan at the time of their annexation in 1826
were of slight economic value. In the seventeenth century Arakan
had driven a considerable export trade in rice. The instability of the
government in the eighteenth century had caused this to decline.
Under Burmese rule quite half of its population had emigrated, and
in any case the Burmese government did not permit the export of rice.
British rule brought more settled conditions and the removal of the
restrictions on export; hence the proximity of the Indian market
caused a revival of rice-planting. Akyab, the administrative headquarters, soon became a flourishing commercial centre.
Tenasserim had a very sparse population living mainly on subsistence agriculture. Its valuable teak forests were thrown opjn to
licensed private enterprise, and for a time Moulmeirobecame a thrivitigport with saw-mills and shipbuilding yards. But the^ rapid development of Rangoon after 1852 soon brought about the eclipse of Moulmein. Lord Dalhousie's work as the creator of modern Rangoon
shows up by comparison with Raffles's at Singapore as a comprehensive and efficient professional job against a slapdash amateur one.

CH. 3 2

THE CREATION OF THE PROVINCE OF BRITISH BURMA

587

In his plans Rangoon's future was envisaged as not only a great port
but also ' one of the most beautiful cities and stations within the whole
bounds of India'. But his most sanguine hopes for the city's development must have fallen far short of reality when Rangoon became the
world's greatest rice port as a result of expansion of cultivation in the
Irrawaddy delta region that was to be one of the most spectacular
developments in the recent economic history of Asia.

CHAPTER 33

T H E LAST DAYS OF T H E KONBAUNG DYNASTY

A T MANDALAY, 1862-85
MiNDON, who was a son of Tharrawaddy, had been twelve years of age
when Arakan and Tenasserim were annexed in 1826. He was raised
to the throne just after Pegu and a deep strip of territory to the north
of the Burmese province had gone the same way. His kingdom was
still a large one stretching many miles up the Irrawaddy and its great
tributary, the Chindwin. It contained what was par excellence the
Burmese homeland, together with a fringe of mountainous areas
occupied by other peoples, principally Shans, Chins and Kachins.
Of these the Shans were far the'most important, and the thick wedge
of their feudatory states paying allegiance to Burma stretched far
across the river Salween to the borders of Yunnan, and in the case of
Kerigtung reached to the upper Mekong. But Mindon was painfully
aware of his weakness. He was cut off from the sea; not a vestige of
the old military strength of Burma remained, and he himself was a man
of peace, not a soldier. He realized, therefore, that it was essential for
him to remain on good terms with the British, and he did so.
His greatest personal interest was in Buddhism. Though not a
profound scholar of Buddhist learning, he was deeply imbued with its
doctrines and had a more genuinely religious outlook than any other
ruler of his house. In 1857 he chose a new site for a royal city on the
plain lying to the south-west of Mandalay Hill and transferred his
capital there from Amarapura. He strove to make it a principal
centre of the Buddhist culture, reviving and conserving the best traditions of the past. In and around it he built large teak monasteries
richly adorned with wood carvings displaying pure Burmese art at
its best. Among the many religious^ buildings with which he adorned
his new capital perhaps the most interesting and significant wasTthe
complex of pagodas known as the Kuthodaw ('great work of royal
merit'), where, around a central pagoda, are grouped 733 simaller ones
containing upright marble slabs, each engraved with verses of the Pali
scriptures, and together forming a complete copy of the Tripitaka,,the
'three baskets' of the Buddhist' bible'."..the Sutta, the Vinaya, and the
588

CH. 33

THE LAST DAYS OF THE KONBAUNG DYNASTY

589

Abhidammapitaka. In the central pagoda was enshrined the Pali

Commentary inscribed on leaves of gold and silver. To the Burmese
Mandalay was Shwemyo, 'the golden city'; its official Pali name was
Yadanabon, 'cluster of gems'. The royal city containing the palace
was a walled square with each side a mile and a quarter long, and with
mud-mortar-built machicolated walls twenty-six feet high, surmounted by wooden look-out towers of traditional Burmese design.
The walls were pierced by twelve gates, three on each side, and surrounded by a wide moat.
Thomas Spears continued to act as British Correspondent to the
Court of Ava until 1861, when he left for a long visit to Europe.^ In the
following year Colonel Phayre, the new Chief Commissioner of British
Burma, came to Mandalay to negotiate a commercial treaty. British
policy now aimed at developing trade with western China along the
old Burma Road running into Yunnan from Bhamo. The idea of
discovering a practicable overland route to China had been revived.
Symes, in reporting his first mission to Ava in 1795, had mentioned
that Burma carried on an extensive cotton trade with Yunnan. Hiram
Cox had followed this up by making careful enquiries, on the results
of which he wrote a fairly detailed report, which Major Francklin
published in 1811 in a collection of papers on Burma.^
The acquisition of Tenasserim in 1826 led to great efforts to
stimulate the trade of Moulmein, and attempts were made to discover
its overland connexions. Crawfurd's estimate, in his report of his
mission to Ava in 1827, that Burmese exports amounted to an annual
value of ,228,000 brought to the fore the feasibility of finding a way
there from Moulmein. It also aroused the interest of the Government
of India in the ancient land route from Bengal to China, and the Calcutta authorities published a map showing possible routes to Yunnanfu. Numerous sufveys were made and a vast amount of information
piled up.
In 1831 Captain Sprye suggested the Salween route to China from
Moulmein via Kenghung, and in 1837 Captain McLeod followed up
his suggestion by making the journey with six elephants, thus becoming the first European to penetrate China by the Salween route.
Another doughty explorer of this period was Dr. David Richardson,
who made"" three visits to Chiengmai from Moulmein and was apparently the first Britisher to visit that city since the unfortunate
^ He returned to Rangoon in 1867 and died there early the next year.
^ W. Francklin, Tracts, Political, Geographical and Commercial, on the Dominions of
Ava and the North-Western Parts of Hindostaun, London, i 8 n .

59

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

Samuel in 1615. Other gallant adventurers explored routes from

India to Upper Burma. In 1830, for instance, Lieutenant Pemberton,
the author of an invaluable Report on the Eastern Frontier of British
India,^ crossed the mountains from Manipur by the Akui route to
Kindat and made his way down the Chindwin to Ava. Five years
later Captain Hannay travelled from Bengal to Bhamo by the route
across northern Burma. But after Tharrawaddy came to the throne
in 1837 all hopes of developing this route were quenched for a generation, and all attempts to develop the overland trade of Moulmein in
the direction of Chiengmai or Yunnan failed.
The journals of, these explorers were studied by Colonel Henry
Yule in connection with Phayre's mission to the Court of Mindon Min
in 1855. One of the objects hoped for from the mission was the signature of a treaty permitting trans-Burma trade with China. But the
king was not to be persuaded to agree to any plan which might provide
excuses for further British interference. Moreover, Yule found that
Burma's trade with Yunnan was declining, and soon afterwards it
came to a complete standstill through the Panthay rebellion. Sprye,
on the other hand, continued to recommend his route from Moulmein
to Kenghung and thence on to Szumao, though without avail, since it
passed through thinly populated, malarious areas, and in any case
Lord Dalhousie's plan to develop Rangoon as a port in preference
to Moulmein, together with the obvious advantages of the Irrawaddy
over the Salween, caused attention to be focused more and more upon
overcoming the opposition of the Court of Ava.
In i86o the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, in the belief that
western China would prove a good market for Lancashire cotton
goods, asked the British government to take practical measures to open
the Moulmein-Yunnan route. Almost at the same time an English
army surgeon, Dr. Clement Williams, while stationed at Thayetmyo,
had been studying Burmese accounts of the old trade between China
and Upper Burma, and found the theme so fascinating that he went to
Mandalay on furlough to find out more about it.. Thenceforward he
became an enthusiast for the Bhamo route.
In response to all this pressure the Government of India sent
Phayre on a mission to Mandalay in 1862. The imiori-of the three
divisions of Arakan, Tenasserim and Pegu in that year to form the
province of British Burma had made a deep impression^on Mindon
Min's mind. He realized that the time had come for a clarification of
his relations with the British. He regarded Phayre as an old friend.
^ Published in Calcutta;in 1835!

f H . 33

THE LAST DAYS OF THE KONBAUNG DYNASTY

591

Williams also he liked. Hence he was prevailed upon to sign a commercial treaty. It was based upon the principle of reciprocity. Britain
undertook to abolish within a year the customs duties on goods
coming down the Irrawaddy from Upper Burma. Mindon agreed to
make reciprocal concessions, if he felt inclined, within a rather longer
period. Rice was to be imported into Upper Burma free of duty.
Traders from British territory were to be permitted to operate along
the whole course of the Irrawaddy in Upper Burma in return for a
guarantee of similar privileges to traders from Upper Burma along the
British section of the river. The most important clause, however, was
one which permitted a British Agent to reside in Mandalay to remove
any misunderstandings that might arise.
Both Mindon and Phayre would have preferred to maintain the unofHcial method of communication so ably conducted by Spears. But
there was no suitable man. Hence the appointment of an official
Agent was resorted to as the best arrangement under the circumstances, and Clement Williams was seconded from the army to become
High Commissioner's Agent at the Court of Ava. His first object on
assuming his duties in 1862 was to persuade the king to allow him to
survey the upper part of the Irrawaddy. In this he was successful and
started off in January 1863. At Bhamo his inquiries convinced him
that the trade route was practicable. He was unable, however, to make
a journey to the Chinese border because an insurrection occurred at
Mandalay and Mindon recalled him. But he forwarded a Memorandum to the Government of India' and began an intensive canvass for
his scheme in British mercantile circles. ' Burmah proper is no longer a
barrier,' he wrote, ' but k gangway, open to the use of whoever will
avail themselves of it. '^
This was mere wishful thinking. The obstacles forming the barrier
had only been slightly dislodged. Most of the ministers were against
the king in this matter, and all attempts to carry out further surveys
failed before the difficulties raised by local officials. Trade also was
badly hampered by the system under which nearly every staple
article of produce was a royal monopoly, and as such could be sold
only through royal brokers or by special permission of the local
authorities. And' the Court of Ava found ways and means of postponing indefinitely its part of the agreement regarding the abolition
of customs duties.
The king, unfortunately, was up against practically insuperable
' The gist of it is given in his book Through Burmah to Western China, London, i868.
^ Ihid., p. 6.

fe

CH. 33

THE LAST DAYS OF THE KONBAUNG DYNASTY

593

difficulties, insurrections were rife, and at any moment a palace revolution might deprive him of his throne. He almost alone at his
Court realized that before the insistent pressure of European expansion
the old isolationism must lead to disaster. But unlike his contemporary, Mongkut of Siam, whose country had not been defeated and
carved up by a European power, any move he made towards relaxing
the rigid traditionalism of his government was bound to look in the
eyes of his ministers like selling the pass.
In 1866 an attempted revolution came so near to success that the
king was badly shaken. On 2 August, when he was at the Summer
Palace a few miles out of Mandalay, two of his sons, with armed
followers, rushed into the temporary Hlutdaw building, where a meeting was in progress, and killed the crown prince, who was presiding,
one of the Wungyis and the two princes who stood next in the succession. Mindon escaped on foot to Mandalay, where he was besieged
in the royal palace all night by the insurgents until his guards managed
to drive them off. Major Sladen, the British Agent, was in the Summer
Palace when the outbreak occurred, but managed to escape. The
situation remained so tense that the king suggested that Sladen should
evacuate all the Europeans to Rangoon, and he took them down on a
merchant steamer that was moored off Mandalay city.
Later in the same year Phayre went to Mandalay with the object of
negotiating a new commercial treaty, but the king pleaded that the
country was still too unsettled and impoverished for him to forgo any
of his monopolies or reduce the frontier duties. In March 1867
Phayre retired, and was succeeded as High Commissioner by Colonel
Albert Fytche, a descendant of the Elizabethan prospector and a
cousin of Alfred Tennyson, the poet laureate. He had far less ability
and insight into the Burmese character than Phayre, but a great deal
more self-assurance. And his first act was to resume the negotiations
that Phayre had had to break off. The situation had now changed; the
king wanted steamers and arms to guard against further trouble, and
naturally turned to Britain for them.
Fytche took his wife up with him,, and both were received
very graciously.^ The treaty that he concluded was on paper a great
advance on the 1862 one. The king promised to abandon all his monopolies save those on rubies, earth-oil and timber, and to reduce all the
frontier customs duties to 5 per cent ad valorem. He also granted
certain rights of extra-territoriality, whereby the British Agent received full jurisdiction over civil cases between British subjects at
' Phayre remained a bachelor all his life.

594

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

the capital, while those between British subjects and Burmese subjects were to be tried by a mixed court composed of the Agent and a
Burmese officer of high rank. It was further arranged that British
officers were to sit as observers in Burmese customs-houses and
Burmese officers in British customs-houses.
The king made further concessions that were not embodied in the
treaty.^ A British Agent was to reside at Bhamo, British steamers were
to be permitted to navigate the Irrawaddy beyond Mandalay, and
British explorers to survey the route from Bhamo into western China*
When this agreement was negotiated Doudart de Lagree and Francis
Gamier had already made their epoch-making journey up the Mekong,
the Suez Canal was nearing completion, as also the first American
trans-continental railway to the Pacific. The keenest competition
for the China trade was developing between Britain, France and the
United States, and the agitation in Britain and at Rangoon for the
opening of an overland route to western China had become very
powerful.
In November 1868 Captain Strover assumed the duties of British
Agent at Bhamo. Before his arrival, however, Major Sladen, the
Political Agent at Mandalay, had brushed aside all the difficulties
raised by the Burmese frontier officials and made his way via Bhamo
to Momein (Tengyueh). The Panthay rebeUion prevented him from
going further, but Fytche wrote to the Viceroy of India in a spirit of
unrestrained optimism that Burma promised ' to furnish a highway to
China,' and after alluding to the threat of American competition in
the Pacific he urged that Britain ' should be in a position to substitute
a western ingress to China'. The enthusiasts went further; they now
advocated the construction of a railway through Burma to Shanghai.
It is not without significance that Sladen's expedition had been partly
financed by the Rangoon Chamber of Commerce, which from now
onwards pressed for stronger measures in dealing with the Court of
Ava.' There were even those in the British service who advocated that
Britain should take over the direction of its foreign relations.
Lord Lawrence, however, viewed Sladen's exploit with disfavour;
he was strongly opposed to any further expansion likely to involve
difficulties with Burma. His successor. Lord Mayo, warned Fytche
that the scheme he had in mind was a generation too early. Hopes
were damped also by Strover's disappointing reports of British trade
at Bhamo consequent upon the opening of steamer traffic there.
' A detailed account of the negotiations is given in .Albert Fytche, Burma Past miJ
Present, vol. ii, appendix C, pp. 252-85.

CH. 3 3

THE LAST DAYS OF THE KONBAUNG DYNASTY

595

They revived in 1874 when Lord Salisbury, the Secretary of State

for India in Disraeli's newly-formed administration, in response to a
petition from the British Associated Chambers of Commerce, ordered
a fresii survey to be undertaken along either Sprye's route or some
other. The Government of India thereupon decided in favour of the
Bhamo route. The plan was for a double expedition. Colonel Horace
Browne, with the geographer Ney Elias and Dr. John Anderson, was
to start from Bhamo, and Augustus Margary from Shanghai. Margary
completed his journey and arrived at Bhamo on 17 January 1875,
befjre Browne's departure. He therefore started back a day ahead of
the Bhamo party in order to make arrangements for them. But on
21 February at Manwyine, halfway to Tengyueh, he was murdered
by Chinese tribesmen, incensed by the report that the object of the
expedition was to arrange for a railway to be built through China.
The threat of a still larger Chinese attack caused Browne's party to
return to Bhamo, and the expedition was called off.
This was the last attempt made during the period of the Burmese
kingship to penetrate China by the Bhamo route. The British agents
sent from Hankow to Yunnan to investigate the Margary murder
reported that the route was unsuitable for railway construction.
Thibaw's accession in 1878, the subsequent withdrawal of the
British Agent from Bhamo, and the closing of the Mandalay Residency
rendered it impossible for the time being to search for a better route
through Upper Burma, and attention was accordingly transferred to
the Moulmein route.
Mindon Min was regarded by both Burmese and British as the
best of his line. A fervent Buddhist, he achieved the dearest wish of
his life in 1871 by convoking at Mandalay the Fifth Buddhist Council
in the history of the religion. There, in the presence of a vast concourse of monks, the Bidagat Thonbon^, 'the Three Baskets of the
Law', was solemnly recited. A decision was also taken to erect a new
hti, 'umbrella', on the summit of the famous Shwe Dagon Pagoda at
Rangoon. The British authorities, realizing that it was intended as a
nationalist demonstration uniting all Burmese Buddhists in allegiance
to the king, sanctioned the ceremony subject to the one condition that
he himself should not be present. It was carried out by his envoys
amidst the greatest rejoicings. The hti, studded with jewels estimated
then to be worth ^^62,000, still surmounts the majestic stupa.
Mindon's relations with the British, notwithstanding many disappointments, were always correct. He had hoped to induce Britain
' The Burmese version of the Pali Tripitaka.

596

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

to restore Pegu, but patiently bowed to the inevitable. After the

rebeUion of 1866 he was particularly disappointed at the obstacles
raised by the British in the way of his importation of arms. He felt
that they ought to have adopted a more sympathetic attitude in face
of his serious internal difficulties. Hence with great astuteness he
cultivated relations with other European states, notably France and
Italy, as a counterpoise to British power. In 1872, partly as a result
of the friendly letters he received from Queen Victoria, he sent the
Kinwun Mingyi, his chief minister, on a visit to England. The
Mingyi was the first member of the Hlutdaw Council ever to visit
England, but his visit did little to improve Anglo-Burmese relations.
For one thing he was deeply disappointed because at his official
reception by Queen Victoria he was introduced by the Secretary of
State for India instead of by the Foreign Secretary. For another, the
British government was somewhat piqued by the fact that on his way
to London he had negotiated treaties with France and Italy. French
technicians had long been employed at Mandalay. They had helped '
to construct the palace-city, superintended the minting of Mindon's
new coinage, and ran his arms factory.
The French without delay sent out the Comte de Rochechouart
to obtain ratification of the draft commercial treaty signed in Paris.
On his way to Mandalay in 1873 he crossed India. At Agra, where he
met the viceroy, he gave the firmest assurances that France had no
designs on Burma. But the negotiations did not result.in a treaty,
for Burma wanted a full alliance providing for the import of arms,
while the French wanted to take over the ruby mines of Mogok,
hitherto one of the most rigid royal monopolies. Agreement, however,
was reached on three secret articles. By the first France promised her
good offices to settle disputes to which Burma was a party; the second
provided that France would supply officers to train the Burmese
army, and the third that Frenchmen in Burma were to be subject to the
Burmese courts of law. These exceeded the envoy's instructions and
were accordingly disavowed by the French Foreign Minister.
With Italy a harmless commercial treaty was concluded in 1872.
This diplomatic activity is chiefly accounted for by Mindon's ardent
desire to demonstrate Burma's independence. The British government's decision in 1871 that its relations with the Court of Ava were
to be conducted through the Viceroy Qf India injured his pride. He
resented being treated like the ruler of a native state in India. With
a little more imagination and insight on the British side, AngloBurmese relations could have been so much happier, and the marked

THE SHWE DAGON PAGODA, RANGOON

598

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

deterioration which set in some years before Mindon's death need

never have occurred.
The atmosphere was not improved by the attitude of the business
community in Rangoon, which was annoyed at the failure of the
various efforts to open trade with China, and in a state of constant
agitation against the king's commercial methods. Notwithstanding
the promise in the treaty of 1867 to abolish monopolies, the royal
control was never relaxed over articles of export such as cotton, wheat,
palm-sugar, pickled tea, cutch and ivory, and the exporter had to pay
substantially above the open market rates for these commodities. A
further source of annoyance was the practice of the king's agents in
buying rice directly in the delta instead of through the big brokers,
and in making purchases of piece-goods in Calcutta when the Rangoon prices were too high.
But the real turning-point, after which it became impossible to
restore proper relations, came as a result of Sir Douglas Forsyth's
mission to Mandalay in 1875. I'^ fixing the frontier between British
and Burmese territory at the end of the Second Anglo-Burmese War
Lord Dalhousie had agreed to respect the claim to independence put
forward by the chiefs of the Red Karens, whose tribes inhabited the
hill tracts known as Western Karenni. They were, however, slaveraiders who made a business of collecting Burmese and Shan slaves
for sale in Siam. There was constant friction between Rangoon and
Mandalay owing to the fact that Burmese local officials instigated
them to commit depredations into British territory.
In 1873 Mindon sent troops to occupy Western Karenni, and since
Lord Dalhousie had promised to protect the tribes from aggression
from the north a British objection was lodged at Mandalay. Mindon
replied by claiming suzerainty over the area. The matter was settled
in 1875 by the Forsyth Mission, which negotiated an agreement
whereby the independence of the Red Karens was recognized by both
sides. On his return from Mandalay Forsyth protested against having
to take off his shoes and sit on the floor at royal audiences. The ' Shoe
Question', as it was called, had long been a grievance with British
envoys, but the requirements of Burmese etiquette in the matter had
been so much reduced as to impose no hardship on Europeans, and,
in Burmese eyes, no indignity. Unfortunately, however, a time had
come in British history when a new pride in empire was being instilled, and with it a national arrogance which in matters of this sort
could make mountains out of molehills.
Later in that same year Burmese envoys went to the grand durbar

CH. 33

THE LAST DAYS OF THE KONBAUNG DYNASTY

''

599

at Calcutta in honour of the Prince of Wales, later Edward VII, on

the occasion of his official tour of India. At the ceremony they were,
as a matter of course, accommodated with chairs and wore their shoes.
Then, in an attempt to force Mindon's hand, the Government of India
issued instructions that in future the British Resident at Mandalay
was not to take off his shoes on going into the royal presence. Before
such an ultimatum Mindon could not give way. Henceforward the
British Resident could no longer be received in audience. The loss
of direct personal contact with the king was disastrous for both
sides.
During Mindon's reign the first steps were taken towards modernizing Burmese administration by the substitution of fixed salaries
for higher officials instead of the traditional practice of assigning them
feudal appanages for their maintenance. To raise the necessary
revenue for financing this new measure Mindon introduced the
Thathameda tax on the household, with an assessment variable from
year to year, in which such factors as a failure of monsoon rains or
damage by fire were taken into consideration. It was a notable
advance on previous practice, but Mindon was himself too ignorant of
other systems of administration to carry out any far-reaching reforms
in this direction; and, unlike Mongkut of Siam, he knew no European
language and did not employ English tutors for his children.
Mindon died in 1878 without having settled the succession to the
throne. There was no hard-and-fast rule of primogeniture; it was a
matter for the exercise of the royal prerogative. But after the murder of
his brother, the heir-apparent, in 1866 the king had been afraid to
appoint another, though frequently urged to do so by the British
Resident. The most popular candidate was the Nyaungyan Prince.
When the king was dying he summoned this prince to the palace,
presumably with the intention of nominating him as his successor.
But the prince, learning that there was a plot afoot to place the
Thibaw Prince on the throne, and fearing a trap, took sanctuary with
his younger brother at the British Residency. The Kinwun Mingyi
sent a formal demand for their surrender, but, most unwisely, it
would seem, the Resident sent them away to Calcutta, where they
became British pensioners.
The dying king then suggested that three of the royal princes
should be nominated as joint rulers, but the Kinwun Mingyi and his
colleagues would not consent to a measure which they felt would
certainly cause a civil war. At this juncture they fell in with the plot
to make Thibaw king. He was a complete nonentity, and the Wungyis

600

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

planned to establish a form of ministerial control such as they were

dimly aware existed in the case of constitutional monarchies. Even
the British Resident allowed himself to indulge in the fond hope that
in this way the beginnings of constitutional reform might be introduced.
The Kinwun Mingyi's trump card was to have been to depose
Thibaw should he prove troublesome. But he had failed completely to
reckon with the Princess Supayalat, whom the conspirators had
arranged for Thibaw to take as his principal wife. As soon as she
became queen she prevailed upon her husband to imprison, and
ultimately, in February 1879, massacre, about eighty members of
the royal family, on the grounds that there was imminent danger
of a rebellion. The Kinwun Mingyi and his colleagues made no
real attempt to prevent this atrocious deed; they seem to have
believed that it would simplify their task of gaining control over the
government. Hence, when the now completely disillusioned Resident,
Shaw, sent in a strong protest the Kinwun Mingyi replied that the
king, as an independent sovereign, had a right to take such measures
as were necessary to prevent disturbances in his own country, and
that there were very good precedents for his action. Nevertheless
Shaw's threat to haul down the British flag and break off all relations
caused something like a panic at the Court, and troops were hastily
mobilized for fear of a British march on Mandalay.
It was not long before the ministerial party discovered that far
from reducing Thibaw to impotence they themselves were reduced to
that position by the strong-willed queen and the ruthless men who
were behind her. For she proceeded to place her minions, notably the
Taingda Mingyi, in key positions in the palace. The Kinwun Mingyi
remained the senior member of the government, for the king dared
not risk a revolt by dismissing him, but the Taingda Mingyi and the
palace clique surrounding the queen wielded all the power. Supayalat's influence over the weak Thibaw was so complete that sheactually prevented him from taking the regulation number of wives
considered necessary for the royal dignity.
In some ways the most tragic aspect of the situation was the
impotence of the British Resident because of the Government of
India's stupid ruling on the subject of footwear. Shaw died of
rheumatic fever in June 1879 and was succeeded by Colonel Horace
Browne, who spoke Burmese well and had had long experience of the
country. The comment he made in his journal shortly after his
arrival at the capital gives a good idea of what had been lost. He wrote:

CH. 3 3

THE LAST DAYS OF THE KONBAUNG DYNASTY

6oi

'As the old King was his own Minister of Foreign Affairs, and no
negotiations were ever concluded except at personal interviews with
him, this sudden change [i.e. the footwear ruling] put an absolute stop
to all important business. . . . The frequent visits of former Residents
to the palace, and their unconstrained intercourse with the King and
his entourage, formed the best, and, indeed, the only means of
ascertaining exactly what was going on outside our rampart of mat
walls.'
On receiving news of the massacre Lord Lytton, the viceroy,
reinforced the Burma garrison and urged the home government to
adopt a strong line. But Britain was already fighting, somewhat
ingloriously, two warsone against Afghanistan, and the other
against the Zulu warlord Cetewayo. And trouble with the Boers was
brewing in South Africa. War with Burma, therefore, was not to be
risked. It would be easy to take Mandalay, said the military experts,
but thousands more men than were at present available in Burma
would be required for the subsequent 'pacification'. In the light of
this advice the British Cabinet enjoined upon the Government of
India a policy of extreme 'forbearance'. But so much concern was
felt for the safety of the British Residency that an armed steamboat
was kept at the frontier, ready to rush aid in case of trouble. There
was a general exodus of Britishers from Mandalay. At the end of
August 1879 Colonel Browne himself was allowed to hand over charge
to his assistant, Mr. St. Barbe, and return to British Burma. In the
following month Sir Louis Cavagnari, the British Resident at Kabul,
was murdered, and the Government of India, fearing that Thibaw
might be tempted to imitate the Afghans, hurriedly withdrew St.
Barbe and his whole staff.
The Court of Ava, suddenly sobered by the seriousness of this step,
deputed an ambassador with a letter and presents to the viceroy. The
British frontier authorities, however, held him up in order that the
nature of his mission might be clarified. He was told that only if he
were empowered to negotiate a new treaty would the viceroy consent
to receive him. For six months he remained at Thayetmyo as the
guest of the British while his powers were being debated between
Calcutta and Mandalay. At last, when it became obvious that the
Court of Ava had no acceptable proposals to offer for a settlement of
the outstanding difficulties, he returned to Mandalay.
A further opportunity to establish better relations occurred in 1882,
when the Kabaw valley question caused Thiba'w to send an envoy
to Calcutta. After the surrender of the valley to Burma in 1834 no

CH. 3 3

THE LAST DAYS OF THE KONBAUNG DYNASTY

6oi

'As the old King was his own Minister of Foreign Affairs, and no
negotiations were ever concluded except at personal interviews with
him, this sudden change [i.e. the footwear ruling] put an absolute stop
to all important business. . . . The frequent visits of former Residents
to the palace, and their unconstrained intercourse with the King and
his entourage, formed the best, and, indeed, the only means of
ascertaining exactly what was going on outside our rampart of mat
walls.'
On receiving news of the massacre Lord Lytton, the viceroy,
reinforced the Burma garrison and urged the home government to
adopt a strong line. But Britain was already fighting, somewhat
ingloriously, two warsone against Afghanistan, and the other
against the Zulu warlord Cetewayo. And trouble with the Boers was
brewing in South Africa. War with Burma, therefore, was not to be
risked. It would be easy to take Mandalay, said the military experts,
but thousands more men than were at present available in Burma
would be required for the subsequent 'pacification'. In the light of
this advice the British Cabinet enjoined upon the Government of
India a policy of extreme 'forbearance'. But so much concern was
felt for the safety of the British Residency that an armed steamboat
was kept at the frontier, ready to rush aid in case of trouble. There
was a general exodus of Britishers from Mandalay. At the end of
August 1879 Colonel Browne himself was allowed to hand over charge
to his assistant, Mr. St. Barbe, and return to British Burma. In the
following month Sir Louis Cavagnari, the British Resident at Kabul,
was murdered, and the Government of India, fearing that Thibaw
might be tempted to imitate the Afghans, hurriedly withdrew St.
Barbe and his whole staff.
The Court of Ava, suddenly sobered by the seriousness of this step,
deputed an ambassador with a letter and presents to the viceroy. The
British frontier authorities, however, held him up in order that the
nature of his mission might be clarified. He was told that only if he
were empowered to negotiate a new treaty would the viceroy consent
to receive him. For six months he remained at Thayetmyo as the
guest of the British while his powers were being debated between
Calcutta and Mandalay. At last, when it became obvious that the
Court of Ava had no acceptable proposals to offer for a settlement of
the outstanding difficulties, he returned to Mandalay.
A further opportunity to establish better relations occurred in 1882,
when the Kabaw valley question caused Thiba'w to send an envoy
to Calcutta. After the surrender of the valley to Burma in 1834 no

602

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill .

precise demarcation of the boundary line with Manipur had been

naade. After Thibaw's accession a series of frontier disturbances
caused by the Burmese led the Government of India in 1881 to suggest
a joint boundary commission. When this was rejected a British
commission proceeded to mark out the boundary. The Burmese were
found to be in occupation of a village claimed by Manipur. A Burmese
envoy was thereupon sent to Calcutta to discuss the matter. He was
given a most friendly reception by Lord Ripon; but just when hopes
of a satisfactory settlement were beginning to rise he was suddenly
recalled. Thibaw's attitude in fact became so provocative that reinforcements were sent to the Raja of Manipur, and he was authorized
to resist any Burmese action by force of arms. There were no further
disturbances. But the hoped-for improvement in Anglo-Burmese
relations disappeared.
Meanwhile Upper Burma was in a state little short of chaos.
Dacoity was rife, the Kachins rebelled, Chinese guerrillas burnt
Bhamo, and most of the feudatory Shan sawbwas threw off their
allegiance to Ava. There were movements to dethrone Thibaw.
The Myingun Prince, who was a strong candidate for the throne, was
at Pondicherry. He was invited to lead a rebellion, but the French
interned him. In 1884, when a movement in his favour was suspected,
the slaughters at Mandalay increased to such a pitch that the British
and Chinese mercantile communities at Rangoon demanded a change
of government in Upper Burma or annexation, and Dr. Marks, the
most prominent Anglican divine there, thundered from his pulpit
against Thibaw's misdeeds. But Sir Charles Bernard, the High
Commissioner, was opposed to annexation. He thought that the
Nyaungyan Prince would prove an acceptable ruler and recommended
intervention on his behalf. The Government of India^ however,
refused to move; it argued that internal misgovernment did not justify
intervention. In 1885 the prince died, and with him the hope of
establishing a satisfactory king at Mandalay.
Thibaw's sudden withdrawal from the Manipur negotiations was
the result of a disastrous decision to play off France against Britain. He
knew that Britain had become very uneasy about French activities in
Annam and Tongking, and foolishly believed he could force the
British to climb down by resuming the negotiations with France that
had been broken off during his father's reign. In May 1883 he sent
a mission to Europe, ostensibly to collect information about industry
and science. When it arrived in Paris the British government learnt
that the old question of the import of arms had again been raised.

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THE GOLDEN PALACE, MANDALAY

The British ambassador was accordingly instructed to ask Jules

Ferry for a guarantee that in the event of a Franco-Burmese treaty
being concluded no facilities would be granted for the purchase of
arms. He gave full assurances.
The Burmese mission, however, remained in Paris, and as the
months passed by British suspicions mounted. Again and again the
British ambassador sought from Ferry a clarification of the situation.
After a long period of fencing Ferry at last admitted, in July 1884,
that the Burmese wanted nothing less than a full political alliance,
together with facilities for the purchase of arms. He promised,
however, that no such alliance would be concluded.
In the following January, since the Burmese mission was still in
Paris, the British ambassador again saw Ferry. He said that the
Burmese were causing such difficulties for the Government of India
that should Britain be compelled to use force to bring the Court of
Ava to a due regard for its obligations it would be most unfortunate if a
treaty between Burma and France were the cause for such action.
Ferry replied that a purely commercial treaty had just been agreed to,
but it contained no political or military commitments. A French

6o4

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

FT. I l l

consul, he said, was to be stationed at Mandalay, but his exact powers

had not yet been settled. He assured the ambassador that the treaty
was a very harmless affair.
The announcement in no way allayed British suspicions. In May
1885 Frederic Haas arrived in Mandalay to assume his duties as
consul. It soon became clear that very extensive concessions, damaging
to British interests, had been agreed to, and that even more were in
the air. In July the Secretary of State for India cabled to the viceroy that under the terms of the treaty the French were to establish
a bank at Mandalay and to finance the construction of a railway from
Mandalay to Toungoo in British Burma. Meanwhile Haas was urging
Thibaw to improve his relations with the British and receive again a
British Resident. Then, under the cloak of better relations, he
should negotiate treaties with France, Germany and Italy, proclaiming
his kingdom to be neutral territory. This advice, however, was
rejected.
Meanwhile rumour had become very active. The French, it was
said, were negotiating to take over the management of the royal
monopolies, control the postal system, run river steamers in competition with the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company, obtain a lease of the
ruby mines, and open up overland trade with Tongking. But the
climax was reached at the beginning of August, when the text of a
secret letter, handed by Ferry to the Burmese envoy when the treaty
had been signed in Paris in the previous January, leaked out. It
contained a guarded promise that as soon as peace and order should
be restored in Tongking arms and military stores of all kinds would
be delivered to Burma through that country.
When this dramatic disclosure was made Ferry was no longer in
power; a revulsion of feeling against his rash policy had forced his
resignation in the previous March. France was up against great
difficulties in Tongking and had wars with China and in Madagascar
on her hands. Hence when Lord Salisbury confronted the French
ambassador in London with a copy of Ferry's secret letter and told
him plainly that Britain would not agree to the proposed French
concessions in Burma the French government repudiated all Haas's
acts and in October removed him from his post.
When that happened Thibaw, on the strength of his agreement with
France, was fully committed to a course of action against a British firm
which was bound to bring his relations with the British government
to a crisis. The Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation, with its chief
office and timber mills in Rangoon, had for many years worked the

CH. 33

THE LAST DAYS OF THE KONBAUNG DYNASTY

605

Ningyan teak forests north of Toungoo and somewhat beyond the

British-Burma frontier, under a contract with the Mandalay government. Early in his reign, under severe financial stress, Thibaw had
adopted the expedient of squeezing the corporation for higher payments. New contracts, involving substantially higher payments, were
made in 1880, 1882 and 1883, and inevitably caused a certain amount
of confusion. This made it easy for the Court of Ava to trump up a case
against the corporation. It was accused of extracting more than twice
the number of logs paid for, of bribing the local officials, and of
failing to pay its Burmese foresters their due amount. The Toungoo
Forest Office was willing for its records to be examined and to produce
the acquittances signed by its employees.
The case came before the Hlutdaw, which, on the information that
a French syndicate was being formed to take over the forests if the
corporation were evicted, proceeded to give an ex parte judgement
that it had defrauded the king of the equivalent in English money of
73,333 and the foresters of 33,333. The corporation was accordingly fined double the amount of the first sum and ordered to pay the
second to the foresters. In default the corporation's timber in the
Ningyan forests was to be seized. The case was a false one; its object
was not to secure justice, and no real attempt was made to sift the
evidence.
The Hlutdaw's decision was published in August 1885. The British
government at once asked the Court of Ava to submit the matter to
arbitration. No reply was received from Mandalay until the middle of
October, when, still hoping for French support, the Burmese government summarily rejected the proposal. For some years the Military
Department at Calcutta had had a plan ready for the invasion of Upper
Burma should the need arise. The governor-general. Lord Dufferin,
therefore was in a position to deliver an ultimatum to the Court of Ava.
It was received on 30 October and was due to expire on 10 November.
The'Court of Ava was caught completely unprepared. The king sent
a blustering reply, refusing to reopen the case against the corporation,
but stating that if the British government wished to reappoint an
agent he might 'come and go as in former times'. To the demand in
the ultimatum that he must place the external relations of his government under the control of the Government of India, as in the case of
Afghanistan, he made the uncompromising reply that 'friendly relations with France, Italy and other states have been, are being, and
will be maintained'.
This was taken as a rejection of the British terms, and the army was

VERANDAH, MANDALAY PALACE

ordered to inarch on Mandalay. Operations began on 14 NoveiAber,

and a fortnight later, after an almost bloodless campaign, Mandalay
was occupied and Thibaw surrendered. Burma neither threatened
nor was prepared for war, and it has been argued that French difficulties in Tongking presented Britain with a heaven-sent opportunity
to clinch matters with Thibaw. But in view of the French rivalry with
Britain for supremacy in the Indo-Chinese peninsula, which was soon
to develop to a further stage, involving the valleys of the upper Mekong and the Menam, the British action, in Furnivall's judgement,
' can best be justified as removing at an opportune moment a potential
cause of a European war'. T h e refusal to reopen the Bombay Burmah
Corporation case was, in all the circumstances, a sufficient casus belli,
but the challenging assertion that friendly relations with France, Italy
and other states 'have been, are being, and will be maintained', could
' b e met by no other reply than a showdown.
With the king gone the fate of his kingdom remained to be settled.
A provisional government headed by a Council of State composed of
thirteen ministers was first set up under General Preiidergast, the
commander-in-chief of the army of occupation. The Government of
India would have preferred to place the country under a protectorate,
with an approved jmember of the royal family on the throne. But there

CH. 33

THE LAST DAYS OF THE KONBAUNG DYNASTY

607

was no suitable candidate. Hence on i January 1886 a proclamation

was issued annexing the territories formerly governed by King
Thibaw to the British dominions. After a further consultation, in
February 1886 it was decided that the annexed territory should be
directly administered. Burma therefore was united as a province of
British India, with Sir Charles Bernard as its Chief Commissioner.

CHAPTER 3 4

VIETNAM AND T H E BEGINNINGS OF FRENCH

EXPANSION IN INDO-CHINA, 1820-70
PRINCE CANH, the eldest son of the Emperor Gia-Long, who had

accompanied Pigneau de Behaine to the Court of Versailles, died in

1801. His brother, Minh-Mang, who succeeded to the throne in 1820,
hated the 'barbarians from the West'. He refused to conclude a
commercial treaty with France, or even to receive the letter on the
subject which Louis XVIII sent him in 1825. Three French attempts
to renew commercial relations with his country were made during his
reign: by Bougainville in 1825, by de Kergariou in 1827, and by
Admiral Laplace in 1831. All were unceremoniously rejected. In
1826 he refused to receive a French consul and broke official relations
with France.
When he died Gia-Long had enjoined upon his successor that there
was to be no persecution of the three religions established in his
empireConfucianism, Buddhism, and Christianity. Minh-Mang,
however, was a strict Confucian and an admirer of Chinese culture.
He revived the eighteenth-century Nguyen policy of persecuting
Christianity. There was much opposition among the mandarins to
this reversal of his father's policy. Many of them had been friends of
the Great Master, as they called.Pigneau, and Le Van-Duyet, the Governor of Cochin China, once Grand Eunuch in Gia-Long's palace, was
courageous enough to write a letter of protest to the emperor. 'We
still have between our teeth', he wrote, 'the rice which the missionaries gave us when we were starving.' His firm stand was successful;
the emperor held his hand so far as the six southern provinces were
concerned. But Le Van-Duyet died in 1833, and in the following year
an edict was issued for a general persecution of Christians. Le VanDuyet's tomb was even desecrated at Minh-Mang's orders. This
outrage provoked a revolt at Gia-dinh. It was cruelly repressed and
several missionaries were actually put to death.
Towards the end of his life Minh-Mang seems to have changed his
mind regarding the European question and to have sought ways and
means of establishing contacts with European states. In November
608

CH. 3 4

VIETNAM AND THE BEGINNINGS OF FRENCH EXPANSION

609

1839 war had broken out between Britain and China, and it may be
that the British occupation of Chusan and their attack on the Taku
forts at the mouth of the Pei river made him reahze that his rigid
isolationist attitude might have dangerous consequences. But he died
in January 1841, and his successor, Thieu-Tri (1841-7), revived the
poHcy of persecution with even greater rigour. He was a man of less
intelligence than his father and failed to realize that the British acquisition of Hong Kong in the very month of his accession, and the opening
up of five Chinese ports to European trade, had introduced a new era
in the Far East. The French were no longer willing to submit to the
treatment meted out to their missionaries and traders by Minh-Mang.
Thu&ia February 1843, when five missionaries were awaiting death
in a Hue prison, a corvette, the Heroine, under Commandant Leveque,
suddenly appeared before Tourane, in the name of Admiral Cecile,
the commander of the French naval division in the China Sea,
demanded, and obtained, their release. And in the same year the
Alcmene delivered yet another condemned missionary. These actions
were symptomatic of a new attitude on the part of the European
nations and the United States of America that was causing a growing
demand for extra-territorial rights. In. 1844, for instance, the U.S.A.
obtained such rights for its residents in China under the Treaty of
Wanghsia, and in the same year by the Treaty of Whampoa France
secured from China toleration for Catholics.
In 1845 Admiral Cecile again intervened at Tourane, this time to
force the release of Mgr. Lef evre, the Bishop Apostolic of the western
part of Cochin China. Again the emperor gave way, under threat
of the bombardment of the city. The bishop was taken to Singapore,
where he managed to persuade the master of a Cochin-Chinese ship
to smuggle him back into the country. The Straits Settlements
Records contain an interesting document^ giving an account of the
sequel to this rash adventure 'pour I'honneur de son pays', as one
French account describes it.^
Governor Butterworth, in a letter of 13 March 1847, reported to the
Government of India that trading vessels coming from Cochin China
had brought notice of new stringent regulations against foreigners
there, and that he told the mandarin in charge of them that 'the
Enghsh sovereign would be displeased", if they were put in force
against British subjects. ' T h e mandarin', he continued, 'at once gave
me to understand that the regulations originated in the visit to Turon
' Governor's Letters to Bengal, R. 14, 13 March 1847.
^ Guy Chastel, Un Steele d'Epopee Francaise en Indochine, p. 63.

6lO

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

Bay of the American ship Constitution, when that vessel fired upon the
town and destroyed several of the inhabitants, because the demand of
her commander to have a French missionary bishop, then in prison,
given up to him, was not compHed with. And that the restrictions in
question must be viewed as a bit of pohcy on the part of the king, who
was anxious to show his subjects that the insuh offered to him had
not been passed over with impunity. In proof of this he gave me a
letter from the Chief Mandarin in charge of the Marine Department
. . . intimating that he had sent, and wished to hand over to me, the
very bishop above referred to, who had again made his way to Cochin
China, after being released from prison by a French ship sent for the
purpose.'
The governor then went on to say that Bishop Lef evre had called to
see him, ' as he had done about one year since, on his release from the
Cochin Chinese prison as previously mentioned', and that he had
forbidden him 'from any further movement towards Cochin China,
more especially as the unfortunate Naquodah,^ who took, the bishop
back to that country on the last occasion, had his head chopped off, '
and every other Cochin Chinese on board was sent into confinement
with hard labour'. 'But', he commented, 'these Jesuits are little
scrupulous about the means so long as they effect the end in view, and
I must add that they are not sparing of themselves.' He was, however,
of opinion that on this occasion the bishop would not find a boat to
convey him back to Cochin China.
In that year 1847 France attempted to force Thieu-Tri to climb
down by staging another naval demonstration at Tourane. Commandant Lapierre, with the Gloire and the Victorieuse, came with a demand
in the name of the French government for guarantees for the safety of
French nationals. Thieu-Tri kept him waiting a month for an answer.
During that time he assembled a large body of troops at Tourane on
the pretext of paying honour to the envoys of France. He invited the
officers of the two ships to an entertainment, where they were to be
assassinated. Their vessels were then to be completely destroyed by
burning. When the invitation was refused the Vietnamese vessels in
the port attacked the two ships and tried to set them on fire. In the
fight which ensued the French ships destroyed a large number of junks
and other vessels and then sailed away.
It was under Thieu-Tri's son and successor, Tu-Duc (1848-83),
that matters came finally to a head. A pious and learned Confucian,
he was even more devoted than his predecessors to the ideal of sealing
' Ship's master.

CH. 3 4

VIETNAM AND THE BEGINNINGS OF FRENCH EXPANSION

6ll

up his country against all European influence. At first, however, he

hesitated before carrying out the policy of violence urged upon him
by his mother and the literati but frowned on by two of his most
influential servants, the Governors of Tongking and Cochin China.
Finally he decided to take the plunge and issued edicts for the dispersal of all Christian communities, the destruction of their villages,
and the redistribution of their lands. Men were to be separated from
women, and each person was to be branded on the left cheek with the
characters ' T a Dao' (infidel) and on the right with the name of the
district to which he or she was banished. Many thousands died of the
treatment they received.
At the same time he turned on the European missionaries. In
1851-2 two French priests were put to death. M. de Montigny, the
French consul to the governments of Siam and Cambodia, was thereupon ordered to proceed to Hue and lodge a very strong protest.
When this was rejected another French warship, the Catinat, bombarded the forts at Tourane.
This stiflFer attitude towards Europeans coincided with a similar
move in China, where Britain, France and the United States were
making a concerted efi'ort to obtain a revision of treaties. It was the
period when Commissioner Yeh Ming-shen of Canton was flouting
every attempt at negotiation and encouraging acts of violence against
Europeans. There can be no doubt that Tu-Duc took his cue from
China and was too simple-minded to realize that the consequences
for his country would be far more serious than those of the blustering
Yeh's exhortations to exterminate the English devils for China. In
1856 a French Catholic missionary was tortured and killed for alleged
complicity in a rebellious society in Kwangsi province. Minh-Mang's
victims had been executed on a similar charge, one may note in passing.
In 1857 Tu-Duc had the Spanish Bishop of Tongking, Mgr. Diaz,
put to death.
It was a piece of crass stupidity. France under the Third Empire
was looking for a pretext for seizing territory in Annam. She already
had a strong naval squadron in Chinese waters which, as a result of
the murder of her missionary in 1856, was co-operating with the
British against Commissioner Yeh of Canton. Spain had a base nearby
in the PhiHppines and was anxious to join with France in dealing
with Annam.
In 1857 for the second time de Montigny was sent to Hue. He
presented three demands to Tu-Duc: (i) a guarantee of religious
liberty for Christians, (2) permission to establish a French commercial

6l2

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

agency at Hue, and (3) sanction for the appointment of a French

consul there. His terms were sullenly rejected. In any case his mission
was sent merely to justify action that Franbe had already decided on.
As soon as Canton had been seized by the Anglo-French task force
early in 1858 and the Treaty of Tientsin wrung out of China in June
of that year, a Franco-Spanish force under Admiral Rigault de
Genouilly made its way to Tourane. It arrived there on 31 August
1858. The forts were soon put out of action and a small occupation
force was landed.
Then difficulties began to pile up. The Annamites in evacuating
Tourane had stripped it of everything. Supplies were unobtainable.
Sickness began to take serious toll of the garrison. It was too weak to
attack Hue. After considering the feasibility of a demonstration in
Tongking the admiral decided to seize Saigon, the granary of Annam.
Tourane accordingly was evacuated, and in February 1859 Saigon was
captured.
Further large-scale operations were then held up by the resumption
of hostilities in China, which culminated in the occnpation of Peking by
an Anglo-French army in October i860. Meanwhile in November 1859
Rigault de Genouilly was replaced by Admiral Page who had received
instructions to negotiate with Tu-Duc. The original demands were
now increased. There were to be French consuls in three parts of the
Vietnamese empire and a charge d'affaires at Hue. Tu-Duc tried
delaying tactics, whereupon Page proceeded to Tourane and des-.
troyed some more forts. He had, however, to go on to assist the
French forces in China, leaving a Franco-Spanish garrison of less
than 1,000 men at Saigon. For nearly a year (March i860-February
1861) the small garrison had to hold out unaided against a besieging
force of 12,000 Vietnamese.
The China war ended in January 1861, and at once Admiral
Charner, with a strong naval squadron and 3,000 troops, left for
Saigon. On 25 February, at the battle of Chi-hoa, h^ defeated the
besiegers and relieved the city. This was followed in, April by the
capture of Mi-tho. Then followed the occupation of Gia-dinh,
Thu-dau-mot and part of the provinces of Bien-hoa and Go-cqng.
In November 1861 Admiral Bonard took over from jCharner and in
a few months had made himself master of the whole of Lower Cochin
China, together with Pulo Condore and all the small islands at the
entrances to the Mekong delta.
In May 1862 Tu-Duc sent two envoys to ask for terms. The
emperor, they explained, was involved in difficulties in Tongking

CH. 3 4

VIETNAM AND THE BEGINNINGS OF FRENCH EXPANSION

613

and wished to end the struggle in the south. In the following month
a draft treaty was signed at Saigon by which Tu-Duc ceded to France
three eastern provinces of Cochin China and agreed to pay a heavy
indemnity in instalments over ten years. He promised the free
exercise of the Catholic religion in his dominions and to open the
ports of Tourane, Balat and Kuang-An to French trade.
There was considerable delay in obtaining the ratification of the
treaty by the Emperor Napoleon III, since the ship carrying the
delegates to France was held up by a severe storm. In the meantime
Bonard committed the error of replacing the French Residents,
appointed by his predecessor to supervise the native administration
in each province, by Vietnamese mandarins. The result was a crop
of rebellions everywhere in December 1862. Hence, when the treaty
signed by Napoleon III arrived from Paris Tu-Duc at first refused
to add his own ratification, and Bonard, who had taken the documents
to Hue for its final confirmation, only secured it by threatening to
send French aid to the rebels in Tongking.
When the next admiral-govefnor, Lagrandiere, took over the new
colony in 1863 the situation was perilous in the extreme. One rebel
leader terrorized the province of Bien-hoa; another held the Cambodian
frontier. Moreover, Tu-Duc, before ratifying the treaty, had already
sent the mandarin who negotiated it, Phan Thanh-Gian, to Paris
to plead for the restoration of the ceded territory in return for an
increased indemnity. In France herself there was growing opposition
to the policy of colonial expansion, while the supporters of the Mexican
adventure wanted Indo-China to be abandoned in favour of their pet
scheme. Even Napoleon III himself cherished grave doubts of the
wisdom of the Far Eastern project. He was won over to it by the
unyielding attitude of the Ministre de la Marine, Comte de Chasseloup-Laubat, who threatened to resign if Cochin China were relinquished, and by the clumsy attempts of Tu-Duc to evade the
commitments he had undertaken.
While Rear-Admiral Lagrandiere was engaged on the task of
restoring order in his three provinces and settling their administration a further important advance in French influence in IndoChina occurred. King Norodom of Cambodia, who had come to the
throne in i860, had run into serious difficulties in 1861, when his
youngest brother. Si Votha, revolted and forced him to take refuge
at Battambang. For many years, as we have seen, Cambodia had
maintained an uneasy existence between her two more powerful
neighbours, Siam and Vietnam. Her kings had attempted to maintain

6l4

EUROPnAN TI-RRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

some semblance of independence by paying homage and tribute .

to both sides. But there were constant dynastic squabbles which
invited intervention.
I
On this occasion the refugee king made his way to Bangkok, seeking
for armed support with which to regain his throne. His application
was supported by Mgr. Miche, Vicar Apostolic of Cambodia, who
wrote to the French consul at Bangkok' to approach the Siamese
government in the matter. The Siamese government sent Norodom
back to Kampot in a steamer, and in March 1862 he re-entered his
capital. Mgr. Miche's demarche was frowned on by the French
authorities. Their great aim now was for France to assume the role
of 'protector' of Cambodia. Luckily Siam did not supply armed
forces. The situation in Cambodia permitted Norodom to return
peaceably. The rebels were badly led, and the king's second brother
soon had the situation well in hand. A French gunboat also, which
Admiral Charner despatched to Phnom Penh to protect French
missionaries there, had helped in bringing about the discomfiture
of the rebels, for they took its appearance to indicate French support
for the royal cause.
Interest in the Cambodian^ situation had been shown by Charner
as early as March 1S61, when he sent one of his officers to tell Norodom that France had decided permanently to occupy Cochin China
and was anxious to help Cambodia to maintain her freedom. The
king in reply had told the envoy that his kingdom owed its continued
existence to the Siamese, who had saved it from Vietnamese dominance. Notwithstanding the king's assurances that in his relations with
Siam he was a free man, it appeared that the latter kept a tight hold
over him by maintaining a Resident at his capital.
In September 1862 Bonard hiniself paid Norodom a visit and
suggested that through conquering Cochin China France considered
that she now had a right to the tribute he had previously paid to Hue.
Frahce, it seemed, was much more concerned with pressing her claims
than with safeguarding the independence of Cambodia. In April
1863 Bonard took a decisive step towards the establishment of French
influence there by sending a naval lieutenant, Doudart de Lagree, as
Resident. He instructed him to make a geographical survey of-the^country and to establish close contacts with the king. The new
Resident reported to Saigon that the King of Siam was more powerful
in Oudong than the King of Cambodia himself.
This news caused Bonard's successor, Lagrandiere, to decide that
any further delay would give Siam tirne still further to strengthen

en.

34

VIF.TNAM AND THE BEGINNINGS OF FRENCH EXPANSION

615

her hold on Cambodia. Accordingly in July 1863 he paid a personal

visit to Norodom at Oudong andoffered him French protection in
order to safeguard his independence against Siam. The king hesitated.
He welcomed the offer of French help, for his position was still
perilous in the extreme. He distrusted his brother Ang Sor, who had
defeated the rebels during his absence. He also feared lest the agitator
Po Kombo, who was giving the French trouble on his frontier, might
attempt to seize the crown from him. But how would he stand if he
threw over both ^Siam and Vietnam for France, and the French were
then to evacuate Cochin China? Lagrandiere, however, overcame
his scruples on this point and he was persuaded to sign a treaty
placing his kingdom under French protection.
The treaty was at once despatched to Paris for Napoleon H i ' s
signature. Then the inevitable difficulties arose.
The French
Minister of Foreign Affairs hesitated to advise ratification; Siam, supported by Britain, had raised the objection that, since Cambodia was her
vassal state, communications between Norodom and the French could
only be made through her as the intermediary. And while the matter
was undecided the Siamese Resident at Oudong prevailed upon the
weak king to sign a document not merely recognizing his vassalage
to Siam but asserting that his true title should be 'Viceroy of Cambodia'. In return the King of Siam announced that he proposed to
go himself to superintend Norodom's coronation and receive his
homage, As much of the regalia, including the sacred sword, which
was used in the ceremony, had been left in Siamese safe-keeping by
Norodom when he returned home after his flight to Bangkok, the
position was indeed delicate. But Lagrandiere declared that the
action proposed by the King of Siam constituted a new claim to
sovereignty which had no justification. King Mongkut therefore
compromised by insisting that Norodom should go personally to
Bangkok to receive his crown.
Norodom decided on 3 March 1864 as the date of his departure for
Bangkok. Doudart de Lagree, on hearing of this decision, threatened to
take possession of the capital by force and sent off. in haste to Saigon
for reinforcements. And when, in spite of this, Norodom started on his
way French marines occupied the royal palace at Oudong and hoisted
the tricolour. The distracted King changed his mind and returned.
He found the treaty establishing a French protectorate over his
kingdom awaiting him on his return, duly signed by the Emperor
Napoleon. There was nothing to be done but accept the inevitable,
and on 17 April 1864 the ratifications were completed.

6l6

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

King Mongkut, pressed by the Frencli government to restore the

insignia to Cambodia, agreed to do so on condition that Norodom
should be crowned by the representatives df Siam and France. Admiral
Lagrandiere accepted the condition, and on 3 June 1864 the ceremony
took place. Doudart de Lagree, however, refused to allow the Siamese
delegate to place the crown on the king's head, and on the following
day the Siamese departed home, but not before he had made a formal
statement of his king's claims to suzerainty over Cambodia and to the
possession of her two westerly provinces of Battambang and Angkor.
A few months later Norodom paid a state visit to Saigon, where he
was received by Admiral Lagrandiere. Then in April 1865 he went
to Kampot to fulfil a promise he had made to pay homage to
Mongkut. Such is Maspero's explanation of the incident.^ Leclere,
however, says that he went there in response to an invitation from
Mongkut to a conference.* Doudart de Lagree, having failed to
persuade him to reject the invitation, accompanied him. The King
of Siam did not turn up.
Meanwhile negotiations were in progress between Paris and Bangkok
on the vexed question of the status of Cambodia. They ended in 1867
in a treaty whereby, in return for the surrender by Siam of all rights
to suzerainty over the kingdom, France, on behalf of Cambodia,
abandoned all claims to the provinces of Battambang and Angkor,
usually known in modern times as Siemreap, which, according to the
French interpretation of Cambodian history, Siam had held ' irregularly' since 1795. Norodom, who had not been consulted, protested
in vain. The French at the time considered it a good bargain.
In 1866 the priest-pretender, who had for long disturbed the
border between Cambodia and Cochin China, had gained enough
support to make a bid for the throne. The name he took, Pu Kombo,
was that of a prince of the Cambodian royal family who had died a
few hours after birth. His imposture attracted wide support. He
collected a large harem, put to death the Governors of Kratie and
Sariibor when they refused allegiance, and fortified himself at the
village of Choeuteal-phlos in the province of Kanhchor.
In June
1866 he defeated a royal army at Ba-phnom, but was himself-subsequently defeated. Then for many months he played hide-and-seek."
with both the Cambodian and French forces sent against him. Every
time they defeated him he disappeared, only to reappear a^few weeks
later and carry on a fresh struggle, until at last in December 1867 he
' L'Indochine, vol. i, p. 148.
/
Histoire du Cambodge^p. 456.,

CH. 3 4

VIETNAM AND THE BEGINNINGS OF FRENCH EXPANSION

617

was caught and killed by the inhabitants of Kompong-thom, where

he had taken refuge.
While this quite serious resistance movement was in progress in
Cambodia the French had their hands full with the same kind of unrest
in Cochin China. Armed bands came over from the regions of Gocong and the Plaine des Jones into French territory and terrorized
the population. The Court of Hue attempted to allay French suspicions of its complicity by appointing Phan Thanh-Gian, the ambassador to Napoleon III in 1862, as viceroy of the three provinces of
western Cochin China. But there was no improvement in the situation,
and in June 1866 Admiral Lagrandiere decided to take possession of
them. Within a week, 17-24 June, his troops occupied in succession
Vinh-long, Chau-doc and Ha-tien. ' T h e population received us
without fear and without repugnance', records Georges Maspero.^
The viceroy committed suicide.
The French were now well set for building up a new empire in
Indo-China. T h e next big move, undertaken while they were settling
the administration of the territories under their control, was to explore
the course of the river Mekong. Hardly anything was known of it
save that it flowed down from Tibet. Possession of its delta was a
challenge to the French to rival the British, who occupied the delta
of the Irrawaddy, in a race for the trade of western China. Phayre's
mission to the Court of Mindon Min in 1855 had had as one of its
aims that of persuading the king to permit trans-Burma trade with
China. The development of a short cut to China by an overland route
to Yunnan had interested the Dutch in the seventeenth century. But
van WuysthoflF's report on the Mekong, and Burma's refusal of trading
facilities at Bhamo, had killed the project. The British had become
interestecf in the idea at the time of the First Burmese War, and
surveys had been made from Assam in the north and Moulmein in
the south, though without success.^
Mindon was at first positively opposed to the scheme. But the
immense pressure exerted by the textile industry in Britain from about
i860' led to further efforts by Phayre and his successor, Major-General
Albert Fytche, which resulted in the establishment of a British Agent
at Bhamo in 1868 and further attempts to find a suitable trade route
into China. The agitation that finally moved the French authorities
1 Op. cit., i, p. 149.
' J. L. Christian, Modern Burma, pp. 212-25.
' See on this point Clement Williams, Through Burma to Western China, being notes
of a Journey in 1863 to establish the practicability of a trade route between the Irawaddi
and the YaTig-tse-kian, London, 1868.

6l8

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

in Saigon to send a surveying expeditioii, up the Mekong in 1866 was

largely the work of a young naval officer, Francis Garnier, who had
served on Admiral Charner's staff in thfe China war and afterwards
at the relief of Saigon, and in 1863 became district officer in charge of
Cholen, a suburb of Saigon. He was inspired by two equally powerful
emotions; a passionate desire to explore the unknown and a burning
hatred of Britain as a colonizing powerthe colossus with rotten feet,
as he described her. 'Shake her and she will fall.'* As he was considered too young to be entrusted with command of the expedition,
it was vested in Doudart de Lagree.
The expedition, composed of ten Frenchmen and a number of native
interpreters, left Saigon on 5 June. On leaving Cambodian territory
it was held up by the need for Siamese passes and money, and spent
the time studying the ruins of Angkor, with which Doudart de Lagree
had become familiar during his service at Oudong. Their existence
had been discovered by a Catholic missionary in 1570, but although
the word ' O n c o ' appears in a number of seventeenth-century maps
it was the French naturalist and photographer Henri Mouhot who
for the first time drew the attention of the West to their importance
in an account of his travels published in the Tour du Monde in 1863.^
His account of them, however, was that of an amateur enthusiast.
It was Doudart de Lagree's mission which gave the earliest exact
data, and this was published in Francis Garnier's book in 1873.
After leaving Angkor the expedition proceeded slowly upstream to
the ruins of the city of Vientiane, which were found to be completely
overgrown with jungle. Then on to Luang Prabang and the nearby
village of Ban Naphao, where Mouhot had died five years earlier and
was buried. King Tiantha Koumane treated the members of the
mission well, but warned them against pushing on into Y u n n ^
because of the disorders there caused by the Panthay rebellion.* He
had paid no tribute to China since the revolt had begun in 1855 on the
grounds that the roads were impassable, and on that account alone was
anxious that the French travellers should not demonstrate the thinness
of his pretext.
But at this stage no warnings could relieve Garnier of the obsjession
that he describes as 'la monomanie du Mekong', and he.persuaded.
Doudart de Lagree to push on into Chinese territory. There his
^ Sir Hugh Clifford, Further India, p. 135. Clifford gives a picturesque account of
his subsequent expedition. His own account of it is entitled Voyage d'Exploration en
Jttdo-Chine, effectuependant les annees 1866, i86y et 1868, etc., 2 vols., Paris, 1873.
' A year later he published, in English, Travels in the Central Parts of Irido-China
(Siam), Cambodia and Laos durittg i8j8-o, 2 vols.,_London, 1864.

CH. 3 4

VIETNAM AND THE BEGINNINGS OF FRENCH EXPANSION

619

leader died, worn out by the fatigues and deprivations of the journey.
And when the expedition, now directed by Garnier himself, arrived at
Talifu the Chinese authorities courteously but firmly refused to allow
it to proceed further. Garnier had, willy-nilly, to renounce his ambition of exploring the sources of the Mekong. It was obvious, too,
that the river was utterly useless as a trade route connecting Saigon
with Yunnan. That dream was shattered.
A new one, however, began to form, which was to have a notable
influence upon the policy of the Third Republic. Garnier and his
companions made their way across the Yunnan plateau and down to
the Yang-tse, where they procured boats and quickly made their way
down to Hankow. They had left Talifu on 4 March 1868. They
arrived at Hankow on 27 May. In Yunnan they acquired from Chinese
mandarins and French missionaries most valuable information concerning the waterways which linked that province with the Red River
of Tongking. French interest, therefore, in the approach to western
China was transferred from the Mekong to Tongking. And the
Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1 forms a convenient dividing line
between two quite distinct phases in French expansion in the Far
East.

CHAPTER 3 5

T H E SECOND STAGE OF FRENCH EXPANSION

IN INDO-CHINA, 1870-1900
IN May 1868, when he was at Hankow on his return journey from
Yunnan-fu, Francis Gamier met a French merchant Jean Dupuis.
The discoveries made by the Doudart de Lagree-Garnier mission
interested Dupuis in the possibility of opening up a trade route into
Yunnan by means of the Red River (Song-Koi), and he seems almost
immediately to have set out for Yunnan. During 1868-9 ^^ was in the
province, but, as in Garnier's case, the disturbed state of the country
consequent upon the Panthay rebellion (1855-73) prevented him from
going beyond Yunnan-fu. In February 1871 he left Yunnan-fu for
Hanoi in order to carry out a contract to supply the Chinese army in
Yunnan with arms and ammunition. Proceeding southwards, he
struck the Song^koi at Mang-hao, and from there managed to navigate
it to the sea.
In the following year, notwithstanding much opposition from the
Tongking mandarins and the difficulties of the route, he delivered his
cargo of military stores to the Yunnan government. Then he purchased a cargo of tin and copper at Yunnan-sen for sale in Hanoi and
undertook to bring back a return one of salt from that city. Salt, however, was a monopoly of the mandarins, and they refused to let him
have any. Thereupon Dupuis and his followers, a mixed collection of
Chinese and Filipinos, proceeded to occupy a part of the city by force
and appealed to Saigon for help. The Court of Hue also appealed to
Saigon; it claimed that the presence of Dupuis in Tongking was
contrary to existing treaty arrangements with France and requested
Admiral Dupre, the Governor of Cochin China, to put a stop to his
activities.
,
-^
Tongking was at the time in a deplorable stat^. After the T'ai~
P'ing rebellion (1850-64), which had caused devastation over vast
areas of China, especially in the south, where anti-Manchu sentiment
was strongest, bands of rebels had escaped over the border into
northern Tongking and were making a living by terrorizing the local
population. The Emperor Tu-Duc, quite unable to cope with them,
620

CH. 3 5

THE SECOND STAGE OF FRENCH EXPANSION

621

had called on the Viceroy of Canton for help, and the latter had s6nt
regular troops, who, instead of carrying out their task, had joined with
the insurgents in the game of pillage. All these robber bands, whether
regulars or irregulars, came to be known to the French as the Black
Flags. Admiral Dupre saw in this state of affairs an admirable
opportunity for intervention, and Dupuis's grievance as a heaven-sent
excuse. He asked his government for a free hand, but was told to
avoid armed intervention. Nevertheless he sent the impulsive Francis
Garnier to Hanoi with a small force of 188 French and 24 Cochin
Chinese troops, and instructions to arbitrate between Dupuis and the
mandarins.
Garnier arrived on 5 November 1873. His attempt at arbitration
lasted only a few -days. Finding the mandarins obdurate, he issued a
proclamation declaring the Song-koi open to general commerce.
This unwarranted action goaded them into making military preparations, to which Garnier replied on 20 November by seizing the
citadel by assault. His reckless audacity succeeded so well that with
the additional volunteers he enrolled he was able to gain possession of
five strongholds, including Hai-phong and Ninh-binh, and to control
the administration of Lower Tongking. The Court of Hue was now
ready to negotiate, but the mandarins of Hanoi called on the Black
Flags for assistance. They appeared before the city on 21 December
1873, and Garnier was killed while heading a sortie against them. He
had impetuously rushed so far ahead of his men that he was ambushed
and killed before they could reach him.
Had he lived the French conquest of Tongking would have begun
ten years earlier than it did, for he went there determined to force
France's hand. Her prestige had become dangerously low in Asia as a
result of her overwhelming defeat in the Prussian war of 1870-1, and
men such as Garnier believed that the best way to revive it was to restart the movement of expansion that had been interrupted by her
debacle in Europe.
The French government, however, was bound to disavow such a
rash act of war as the seizure of the citadel at Hanoi, and as soon as
he heard of it Admiral Dupre despatched an inspector of native
affairs named Philastre to order Garnier to refrain from further acts of
aggression and to negotiate a settlement with the Court of Hue.
Philastre had been a personal friend of Garnier's, but he had an
immense admiration for Chinese culture and had been so profoundly
shocked by his friend's coup that he had written to him: ' L e mal
est irreparable et pour vous et pour le but que Ton se propose en

622

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

France. Vous vous etes done laisse seduire, tromper, et mener par
ce Dupuis?'^
Philastre reached Hanoi on 3 Januarjf 1874, and at once ordered
the evacuation of all the forts held by the French. He realized to the
full the heavy blow this would deal to !^rench prestige, but 'justice
above all things' was his motto. Dupuis's vessels were sequestrated.
Then Philastre proceeded to negotiate a treaty with Tu-Duc. On 15
March 1874 it was signed at Saigon by Admiral Dupre. Tu-Duc
recognized French sovereignty over Cochin China. He agreed to
receive a French Resident at Hue, to open the ports of Qui-nonh,
Tourane and Hanoi to French trade, and conceded to France the
right to appoint a consul at each with an escort for his protection. The
navigation of the Red River was declared free up to Yunnan. Once
again Tu-Duc promised freedom to Christians. In return for all these
favours France released him from his obligations with regard to the
unpaid balance of the indemnity and agreed to supply him with gunboats, arms and instructors to enable him to deal more effectively
with the Black Flags. A supplementary treaty of cTommerce was also
concluded which granted French vessels and trade more favourable
terms than those of other nationalities and provided for the appointment
of French officers to key positions in the Vietnamese.customs service.
On paper the concessions were considerable, but in his zeal for
justice Philastre had overlooked the fact that in Vietnamese eyes his
actions were taken to be a sign of weakness on the part of France.
Hence as soon as the French forces had left Tongking Tu-Duc renewedthe persecutions of Christians, subjected the new French consuls to
the greatest indignities, and punished all who had been French
partisans during the Garnier adventure. Moreover, as a counterpoise
to the French threat he moved Closer to China, renewing his declaration of allegiance to the emperor and seeking a fresh investiture
as his vassal.
iMeanwhile, with the final defeat of the Panthay rebellion in Yunnan,
fresh hordes of refugees, chased out by Chinese armies, were swelling
the numbers of the insurgents in neighbouring states. Their depredations affected the Laos states just as much as Tongking. ^ h e r e
were Black Flags, Yellow Flags and Red Flags, besides-professional
pirates. Between them they rendered null and void the clause of the
1874 treaty declaring the freedom of the navigation of the'Red River.
* The letter is quoted in full in C. B. Norman's Tonkin or France in the East, London, 1884, pp. 142-3. For a concise account of this period see Georges Maspero'(ed.)
L' Indochine, Paris et Bruxelles, 1930, vol. i, pp.'j50-3 and vol. ii, pp. 1-15.

CH. 35

THE SECOND STAGE OF FRENCH EXPANSION

623

To add to the confusion, a revolt against the Nguyen emperor was

stirred up by partisans of the old Le dynasty that had been brought to
an end in 1804. Tu-Duc himself played the double game of encouraging banditry as a counterpoise to the French, and of asking for
Chinese aid in suppressing it, fondly hoping that should France make
a further move she would find herself embroiled with both.
The French were acutely conscious that any move to annex the
remainder of the empire of Vietnam was calculated to arouse strong
opposition on the part of China. They felt also that Peking would
resent the clause in Philastre's treaty opening the Red River to
European commerce as constituting an infringement of the Treaty of
Tientsin (1858). The French ambassador at Peking was accordingly
instructed to do his utmost to lull the suspicions of the Chinese
government. But when news arrived of the murder of the Englishman
Margary while attempting to explore a trade route from Burma across
Yunnan, France decided to go all out for the recognition of the 1874
treaty. She jumped to the conclusion that Britain would use the
murder as a means of forcing Peking to open Yunnan to British trade
via Burma.
France*s attitude towards China stiffened still further when in 1876
it was reported that, without any reference to her, Tu-Duc had
despatched an embassy to Peking bearing the customary triennial
tribute. Earlier, when the French ambassador had asked the Peking
government to recall its troops from Tongking the latter had promised
to do so, but in such terms as to show plainly that it regarded Vietnam
as its vassal and entirely independent of France. The fact was' that
France, in spite of the declaration of Tu-Duc's independence in the
Philastre treaty, was trying to stake the claim that the real effect of
that document was to transfer the protectorate of Vietnam from
Peking to Paris. Her representatives on the spot, however, were well
aware that any move in this direction was bound to cause an open
rupture with China.
But the Tongking situation had to be dealt with, and without
assistance Tu-Duc was powerless to suppress the insurgents. He
called on China for "further assistance, and it was granted. Then in
i88o the Peking government publicly restated China's position. It
announced that the insurgents in Tongking had been defeated by the
armies she had sent to the aid of her vassal Tu-Duc, whose investiture
as such had been granted by the Eniperor of China. In response to
this Tu-Duc sent an embassy to present his humble gratitude to the
emperor.

624

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

De Freycinet was now Minister of Foreign Affairs in Paris. He was

an aavocate of the new expansionist policy that was producing an
unparalleled movement of European econprnic imperialism and bringing vast territories into the colonial empires of the great powers. The
choice, as he saw it, was between complete withdrawal from Tongking
and further annexation. He was determined to revive French power
in the East at the point of the bayonet. France was rapidly recovering
from the knock-out blow she had received at the hands of Bismarck.
In July 1881 both chambers of her Parliament voted the credits
necessary for a renewal of military operations in Tongking.
In the next year the French attack was launched. Their difficulties
in Tongking were increasing so rapidly that they had an excellent
excuse for armed intervention. On the plea that the insurgent activities
were menacing the safety of French subjects in Hanoi, Captain Henri
Riviere was sent with an expeditionary force to operate against the
bands of Black Flags infesting the Red River. His real object was to
begin again the conquest of Tongking which Francis Garnier had
essayed in the previous period. /
Riviere seized Hanoi in April 1882 and Nam-dinh in March of the
following year. But the redoubtable Black Flags in the pay of Tu-Duc
again laid siege to Hanoi, and again the French leader was killed in a
sortie against them. Jules Ferry, the chief exponent of the views of
the 'colonial party', was now Prime Minister of France. He decided
that not only must Tongking be conquered but the Court, of Hue
itself must be brought under French control. A strong expeditionary
force was despatched to the East, General Bouet was sent to take
command at Hanoi, and Admiral Courbet placed in charge of the
fleet. Dr. Harmand, who had been one of Garnier's colleagues, was
commissioned to organize the protectorate which was to be established
over Annam and Tongking.
'
Bouet found Hanoi so closely inyested by Black Flags that at first
he could do little more than stand on the defensive until such time
as Courbet's fleet should arrive with reinforcements.- On 18 August
1883 Courbet appeared before the mouth of the Hue river and proceeded to attack the forts guarding it. The French gave no quarter,
and the capture of the forts involved such fearful loss of-life to, thedefenders that the Vietnamese Foreign Minister came personally
under a flag of truce to negotiate. It transpired that Tu-Duc had
died in the previous month, and his death had been followed by a
dynastic crisis. Prince Ung-Chan, whom he had designated as his
successor, had been deposed by the Council of/Regency after a reign

CH. 35

THE SECOND STAGE OF FRENCH EXPANSION

625

of only three days and replaced by Prince Hong-Dat, who had been
raised to the throne as the Emperor Hiep-Hoa on 30 July.
An armistice was concluded, under which all forts and war vessels
in the neighbourhood of Hue were to be surrendered to the French
and a new treaty was to be drawn up immediately. A few days later,
on 25 August, this document was signed by Hiep-Hoa and Harmand
acting on behalf of France. Under its provisions Vietnam recognized
the French protectorate and surrendered control over her external
relations to France. French Residents with suitable garrisons were to
be appointed to all the chief towns and were to have jurisdiction over
the Vietnamese authorities everywhere. The French were to occupy
the forts of the Hue river and all forts deemed necessary for the
preservation of peace in Tongking. The customs service was to be
placed under French administration. All Annamite troops serving
in Tongking were to be irnmediately recalled, while France undertook
the task of opening the Red River to commerce, suppressing rebellion
and piracy, and repelling all foreign aggression. Vietnam ceded to
France the province of Binh-thuan bordering on Cochin China, all
her ships of war, and agreed to pay an indemnity to cover the cost of
the French occupation. Pending its payment France was to retain
all the proceeds of customs dues.
The first result of this action was a formal protest by China. She
pointed out that no treaty with Vietnam was valid without the
approval of the Peking government. The Quai d'Orsay, however,
brushed this aside as a matter of no importance. Reinforcements were
hurried to the East and General Bouet was told to act with vigour.
China therefore replied with vigour by sending troops from Yunnan
to the Vietnamese bases of Son-tay and Bac-ninh and placing orders
for warships and ammunition in Europe and America. General
Bouet thereupon advanced in the direction of Son Tay as far as
Fallen, which he captured from its Chinese and Vietnamese defenders,
but could go no further owing to the inundations caused by the enemy.
He was up against regulars, but chose to regard them as insurgents,
and hence beheaded all his prisoners.
While his operations were held up in this way Bouet suddenly
and without warning left for France. The official announcement was
that he had gone to report on the state of affairs in Tongking. Later
ft transpired that he had quarrelled with Harmand, the Civil Commissioner. The management of operations was taken over by Admiral
Courbet, and in December 1883 he captured Son-tay from the
Chinese. Soon reinforcements were pouring in, and three generals

626

RUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. I l l

"iVIillot, de Negrier, and Bri^re de Lisle^-assumed charge of separate

columns as the fighting moved further inland. Bac-ninh was taken
in March 1884 and Thai-nguyen soon after. Then while one column
cleared the Black River region another in June gained possession of
Tuyen-quang.
In that same month a new treaty was signed with the Court of
Hue which in some degree modified the harsh terms of the Harmand
Treaty. For instance, the province of Binh-thuan, which had been
annexed to Cochin China, was restored to Annam. Annam itself
remained a protectorate, but France was given the right to occupy
militarily any place in it. The administration of Tongking became a
French responsibility: the emperor was left with nominal suzerainty
only. But the northern Annamite provinces, which had been linked
with Tongking by the Harmand treaty, were now restored to Annam.
Meanwhile, vnth a difficult struggle on their hands in Tongking
and considerable unrest in Annam, the French became involved in an
undeclared war with China. The capture of the important towns of
Son-tay and Bac-ninh, garrisoned by Chinese troops, was regarded
by China as an act of war. An attempt, however, to bring about a
settlement was made by Li Hung Chang and the peace party at
Peking. Commandant Fournier of the French navy, a personal friend
of the Chinese statesman, met him in Peking for discussions. On 11
May 1884 they signed a draft convention. France was to guarantee
China's southern frontier, and, in case of need, protect it; China in
return was to withdraw her troops from Tongking.
The convention satisfied neither side. The Chinese Foreign Office
wanted to maintain China's suzerainty over Vietnam and to close the
Yunnan frontier to French trade. Worse still, a quarrel developed
over the date on which the Chinese troops were to be evacuated,' and
Colonel Dugeune, the commander of the French troops in the
Lang-son area, clashed with a Chinese force at Bac-le and sustained
a serious defeat. War, therefore, was resumed. General de N6grier
took the field against the Chinese in the Lang-son are?, and after much
hard fighting captured the place on 13 February 1885.
Admiral Courbet, after an unsuccessful attack on the port of Kelung
on the northern coast of Formosa, steamed across t6 Foochow, where'
he destroyed the Chinese fleet, as it lay at anchor, and the new arsenal
there. Then, returning to the blockade of Formosa, he made attack
upon attack on the Kelung forts until at last, in March 1885, he
captured them. Soon afterwards he occupied the Pescadores.
By this time both sides were utterly war-weary. The French,

CH. 3 5

THE SECOND STAGE OF FRENCH EXPANSION

627

engaged in exhausting guerrilla warfare with the Black Flags, had

begun to register some progress. But on 28 March 1885 their forces
at Lang-son suffered a terrible defeat at the hands of the Chinese.
General de Negrier, while on a cavalry reconnaissance outside the
town, was attacked and wounded. His second-in-command, Captain
Erbinger, on taking over, decided to evacuate the place. His troops
panicked, abandoned all their baggage and guns, and fled to the
mountains.
The news of this disaster, telegraphed to Paris, caused such consternation that on 31 March, before the attack of Clemenceau, Jules
Ferry's Cabinet fell. At almost the same moment negotiations which
were already in progress between China and France resulted in the
signing of a peace protocol. On 9 June, after the details of a settlement
had been agreed between Li Hung Chang and M. Patenotre, the
French Minister at Peking, the Treaty of Tientsin was signed.
Ironically enough, the agreement which it brought into effect was
almost identical with the one reached a year earlier between Li and
Fournier. France restored Formosa and the Pescadores to China..
Throughout the period since Tu-Duc's death in July 1883 one
crisis after another had arisen at the Court of Hue. Hiep-Hoa, who
had signed the Harmand Treaty at the point of the bayonet, was
murdered by patriots in the Following" November. He was succeeded
by Kien-Phuc, who reigned until July 1884, when he was deposed and
replaced by Ham-Nghi. In July of the following year there was further
trouble in the palace, and Ham-Nghi fled to the Laos. Thereupon
the French intervened and placed their own candidate, Dong-Khanh,
on .the throne. With him they made a convention whereby they
installed Residents in each province of Annam. In January 1886 the
tightening-up process went a stage further; two Residents Particuliers
were appointed, one for Tongking and the other for Annam, to work
under the Resident-General. In the following month a corps of Civil
Residents common to both countries was created.
A similar tightening up process had been going on in Cambodia.
Thomson, the Governor of Cochin China, made the abuses of the
mandarinate the excuse for imposing on King Norodom a convention
whereby he iagreed to accept such reforms of the administration of
his kingdom as the French might consider necessary. He was permitted to retain his Court ceremonies and other prerogatives but had
to transfer the real government to the French Resident Superieur, who
could ignore the assembly of ministers if he chose. In addition each
province of his realm received a Resident, whose task it was to

628

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

supervise the hierarchy of native officers and councils forming its

administration.
The agreement was signed in June 1884. It created a crop of fresh
difficuhies at a moment when the French had enough on their hands
elsewhere. The population rose in revolt' under a prince of the royal
house, Si Vattha. They were already thoroughly discontented through
the forcing upon the king of a number of previous conventions dealing
with the traffic in arms, the suppression of the capitation tax on
Vietnamese, and the collection of opium and alcohol dues. They
were determined to prevent the establishment of the new officers.
Armed bands broke over the frontier in places and the military escorts
of Cochin-Chinese troops provided for the Residents were massacred.
The rebellion, which began in January 1885, lasted for eighteen
months and caused the French heavy losses. Then Si Vattha became
a hunted man; but not until 1892, when he was at the end of his
resources, did he surrender.
While this revolt was in progress the French hold on Cochin
China went through a critical period. Drained of troops for service
in Tongking, and with the Cambodian situation making large demands
on those that were left. Cochin China was threatened with invasion
by armed bands of insurgents who had assembled in the Annamite
province of Binh-thuan. Then at an awkward moment, when the
authorities had only 300 troops at their disposal in the city, a revolt
broke out in Saigon also. When this was suppressed the governor
called for native volunteers to make up a force for the invasion of
Binh-thuan and Phu-yen. In response to this the Tong-doc Tran
Ba-Loc, who was loyal to the French regime, left Saigon in July 1886
at the head of a force of partisans, stiffened by a handful of regulars,
and treated the two provinces to a dose of such frightfulness that they
were 'entirely pacified'. His merciless repression was long reniembered. Everywhere indeed in the new French empire unrest and
rebpUion were constant factors for many years. Not until 1895 was
Tongking completely 'pacified'; her discontented^elements found a
formidable leader in De-Tham, who proved a sore thorn in the flesh
to the French.
^
The administrative arrangement's were rounded off^ .by decrees
issued in October 1887. These placed the Protectorates of Annam and
Tongking in the hands of the Minister of Marine and Colonies in
Paris and brought together Cambodia, Cochin China, Annam and
Tongking to form the Union Indochinoise. The higher administration"
of this was entrusted to a civilian governor-general and was divided

CH. 35

THE SECOND STAGE OF FRENCH EXPANSION

629

into five departments under the Commandant superieur des troupes,

the Commandant superieur de la Marine, the Secretaire general, the
Chef du Service judiciaire, and the Directeur des Douanes et regies,
respectively. Under the direct authority of the governor-general
Cochin China had a lieutenant-governor, Annam and Tongking combined a resident-general, and Cambodia a resident-general. Each of
these units maintained an autonomous organization and had its
separate budget.

CHAPTER 3 6
I

SIAM UNDER M O N G K U T AND

C H U L A L O N G K O R N , 1851-1910
MoNGKUT, who was the rightful heir to the throne when Rama II
died in 1824, was a Buddhist monk when his elder brother, Pra Nang
Klao, seized the throne and became Rama I I I . He was then twenty
years old and quite inexperienced in matters of state. Though he had
entered a monastery only for the short period that was customary
for all young men, he now remained in the order and eventually
became Sangkaret Bawaraniwate. In his early years as a monk he
became famous for his knowledge of the Pali scriptures, and later for
the reformed sect, the D'ammayutika, which he founded. Soon he
began to widen the scope of his studies, learning Latin, mathematics
and astronomy from the scholarly French missionary Bishop Pallegoix,
and English from the American missionaries Caswell, Bradley and
House. He became an enthusiast for the study of English, which became his second language; as a king he signed all state papers in roman
characters, and his fluent, ungrammatical style makes his letters
delicious reading. ' My gracious friend,' he wrote to Sir John Bowring,.
the British envoy, who came to negotiate a treaty in 1855, ' I t give^me
today most rejoyful pleasure to learn your Excellency's arrival h e r e . . . .
Please allow our respects according to Siamese manners. Your
Excellency's residence here was already prepared. We are longly
already for acceptance of your Excellency.'^
These years of study gave Mongkut something which no previous
King of Siam had hada range of contacts beyond the almost prisonlike isolation of life in the royal palace. As a monk-his pilgrimages
and preaching brought him into touch with all sorts and conditions of
people, while from his European teachers and booksfor he^was a
voracious readerhe gained information about foreign countries and
international relations which was to prove of the utmost value to him
and his country. It is perhaps not too much to say that/Siam owed
to Mongkut more than anyone else the fact that she preserved her
' A facsimile of the letter is in Bowring's The Kingdom and People of Siam, London,
1857, vol. i, attached to p. i.
630 "

CH. 3 6

SIAM UNDER MONGKUT AND CHULALONGKORN

631

independence when by the end of the nineteenth century all the other
states of South-East Asia had come under European control. For he
almost alone among his people could see clearly that if China had failed
to maintain her isolation against European pressure, Siam must come
to terms with the external forces threatening her and begin to accommodate herself to the new world, in which Asian traditionalism
appeared outworn and inefficient.
King Nang Klao had sons of his own and intended that the eldest
should succeed him. But when he lay dying a meeting of the chief
princes of the royal family and the highest officials of the realm
invited Mongkut to accept the crown, and after some hesitation he
agreed on condition that his brother, Prince Itsarate Rangsan, should
be appointed Second King. Prince Itsarate, whose English was
perfect, and whose home was built and furnished in European style,
never took a prominent part in public affairs; but as an adviser to
the government his influence was great. He had more advanced
political ideas than his brother and a mind at least as acute.
The introduction of Western ideas and methods, even on a limited
scale, caused a double conflictone between the king and the ruling
classes, and the other in the king's own mind, where Western progressive ideas clashed with oriental conservatism, leaving him a mass
of contradictions. The picture of him portrayed by the excellent
Mrs. Leonowens, the English governess he engaged in 1862 as tutor
for the royal children, gives some idea of the contradictions, although
the lady was gifted with more imagination than insight in her description of his domestic life.^ The Siamese memory of him today is
certainly not of a revengeful or cruel man, nor of one needlessly
suspicious. Judged against the background of his own people, he
emerges both morally and intellectually head and shoulders above the
level of the Siamese aristocracy of his day. It is not too much to claim
that among the benevolent despots of the world he ranks high.
Mongkut opened the door for European influence when in 1855
he concluded the Treaty of Friendship and Commerce with Britain.
In their resentment at the treatment they had received both 'Raja'
Brooke and the American envoys, who had failed with Pra Nang Klao,
had foolishly advised that only warlike demonstrations would move the
Siamese. An interesting sidelight on this is the fact that in the
negotiations with Sir John Bowring one of the greatest obstacles in
' An English Governess at the Court of Siam, Boston, U.S.A., 1870. Margaret
Landon's Anna and the King of Siam, which is based on it, is equally unfair to
Mongkut. The fairest estimate of him is in Malcolm Smith's A Physician at the
Court 0/Siam, Lxjndon, 11)46.

632

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

the way of agreement was Mongkut's fear that Siam's rival Vietnam
would assume that he had been intimidated by the British into signing
a treaty. Bowring's task was rendered easier by the simple fact that his
plenary powers had been conferred on him by Queen Victoria, whose
sign manual was affixed to his documents. But his greatest asset
came from the fact that he liked and respected the Siamese and won
the personal friendship of the king. The overriding fact was that
Mongkut was particularly anxious for the friendship of Britain.

RAMA IV

( K I N G M O N G K U T ) OF

SUM

The treaty, which contained more important concessions than

Siam had ever granted to a foreign power, was negotiated in less than
a month. It limited the duty payable on goods imported by British
merchants to 3 per cent ad valorem, permitted the import of opium
duty-free but subject to certain necessary restrictions, and laid down
that exports were to be subject to duties according to an agreed
schedule. British subjects were to be permitted to purchase or rent
land near the capital, and no additional charge of any kind might be
imposed on them, save with the sanction of both the supreme Siamese
authoritiesi.e. the First and Second Kingsand the British consul.

CH. 3 6

SIAM UNDER MONGKUT AND CHULALONGKORN

633

Bowring claimed that these provisions 'involved a total revolution

in all the financial machinery of the Government'. They must, he
thought, bring about a complete change in the whole system of taxation, seeing that they affected a large proportion of the existing
sources of revenue and would uproot a great number of long-established privileges and monopolies held by the most influential nobles
and the highest functionaries in the state. Both Mongkut and his
successor, Chulalongkorn, carried out the treaty faithfully.
The other main concession was the establishment of the extraterritorial system for British subjects. The treaty laid down that a
British consul was to reside at Bangkok and exercise civil and criminal
jurisdiction over all British subjects in Siam, who were thus made
independent of the Siamese courts and answerable to the consul
alone. This was not a complete novelty in Siam's relations with
European powers; the Dutch had extorted a similar concession, though
not in identical terms, irofsv King Narai in the seventeenth century.
But by Bowring's time it had long fallen into desuetude. In the days
of the great chartered companies of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries rulers in South-East Asia had preferred that each community
of foreign merchantsand this included the Chinese as wellshould
be under the control of a chief, with whom the ruler could deal
directly in all matters concerning them. Mongkut's initial hesitation
to accept the system lay mainly in his fear that he would be unable
to control the consul, but he accepted Bowring's assurance that only
men worthy of his confidence would be appointed.
The conclusion of this treaty was epoch-making. It speedily
attracted the attention of other powers, and during the next few years
a spate of similar treaties came into being. They were made with
France and the United States in 1856, Denmark and the Hanseatic
cities in 1858, Portugal in 1859, Holland in i860, and with Prussia in
1862. In 1868 Sir John Bowring himself was commissioned to
conclude treaties on behalf of Siam with Belgium, Italy, and Norway
and Sweden. British trade reaped the greatest harvest from this
revolutionary change in Siamese policy. Singapore and Hong Kong
began to carry on a thriving trade with Siamese ports. The British
Bombay-Burmah Corporation secured a preponderating share of the
teak industry in the forests of northern Siam. British firms did most
of the foreign business in Bangkok, and Britain soon came to have by
far the largest capital investment in the country.
Important as these treaties were in introducing new commodities to
Siam and providing new contacts, they probably contributed less to

534

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

the modernization of the country than Mongkut's policy of employing

Europeans to reorganize the government services. They came in as
advisers and teachers, but, in the absence of Siamese officers with
technical training or the right kind of administrative experience,
many of them became heads of departments. In this matter Chulalongkorn went even farther than his father. Most of his foreign
advisers were British, since their experience in India and Burma
suited them for the conditions of work prevailing in Siam. But he
also appointed Belgians and Danes. His General Adviser, who carried
through most of his reforms, was Rolin-Jaequemins, a Belgian
lawyer of repute, who had been Minister of the Interior at Brussels.
One of his most efficient servants, a Dane, was head of the provincial
gendarmerie. The Italian Major Gerini, who was in charge of the
military cadet school, achieved distinction for his scholarly contributions to Siamese history and archaeology, and later for a pioneer
study of the section of Ptolemy's Geographia relating to South-East
Asia.
With France Mongkut's relations were at first quite cordial, and
Napoleon I l l ' s envoy was given a splendid reception at Bangkok in
1856. French missionaries were given much freedom to build schools,
seminaries and churches, though the king and his Court remained
fervently Buddhist. But French trade failed to make much headway
in face of British competition, and when France began to expand in
Cochin China and her interests clashed with those of Siam in Cambodia Mongkut became decidedly uneasy. The treaty of 1867, whereby Siam surrendered her claims over Cambodia in return for France's
recognition of her rights over the old Cambodian provinces of Battambang and Siemreap, and the French exploration of the middle and
upper Mekong only served to increase his suspicions concerning the
trend of Napoleon I l l ' s imperial ambitions, and to strengthen his
desire for closer co-operation with Britain.
Mongkut's intense interest in science was the cause of his death in
1868. A total eclipse of the sun was due to occur on 18 August of that
year, and as it was to be visible from peninsular Siam a French
scientific expedition chose Sam Roi Yot, on the Gulf of Siam 140
miles south of Bangkok, as the spot from which to study it. Mongkut
did all he could to make the expedition a success by clearing the jungle
and erecting houses for his guests and himself. Sir Harry Ord, the
Governor of the Straits Settlements, and his wife attended by special
invitation of the king, who also invited all the Europeans in Bangkok
to witness the eclipse. It was, he felt, a wonderful opportunity for

CH. 3 6

S U M UNDER MONGKUT AND CHULALONGKORN

635

demonstrating to his subjects the importance of scientific knowledge.

Everything went well, the eclipse was seen under perfect conditions,
and the king's joy was unbounded. But it was a malarial spot, and the
king went down with fever as soon as he reached home. He died in the
following month.
He had promoted the digging of canals, the construction of roads,
shipbuilding, and especially the teaching of foreign languages. He had
established a mint in the palace, and from 1861 minted flat coins in
substitution for the rounded lumps of gold or silver previously in
circulation. Was it a coincidence that Mindon of Burma had begun
to mint coins in the previous year? He had patronized the printing
press introduced by Christian missions, constructed buildings in a
European style, and begun the reorganization of the army.
An immense amount still remained to be done. Siam was still
in 1868 a backward oriental country, unready in general for such
violent changes as the adoption of European models in the various
public services must inevitably bring. T h e situation which faced
Chulalongkorn has been summed up thus:
' There was no fixed code of laws; no system of general education;
no proper control of revenue and finance; no postal or telegraph
service. Debt slavery was not fully abolished; the opium laws were
badly administered; there was no medical organization to look
after the health of the city. There was no army on modern lines;
there was no navy at all; there were no railways and almost no roads.
The calendar was out of step with the rest of the world. The list
could be extended.'1
Chulalongkorn was only sixteen years old when his father died and
he became King Rama V. His education had begun under Mrs.
Leonowens, who had never ceased to instil into him her views on the
reforms necessary in his country. Later he had been placed under the
absolute authority of an English tutor, Robert Morant, but owing to
his father's death this discipline lasted only a year and a half. As he
was a minor, the government was under a regency until 1873, ^^'^ ^e
seized the opportunity to travel and study on the spot methods of
administration in Java and India. This tour made a deep impression
on his mind. He returned home far more enlightened than almost
any of his subjects, and at once began to put into operation a series of
reforms which in the long run introduced radical changes into every
' Malcolm Smith, up. cit., pp. 85-6.

636

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. HI

department of the national life. He realized forcibly that if his country

were to preserve her independence she must, willy-nilly, put her house
in order according to the prevailing European notions, or at least keep
up the appearance of doing so.
His first essay in this direction was the dramatic announcement at
his coronation in 1873 of the abolition of the practice of prostration
in the royal presence. His father had done something towards
increasing the monarch's accessibility by abolishing the ancient taboo
against looking on the royal face or watching a royal procession. Rama
HI had left the palace only once a year for a ceremonial visit to the
temples of the city. He had travelled by water, but the people had had
to shut themselves in their houses out of sight, and the route to be
traversed by the royal barge was cleared of all craft. Chulalongkorn
often drove about in public and had informal conversations, but he
made no attempt to rid himself of the traditional harem life, which
tended to isolate him in a sacred city of women and children and
servile officials, with its atmosphere poisoned by jealousy.
Like the abolition of prostration, his early reforms sprang from a
realization that there were certain abuses which it was not to his
interest to tolerate any longer. The ignorance of the aristocracy was
one, and he forced them to send their children to the two schools with
European curricula which he established at the palace. These
produced a few men of outstanding attainments such as Prince
Devawongse, the first Siamese Foreign Minister to speak European
languages, and Prince Damrong, who as Minister of the Interior
introduced European efficiency into his office and transformed the
whole system of local administration.
Slavery was another intolerable abuse. Though not as harsh as
the plantation system of America, and governed by the precepts of
the Laws of Manu, its abolition was an obvious essential of the
modernizing process. Mongkut had issued regulations to mitigate
the lot of the slave, but Chulalongkorn in 1874 struck a powerful blow
at its root by decreeing that thenceforward no one could be born a
slave, and that the practice of selling oneself for debt was illegal.
There was, however, still much to be done to root it out and check its
persistence under other names. GambHng was its chief cause, and it
was only the abolition of public gambling-houses and the placing of
restrictions on moneylenders that rendered the decree effective.
These reforms did not come until the present century.
Along with slavery disappeared the compulsory services of the Prai
and Sui classes in the army and police, and in private labour for the

CH. 3 6

SIAM UNDER MONGKUT AND CHULALONGKORN

637

profit of the Crown. In their case it was the reform of the military
system and the introduction of modern forms of taxation that revolutionized their life. The long-term results of these measures have been
most striking, especially by contrast with Siam's two neighbours,
French Indo-China and British Burma. The Siamese peasantry
became, in Graham's words, 'a sturdy and independent class free
from the ancient thraldom, owning its own land, depositing money
in the savings bank, in fact, acquiring a stake in the country.'^
The corruption and peculation prevalent among the officials gave
Siam the reputation of being one of the worst-governed countries in the
world. One of the most pressing needs was to put the country's
finances in order. And it was not simply a case of bringing into the
Treasury the money that was finding its way into the pockets of
extortionate officials, but of controlling expenditure, setting up a
proper system of audit and accounts, and reorganizing the Customs
and the Inland Revenue. This problem was for long beyond the
competence of the government, until in 1896 the services of a financial
adviser were obtained from the British government, and after him
those of a former Accountant-General of Burma.
Even then it was not until 1901 that the government's first budget
was published. Before the fiscal system was modernized it was
estimated that from five to six millions sterling were squeezed annually
out of the people by tax-gatherers and monopolists, while of this
amount only j(j 1,200,000 ultimately reached the Treasury. A favourite
money-making device was to collect land taxes without giving receipts,
so that the tax could be forcibly collected several times over. Writing
in 1902, J. G. D. Campbell was able to say that even Siam's worst
enemies would admit that the improvement in the collection of taxes
had been enormous, and as a result the people were 'immeasurably
better off' than they had been ten years earlier.^
Provincial administration was an equally black spot. Under the old
system provinces were largely autonomous; in practice so long as the
provincial governors regularly remitted the due amount of revenue to
the capital they were left alone. The great evils were the farming of
dues, feudal privilegesespecially in the matter of forced labour
and general inefficiency. The abuses of local justice were also, from
a European point of view, flagrant. In 1892, therefore, the whole
system of administration was centralized under the Ministry of the
Interior, and the direct collection of practically all the taxes was
^ W. A. Graham, Siam, I, p. 238.
* J. G. D. Campbell, Sjam in the Twentieth

Century, p. 180.

638

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

substituted for the old farming system. The reform of local administration was then carried out by Prince Damrong, who introduced the
system developed by the British in Burma. The whole kingdom was
divided into eighteen monthons, each with a resident High Commissioner at its head. These were subdivided into provinces, villages
and hamlets. Each hamlet of about twenty families was placed under
an elder, and the elders together elected the headman of the whole
village.
The reorganization of the administration of justice was mainly due
to the efforts of Rolin-Jaequemins, who called in the assistance of a
number of Belgian lawyers to advise the judges. He was ably seconded
by Prince Rabi as Minister of Justice. Rabi was one of hundreds of
young men whom Chulalongkorn sent abroad to learn Western
methods. He was educated in England and took his degree at Oxford.
One of his achievements as minister was to establish a legal school for
the training of Siamese lawyers, for the immediate result of the
modernization of the legal system, had been to throw the chief legal
business into the hands of foreigners. A further result of the judicial
reforms was the reform of the prison system and the modernization of
the police force. For the last-named task officers were recruited from
the Imperial Police Service of India and Burma.
Waterways were the main mode of transport in Siam, and rulers
who gave their attention to the improvement of communications
concentrated on cutting canals to link up rivers and creeks rather than
on roads. Villages were built along the banks of waterways. Provincial
towns were simply larger settlements on a maze of waterways with
many houses on floating pontoons. When Chulalongkorn came to
the throne, Bangkok had hardly any streets and was called the Venice
of the East. The best roads were simply bullock-cart tracks usable in
the dry season, or mountain tracks for pack animals. Under such
conditions the railway age was late in arriving. Chulalongkorn first
became aware of the importance of railways through the British efforts
to survey routes from Burma to western China. But the first railway in
Siam was not completed until 1893. It covered the sixteen miles between
Bangkok and Paknam and was built by private enterprise, though
with valuable financial help from the king.
France's encroachments upoti Siam's eastern frontier in the
eighteen-nineties caused so much alarm that the government decided
to build a strategic railway from Bangkok to Korat. Chulalongkorn
himself cut the first sod in 1892, and a Royal Railway Department was
formed to control the work, which was under an English contractor

WAT BENCHAMA BOPHIT, BANGKOK

640

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

with experience of similar work in Ceylon ,and Malaya. Unforl;unately

the department was under a German who had unsuccessfully tendered
for the contract, and he quarrelled so much with his English rival that
ultimately in 1896 the government cancelled the contract and completed the work with its own engineers. The first sectionfrom
Bangkok to the old capital of Ayut'iawas only completed in 1897.
The remainder of the work was completed before the end of 1900, and
in opening the railway Chulalongkorn proudly said that he counted
the day one of the most auspicious in his life. A further section
carrying the railway to Lopburi, seventy miles north of Bangkok, was
opened in 1901. This northern line was gradually extended to
Utaradit and Sawankalok in 1909. The first section of the future
Peninsula Railway that was ultimately to link up with the Malayan
Railways and connect Bangkok with Singapore was begun in, 1900
and reached Petchaburi in 1903. The agreement for its extension to
the frontier of British Malaya was made in 1909 with the Government
of the Federated Malay States.
As in the case of Burma, Siam's'education in the past was conducted
entirely in the Buddhist monasteries. The missionaries were the first
to introduce secular education of a more advanced type. In 1891
Prince Damrong was sent to study educational methods in Europe,
and on his return a government Department of Education was set up.
This later became the Ministry of Public Instruction. Its initial task
was to improve primary education, and it did so by adapting the
monastic school buildings to educational needs and providing
apparatus. The task of developing secondary and higher education
was more difficult owing to the absence of textbooks in the Siamese
language. English was considered the, best medium for higher
education; hence the original provision for state secondary education _
was for a dual system of schools. One type was to give a course in
Siamese for boys proceeding no further; the other was to provide a
five-year course in English as a preliminary to the scientific study of a
special subject.
In 1899 the Siamese government applied for the Toan of a British
civil servant to reorganize the educational system, and the Board of
Education sent out Mr. J. G. D. Campbell to act as idviserto PrinCe-"
Damrong for two years. So much effort, however, was being concentrated upon the other departments of state that the Education
Department made little progress, and when Campbell left the Siamese
service he reported that education was still in a ^?ery backward state.
Secondary and higher education were ,alny)st non-existent outside

CH. 3 6

SIAM UNDER MONGKUT AND CHULALONGKORN

641

Bangkok, and even there school accommodation was inadequate and of

a low standard, there was a dearth of qualified teachers, and systematic
inspection was only in its earliest beginnings.
Notable advances were made by the establishment during the
'nineties of three government schools entirely controlled by English
teachers. One of these was a school for girls, Sunandalaya. This and
one of the boys' schools, King's College, were boarding schools for
the children of the nobility. The other Was a boys' day school for
sons of middle-class parents. The curriculum was largely that of the
similar class of scTiool in England, and the object was to transplant
the English public-school system into Bangkok. When these schools
were founded a fairly large number of Siamese boys had received
their education at leading English public schools, and among the new
generation at the end of the century there were many enthusiasts
who believed that the upper classes in their country needed a strong
dose of the qualities, such as esprit de corps, manliness and honour,
which the English system inculcated.
Siam had no university in Chulalongkorn's day, and only a very few
Siamese proceeded to British universities. There were, however,
departmental schools for training in specialist subjects, law and
medical schools, a survey school, and military and naval cadet schools.
But until much later Siam had no technical school and no institution
for the systematic study of art. The great developments in education
were to come after Chulalongkorn's death. His reign saw only the
small-scale beginnings of things and the gropings after a policy. The
^ monastic schools catered only for boys, and the hopelessly inadequate
' sums of money the Education Department had at its disposal crippled
its efforts, notwithstanding the immense zeal which two Englishmen
on its permanent staff, R. L. (later Sir Robert) Morant, Mrs. Leonowens's successor as tutor to the royal children, and W. G. Johnson,
who reorganized primary education, displayed in combating enormous
difficulties.
The recruitment of so large a corps of European advisers was indeed
a step of the utmost importance, but it can hardly be said that the
best use was made of their abilities and experience. Few Siamese
officials gladly co-operated with them. There was what Campbell has
called ' a universal horror' of anything of the nature of a permanent
European Civil Service in the country. ^ It arose from the fear that
such a step might lead to loss of independence. Hence the path of the
European adviser was strewn with the subtle forms of obstruction,
' Ibid., p. 172.

642

r.UROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

the technique of which the shrewd Siamese knows so well. But in the
light of later developments, and against the background of deeplyingrained traditionalism, one may assess the achievements of Chulalongkorn's reign as truly remarkable. And if one refuses to attribute
to him personally the zeal for reform that his admirers have praised in
somewhat exaggerated terms, the fact remains that the real progress
that was made was possible only through the exercise of his absolute
power.

CHAPTER 3 7

BRITAIN, FRANCE AND T H E SIAMESE Q U E S T I O N

(a) Luang Prabang
T H E French conquest of Cochin China wrought a profound change in
Franco-Siamese relations. In the first place it brought Siam's eastwards expansion to a stop. France took the place of Vietnam as the
competitor with Siam for dominance over Cambodia, and within
the briefest possible time won the contest decisively. King Norodom,
who had already accepted Siamese suzerainty, was literally forced by
the French in 1863 to accept their protectiona position which, he
was soon to find, was tantamount to complete controland four years
later Siam signed a treaty with France accepting the inevitable, though
with Battambang and Siemreap as a quid pro quo. Siam's attempts
to expand southwards and secure a dominant position in Malaya had
likewise been stopped by British action to secure the independence
of the threatened states. Unlike France in Indo-China, Britain was in
no hurry to force her ' protection' on the Malay rulers. The contrast
between them as empire-builders, one may venture to comment, was to
become even clearer as French expansionist efforts in Indo-China
^progressed. 'Britain', it has been well said,^ 'annexed areas where
she had interests to protect, whereas France annexed areas where she
zoished to have interests to protect, and so had to shut out competition
from the start.'
The French thesis regarding Siam was that her policy was expansionist, and that, finding her ambition thwarted on the east by
France and on the west and south by Britain, she naturally began to
concentrate her attention upon the Laos states in the north.*
Auguste Pavie, who played so important a part in French expansion into these Laos states, seems to have been the first to have expressed this
view; his belief was that Siam's advance, checked in one region, would
be sure to break out elsewhere. It was a most plausible theory, and
extremely convenient propaganda for French empire-builders. For
' E. V. G. Kiernan, British Diplomacy in China, 1880 to 1885. Cambridge, 1939.
^ Le Boulanger: Histoire du Laos Franfais, 4th ed., Paris, 1931. This thesis has been
uncritically accepted by Virginia Thompson in Thailand, the New Siam, pp. 183-92.
t'43

644

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

the time was to come when they would be at pains to show that the
Siamese suzerainty over the Laos state of Luang Prabang constituted
an unwarranted denial of the older and better claims of the empire of
Vietnam to its allegiance. The fundamental fallacy in such an argument lay in reading European diplomatic ideas into the relationships
between the states of the Indo-Chinese peninsula. But the French did
it consciously and deliberately, and with the single-minded aim of
exploiting to the full any situation that could be used to their advantage.
In 1827 the Siamese armies under P'ya Bodin had extinguished the
Laos kingdom of Vientiane for attempting to assert its independence.
When this occurred Vientiane's sister state of Luang Prabang, which
had acknowledged the suzerainty of Siam for half a century, became
restive, and in 1831, and again in 1832, offered homage to Hue in the
hope of gaining independence by playing off the one against the
other.i Nothing came of this effort, however, for Minh-Mang had too
much on his hands in Cochin China and Cambodia to risk serious
entanglements elsewhere.^
Souka Seum, who succeeded to the throne of Luang Prabang in
1836, had lived for ten years as a hostage at Bangkok and did not
receive Siamese recognition and permission to return until 1839.
Annamite sources contain a story that during the interval between his
father's death and his own return home a prince of Luang Prabang took
advantage of a rebellion against Minh-Mang in Tongking to ravage the
the provinces of Thai-nguyen, Cao-bang and Lang-son round about
1836-7, but was finally defeated and burnt alive in the woods in which
he took refuge. Souka Seum, who reigned until 1850, was a prudent
man who made no attempt to take advantage of Siam's concentration
upon Cambodia by pursuing a heroic poHcy. Throughout his reign
his kingdom maintained strict peace and well-being.
His brother, Tiantha Koumane, who succeeded him in 1851,
received the French explorer Henri Mouhot in 1861, and it was in the
little village of Ban Naphao, not far from his capital, that Mouhot died
of fever in October of that year.' During his reign also other European
explorers busied themselves with surveys of his country. There was a
Dutchman, Duyshart, who was employed by the Siamese government,
and whose papers, never published, were presumably utilized -by
' See above, chap. 23.
'
/
' See above, chap. 24.
/
' Mouhot described Luang Prabang as a ' delicious little town' in a charming situation, witji only about 8,000 inhabitants. His Travels in the Central Parts of IndoChina (Siam), Cambodia, and Laos during 1588-60 was published in London in 1864.
For shorter accounts of his work see Sir Hugh Clifford's Ffirther India, pp. 2 0 8 - r i ,
and Le Boulanger's Histoire du Laos Franfais, pp. 219-29. '

CH. 3 7

BRITAIN, FRANCE AND THE SIAMESE QUESTION

645

James M'Carthy in the preparation of the detailed map of Siam

published by the Royal Geographical Society in 1888. There was
also the Doudart de Lagree-Garnier expedition, which arrived at
Luang Prabang in April 1867 on its way to Yunnan.
Garnier's anglophobia had been ablaze at reports that they had
been forestalled by a party of English explorers, about forty in
number, who had cut in above them from Burma; but near Chieng
Kang, as the Frenchmen were pushing on determined to die rather
than suffer themselves to be outdone, they met Duyshart journeying
downstream, a solitary Dutchman with his native staff, and realized to
their immense relief that his activities were the cause of the rumours
which had so greatly disturbed their minds. The incident is interesting
for the light it throws upon the French outlook in the matter of IndoChina. The term 'Anglo-French rivalry' has been too loosely used in
this connection. The rivalry was mainly from the side of the French,
who shivered at the thought of an imaginary Englishman already
ahead of them in whichever direction they proposed to expand. Their
actions again and again forced the British to react in defence of what
they regarded as their legitimate interests, as in the case of the march
to-Mandalay in 1885.
During Tiantha Koumane 's reign the Tran Ninh question came to a
head again. The kingdom of Chieng-Khouang^ had been extinguished
in 1832 by Minh-Mang and its territories annexed to Vietnam. It was
brought into strict servitude by the most brutal methods, and everything possible was done, even to forcing its people to wear Annamite
dress, in order to crush out all traces of its long-prized individuality.
This played into the hands of Siamese secret agents, who stirred up
a revolt in which the Vietnamese governor was killed. After restoring
order Vietnam won over Chao Pho, the eldest son of the previous
king, Chao Noi^ and in 1855 Placed him in control of the administration of Chieng-Khouang, with the rank of 'imperial mandatory prince'. This caused Tiantha Koumane to take up the position
that the old kingdom had been restored and must therefore resume
payment of its ancient tribute to Luang Prabang. After lengthy
negotiations, which were rendered easier for Tiantha Koumane by the
fact that the Emperor Tu-Duc became deeply involved in trouble
with the French, Chao Pho agreed to pay triennial tribute to Luang
Prabang, while continuing to pay annual tribute to Vietnam.
T h e kingdom itself is often referred to by the name of its capital, Chieng-Khouang,
or, in many maps, Kiang Kwang.
See chap. 23.

646

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

FT. Ill

Tiantha JCoumane's last years were rendered happy by the gracious

act of King Mongkut in restoring the famous Prabang image of the
Buddha to its historic home. It had bedn carried away from Luang
Prabang to Vientiane in 1707, when the division of the old kingdom
into two occurred. In 1778 it had been, taken away from the latter
place by the Siamese general Chulalok, but restored four years later.
Then when P'ya Bodin destroyed Vientiane in 1828 it had been
brought to Bangkok.
In 1864, five years before Tiantha Koumane's death, refugees
began to pour out of western China into Tongking and the various
Laos states. Tongking was the first to suffer when they began to
organize themselves into armed bands known by the colours of their
flags. The turn of Luang Prabang and Tran Ninh was to come early
in the reign of Tiantha Koumane's successor, Oun Kham (1872-87).!
Among the Thai peoples they were known by a word transliterated as
' H o ' or ' H a w ' and meaning 'Chinese'. In 1871 a band of some
2,000 Hos, belonging to the Red Flag organization, was driven away
from the Black River of Tongking by the Yellow Flags. They thereupon made their way across country into Tran Ninh and built themselves a fortified camp at Tung-Chieng-Kam, some three days'
march from the capital. Having defeated the combined forces of
Luang Prabang and Tran Ninh, supported by a Vietnamese contingent, they captured Chieng Kham and Chieng Khouang and
devastated the country so thoroughly that they soon had to look elsewhere for booty.
They next threatened Luang Prabang, but suddenly turned'southwards to Vientiane and Nongkai. Almost simultaneously in 1872 the
Siamese government received frantic appeals for help from King Oun
Kham and its own Governor of Nongkai. A Siamese army was
accordingly sent to co-operate with the Luang Prabang forces. The
campaign, successful at first, soon petered out when the Hos retired
on their fortified strongholds. The Siamese therefore called off the
campaign on receiving a vague recognition of the suzerainty of Bangkok and evacuated the survivors of the local population to Siam.
Luang Prabang was spared for the moment, but complete anarchy
reigned on its northern and eastern borders, especially in Dinh-binhphu and the Sip-song Chu-Thai running along the south-western
side of the Black River. Oun Kham, who was powerless to deal with
the growing disorder in his own territories, found himself forced to
^ His reign begins officially only in 1872 when he received investiture from Siam.
Tiantha Koumane had died in 1869.

CH. 3 7

BRITAIN, FRANCE AND THE SIAMESE QUESTION

647

rely more and more on Siamese support, especially when his friend
Cam-Sinh, the Chief of the Sip-song Chu-Thai, having driven off
the attacks of the Yellow Flags from his own territory, was drawn into
the guerrilla warfare which the exploits of Francis Garnier and Henri
Riviere had aroused in the delta region of Tongking.
The French advance in Tongking very naturally caused the Siamese
to tighten their hold on the Laos country. In 1883, the year in which
the French forced Vietnam to become a protectorate, a force of
Laotians and Siamese made a further attempt to storm the Ho strongholds in Tran Ninh and were so severely defeated that Chulalongkorn
decided to send a large army to occupy all the country to the north and
east of Luang Prabang right up to the basin of the Black River. This
arrived at its destination in October 1885, and its commander-in-chief,
Chao Mun Vai Voronat, appointed two Siamese commissioners to
superintend the administration of the kingdom at the side of the
ageing Oun Kham.^
The Siamese expedition had been prepared so secretly that the
Comte de Kergaradec, the French representative in Bangkok, only
learnt of it after its departure. Le Boulanger asserts that this step was
taken on the suggestion of Chulalongkorn's British advisers, because
Britain regarded French penetration into the Red River region with
jealousy owing to its obvious threat to their plans for commercial
penetration into Yunnan.* Graham, however, is much nearer the
point in drawing attention to the fact that the 'unofficial advocates' of
French colonial expansion were already beginning to advance the
theory that the territory held by Siam to the east of the river Mekong,
having at one time formed part of Annam, should be restored now
that Vietnam was a French protectorate.*
A young British journalist, Mr. (later Sir) James George Scott, who
had been with the French forces in Tongking and was shortly to join
the Burma Commission,, took the matter much further in a book,
France and Tongking, which he pubhshed in 1885.* After stating that
' it was the encroachment of the French on the eastern borders that
decided the fate of Upper Burma', he showed that Siam was now
threatened by France. ' It cannot be too strongly urged', he wrote,
' that the whole French procedure in regard to Siam is as scientifically
' T h e n between seventy and seventy-five; the date of his birth was somewhere
between 1811 and 1816.
Op. cit., pp. 251-2.
' Op. cit., i, p. 220.
Quoted in G. E. Mitton (Lady Scott), Scott of the Shan Hills, London, 1936, pp.
47-8.

64.8

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

mapped out as a game of draughts. Every counter-move has been

calculated and provided for, and we are no disinterested spectators,
we do not want Siam and have no particular hankering for the Shan
states but we do want to keep France out of them.' His advice was
that a railway connecting Moulmein with.Chiengmai, and Chiengmai
with Bangkok, would supply all that was ^wanted. 'Siam would then
be connected with us directly, and so miich capital would be involved
that she would cease to be the safe quarry she is now for sinister
French designs. If anything is to be done it must be done at once.
In a year or two Siam will be so surrounded she will be unable to stir.'
They were strangely prophetic words, but no one heeded them then.
The Siamese action caused the Quai d'Orsay to issue a warning
note to Bangkok and to invite the Hue government to formulate its
claims on Luang Prabang. Siam in reply stated that her sole aims in
sending an army there were to defend the region against the Hos.
Hue claimed the region on the score of payment of tribute since the
seventeenth century. France therefore asked Siam to agree to a joint
commission to examine the boundaries of Luang Prabang on the spot.
On 7 May 1886 a provisional agreement was concluded sanctioning
the creation of a French viccTConsulate at Luang Prabanga method
of approach to the question which, be it noted, implicitly recognized
Siamese authority over the disputed principality.
The French choice for the new post was Auguste Pavie, who was to
achieve a great reputation for his scholarly work of exploration in the
Mekong valley. He had started his career with a commission in the
Marines. In 1868 he had transferred to the Postal and Telegraphic
Department of Cochin China. After the Franco-Prussian War he was
stationed at Kampot, the Cambodian port on the Gulf of Siam, where
he had attracted attention by his study of the old Khmer civilization.
In 1880 he had been entrusted with the construction of a telegraph
line from Phnom Penh to Bangkok. For the next five years he had
busied himself with detailed surveys of Cambodia. The work of
Mouhot, Gamier and others had inspired him with a great ambition
to follow in their footsteps by exploring the Laos country. His immediate instructions were to explore routes connecting the upper
Mekong valley with Tongking and hold himself in^ readiness to join"
the frontier commission, if and when it materialized. '
The Bangkok government, only too painfully aware of the direction
of French policy, kept Pavie waiting six months for his permit, in the
hope that Vai Voronat would have time to complete his mission before
the Frenchman's arrival.

CH. 3 7

BRITAIN, FRANCE AND THE SIAMESE QUESTION

649

Meanwhile the Siamese siege of the. Ho stronghold of T u n g Chieng-Kam had failed in 1885. In the following year they staged a
much stronger effort with reinforcements which achieved no little
success. And soon after Pavie arrived m Luang Prabang in February
1887, Vai Voronat appeared in triumph to announce that the whole
country had been cleared of the invaders, and with a map showing
exactly the territories owing allegiance to King Oun Kham. There was
obviously to be no joint frontier commission. Pavie therefore went
ahead with preparations for exploring a practicable route from the
Mekong into Tongking.
He left at the end of March 1887, but had not gone far before news
reached him of an impending attack by armed bands on the capital
itself. He at once sent a courier back to warn the Siamese commanderin-chief; but received the reply that while no importance need be
attached to the rumour, he would be wise to return to Luang Prabang,
as the season was unfavourable for the survey work he had in hand.
Accordingly he retraced his steps, only to find on arrival at the capital
that Vai Voronat and the Siamese chief commissioner had already
left for Bangkok with the niain body of the army, a number of Ho
hostages arid the eldest sons of the king and the Oupahat.
Vai Voronat's easy assumption that his task was completed was
soon to be proved mere wishful thinking. For in carrying out the
task of pacification he had foolishly alienated the most powerful chief
of the T'ai cantons of the Black River region. Cam Sinh of MuongLa'i. The old chief was a firm friend of King Oun Kham and had
entrusted him with the upbringing of two of his sons. But he was the
enemy of both the French in Tongking and the Siamese. Vai Voronat
had therefore completely failed to persuade him to recognize Siamese
overlordship. He had then taken the drastic step of kidnapping some
of the old chief's sons and carrying them oflF as hostages.
Now Cam Sinh employed in his service a band of Black Flags.
They were commanded by his eldest son. Cam Oum, or Deo-van-Tri,
as he was known by the Vietnamese. Early in June, with 600 followers,
he appeared at the city of Luang Prabang to demand the release of
his brothers. Finding that they were no longer there, he sacked the
city. The king, his Siamese adviser and Pavie took refuge at Paklay,
near the Siamese border, but Deo-van-Tri made no attempt at
conquest.
On receipt of news of the disaster Chu'lalongkorn invited Oun
Kham to Bangkok, where he was received with honour. Vai Voronat,
who had received the title of P'ya Surrissak, was ordered to mobilize

5go

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. I l l

another army to restore order in the principality. The captive princes

of Muong-Lai were liberated, and one of them was entrusted with a
conciliatory message to his father. Late in the year the boundary
commission, consisting of Pavie and two French officers together with
three Siamese commissioners, was appointed.
Pavie now began to take matters very much into his own hands.
Two French columns under Colonel Perriot and Commandant Oudri
were engaged on the pacification of the upper region of Tongking
bordering on the Sip-song Chu-Thai. Pavie therefore got into touch
with Pernot, who was engaged in some stiff fighting with Deo-van-Tri
and his Black Flags in the Muong-Lai region. They met in the middle
of February 1888 and agreed on a plan of action which involved the
annexation of the twelve T'ai cantons to the French empire. And to
cut a long story short, Pavie returned to Luang Prabang at the end of
March and announced to P'ya Surrissak, who was once more engaged
upon the military occupation of the principality, that he intended to
recommend the annexation of the T'ai cantons by France on the
grounds that they were dependencies of Vietnam. He then made
his way to Hanoi, where General Begin entrusted to him the task
of organizing the annexed territory.
In October of the same year he received the submission of the
Black Flags, and in the following December P'ya Surrissak made
formal surrender of the cantons on behalf of Siam. In January 1889
he was back in Luang Prabang to witness the reinstatement of the
aged Oun Kham on his return from Bangkok. Then he began thie
investigation of France's claims to a further tract of territory, this time
in 'Middle Laos'the cantons of Camkeut and Cammon, once part
of the kingdom of Vientiane. But Siamese forces were in control of
them, and it was impossible for him to attempt again the methods
which had been so successful in the Black River region. In June 1889,
therefore, he wound up his first 'mission' and returned to France on
furlough. There he strove to convert the Quai d'Orsay to the view
that it should aim at extending the boundaries of its Indo-Chinese
empire to the river Mekong.
(A) The Mekong Question
Payie's second 'mission', which he began to organize as soon as
he arrived back in France, was planned as a scientific expedition on the
big scale not only to study the geography of the Laos country but also
'to investigate land and river routes, create trading depots, collect

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BRITAIN, FRANCE AND THE SIAMESE QUESTION

651

specimens, examine existing commercial procedure, and produce a

definite statement on the nature and value of the products of the
Mekong basin'. In close association with his project a Syndicat
fran9ais du Haut-Laos was formed, which placed fifteen tons of
merchandize at the disposal of the mission. The results of the
mission's work as set forth in Pavie's monumental Mission Pavte^ were
of immense importance as contributions to knowledge. But the
ultimate aim of the work was to pave the way for another big annexation of territory by France.
The mission began work in January 1890. The party was split
into several groups working separately in Tran Ninh, Cammon and
Stung Treng, and with the leader himself in Luang Prabang, where
after six months all the members were to meet to co-ordinate their
work. Late in the year he made his way down the Mekong to Saigon,
and thence to Bangkok, where he hoped to continue the softening
process by talks with the government. But the Siamese politely
evaded his advances. They were alarmed at the way the French were
striving to increase their influence among the Laos people, and at the
agitation that was being worked up in France for 'the incontestable
rights of Arinam' to all the territory east of the Mekong.^
The Siamese suggestion, made at the time when Pavie wound up
his first mission in the previous year, had been that the disputed
territory should be regarded as neutral until the frontier could be
properly delimited; and an agreement to this effect had been made.
But both sides then began to accuse each other of infringing it. The
French theory was that Siam was encroaching upon territory she had
never previously occupied in order to compensate herself for what
she had had to surrender in the Black River region. But it reflects
too closely the outlook of the French themselves. Actually Siam's
actions were capable of the simple explanation that they were entirely
defensive. Pavie, however, before the end of the year 1890 was describing them as 'the Siamese invasion' and was urging Governor-General
Piquet to instruct French frontier posts to do their best to stop them,
while avoiding any cfesh. During the first half of 1891 he was engaged
in the north upon a study of conditions in the Sip-song Pannas.
There news reached him that Siam was summoning additional troops
to the colours, laying in supplies of arms and constructing fortified
posts. On the grounds that these constituted real preparations for
war, he broke off his work to return to Paris, declining on his way an
' Mission Pavie: Indockine tSjg-iSgs, 11 vols., Paris, 1898-1919.
' Ar this stage only the middle Mekong was in question.

THE FRANCO-SIAMESE
QUESTION. 1893

Frendt baunitary 1893

Siam boui/darf before 1893 .

CH. 3 7

BRITAIN, FRANCE AND THE SIAMESE QUESTION

653

offer by the Bangkok government to discuss the matter. Thus ended

his second mission.
The annexation of Upper Burma by Britain at the beginning of the
year 1886 involved the large block,of Shan states which had paid allegiance to the Court of Ava ever since the sixteenth century. This
brought the eastern frontier line under anxious consideration. Military
opinion favoured the Salween as the eastern boundary of British
Burma, but some of the states which had been subject to the Burmese
monarchy stretched across that river, and the two most important
trans-Salween states, Kengtung and Kiang Hung, claimed territory
east of the Mekong; in fact Kiang Hung's richest part lay on the far
side of the river.
But the further question arose: what would become of the transSalween territories if Britain declined responsibility for them ? China
and Siam, it was argued, might be invited to absorb them and thus
place a buffer belt between British territory and Tongking. China,
however, did not favour such a solution, and Siam, though favourable,
was weak; and the fear was that if such a plan were carried out France
might then be tempted to push her boundary up to the Salween.
It was therefore decided that Britain must accept her full responsibilities, and measures were accordingly taken to secure the allegiance
of all the states. The last to be brought under control was Kengtung;
Scott was sent there in 1890 and at a durbar presented the sawbwa
with his patent of appointment.
Britain had two anxieties in this matter: to avoid a frontier running
with French Indo-China, and to reach an amicable agreement with
Siam on all frontier questions. There were several delicate questions
to be solved with regard to Siam. In 1889, therefore, Britain appointed
the Ney Elias Commission to survey the Anglo-Siamese frontier and
settle disputes with Siam. No Siamese officials were sent in reply to
Britain's invitation for co-operation; but the commission completed
its work and Siam accepted its decisions.^ With France, however,
difficulties cropped up.
In 1889 M. Waddington, the French ambassador in London, called
on the prime minister, Lord Salisbury, with the suggestion that it
would be to the advantage of both countries to declare Siam a buffer
state between their respective empires. He thought that in the first
instance the frontier between Cochin China and Siam should be
fixed and a settlement made of the boundaries of Burma. Regarding
' A summary "of the work of the commission is given by Sir Charles Crosthwaite in
his The Pacification of Burma, London, 1912, pp. 219-21.

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FUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

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Luang Prabang, he said, his government proposed to draw a line

from a point nearly due east of that place southwards to the Mekong,
and below that point to make the river the dividing line between
French and Siamese territory until it entered the territory of Cambodia.
The boundaries of Siam should be defined up to the Chinese frontier
on both the British and the French sides.
Salisbury's immediate reply was sympathetic on the subject of a
buffer state. With regard to the other proposals, however, he said he
had insufficient evidence on which to express an opinion, but would
be grateful for exact details of the proposed frontier line between
Cochin China and Siam. After consultation with the India O^ce
Salisbury sent a considered reply to Waddington on 27 August.
Britain, he indicated, would welcome measures which would establish
a strong independent kingdom of Siam with well-defined boundaries;
and he forwarded a map showing the India Office view of her boundaries. The western one was clearly demarcated up to the northern
limit of British Burma before the annexation of Thibaw's kingdom.
Those on the north and north-west were shown as, approximate.
He asked for the views of the French government on the subject of
the east and north-east ones, saying that as soon as he received them
he would be prepared to discuss with Waddington the next step for
carrying his proposal into effect. He warned him, however, that
Siam's territorial claims could only be settled in communication
with her government.
Before we proceed to deal with the next phase of the story two
points must be emphasized. In the first place Luang Prabang had
been under Siamese suzerainty for a century at least, and in the
French official maps in use up to the date of this exchange of views
was marked as part of Siam.^ In the second place the Convention of
7 May 1886, providing for the appointment of a vice-consul there,
had implicitly acknowledged the sovereignty of Siam.
Waddington never replied to Salisbury's communication of
27 August 1889. The matter indeed was not taken up again until
February 1892. During the interval Pavie was sent on his 'second
mission', and there can be no doubt that France's sudden lapse into
silence on the Siamese question was a result of the decision_tp despatch,
it. Before the next approach was made to the Foreign Office in
February 1892, the Quai d'Orsay had taken certain significant steps.
It had increased its agencies in Siam by opening semi-commercial,
' Jj G. D . Campbell, Siam in the Twentieth Century, illustrates this point with a
sketch-map (p. 293) and a coloured folding map (pp. 328-g).

CH. 3 7

BRITAIN, FRANCE AND THE SIAMESE QUESTION

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semi-political bureaux at Utene, Bassac and Stung Treng; it had also

appointed Pavie to be resident minister at Bangkok. The reason for
these moves is not far to seek. Siam had learnt that France had made
approaches to both London and Peking regarding the Mekong question. She had therefore begun to stiffen her attitude considerably
and to play for British support. Hence the object of Pavie's new
'mission' was to apply the softening-up process at the centre. And
it is no mere coincidence that on 16 February 1892, the day after the
announcement of his appointment to Bangkok, Waddington broke
the long silence between London and Paris on the Mekong question
by suddenly coftiing forward with a new proposal.
His government, he explained, was concerned to avoid further
difficufties with f Britain in the matter, and thought that the best
method would be for each power to bind itself not to extend its
influence beyond the upper Mekong. The implications of this
proposal were so unwarrantable that Lord Salisbury proffered the
obvious objection that French influence did not extend to the upper
Mekong. This evoked from Waddington what can only be described
as a deliberately lame explanation of his proposal. It was, he said, of
the nature of a prophylactic; he did not intend to imply that the actual
sphere of influence of either France or Britain did indeed extend up
to the Mekong.
Before the discussion could go further Salisbury's government fell
and Gladstone returned to power. Lord Rosebery took over the
management of foreign aflFairs. In due course Waddington in a
personal conversation took up the matter of the French proposal.
Lord Rosebery accordingly made a considered statement of the
British position. It was contained in two notes delivered respectively
in December 1892 and April 1893. .He explained that through its
annexation of the kingdom of Ava the British government had acquired
rights in certain districts east of the Mekong. Thus Keng Cheng, a
' dependency of Kengtung, extended east of that river, as also did
the district of Kiang Hung, the northern portion of Kengtung. He
went on to say that Britain proposed to limit her frontier to the
Mekong by transferring Kiang Hung to China and Keng Cheng to
Siam. He warned Waddington that an engagement along the lines
suggested by France would cause alarm and suspicion in Siam, and
stated categorically that until France explained quite clearly her
views regarding Siam's eastern and north-eastern frontiers Britain
could not consider the conclusion of a formal agreement.
On this note negotiations broke down a second time, but not

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EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. HI

before Waddington, in a conversation with Rosebery in March 1893,

had let the cat out of the bag regarding the real nature of French
intentions. His government, he saidj, did not admit that any part of
Siam lay on the left bank of the Mekong, since all the country lying
on that side belonged to Vietnam. Rosebery's attitude in face of this
astounding volte-face was one of cautious diplomatic reserve. The
Siamese have never ceased to deplore the weakness which he showed
at this moment, when in their view a firmer stand would have saved
so much subsequent trouble. There can be little doubt that his failure
to pursue a more positive line actually encouraged France to go ahead
alone. Btit the accusation made by French writers that Britain backed
down after encouraging Siam to oppose France* is a complete travesty
of the facts. Throughout this period Britain was urging the Siamese
to do nothing likely to precipitate a rupture with France.
Meanwhile ' incidents' had been taking place on the spot, and Were
being played up as much as possible in France with the object of
rousing public opinion in favour of a forward move. To this more
disillusioned age they appear ^rather petty. Two that caused a violent
storm in the Chamber of Deputies were the expulsion by the Siamese,
authorities of two French agents, Champenois and Esquilat, from
Oudene without explanation, and the death of Massie, the French
agent at Luang Prabang, after leaving the place in despair at the difficulties placed in his way by the Siamese representatives there. His
death was due to natural causes; there wais no suggestion of foul play.
But the Colonial Party was looking for martyrs.
The agitation caused by these incidents led the French government
in February 1893 to authorize the Governor-General of Indo-China
to take energetic action on the Siamese frontier if immediate reparation were not obtained. In the following month, it will be remembered, Waddington told Lord Rosebery that in the French view all
the territory on the left bank of the Mekong belonged by right to
Vietnam. At the same time Pavie, under instructions from the Quai
d'Orsay, made the same claim to the Foreign Office at Bangkok.
The Siamese protested. They offered to refer any doubtful matters
1 TTiis view has been accepted uncritically by Virginia Thompson in 'Thailand,
the Nevi Siam, p. 162. She also (p. 187) gives a complel;ely false-picture ^{ the
negotiations between France and Britain. The French archives relating to "this
question have never been thrown open to the public and only a selection of them
has been published, Documents Diplomatiques, Affaires du Siam et du Haul
Mekong, Paris, 1893 and 1896. T h e British archives are open up'^to 1902, but no
definitive study of the subject has yet been published. There is an unpublished
Ph.D. thesis by K.S.M, Murti, Anglo-French Relations with Siam, 1880-1904,
which was successfully submitted to the University of London in 1952 and is based
on a detailed study of the extensive materials in the Public Record viHce.

CH. 3 7

BRI'J'AIN, FRANCK ANX> THE SIAMESE QUESTION

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to arbitration. But Pavie demanded the immediate evacuation of all

positions held by Siam in the disputed territory.
In April the French followed up their claim by organizing three
columns to occupy, by force if necessary, the territory on the Lower
Mekong which they claimed. One under Captain Thoreux seized
Stung Treng on the Mekong inside the Siamese frontier, and shortly
afterwards the island of Khone below the rapids. The second began
an advance towards Muong-Phine, and the third went to the Gammon
region.
Bangkok, faced by this critical situation, and with an army quite
incapable of standing up to the French, continued to offer arbitration,
while at the same time making frantic appeals for help to Britain.
Lord Rosebery's reply, which he al^o communicated to the Quai
d'Orsay, was eminently correct. He urged the Siamese to avoid
anj^hing that might provoke France to resort to war. But it was cold
comfort to the harassed Prince DevawOngse. And the inevitable
frontier incidents occurred. There was an attack on the French
position at Khone. The French commander, Thoreux, was taken
prisoner and some Vietnamese soldiers killed. The Siamese tried to
place the reponsibility for it upon the semi-barbarous tribes in the
neighbourhood. Then they changed their tone and contended that
Captain Thoreux had been in comniand of an aggressive expedition
and his capture was justified. Lord Rosebery, however, supported the
French demand for his surrender, and as an act of grace the Siamese
handed him over.
The systematic advance of the French columns along the Mekong
brought a whole series of incidents. It seems impossible to establish
the truth about them; and since their propaganda value to France was
high, one naturally distrusts the French version. The French were
looking for trouble in order to turn it to their own ends. The most
publicized incident was one in which, according to the French account,
the Siamese murdered a French official, M. Grosgurin, while he was
conducting one of their frontier garrisons from an abandoned post
back to the Mekong. Subsequent investigation established the fact
that the attack had been made by the French party on the Siamese.
But long before this was known the French version of the affair caused
the agitation in France against Siam to reach such a pitch that the
government was able to take the drastic action which was the object
of all this manoeuvring.

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EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. I l l

(c) Paknam and after

By April 1893 the tension in Bangkok had become so acute that
a British gunbioat, the Swift, was sent there to protect British lives
and property in case of trouble. Two months later there were rumours
that the French intended to send a naval squadron to close the port.
It was feared that if such action were indeed to be taken there would
be a mass outbreak of the lower classes of the Chinese population
in the city. A further British warship, the Pallas, was accordingly
despatched from Singapore. A full explanation of these moves was
sent to the French government and assurances were given that the
British government was doing its utmost to. persuade Siam to come
to a friendly agreement with France. The French government in
return gave Britain an undertaking to report at once to her any movements of its f^eet in the jieighbourhood of Siam.
A French gunboat, the Lutin, vras anchored in the Menam off the
French legation. Early in July Pavie notified the Siamese government
that two more French gunboats were being despatched and would
arrive at Paknam on the i3thf He asked for pilots to bring them up
to Bangkok. The Siamese government replied that under its treaty
with France no warships of any foreign power could proceed further
than Paknam without its consent. This was certainly the intention of
the clause in the Franco-Siamese treaty of 1856 dealing with the
subject, though it may be conceded that its wording was not so clear
as in the Anglo-Siamese treaty of the previous year. Pavie, however,
brushed aside the Siamese objection and informed them that the
Inconstant would proceed up to Bangkok, even in face of opposition.
On receiving this information the Siamese began to close the mouth
of the river, while Lord Rosebery reminded the French of their
promise to keep his government informed of any movements of their
fleet and made it clear that the additional British ships sent from
Singapore would not go beyond Paknam. In response to this warning
the French Foreign Minister, M. Develle, telegraphed Rosebery
that the additional French ships would also remain outside the*bar
at Paknam, and on the morning of 13 July Pavie in Barigk'bk gave asimilar assurance to Prince Devawongse;
On that same day the Inconstant and Comete arrived at Paknam
to find the British warships lying at anchor there. Captain Macleod,
the British commander, informed the French that they might expect
instructions to wait outside the bar. T h e F r e n c h commander, how-

CH. 3 7

BRITAIN, FRANCE AND THE SIAMESE QUESTION

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ever, disregarded this advice, and after a twenty minutes' engagement

with the Paknam fort, in which both sides suffered casuahies, the
two warships made their way up the river to Bangkok. The best
account of the incident is given by Warrington Smyth in his Five
Years in Siam.^ He was an eye-witness. Captain Macleod in reporting
the incident declared that the French commander actually received
instructions to remain at Paknam before entering the river. Be that
as it may, the Siamese committed the serious blunder of firing the
first shots in the encounter. By disregarding Rosebery's reiterated
advice they had played into the hands of the French. The two ships
anchored off the French legation at Bangkok. At this critical moment
Prince Devawongse rose to the occasion by congratulating their commander on his skill and daring in forcing an entrance. His admirable
suavity and restraint probably saved the situation.
Pavie at once seized the opportunity to demand that the Siamese
troops should be withdrawn from the Mekong and all hostilities
suspended. Prince Devawongse agreed to the demand, but the French
government at home was by no means satisfied. It instructed Pavie to
deliver an ultimatum demanding that the whole of the territory on the
left bank of the Mekong, including the principality of Luang Prabang,
should be ceded to France, that an indemnity of three million francs*
should be paid in respect of the casualties inflicted on the French
ships, and that the officers responsible for the firing at Paknam and
the murderers of Grosgurin should be punished. Failing this a
blockade of the Menam would be established.
The ultimatum was delivered on 20 July. The Siamese government
accepted the second and third demands but offered a compromise in
place of the first. Pavie, however, refused to bargain and announced
that he would leave Bangkok on the 26th if the demands were not met
in toto. It was now Britain's turn to be alarmed. She had optimistically believed that the French dispute with Siam was concerned
merely with the frontier on the lower Mekong. Now she saw that
if France annexed all the territory covered by the first demand, not
only was the question of the integrity of the Siamese dominions
involved, but on the upper Mekong the French would come directly
into contact with Burma and their claims would clash with British
interests in that region.
The British ambassador in Paris was accordingly instructed to obtain
from M. Develle a clear statement regarding France's aims. Develle
1 New York, 1898.
" The exchange rate of the franc was then twenty-five to the .

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KUROPIiAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

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replied that since the terms of the uhimatum had been pubHshed to the
world France could not, in the excited state of her own public opinion,
climb down. He assured the ambassador,] however, that when Siam
had accepted the terms the way would be open for the establishment
of a buffer state between the French and British empires. Notwithstanding its previous experience of the valuer of French promises
regarding the Mekong question, the British government accepted the
French assurance. Develle indeed promised that France would
respect the independence of Siam. Lord Rosebery therefore went so
far as to urge the Siamese to accept the French demands.
On 25 July, when the Siamese government had given no sign of
acceptance, the French proceeded to blockade the Menam. Two days
later Chulalongkorn, who had been in a state of collapse throughout
the crisis and had left matters entirely to Prince Devawongse, accepted
the terms of the ultimatum unconditionally. On 3 August the blockade
was called off, but Chulalongkorn had to agree to further stipulations
thrown in as guarantees. Pending the Siamese evacuation of the east
bank of the Mekong France was^to occupy Chantabun. Moreover,
Siam was to withdraw her forces to a distance of twenty-five kilometres from the west bank, and in addition evacuate the provinces of
Battambang and Siemreap (Angkor), which had once belonged to
Cambodia.
Even then the state of tension was in no way relaxed. When
negotiations began for a treaty in which all these concessions were-to
be embodied France attempted to insert a number of supplementary
terms, ostensibly designed as additional guarantees, but, in Lord
Rosebery's words, calculated to infringe materially the independence
and integrity of Siam, which she had pledged herself to respect.
Throughout the negotiations Britain, constantly applied pressure on
France to modify her demands. Chulalongkorn, however, had hoped
for much more positive support and was bitterly disappointed at what
he regarded as British neutrality. The Siamese government did its
utmost to resist the French demands, and it was not until France had
served a further ultimatum upon him that Chulalongkorn, acting on
British advice, gave way and on 3 October accepted the treaty.
_
France had scored a diplomatic triumph over Britajn, whose hands
were tied by the fear that firmer action on her part would lead to a
European war. From the moment when the Siamese fired their first
salvo at Paknam the game was in France's hands, and in the opinion of
shrewd observers Rosebery went as far as he could consistently with
prudence. What Lord Curzon described as 'thfe fiery Chauvinisnfi

CH. 3 7

BRITAIN, FRANCE AND THE SIAMESE QUESTION

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of the Colonial Jingoes of Tongking and Saigon'^ had risen to a

dangerous pitch. They were demanding control over Battambang and
Siemreap, and further resistance by Siam might have resulted not only
in their loss to France but also in a real threat to her independence.
Had matters reached such a pass it is an interesting speculation what
action Britain would have taken. As it was, Siam owed her salvation
not a little to the consistency with which British diplomacy concentrated upon obtaining from France a guarantee of the independence
of the basin of the Menam.
After the immediate crisis had passed, Britain's interest was in the
creation of the promised buffer state on the upper Mekong. In August
1893 J. G. Scott was recalled from his special work in the Shan states
and sent to take charge of the legation at Bangkok so that in due course
he might represent Britain on the Buffer State Commission. His
opposite number was to be Auguste Pavie. Since the previous year
arrangements had been in progress between Britain, China and Siam
for the rectification of Burma's eastern frontier. Kiang Hung and
Mong Lem had been ceded to China on condition that they were not
to be alienated to another country without British permission. When,
however, France forced Siam to surrender her territory on the upper
Mekong, China broke the treaty by ceding the trans-Mekong state of
Kiang Hung to France.
Britain had been about to make a similar arrangement for the
transfer to Siam of Keng Cheng with its capital Mong Sing. But now
under the Franco-Siamese Treaty of 1893 France claimed the state as
being on the left bank of the Mekong. It was in this area that the
proposed buffer state was to be formed; Scott and Pavie accordingly
arranged to meet at Mong Sing at the end of December 1894. The
little state was under a Myosa. He received so many contradictory
messages regarding both the actual and the future status of his
principality that he finally decided that the way of safety was to hoist
the French flag over his haw. But when members of the British
delegation began to arrive first he took fright and fled. ' I t was the
wisest thing he could do,' commented Scott. ^ Scott, who arrived there
on Christmas Day to find the French flag flying, promptly had it
hauled down. On i January 1895, when Pavie turned up, the Union
Jack was flying over the haw. The fat was then truly in the fire. The
petty little affair almost flared up into a first-class international
incident. The Buffer State Commission broke up and the negotiations
' J. G. D. Campbell, op. cit., p. 311, fn.i.
* Mitton, Scott of the Shan Hills; p. 211.

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EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

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had to be transferred to Europe. The plan for a buffer state vanished

into thin air. Scott and Pavie could not agree on its limits, and on the
grounds that under any form of arrangement it would become a
dangerous focus of intrigue Scott persuaded the British government
to abandon the idea.
The Mong Sing incident and the failure of the Buffer State Commission caused a hysterical outburst in France against Britain very
similar to the one that vi^as three years later to be produced by the
Fashoda affair. The two countries actually came to the brink of war.
In the negotiations which began in June 1895 Britain traded her claims
to territory east of the Mekong for a joint guarantee of the independence of the Menam valley. It was a good bargain, since she had
never intended to hold on to the trans-Mekong territory. And Lord
Salisbury's idea of defining Siam in terms of the Menam valley,
though denounced by indignant journalists,^ did result in an effective
guarantee of the independence of the area which contained fourfifths of her population and was economically one of the richest
regions in the Indo-Chinese peninsula. Moreover, France was fobbed
off with territories which, though large, were economically worthless.
The Anglo-French agreement was signed in January 1896. Mong
Sing went to France. Both states guaranteed the independence of the
Menam valley and promised to seek no exclusive advantages in Siam.
The agreement did not affect the Korat plateau, the old Cambodian
provinces of Battambang and Siemreap, or the Malay Peninsula.
Salisbury was careful to point out that these were as integral parts of
Siam as the Menam valley, but from the point of view of an agreement,
with France concerning British interests were of no importance.^
It was only with the lapse of time that the soundness of this policy
became evident. France indeed soon discovered how worthless were
the Mekong territories she had acquired, compared with the Menam
valley. Her Colonial Party actually proclaimed, loudly and publicly,
that control over the Menam was essential to the economic success of
French Indo-China. It was some years before the danger was really
averted. There were constant quarrels between France and Siam, and
the continued occupation of Chantabun, which was a heavy drain
on French colonial finances without any compensating advantages,caused much heart-burning to both sides.
Ihid., p. 166. Scott's comment on the abandonment of Mong Sing was that Lord
Salisbury, 'who was, without exception, the worst Foreign Secretary we ever had for
matters east of Suez, . . . gave up the whole question.'
' Ninety per cent of Siam's foreign trade was in Britain's hands, and seven-eighths of
this was with the Menam valley.

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. BRITAIN, FRANCE AND THE SIAMESE QUESTION

663

The most dangerous quarrel was over a badly-drafted clause in the

treaty of 1893, under which Siam promised to hand over to the French
legation at Bangkok all such Annamite, Khmer and Laotian subjects of
France as were detained in the country, and allow any deported
inhabitants of the Laos states to return home. The French consulate
thereupon went ahead with the enrolment of as many 'French
proteges' as possible, without any proper investigation of their cases.
It then complained to the Siamese government that they were being
prevented from receiving the protection of French jurisdiction.
The matter caused no little embarrassment to the Siamese, since their
navy was manned largely by Khmers. Had it not been for her fear of
Britain's possible reaction to any attempt to sabotage the agreement of
1896, this question could easily have afforded France a useful pretext
for extinguishing Siam's independence.
Anglo-French bickering over the question of trade with Yunnan
gradually died a natural death. In 1897 an agreement permitted
the construction of a railway from French Indo-China to Yunnan and
provided for its ultimate connection with the Burma Railways. The
French built a line linking Tongking with Yunnanfu (Kunming), but
went no farther. The British abandoned their surveys beyond Bhamo
and Lashio respectively. Between 1894 and 1900 Major H. R. Davies
surveyed all possible railway routes into Yunnan and produced an
extremely valuable book and map on the subject. He showed that the
country to be traversed was exceptionally difficult and the profits of
the enterprise doubtful, but advocated construction. By this time,
however, it had become quite clear that the best approach to Yunnan
was from Tongking. At the turn of the century also Britain had
become too preoccupied with the Boer War on the one hand and German ambitions on the other to devote much attention to Indo-Chinese
affairs. When, therefore, Lord Curzon as Governor-General of India
dubbed the idea of linking up the Burma Railways with Yunnan
'midsummer madness' and vetoed the proposal it was summarily
relegated to the limbo of lost illusions.
In April 1904 the conclusion of the Entente Cordiale wound up
finally the Franco-British controversy over Siam and left both sides
free thereafter to come to terms separately with Bangkok. In that same
year France concluded a new treaty with Sia_m whereby the Laos
frontier was modified to her advantage. Siam renounced her
sovereignty over Luang Prabang and agreed to a joint commission to
deal with the Cambodian frontier. In return France agreed to
evacuate Chantabun and reduced her demands in connection with her

664

EUROPEAN TERRITORIAL EXPANSION

PT. Ill

'proteges' and the neutral zone. This proved to be a turning-point in

the relations between the two countries. In 1907 they made a further
agreement whereby Siam surrendered the Cambodian provinces of
Battambang and Siemreap. France in return handed back some of the
territory surrendered by Siam in 1904 and abandoned all claims to
jurisdiction over her Asian subjects.
Britain also began discussions with Siam in 1904. They resulted in
the conclusion in 1909 of a treaty by which she surrendered all her
extra-territorial rights in return for the abandonment by Siam of her
sovereign rights over the Malay states of Kelantan, Trengganu,
Kedah, and Perils. She also granted a loan of four million sterling to
Siam for railway construction in the Peninsula. Siam was the gainer
on balance by the treaty; her rights over these states were vague, and
they had never been a paying proposition.
The story of what Graham appositely terms 'the long-drawn-out
series of diplomatic contortions' by which Siam fended off a ravenous
enemy at the cost of sacrificing 90^000 square milesof territory is not a
pleasant one. It belongs to the most intense period of European
competition for colonial possessions and reflects some of its worst
features. Siam, it has been said,' gained morally by this physical loss '^
in that she became a more compact and homogeneous country. She
had certainly not shown her best qualities in exercising dominion over
other peoples. The Anglo-French agreement of January 1896 did
much to raise Siam's morale; it inaugurated a new period of reform
largely influenced by British ideas.
' Virginia Thompson, op. lit., p. 163.

PART IV

NATIONALISM AND THE CHALLENGE TO

EUROPEAN DOMINATION

CHAPTER 38

T H E PHILIPPINES T O T H E END OF SPANISH RULE

DURING the first half of the seventeenth century the Spanish hold upon
the Philippines was strenuously challenged by the Dutch. Although
they came into the island world of South-East Asia mainly in order to
wrest control over the spice trade from the Portuguese, the Dutch were
equally concerned to break the power of Spain. Quite apart from their
general hostility to Spain as the enemy of their independence, they were
impelled by two special considerations. In the first place the Spaniards
from their Philippine bases could give vital assistance to the Portuguese
in the Moluccas; in the second Manila's strategic position as an entrepot
for Far Eastern trade oflFered dazzling opportunities of which the Dutch
were only too well aware. Hence their onslaught upon the HispanoPortuguese power in the Moluccas was accompanied by a grim naval
warfare waged year after year in Philippine waters. It began in 1600
with an attempt by Oliver van Noort to intercept the Acapulco galleon.
When he failed to do so, he cruised about Manila Bay plundering Chinese
and Filipino shipping. But at the battle of Mariveles the Spaniards
inflicted so severe a check on him that he had to limp away with the loss
of one of his ships.

The Spanish counter-attacks in the Moluccas, which culminated in

the downfall of Sultan Zaide of Ternate in 1606, provoked a new Dutch
offensive under Cornelis Matalief which inflicted much damage upon
Spanish and Portuguese forts and sea patrols in Indonesian waters,
and Matalief, on returning home, advised the States General to make
an all-out attack upon the Philippines in alliance with the Moros. This
was made in 1609, the year of the conclusion of the Twelve Years Truce
between Spain and Holland; for there was no let-up in their warfare
in the East. A powerful Dutch fleet under Admiral Wittert attacked
first the port of Iloilo on Panay, but finding the opposition too determined went on to Manila Bay, which it blockaded for five months.
The Spaniards, however, decisively defeated his fleet on 26 April 1610
in a stretch of water known as Playa Honda not far from Manila, and
Wittert himself was killed. The indefatigable Governor-General Juan
dp Silvfl tVipn followed up this success by an incursion into the Moluccas.
667

668

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

There, however, he found the enemy so well established on the island

of Amboyna that he returned home to prepare for a much greater effort
involving the co-operation of Goa. This qffensive was launched early
in 1616, but came to nothing. The Portuguese fleet was late in arriving
at the rendezvous, and while awaiting them at Malacca de Silva died
and his second-in-command thereupon took the armada back to Manila.
In the meantime the Dutch, convinced that while Manila could come
to the help of the Portuguese in the Moluccas their own trade would be
insecure, had undertaken a new effort to conquer the Philippines. Thus
while de Silva's expedition was in Indonesian waters, Joris van Speilbergen with a Dutch squadron, that had sailed via the Magellan Straits,
appeared before the entrance to Manila Bay at the end of February 1616.
Had he attacked, the city must have fallen. But hearing of de Silva's
expedition he sailed away to Ternate, only to find that the great offensive
had misfired. In the following year, however, the Dutch returned to the
attack; a second battle was fought at Playa Honda and again they sustained a severe defeat. They continued, however, to harass the Philippines. In 1618 and 1619 their squadrons entered Manila Bay and
plundered shipping, and in 1620 they made another abortive attack
upon the Manila-bound galleon from Acapulco. They could sail about
almost at will, for after the sea-fight in 1617 the Spaniards could not
muster another fleet capable of challenging them; and in 1619 the
Anglo-Dutch treaty was signed which placed English ships also at the
disposal of Jan Peterszoon Coen. In January 1621 an Anglo-Dutch
fleet began the blockade of Manila, and kept it up until May of the
following year, preventing any ships from leaving or entering the Bay.
Again the Spaniards were unable to take effective action at sea. Their
opponents, on the other hand, made no attempt to test the defences gf
Manila, but contented themselves with immobilizing the trade of the
port.
In 1622 the Dutch planted a fort on the Pescadores Islands from
which to intercept the trade of Manila with China and Japan. In 1624
they transferred to Formosa, and managed to divert- to that island
much of the Chinese trade that normally went to Manila. But the
Spaniards could still struggle gamely. They won a third naval engagement with a Dutch squadron at Playa Honda, and in the-lull which
ensued sent an expedition to Formosa, and established two forts there
as a counterpoise to the Dutch. They also fought the Moros,,who were
receiving arms from the Dutch, and strengthened their forts in the
Moluccas. They still possessed five there, but they were in such
jeopardy from Dutch attack that Spaniards on tKe spot believed that

CH. 3 8

THE PHILIPPINES TO THE END OF SPANISH RULE

669

without much stronger military support from home, they, and indeed
the whole Spanish empire in the western Pacific, would fall into Dutch
hands.
After a longish spell of commerce-raiding the Dutch went over to
the offensive again in 1640, the year of the Portuguese breakaway
from Spain under Braganza leadership. In 1641 Malacca fell, and in
the following year the Dutch captured the Spanish strongholds on
Formosa, thereby securing a valuable base for operations against the
Philippines just to the north of Luzon. In July 1645 they bombarded
the Spanish fort at Jolo, though without success. The year 1646 saw
no less tjjian five naval engagements in which the Spaniards with two
reconditioned old galleons inflicted one reverse after another upon
Dutch marauding squadrons. The fighting culminated in 1647 with an
attack upon Manila Bay by Martin Gerretsen with a fleet of twelve ships.
He bombarded the fort at Cavite, but was repulsed and killed and his
flagship sunk in an intense artillery fight. The remainder of his force
then made the island of Corregidor their base and plundered the
towns of Bataan until, deterred by Spanish and Filipino resistance
and the outbreak of an epidemic among them, they abandoned the
enterprise and sailed away. In 1648 Spain and the United Provinces
signed the Treaty of Munster, and Dutch attacks upon the Philippines
ceased. Their raiding, however, continued; it only ceased when,
on account of Coxinga's threat to attack Manila in 1662, the Spanish
garrisons were withdrawn from Zamboanga and the Moros area, and
at the same time from Ternate.
The Spanish success in retaining the Philippines, in spite of the
long series of Dutch attempts to destroy their hold upon the islands,
was of decisive importance in South-East Asian history. It had been
one of the main recommendations of Jan Peterszoon Coen's political!
programme that Manila and Macao should be conquered and HispanoPortuguese power overthrown in the western Pacific. The Dutch failure
was due in large measure to the tenacity of the Spaniards in defence
and counter-attack; but perhaps in even larger measure to the loyalty
of the Filipinos to their Spanish masters. When one takes into account
the appalling sacrifices the Filipinos were called upon to make, the
fact that the Spaniards were able to command adequate support from
them to repel both the Dutch and their allies the Moros bears striking
testimony to the work of the Catholic missionaries.
By the middle of the seventeenth century the Spanish effort to
subdue the Moros had reached a position of stalemate. The abandonment of Zamboanga in a moment of panic greatly stimulated Moro raids,

670

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

especially upon the Christian communities in the islands just to the

north of Mindanao.- Hence, as soon as the Coxinga threat was lifted,
the Jesuits began to agitate for the reoccupation of the fort, and
in 1666, as a-result of their pressure, the queen-regent sent instructions
to that effect. But they were disregarded: the settlement had been
very costly to maintain, and the Manila authorities had begun to
cherish the hope that negotiation was worth a trial, since the Muslim
Malays had come to have a real interest in trade with the Spanishcontrolled regions. Moreover, what had once been semi-feudal confederacies of Magindanaus and Sulus were, long before the end of the
century, becoming welded into centralized sultanates with claims to
international status. In 1704 Manila was invited to arbitrate in a
quarrel between the sultans of Magindanau and Sulu, and the opposing
parties not only accepted a Jesuit priest as arbitrator, but his decision
as well. Nevertheless, royal orders continued to be issued every so
often for the reoccupation of Zamboanga until finally in 1718 the
standard of Spain was unfurled once more over the fort of Our
Lady of Pilar, and military expeditions again directed against the
Moros.
The peace-by-negotiation policy was not, however, abandoned. In
the seventeen-twenties a commercial treaty was made with the Sultan of
Sulu which provided also that Christian captives should be released
and Christianity tolerated in the sultan's dominions. And, prompted
by the Jesuits, Philip V sent personal messages to the More chiefs
offering them alliances with Spain. Neither force nor conciliation
had any appreciable effect upon the situation. The Moros'continued to
raid and to be in effect the real masters of the Philippine seas.
Among the rulers approached by Philip V was Alimud Din, Sultan of
Sulu, a learned and respected ruler, who had revised the Sulu code of
laws and translated Arabic texts, including parts of the Koran, into
the Sulu language. At the king's request in 1744 he agreed to permit
a Jesuit to preach in his dominions, and a Spanish church and fort to
be erected. Five years later, however, his brother Baiitilan, disliking
the pro-Spanish tendency of his policy, seized the throne. Alimud
Din and his family escaped to Zamboanga and thence went on to Manila,
where they were welcomed. He accepted Christian baptism,' and sent his son and daughter to school in Manila^ where he came to be known
as Don Fernando de Alimud Din I, Catholic Sultan of Jolo. In 1751 he
accompanied a Spanish expedition against Jolo, which aimed at restoring
him; but, on the grounds that a letter, alleged to have been written
by him to the Sultan of Mindanao, was treasonable, he was sent back to

CH. 3 8

THE PHILIPPINES TO THE END OF SPANISH RULE

671

Manila and imprisoned, though later he was accorded a measure of freedom and a monthly pension. As we have already seen,^ he was still
living in Manila at the tirrie of the British capture of the city in 1762.
The British restored him to his throne, but he soon abdicated in favour
of his son Israel, who reigned until 1778, when he in his turn was
deposed by a son of Bantilan.
The British occupation of Manila (October 1762-May 1764) was an
incident in the Seven Years War. The British Government expected it
to yield enormous plunder and do serious damage to Spanish commerce
in the Pacific, but had not envisaged its retention after the war. They
certainly ;^imed at ousting Spain from the China seas, in extending their
own commerce there, but thought tha^ the annexation of the island of
Mindanao might best serve this purpose. The news of the capture of
the city, however, did not reach Europe in time to affect the peace
negotiations at Paris, and the East India Company were thus prevented
from using it as a bargaining counter. Manila was handed back to
Spain, and the huge ransom of four million dollars, promised by the
Spanish authorities when the city surrendered, was repudiated by
Madrid. In any case, the splendid resistance, led by the lieutenantgovernor Don Simon de Anda, which prevented the British from
extending their conquests beyond Manila, showed that the annexation of
the Philippines was out of the question.
The effects of the occupation upon the Philippines, on the other
hand, were far-reaching. World attention became focused on Manila
for the first time; for a few months it was opened to foreign trade, and
British and other foreign merchants came to examine its potentialities
as a commercial centre. More important still, the ease with which
the city had been captured broke for ever Spain's military prestige,
and rebellions flared up everywhere. It is not surprising therefore that
during the later years of the eighteenth century the Moro raids became worse than ever before. Every Christian town between Mindanao
and Luzon suffered horribly. Attacks were even made upon the coasts
of Luzon up to the very wharves of Manila. Thousands were massacred
and enslaved, and it was estimated that an average of 500 Filipinos a
year were sold in the slave markets of the Malay Archipelago. The
Spaniards, notwithstanding a vast expenditure upon expeditions
against the Moros, seemed to be helpless; actually, nothing availed
until the advent of the steamship in the next century.
The systematic propagation of Christianity among the Filipino
peoples gave to the religious orders who supplied the missionaries,
^ Supra, p . 464.

672

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

the Augustinians, the Franciscans, the Jesuits, the Dominicans and

the Recollectsto name them in the order of their arrival in the
Philippinesa necessarily important place in the colony. As in all
Spanish colonies, Church and State were united. There were two sets
of authorities, civil and ecclesiastical, and their work necessarily
overlapped. Ideally they formed the interrelated parts of one whole.
The civil authority from the governor-general downwards had, in addition to their ordinary duties, the supreme one of assisting the propagation of Christianity. The ecclesiastical authorities, besides tending
to the spiritual needs of their flocks, were concerned with the maintenance and spread of Spanish sovereignty, and tfie cost of ecclesiastical
administration was borne by the State. The position was that the
Spanish 'Crown, having been entrusted by the papacy with the administration of the Church in the Indies, delegated to the regular clergy the
task of Christianizing the native peoples.
From this relationship two main sources of contention arose. In
the first place no satisfactory division between the civil and ecclesiastical authority could be made, and there were constant complaints
by the civil authority of ecclesiastical interference involving the usurpation of its powers. In the second place the regular clergy, i.e. the
members of religious orders, denied the right of the bishop to jurisdiction over them in their role as parish clergy, although it had been
firmly laid down by the Council of Trent that no priest should exercise
care over the souls of laymen without being subject to epfscopal
authority.
The struggle for power went on without abate throughout the whole
Spanish period. On the churchmen's side it must be remembered that
they were generally more interested in welfare than their opponents,
and that in fact Spanish power in the Philippines depended more upon
them than upon the army. But there can be no doubt that, like the
Church in mediaeval Europe, the Church in the Philippines did tend to
overstep the mark in the exercise of its authority, and that the complaints, which were so frequent, were not entirely without foundation.
A few special examples must suffice. In 1606 the fiscal of Manila
reported to the king that ecclesiastics were interfering in local administration and making improper assessments upon the people. "He asked'
that the Audiencia should be instructed to investigate the situation.
In 1610 the governor-general himself reported an incident in which
the Dominicans had brought about the escape of a condemned prisoner
by threatening the alcalde with excommunication. A royal order,
to the Dominican provincial, telling him to restrain his subordinates

CH. 3 8

THE PHILIPPINES TO THE END OF SPANISH RULE

673

from meddling in civil affairs, resulted from this complaint. In 1618

the Augustinians were the subject of a complaint; they were accused of
charging excessive fees for masses, burials and other services, and of
levying taxes for the erection of churches and convents without the
sanction of the civil authority. The king in response issued a decree
against this, but the governor-general reported that the archbishop of
Manila thought the decree unnecessary. Hence, in 1622 another royal
decree ordering the ecclesiastical authority to stop 'irregularities' was
issued. Royal decrees, however, seem to have had no effect, and in
local government matters the friars tended to be more readily obeyed
than the acalde-mayor.
In trying to uphold the civil power two governors-general came to
grief. In the first case, which occurred in the sixteen-forties, GovernorGeneral Hurtado de Corcuera and Archbishop Hernando Guerrero
came to loggerheads over a soldier, who had killed a girl and taken
refuge in an Augustinian church. Corcuera had the soldier apprehended
and executed, and the archbishop's protests resulted in his own imprisonment in Fort Santiago. On the expiry of the governor-general's
term of office the residencia sentenced him to five years' imprisonment,
and notwithstanding his distinguished services against the Moros the
king refused to interfere with the court's decision. The second case
was that of Governor-General Diego de Salcedo, who in 1668 was
arrested by the Inquisition because when his opponent Archbishop
Miguel Poblete died, he forebade the bells to be tolled or the body
embalmed. But the real cause of trouble was said to have been that he
had refused a military office to the nephew of the commissary of the
Inquisition. On his way to Mexico to answer the charges he died; he
was subsequently exonerated.
In 1680 a tremendous controversy broke out over a complaint to
Governor-General Vargas on the part of the parish priest of Vigan that
the acting head of the diocese of Nueva Segovia had interfered with the
exercise of his functions, although he did not reside in the diocese. The
matter was brought before the Audiencia, and when Archbishop Pardo
challenged its right to hear the case, he was deported to Lingayen, and a
number of his fellow Dominicans, who supported him, were banished
to various other places. But the governor-general's successor in 1684
upheld the archbishop's claim, and Vargas and his associates were all
excommunicated. Vargas himself was offered pardon if he would
publicly perform a most humiliating penance. When he refused, he
was confined to an island in the Pasig River. In 1689 he also died
while on his way to Mexico, a prisoner. In 1719 Governor-General

674

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

Bustamente was murdered in the course of a quarrel with the ecclesiastical authority over the arrest of the archbishop, when he refused
to hand over an accused man who had takeii refuge in a church. The
friars led a rabble which attacked the governor's palace, and in the
ensuing melee he and his son were killed. In each of these cases the
governor-general abandoned a strong position by an arbitrary act
which put him in the wrong, or appeared to. Hence the sum effect of
these struggles was the gradual enhancement of the Church's power at
the expense of that of the civil authority, and Le Gentil's comment in
1781 that the religious orders in the Philippines were more absolute
than the king himself, was only too true. This state of affairs was
to bring its own nemesis in the nineteenth century, when the friars had
lost their missionary ardour and found themselves faced with the growing opposition of the Filipino people.
The struggle over episcopal visitation had in the long run an even
more profound effect upon Philippine history than the conflict between
the lay and ecclesiastical authorities. Beginning as a conflict about
episcopal jurisdiction over regular clergy exercising parochial functions,
it developed into one between the regular and the secular clergy for
possession of the parishes; and, as the Spanish, friars clung to their
parochial rights, and sought to prevent them from passing into the
hands of the Filipino secular priests, it became racial in character,
and thus a main factor in the later nineteenth-century revolutionary
movement.
The regular clergy, who undertook the task of Christianizing the
Filipinos, were subject to the heads of their respective orders, known
as 'provincials', but as parish priests they were nominally under
episcopal jurisdiction, and they objected to this. Against them were
ranged the ruling of the Council of Trent (1564), Canon Law, which laid
down the episcopal right of ' visitation', and the decrees of the papacy.
Bishop Salazar, who had had long experience in Mexico, where episcopal visitation was accepted by the friars, asserted his right to this type
of jurisdiction in 1582, and was supported by the governor-general.
He had, however, to abandon the plan in practice because of the
opposition of the friar-missionaries. A second attempt was made^in
1620 by Archbishop Serrano to enforce visitation; but, although he
appealed to the king, he failed. Archbishop Poblete in 1654 made the
third attempt to assert episcopal authority over the friair-curates, but
had to abandon it because the Audiencia supported his opponents; and
he could not fight the matter to the final issue because he had at his
disposal only 59 seculars as against 254 friar-curates'.

CH. 3 8

THE PHILIPPINES TO THE END OF SPANISH RULE

675

At the end of the century Archbishop Camacho seized the opportunity to raise the matter again, when the friars appealed to him for
support against the Audiencia over its action in investigating the validity
of their land-titles. He was willing to help them, he told them, if they
would accept episcopal visitation. When they refused, he supported
the investigator appointed by the Audiencia. The .procurators of the
religious orders in Madrid thereupon (1699) delivered a protest to the
king in which they offered him the alternative of granting exemption
from episcopal control or the withdrawal of all friars from curacies.
As there were only 60 secular priests for some 800 parishes, they felt
themselves to be on strong ground. Nevertheless, the king in May 1700
issued a decree supporting the archbishop, and in January 1705 the pope
issued a bull confirming the powers claimed by Camacho. Yet the
friars again won the day. Their hostility resulted in such turbulence
that the governor-general and the Audiencia withdrew their support
from the archbishop. His successor. Archbishop Cuestra, on taking
office in 1707 renewed the struggle by insisting upon putting the papal
bull into effect. But the reports of the resistance so alarmed the king
that he ordered the archbishop to postpone all action until further
notice.
The matter was revived once more in 1767, when Archbishop de Santa
Justa ordered the regular clergy in the parishes to submit to visitation.
He had the support of the governor-general on the strength of orders
received from Madrid. The Pope also had issued two bulls ordering
the friar-curates to accept visitation. Because of this the Dominicans
in council decided to accept the archbishop's mandate. After long
discussion a compromise was arrived at and embodied in a royal decree
issued in December 1776. The friar-curates were to accept visitation
but only by their own superiors. Episcopal visitation was to be limited
to parishes served by secular clergy.
In 1768 the Jesuits were expelled from the Philippinesfor reasons
connected purely with European historyand as a result the secularization question came into the foreground. The parish vacancies caused
by their departure were filled with secular priests. The seculars
appointed were all Filipinos, and because of the shortage of candidates
some of the new priests were inadequately trained and highly unsuitable.
Governor-General Anda, however, thought he had found the key to the
solution of the visitation problem, and on his advice the king in 1774
decreed that all parishes on becoming vacant were to be secularized.
Once again the anger .of the friars blazed forth, and with apparent
reason because of the low quality of the appointees. The complaints

676

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

reaching the king were so bitter that in 1776 he suspended further

secularization. It was a sad blow to the cause of the Filipino clergy.
In 1804 the pendulum swung still further against them, when a beginning was made to the restoration to the regular clergy of parishes previously taken from them. But a worse blowistill fell in 1861 when, to
compensate the Recollect friars for the loss of the missions in Mindanao
restored to the Jesuits on their return to the Philippines in 1859, a
number of wealthy parishes in the Manila neighbourhood in the hands
of secular priests were transferred to them. The situation now was vastly
different from what it had been in 1776: the Filipino seculars were
now well educated and thoroughly competent, and they bitterly resented
the slurs cast upon their race, intelligence and morality in the very
unpleasant controversy which this grave blunder stirred up.
Their cause was championed by one of their number, the learned
Father Pedro Pelaez, who became acting archbishop of Manila in April
1862. Only a month earlier he had addressed a strong remonstrance to
Queen Isabella II asking for the revocation of the decree of the previous
year ordering the transfer of the parishes. His plea was rejected, but he
went on to lead a powerful campaign against racial discrimination. When
he lost his life in the Manila earthquake of 3 June 1863, his pupil Father
Jose Burgos continued the agitation. His Manifesto to the Noble Spanish
People, published in June 1864, attacked with tremendous vigpur the
current assertions of the superiority of the white race, but it failed in its
objective. In 1870 there were still only 181 out of 792 parishes administered by the Filipino clergy. In that year, however, the Spanish
Archbishop of Manila, realizing that the growing resentment against the
regular clergy was stirring up strong anti-Spanish feeling, wrote a
serious warning to the Regent of Spain, saying that grave evil, involving
the danger of revolution, might result from the secularization grievance.
But once again Spain did nothing. When, indeed, in 1896 the nationalist
explosion came, the secularization question was one of its strongest
ingredients.
The galleon trade brought such prosperity to Manila before the end
of the sixteenth century, and expanded so rapidly that before long
the Seville and Cadiz merchants, who managed Spain's export tradFto
America, began to be worried lest the flood of oriental goodsnotably:
Chinese textileswould affect their own trade and the manufacturing
industries upon which it drew. The export of a large quantity of silver
from Spanish America to the orient instead of to Spain was a further
source of worry to minds, dominated as they were by the buUionist
theory. Accordingly, in 1593 Spain applied a closed-door policy to

CH. 3 8

THE PHILIPPINES TO THE END OF SPANISH RULE

677

Philippine commerce, and applied it with full rigour until 1815.

Philippine commerce with Spanish America had to be carried on in
government-owned galleons only and with Manila and Acapulco in
Mexico as its sole terminals. In 1585 Philip II had tried to stop all
Chrftese-trade with Manila, but the viceroy of Mexico had refused to
take action. He then forbade the shipment of Chinese textiles from
Mexico to Peru, and direct trade between Peru and the Philippines.
When in 1593 the Manila-Acapulco run became the rule, it was laid
down that exports from Manila to Mexico were to be restricted to a
maximum value of 250,000 pesos, and imports to Manila from Mexico
to 500,000 pesos, while the run was to be limited to two galleons of not
more than 300 tons burden each. But the Manila merchants ignored the
quota, and the colonial officials connived at the evasions. When royal
decrees reaffirming the quota had no effect, and the Seville and Cadiz
merchants were losing heavily, the king in 1635 sent Pedro de Quiroga to
investigate. His severe measures, however, aroused so much opposition
that the Manila merchants refused to freight the Acapulco galleon, and
in the years 1636 and 1637 the galleon trade was at a standstill. Their
protests eventually won the day: in 1640 a new royal decree fixed the
quotas at the more realistic maxima of 300,000 and 600,000 pesos, with
two galleons of not more than 500 tons burden each to carry the trade.
In 1734 the quotas were raised to 500,000 and one million pesos, but
the galleons reduced to one.
In the eighteenth century the galleons varied in burden from 300 to
2,000 tons and were armed with from forty to sixty guns each. Many of
them were built in the Philippines, of excellent local unsplinterable
hardwood and equipped with equally good local-made cordage and sailcloth. Their Filipino builders were first-rate craftsmen, and their
Filipino crews were among the best seamen of the Pacific. Their
crews numbered between 60 and 100, and in addition they might carry
up to 400 passengers. In the seventeenth century usually more than two
made the annual voyage across the Pacific. In the 1730s, however, the
number was reduced to two; but the cost was found to be too high,
and the Manila authorities limited the number to one. To Mexico
they carried Chinese silk fabrics, cotton and linen cloths, porcelain,
spices, amber, musk and perfumes. From Mexico they brought
anything from a million to three million silver pesos, vastly exceeding
the legal limit. Losses were heavy through typhoons, overloading or
the incompetence of navigating officers. Some fell into the hands of
English freebooters; others during the Anglo-Spanish wars of the
eighteenth century were captured by the British Navy. These losses.

678

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

combined with the establishment of the Royal Company of the Philippines in 1785, and the smuggling trade with Mexico developed by
British and American private venturers, caused the galleon trade monopoly to lose its value so much that in April 1815 it was abolished, and
the trade of Mexico, California, Peru and Ecuador was opened to
Philippine commerce.
The galleon trade had effects of great importance in Philippine
history. It drew most Spaniards to the Manila area, and far too much
attention was paid to it by the officials, to the neglect of agriculture
and industry. More important still in the long run was the fact that
it forged strong links between the Philippines and America. Manila
was the gateway to trade with Spanish America, and the channel through
which Mexican pesos flowed into eastern Asia. But by concentrating
upon the American connection the Spaniards failed to develop Philippine trade with Asia: the economic ties of the Philippines were with
America rather than Asia.
The events of the eighteenth century, and notably the shock of the
British occupation of Manila, resulted in the beginnings of a new policy
abandoning isolation. It began to show itself clearly during the governorgeneralship of Jose de Basco y Vargas (1778-87), when for the first time
a comprehensive plan to develop the natural resources of the Philippines
was set in motion. Through the Economic Society of Friends of the
Country, which he founded in 1781, he sought to foster all kmds of
cultivation suitable to the country, indigo, cotton, tobacco, cinnamon,
pepper, sugar on a big scale, silk, hemp, tea, coffee and the opium
poppy. In the following year he established the government tobacco
monopoly, by which tobacco was to be cultivated in certain areas under
government supervision and sold at a fixed price to the government.
Large tracts of land were taken into cultivation in this way, and the
Philippines became the chief tobacco-producing country in the East.
Governmental revenue was much increased, so much so that the profits
of the monopoly helped to make the Philippines financially self-supporting during the nineteenth century. On the other hand the-operation of
the monopoly opened the way for much official corruption and oppression. Together with other government monopolies, notably that of wine,
it caused much popular unrest.
^
.
. Vargas aimed at making the Philippines economically .independent
of Mexico. For many years the idea of direct trade between Spain and
Manila had been discussed. King Philip V (1700-1746) had actually
formed a company for trade with Manila via the Cape of Good Hope, but
the opposition of the Manila merchants caused the sch'eme to be dropped.

CH. 3 8

THE PHILIPPINES TO THE END OF SPANISH RULE

679

Charles III (1759-88) ordered the opening of direct trade, and in 1766
sent a royal frigate with a cargo of European goods round the Cape to
Manila, and, even in face of the refusal of the Manila merchants to
co-operate, maintained the practice annually until 1783. In 1785 he
went a step further by establishing the Royal Company of the Philippines
with himself as a principal shareholder. It was given monopolistic
trade privileges with Manila, no tariffs were to be charged on the
import of Philippine products into Europe, and a percentage of the
company's net profits was to be invested in Philippine industry.
After some successful early ventures, however, it failed, partly because
of the opposition of the Manila merchants engaged in the galleon
trade, but also through bad management. Yet its effects upon the
Philippine economy were beneficial: it invested money in textile
factories, in the production of pepper and spices and the manufacture
of indigo, sugar and silk.
The royal decree of 6 September 1834, which abolished the Royal
Company, opened the port of Manila to world trade. Spanish mercantilism, which had again clamped down its restrictions upon Philippine
trade after the British occupation, remained as rigid as ever, but
Mexico's declaration of independence i n i 8 2 i , and subsequent secession,
forced Spain's hand. Hostility to foreigners was intense. In 1800 they
had been forbidden by royal edict to live in the Philippines. How little
real effect the edict had is shown by the fact that within a very few years
it had to be reissued more than once. In 1828 foreigners were forbidden
to engage in retail trade, or visit the provinces for purposes of trade. As
late as 1857 these anti-foreign laws were renewed. Foreigners were the
enemies of God and Spain, the Filipinos were told, and the 'Cholera
Massacre' of 1820 was a grim reminder of the way the Spaniards could
work up mob frenzy against them. But in spite of the often-repeated
decrees against them, foreigners did gradually work their way into the
Philippine economy after the opening of Manila to foreign trade in
1834. Keen rivalry, indeed, developed between American and British
merchants for trade supremacy there. The latter won, for with their
far-flung banking connections and commercial bases at Hong Kong,
Singapore and in India, they were in a more favourable position to push
their trade in the Philippines. The opening of the islands to world
commerce also stimulated developments in their agriculture, and their
hemp and tobacco became famous in the markets of the world. And such
things in turn stimulated road-building, the construction of harbourfacilities and port works, the development of a modern postal and
telegraph service and of a modern banking system.

68o

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

FT. IV

All this material progress brought into being, during the latter
half of the nineteenth century,_a new middle class of Filipino families,
often with mixed Chinese or Spanish blood, prosperous, well-educated,
becoming increasingly Westernized, and interested in sending its sons
abroad to widen their outlook. It was through these people that the
old isolationism, which had kept Filipino society largely incommunicado
from the outside world, was broken down. And with the impact of
modern ideas and nineteenth-century liberalism came the beginnings of
the political awakening of the Filipino people.
For most of the Spanish period education in the Philippines was exclusively in the hands of the missionary friars and Jesuits, and aimed
at propagating Christianity and Spanish culture through the medium
of the Spanish language. On the lowest level there were parochial
schools, the first of which was founded on the island of Cebu as early
as 1565. On the secondary level there were a number of boys' colleges,
in the founding of which the Jesuits took the lead, opening their first
in Manila in 1589. They also took the lead in higher education when
their college of San Ignacio received papal recognition as a university
in 1681. It was followed by the Dominican foundation of Santo Tomas,
recognized by Innocent X in 1645, which in 1870 became the University
of the Philippines. Some colleges for girls were also established in
connection with convents. But until the second half of the, nineteenth
century Spanish education was given only to a very small proportion
of the people, and few Filipinos received secondary education.
The secession of Mexico, which brought the Philippines into direct
relations with Spain, also broiight to the Philippines many Spaniards
imbued with the new liberal ideas that were stirring Europe. The
ruling concept of education as the handmaid of religion came thus to
be challenged, and at the same time a growing demand arose for its
extension. Ever since 1770 the establishment of a system of public
primary education had been spasmodically under consideration. Provision for it was at last made in 1863. The commission, upon whose
report the new education code was based, had been^^ecreed in 1839,
appointed in 1855, and took six years over its deliberations. Spain was
not in a hurry to provide the Filipinos with the means for their-own
emancipation.
'

-" '
The code laid down that at the headquarters of every pueblo there
mustbe at least one primary school for boys and one for girls. Attendance was to be compulsory, and for the poor free. The parish priest
was to be the local inspector, and the direction of the system was
vested in Provincial Boards dominated by ecclesiastics and a Superior

CH. 3 8

THE PHILIPPINES TO THE END OF SPANISH RULE

681

Commission presided over by the Archbishop of Manila. Normal

schools were to be set up for the training of teachers. The first, for
men, was opened in Manila in 1865. The figures given in various
sources for the numbers of schools and pupils vary, but it would appear
that by the end of the Spanish regime the Philippines had some 2,150
public schools with a total enrolment of well over 200,000 pupils. As
far back as 1843, long before the system came into operation, a Spanish
investigator stated that in proportion there were more literates in the
Philippines than in Spain herself. By the end of the nineteenth century
they were ahead of any other country of South-East Asia in education,
and particularly in female education, and there were said to be better
schools there than Spain established anjrwhere in America. The spread
of the Spanish language and the Latin alphabet linked the Filipinos
closer to Europe than to Asia. Thus culturally as well as economically
the Philippines stood apart in South-East Asia. Nowhere else had
Western culture and Christianity made so powerful an impact. Nowhere
else also had a modern-type nationalist movement shown itself as a
powerful and cohesive force.
Opposition by force to Spanish rule never ceased in the Philippines.
The Moros of Mindanao and the Sulu archipelago from the start had
rejected Spanish domination outright and vigorously retaliated against
all attempts to conquer them. In the middle of the seventeenth century
they forced the Spaniards so much on to the defensive that they had to
leave their settlements in Formosa in the lurch in order to concentrate
on the danger from Mindanao. Not until late in the nineteenth century,
when the steamship and modern arms forced the brave people of Sulu to
acknowledge defeat, was the pacification of the Moros completed. In
July 1878 the sultan capitulated and accepted Spanish suzerainty.
Elsewhere also in the territories occupied by Spain attempts were
made again and again to cast off her yoke. More than one hundred
were of appreciable size. In the seventeenth century discontent with
the hardships caused by the long struggle with the Dutch was a main
source of trouble, but there was no general outbreak and Spanish power
was never seriously threatened. They were usually local disturbances
due to forced labour, the appalling slowness of government in paying
for services or goods, and other crushing burdens. Some, like the
Bohol revolt in 1621, the Leyte rising which followed it, and in particular the uprising of 1660-1 in Pangasinan and Ilokos were antiSpanish in character and aimed at the restoration of what the Church
called 'paganisin'. They were watched with sympathy in other parts of
the islands, but regional jealousies were such as to enable the Spaniards

682

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

to crush each revoh with the help of 'friendly Indians'. Only a handful
of Spanish soldiers was used. In Bohol in 1744 there was an unusual
type of revolt, which began over the refusal jof a parish curate to bury
a body in consecrated ground. Three thousand rebels under Francisco
Dagahoy, the brother of the deceased man, murdered priests, fled to
the hills and defeated every attempt to dislodge them. Dagahoy
established an independent regime which lasted until 1829, long after
his death. His fcdlowers increased in number to some 20,000, and
when, after very hard fighting, the patriots weire overcome and accepted
pardon, there were 19,420 survivors.
Discontent with the occupationof disputed legalityof Filipino
lands by the religious orders caused a whole series of agrarian uprisings
in 1745-6 in the provinces of Bulacan, Batangas, Laguna, Cavite and
Risal, around Manila. They were so serious that Philip VI appointed
an investigator into the charges brought against the ecclesiastics.
They refused, however, to submit their land-titles to a secular judge
and although they were adjucfged to have usurped the lands, and the
decision was upheld on appeal by both the Audiencia and the Council
of the Indies in Madrid, they refused to hand them over and eventually
won their case.
The British occupation of Manila (1762-4) triggered off a number
of rebellions because of the ease with which the Spaniards had been
defeated. The most important was led by Diego Silang in the Ilokos
region. He began by asking for the abolition of tribute, because of
the Spanish failure to defend the country, and offered to lead Iloko
troops against the British. When his demands were refused, he made
Vigan the capital of an independent government which maintained itself
against all attacks for nearly a year. Silang was assassinated, but
his heroic wife, the Tlokano Joan of Arc', held out for some months
until hunted down and captured by a flying brigade of loyal Filipinos.
There were about a dozen other risings at the time, but the vigorous
action of Governor-General Anda, helped by militant friars and loyal
Filipinos, caused their failure in every case. Although, many of the
leaders of the revolts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are
today acclaimed as national heroes, their revolts were purely local^ in
character, and it has been well said that 'it took two hundred,and.fifty
years of the pax hispanica before a Philippine national consciousness
could become articulate'.*
The nineteenth century saw a growing spirit of unrest in the Philippines. There were risings due to the abuses of the monopoly system
' J. L. Phelan, Hispanization of the Philippines, 1959, p. 151.

CH, 3 8

THE PHILIPPINES TO THE END OF SPANISH RULE

683

and also tO' the rapacity of the religious orders. But developments
elsewhere, in Spain and Spanish America, now began to have their
influence. The Sarrat rebellion of 1815, for instance, was caused by
the decree of Ferdinand VII suppressing the liberal Spanish Constitution of 1812. The dramatic Novaks Mutiny of 1823, which almost
resulted in the seizure of Manila by rebellious Filipino troops, arose
out of racial discrimination in the army. Racial discrimination in
ecclesiastical matters caused the revolt of 1841-2, which itself led to
the mutiny of the Tagalog Regiment in 1843. All these revolts, like
those of; the earlier period, failed', and for the same reasons. National
cohesion was completely lacking, and none of the revolutionary leaders
was a national figure. But they were of great significance, for they were
the sign of an unquenchable spirit of independence, which deeply
resented Spanish pride and intolerance and the rapacity of the religious
orders.
National sentiment existed, but it was inchoate and very slow in
expressing itself effectively. The geography of the islands, of course,
was a great hindrance- to its development as a conscious force. But
by the middle of the century all the ingredients for a national movement
were there. The Filipinos possessed a common racial origin, a common
cultural heritage, to which Spain had contributed much, and a common
hatred of the Spanish yoke. Spanish policy had helped to unite them
by giving the islands for the first time a centralized government, and
by spreading Christianity and Spanish civilization. The opening of
the Philippines to world trade, and the rise of an enlightened middle
class of Filipinos, were powerful factors in preparing the way for a
nationalist movement, and it was this new middle class which provided
the movement with its leaders.
The movement was sparked off by the Spanish revolution of 1868
which replaced the quasi-constitutional regime of Isabella II with a
short-lived republic, which, however, had a sufficiently long existence
to make its impact felt upon the Philippines. Colonial officials with
democratic ideas were sent to the islands and the administration was
transformed in the direction of autonomy. Newspapers and books with
European liberal ideas circulated openly, and a liberal governor-general,
De la Torre, abolished the censorship, fostered free discussion, and
introduced an entirely new spirit of humanity into the relations of
government and people.
The immediate effect of all this was a tremendous agitation among
both priests and laymen for Filipinization. But in 1871, when the
national movement was in its birth-pangs, the Spanish republic was

684

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

suppressed and a reactionary governor-general sent out to replace

De la Torre. The Filipino nationalist priests were forbidden to say
mass, and De la Torre's policy was completely reversed. The mutiny
of some 200 Filipino soldiers at Cavite in January 1872, speedily
repressed, was magnified into an attempt at (revolution, and numbers of
laymen and priests, who had supported the liberal regime, were arrested
for treason, and after a farcical trial given heavy prison sentences.
Some were executed, among them three blameless Filipino priests.
Fathers Burgos, Gomez and Zamora, who thereupon became the
martyrs of the nationalist cause.
The judicial murder of the three priests was followed by the deportation of various Filipino leaders to penal colonies, and by such a persecution of intellectuals that many fled abroad to Hong Kong, Singapor.e
and Japan, and in particular to London, Paris and Madrid itself. There
they carried on a publicity campaign known as the ' Propaganda Movement ' with such moderate demands as equality of Spaniards and Filipinos
before the law, the assimilation of the Philippines as a Spanish province
with representation in the Spanish cortes, the Filipinization of the
parishes, and liberty of speech, the press, meeting and petition. Their
aims were reform, not revolution. They themselves were loyalists.
The chief Propagandists were the brilliant young Dr Jose Rizal, Marcelo
del Pilar and Graciano Lopez Jaena. Rizal, the soul of the movement,
was born in 1861 and educated at the Jesuit college at Manila. He
showed marked ability as a poet, writer and sculptor. Sent to complete
his education in Spain, he there took his diploma as a doctor of medicine.
He then travelled in Europe, and in 1887, in Berlin, published his novel
Noli Me Tangere, in which he described Filipino sufferings under
Spanish rule. Four years later its sequel, El Filibusterismo, in which
he attacked the religious orders, was published in Ghent. These two
novels did for the Filipino opposition to Spain what Max Havelojor did
for the opponents of the Culture System in Java, or IJncle Tom's Cabin
for the anti-slavery movement in the United States.
Rizal produced a vast amount of published work on a~wide variety of
subjects, much of it consisting of articles contributed t5 the organ of the
Propaganda Movement La 5o/iJnrfarf, a fortnightly journal founded by
Jaena in Barcelona in 1889, and later transferred to Madrid, where Del
Pilar became its editor until in 1895 it failed for lack of funds. I n 1887
Rizal returned to Manila, but finding that his presence iri the Philippines
endangered his family he left and returned to Europe to continue his
writing and propaganda. In June 1892, because of the eviction of his
father and sisters from their home on the Dominican estate of Calamba,

CH. 3 8

THE PHILIPPINES TO THE END OF SPANISH RULE

685

. he insisted on returning to Manila. There he tried to found the Liga

Filipino, a peaceful association for the social and political betterment of
his people, but his arrest a few days after its formal inauguration, and his
deportation to Dapitan in Mindanao, brought its existence, and his own
political career, to an end. He was not a revolutionary in the ordinary
sense, but the Spanish government chose to treat him as one.
The propaganda movement also came to an end; support for it dried
up, its leaders died in poverty and La Solidaridad went out of circulation. Spain was moved by their denunciations to announce reforms, but
they were ludicrously inadequate. The way was thus open for the real
revolutionaries to take the lead. In July 1892 a secret society, the
Katipunan, was founded in Manila. It had two aims: to win independence by force and to unite all Filipinos into a nation-state. Its founder
was Andres Bonifacio, of humble origin, orphaned at fourteen and selfeducated. With him was associated Emilio Jacinto, also of humble
origin but with a university education. The society was directed by
a Supreme Council, which worked through local councils in each province and city; but real power was in the hands of a secret junta of three.
The leaders got into contact with Rizal at Dapitan in July 1896, but
he warned them that their plan to start a revolution was premature:
much more preparation was needed. Matters were taken out of their
hands, however, by the discovery of the Katipunan and its revolutionary
plan, and when during August 1896 the government tried to apprehend
Bonifacio and his associates, sporadic fighting began. Then almost
simultaneously nationwide rebellion blazed up. It was rnet by a reign
of terror, in which among others Jose Rizal was tried on charges of
rebellion, sedition and illicit association, and on 30 December 1896
was shot. His death added fury to the revolution, but the initial moveirient, involving the capture of Manila, had collapsed, and Bonifacio
had gone to take refuge in the hills of Montalban in northern Luzon.
And against a new governor-general, Polovieja, who arrived with reinforcements in December, the main rebellion in the Cavite region, led
by Aguinaldo, also failed, notwithstanding desperate resistance.
Bonifacio had set up a revolutionary government at Tejeros. Aguinaldo's brave stand, however, in the Cavite fighting showed him to be a
better military leader, and in March 1897 a revolutionary assembly
at Tejeros elected him President of the Philippine Republic. The
deposed leader tried to set up a breakaway government at Limbon, but
he and his brothers were caught and sentenced to death by a military
court appointed by Aguinaldo.
Aguinaldo's revolutionaries, hovyever, could not prevail against

686

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

the much better equipped Spanish forces, and in July 1897 he himself
took refuge in Bulacan. The way now seemed open for a settlement
by negotiation, and with the warlike Polovieja removed from the scene
by illness, his successor, Fernando Primo de Rivera, tried diplomacy.
Aguinaldo was induced to reduce his demands very considerably, but
even these the Spanish authorities could not accept. Finally in December
1897 the so-called Pact of Biacnabato was agreed upon, by which the
revolution was to stop and its leaders go into voluntary exile in Hong
Kong. Spain in her turn was to pay them the sum of 800,000 pesetas by ,
instalments upon the surrender of their arms. The government was
also to grant an indemnity of a further 900,000 pesetas to the families
who had suffered from the war.
The pact was soon broken. Aguinaldo and his associates received the
first instalment of their money, 400,000 pesetas, in Hong Kong, and
proceeded to use it for "the purchase of new arms. Primo de Rivera
distributed a little money in cash to war sufferers, but the full sums
promised were never paid. And nothing was done about the reforms,
which had been the subject of the ^negotiations, although not formally
stated in the terms of the ' pact'. It was a case of bad faith on both sides.
In February 1898 new risings began, and shortly afterwards a new
revolutionary government under General Francisco Makabulos established itself in central Luzon. Such was the situation when on i May
of that year the Spanish fleet was sunk in Manila Bay by Commodore
Dewey's American fleet.

CHAPTER 3 9

T H E RESURGENCE OF S O U T H - E A S T ASIA
AT the beginning of the twentieth century new factors of far-reaching
significance may be discerned in the historical development of SouthEast Asia. Asia as a whole was becoming aware of itself as never
before. A fermentation was in process that in many ways bears a
striking resemblance to the European Renascence of the fifteenth
and sixteenth centuries. Only in South-East Asia's case, 'unlike
Europe's, the attack upon traditionalism, the introduction of new ways
of thinking and new techniques, and the break-up of the older
regimented, feudal social order came as a result of the imposition of
alien political and economic domination. By the end of the nineteenth
century all her states save Siam had come under European control, and
Siam's own political independence, threatened in 1893 by France, was
still in jeopardy.
The threat of European dominance had made itself felt from 1511,
when Albuquerque conquered Malacca. But the European states of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were in no position to establish
territorial sway over immense regions so remote from their shores.
Nor did they covet it at first. They planted'factories'. They sought
to monopolize commerce, not to exercise political power with all its
responsibilities. Their control was maintained by powerful fleets
and forts with garrisons. And when, like the Dutch towards the end
of the seventeenth century, they gained political control they did not
administer territories directly, but through native rulers. There was
hardly any interference with native institutions, though in some
places considerable interference with economic activities.
The Portuguese were pledged to a crusade against the infidel, but
against both Islam and Theravada Buddhism their missionaries had
strikingly little success. The Dutch and English made no attempt
before the nineteenth century to interfere with the established religions.
The French, on the other hand, in the latter half of the seventeenth
century launched a grandiose scheme of Catholic missionary enterprise, using Ayut'ia as their base. But Louis XIV's pet project to
convert the Far East foundered on the rock of its deeper political
68723

688

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

implications. It aroused intense anti-European xenophobia in Siam

which was not relaxed until the days of Maha Mongkut. The
other states of the mainland alsonotably Burma, Annam, and
Tongkingdeveloped this same tendency to an increasing degree.
They showed the greatest suspicion towards,all types of European
activity.
The nineteenth century brought a new phase in the European
impact, with a far more dangerous threat to the jealously guarded
independence of the South-East Asian states. It was a period of rapid
Western political and territorial advance, when Britain, France and
Holland acquired colonial empires in South-East Asia. The whole
situation changed. The great companies of commerce, the directors of
European enterprise in the earlier period, disappeared from the scene.
Government officials took the place of merchants, territorial revenues
of trading profits, and at home control by ministers of state was substituted for that of boards of directors.
There was extensive exploration of natural resources;, foreign
capital, not all of it European, was invested on an ever-increasing
scale; economic development, particularly that of interiors,, was rapid
breathlessly so in some cases. The effects upon native life were
revolutionary. Producers became dependent upon external markets
and the heartbreaking problem of agricultural indebtedness came to
assume gigantic proportions. Foreign immigration, notably of Chinese
and Indians, on an immense scale caused deep resentments and acute
problems. For some time the indigenous peoples of the 'colonial'
territories looked on helplessly as their economic subjection became
more and more complete. Their growing realization of their plight
gave impetus to the movements for national independence which
characterized the first half of the twentieth century.
The response of the West to the nationalist challenge was not unsympathetic. As early as the year 1900 the Dutch publicly proclaimed
their adoption of the 'New Course', whereby government of the
Indies was to he for the Indies. The French defined their function as
a mission civilisatrice. The British, in response to political developments
in India, promised to train the native peoples for self-government
according to Western democratic methods, and to introduce it .by
gradual stages. All three powers expanded and liberaUzed their
colonial administration by adopting methods of social welfare similar
to those they were developing at home. All three fostered the spread
of European education. Save in the case of British Malaya, however, where there was no strong national movement until after the

CH. 3 9

THE RESURGENCE OF SOUTH-EAST ASIA

689

Second World War, the new policy failed signally to arrest the growing discontent with Western domination.
The national movements which attained such a pitch of intensity in
Burma, Indo-China and Indonesia were powerfully influenced by
developments elsewhere in Asia. The Boxer Rising of 1899 in China,
the emergence of Japan and her spectacular defeat of Russia in 1905,
the Chinese revolution of 1911 and the establishment of the Kuomintang Party by Sun Yat-Sen, the increasing dominance of the Swaraj
Party in the Indian National Congress, the rise of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and the launching of his non-co-operation movement
against British rule in India, aroused their enthusiasm with the sight of
Asia casting off her chains.
The upsurge of nationalism, however, was at this time by no means
confined to Asia. The peace conference at Versailles at the end of the
First World War had taken the lid off a boiling cauldron of nationalist
claims in Europe itself. In remaking the map of Europe the nationstate was accepted as the guiding principle, though with the rather
flimsy safeguard of a League of Nations to restrain what the more
penetrating thinkers ominously described as its 'giant egotism'.
Nationalism, and the rights of small nations in particular, became
the main topic of discussion, and the increasing numbers of Burmese,
Vietnamese and Indonesians who reached the higher grades of
European education in their own countries or proceeded to famous
centres of learning in Europe inevitably imbibed the heady wine of
Western political thought.
From their study of Western history they learnt of Britain's constitutional struggles, the American War of Independence, and the
French Revolution. They read John Stuart Mill's Essay on Liberty;
they caught the thrill of Shakespeare's ardent patriotism when they
read:
This England never did, nor never shall
Lie at the prond foot of a conqueror,
and the flame of freedom scorched their souls. They were the people
who became most acutely sensitive to the racial discrimination
practised by their Western rulers, for they suffered most from it. It
was from their numbers, therefore, that the political agitators, and
eventually the national leaders, were recruited. Thus the nationalist
movements acquired both means of expression and technique through
Western education.
Nationalism, however, was not born of the revolt against European

690

THK CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

domination. Its cultural roots go as far back in South-East Asia as in

Europe. Notwithstanding the strength of the influences coming from
India on the one side and China on the lother, the more advanced
peoples who absorbed them showed marked individuality very early
in their history. The great cultures which flowered so richly, especially
in art and architecture, during the Middle AgesMon, Khmer, Cham,
Javanese, and Burmesenot only reflect that individuality but even in
their earliest expression are quite distinct from Indian. And even in
the case of Vietnam, where it may be contended with reason that
Chinese was the parent culture, the diff^erences are signiflcant, for the
Vietnamese struggle for political independence, which came to a
successful issue in the tenth century, was also a reaction against the
intense sinization systematically enforced by China.
Long before the arrival of the European the peoples mentioned
above were producing their own vernacular literatures. Some
notably Burmese, Mon, Javanese, and Balineseexhibit a great
variety of forms and literary qualities of a high order. In Bali's case it
is of interest to note that Stutterheim claims that just as in Europe
through the stimulus of the Greek and Roman classics the various
peoples developed their own national cultures, so out of Hinduism
the Balinese created 'a proper, purely national culture'. The same can
be said with equal truth of the Burmese, Mon, Khmer, Cham, and
T'ai peoples.
It is perhaps questionable how-far the great mediaeval states such
as Pagan, Angkor, Ayut'ia or Majapahit represented national ideas or
aspirations. The dynastic factor played a prominent part in their
history. But in the struggle of the Burmese against Shan domination,
of the Mons for independence against Burmese rule, and in the wars
between Burma and Siam in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries,
national sentiment was evoked and played its part. Naresuen and P'ya
Taksin, for instance, were in a real sense national leaders. The struggle
between the Chams and the Vietnamese in its later stages seems
pretty certainly also to assume a nationalist character.* Nationalism
as a political sentiment does seem to show itself in these cases; but
the subject still awaits systematic investigation, and its discussion h^re
must be considered exploratory only. "
j
There can be no doubt that much of the opposition the European
powers had to meet in their territorial expansion during the nineteenth century had a strong nationalist content. Not a few of the
rebel leaders of that period are revered today as pioneers in the
struggle for freedom. A recent study of Dipo' Negoro is worth

CH. 3 9

THE RESURGENCE OF SOUTH-EAST ASIA

691

examination in this connection. At the beginning of the twentieth

century the great majority of, people in Burma and Indo-China had
been born in the days before the final extinction of independence, and
memories ren;iained green of a time before European rule. All the
nationalist movements gained some of their driving force from an
awareness of a historic past before the European intrusion. It wa? a
sedulously cultivated awareness, as was only to be expected, of a
glorified past bearing little resemblance to sober Jiistory. And the
situation was not without its irony, for it was the European archaeologist and historian who discovered the real achievements of the past
and rescued the historic monuments from decay and, in not a few cases,
oblivion.
In each country the nationalist movement pursued a largely
independent course. There was practically no liaison between the
leaders in one country and those in another. Their ties were much
closer with left-wing movements in the European countries under
whose sway they lived. Moreover, the methods of the British, Dutch
and French in dealing with their respective areas differed considerably. Hence it is difficult to draw comparisons between the
different movements and dangerous to generalize. Among the peoples
themselves there was much divergence of opinion regarding aims and
methods. Some were for gradualness, others for revolution. There
weire sincere patriots who were anxious not to break the political ties
with the West. Few indeed advocated the reinstatement of the
obsolete or obsolescent monarchies. And, unlike in India, there were
extremely few opponents of Western techniques and scientific
methods. Traditionalism, however, showed its influence in Buddhist
and Islamic revivalism, and in Burma the Young Men's Buddhist
Associations and in Indonesia Sarekat Islam played important roles.
Buddhism became closely identified with national sentiment in both
Burma and Siam, and the patriotism of those who belonged to other
religions was impugned. Partly for this reason Communism failed to
appeal to the great majority of people. Only in French Indo-China
did the Communists gain control over the Vietnamese nationalist
movement, and then only because of French intransigence.

CHAPTER 4 0

B R I T I S H BURMA, 1886-1942
BRITAIN'S greatest mistake in dealing with Burma was to attach the
country to the Indian empire. It was the natural thing to do, seeing
that each stage of the conquest was organized and carried out by the
Government of India. But its inevitable result was the standardization
of Burma's administration according to the Indian model. In Malaya
the mistake; was avoided because the British forward move there cartie
after the transfer of the Straits Settlements to the Colonial Office.
Even as late as 1886 it could have been avoided if, when the whole
country came under British rule, the fact had been adequately recognized that its culture, history and outlook gave it an individuality
which it was the duty of the conquerors to preserve with all possible
care. But as few people knew anything about these things administrative convenience was the overruling consideration.
It used to be said that three generations in Ireland makes an Irishman. It would be equally true of Burma. Moreover, the earliest
British administrators found that the only effective way of getting
anything done was to do it according to the Burmese method. The
Burman judged everything according to the extent to which it conformed to Burmese custom, and the reply,' It is not our custom', given
by the Court of Ava to a proposal made by a British envoy, was final.
It was useless to argue further. Hence in Tenasserim after its annexation in 1826, and in Pegu after 1852, although the administrative layout conformed to the Indian model, administrative practice tended to
conform to .Burmese traditional methods. And although in theory the
Bengal method of direct rule was employed, in practice indirect rule
not unlike the Dutch system in Java prevailed. The life of the ordinary
villager went on much as it had under Burmese rule, and've^y few
Burmans lived in towns.
~
Various factors combined to bring a fundamental change in this
state of affairs. In the first place the process of standardization
according to the Indian model received considerable impetus from the
efforts that had to be made to quell disorder after the annexation of
1886. In the long run, however, the.effects of this might not have been
692

CH. 40

BRITISH BURMA, 1886-1942

693

decisive, and the traditional Burmese methods might in time have

reasserted themselves, had it not been for the development of increasing specialization in functions and the additional responsibilities
which governments of the modern Western type began to undertake
during the succeeding period. The old policy of laissez-faire was
abandoned and new forms of governmental interference, aiming at
improved efficiency or social welfare, were invented. And along with
them, as a- result of immensely improved communications, came
greater and ever greater central controlthe control of the Rangoon
Secretariat over district administration, and the control of the Government of India over provincial administration.
The immediate problem after the annexation was that of disorder.
The Burmese army disregarded the order to surrender and melted
away into the jungle villages with its arms to carry on guerrilla warfare
over a wide area. The thugyis, who had been the backbone of the
Burm^e system of district administration, became the leaders of the
resistance movement, and at the head of marauding bands roamed far
and wide to prevent the establishment of settled government. No less
than five princes of the royal family, each claiming the throne, held
out in different regions. And a serious rebellion broke out in Lower
Burma. The abolition of the kingship, worthless as Thibaw had
proved himself to be, evoked a nation-wide reaction against foreign
' rule. It took five years of hard campaigning to subdue the country,
and at the peak period of the resistance an army of 32,000 troops and
8,500 military police was fully engaged.
For purposes of civil administration Upper Burma, excluding the
Shan States and the extensive hill tracts inhabited by non-Burmese
peoples, was divided into fourteen districts, each under a Deputy or
Assistant Commissioner. So far as revenue and civil justice were
concerned, the original intention of Sir Charles Bernard was for these
to work through indigenous agencies according to local methods. But
Bernard's successor, Sir Charles Crosthwaite, who came with firmly
fixed ideas of Indian administration, brought with him a ready-drafted
scheme for making the village, as in India, the basic social and political
unit. His theory was that the circle headman of the older administration, known as myothugyis or taikthugyis, had, in the words of a
recent study,^ 'overshadowed and usurped the rightful power of the
village headman'. His plan, therefore, was to break up the circle into
villages and strengthen the village as an administrative unit, primarily
in order to use it for the restoration of law and order. For his
^ F. S. V. Donnison, Public Administration in Burma, London and New York, 1953.

694

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

immediate intention was to hold the village community responsible

for crimes committed within its tract.
The new policy was set in motion by [the Upper Burma Village
Regulation of 1887 and the Burma Village Act of 1889, which applied
it throughout the country. These two measures imposed statutory
duties concerning the maintenance of order and the collection of
revenue upon the headman and villages. As a r ^ u l t of their enforcement the myothugyis and taikthugyis were gradually eliminated. The
largest indigenous social and political unit of the previous period was
thus destroyed and a stereotyped direct administration imposed, with
the village tracts placed under the charge of a civil servant, the myo-ok
or township officer.
Mr. J. S. Furnivall, who during his long experience as an administrator in Burma not only had a close view of the working of the new
system but also made a careful study of the existing indigenous
materials relating to the myothugyi system,^ has summed up the effects
of the change in a recent work.^ In the first place, he writes, the
villages had duties imposed upon them without any compensating
rights. In the second place, in order to equalize headmen's charges
so as to combine adequate emoluments with efficient administration
(from the point of view of supervision by the myo-oks), a comprehensive scheme of amalgamation was carried through after 1909. The
merging of villages which this involved led to a reduction in the
number of headmen by over 2,000 and made the 'village' a. mere
artificial administrative unit. In the third place, with the disappearance of the myothugyi the habit of referring serious disputes between
adjacent villages to his arbitration 'so as to arrive at a compromise
according to known custom' tended to die out and '.the mechanical
logic of the law courts' was substituted. His general conclusion is
that 'the popular self-government of Burmese times was replaced by
a foreign legal system'.
It ;seems doubtful whether the semi-feudal po-wer of the myothugyi
can be rightly termed 'popular self-government', though it must be
admitted that the myothugyi was bound by local custom; he did not
give arbitrary decisions. But whether the old Burmese institution was
capable of carrying out the new duties necessarily imposed by
twentieth-century conditions may also be doubted. The great evil of
' The main records are a mass of several thousand documents known as Sittans.
Furnivall printed a large colIecTtion of these in a volume which was apparently never
published. It was used by Ma Mya Sein for the researches upon which she bas'ed her
Administration of Burma, Rangoon, 1938.
* Colonial Policy and Practice, pp. 74-6.

CH. 40

BRITISH BURMA, 1886-I942

695

the new system was that the myo-ok as a civil servant was subject to
frequent transfer and rarely stayed long enough in one place to learn
all that was necessary for good administration, whereas the myothugyi
was a local man whose ancestors had held the office before him.
Burma's artificial connection with India had other unfortunate
results. Her first two Chief Commissioners, Sir Arthur Phayre and
Sir Albert Fytche, had spent most of their previous careers in the
country; they spoke the language, understood its religion and customs,
and Phayre wrote the first standard history of Burma in English.
After Fytche's retirement in 1871, however, the office of Chief
Commissioner, and thereafter of Lieutenant-Governor, was held by
men who had been trained in India and looked forward to returning
there on promotion. They never learnt the language and had only a
smattering of knowledge of the country.
Moreover, the Indian connection imposed upon British administrators in Burma a negative attitude towards the religion of the
country. Now Buddhism was not merely the religion of the people
but also the state religion, and had been so ever since the reign of
Anawrahta of Pagan (1044-77). Hence the abolition of the monarch
raised the important question of the position of th Buddhist organization under the new regime. The men with long service in Burma,
especially Colonel (later Sir Edward) Sladen, who had known Mindon
intimately, urged that the new government should support the lawful
authority of the heads of the Buddhist Church, as the Burmese kings
had done. And responsible Burmese leaders added their pressure.
The head of the Buddhist ecclesiastical organization, the Thathanabaing, headed a deputation to Sir Frederick Roberts, the commanderin-chief, asking for confirmation of the jurisdiction of the ecclesiastical
commission which had operated under the kings.
All he asked for was readily granted, except the one crucial issue of
recognition of his own powers and of the ecclesiastical code by which
discipline over the monasteries of the order was maintained. The
British contended that if they stepped into the king's shoes in this
matter it would constitute the kind of interference with religion which
the Queen's Declaration of 1858 at the close of the Indian Mutiny had'
expressly promised that her government would abstain from. Dis' cipline and cohesion had already been lost by the Buddhist Church
in Lower Burma as a result of its severance from its headquarters.
Now, with the disappearance of the last vestige of ecclesiastical
autonomy, went the only effective machinery for regulating admission
to the Order and expelling unruly members. The decay of monastic
23*

696

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

discipline which resulted led to the rise of an ignorant, disorderly class

of monks who neglected the study of the Pali scriptures to preach
sedition and create unrest.
I
The promotion of the Chief Commissioner in 1897 to the rank
of Lieutenant-Governor assisted by a Legislative Council of nine
nominated members, including five non-officials, was the prelude to,
though not the cause of, a considerable expansion in the functions of
government and a multiplication of new departments concerned with
social welfare. There was also the gradual introduction of a judicial
system based upon the British principle of the separation of powers.
It began with the establishment of a Chief Court for Lower Burma in
1900 and was followed in 1905 by the creation of a separate judicial
service to relieve local executive officers of all their civil and some of
their criminal cases. At first, for reasons of economy, the change was
not applied to Upper Burma, where Divisional Commissioners sat
as sessions judges and Deputy Commissioners tried civil cases in the
remoter districts. Moreover, the view was rightly held by niany
people that the separation of powers below High Court level was not in
the interests of good government, and that, at least so far as the
Deputy Commissioner was concerned, it was better to concentrate
rather than disperse his authority.^
The increase of specialist departments, which began in 1899 with
the creation of a separate department to take over the management of
prisons from the Inspector-General of Civil Hospitals, came partly
from a new campaign for 'efficiency' inspired by Big Business and
partly from concern for social justice, which had been growing throughout the nineteenth century among the more progressive sections of
the British people and was to have so powerful an influence on policy
in the twentieth. The Dutch felt this humanitarian impulse at the
same time and proclaimed the 'New Course' in Indonesia. In Burma
it was hurried on partly because the great increase of crime and
general lawlessness, which were the ordinary Burman's protest against
the new conditions introduced by alien rule, made if necessary to
free the hands of the general administrative officers for concentration
upon the campaign against the criminal.
^
In 1900 a Commissioner of Settlements and Larfd Records was
appointed for the more efficient handling of land revenue matters.
From 1900 also a closer control over education was instituted and
a considerable extension of state education began. In 1904 the
Co-operative Credit Department was set up. ^In 1905 a Chief
^ F. S. V. Donnison, op. cit., pp. 40-1, has some.yseful observations on this subject.

CH. 40

BRITISH BURMA, 1886-1942

697

Conservator of Forests was appointed and in 1906 a Director of Agriculture. Agricultural, Veterinary and Fishery departments came into
being, while in 1908 a Sanitary Commissioner was appointed and a
Public Health Department began to function as an organization distinct
from its parent, the Medical Department. In Rangoon a large new
secretariat came into existence to link up all these departments, and
bureaucratic government became the order of the day.
Gladstonian Liberalism sought to foster the political education of
the people of India by the gradual introduction of local self-government. As early as 1874, at the instance of the Government of India,
nominated Municipal Committees were established in a few Burmese
towns. In 1882 the electoral principle was introduced. Little progress,
however, was made in self-government. The fact that urban populations were composed of different communitiesBurmese, Chinese,
and various types of Indianmade common action difficult. Local
opinion also was against any line of action which might increase
taxation, and was often not in sympathy with the sort of amenities
that such committees existed to provide. Hence only in Rangoon,
with its relatively large European element and educated Asian community, was the system reasonably successful.
The rural District Committees, first established in 1884 at the
instance also of the Government of India, failed rather badly as an
experiment in self-government. The local ofHcer had to retain a tight
hold over them, and as the great evil of frequent transfer prevented him
from gaining a thorough knowledge of his district the general result
was inefficiency, and corruption among the subordinate officials.
In 1909 the Minto-Morley reforms in the government of India
increased the size of the Burma Legislative Council to a membership
of thirty with a non-official majority. It could ask questions, move
resolutions and take votes, but no resolution had binding force on the
government. Notwithstanding Morley's own strongly expressed
desire that the reforms should not lead either directly or indirectly to
the introduction of the parliamentary system into India, it seems
obvious now that in 1909 Britain did in effect cross the Rubicon,
although the principle of popular election was not introduced. This
became clear when, under the stress of the First World War, Britain,
in order to hold India, made promises of political advancement, with
responsible self-government as the ultimate aim.
The Montagu* Chelmsford Report, however, upon which the
Government of India Act of 1919 was based, recommended that
Burma's case should be reserved for special consideration, since her

698

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

people were of a different race, at a 'different stage of political

development, and with altogether different problems. The storm of
protest which suddenly arose in Burma when the nature of the alternative proposals for her political development became known took
everybody by surprise. Burmese national [sentiment was worked up
to fever pitch, boycotts were organized, and a vociferous demand for
home rule went up.
In 1921, therefore, parliament decided to extend to Burma the
dyarchical form of constitution introduced into the other Indian
provinces by the Government of India Act of 1919.
A Burma Reforms Committee under the presidency of Sir Frederick
Whyte was appointed to work out the details of the new arrangement
on the spot; and although the extremists among the Burmese politicians condemned dyarchy as inadequate, Burma became a governor's
province in 1923, and subject to the exclusion of the Shan states,
Karenni and the Tribal Hills the first steps were taken towards 'the
progressive realization of responsible self-government'.
The main features of the new scheme were as follows: the Legislative Council was increased to 103 members, of whom 79 were to be
elected on a democratic franchise, 2 were ex officio and 22 nominated;
the government was entrusted to the governor with an Executive
Council of two Members in charge of Reserved Subjects, and two
Ministers, responsible to the legislature, in charge of Transferred
Subjects. The reserved subjects comprised defence, law and order,
finance and revenue. The transferred departments included education
public health, forests and excise. The transference of the important
Forest Department placed Burma ahead of all the other provinces
except Bombay. The franchise was granted to householders with^
out sex disqualification and with eighteen as the minimum age
limit.
Why was so wide a franchise qualification introduced, with an age
limitibelow that in any European democracy? Mr. Furnivall's comments on it sum up succinctly the various attempts that have been
made to explain so surprising a step.* ' T h e official explanation was
that no qualifications of age, propertyor education could be devised;
simplicity welcomed it as evidence of faith in liberal ideals^ cynics.
ascribed it to petulance, "making the best of a bad j o b " or to astutenessif the people do not like bureaucracy, let them have democracy in full measure to disillusion them. The kindest explanation is
that the government trusted, as it believed, the well-merited affectiori
^ Op, cit.f p. 160. ^

CH. 4 0

BRITISH BURMA, 1 8 8 6 - 1 9 4 2

699

of the "conservative element" against the disaffection of a few

pernicious agitators.'
In addition Burma was given five seats in the new Indian legislature
at New Delhi which dealt with what were known as 'central subjects'.
A great increase in self-governing local bodies was also provided for,
and the majority of members of both municipal committees and rural
district committees were to be elected. Moreover, the wide jange of
responsibilities entrusted to these bodies, including the maintenance
of roads other than main roads, pubhc health, sanitation, the maintenance of hospitals, the health of cattle, the provision and regulation
of slaughter-houses, the establishment and control of markets, the
operation of ferries and the creation of school boards, gave Burma a
very real degree of self-government in local affairs as well as at the
centre. The administration of justice was not affected, though at
almost the same time a High Court was created to replace the Chief
Court of Lower Burma and the Judicial Commissioner in Mandalay,
while the separate judicial service was extended in such a way that
divisional commissioners no longer held Sessions.
In the Legislative Council right from the start there was a solid
nationalist bloc which normally commanded greater voting power
than the government. The dominant party was the People's Party,
or the 'Twenty-one Party'^ led by U Ba Pe, a moderate. There was
also a small Independent Party, led by Sir J. A. Maung Gyi, which
tended to support the government. The extreme nationalists under
U Chit Hlaing, the President of the Grand Council of Buddhist
Associations (the G.C.B.A.), boycotted the Council.
The electorate was at first apathetic, and personal rivalries among
the elected leaders weakened effective combination to control the
government. There was therefore no difficulty in obtaining candidates
for ministerial posts, even from the opposition. The earliest demands
of the dominant party were for improved education to fit Burmans for
self-government, rapid Burmanization of the public services, the
promotion of indigenous economic development, the curtailment of
foreign 'exploitation', and the provision of more money for the
'nation-building' departments and for agricultural credit. There was
notable progress in education and public health, but the big economic
and racial problems remained as far from a solution as ever. Finance,
the crux of the situation, was a reserved subject; and while the transferred department* received their fair share of the allotment of money,
the fact that the heads had no responsibility for any additional burden
^ So called from the number of those who signed its first programme.

yOO

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

imposed on the tax-payer meant that the working out of a comprehensive national poHcy of reconstruction was supremely difficult.
Nevertheless dyarchy was a real step forward in the political
education of both sides. There was, however, what has been described as 'an unsettling air of impermanencc;'^ about it, for under the
Government of Burma Act of 1921 it was laid down that after ten
years a Statutory Commission should be appointed to consider the
possibility of a further instalment of reforms. Early on a demand
went up for its appointment sooner than the stipulated date, and for
full responsible government and separation from India. The desire
for separation was natural, for the increasing Indian immigration and
economic competition made the Burman fear that his country might
one day become a vassal state of an Indian commonwealth governed
by Indians.
In 1928 the ' Simon Commission' came to review the working of the
reforms introduced in 1923. It reported in favour of separation and a
number of constitutional advances. Then suddenly Burmese opinion
veered on the separation issue. A loudly-vocal section led by Dr. Ba
Maw, a young aspirant to political leadership, proclaimed that if Burma
were separated from India her rate of constitutional progress might be
slower than India's. The fact that the government and Big Business
gave unqualified support to separation aroused the deepest suspicions.
Actually one of the chief reasons for the support given in official
circles to separation was that India's share of the Burma revenues was
considered too large. The central taxes, such as income-tax and
customs revenue, were capable of much greater expansion than provincial revenues.
While a special Burma Round Table Conference sat in London'
between November 1931 and January 1932 to discuss the main lines
of a constitution for a Burma separated from India, the agitation in
Burma came to a head with the formation of a strong Anti-Separation
League, which advocated joining the proposed Indian federation with
the option of secession. At a general election held in November 1932
the League won a complete victory. Hardly a single Burmese antiseparationist was in favour of permanent union with India. Hence
when Britain made it clear that she was not prepared to give-Burma"
the option of contracting out of the Indian government at will, the
League executed a complete volte-face, and the Government of India
Act of 1935 provided for the separation of the two countries to take
effect on i April 1937.
' Donnison, op. cit., p. j j . -

CH. 40

BRITISH BURMA, 1886-I942

7OI

The new constitution of separated Burma, outlined in Part XIV and

Schedules X to XV of the Government of India Act, ' was given- body
in the Government of Burma Act, 1935, and spirit in the Instrument
of Instructions from His Majesty to the Government'.^ The Burma
government came directly under the British Parliament, the Secretary
of State for India became Secretary of State for India and Burma, and
a separate Burma Office was created under an Under-Secretary for
Burma. The governor became solely responsible for defence, external
and internal, monetary policy, currency and coinage, foreign affairs
and the Excluded Areas of the Shan states, Karenni and the Tribal
Hills. In all other matters, save certain emergency powers entrusted
to his special responsibility, he was bound to act on the advice of
his ministers. General administration was entrusted to a cabinet of
ministers, limited to ten, under the leadership of a prime minister
and responsible to the legislature.
The legislature was bicameral. The upper house was a Senate of
thirty-six members, half of whom were elected by the House of
Representatives and half nominated by the governor. The House of
Representatives contained 132 members, of whom 92 were elected by
territorial constituencies and the remainder represented communal and
other special interests such as the University of Rangoon, commerce
and labour. The franchise was made even wider by including most
males over twenty-one and all females over that age who could pass a
simple literacy test.
The governor's reserve powers were greater in theory than in
practice. The Instrument of Instructions counselled h i m ' so to exercise
his powers as not to enable his Ministers to rely on his special responsibilities in order to relieve themselves of responsibilities which
are properly their own'. And wherever possible he was to consult them
even in matters left to his special responsibility. It was hoped that his
'special responsibility powers', which included the prevention of grave
menace to internal peace, the protection of minorities, and the prevention of unfair discrimination against British subjects or their goods,
would as far as possible be held in abeyance.
The Burmese Cabinet and parliament now had almost complete
control over internal affairs. The first general election was keenly
contested. Dr. Ba Maw was the first prime minister, and he and his
colleagues gained office by promising to tackle the serious problems
of agrarian distress, corruption and village administration. Their
early efforts were not very effective. But the new system had no chance
' Donnison, <it>. cit., p. 73.

yo2

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

FT. IV

to settle down and learn its job, for the peace of the world was already
threatened by Nazi Germany and the Japanese penetration into China.
And internally political life was vitiated by the personal rivalries of
aspirants to power, with the consequent development of splinter
parties. Mr. Donnison, who Served in I Burma under the new
system, writes that 'the first reaction of the new Ministers to the
increased power conferred on them by the' new Act, was to become
bolder, less scrupulous, and more cynical, interfering with the administration as a matter of course and. even at times tampering with
the courts'.
Britain had made an early start compared with the Dutch in tackling
the problems of indigenous education in Burma. Phayre as first
Commissioner of British Burma aimed at building an educational
structure on the basis of the monastic schools, which, as in Siam,
provided general elementary education for boys throughout the
country. But his scheme went awry, for the first Director of Public
Instruction, who had been appointed in 1866, died soon after, and his
successor knew no Burmese.
The next plan was to substitute lay schools for monastic ones.
Eventually both types were given grants-in-aid and inspected. But the
inevitable demand for English, fostered by the demands of government
and business offices for clerks, caused attention to be turned to the
development of Anglo-Vernacular education. Government schools
were founded in the 'seventies and grants were made to the mission
schools provided by the Roman Catholics, the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, and in increasing numbers by the American
Baptist Mission. Some of their best pupils took the matriculation
examination of Calcutta University.
When in 1880 the whole system was overhauled and provincial
examinations instituted, the Calcutta matriculation was the final aim
of most secondary schools; but the Rangoon Government AngloVernacular School, founded in 1873, developed a higher department,
Rangoon Government College, which in 1884 began to prepare
students for the external degrees of Calcutta University. But departmental policy was to encourage voluntary schools rather than found
government ones. In 1900 there were sixteen missionary secpndaf/^
schools and a small Baptist college in Rangoon for the higher education of Karens. The Education Department maintained five
normal schools for the training of teachers, and in addition to the
Rangoon Government High School and College, a number of
technical schools for surveying, elementary engineering, forestry and'

CH. 40

BRITISH BURMA, 1886-1942

703

midwifery. Throughout the country there were 17,000 vernacular

schools, 341 of them for the education of girls.
In the twentieth century the increasing demand for secondary
education in English caused the serious neglect of monastic sch-iols
and concentration upon the multiplication of secondary schools. This
inevitably brought the question of higher education to the forefront,
and the first big separation issue arose through the demand that Burma
should have its own independent university. This brought the
University of Rangoon into existence in 1920 as a teaching and
residential institution, blending the work of the two existing institutions of higher education, Government College and the Baptist
College, which became its constituent colleges.
The university began its life at a moment of high political tension
over the question of dyarchy, and the refusal of the Education Department to countenance an institution after the Calcutta model,
granting external degrees and encouraging local affiliated intermediate
colleges, combined with a simultaneous quarrel over anglo-vernacular
education to bring about a nation-wide boycott of government and
missionary educational institutions. An attempt was made by a
Council of National Education to create a complete educational system
free from government control. National education was to be the key
to unlock the door to national independence and self-government.
It was a most impressive movement, but after the introduction of
dyarchy and the transfer of education to the control of a Burmese
minister it lost its vitality. Efforts at conciliation succeeded, especially
when in 1924 a University Amendment Act was passed giving Burmans
greater control. The boycott was called off and the more efficient
C.N.E. schools qualified for government grants. The university also
was given enough money to expand its scope to include medicine,
engineering and forestry, as well as to establish a large modern teachers'
training department, complete with practice schools. It gave immense
stimulus to education and culture throughout the country.^ Its
graduates notably improved the standards of the services to which
they were appointed.
But political pressure, often attempted before 1937, became far more
effective with the establishment of the new constitution for Burma in
' Donnison's' complaint (op. cit., p. 70) that 'the courses of study provided were
often unrealistic and imperfectly related to the needs of the country', merely reflects
the pathetically wrong-headed attitude of the European community towards university
education for Asians. Its real crime to them lay in the fact that it was university education and not a superior form of technical education ' related to the needs of the
country'.

704

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

that year, and inevitably the high standards that had been buih up
against great difficulties in the earlier period began to deteriorate. The
Students' Union also became a happy hunting-ground for the less
responsible type of political agitator, and discipline was undermined.
The forcing of a new constitution upon the; university in 1939 was
inspired by not a single honest educational object. The intention was
to use it to produce political agitators against the British. Unfortunately, however, far too much attention has been directed to this aspect
of the question, so that the real value of the work done by the university during this period has tended to be obscured.^ The babble of
ill-informed criticism is still too loud for a true appraisal of the facts.
' A period of residence and work in the university from December 1952 to March
1953 has more than ever convinced the writer that this is the case.

CHAPTER 4 1

T H E D U T C H ' N E W COURSE' AND NATIONALISM IN

INDONESIA, 1900-42
BY 1900 Dutch opinion on colonial affairs had come to regard liberalism as out of date. It was obvious that the supporters of private enterprise cared little about the interests of the Indonesians, and that the
imniense power that private capital had come to wield was in the hands
of a few great corporations able to take common action in defence of
their intereststhe 'over-mighty subjects', in truth, of modern times.
Dr. Abraham Kuyper, who became prime minister in 1901, was the
writer of a pamphlet published in 1880, 0ns Program, in which he
argued that the government must adopt a policy of moral responsibility
for native welfare. This idea he incorporated in the ' Speech from the
Throne' of that year. Thus was launched what became known as the
'Ethical Policy'.
The first Socialists had by this time entered the Dutch parliament
and were loudly proclaiming the doctrine of 'Government of the
Indies for the Indies', with their'eyes open to the ultimate aim of
self-government. But a far deeper impression was made by the
Liberal C. Th. van Deventer, who not only drafted a new programme
for his party, advocating welfare, decentralization and the greater
employment of Indonesians in the administration, but in 1899 caused
a sensation by his article Een Eereschuld ('A debt of honour'), in
which he argued that all the money drawn from the Indies under the
batig saldo since 1867, when parliament assumed responsibility for the
finances of the Indies, should be repaid.
So once more, after a tremendous outpouring of noble sentiment,
a programme of 'decentralization' and native welfare was set in motion,
with the same almost incredible hesitation that had marked the
abandonment of the Culture System. 'Decentralization' was the new
gospel. It envisaged the delegation ofpowers from The Hague to
Batavia, from the governor-general to departments and local officers,
and from European to Indonesian officers. It also meant the establishment of autonomous organs managing their own affairs in cooperation with the government. In practice, however, the Decentralization Law of 1903 and the decrees of 1904-5 creating local councils
705

7o6

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

composed of Indonesians, Europeans and Chinese went nothing like

as far as the decentralization scheme which Governor-General Mijer
had submitted to the home government as far back as 1867. And up
to the outbreak of the First World War, which cut off Batavia's
communications with The Hague, the governor-general remained
completely under the control of the home government.
In 1905 the Deputy Director of the Civil Service, de GraafF,
raised the question of the substitution of Indonesians for Europeans
and the unification of the two services, in connection with his proposal
for a reform of Java's territorial organization which would give local
officers greater power. But for the time being it was side-tracked.
In 1914, he submitted a wider scheme embracing the reorganization
of the whole of the Indies into twelve governments, each with a degree
of financial autonomy. This also was shelved, but his plan to give
Indonesian officers greater powersthe word actually used was
ontvoogdmg, 'emancipation'was generally approved. Nothing, however, was done until 1921, when it was laid down that certain concessions might be made to regents in recognition of special merit.
But the first regent to be 'emancipated' declared that it made no
difference whatever to his position, and for another ten years, in the
words of Raden Djajadiningrat, 'the European administration
remained just as before'.^
Meanwhile the promoters of the 'ethical policy' had turned to
the village as the lever for the improvement of native welfare. Beginning with de Graaff's Village Regulation of 1906, which provided for
a Village Government, comprising the headman and village officers,
and a Village Gathering competent to regulate village institutions
and provide for its requirements, measures were taken to improve
agricultural production and veterinary care, to establish village
scTiools, provide sound credit and promote public health. The most
elaborate village administration was built up. But it was an instrument
for such excessive interference from above that there was hardly
, any village autonomy left, and the general effect was to turn villages
against Dutch rule. The Dutch method has been described by Mr.
Furnivall as 'let me help you, let me show you how to do it, let me
do it for you'.^
The first signs of an awakening national self-consciousness began
to show themselves in Java early in the century. Such external
^ Indonesische Genootschap, 1929, p. 83, quoted by J. S. Furnivall in Netherlands
India, p. 269.
" Op. cit., p. 389.
_ -

CH. 4 1

NATIONALISM IN INDONESIA, 1 9 0 0 - 4 2

707

influences as the Boxer Rising in China, the Filipino revolt against

Spain, and the rise of Japan undoubtedly played their part, for they
had a marked effect on the minds of little groups of literati in the
various countries of South-East Asia, who were worried by the inferior
status accorded to them under Western domination. It was significant
that in 1899 Japan claimed, and received, equal rights with Europeans

RADEN ADJENG KARTINI

in the Netherlands Indies. But in each country the nationalist movement took on a special character of its own.
In Indonesia the predominance of Java, with two-thirds of the
total population crowded into one-fifteenth of the total area, was a
marked feature of its early stages. Cultural factors here were active,
an increased awareness of the value of Javanese culture with its roots
deeply in the far-distant past, and a demand for the spread of education,
regarding which the Dutch had shown themselves woefully negligent
before the twentieth century. A new chapter in the native movement
opened with the emergence in 1900 of the gifted Raden Adjeng

_o8

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

Kartini, daughter of the Regent of Japara, as a champion of education

for women. Her letters,^ published in 1911, stimulated the release
of a native spiritual energy w^hich led to the foundation of Kartini
schools for girls. Both she and Dr. Waidin Sudira Usada, a retired
medical officer, who began a campaign for the advancement of Java
in 1906, looked to the spread of Western education as the means of
salvation.
In 1908 Usada founded the first nationalist association, Budi
Utomo (' High Endeavour'), with a membership mainly of intellectuals
and Javanese officials. It aimed at organizing schools on a national
basis and took its inspiration from the Indian poet Rabindranath
Tagore, and to some extent from Mahatma Gandhi. It was followed
in 1911 by an association of a very different character, Sarekat Islam,
which was an offshoot of an Islamic revival among Sumatrans and
Javanese, resulting from an intensification of Christian missionary
enterprise. Sarekat Islam made its first appearance, however, as a
combination of Javanese batik traders against Chinese exploitation.
Its four original aims were announced as the promotion of Indonesian
commercial enterprise, mutual economic support, the intellectual
and material well-being of Indonesians and the true religion of Islam.
It rapidly became a popular movement, and within a quarter of a
centMry had a membership of two millions. ' Islam was the bond and
symbol of common action against other nationalities', writes Colenbrander.* At its first congress, held at Surabaya in January 1913, its
leader, Omar Said Tjokro Aminoto, asserted forcibly that it was not
directed against Dutch rule, and that it would pursue its aims in a
constitutional manner. Its first nation-wide congress was held in
1916, when representatives of 80 local societies with a membership
of 360,000 attended and passed a resolution demanding self-government on the basis of union with the Netherlands.
Meanwhile Socialism had made its appearance not only among
Indonesians but also among the Indos, or Dutch Eurasians. The
Russian Revolution of 1917 had immediate effects upon the situation
in Java. Hendrik Sneevliet formed the Indian Social Democratic
Club with revolutionary aims, and Semaun, one of its membersr
strove to win over Sarekat Islam to Communism. At'the National^
Congress of October 1917 at Batavia Tjokro Aminoto changed his tone
to one of hostility to the government, though he still recommended
^ TTie Dutch edition is entitled Door duisternis tot licht. Gedachten over en voor
het Javaansche volk. There is an English edition entitled Letters of a Javanese
Princess by Raden Adjeng Kartini, New York, 1920. She 'died in 1904 aged
twenty-five.

' Koloniale Geschiedenis, iii, p. 129,

''

_o8

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

Kartini, daughter of the Regent of Japara, as a champion of education

for women. Her letters,^ published in 1911, stimulated the release
of a native spiritual energy w^hich led to the foundation of Kartini
schools for girls. Both she and Dr. Waidin Sudira Usada, a retired
medical officer, who began a campaign for the advancement of Java
in 1906, looked to the spread of Western education as the means of
salvation.
In 1908 Usada founded the first nationalist association, Budi
Utomo (' High Endeavour'), with a membership mainly of intellectuals
and Javanese officials. It aimed at organizing schools on a national
basis and took its inspiration from the Indian poet Rabindranath
Tagore, and to some extent from Mahatma Gandhi. It was followed
in 1911 by an association of a very different character, Sarekat Islam,
which was an offshoot of an Islamic revival among Sumatrans and
Javanese, resulting from an intensification of Christian missionary
enterprise. Sarekat Islam made its first appearance, however, as a
combination of Javanese batik traders against Chinese exploitation.
Its four original aims were announced as the promotion of Indonesian
commercial enterprise, mutual economic support, the intellectual
and material well-being of Indonesians and the true religion of Islam.
It rapidly became a popular movement, and within a quarter of a
centMry had a membership of two millions. ' Islam was the bond and
symbol of common action against other nationalities', writes Colenbrander.* At its first congress, held at Surabaya in January 1913, its
leader, Omar Said Tjokro Aminoto, asserted forcibly that it was not
directed against Dutch rule, and that it would pursue its aims in a
constitutional manner. Its first nation-wide congress was held in
1916, when representatives of 80 local societies with a membership
of 360,000 attended and passed a resolution demanding self-government on the basis of union with the Netherlands.
Meanwhile Socialism had made its appearance not only among
Indonesians but also among the Indos, or Dutch Eurasians. The
Russian Revolution of 1917 had immediate effects upon the situation
in Java. Hendrik Sneevliet formed the Indian Social Democratic
Club with revolutionary aims, and Semaun, one of its members;
strove to win over Sarekat Islam to Communism. At'the National^
Congress of October 1917 at Batavia Tjokro Aminoto changed his tone
to one of hostility to the government, though he still recommended
^ The Dutch edition is entitled Door duisternis tot licht. Gedachten over en voor
het Javaansche volk. There is an English edition entitled Letters of a Javanese
Princess by Raden Adjeng Kartini, New York, 1920. She 'died in 1904 aged
twenty-five.

' Koloniale Geschiedenis, iii, p. 129,

"

CH. 4 1

NATIONALISM IN INDONESIA, 1 9 0 0 ^ 4 2

" 709

constitutional action. There was strong disappointment at the

postponement of the establishment of the long-promised Volksraad,
and with the limitation imposed, by the Dutch upon franchise regulations. War was declared on ' sinful capitalism'. But Semaun, who had
organized an energetic Communist section (Section B) closely in
touch with Moscow, failed to gain control of the movement and broke
away to form the Perserikatan Komunist India (P.K.I.), which joined
the Third International of Moscow. An outbreak of passive resistance
in the Preanger in July 1919, coming after an ugly incident in central
Celebes in which the Dutch controller and some officials lost their
lives, led to an enquiry, which showed that secret societies belonging
to Section B were involved, and it was thereupon dissolved by the
government.
The struggle was now between the P.K.I, and Sarekat Islam, and
the religious question was the main issue. P.K.I.'s second congress
in 1920 decided that Communism was just as much opposed to PanIslamism as it was to Western domination. Communism, however,
was not a mass movement, and the Communists, though exceptionally
energetic and intelligent, were few in number. Hence their tactics
were to attempt to steal their influence from the leaders of Sarekat
Islam and to win over the trade unions. And Tan Malaka, a Communist
leader exiled for inciting a strike of government pawnshop employees,
went to Moscow and tried to persuade the Comintern to accept PanIslamism.
When the sixth national congress of Sarekat Islam met in October
1921 at Surabaya, Tjokro Aminoto was under arrest because of his
connection with underground activities, and Abdul Muis and Hadji
Agus Salim, who presided in his place, carried a motion forbidding
members of the Sarekat to belong to any other party. This forced
the Communists out of the movement. But for five years Sarekat
Islam fought a losing fight against the relatively small group of Communists who went ahead organizing Sarekats of their own, supporting
strikes and making preparations for revolutionary action in parts of
northern and western Java. In 1922, under the influence of young
Indonesian graduates from Europe, who were discontented with their
status in the government services, Sarekat Islam established relations
with the Indian National Congress and adopted the policy of nonco-operation.
The years 1923-6 saw a series of revolutionary attempts. The
post-war depression, with its crop of industrial disputes, presented
the extremists with excellent opportunities for bringing about the

CH. 4 1

NATIONALISM IN INDONESIA, 1 9 0 0 ^ 4 2

"

709

constitutional action. There was strong disappointment at the

postponement of the establishment of the long-promised Volksraad,
and with the limitation imposed, by the Dutch upon franchise regulations. War was declared on ' sinful capitalism'. But Semaun, who had
organized an energetic Communist section (Section B) closely in
touch with Moscow, failed to gain control of the movement and broke
away to form the Perserikatan Komunist India (P.K.I.), which joined
the Third International of Moscow. An outbreak of passive resistance
in the Preanger in July 1919, coming after an ugly incident in central
Celebes in which the Dutch controller and some officials lost their
lives, led to an enquiry, which showed that secret societies belonging
to Section B were involved, and it was thereupon dissolved by the
government.
The struggle was now between the P.K.I, and Sarekat Islam, and
the religious question was the main issue. P.K.I.'s second congress
in 1920 decided that Communism was just as much opposed to PanIslamism as it was to Western domination. Communism, however,
was not a mass movement, and the Communists, though exceptionally
energetic and intelligent, were few in number. Hence their tactics
were to attempt to steal their influence from the leaders of Sarekat
Islam and to win over the trade unions. And Tan Malaka, a Communist
leader exiled for inciting a strike of government pawnshop employees,
went to Moscow and tried to persuade the Comintern to accept PanIslamism.
When the sixth national congress of Sarekat Islam met in October
1921 at Surabaya, Tjokro Aminoto was under arrest because of his
connection with underground activities, and Abdul Muis and Hadji
Agus Salim, who presided in his place, carried a motion forbidding
members of the Sarekat to belong to any other party. This forced
the Communists out of the movement. But for five years Sarekat
Islam fought a losing fight against the relatively small group of Communists who went ahead organizing Sarekats of their own, supporting
strikes and making preparations for revolutionary action in parts of
northern and western Java. In 1922, under the influence of young
Indonesian graduates from Europe, who were discontented with their
status in the government services, Sarekat Islam established relations
with the Indian National Congress and adopted the policy of nonco-operation.
The years 1923-6 saw a series of revolutionary attempts. The
post-war depression, with its crop of industrial disputes, presented
the extremists with excellent opportunities for bringing about the

yiO

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

maximum dislocation of political and economic life in the hope that

it would enable them to seize power. Moscow at the time regarded
Java as a strategic centre of the highest importance. Through agents
in Singapore contact was made between thcj P.K.I, and the Chinese
Communist Party. For the time being the pommunists became the
most vital force in the Indonesian movement, and lawlessness and
intimidation were the order of the day. Against this Sarekat Islam
became increasingly hostile and turned more and more to religion as
a means of combating Communism.
The P.K.I., with a large following among the trade unions, organized
a railway strike in May 1923 which caused the government to amend
the penal code by providing heavy penalties for action likely to dislocate economic life. But the policy of repression only encouraged
the spread of revolutionary views. In 1925 a strike in the metal
industry was forcibly suppressed. In the following year, encouraged
by vague promises of assistance from Zinoviev and Bucharin, the
Communist leaders tried to start a revolution in West Java and
Sumatra. The operations were described as carefully planned and
widespread. Nevertheless they were easily suppressed, and before
the measures of severe repression taken by the Dutch the whole
revolutionary movement collapsed. The Communist Party was banned. Communist meetings prohibited and about 1,300 members of the
party interned in New Guinea. Communism was not entirely suppressed, but its leadership of the Indonesian movement was ended
and a new phase in the history of that movement began.
The failure of the revolutionary movement left Sarekat Islam as
the main organ of nationalism, though by this time a multiplicity of
parties had arisensome local, such as Sarekat-Ambon, PerserikatanMinahasa and the Sumatranen-Bond; others based upon the division
of political parties in Holland; and still others, such as the IndoEuropean League and various Chinese societies, representing special
communal interests. Sarekat Islam now began to paymore attention
to education and economic conditions. It put great energy into the,
foundation of 'wild' schools and co-operative institutions. This kind
of work, however, did not satisfy the aspirations of the discontented
students of the Indonesian Club in Holland. Through their influeiice,'
and under the leadership of Djipto Mangun Kusuma, the leader of
the Bandung Study Group, and of Sukarno, a popular young'demagogue of incorruptible character, a new political party, Perserikatan
National Indonesia, came into being in 1927. It sought to rally all
the existing nationalist organizations behin^ a big non-co-operation

CH. 4 1

NATIONALISM IN INDONESIA, I9OO-42

Jn

movement on the Gandhi model. But when Sukarno began to show

revolutionary tendencies he and two of his helpers were jailed in
December 1929, and once more the extremist attempt tc capture the
nationalist movement failed; as a political force it came to an end for the
time being. New leaders interested in social service and social justice
came forward. Ki Hadjar Dewantoro ('teacher of all the g o d s ' ) /
to use the pseudonym he adopted as a public man, went ahead with
the planning and development of national education, while Dr. Sutomo,
who as a young medical student had been associated with Dr. Sudira
Usada in founding Budi Utomo, directed the energies of the National
Party into various types of constructive activity, and in particular
the struggle to free the peasantry from the tyranny of the usurer.
Much of the trouble of these post-war years was the result of disappointment at Dutch unwillingness to effect any real transfer of
power. During the First World War, in response to insistent nationalist demands for a greater share in the government, a scheme for a
Volksraad was passed by the Netherlands Parliament in 1916, and
what has been called an experiment in self-government* held its first
meeting in May 1918. Half of its members were elected by local and
city councils, and half were appointed by the-governor-general. It
was in no real sense a representative body, it had a European majority,
and its powers were limited to the offering of advice, which the
governor-general could not accept without authorization from The
Hague. At its first meeting the disappointed deputies rejected a
proposal to address a loyal cable to the queen in token of gratitude.
And although under the Constitution {Staatsinrichting) of 1925 its
numbers were raised from forty-eight to sixty-one and it was given
an elective majority, Indonesians received only thirty seats and its
financial and legislative powers remained very slight, if indeed they
call be dignified by the name of 'powers'.
The reformed Volksraad must be seen in relation to the general
scheme of decentralization introduced by the Constitution of 1925.
A new system of provincial government was devised above the
residencies. As a first step Java's twenty-two residencies were in
1929 combined so as to form three provinces, and each under a governor assisted by a partly elected council with a non-European majority.
Regency councils also were created, and these, together with the
existing town councils, formed the electorates for both the Volksraad
^ Raden Mas Suwardi Suryaningrat; he belonged to the princely house of Paku
Alam.
Vlekke, Nusantara, p . 346.

712

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

and the provincial councils. Outside Java, in areas where the political
development of the population was considered too backward for any
form of self-government, 'governments' I without representative
councils werQ established instead of provinces. The new system was
a long time in taking shape and was only completed shortly before the
Japanese invasion. It represented the utmost concessions the Dutch
were prepared to make before the coming of the deluge.
Dutch policy, like Conservative policy in Ireland in the 'nineties,
was to 'kill home rule by kindness'. The energy and enthusiasm
in the cause of economic and social welfare shown by Dutch
administrators was quite outstanding. Their comparative lack of
success was due chiefly to the phenomenal rise in the population of
Java and the opposition of private interests in both Holland and
Indonesia. But the effects of the great depression of the early
nineteen-thirties led them to encourage native industry; and when
the revival of trade and industry began, a spirit of greater co-operation
began also to show itself between Dutch and Indonesians.
But though the political atmosphere was less heated, the Indonesian
movement continued to cherish its two aims of economic self-sufficiency and political self-government with unabated fervour. In 1936
the Volksraad passed a motion asking the Netherlands government
to call an imperial conference to discuss the method by which selfgovernment should come into effect, and to fix a time-limit. It was
characteristic of Dutch policy that no real response to this request was
made until July 1941, when Queen Wilhelmina and her government
were refugees in London. Under such a chastening experience it vvas
only natural that she should promise to hold such a conference
immediately after the war. But without undue scepticism the doubt
may be expressed whether in 1941 the Dutch government had the
serious intention of ever granting Indonesia real self-government.
Like the French in Indo-China, the Dutch were not enthusiasts
for native education beyond the elementary stage,. Fear of stimulating
popular discontent made them slow in providing secondary and higher
education. The pressure exerted by Sarekat Islam practically forced
them to improve the Dutch-vernacular schools and thereby create^a
demand for more advanced education. Tn response to this M,U.L.O.^
(More Extended Lower Instruction) Schools were founded, and in
1919 General Middle Schools, which provided courses in ^ e s t e r n
languages, mathematics, science a.nd oriental literature leading up to
university entrance. But the rate of progress in the provision of
schools of this type was too slow for the nationalists, who tried to fill'

CH. 4 1

NATIONALISM IN INDONESIA, I9OO-42

713

in the gaps by establishing 'wild' schools literally by the thousand.

The inefficiency of most of these, coupled with the fact that many
of them were used for the purpose of spreading political discontent,
compelled the government to take them more and more under its
control. Hence, when provincial councils were created, education
was not one of the subjects transferred to them.
From 1907 onwards immense efforts were put into the foundation
of village schools. The practice was for the village, or group of
villages, to build the school, often with materials provided free of cost
by the government, and to contribute ninety guilders annually towards
its upkeep. The government provided the teachers and textbooks.
Parents were expected to pay a few cents a month, but were usually
exempted, since pressure had to be brought on many of them to send
their children. By 1930 there were more than i | milUon at these
schools. But they were so closely controlled that they were organs of
the central government rather than of the village communities. Perhaps the most paternal feature of the whole system was its extremely
efficient provision of reading matter not only for the children but for
popular consumption as a whole.
The extremely tardy development of higher education must be
understood in the light of the few opportunities that existed outside
government service for Indonesians with specialist qualifications. In
their early years few Indonesians qualified for entrance to the Bandung Technical College opened in 1919, the Law College in 1924,
the Medical College in 1926, and the government institutions teaching
agriculture and forestry. In 1941, when the University of Batavia
(now the University of Indonesia) was formed, its enrolment of
Indonesian students was small. The instruction given at these
institutions maintained the very best traditions of Dutch scholarship,
but from a British point of view it was instruction ratber than education. There were no hostels for students coming from a long distance,
and no community life such as similar British institutions fostered.
Notwithstanding the great strides taken by the Dutch to extend
education in Indonesia under the 'New Course', the annual budget
allotment, compared with the Philippines, was very small. Moreover,
the provision of education failed to keep pace with the rise of population, and the number of illiterates was actually greater in 1940 than
it had been at the beginning of the century.

CHAPTER 4 2

FRENCH A D M I N I S T R A T I O N AND N A T I O N A L I S M
I N INDO-CHINA
T H E fashioning of what has been appropriately described as 'the neat
hierarchy of French colonial administration modelled on the Napoleonic pattern'^ was largely the work of Paul Doumer, who held
the office of governor-general from 1897 to 1902. He unified the
corps of civilian services, reconstituted the administration of Tongking, and organized the government of the newly-acquired Laos
territories. In Tongking he wiped out the last vestiges of autonomy
by abolishing the oflSces of viceroy, Tong-doc and Tuan-phu, and
transforming what was theoretically a protectorate into what became
for all practical purposes a directly administered colony. The Laos
territories became an 'autonomous protectorate' under a resident
superieur responsible to the governor-general. From Doumer's
regime, writes Georges Lamarre,^ dates Vlndochine actuelle.
Two of Doumer's pre-war successors strove to liberalize the
administration by native collaboration. Paul Beau (1902-7) re-established the Tong-doc and Tuan-phu in Tongking and set up an
indigenous consultative chamber there. He also created provincial
councils and schools for the training of native officials. Albert Sarraut
(1911-14) went further in the same direction by introducing the
method of 'association', whereby more natives were recruited into
the subordinate services and public instruction was jeorganized so
as to increase the supply of native candidates for government service
and improve its quality. He also established further consultative
chambers of natives in the protectorates similar to the Tongking one.
But the rigid structure built by Doumer survived all attempfs^o check
excessive centralization. In any case colonial self-government was
never the aim of French policy; assimilation rather than association
was its keynote.
Theoretically the governor-general had quasi-absolute powers;
but he was under the close supervision oLthe Directorate of Control
Charles A. Micaud in The New World of Southeast Asia, p. 227.
' In Georges Maspero (ed.) L'Indochine, ii, p. 18.
714

CH. 4 2

NATIONALISM IN INDO-CHINA

715

in the Ministry of Colonies, which periodically sent out Inspectors of

Colonies to investigate his administration. And as he was not a
professional colonial administrator but usually a politician unacquainted with the internal problems of the territories he was called
upon to govern, his function was to pass on the dictates of his
superiors to the experienced permanent officials who served under
him.
The governor-general was assisted by a Grand Council of Economic
and Financial Interests. This was composed of high-ranking French
and Indo-Chinese officials together with representatives of the
Colonial Council of Cochin China and of the Chambers of Commerce
and Agriculture. It was a purely advisory body and could deal only
with matters brought before it by the governor-general; but the
general budget of the colony and those of its various divisions had to
be submitted to it. The bulk of the legislation for Indo-China was
enacted by the French parliament or took the form of decrees issued
by the Ministry of Colonies.
Technically Cochin China was the only one of the five divisions
to rank as a colony and'to be under direct control. Annam, Cambodia,
Laos and Tongking were all protectorates. Cochin China's government was in the hands of a governor, assisted by a Privy Council and
a Colonial Council. The former approximated to an Executive Council,
the latter to a Legislative Council, in a British colony. The colony
of Cochin China was divided into major districts named provinces
with a French administrative officer at the head of each. Notwithstanding the policy of 'association' enunciated by Albert Sarraut, the
percentage of native subordinate officials in the French service was
much lower than in the case of the Dutch and British regimes in
South-East Asia. In Burma, for instance, while in 1900 Europeans
occupied nearly all the posts in the 'covenanted' civil service, the vast
rriajority of the administrative posts were outside this in t h e ' provincial'
services, and with a very few exceptions were filled by Burmese or
Indians. After the introduction of dyarchy in 1923, Burmese and.
Indians were recruited in increasing numbers into the highest grade
of the administrative and police services.
In Annam, Cambodia and Laos the kings and their Courts, together
with their hierarchy of mandarins, continued to exist alongside the
French administration. The real control, however, in each protectorate was in the hands of a resident superieur, assisted by a Privy Council
and a Protectorate Council with composition and powers similar to
those of their counterparts in Cochin China. Each protectorate was

7l6

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

divided into provinces under Residents, who were Frenchmen. In a

protectorate, however, the exercise of power was less direct than
in Cochin China. T h e actual administratioh was carried out by the
native officials under the guidance of their French opposite numbers,
who never intervened directly unless it became absolutely necessary.
The mandarins therefore were in no sense figureheads, but French
control was absolute. Mutatis mutandis the system was not unlike
the Dutch method of indirect rule in Indonesia. But in both cases
the distinction between direct and indirect rule was a legal rather
than a practical one.
The facade of native administration was imposing; it was also
useful in making foreign rule somewhat less unpalatable. The
Consultative Native Assembly, which assisted the resident superieur,
is an excellent example of the system of camouflage used by the
French. Most of its members were elected, but by a narrow group
of officials and others of trusted loyalty. Even then it could not debate
political subjects, while on other matters it could express its views only
if the resident superieur agreed to a debate. The budget estimates of
the protectorate were laid before it, but merely as a matter of form.
In Cochin China the chief aim of French educational policy was
at first simply to train interpreters. Franco-vernacular schools were
accordingly opened in the larger centres. When it was found that
they were channels to promotion the sons of notables flocked to them.
A scheme drawn up in 1879 to promote the official policy of 'assimilation' provided for secular elementary schools to be established in
every canton and village; but it made little progress, while left to
themselves the village schools of the traditional type were gradually
disappearing and leaving an unfilled gap. In the protectorates the
native systems continued to function and Western education made
very slow progress. A few Franco-vernacular schools were established
at provincial capitals for training native subordinates; their standards
were yery low. As in the case of the other colonial territories in SouthEast Asia, Vietnamese nationalism seems to have been the special
product of the Franco-vernacular schools. In 1900 it was complained
that in Cochin China the curves of crime and of European feducatwn
rose concurrently.^
'
?
Paul Beau founded the modern educational system by creating
in 1906 the Conseil de Perfectionnement de VEnseignement Indigene
to reorganize public instruction. It was to be based on the village
' J. S. Fumivall, Educational Progress in Southeastern Asia, p. 40, quoting Jules Harmand, Domination et Colonisation, 1910, p. 264.

X
CH. 4 2

NATIONALISM IN INDO-CHINA

717

elementary school teaching literacy by the use of either Chinese

characters or quoc-ngu.^ The best pupils were to go to Francovernacular primary* and secondary schools; the rest might proceed
to a primary vernacular school at the headquarters of the canton,
where French was optional, or in a few cases to a secondary vernacular
school. This system was introduced first into Annam and Tongking,
and later, in 1909-10, into Cochin China. But by 1913 there were
only 12,103 pupils in the government primary schools; in Annam and
Tongking private education was preferred. In Cambodia and Laos
the monastic schools remained the sole purveyors of elementary
education.
Cultural assimilation became still more the aim of French policy
during the First World War. In 1915 the traditional competitive
examinations for the mandarinate in Tongking were abolished. Sarraut, during his second term of office (1917-19), followed this up by
introducing a scheme under which the state was to take over all
primary instruction and make the study of French universal. This
project, however, proved too expensive and had to be abandoned.
Hence the division into vernacular and Franco-vernacular schools
was restored in 1924; but so slow was the actual progress in providing
state schools in the villages that in 1926 where there was no state
school a village was allowed to provide its own.
Generally speaking, the French were not interested in vernacular
education; they aimed at injecting larger and ever larger doses of
French culture. There was a curious inconsistency about their policy
in this matter, for a comparatively small coterie of French scholars
carried out remarkable researches into the languages and literatures,
the history and archaeology of the East, and made the ficole Fran9aise
d'Extreme Orient, established at Hanoi in 1899, the finest centre of
oriental studies in the world. No praise can be too high for the work
it has done in discovering, caring for and restoring Indo-Chinese
historical monuments, and in particular revealing to the world the
glories of Khmer and Cham art and architecture.
The policy of assimilation had strangely different results from those
it was intended to produce. It has been said that the bitterest opponents of the French were those who knew the language best. When
Paul Beau, as a concession to nationalism, founded the University of
' T h e system of romanization invented by Catholic missionaries in the seventeenth
century.
* T h e term 'primary' in this connection represents the stage above 'elementary'
and must not be interpreted according to its present meaning in the English system of
education.

7l8

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

Hanoi in 1907, there was such an outburst of nationaHstic assertiveness

among the students that in the following year it was closed, and not
reopened until Sarraut's second term as goji^ernor-general.
The nationalist movement in Indo-China, was almost entirely confined to the Vietnamese. 1 They were the most numerous of all the
peoples of the area, and by 1945 constituted about 75 per cent of
a population roughly estimated at 25 millions. They had a tradition
of nationalism dating from their long struggle for independence
against China. Though their civilization remained predominantly
Chinese in character, ^ after independence was achieved in 939, it
was no less their own, and in their expansion southwards into the
tecritories previously held by the Chams and the Khmersi.e.
central and southern Annam and Cochin China^they substituted it
for the Indianized culture they found in those areas.
The French established themselves in both Cochin China and
Tongking by conquest. In each case it was a long protracted struggle,
and when at last forced to give in the Vietnamese never lost the hope
that one day the hated foreigner would have to withdraw. Banditry
was never stamped out; there were constant plots, which the French
put down with heartless severity. The French colonists blamed the
liberal policy of Beau and Sarraut and demanded protection. Japan's
victory over Russia in 1905 created a wave of unrest, which came to a
head in the Gilbert Chieu conspiracy in the following year. The
Young Annamites protested against the Franco-Russian alliance. The
intelligentsia, influenced by the writings of Chinese reformers such as
K'ang Yu Wei, who advocated the study of Western culture, turned
to the study of the French philosophical writers, notably Montesquieu
and Rousseau, and flocked to the University of Hanoi when it was
founded in 1907. But French measures of repression, including the
rounding up of suspects and their imprisonment on Pulo Condore,
and the closing of the university, brought what may be considered
the first phase of the twentieth-century nationalist movement to
an end.
!! ^-^
Sarraut's liberal policy during his first tenure of office helped to
keep Indo-China relatively quiet during World War I. But Francemade generous promises which she was not prepared to redeem after"
the war. She also injured Vietnamese susceptibilities/by forcibly
recruiting no less than 100,000 of them for war service in ^Europe.
' See Virginia Thompson's survey in Emerson, Mills and Thompson, Government
and Nationalism in Southeast Asia, pp. I Q 8 - 2 I O ; see also Philippe Devillers, Histoire du
Viet-Nam de ig^o a igss, chaps, ii and iii.

CH. 4 2

NATIONALISM IN INDO-CHINA

yig

Many of these on their return home brought back subversive ideas.

The political prisoners, who had been interned on Pulo Condore, were
also stimulated to renewed activities after the war by contacts with
Siamese and Chinese revolutionaries. The post-war period therefore
saw the rise of political parties. The elite were stirred by the doctrine
of self-determination proclaimed by the victorious Allies. Some also
took their inspiration from the Indian swaraj movement, while others
imbibed the teachings of the Cantonese Communists. There was a
Constitutionalist Party, led by Bui Quang-chieu, which advocated
reform along democratic lines, and a Tongkingese Party, led by
Pham Quynh, with a similar programme. The government turned
down a programme of mild reform submitted by Pham Quynh. It
was then the turn of the extremists to steal the limelight from the
moderates.
In 1925 the Revolutionary Party of Young Annam was founded.
But the mutual jealousies of its leaders paralysed it, and when its
Communist members seceded in 1929 it soon came to grief; for the
secessionists informed the police against their former comrades and
the party was suppressed. A Tongkingese party calling itself the
Nationalist Annamite Party came into being through Kuomintang
contacts. Half of its members were in government service. It had
a very limited following but hoped for foreign aid. It sought also to
win over the Vietnamese battalions in the army. In January 1929
it made an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Governor Pasquier,
and in the following month killed Bazin, the head of the Labour
Bureau. Its terrorist activities brought the police so hot oh its trail
that it was forced to launch a rebellion with inadequate preparations.
This began with the abortive Yenbay mutiny of February 1930, and
there were outbreaks of violence in many places. The French reacted
with the most tremendous severity. Every kind of manifestation,
even unarmed demonstrations, was broken up by force, and so many
of its leaders were arrested that the party dissolved.
The ferocity of the suppression of the extremist outbreaks of 1930
forced Communism underground. The small party, which numbered
some 1,500 members in 1931, was ably led by Nguyen-Ai-Quoc,
better known as Ho Chi Minh. He had joined the Communist Party
in France before the First World War. After the armistice he went to
Russia, where he studied revolutionary technique. Then in Canton
he founded the Association of Revolutionary Annamite Youth. It
was composed of revolutionaries who went there for training at the
Wampoa Academy. His aim was the nationalist one of winning

720

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

Vietnamese independence. On his own showing^ this was to be

accompUshed through a democratic bourgeois regime; Communism
was to be introduced at a later stage. He drjcw up a programme which
appealed to intellectuals and peasants alike. It included the reduction
of fiscal burdens, the redistribution of land among the peasantry,
and the abolition of the conscription of labourers and native soldiers
for service abroad.
Self-effacing as a leader, he was a strict disciplinarian. Where other
leaders and their parties failed, his firm, intelligent leadership
succeeded; and although he was arrested by the British in Hong Kong
and imprisoned for three years, his movement persisted against all
attempts by the French to extirpate it. In 1939 it became Viet Minh,
or the League for the Independence of Vietnam. During the period
of the Japanese occupation it was to become the spearhead of the
nationalist movement. Thus while in the pre-war period Vietnamese
nationalism as a movement was ineffective, and weakened by personal
or local jealousies and rivalries, it was to find new life under the
direction of a leader of inflexible will and tireless energy. The pity
was that French intransigence caused it to fall under Communist
leadership. The Vietnamese, with their deep attachment to property
and the patriarchal family system, are not natural recruits to
Communism,
' Nguyen-Ai-Quoc, Leproces de la colonisation frattfaise, Paris, 1926.

CHAPTER 43

T H E U N I T E D STATES AND F I L I P I N O NATIONALISM

T H E blowing up of the American battleship Mainepresumably by
accidentin Havana Bay on 15 February 1898 set off a far greater
explosion, of anger against Spain as the suspected perpetrator, in the
United States with the result that the two countries soon found themselves at war. Even Spain's expressed willingness to submit the matter
to impartial examination on Washington's own terms was peremptorily
swept aside. On the very day on which the United States Congress
formally declared war. Commodore Dewey, then in Hong Kong harbour, received orders to lead his squadron into battle against the Spanish
fleet at Manila. So on the morning of 1 May, before the eyes olSthe
Manila populace on shore, he sailed into the Bay and destroyed or
disabled the whole Spanish fleet without himself sustaining a single
casualty.
Unable to land adequate forces to capture thfe city, Dewey then
got into touch with Aguinaldo in Hong Kong and with the promise of
independence for the Philippines as the prize for assistance against the
Spaniards he brought the exiled leader home to head another nationalist
revolt. Within a matter of weeks the whole of Luzon except Manila
itself had come into insurgent hands, and on 12 June 1898 Filipino
independence was solemnly proclaimed at Aguinaldo's headquarters
at Kawit, Cavite, and he himself was again president of the revolutionary
government. His forces, however, were not strong enough to capture
Manila; the fall of the city had to await the arrival of reinforcements for
Dewey from America. Its capitulation after a token resistance took
place on 13 August 1898, when the Spanish governor-general surrendered to the American High Command by a prearranged ruse which
kept the Filipino army out of the city. There then began a chain of
events which led inexorably to the cession of the Philippines to the
United States and the rejection of the Filipino claim to independence.
The treaty bringing the Spanish-American war to an end was signed at
Paris on 10 December 1898; Aguinaldo's envoy was denied entrance to
the conference.
Opinion in Washington was so divided on the subject of annexation
721

722

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

FT. IV

that the necessary two-thirds majority in the Senate for ratification

of the treaty was obtained with only one vote to spare. The issue was
chnched largely because two days before t|ie vote was taken fighting
broke out between the troops of Aguinaldo's republican army and the
American occupying forces. Attempts had been made at peaceful
negotiation, but the Filipinos were as determined to assert their independence against America as they had been' against Spain. The headquarters of the Philippine Republic were set up at Malolos, and there
a constitution was drawn up embodying ideas from a wide variety of
existing constitutions. On 23 January 1899 it was formally promulgated
and Aguinaldo ceremonially sworn in as president. For about a year
its organized forces put up a determined and bitter resistance to the
Americans throughout Luzon and in Panay. But Aguinaldo himself
with the main army was gradually forced back into the mountains of
northern Luzon, and by early 1900 the Filipino forces had become
disorganized, and the rest of the struggle was carried on by guerrilla
warfare. These operations petered out after the capture in March 1901
of Aguinaldo himself.
/
Controversy still rages over the promises made to Aguinaldo in
order to obtain his co-operation against the Spaniards. Seen in its
proper perspective America's move to acquire the Philippines was not
an accidental, unpremeditated act. She had long been acquiring
growing interests in the western Pacific. She wanted a base for ships
engaged in the China trade, and American imperialists such as Theodore
Roosevelt had already begun to think of Manila as a prize to be won
through a war with Spain. Moreover, in an age when the partition of
China looked to be a strong possibility, it was considered essential
that in the event of the collapse of the decadent Spanish regime, the
Philippines should not be permitted to fall into the hands of, say,
Germany. When Dewey went into Manila Bay there was an even stronger
German fleet near by, and when, after destroying the Spanish fleet, he
blockaded Manila, the German commander created a tense situation by
deliberately refusing to recognize the blockade. It se'ems probable that
only the support of a British squadron at the critical moment prevented
a second battle of Manila Bay. Thus any hope of Filipino independence
under such conditions was a forlorn one.
j
._
While the American army was dealing with the patriots, Washington
in 1899 ^^'^t out a five-man commission under President Schurman
of Cornell University to enquire into the Philippine situation. It
reported to President McKinley that to a man the Filipinos wanted
independence, but were as yet incapable of self-g6vernment. It made

CH. 4 3

THE UNITED STATES AND FILIPINO NATIONALISM

723

a series of comprehensive recommendations. They included the creation

of a Filipino legislature and the institution of civil government as soon
as possible, immediate measures'to develop the country's resources,
the establishment of a system of provincial and municipal government,
the setting-up of a complete system of public instruction with English
as its medium, and the recruitment of specialists for the chief administrative posts.
The transition from military rule came on 4 July 1901 when a new
five-man commission headed by Judge William H. Taft was installed at
Manila, and proceeded with tremendous vigour to implement the Schurman recommendations. The Filipinos were given the specific assurance
that their customs, habits and traditions would be fully taken into
account, but that American principles of government were essential to the
rule of law and to individual freedom. Throughout the country law and
order had to be restored, and famine, plague, cholera and various epidemics fought. No less than 440 laws, establishing the new system of
government, were adopted and put into effect. The new municipal
and provincial codes provided for Filipino participation in local government, but the administrative decentralization, recommended by
McKinleyi was not in accord with the Spanish tradition of centralization, with which the Filipinos were familiar, and in the interests of
efficiency it was found expedient to maintain American supervision,
particularly over the new municipal governments, which were to be
served by elective officials. A vast educational campaign was set in
motion, with no less than six hundred teachers immediately recruited in
America for service in the Philippines. Departments of Agriculture,
Waters and Forests, and a Public Health Service, were created. In legal
matters Spanish civil law tradition, long established, had necessarily to
be retained, but an American-type Supreme Court was superimposed,
and its first chief justice was a Filipino. Three Filipinos were also added
to the Commission.
At first the Commission itself acted as both supreme executive and
legislature, its president being in effect the civil governor of the colony.
In July 1902, however. Congress passed the Philippine Organic Act,
providing that after a census a popular assembly, of eighty members
elected by single-member constituencies, was to come into being, and
the Commission was then to become the upper house of a bi-cameral
legislature. Executive power was to be in the hands of a governorgeneral, and as the Commission continued to be his cabinet, when the
new system began to function in 1907, several members of the upper
house of the legislature were also heads of executive departments. A

724

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

FT. IV

further provision of the act, which was to'have important effects upon
Philippine pohtical development,, was that two Filipino delegates were
to sit in the American Congress, though without votes.
Notwithstanding the extremely liberal policy pursued by the Americans, contrasting strongly with that of Spain, the nationalist agitation
for independence became so intense that the government felt compelled
to pass a Sedition Act forbidding the advocacy of independence and the
use of the Philippine flag. The moderate Federal Party, aiming at
ultimate federal union with America, gained hardly any support, and
the first general election on an electoral roll restricted by qualifications
of property and languagei.e. the ability to use either English or
Spanishresulted in a complete victory for the Nacionalista Party,
which niade independence its supreme objective. The election brought
to the fore two dominating personalities, Sergio Osmena, who became
the first speaker of the Assembly, and Manuel Quezon, the leader of
the majority party. Both were mestizos, the former being of ChineseMalayan mixture and the latter of Spanish-Malayan. Quezon, who
became a delegate to Washington in 1909, devoted himself to the task
of impressing upon Congress that the Filipinos were politically mature.
Through his influence Filipinos gained a majority of seats on the
Commission and a number of ministerial posts. He also played an
important part in securing the passage of the Jones Law (1916), which
accorded a substantial degree of autonomy to the Philippines.
The McKinley instructions in 1901 had laid down that preference
should be given to Filipinos in appointments to public offices, but the
tendency had been for more, rather than fewer, Americans to be
appointed to the civil service, as time went on. In 1912, however, the
Democrat victory brought President Woodrow Wilson to office, and in
due course he appointed Francis Burton Harrison governor-general of
the Philippines. The acceleration of progress towards self-government
now became the order of the day, and Harrison went over to a policy of
rapid Filipinization. The Jones Law, named after-the deputy who sponsored it in the Chamber, announced in its preamble that it"was America's
intention to grant independence to the Philippines as soon as a stable
government could be established there. It provided for a governinent
modelled upon that of the United States, with executive power in the
hands of a governor-general, legislative power in those of a bi-cameral
legislature composed of a Senate and a Chamber of Deputies, and
judicial power vested in a Supreme Court. In place of the Commission
there'was to be an elective Senate of twenty-four members, twenty-two
elected by manhood suffrage and two appointed by the governor-general

CH. 4 3

THE UNITED STATES AND FILIPINO NATIONALISM

725

to represent non-Christian tribes. The Chamber of Deputies was to

consist of eighty-four members elected on a similar franchise and nine
appointed by the governor-general. Certain restrictions upon full autonomy were provided for in the act. The governor-general could veto
acts of the legislature, and laws regarding public land, timber, mining,
currency, coinage, immigration and tariffs must go to him for signature.
The control of money was reserved to the President of the United
States. The right to annul any law was reserved to Congress. In certain
legal cases appeal lay to the Supreme Court in Washington.
The general effect of the act was to give the Filipinos complete control
over their own internal affairs, notwithstanding the reservations listed
above. True, it conferred greater powers upon the governor-general,
and he was an American appointed by Washington. This was later
discovered to be a serious defect from the Filipino point of view, but
Harrison had no intention of using them arbitrarily. Legally, for instance, the cabinet was not responsible to the legislature but he permitted heads of departments, at the request of the legislature, to present
reports to it. In 1918, at the request of Speaker Osmena, he appointed an
advisory Council of State composed of the members of the Cabinet and
the presidents of both houses. Through this means the two leaders of
the Nacionalista Party managed in effect to control the top executive
appointments. Harrison pushed ahead with the development of education, drew up a programme of economic development, founded the
Philippine National Bank to grant long-term loans for industrial
development and a number of industrial projects under state control.
But his economic administration was too extravagant for the means at his
disposal, and his policy of rapid Filipinization stirred up much opposition. In 1921 the Wood-Forbes Commission of Enquiry, appointed by
a Republican Congress, condemned his governmental methods as transgressing the Jones Law, and asserted that immediate independence
would be a betrayal of the Filipino people. What they needed, it said
was a period of apprenticeship.
Accordingly, Leonard Wood, on taking office in 1921 as governorgeneral, announced his intention of applying the Jones Law strictly.
His use of the veto on legislative enactments soon brought him into
violent conflict with the Filipino leaders, and in July 1923 all the
Filipino secretaries of departments together with Quezon, the president
of the Senate, and Manuel Roxas, the speaker of the House of Representatives, resigned from the Council of State. The political deadlock
thus created lasted until Wood's sudden death in 1927. His successor,
acting Governor-General Eugene A. Gilmore, revived the policy of

726

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

co-operation, and Henry L. Stimson, the nfext governor-general, introduced new machinery to ensure it. He revived the Council of State,
appointed his cabinet from the majority party in the legislature, and
arranged for cabinet members to speak in the legislature and answer
questions.
'
In June 1933, as a result of the Democratic victory in the American
elections, Frank Murphy became governor-general. He was a Catholic
and a sympathizer with Filipino aspirations, and with immense energy
he began to put into operation a policy aimed at counteracting the
disastrous effects upon the Philippines of the Great Depression of 1930.
By this time opinion in the United States was turning strongly in favour
of Filipino independence. The depression was not without its effects
upon this situation, for it had caused loud demands for restf ictions on the
entrance into America of Philippine sugar and immigrants, and on the
employment of Filipinos on American ships. The farmers, the sugar
producers and the trade unions were behind this agitation, and their
hope was that, if independence were granted, the Philippines would no
longer enjoy free trade with America, and would be treated as a foreign
country. Partly for this reason, but also because it was the policy of the
Democratic majority in Congress to help the Philippines towards the
achievement of independence, Osmeiia and Roxas, who had arrived in
Washington in December 1932 at the head of a Philippine independence
mission, were able to secure the passage through Congress of the HareHawes-Cutting Independence Act. But President Herbert Hoover
vetoed it. Congress replied by repassing the act over his head. The
Filipino legislature, however, rejected the measure as unsuitable. The
reasons given by Quezon as president of the Senate were that the provisions regarding commercial relations were to the disadvantage of the
Philippines, the clause limiting the entry of Filipinos into the United
States was injurious, and the retention of military and naval bases by the
United States in the Philippines constituted a violation of Filipino
national dignity.
Quezon then went himself to Washington and persuaded Congress to
approve a new independence measure, the Tydings-McDuffie Act,
which was signed by President Roosevelt on 24 March 1934 and subsequently accepted by the Philippine legislature. It differed surprisinglylittle from the rejected measure, but mentioned only ,naval bases.
Moreover, Roosevelt gave the assurance that before full independence in
1946 the 'inequalities and imperfections' would all be ironed,out.
Under its provisions a Commonwealth of the Philippines was to come
into being on 4 July 1936. Its constitution was to'be drawn up by a

CH. 4 3

THE UNITED STATES AND FILIPINO NATIONALISM

727

popularly-elected Convention of 200 members. It was to function for

ten years, at the end of which, on 4 July 1946, the independent Republic
of the Philippines was to be inaugurated, and the American forces withdrawn. Up to then foreign relations and national defence were to
remain under American control, and the United States presideat was
to retain power to approve or veto any constitutional amendment, or any
acts affecting currency, coinage, imports or exports. The United States
also reserved the right to intervene in the Philippines in order to preserve constitutional government.
The Constitutional Convention was speedily elected and a constitution closely resembling the American one was framed, and on 14 May
1935 ratified by a national plebiscite. On 15 November 1935 it was
inaugurated by President Roosevelt. Frank Murphy, the governorgeneral, became America's first High Commissioner to the Philippines.
Manuel Quezon was elected the new Commonwealth's first president
with Osmeiia as vice-president. Thus was the rift in the Nacionalista
Party, caused by Quezon's rejection of the Hare-Hawes-Cutting Act,
healed. No other party had any strength whatever, so that the new
regime was. essentially a one-party government.
The price, which the Philippines were called upon to pay for this new
measure of freedom, was not so heavy as had at one time seemed probable. Filipino immigration into the United States was to be limited to
fifty persons a year; no limitation was imposed upon American entry
into the Philippines. Regarding the import of Philippine products into
America, maximum quotas were laid down for the duty-free entry of
raw sugar, refined sugar, copra and hempen cord. Then, beginning
from 1941 all Philippine imports into the United States were to pay
5 per cent duty, with an additional 5 per cent annually until in 1946,
on attaining independence, when the Philippines would be outside the
American tariff barriers and their products would pay 25 per cent duty
on entering America. American goods, on the other hand, were to enter
the Philippines duty-free during this period.
The United States thus within a very short period of time introduced
an advanced form of political democracy into the Philippines. It had
serious defects. In effect power was conferred upon the property owners
and the intelligentsia, and the men who exercised it came almost entirely from the landed gentry, for notwithstanding the most tremendous
drive to establish schools, enrol pupils and train teachers, education
of the masses could never keep pace with political progress. The landed
classes, who wielded power, were not at all interested in democratization, but in preserving their own social and economic privileges. And
24*

728

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

as their co-operation was important to the American authorities, nothing

was done to break up the big estates, save those of the friars, and even
then it was not the cultivators who benefited. At one end of the scale
there were vast estates and at the other a vast number of holdings of less
than a hectare, i.e.'just under 2^ acres. The number of owner-cultivators
too small under the Spanish regime, declined' further under the American, and the condition of the peasantry was the worst in the whole of
South-East Asia. And as the representatives and allies of the landed
interest were the people who replaced the American authorities, when
the commonwealth came into being, nothing effective was done before
the Japanese onslaught at the end of 1941 brought far worse troubles
to the under-privileged.
The American Congress had in 1902 empowered the Philippine
Government to classify and dispose of all public lands for the benefit of
the people. In the following year an adaptation of the American
'homestead system' was introduced into the Philippines whereby every
citizen could have the opportunity to acquire 24 hectares of public land.
At the same time the purchase or lease of public lands by any corporation
was limited to a maximum of 1,024 hectares. But the homestead
policy proved a disappointment; the procedure, was too complicated
for the average peasant and the credit facilities inadequate. And, more
important still, the Bureau of Lands connived at the manoeuvres of the
land-grabbers, so that the legal restrictions against speculation in land
and agricultural exploitation were evaded. It is a significant fact that
while the number of cultivators increased by about 700,000, less than
35,000 homestead applicants received land titles. Anti-usury legislation
failed to prevent the loss of the peasant's land for what began as a
trifling loan, which he did not repay in time. Co-operative credit
schemes also failed.
The purchase in 1904 by the American government for seven million
dollars, of the friar lands, which Aguinaldo's regime had marked down
for nationalization, offered a wonderful opportunity to create peasantownership on a big scale. The lands were to be sold^on-an instalment
plan with preference given to the actual cultivatorswho, by the way,
had paid no rent since the outbreak of the revolution in 1896. But,
partly because of the poor drafting of "the legal provisions, and largely
because of landlord pressure upon the Filipino administrators of the
scheme, ownership actually went into the hands of a class of small or
medium landlords, not those of the cultivators themselves.
Thus the evils of usury and of land-grabbing through the courts
reduced the majority of owner-cultivators to share-cropping tenants.

CH. 4 3

THE UNITED STATES AND FILIPINO NATIONALISM

729

at the mercy of their landlords, or to wage-earners. The opening of

the American market to Philippine produce favoured large-scale agricultural production, to the detriment, and consequent break-up, of the
traditional economy. Large-scale sugar production played an important
part in this process, and private corporations and large estate owners
succeeded the Church and the friars in land-ownership. The new
'sugar-baron' became more powerful than the old 'rice-baron', and it is
significant that the leading Filipino politicians came from the sugar
provinces.^
The normal method was for the landlord to divide up his estate into
small farms cultivated by share-croppers. The kasama system was
the most widespread, especially in rice-growing. The landlord provided
land, seed and capital, the tenant labour and working animals. The
tenant took 50 per cent of the crop after his portion of the expenses of
cultivation had been paid. In regions where there was competition
for land occupancy the inquilato, or cash rent, system was common.
Both were sources of injustice. The share-cropper had to pay usurious
rates of interest on the advances made to him: for instance, a usual rate
of interest was two cavans of paddy at harvest for every one loaned, and
failure to pay doubled the debt at the next harvest. The cash tenant had
no security: population pressure would force his rent up, and if he
failed to pay, he could be expelled from his holding without compensation. A system of extra services and heavy fines added to the misery of
all tenants.
The increasing demand, caused by expanding foreign trade and
increase of population, led to a corresponding increase in the area
cultivated, which rose from 1,267,000 hectares in 1903 to 4,017,000
hectares in 1935. But the bulk of the additional income thus created
went to Government, the landlords and the urban areas; very little to
the peasantry. During the Spanish period there had been many agrarian
risings; and to Aguinaldo's peasant supporters 'independence' meant
the abolition of the tenure system which tied them down to abject
poverty. When, therefore, the Great Depression of 1930 knocked the
bottom out of the world market for primary products, agrarian revolts
began once more to break out; and just as the angry peasants of the
earlier period believed that land reform would not come while the
Spaniards remained, so in the nineteen-thirties they cherished the same
feelings about the Americans.
The unrest among the depressed classes showed itself also in the rise
of left-wing organizations. In June 1924 communism made its first
^ E. H. Jacoby, Agrarian Unrest in Southeast Asia, p. 170.

730

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

appearance when at the invitation of the Soviet Government a delegation

of FiHpinos attended the International Conference of Labour at Moscow.
On their return they organized the Society of Workers of the Philippines.
Other left-wing groups, which made the teriant-landlord relationship
and agf arian indebtedness main items in their' agitation, were the Tanggulan, which caused a rising in 1931, and the Sakdal, which caused one in
1935. Communism easily made converts in the agricultural provinces
of central Luzon, where the worst evils of landlordism were rampant.
There was no political party in the legislature at Manila which represented the needy classes.
The spread of education was America's greatest achievement in the
Philippines. It has been well said that whereas the church building
and the missionary were the official instruments for the spread of
Spanish culture, their equivalents for the spread of American culture
were the schoolhouse and the teacher; and, it might be added, the
social progress achieved by their means in a matter of decades exceeded
that of over three centuries of Spanish rule. To carry the new education
system into effect, thirty-seven divisions were organized, each under a
superintendent, and 379 school districts, each under a supervising
teacher. By 1922 there were over^a million pupils in the public schools,
and the expenditure on education was nearly one-half of the total
governmental expenditure. Teacher training in the Philippines went
ahead so fast that by 1927 the number of American teachers was only
one per cent of the total of 26,200 public school teachers.
English was the medium of instruction from the primary grade
upwards. By 1939 literacy had been raised from 20 to 49 per cent of the
population over ten years of age, and nearly 27 per cent of the population
spoke English. By that time there were 11,000 public schools with
1,750,000 pupils, of whom some 76,000 were in secondary schools. The
private education system also developed rapidly, especially in the higher
grades. In 1940 its elementary schools accounted for 71,000 pupils
and its secondary schools 63,000. At the top of-the scale, competing
with the older established Spanish foundations, w a ^ t h e University
of the Philippines, founded on the American model iff 1908. In 194a
it had nearly 8,000 students, and the total number in state-supported
institutions of higher education was something over f2,ooo;-Against
that, the private universities and institutions of higher education had
a little over 36,000 students. Thus they played a. very substantial
part in higher education. The Filipino response to these wider educational opportunities was enthusiastic, and support for education increased with the increase in Filipino participation in government.

CH. 4 3

THE UNITED STATES AND FILIPINO NATIONALISM

731

The demand was always ahead of the accommodation. Everywhere

education was regarded as the key to independence and poUtical
progress.
When Manuel Quezon became the chief executive in the Philippine
Government as a result of the victory of the Nacionalista Party in the
elections of September 1935, he took as his motto 'less politics, more
government'. Certainly the external and internal problems that were
mounting up called for the utmost wisdom and resources he could
commandand more. On account of the growing dangers in the international situation he was forced to devote his chief attention to national
defence, and with General Douglas MacArthur as his adviser he built
up the armed services through a system of compulsory military service.
Rural discontent had risen to an alarming degree. To combat it his
policy was to introduce a general minimum wage of one peso a day,
an eight-hour day, a rent law and a law for the expropriation of large
estates and their subdivision among the cultivators. The actual results,
however, were meagre. For one thing, to have achieved success would
have cost far more money than he had at his disposal, and, for another,
he lacked a civil service sufficiently honest and independent to be able
to counteract the means of sabotage used by the powerful landed
interest against such a policy.
Actually, in terms of exports agriculture was making much progress.
In addition the new Commonwealth enjoyed an unexpected gold boom,
which caused the number of its mines to increase from six to 104, and
raised the annual production to 80 million pesos in value. Nevertheless,
there was a growing lack of confidence on the part of American investors,
and Quezon, aware of the extent to which Philippine prosperity depended upon the customs union with the United States, became more
and more uneasy about the situation that would arise when Philippine
products had to compete on equal terms with other foreign imports
in the American market. As a result of his representations at Washington a Joint Preparatory Committee on Philippine Affairs, composed of
six Filipinos and six Americans, was appointed in 1937 to go into the
matter, and in the following year recommended that the trade preferences, accorded by America to Philippine exports should terminate in
i960, not 1946. It was apis aller. The alternative envisaged by Quezon
diversification of production, improvement of techniques and
reduction of net costswas a long-term policy, and, moreover, would
entail the abandonment of the free enterprise to which both America
and the Philippines were committed. Thus, with an economy tied
to that of America, and with American military bases in their midst.

732

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

real independence for the Philippines was a long way off; and in the
wicked world of Mussolini and Hitler, of Japan's wanton invasion of
China and of the violent overthrow of the Spanish Republic, the
neutrality provided for in the Tydings-McDufRe Act was mere wishful
thinking.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour on 8^ December 1941 (Philippine time) was followed within a matter of hours by the bombing of
military objectives in the Philippines from bases on Formosa. On 10
December the invasion began, and a week or tWo later two Japanese
armies, one from Lingayen in northern Luzon and the other from
Atimonan and Mauban in the south, were converging upon Manila.
The American and Filipino forces under General MacArthur retired
before superior numbers to the Bataan Peninsula and the fortified island
of Corregidor commanding the entrance to Manila Bay. To save Manila
from destruction it was declared ah open city, and on 2 January 1942 it
fell to the Japanese. The magnificent defence of Bataan and Corregidor
upset Japan's programme, and gave America and the British Commonwealth desperately needed time to go ahead with their preparations.
On 9 April the 36,000 surviving defenders of Bataan surrendered; on
6 May the 12,000 on Corregidor. President Quezon and the members of
the government had earlier escaped to Australia by submarine. General
MacArthur also, under orders from America, had got away to Mindanao
in March and gone thence to Australia.
Many from the defeated American and Filipino forces fled to the
mountains and began to organize guerrilla warfare on a big scale. Their
numbers swelled to large proportions: post-war investigation showed
that not less than 260,000 men had been actively engaged, with the support of probably an even larger number'in the underground resistance.
The Japanese promises, and the propagation of the Greater East Asia
Co-prosperity Sphere, made no appeal to the mass of the Filipinos.
The Japanese brutalities and atrocities, their systematic pillage of
everything that could be carried away, the drug traffic carried on by
the Japanese army and its gambling and prostitution rackets, the forced
labour expected from the peasantry, and the general reduction of the
workers to slavery, all these were far more powerful arguments than
boastful propaganda.
'
In the Philippines under Japanese rule there was less disruption
of the social system than in Burma and Indonesia. A large proportion
of the Filipino officials continued to serve, since, after all, government
had to function, and their excuse was that by collaboration they could
the better protect the people from Japanese_brutality. Political parties

CH. 43

THE UNITED STATES AND FILIPINO NATIONALISM

733

were suppressed. They were replaced by an organization called from

the initial letters of its name Kalibapi, the 'Association for the Service
of the New Philippines'. Every member of the administration had to
belong to it. It received its orders from Tokyo. In June 1943 a convention of the Kalibapi, summoned under Japaijese instructions, chose a
Constitutional Commission to draft a new constitution for the 'independent republic'' of the Philippines, which Japan proposed to
establish. It was presided over by Jose P. Laurel, the most prominent
among the actual sympathizers with Japan among the Filipino ruling
classes. In October 1943 the new republic was formally inaugurated,
with Laurel as its president. He had absolute power of veto over the
National Assembly, but was himself, of course, completely under
Japanese control. In the following month he headed a Filipino delegation, which attended the 'Assembly of the Nations of East Asia' at
Tokyo, and participated in the establishment of the Pacific Charter
drawn up by Japan in anticipation of her ultimate victory.
But American submarines were decimating the Japanese mercantile
marine, and there was famine throughout the Philippines. The underground and guerrillas became so effective that the Japanese were able
ultimately to control only twelve out of the forty-eight provinces. The
guerrillas established contact with General MacArthur in Australia, and
received American supplies by submarine and parachute. The backbone
of the resistance on Luzon was supplied by the Hukbalahaps led by Luis
Taruc and Casto Alejandrino. The movement had originated in central
Luzon as a part of the pre-war agrarian agitation against landlordism.
Its name was composed of the initial letters of their Filipino designation
' The People's Army against Japan'. They gradually expanded their hold
over much of Luzon, and by well-planned attacks upon Japanese
patrols and depots were able to arm 30,000 men and deny possession of
the harvests of much of the island to the Japanese. They Sovietized
their areas, redistributed land to the cultivators and created co-operatives. Their contribution towards the final defeat of Japan was
substantial.
Meanwhile, Quezon's government-in-exile was at Washington
preparing for the post-war reconstruction of the Philippines. It became
one of the founder-members of the United Nations, and in June 1944
had the satisfaction of seeing the passage through Congress of the law
authorizing the President of the United States to proclaim Philippine
independence on 4 July 1946. When that law was passed the Americans
were poised for the reconquest of the Philippines. The initial bombing
began late in September. On 20 October four divisions of American

734

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

troops began to disembark on Leyte from a ifleet of 650 ships. General

MacArthur commanded the expedition, and with him was Sergio
Osmefia, who had become head of the exiled government upon the death
of Quezon on i August 1944. The Japanese thre\v everything they could
muster against the Leyte expedition, and it \vas in this connection
that the decisive naval battles of 23-26 October were fought and
Japan's sea power annihilated. Marshal Yamashita's attempt to keep
the Americans out of Luzon was also frustrated when on 9 January
1945 they landed in strength in the Gulf of Lingayen. There was a
frightful struggle for Manila, which lasted until 23 February and left
the city a mass of ruins. Then came mopping-up operations throughout
the archipelago. They lasted several months, and it was only on 3 September, the day after Japan's formal surrender to General MacArthur,
that Yamashita himself surrendered with the remnant of his forces at
Baguio.
During 1944 it looked as if collaboration v^ras going to become a
major issue in the FhiTippihes atier the war^ Generaf MacArthur
declared that he would 'run to earth every disloyal Filipino'. The
difficulties in attempting to carry but such a policy were found to be
too great, however, and MacArthur's support for his pre-war friend
Manuel Roxas, who had served with Laurel, and been in charge of the
procurement of rice for the Japanese, made it c^uite impossible to deal
with the great collaborators. A People's Court Was set up to try traitors,
but none of the high-ups was convicted, and in January 1948 President
Roxas proclaimed an amnesty for all, except those who had committed
heinous offences such as murder, theft and rajje. The worst type of
collaboration had been that of the 'peso millioiiaires', who as middlemen had made vast profits through helping the Japanese to exploit
the country's iron-ore, chromite, manganese, cojjper and wolframite for
the supply of their munitions factories.

CHAPTER 4 4

T H E ECONOMIC ASPECT OF EUROPEAN D O M I N A T I O N

imperialism provided the main stimulus to the extension of
European domination over the lands and islands of South-East Asia.
Europe's insatiable hunger for markets and for tropical products went
through a number of distinct phases between 1500 and 1900. The
most acute one coincided with the revolution in human life begun by
the railway, steamship and electric telegraph, and intensified by the
motor car, aeroplane and wireless. European industry became more
and more dependent upon products that South-East Asia could supply
in abundance, such as oil, rubber and various metals, while Europe's
growing population made ever greater demands on the rice, coffee,
tea and sugar of the area.
After 1870 the process of opening up interiors was carried on with
rapidly increasing momentum. It was the age of science, and before
the advance of applied science all the barriers that had previously
prevented European exploitation of interiors were rapidly broken
down. Thus traditional systems of economic life which for centuries
had resisted the European impact, and in which subsistence agriculture, cottage industries and barter were dominating features, disappeared with startling suddenness, to be succeeded by new conditions
under which crops, financed by money advances, were grown for a
world market, and the cultivator's home market was flooded with
manufactured European goods to the detriment of his own native
handicrafts. This happened on a vast scale in the rice-growing
areas of South-East Asia and it had effects of fundamental importance in every country affected.
ECONOMIC

(a) British Burma

Before the British acquisition of the province of Pegu in 1852 Burma
had never exported rice. Merchant vessels might take away with them
no "more than they required for food until their next port of call.
Arakan, on the other hand, grew rice for export in the seventeenth
'century, and when it came into British hands in the nineteenth
735

736

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

century the growing Indian demand caused its rice cultivation to

flourish. The Irrawaddy delta region^ however, was a land mainly of
swamp and jungle which had never recovered from the effects of the
Burmese policy towards the Mons in the late sixteenth century. Its
sparse population grew paddy almost entirely; for its own needs, and
when these were met any surplus crops for which there was no demand
might be left unreaped. Moreover, the immediate effect of the second
Anglo-Burmese war of 1852 was a movement of population into
Upper Burma.
The Indian Mutiny of 1857-8 seems to have caused the first upward
tendency in the production of rice in the delta. Rangoon, rapidly
developing its facilities as a port, could handle an increase of trade,
and immigrants came down from Upper Burma to take up rice
cultivation. The expansion of the acreage under rice in Lower Burma
was striking. The figure for 1845 is 354,000 acres, while for i860 it is
1,333,000. The American Civil War of 1861-5, which cut off
Carolina's rice exports to Europe, caused Britain to look to Burma to
make up the deficiency, and by 1876 the acreage figure had risen to
1,735,000. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 caused rice cultivation to go ahead at an even faster rate. During the next fifteen years no
less than a million acres more came under rice, and the expansion
continued without a break up to the great world slump irt 1930, when
the figure for both Upper and Lower Burma had risen to 12,370,000.
It was the most spectacular development of her economic history; At
the end of the century Burma exported 2! million tons of rice;
by 1940 her total production was 4.94 million tons.
There was a wild scramble for land. But the task of clearing it
involved hiring labour, for it was in most cases overgrown with heavy
jungle, and it took more than one harvest before the cost of cultivation
was recovered by the cultivator. As there were hardly any Burmese
with capital to spare, Indian money-lenders of the chettyar caste
stepped' into the breach and provided cultivators not only with all the
money they needed at a conservative estimate, but up-tcTthe limit of
the security. The European exporters also adopted the practice of
giving out advances to ensure supplies. .Under normal conditions in
the early days the cultivator could keep his head above water.'But he
operated so near the danger level that a fall in world prices', the failure
of the monsoon rains, his own illness, or the death of his cattle, might
cause him to be sold up, and his land would pass to another; for such
was the demand for land that it was easy to find another purchaser.
By 1895 land in the delta was constant]y:jchanging hands. At first

CH. 4 4

THE ECONOMIC ASPECT OF EUROPEAN DOMINATION

737

one peasant proprietor would be supplanted by another. But speculation more and more took a hand in the business: traders and brokers
interested in the export business bought land in order to control
supplies of paddy; Indian and Chinese merchants in the towns bought
it as an investment for their surplus money. Thus, as time went on,
an increasing number of cultivators did not own their holdings, and
peasant proprietorship began to break down. In 1930, when the great
world depression broke in full force on Burma, although only 27 per
cent of the occupied land was recorded as in the ownership of nonagricultural landlords, the difficulty of finding purchasers able to take
over holdings at anything like the full value of the outstanding loans
revealed the fact that practically half the cultivated land in Lower
Burma belonged to non-agricultural absentee landlords. The total
agricultural indebtedness was estimated at ^^40 million.
Worse still, from the point of view of the Burmese, was the fact that
the demand for labour during the years of rapid expansioiv had
attracted increasing numbers of Indian immigrants. With a much
lower standard of living than the Burmese, they were able to undercut
them in competition for land tenancy. Thus between 1915 and 1930
native owners lost no less than 1,300,000 acres of delta land through
debt. At the same time the small Burmese rice-millers were being
driven out of business by the multiplication of large steam-driven mills
employing Indian coolie labour, the development of steam navigation
on the rivers and creeks in place of the native craft was forcing many
Burmese out of their traditional occupations, and cheap Indian labour
was driving them from the wharves.
At the beginning of the twentieth century Indians were arriving in
Burma at the rate of 250,000 a year. The number rose each year until
in 1927 it reached the peak figure of 480,000. The majority came over
. only for seasonal occupations on the land and returned home afterwards, or stayed only a year or two. But enough remained for each
decennial census to show a marked increase in the proportion of
Indians to the total population. The fact that Burma was a province
of the Indian empire made it well-nigh impossible for the government
to take effective safeguarding measures such as the Dutch took in 1870
when they made it illegal for an Indonesian to alienate his land to a
foreigner. The result, therefore, was a dangerous development of
communal discord.
This flared yp in 1930 in a frightful outbreak of anti-Indian riots
in Rangoon, when the Burmese, having been used to break an Indian
dockyard strike, objected to being dismissed and in three days'

738

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

fighting killed 120 Indians and wounded 900. The agrarian unrest
also showed itself at the end of the same year when a formidable
rebellion broke out in the Tharrawaddy district under a leader called
Saya San and spread rapidly over most of the delta. Saya San was the
usual type of minlaung (pretender to the throne) that Burma has often
produced in times of unrest; he sought tbi overthrow the British
regime, but most of his adherents were concerned mainly with the
recovery of their lands from Indian money-lenders and tenants.
Early in the eighteen-eighties the government became concerned
for the defence of the peasant cultivator against the private moneylender. In 1882 and 1883 legislative Acts were passed to provide
cultivators with loans at much lower rates of interest than those
charged by the chettis. But the conditions imposed were too stringent,
and the chettis knew far better than government officers how to manage
the improvident Burmese.
Then early in the twentieth century the co-operative movement was
inaugurated as a further measure for combating the evil. A cooperative department was established to foster the development of
co-operative societies of cultivators financed by land banks. Thousands
of these societies were formed in'the first flush of enthusiasm for the
movement. Most of them failed, and when the great depression began
in 1930 the two most important land banks, the Burma Provincial
Co-operative Bank of Mandalay and Dawson's Bank, with its headquarters at Pyapon in the delta, ran into serious difficulties. The government therefore revived the co-operative movement, and in 1935
passed a measure making it possible for foreclosed land to be returned
to its original owners on payment of its actual market value spread over
a period of fifteen years. This was followed in 1936 by a Debt Conciliation Act, which established boards for scaling down debts and
accumulated interest.
In 1937, when Burma was separated from India and given almost
complete control over her internal affairs, one of the first acts of her
new legislature was to pass, against strong chettyar opposition, a
Burma Tenancy Bill for the protection of tenants. Settlement reports
had long stressed the fact that throughout Lower Burma, and in sorne
parts of Upper Burma, after subtracting rent, debt charges and cost
of cultivation, most tenants had insufficient money left from the sale
of their produce to maintain a livelihood. The Bill was based upon the
findings of a committee set up to investigate the matter. But, according
to Furnivall, the measure was 'not very wisely conceived',> and before ' Cohmiid Pdliry and Prar/ire/pfi. 103-4.

CH. 4 4

THE ECONOMIC ASPECT OF EUROPEAN DOMINATION

739

the still unsolved agrarian problem could be dealt with more effectively the Japanese invasion took place.
Before the spectacular development of rice production in Burma
during the last quarter of the nineteenth century her chief article of
export was teak. The annexation of Pegu in 1852 led to the first
important steps for the preservation of her forests. This began with
a survey by Dr. Dietrich Brandis of the valuable forests in the Tharrawaddy-Prome area and the Toungoo district. He laid the foundation
of the Burma Forest Department. The annexation of Upper Burma
in 1886 brought further forest areas within the scope of European
exploitation and conservation. A Forest Service of three grades of
officers came into being which ultimately disposed of a departmental
personnel of 2,000. The commercial output between 1919 and 1924
averaged over 500,000 tons annually and only slightly less between
1925 and 1940. India took three-quarters of this. Besides teak the
forests produced other hardwoods, notably pyinkado (iron wood),
which was used for railway sleepers in Burma and India. There were
also many minor forest products, such as bamboo, cutch, lac, firewood used in steamers, mills and railway engines, and charcoal in
universal use for cooking. It was estimated that the Burma forests
could yield 787,000 tons of paper pulp per annum, but before the
Second World War little had been done in this connection. The
forests provided as much as 20 per cent of the state revenue.
The absence of suitable coal operated against attempts to industrialize Burma. The petroleum wells of the Yenangyaung region
had been worked for many generations by hereditary Burmese owners
when Britain took over Upper Burma. The Burmah Oil Company, the
parent of the Anglo-Iranian Company, was founded in 1886. At first
it bought oil from the native drillers and confined itself to refining
and distribution. Expansion began in the present century, when modern methods of drilling were introduced and large-scale production
began. A line of oilfields was opened up from Indaw on the Upper
Chindwin through Sabe and Singu to Yenangyaung, and in 1908 a
pipeline of 275 miles was built from the oilfields on the Irrawaddy to
Syriam, the site of the refineries. Production by 1940 had risen to 270
million imperial gallons, which was .5 per cent of world production.
By that time other oil companies had joined in, but the B.O.C. controlled three-quarters of the industry. Practically its whole output
was absorbed "by India and Burma.
Other large-scale industrial undertakings developed by British
capital and technical skill in Burma were the great lead-silver Bawdwin

740

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

mine in the Northern Shan States, worked by the Burma Corporation;

the Mawchi mine in Karenni, which produced half the tin and
tungsten in Burma; and other tin and tungsten mines in Tenasserim.
Before the British conquest Burma's main communications were
by her great rivers and innumerable creeks. Hhese were the first to be
developed by British enterprise, and the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company,
founded in 1865, operated a fleet which in the present century included some of the largest shallow-draught steamers in the world.
They served the Irrawaddy up to Bhamo, the Chindwin up to Homalin, and the chief delta towns. Roads came late. By 1918 there were
only 2,000 miles of metalled roads in the country. Then came a big
expansion, and twenty years later there were 6,000 miles of allweather roads plus another 5,000 to 6,000 miles that could be used by
motor traffic in dry weather. Railways came after the opening of the
Suez Canal. They were built for the areas not served by water transport. Before the end of the nineteenth century Prome, Mandalay and
Myitkyina were connected with Rangoon. Later lines were built
through the Northern Shan States to Lashio and through the Southern
Shan States to Shwenyaung, near Taunggyi. In all there were 2,060
miles in 1941.
Burma was developed by foreign capital. Indians, Chinese and
Europeans owned all the large factories and industrial concerns, the
greater part of Burma's public debt was foreign-held, and Indian
chettis in 1930 had an investment of 750 million rupees in the delta
rice-lands. In 1939 foreign investments totalled 155.25 million
three times as much as in 1914. The European corporations owned
just over 47 million of this, the chettis 56 million, the Chinese
2.8 million, and the government and municipal obligations amounted
to ^^45 million. The Burma Railways were built by the Goveriunent
of India. Little of the capital cost had been repaid when Burma
separated from India in 1937 and took over the debt to the extent of
344.5 million rupees.
(b) French Indo-China
French Indo-China contained two ancient centres of rice cultivation, the deltas of the Red River of Tongking and of the Mekong in
Cochin China. French policy was rigidly protectionist/ In French
eyes the function of a colony was to supply the mother country with
raw materials and products which did not compete with her own. The
economy of French Indo-China therefore came ,to depend almost
completely on the interests of France. ;^Most of the population

CH. 4 4

THE ECONOMIC ASPECT OF EUROPEAN DOMINATION

741

remained cultivators and were overcrowded in the two rice-producing

areas. If native industries survived, it was largely Because the majority
of the people were too poor to buy French imported goods.
The Vietnamese were industrious farmers, good fishermen and
skilful workers; the Cambodians tended to be indifferent and inactive;
while the T'ai preferred hunting and fishing. The population problem
in the crowded areas was very serious. Land in the hands of the
peasantry was parcelled out in minute holdings. In Tongking the
entire farming population cultivated only 40 per cent of the total rice
area as smallholdings. Sixty per cent of the farmers owned less than
one acre of land; 63 per cent of the tax-payers owned less than half an
acre or were landless. In Cochin China holdings were larger but
smallholdings only accounted for 45 per cent of the total cultivated
area.
Before the French occupation inequalities in landed wealth were
counterbalanced by the joint communal responsibilities of the villages,
and people without rice-fields of their own could cultivate the
communal lands. French administration favoured the establishment
of large estates and European plantations. In Cochin China concentration of land in this way went so far that the landed class came to
control over 80 per cent of the rice-fields, with 200,000 families
employed in share-cropping. The share-cropper worked for a French
landlord, who loaned him buffaloes, food and tools, and supplies of
seeds and manure. The landlord usually demanded exorbitant interest
on his capital, and the share-cropping tenant, discouraged and restless,
often disappeared after having squandered- his advance payments.
The large estates were normally formed through the purchase of
forfeited land or land on which loans at exorbitant interest rates had
been made. By various methods encroachments upon communal
land took place until far too little was left, arid when with the great
slump of 1930 many great land-owners became insolvent there was no
redistribution of land to the needy population. French policy preferred the stabilization and consolidation of large estates to the
redistribution of land.
The landlord-tenant relationship was feudal. The share-cropper
paid his landlord 40 per cent of the crop, and in addition had to render
onerous gifts and services. When a landlord furnished credit to a
tenant it was usually at the rate of 50 per cent for a period of from
eight months to one year. The system did not promote improved
methods of cultivation, since the landlord came to rely more on the
interest to be derived from his capital than on the productive capacity

742

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

of his fields. Hence estates were usually divided into minute farms
and leased to tenants for primitive, traditiorial cultivation.
Among the peasant proprietors the same problems of indebtedness
were to be found as in Burma. Chinese middle-men monopolized the
purchase of rice. Annamite and chettyar money-lenders were ready to
lend money at rates of interest up to 120 per cent per annum. French
legislation to limit the rates of interest failed. Beginning in Cochin
China in 1913 mutual agricultural credit institutions were set up. But
as they could lend only on land security their activities rarely reached
the level of the tenants. They strengthened the landlord by helping him to lend to tenants and farmers at higher rates than those on
which he borrowed the money.
A Credit Populaire system was established in 1926 and reorganized
in 1933 under the name Credit Mutuel Agricole, but it did not operate
in Cochin China. It made loans to agricultural co-operatives, whose
activities included not only paddy but a great variety of products such
as tung, castor oil, maize, tobacco, tea, sugar, coffee, mulberry,
sticklac and palm sugar. They collected their members' crops and
sold them, and attempted to educate them in the use of selected seeds,
manure, etc. But in most cases the peasant was too poor to buy the
fertilizers and other improvements recommended to him, and in any
case the movement never got much beyond the experimental stage.
The general picture was that of an upper class with an agricultural
proletariat densely packed into two areas in which too much labour
was employed on the land. The evils of overpopulation and undernourishment were aggravated by the improvements in sanitary and
medical control, which caused a great increase of population
greater, in fact, than the increase in rice production. There was a'
constant reduction in the purchasing power of the peasant. Rice, the
diet of almost the whole population, formed half the total exports of
the country and was subject to the same risksfailure of the rains and
fluctuation of the vvorld priceas elsewhere.
The French attempts to attract people away from the deltas to work
on inland plantations, notably rubber, failed, notwithstanding the
better living conditions on them. The yietnamese do not like moving
away from the place where their ancestor cult is carried 6n. Moreover,"
the hinterland areas were malaria-ridden, there were difficulties of
transport, and the government had no comprehensive development
plan. T h e fundamental weakness of French economic administration
is well shown by the contrast between Indo-China and Java in rubber,
production. In the former large plantations owned by Frenchmen

CH. 4 4

THE ECONOMIC ASPECT OF EUROPEAN DOMINATION

743

and financed by the Societe Financiere des Caoutchoucs monopolized

the whole production. In Java 50 per cent of the rubber was produced
by natives on their own lands.
French economic expansion in Indo-China was financed by two
methods: by money raised internally through taxation and by loans
entirely subscribed in France. So successfully did the French resist
the investment of non-French European capital in their close preserve
that in 1938 they owned 95 per cent of the European capital invested
in business enterprises and all the capital invested in government
securities. There was, however, a large Chinese investment, which
accounted for 80 million dollars (American) out of a total investment
in business enterprises of 382 million dollars. Government securities
added 82 million dollars to make a grand total of 464 million dollars.
No statistics exist for French investments in Indo-China before
1924. Mines first attracted French capital. The coal industry attracted
8-9 milHon francs by the beginning of the century. Tin mining
began in 1901-2 with 2 milHon francs capital, zinc in 1906 with a
similar amount. An Artificial Portland Cement Company was founded
in 1899 with a capital of i | million francs. Other ventures which
attracted capital early in the century were the distillation of alcohol
from rice, electrical works for urban consumption, the Yunnan Railway Company, which swallowed up 102 million piastres between
1901 and 1911, breweries, and tobacco and match factories. The big
French metallurgical companies also had branches in the colony.
From 1910 onwards much capital was invested in timber extraction
- and rubber planting. At the end of the First World War a far more
comprehensive programme was set in motion. The depreciation of
the franc caused a great deal of French money to seek security in the
piastre, and between 1924 and 1930 some 2,870 million francs were
invested in the colony. The effect of the great slump, therefore, was
very serious, and through failures or reductions in capital losses
estimated at 1,255 million francs were incurred. When after 1936 the
flow of capital investment was resumed it was far below the preslump level.
As time passed the economic ties between Indo-China and France
grew progressively stronger. Between 19x1 and 1920 an average of 19.6
per cent of Indo-China's exports went to France; in 1938 the amount
was 53 per cent. Between 1911 and 1920 Indo-China's imports from
France averaged 29.6 per cent of the total; between 1931 and 1938
they averaged 57.1 per cent. The French textile industry had a powerful influence over colonial policy; Indo-China's imports of French

744

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

fabrics preponderated over those oi other countries. The French

metal industry also found a profitable market for its products in the
colony. These two industries together accounted for two-thirds of
French exports to Indo-China.
Before the competition of French manufactured articles native
industries deteriorated. They might have disappeared had not the
great mass of the people been too poor to buy the imported articles.
Cotton and silk continued to be woven on primitive looms. Woodworking, stone-cutting, pottery and basketry also survived as native
crafts, but on a reduced scale, since the peasant craftsmen could not
afford to buy much raw material. France's economic aim for the
native, it has been said, was to raise his standard of living to enable
him to buy more French goods and to afford more employment to the
French merchant marine.
(c) The Netherlands Indies
In 1900 in the Netherlands Indies production for the foreign market
was almost wholly agriculturalrubber, tea, coffee, copra, quinine,
tobacco, sugarand almost wholly Dutch. The native contribution
was negligible; it was carried on almost entirely for home consumption, and rice predominated over all other crops. Java's great
problem, like that of the Red River and Mekong deltas, was overpopulation, but it affected the whole island, so that it could only be
relieved by migration to other islands or the Malay Peninsula. The
population of Java and Madura increased from 28.74 millions in 1900
to an estimated 49 millions in 1941, and in the latter year its annual
rate of increase was in the region of 700,000. No other comparable
area in the world supported so large a population with so great a rate of
increase. There was a grim race between the increase of the population and the expansion of production.
In 1905 the Department of Agriculture, later-a^.branch of the
Department of Economic Affairs, was formed and was charged with
the special task of devising measures for the permanent improvement
of native agriculture. Native production, mainly of food crops, was
multiplied by clearing new ground, by improvements in irngation,~
improved technical methods and a vast increase in secondary crops.
In 1918 the General Agricultural Experimental Station was established. The Department of Agriculture also began to develop
special sections, notably one dealing with Agricultural Economy and
another known as the Agricultural Information Service, whose

CH. 4 4

THE ECONOMIC ASPECT OF EUROPEAN DOMINATION

745

expert Landbouwconsulent, its local officer, must be consulted with

regard to the probable effect on native interests before land could
be leased to Europeans.
But notwithstanding these excellent administrative measures the
food margin dwindled and production failed to keep pace with population increase. Between 1929 and 1938 while population increased by
15 per cent the increase of cultivation was only 3.5 per cent, and the
limit for expansion was already passed. Deforestation had reduced the
forest area to 23 per cent, where 30 per cent was considered essential
to protect the island's -water supply, while signs of soil exhaustion
through over-use were showing themselves. One difficulty lay in the
fact that individual holdings were too small for efficient cultivation.
The average at the beginning of the century was only 2J acres per
family, and it tended to diminish. This minute subdivision of the
cultivated area was nothing so bad as in the congested areas of French
Indo-China, but it meant that' on the native lands agriculture was
overmanned and underequipped.
By the Agrarian Law of 1870 the Dutch had prevented the formation of a landlord class such as was found elsewhere in South-East
Asia, but the substitution of a cash economy forced the native population to live on credit. T h i s was supplied mostly by Chinese pawnbrokers and Arab money-lenders at excessively high monthly rates of
interest. In 1898 de Wolff van Westerrode was put on special duty
to work out plans for state pawnshops and agricultural credit banks.
State pawnshops were established in 1900, and four years later the
beginnings of a popular credit system introduced in the form of
'paddy banks' and village cash banks. Civil servants were instructed
to regard the formation of these banks as one of their foremost duties.
By 1912 Java had 12,000 paddy banks and 1,161 village banks, and
the village co-operatives were run by the headmen under official
supervision.
But as elsewhere the co-operative movement languished. The
private money-lender allowed rash borrowing and his working
expenses were lower. The private money market continued at rates
. from 10 to 15 per cent monthly, while, to make matters worse, the
earnings of the peasant through sale of his produce were reduced by
the operations of middle-men, whose share of the market price
averaged 50 per cent. The hard-pressed cultivator was often forced
to lease his land to a European plantation company, and again the
government had to step in to protect him by fixing minimum rentals
and limiting the amount of village land that might be leased and the

746

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

length of leases. Many migrated to work on the tobacco, sugar and

tea plantations of Sumatra and the rubber plantations of Malaya, but
when these were hit by the great depression in 1930 thousands of
people returned to overcrowded Java.

MCE CtlLTIVATION IN JAVA

The effects of the great depression were not so severe on the

Indonesians as on the Europeans, owing to the former's concentration
on the cultivation of rice instead of export crops. But intense suffering
was caused to those connected with the sugar industry. After the

CH. 4 4

THE ECONOMIC ASPECT OF EUROPEAN DOMINATION

747

winding up of the Culture System sugar production had developed

on estates composed of land rented from villagers. The slump caused
the area under sugar to be reduced from 200,000 to 28,000 hectares,^
ground rent fell from a total of 25 million guilders to one of 3.8 million,
while wages dropped from just under 84 million guilders to 7.27
million. The industry never recovered. When production began
again to expand, countries such as India, China and Japan, which had
relied on Javanese supplies, had started to produce their own sugar.
But the Dutch adopted a 'crisis policy' with all kinds of measures to
stimulate native industry, stabilize the price of rice and promote
native welfare. And Sarekat Islam, the main organ of the nationalist
movement, threw its energies into the task of founding 'wild'^ schools
and 'wild' co-operative institutions. The general renascence of
national life was reflected in a remarkable development of native
agriculture. Judged by European standards the Javanese peasant's
earnings remained pitiably low, since all the economic benefits
introduced by the Dutch after 1900 were neutralized by the immense
increase of the population. Furnivall's carefully considered opinion is
that his standard of comfort was at least as high as in Burma outside
the rice plains.
In Indonesia in 1900 the wholesale business and banking were
mainly in Dutch hands, with the Chinese as middlemen and moneylenders. Natives were restricted to petty retail trade. The freedom
accorded late in the day to European enterprise led to an increase in
the numbers of non-Dutch settlers, especially after 1905. By 1930
these were 7,195 Japanese, 6,867 Germans, and 2,414 British settlers
in Indonesia. Foreign (i.e. non-Dutch) capital was invested mainly
in oil and rubber. British investment in tea plantations in about
1906 represented the first introduction of foreign capital on a large
scale. From 1905 the British began to invest in rubber, and by 1912
half the rubber companies in Java were in British hands. The development of tobacco in the Deli region of Sumatra attracted British, Swiss
and German capital. By 1913 the Dutch capital investment in east
Sumatra was only 109 million guilders out of a total of 206 million.
Dutch capital dominated the sugar industry. Just before the great
slump the foreign capital invested in crops other than sugar was
just over 40 per cent of the whole. At the time the total amount of
foreign (including Dutch) capital invested in the Netherlands Indies
was estimated at 5,000 million guilders. The deflation caused by the
' A hectare is just under 2 J acres (2.4711 acres).
' wild=based on voluntary efTort, outside the government system.

748

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

great slump reduced this amount considerably, and in 1939 the total
foreigu capital was estimated at 2,875 miUion guilders. Of this amount
about 75 per cent was Dutch, 13.5 per cent British, and 2.5 per cent
American. In addition, foreign investors, mainly Dutch, held about
2,000 million guilders' worth of Indies government bonds.
The development of the Outer Possessions in the twentieth century
was in marked contrast with their neglect until late in the nineteenth.
Sumatra developed large rubber estates inland from Palembang and
Jambi. After the conquest of Acheh the oil-wells of the north-east
coast were exploited, and by 1940 Sumatra was yielding annually some
5 million tons of crude oil. The rich alluvial tin deposits in the islands
of Banka and Billiton attracted an influx of Chinese labour and by
1940 were producing 44,000 tons of ore annually. Smelting was
carried out on Banka, but most of the ore went to Singapore until
the construction of the large Arnhem smelter in Holland. Bauxite
was extracted on the island of Riau, and by 1938 275,000 tons were
produced annually. British oil production in Brunei stimulated the
Dutch to develop their section of Borneo. Samarinda provided one
of the largest oilfields in Indonesia, and by 1940 was producing 12^
million barrels annually for refining at Balikpapan. Gold, nickel, iron
and petroleum were discovered in Celebes, but before the Second
World War were not worked to any extent.
(</) Malaya
Malaya had no problems of population pressure. Her chief agrarian
problem was that of the Malay continuing with subsistence farming
and refusing to supply labour for the expanding rubber and tin
industries. Only 15.5 per cent of the land had been taken under crop
by 1940, and more than half of that was planted with rubber. The
average Malay holding was only about 2^ acres, but it was enough for
the normal family,, for the Malay did not rely solely on his rice; he
grew much garden produce besides coconut and areca palms and fruit
trees. He was also a fisherman and trapper.
At the beginning of the century, therefore, since the Malay was hot
interested in producing rice beyond his own needs, Malaya produced"
only one-third of the rice it needed. The remainder was purchased
from Siam and Burma. After the First World War, and again after
the great slump, as a result of government encouragement more rice
was produced, but the ratio of local production to total consumption
remained unchanged. The root of the e;^l was again agricultural

CH. 4 4

THE ECONOMIC ASPECT OF EUROPEAN DOMINATION

749

indebtednessin this case to Chinese and Indian money-lenders.

The government's answer to the problem was, as_ elsewhere, to
sponsor co-operativeS. A small beginning was made in this direction
in 1907, but the big effort to launch a co-operative movement was in
1922, when a Co-operative Societies Department was set up at Kuala
Lumpur.
Malay individualism, however, was a great obstacle, as also a
propensity for plungmg into debt for a family celebration such as a
wedding. The co-operative movement therefore languished. When
after the great slump the government tried to induce the peasant to
cultivate more rice by protecting him against the price-fixing methods
of the Chinese ^millers, he was far too dependent upon credit from
Indian or Chinese shopkeepers to respond. The danger that he would
become a landless farm worker was real. He could not come to terms
with the foreign industrial and capitalist system that had taken root
in his country. 'If money comes into a Malay's hands', wrote C. F.
Strickland in reporting on the Malayan co-operative movement in
1928, 'he spends it, regardless of the time when he will need it
urgently.'^
^
T h e original object in founding rural co-operative societies in
Malaya was to free the cultivator from his burden of debt. After the
great slump it was felt that better methods of production and sale were
necessary. New types of societies therefore were devised and achieved
some success. They were general purposes societies, which promoted
all kinds of co-operative effort, and 'better-living' societies, which
sought to stir up a public opinion against extravagant expenditure
and granted loans merely to tide the cultivator over the period between
sowing and harvest.
At the beginning of the twentieth century labour in Malaya was
predominantly Chinese and Indian. The Chinese came to work in
the tin mines; then later, with the extension of rubber cultivation,
Indian coolies came to work, on the estates. A brief statement of the
rise in their numbers will give some idea of the problem this has
created. (See following page.)
There was a strong Chinese community in Malacca under Dutch
rule. When Penang was founded by Francis Light in 1786 many
Chinese were attracted there from Malacca. Singapore from its
foundation in 1819 attracted large numbers of Chinese. They came
from Dutch territory and also by direct immigration from China.
By 1941 Penang and Singapore were predominantly Chinese. In the
' L. A. Mills, British Rule in Eastern Asia, p. 282.

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

75

1911 census

1921 census

1931 census

PT. IV

1941 census

1
Malays

1,437,000

1,651,000

r,'962,000

2,278,006

Chinese

916,000

1,174,000

1,709,000

2,379,000

Indians

267,000

471,000

624,000

744,000

Malay states the chief Chinese community before the nineteenth

century was in Johore, where they went in order to be out of the way
of the Dutch. The influx of Chinese into the mining areas began from
about 1830 and became a flood from about 1850. Their secret
societies supplied practically their sole social organization. It was the
rivalry in the Larut area of Perak between the Cantonese Ghee Hins
and the Hakka Hai Sans which led to the earliest British intervention
to establish a protectorate over a Malay state.
Under the protectorate system the economic development of Malaya
was mainly in Chinese hands. Europeans began to come into tin
mining from 1882, but the Chinese remained for long the chief
miners. They were also market gardeners, artisans, shopkeepers,
contractors, financiers and revenue farmers. When rubber planting
began they became in a few cases large-scale planters. Their importance was such that there were usually two Chinese representatives
on each of the state councils in the Federation.
At first they regarded MaJaya as a place in which to make money
so as to return home as soon as possible. In the twentieth century,
however, there was a growing number of Straits-born Chinese who
regarded Malaya as their home. By the time of the Japanese invasion
in the Second World War about one-third of the Chinese in Malaya
had severed all connections with China save cultural ones. The
immigrants brought political problems; there were'underground"
organizations first of the Kuomintang and later of the -Communist
Party. When the Japanese invaded China in the 'thirties they were
strong advocates of direct action. They formed boycotting groups
which raided shops selling Japanese goods.
They established many schools, in which^the written vernacular.

CH. 4 4

THE ECONOMIC ASPECT OF EUROPEAN DOMINATION

751

the Kuo Yu, or National Language, replaced the literary language.

Their teachers were nearly all China-born and taught Chinese
nationalism in an extreme form which was hostile to the governments
of Malaya. Their textbooks were imported from China and were full
of subversive matter. The whole tone of the curriculum was unfavourable to the cultivation of a sense of Malayan nationality.
The British had first to deal with the activities of the secret societies,
which from time to time caused serious disturbances. For a long time
they lacked the precise information on which to take effective action.
It was for this reason that the Chinese Protectorate was established in
1877 in the Straits settlements. From 1883 onwards its scope was
gradually extended to look after the interests of Chinese labourers.
In 1884 a Protector of Chinese was appointed, but as the first
holder of the post regarded the secret societies as harmless ' friendly
societies' performing the same useful functions as these organizations did in contemporary Britain, little headway was made for some
time in coping with the Chinese problem.
In the matter of the labourers special laws had to be passed
to deal with the appalling abuses of the 'contract' system and the
ingenious devices of contractors and employers to ' squeeze' labourers.
It was difficult, however, to enforce their provisions because of the
Chinese preference for piece-work, in which there was scope for
trickery in calculation. In 1937 some 80 per cent in the mines of the
Federation were on piece-work. The payment of wages, housing and
health were subject to government inspection. At the end of 1936
there were serious strikes because the drastic reductions in wages
made during the depression had not been restored. The government
intervened in the dispute ana negotiated a settlement which provided for an increase of wages. In 1937 an Advisory Committee on
Chinese Labour was set up for the whole of Malaya.
^
Up to 1930 no restrictions were placed upon Chinese immigration.
But owing to the slump 167,903 unemployed labourers returned to
China. The Secretariat for Chinese Affairs, the name given to the
Chinese protectorates when they were later merged in 1934, repatriated no less than 13,000 destitute labourers. As, however, 242,149
fresh Chinese immigrants arrived in that year the policy of immigration restriction was adopted. During 1931, 1932 and 1933 control
was maintained by a quota system, under which the monthly number
of arrivals was gradually reduced to 1,000. In 1934, when conditions
began to improve, the number was raised, but the old system of
unrestricted immigration was not restored.
25

752

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

The problem of Indian immigration was not so serious as in Burma,

but the numbers coining inmainly for labour in the rubber plantationsrose steeply with the rubber boom of 1907, and as the Malay
and Chinese population was also rising steeply the Indian population
tended to remain at about 14 per cent of'the whole. In 1907 the
demand for Indian labour was so great that an Indian Immigration
Fund was established to finance recruitment, and free passages from
India were granted to all labourers who applied for them. This
enabled the abuses of the older kangany system to be abolished. The
kangany was a recruiting agent employed by Malayan planters to recruit
labourers by advancing them their passage money and recovering it
from them out of their wages on the estate. In 1922 the Government
of India further regulated the system by passing an Emigration Act
under which officials were stationed in India and Malaya to control
immigration. The great slump caused assisted immigration to be
suspended, but by 1934 the recovery enabled the system of controlled
immigration to be re-established. Nationalist opinion in India, which
had caused the Government of India to intervene in 1922, was still
critical of the treatment of Indian immigrants, and in 1936 Srinivasa
Sastri, who had already investigated the position of Indians in South
Africa, was appointed by the Government of India to examine the
condition of Indian labour in Malaya. He reported very favourably
and advised that there was no justification for preventing Indian
labour from going to Malaya. But he suggested that the kangany
system should be discontinued, and in 1938 it was abolished.
Meanwhile great strides had been taken by the Labour and Health
Departments at Kuala Lumpur in improving housing and health
conditions on the estates. In the early days the death-rate from
malaria had been very high, but Malaya was one of the first tropical
dependencies to take advantage of the discoveries of Sir Ronald Ross
and other pioneers of tropical medicine. In 1910 the Estate Health
Branch of the Medical Department was established, and in ten years
the annual death-rate among estate labourers was reHuced from 62.9
per 1,000 to 18.57. Ill ^937 the death-rate among Indian labourers
in Malaya was only 7.11 per 1,000. It is noteworthy that the European
estates had a much better health record than the Asian-owned onesf
As in the case of the great majority of Chinese, the chief problem in
connection with the Indians in Malaya lay in their political affiliations
with their mother country.
Out of all this immigration a serious problem was already taking
shape during the period between the two. world wars. The 1941

CH. 4 4

THE ECONOMIC ASPECT OF EUROPEAN DOMINATION

753

census showed that the Malays were outnumbered by the Chinese.

Before the British period they had been in an overwhelming majority.
Actually they outnumbered the Chinese in the Malay states, since it
was Singapore with its 77 per cent Chii>ese population that tipped the
scale. Excluding Singapore, t h e respective percentages were Malays
49 and Chinese 38, with Indians making up most of the remainder.
But the Malay population itself was not wholly indigenous, since for
many years there had been a modest but growing migration of
Javanese and other Indonesians from the Netherlands East Indies.
Naturally the Malays regarded themselves as the people of the
country and the rest as aliens. But there was little idea of Malaya
as a political unit, since the ordinary Malay peasant's loyalty was to
his sultan, and Malays from other states were foreigners to him.
Moreover, the great' majority of Chinese and Indians who came to
Malaya regr.rded it as a place of temporary exile. Chiang Kai-shek's
government did its best to inculcate that all Chinese living abroad
were citizens of China, even if their families for several generations
had been British citizens. The Indians also were deeply impregnated
with their own nationalism. But in any case the Malays as Moslems,
able to be raised to a high pitch of fanaticism, though normally easygoing, nourished a latent hostility against both races as heathen;
there was practically no intermarriage, and harmony was maintained
only through the close co-operation of the sultans and the British.
Most of the Malays were head ovef heels in debt to the Chinese,
but at the same time their leaders demanded that in the administration of the country no Chinese should be placed in authority over
Malays. Had there been a strong Malay nationalist movement things
must certainly have come to a head. But before the Japanese invasion
the Malays were thef most unpolitically-minded people in South-East
Asia. That blissful state of mind, however, was not to survive the
occupation period.
T h e history of Singapore since its early development as a freetrade entrepot and the centre of British trade in the area from Sumatra
to New Guinea and from Java to China was one of growing prosperity
and economic importance coupled with a shrinking trade area. Much
of its China trade was transferred to Hong Kong after 1842. Its
important trade with Indo-China was cut off by the French conquest,
which resulted in the imposition of heavy duties in foreign trade and
the establishment of direct steamship services between the colony
and France. The somewhat belated establishment of Dutch steamship services between the principal ports of the Netherlknds Indies

754

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

and their overseas markets considerably changed Singapore's relations

with that area. In the present century Port Swettenham began to
draw much of the trade of the Federation. I
But Singapore remained the collecting and distributing centre of
the Malay Peninsula, central Sumatra and Borneo, and the immense
extension of rubber cultivation in Malaya and Sumatra has more than
compensated for the contraction of its trading area. Its trade with
Java, Siam and Indo-China still remained important. The continuous
improvement of its port facilities was one of the chief reasons for
the maintenance of its position, as also the fact that it is extremely
well placed on the principal trade route between Europe and the Far
East. For instance, with oil becoming increasingly important it
proved to be the most convenient centre for the distribution of the
oil produced in Sumatra, Dutch Borneo and Sarawak. Its total trade
reached the 2,000 million dollars^ mark before the Second World
War.
The economic development of Malaya was closely bound up with
tin and rubber. Before 1900 tin mining had been carried on almost
entirely by the Chinese. After 1900 the industry was revolutionized by
British capital and direction, the installation of machinery and the
application of scientific methods. Smelting was started as early as
1887 by the Straits Trading Company, and an American attempt af
the end of the century to transfer all smelting to the United States
and thereby gain complete control over Malayan tin production was
frustrated by an export duty on tin ore. As a result Singapore became the biggest centre of tin smelting in the world, receiving ore
for smelting from Siam, French Indo-China, Burma, Australia, China,
and Central and South Africa.
Tin production rose steadily in Malaya until 1926, when the peak
price of 28:^ ys yd. a long ton was reached. Then overproduction
brought the price down to ;i20. The difficulty lay partly in the fact
that the United States had become the largest" consumer of tin in
the world and her demand tended to fluctuate violently. The Tin
Producers Association, which represented the mines in the four richest
areasMalaya, Bolivia, the Netherlands East Indies, and N i g e r i a worked out a restriction scheme, and in 1931 this c^me into force"
under the International Tin Committee. The weak point in the
scheme was that it left out minor producers such as Siam, French
Indo-China and the Congo, with the result that they had to be
brought into the scheme on their own terms. From 1933 the demand
' T h e Straits dollar is woTthjzs. 41/.

CH. 4 4

THE ECONOMIC ASPECT OF EUROPEAN DOMINATION

755

began to increase, and to keep the price stable the International Tin
Committee adopted the practice of manipulating a buffer stock of
15,000 tons. In 1938, the last normal year before the war, Malaya
produced 29 per cent of the world's tin, her potential output being
100,000 tons a year.
The great development of Malaya as one of the chief world producers of rubber did not begin until 1905. Hence until the post-war
slump in 1920 its cultivation was extended by Europeans, Chinese,
and Malays. Malaya's export of 196,000 tons of rubber in 1920 was
53 per cent of the world total. Rubber production greatly increased
Malaya's prosperity and was the chief cause of the fact that between
1901 and 1921 her.population doubledthough, as we have seen, this
was largely through immigration of non-Malays. To cope with the
problems raised by this rapid expansion of Cultivation the Department of Agriculture at Kuala Lumpur had to develop new branches
for carrying out research and experimentation.
The slump of 1920 was due to overproduction, extravagance and
the post-Avar depression in Europe. The price of rubber fell from zs.
per lb. in 1920 to 6d. in 1922. Britain thereupon set up the Stevenson
Committee of Inquiry, which advised that a restriction scheme
should be worked out with the co-operation of the Dutch and Ceylon.
The Dutch, however, refused, because they were encouraging their
Javanese smallholders to plant rubber. Malaya and Ceylon therefore,
on the strength pf the fact that they produced 70 per cent of the world
production, decided to go on alone. This was a great mistake, as the
tin producers! were to discover later on. After six years' trial the
scheme had to.be abandoned owing to Dutch competition and the
vast increase of native smallholders.
Then came the great depression, when the price dropped to 2\d.
per lb. The situation during 1931-3 was far more serious than during
1920-2. The big estates were forced to reconsider the whole question
of costs of production. Again also international co-operation had to
be sought, and as a result of agreement in May 1934 between the
producing countries the International Rubber Regulation Committee
came into being to control research and restriction. In 1935 the price
rose to 6d. per lb, and as a result of the improved methods they had
been forced to adopt to tide over the crisis this yielded the big estates
a profit. The armaments race and the immense development of the
American motor-car industry then caused the price to rise; but again,
as in the case of tin, it fluctuated too much according to conditions
in the United States. The Rubber Regulation Committee then tried

75^

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

to Stabilize the price at gd. per lb., but bad to abandon the effort
because the demand in the manufacturing countries was found to be
beyond its control. In 1938 Malaya hadi 3,302,170 acres under
rubber and produced 41 per cent of the world supply. Of her acreage,
2,026,348 acres were owned by the big estates, and 1,275,822 by smallholders, chiefly Malays. Her total production was 361,000 long tons,
but the total export was 527,000 tons. This was because much of the
rubber produced in Siam, Sumatra and Borneo was sent to Singapore,
where it was graded and shipped overseas.
One lesson learnt from the great slump was the need to encourage
additional cultures to rice and rubber. The oil palm was found to be
an attractive alternative to rubber. But it had to be cultivated on
large estates, for it had no interest for the smallholder. Although palm
oil is more nutritious than coconut oil, the Malay refused to include
it in his diet. Coconut production was mainly carried on in small
holdings, but large estates for the production of copra began to develop.
T h e production of oil was carried out mainly by power-driven mills
along the western coast.
'
The British have never imposed any restrictions on foreign investment in Malaya. Before the Second World War American companies
owned large rubber plantations, much Australian capital was invested
in tin, and the Japanese controlled all the iron mines. The iron mines
were in Johore and Trengganu and in 1938 produced ore worth
;858,ooo. Western investments in Malaya reached a total of justiover
;4o millions in 1914. In 1930 they stood at ,116.5 millions. British
investments accounted for some 70 per cent of the whole. Chinese
investments in 1937 totalled well over j\.i millions.
The great criticism of economic imperialism, or 'colonialism', as it
is now ineptly termed, was that the foreign capitalist drained profits
away for the benefit of shareholders overseas instead of ploughing
them back into the country. This theory, loudly asserted by political
discontents, is plausible, but on close examination the~facts are not
capable of quite so simple an explanation. The imperial powers
provided a vast amount of capital and technical skill, without which
the development of the 'colonial' territories to their prelent economic'
importance could never have taken place. They revolutionized
health conditions and delivered great masses of people from^the decimating or enfeebling.dominion of frightful diseases. Their research
in tropical agriculture and their scientific investigation into other
matters of fundamental importance laid the-sure foundations on which

CH. 4 4

THE ECONOMIC ASPECT OF EUROPEAN DOMINATION

757

prosperity and higher standards of life could be built up. Investigation

of their fabulous profits, so far as it has gone, has tended to show that,
as in all fables, imagination considerably outstripped reality, and that
the critics of 'colonialism' have not taken into account the heavy losses
that have occurred from time to time. And in most cases foreign
investors contributed the major part of the state revenues. On the
facts, as they are at present available, the sober historian dare not
commit himself to the sweeping generalizations that are the weapons
in political warfare.
It has been estimated that before the Second World War Europe's
annual imports from, the United States amounted to some 500
million dollars more than her exports in return, and that the greater
part of the funds heeded to balance this account was provided by the
South-East Asian trade. The total foreign investment in South-East
Asia, including the Philippines, was about 4,370 million dollars. The
respective shares in the capital invested in business enterprises were
as follows:
European (principally Dutch in Indonesia
and French in Indo-China)
British
Chinese
United States
Japanese

1,943 million dollars

860
640
330
60

,,

,,
,,

,,
,,
,,
,,

The undertakings in which these sums were invested provided

Europe and America with important foodstuffs and vital raw materials
for industry. Through the Straits of Malacca and Sunda ran trade
routes of the highest importance to the great commercial powers.
Singapore had fulfilled Raffles's expectations that it would become
another Malta. The London Imperial Conference of 1921 decided
to make it a first-class naval base, and in 1938 the work was completed
at a cost of ^20 million.

CHAPTER 4 5

SIAM I N T R A N S I T I O N , 1910-42
T H E title of the chapter is borrowed from Professor K. P. Landon 's
book^ dealing with the revolution of 1932, which, besides substituting
a form of constitutional government for the old Chakri absolutism,
considerably hastened the process of adjusting Siam to modern world
conditions begun under Chulalongkorn. Chulalongkornhad thirty-four
sons and forty-three daughters. In the early days of his reign the sons
were sent to English public schools, universities or technical institutions.
Quite a number showed exceptional ability. Some became specialists
in law, agriculture or engineering. Others received training in the
British, German, Russian and Danish armies, and' the British navy.
Their father wrote a little pamphlet of advice for their benefit during
their sojourn abroad.
Prince Maha Vajiravudh, who succeeded his father in 1910, was
one of those who had received this training, going to Cambridge
University and serving for a time with the British army. As the
nearest direct heir according to the Chakri rules of succession, the
title of heir-apparent was conferred on him shortly before his return
to Siam in 1902. During his long stay abroad he had almost lost
contact with his family, and on his return he gathered about him as
his associates a band of young men who were not members of the royal
family. When he became king he discontinued his father's practice
of seeking the advice of the more distinguished members of his family.
His brothers and uncles were rarely consulted, and in order to counteract their influence he not only appointed his favourites to important
positions in the government but also founded the ' Wild" Tiger Scout
Corps', in which volunteers from amongst the civil officials were enrolled on a quasi-military basis, under the personal leadership of the
king as Chief Scout-General.
'
Vajiravudh was, however, unconquerably shy and lacking in real
gifts of leadership. He was a lover of art and the theatre and wrote
or translated plays in polished T'ai. But the appointment of his
' Kenneth Perry Landon, Siam in Transition, London, 1939./See also his contribu-'
tion on Siam to L. A. Mills and Associates, The New Wg^ld of Southeast Asia, pp. 246-72.
758

''^

- '

CH. 4 5

SIAM IN TRANSITION, 1 9 1 0 - 4 2 ,

759

satellites to sinecures and the unparalleled corruption that resulted

made his clique disliked and caused him much unpopularity. Throughout his reign there was subdued discontent in the country. There
were even two attempts to dethrone him. The first, in 1912, was an
assassination plot, nipped in the bud by his able brother, the Prince
of Pitsanulok. It was due to discontent in the army and navy at the
creation of the Wild Tiger Corps. The Bangkok troops were apparently
ready to mutiny and march on the palace. But the censorship was so
rigorous that even now the details are not known. Some sixty army
officers were arrested. The second, in 1917, was also a military plot,
caused by dislike of the king's pro-Allied sympathies on the part of
the pro-German section of the army.
He has been somewhat unaccountably called democratic.^ On the
contrary, his attempts at tightening the royal absolutism were a contributing factor m bringing about the constitutional crisis of 1932.
The Cabinet of ministers set up by Chulalongkorn rarely met.
Ministers consulted the king individually and made individual
decisions. There was thus no co-ordination. And the king's predilection for reviving old ceremonial, together with the increasing
elaboration of state functions, betrayed an inordinate enjoyment of the
pomp and circumstance of his office.
He had a great sense of the dramatic and he consciously fostered
national pride. He realized the great value of the Boy Scout movement
for such a purpose, and through his encouragementone might
almost say 'at his order'the schools of Siam became Scout-minded
and produced innumerable companies of 'Tiger's Whelps', as they
were called, for they were affiliated to t h e ' Wild Tigers'. And as in the
contemporaneous national movements in Burma and Indonesia, so in
Siam religion was called in as the great unifying force. There is a
"curious parallel between Siam and Burma in this matter, for in both
nationalist propaganda asserted that only a Buddhist could be a true
patriot. Japan's victory over Russia in 1905 had a stimulating effect
upon Siam's national sentiment, and it seems likely that in his efforts
to carry the process of modernization further Vajiravudh was fully
aware of the methods by which Japan had made herself strong enough
to defeat a great European power.
Compared with his father, Vajiravudh accomplished few important
administrative reforms. His social reforms, however, had farreaching consequences. They were introduced largely in order to
bring Siam into line with Western ideas and practices and thereby
* Virginia Thompson, Thailand: The New Siam, p. 49.
25*

760

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

secure her acceptance into the comity of nations. This is the explanation of the recodification of law which was begun in Vajiravudh's
reign, and particularly of the draft law of monogamy which, at the
king's instance, was included in it. It did not spring from a singleminded desire to emancipate women. One,of his deepest concerns
Nwas to obtain the abolition of the extra-territoriality rules affecting
Europeans in his country, and he realized that to bring Siam's legal
system into closer conformity with accepted European notions was an
essential requirement of such a policy.
Some of his social reforms were undoubtedly due to ideas he had
imbibed during his long period of education in England. His edict in
1916 ordering all his subjects to adopt patronymics may certainly be
ascribed to this, as also his introduction of compulsory vaccination. It
was also largely through his influence that women adopted European
hair styles and the skirt in place of short hair en brosse and the panung,
or waist-cloth with the end pulled between their legs and tucked in at
the front.. Other useful measures in the same spirit were the adoption
of the Gregorian calendar, the introduction of compulsory elementary
education (in 1921), the foundation of the Chulalongkorn University
(in 1917), and the institution of^the Red Cross Society. He was an
enthusiast for football and athletics. Football in particular became,
with his active support, immensely popular throughout the country,
and he himself organized cup-ties. His own personal contribution to
education was the foundation in Bangkok of the famous Vajirayudh
School, a boarding school for boys modelled closely on the English
public-school pattern and under a Siamese headmaster who was a
product of Sanderson's Oundle.
Next to social reform foreign policy absorbed most of Vajiravudh's
attention during his early years. When the First World War broke
out in 1914 his personal sympathies were with the Allies. But antiFrench sentiment was still very strong among the Siamese people, and
there was a powerful pro-German section in the army. It was, however, certainly not to Siam's advantage that she should"'be a centre
from which German intrigue radiated into the adjacent territories
belonging to Britain and France. In July 1917 therefore, in consequence of Germany's contemptuous rejection of a Siamese-protest"
against her methods of submarine warfare, Vajiravudh took the plunge
and declared war. In the following year a small Siamese expeditionary
force was sent to France. Siam gained much by joining the winning
side. German shipping to the value of several millions sterling came
into her hands as booty, and ^he was able to free her railway system

CH. 45

^^^^

TRANSITION, 1910-42

761

from the control that Germany had managed to obtain over it in the
pre-war period- Better still, she secured membership of the League
of Nations, and in 1922 the United States made a fresh treaty abandoning all her extra-territorial rights in Siam.
Vajiravudh had always disliked the heavy work impoised upon him
by having to attemi to daily matters of government routine. He left
much of the detailed work to his uncle, Prince Devawongse, who had
been his father's closest companion and was for some thirty years
Minister of Foreign Affairs. Dr. Malcolm Smith tells us that next to
the king he was the most powerful man in the country.^ He was a man
of great intelligence and devotion to duty and performed notable
services in the cause of Siam's independence and progress. After his
death in 1923 the king relied mainly on Chao P'ya Yomarej, whose
meteoric rise from an obscure post in the household of one of Chulalongkorn's brothers to become Minister of the Interior was the
measure of his remarkable ability.
When Vajiravudh died in 1925 he left no son to succeed him. He
had been a bachelor throughout most of his reign, to the great disappointment of his mother. Queen Saowapa, who died in 1919. When
at last he did marry, in 1922, he failed to produce a male heir before
his death and was succeeded by Prince Prajadhipok, his youngest
brother. Prajadhipok had never expected or desireii to become king.
He was the seventy-sixth child of his father and his last son. His
uncle, Prince Vajirayan, the. Supreme Patriarch of the Buddhist
Church, had tried to persuade him to devote his life to religion so as to
qualify to become his successor, but after serving four months in 1917
as a novice he left the monastery in shattered health and abandoned
the idea. He was a modest young man of liberal outlook and with a
high sense of responsibility.
The most pressing problem facing him at his accession was the need
for economy in public expenditure. Vajiravudh's extravagance had
played havoc with the state finances. Prajadhipok therefore dismissed
many of his brother's favourites, reduced the Civil List and Royal
Household expenditure drastically, and cut down the Royal Corps
of Pages from 3,000 to 300. These measures, combined with increased
customs returns resulting from new commercial treaties and prosperous
foreign trade, enabled the Treasury to balance its budgets without the
necessity to negotiate foreign loans or raise taxation. He also set up a
Supreme Council, composed of five,of the most important princes, as
an advisory body, and revived the Cabinet. In 1927, in order to obtain
Op. cit., p. 121.

y62

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

advice from a wider circle of advisers, he created a large Privy Council,

with a committee of forty to report to him on any matters he might
submit to them.
I
The early years of his reign saw many interesting developments
such as the establishment of a wireless service, the preparation of the
Dom Muang airport for international air service, and the foundation of
the Royal Institute of Literature, Architecture and Fine Arts, with its
excellent National Library and Museum. The tical was linked with
gold by a new Currency Act in 1928. Public Health laws were passed
and the qualifications for the medical profession made more stringent.
An Act for the Contrpl of Commercial Undertakings of Public
Utility was passed to increase governmental control over insurance and
banking, and in 1930 Dr. Karl Zimmerman of Harvard University
made an economic survey of the kingdom.
The great slump, the-more acute effects of which began to be felt
in that year, hit Siam in some ways less hard than other countries in
South-East Asia. The bottom fell out of the rice market, and Britain's
abandonment of the gold standard, which affected Siam's chief
competitor in rice exports, Burma, forced Siam herself to abandon it
in May 1932 after long hesitation. The consequent improvement in
her export trade, especially to the silver controlled markets, ultimately
benefited the cultivator and caused some criticism of the government
for not acting earlier. But there was no serious unrest in the agricultural areas. The country lacked big industries; hence there vyas no
large mass of unemployed. Foreign commerce was in foreign hands
exclusively. The chief effects, therefore, of the depression were to
strengthen the nationalist demand for the removal of foreign control
over the country's economic life.
The government, however, got into serious financial difficulties.
In March 1931 the Minister of Finance had to announce a budget
deficit of II million ticals. As Siam failed in her attempts to raise
foreign loans in Paris and New York, she was forced to introduce
drastic economies involving salary cuts, which hit the "junior official
class very hard. They were already discontented because the road to
middle-class promotion was blocked by the solid princely phalanx
which monopolized all the key positions. Many of thefn had adopted
democratic ideas through education in Europe and had'become impatient with the working of the old-fashioned royal absolutism. At the
same time, during the king's absence abroad for medical treatment in
1931 serious rivalry developed in the Supreme Council between the.
Minister of War, Prince Bovaradej, and the Minister of Commerce,

CH. 45

SIAM IN TRANSITION, I91O-42

763

Prince Purachatra, over a question of economy. In October 1931 this

produced a first-class political crisis which shook public confidence in
that princely dominated institution.
This was not all the discontent, since there were those of the
official class who had lost their jobs through Prajadhipok's drastic
pruning of the Civil Service, and to them must be added a group of
army officers resentful of the salary cuts and hostile to princely
influence. In 1932 these discontented elements found a leader in
Luang Pradist Manudharm, better known by his personal name of
Pridi Banomyong, a brilliant young lawyer trained in Paris and
Professor of Law at the Chulalongkorn University. He drafted a
constitution and with military help took control over Bangkok and
carried out a bloodless revolution on 24 June 1932.
The public took no part in the coup save as spectators. The king,
who was away from the capital at the time, returned two days later and
at once accepted the provisional constitution. By it he Jost all his
prerogatives save the right of pardon, the princes were excluded from
ministerial posts and the army, arid the People's Party, as Pridi and
his supporters named themselves, took over the management of the
government. They nominated a Senate of seventy members, which
proceeded to appoint an Executive Council with power to promulgate laws and control ministers. The Senate was to be replaced by an
elected Assembly after a lapse of six months, and there was to be
universal suffrage after ten years.
The new government was therefore a party dictatorship. But Pridi
and his lieutenants did not take over the actual government. They
chose P'ya Manopakorn as President of the Executive Council. He
had played no part in the revolution but had been a good President of
the Court of Appeal. His appointment, like that of the President of the
Senate, a previous Minister of Education, was an attempt to appease
conservative opinion. From the point of view of the revolutionaries
the arrangement was not a success. P'ya Manopakorn's policy was,
on his own admission, a continuation of the pre-revolution regime's
retrenchment policy. No one was satisfied, there was an atmosphere
of alarm, and when the Communists and their Chinese supporters
tried to cash in on the situation the government adopted a policy of
repression.
The conservative influence in the government showed itself quite
clearly in December 1932 when the new constitution, on which a
special committee had been at work since the revolution, was promulgated. The committee had worked in close collaboration with the

y64

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

king, and the result was a document in which the royal powers were
considerably greater than had originally been announced. Legislative
competence, control over finance, and the power to interpret the
constitution were vested in a unicameral Assembly of 156 members,
of which, as a temporary measure, the king was to appoint half.
Elections were to be held every four years. Candidates for seats must
be Siamese of at least twenty-three years of age, resident in their
constituencies, and able to fulfil certain educational requirements.
The law of citizenship was redefined so as to include the right to vote
among the privileges of the citizen. Ministers were to be responsible
to the Assembly, but if a vote of confidence were moved the voting
must not take place on the day of the discussion. The king secured
three important powers. He could dissolve the Assembly without
Cabinet approval, but a new election must be held within three
months. He was given the right to veto legislation, but the Assembly
could override his veto by a second vote. He could also enact emergency decrees so long as they were countersigned by the minister
responsible.
'
The restrictions on the princes of the royal family were also relaxed.
While they were prohibited from sitting as deputies or holding office
as ministers, they were permitted to act as advisers and hold diplomatic
posts. As a safeguard against party dictatorship a political party was
forbidden to issue orders to any of its members with seats in the
Assembly. In 1933 a further step was taken at the king's request.
The People's Party was dissolved as a political party and became a
social club. This was an astute piece of political engineering. The
king had rejected a petition by a number of army officers and high
officials to form a Nationalist Party and in consequence was able to
bring pressure to bear on the People's Party. Apparently the petition
had been presented solely with that intention.
P'ya Manopakorn now sought to free his government from the
control of Pridi and his group. An unpublished- scheme of national
economy prepared by Pridi was declared to be Communistic, and by a
well-prepared coup he was forced into exile. Then the governmentstole his thunder by announcing a national policy to exploit the
national resources and promising assignments of vacaiit land'to the
unemployed. But P'ya Manopakorn went too far by securing a
prorogation of the Assembly and assuming a more and more dictatorial
attitude.
The rising alarm and the prime minister's preparation for another
purge led four army leaders, with P'ya Bahol at their head, to offer

CH. 45

SIAM IN TRANSITION, 19X0-42

765

their resignations. AH had been colleagues of Pridi in the revolution of

the previous year. When their resignations were accepted they planned
another coup d'etat, and on 20 June 1933 carried it through successfully. P'ya Manopakorn resigned and his place was taken by P'ya
Bahol. A new Council composed of his followers was appointed and
the Assembly recalled. The government publicly proclaimed that it
was anti-Communist and would defend the constitution. The king,
who had been conveniently absent from the capital for the coup d'etat,
returned and in the first radio speech ever made by a Siamese monarch
to his people urged that peace and unity should be maintained.
In September Pridi, who had become the darling of the people,
was permitted to return and was given an enthusiastic reception.
A commission was appointed to investigate the charges of Communism
that had been made against him, and in March 1934 its report completely cleared him. Meanwhile in October 1933 the government was
faced by a serious military revolt led by the king's cousin, Prince
Bovaradej. The rebel forces occupied the Dom Muang airport and
demanded the resignation of P'ya Bahol and his associates. But the
premier's popularity with the army ensured the loyalty of the troops
guarding the capital, and when Luang P'ibun Songgram, in command
of the government forces, recaptured Don Muang the rebel leaders
fled to Saigon and the revolt collapsed.
Throughout the crisis the king had maintained a neutral attitude.
It became known that he had been aware of what was brewing and
that most of the royal princes had given moral and financial support
to the rebels. He was never able to regain the confidence of his people,
and in January 1934 went abroad on the plea that he must have
specialist treatment for his eyesight, which was indeed causing him
serious anxiety. The aristocracy also did not recover its position.
On the other hand, the new middle-class movement became divided
by the growing rivalry between P'ibun Songgram, who had risen to
prominence by restoring order at the time of the military revolt, and
Pridi. P'ibun was the leader of a group that was militarist and
nationalist, while Pridi led a section in which the civilian element
predominated. Only the strong personality of the prime minister,
whom everybody liked for his humane temperament, held the governmenf together.
In November 1933 a general election was held in order that the
government might seek to counteract the influence of the rebel
sympathizers by intensive propaganda. Less than a tenth of the
electorate voted and comparatively few candidates offered themselves

766

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

for election. Pridi's following apparently secured a majority of the

seats. Pridi was all for a radical economic policy, but there were
signs of unrest which caused much alarm, land P'ibun's campaign
against what he called the Communistic element in the government
caused much wariness of embarking on any fundamental changes.
In September 1934 a crisis occurred when the Assembly threw out a
measure for ratifying a rubber agreement with Britain. The Cabinet
resigned, but P'ya Bahol's popularity was so great that he returned to
office with a reconstructed ministry which won a vote of confidence
with a secure majority.
Soon afterwards another crisis blew up which involved the king's
abdication. He vetoed a Bill which sought to abolish the need for his
signature to be appended to a death sentence, and when the Assembly
objected he threatened to abdicate unless his conditions, involving the
resignation of the Assembly and a new general election, were accepted.
Attempts at a compromise failed and in March 1935 he announced his
abdication. His nephew, Prince Ananda Mahidol, a ten-year-old
schoolboy in Switzerland, was proclaimed king and a Regency Council
of three members was appointed to act during his minority. Praj adhipok and his wife were in England when this crisis occurred, and
he announced his intention of residing there in future with the title of
Prince of Sukhodaya.
During the succeeding period P'ibun's influence continued to
grow, especially after Pridi's departure on a foreign tour in the middle
of 1935. The State Council was constantly weakened by quarrels
between its members, and as more and more posts in the civil administration were given to army officers the government showed signs
of a trend towards a military dictatorship which seriously alarmed the
Assembly. P'ya Bahol's administration survived another general
election in 1937; but the new Assembly was determined to assert its
will, and in December 1938 passed against the government an amendment td its procedure to compel a more detailed explanation of the
budget. This brought the resignation of the Council and P'ya Bahol
announced his retirement.
The new government was headed by P'ibun, with Pridi as Minister
of Finance. Its prevailing note was an intensified natioiialism.
Pridi's new Revenue Code, passed in March 1939, was ah attempt to
lighten the burden of the peasant and free him from dependence upon
the money-lender. Much heavier taxation was levied on the
commercial class, represented mainly by the Chinese and partly by
European firms. It was followed by stringent regulations to check

CH. 4 5

SIAM IN TRANSITION, I 9 1 O - 4 2

767

Chinese immigration and reserve for Siamese nationals a number of

occupations previously monopolized by Chinese. The government
went so far as to close hundreds of Chinese schools, suppress Chinese
newspapers, deport thousands of opium addicts and even arrest some
of the leaders of the Chinese community. The reason given was that
the terrorist activities of the Chinese secret societies constituted a
menace to public order.
European interests were hit by these measures, since they employed
Chinese labour in mining and forestry. Leases for the teak industry,
which,was under British management, were renewed on less favourable terms and more forest areas were reserved for Siamese enterprise.
An attempt was made to take over local shipping by buying vessels to
be operated by a state company and by legislation ruling that the
capital of foreign shipping firms must be at least 70 per cent Siamese,
all vessels must be registered as Siamese and their crews 75 per cent
Siamese. State subsidies were given to private Siamese firms,
technical, commercial and agricultural schools were founded, and
many Siamese students sent abroad for technical training.
Other interesting manifestations of the new chauvinism were the
change in the official name for the country from Siam to Thailand
in June 1939. The Siamese had always proudly referred to their
country as Muang Thai, 'the land of the free', and it was now decreed
that foreigners also should use this name.^ P'ibun also started a
campaign to inculcate Western manners and social practices, and a
series of pamphlets was issued to explain government policy in this
connection. Both sexes were required to wear European shoes and
hats in public, and a Westernized version of dress was prescribed.
Efforts were also made to stop the practice of chewing betel. The
education system was brought under the strictest control. All schools
had to adopt the curricula, textbooks and examinations rigidly prescribed by the Ministry of Education, and all teachers had to be
registered. The movement to equate Buddhism with patriotism was
fostered, and there were many conversions from Christianity. It was
made clear that non-Buddhists in government service were liable to
lose their posts or their hopes of promotion. The rule was also laid
down thatno official might marry an alien without special permission.
In foreign affairs efforts were made to win concessions from the
Western powers by threatening to co-operate with Japan. Much
closer economic relations were formed with that country, and Japanese
' In September 1945 it was changed back to Siam, but in 1948 the name Thailand
became again its official designation.

768

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

goods began to flood the" Siamese market. Siamese irredentism was

stirred up, particularly against French Indo-China, and demands were
made for the restoration of the Cambodian and Laos territories, which
France had forced Siam to yield in the earlier period.
The outbreak of the Second World War in 1.939 and the consequent
concentration of Britain and France upon' the German menace
enabled P'ibun with Japanese assistanceit was officially called
'mediation'to regain much territory. After the Japanese landings
in Indo-China a Thai-Japanese pact was signed in December 1940, and
in the following March the French ceded the Cambodian provinces of
Battambang and Siemreap, together with the Laotian territory tp the
west of the river Mekong.
Instead of playing off Japan against the Western Powers, P'ibun
had now sold himself to the Japanese. He and a small group of highplaced officials adopted a policy of full co-operation with Japan, the
natural result of which was the declaration of war by Siam against
Britain and the United States on 25 January 1942.

CHAPTER 4 6

T H E JAPANESE I M P A C T
WHEN in November 1936 Germany and Japan signed the AntiComintern Pact and in July of the following year Japan's second big
offensive began in China, another Russo-Japanese war seemed only
a matter of time. In the summer of 1938 there was open warfare near
the junction of the borders of Manchuria, Korea and Siberia, and a
state of severe tension in Soviet-Japanese relations. Both sides were
making huge concentrations of troops in Manchuria and Siberia.
Then in September 1938 came the Munich agreement. Its effects
upon Japanese policy were immediate. She decided that the weakness
displayed by Britain and France in face of the dictators indicated that
she could get away with a policy of expansion in South-East Asia.
Britain had the largest financial stake in China, and Japan was already
heartened by the extent to which her determined advance there had
resulted in British measures of appeasement. Her hope, therefore,
was that she could achieve her aims without full-scale hostilities. That
was why in the spring of 1939 she refused the invitation to join her
Anti-Comintern partners in a military pact.
Japan's southwards push began in the very month after Munich,
when she seized Canton and isolated Hong Kong from the mainland.
This was the prelude to the seizure of strategic points in the South
China Sea, Hainan Island off the. coast of French Indo-China on 10
February 1939, and the Sinnan Islands, including Spratley, on 30
March. Thus she sought to overcome the serious disadvantage under
which she had laboured through having no naval base nearer Singapore
than Formosa. Hainan brought her within 1,300 miles of it. Spratley
Island took her 700 miles nearer still.
The big danger in the game that she was playing was from the
United States, where her actions had already aroused so much
apprehension that in the previous January the American fleet had been
transferred from the Atlantic to the Pacific. But Germany and
Russia signed their Non-Aggression Pact on 21 August, and within a
fortnight another great war began in Europe. Japan was worried by
the possible implications of the pact; but she calculated that while there
7S9

770

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

was danger of becoming involved in a war across the Atlantic America

would do everything possible to avoid-one in the Pacific. She decided,
therefore, to commit herself fully to the South-East Asian gamble.
Her next move, in November 1939, was a .big thrust into Kwangsi
province to capture the city of Nanning and cut China's strategic
road connection with French Indo-China. This left China with only
the newly opened Burma Road and the Hanoi-Kunming railway for
outlets to the sea, and Japan could threaten both from the air. French
Indo-China now became her major objective. On 9 April 1940
Hitler's blitzkrieg began. Only just over a week later Arita, the
Japanese Foreign Minister, made some significant references to the
future of French Indo-China and the Netherlands Indies in the event
of a German victory. These evoked a sharp reply from Cordell Hull,
the American Secretary of State. But France and Holland- fell, and
their possessions in South-East Asia were left with quite inadequate
defences against a possible Japanese attack.
In the same month that France fell, June 1940, Japan signed a treaty
of friendship with P'ibun Songgram's government in Thailand. She
was now well placed to bring that country under control by means of
her technique of infiltration, pressure and menaces. Incidentally she
had her eye on the new naval base which Thailand was building at
Singora. But it was to French Indo-China that she now turned; the
time had come to clinch matters.
In August 1940 the Konoye Cabinet demanded special concessions
there. The Vichy regime, under pressure from Berlin, signed an
agreement granting Japan permission to use Indo-China's ports,
cities and airports for troop movements. In the following month
a treaty was signed between Vichy and Tokyo which permitted
Japanese forces to occupy the northern part of Indo-China as far south
as Hanoi. In the same month Japan burnt her boats by forming a
military alliance with the Axis. The treaty was worded in such a way
as to 'warn America against interference in either^Europe or the
Pacific. In face of this American isolationism died a siidden death,
and Washington began to prepare for the worst.
Japan's next concern was to reach, a neutrality agreement with
Russia and at the same time hold America off by negotiationsr Meanwhile she played upon P'ibun Songgram's revisionist ambitions by
permitting a mock Thai offensive on the Cambodian and Laos frontiers
and then in January 1941 stepping in with an offer of 'mediation'.
Vichy was forced to hand over the Cambodian provinces of Battambang and Siemreap and the Laos territory on the west bank of the

CH. 4 6

THE JAPANESE IMPACT

771

Mekong, which Siam had lost at the time of the Paknam incident in
1893. In April 1941 Japan's hoped-for Neutrality Pact with Russia
was safely concluded. In that same month American, British, Dutch,
Australian and New Zealand officers met in Singapore for staff
conversations.
Then came a sudden check to Japan's plans for a southward drive;
on 22 June 1941 Hitler began his surprise attack on Russia. Japan
now hesitated, for a war on two fronts was something she was
extremely anxious to avoid. It soon appeared, however, that luck
was still on her side; for the overwhelming and rapid German
successes against Russia made it obvious that she could resume her
southwards course. During July her troops occupied the whole of
French Indo-China. But by now America's attitude had hardened and
her military preparations were a serious deterrent to a further step.
Japan therefore redoubled her efforts to lull the suspicions of
the White House and the State Department. For some months
negotiations were carried on amid growing tension. Both sides had
become convinced that war was inevitable. On 6 December 1941 as a
final despairing peace effort President Roosevelt sent a personal
telegram to the Emperor of Japan. On the following day Japan made
her surprise attack on Pearl Harbour and inflicted upon America one
of the most disastrous defeats she has ever sustained. Her Pacific fleet
was put out of action and Japan was free to go ahead with the conquest
of South-East Asia.
She planned a short and decisive war. She was in a hurry, for she
believed that a German victory in Europe was certain, and she wanted
to reach her objectives before America could revive her power in the
Pacific. After Pearl Harbour, therefore, her offensive went ahead with
breathless speed. On the following day her troops landed in Thailand,
and after a token resistance P'ibun's government capitulated and
agreed to declare war on the Allies. Before the end of December the
American bases of Guam and Wake and the British settlement of
Hong Kong had fallen. Simultaneoutly with these moves the
Japanese began the invasion of the Philippines. Only three days after
Pearl Harbour two British capital ships, the Prince of Wales and the
Repulse, on their way from Singapore to prevent a Japanese landing
in north Malaya, were sunk by aeroplanes based on Indo-China.
Japan now had overwhelming naval supremacy in the Pacific and East
Asiatic waters.
The main Japanese army now moved down the Malay Peninsula
towards Singapore, while another force of specially trained veteran

772

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

troops invaded Burma. In all these spheres^the Philippines, Malaya,

and Burmathe invaders possessed decisive ground and air superiority.
While these campaigns vfere in progress other forces were landed in
Bali and Sumatra in preparation for the invasion of Java. Singapore
fell on 15 February 1942. The Burma invasion began in the third
week of January with two thrusts from Siamese territory into Tenasserim. The British made their first stand on the Salween river around
Moulmein. Thence they were driven westwards along the coast
road through Thaton, and across the Sittang to Pegu. A second defeat
there led to the evacuation of Rangoon on 7 March and a retreat on
Prome.
By this time Java was in the throes of invasion, and on 9 March
organized resistance ended there. Meanwhile the British forces in
Burma were fighting a rearguard action up the Irrawaddy valley,
while Chinese troops coming in by the Burma Road strove to cooperate with them by holding a line stretching across from Pyinmana
to AUanmyo. In the Philippines the American and Filipino armies had
been forced back to the Bataan peninsula, while others held out at
Corregidor in Manila Bay. In both places they fought a grim battle
against superior forces for some months.
In Burma the Japanese foiled the Anglo-Chinese attempt to
establish a line by driving a wedge between them. The British
thereupon fell back up the Chindwin valley towards Manipur. Stil-'
well, the American general commanding the Chinese, hoped to make
a stand in northern Burma, but the Japanese prevented this by
piercing the Shan hills and defeating the Chinese at Loilem. Stilwell's
forces then disintegrated. He himself with a mixed band of Americans,
British, Burmese and Chinese trekked oif towards India, crossing the
Chindwin at Homalin. The remainder pushed off along the Burma
Road into China. By the end of April the whole of the Irrawaddy valley
was in Japanese hands. By that time the war in the Philippines was in
its last stages. Bataan had surrendered on 9 April.- Corregidor was to
surrender on 6 May. Five months after Pearl Harbour the Japanese
had conquered most of their 'Greater East Asia co-prosperity
sphere'.
.
"^
Before her invasion of South-East Asia Japan had failed to "stiipulate
any nationalist rising against the Western Powers. Indonesia was, for
its economic resources, the region she most coveted. She had tried
to persuade the Dutch, after the German conquest of Holland, to
play the same part in Indonesia as the French iji Indo-China. In
September 1940 Ichizo Kobayashi, the Japanese Minister of

CH. 46

THE JAPANESE IMPACT

773

Commerce and Industry, had gone to Batavia to obtain full Dutch

co-operation in the co-prosperity plan. His hope was that Britain
would be forced to capitulate to Germany, and that h^ would then be
able to 'persuade' the Dutch to accept a Japanese 'protectorate' over
their Indonesian empire.
But Britain did not fall. Kobayashi therefore could not present his
ultimatum, and Dr. H. J. van Mook proved a doughty antagonist in
argument. When Kobayashi's successor, Kenkichi Yoshizava,
arrived in January 1941 it soon became evident that the Dutch would
not 'co-operate'. Japan's great object had been to prevent the
destruction of Indonesia's oil industry and the carrying out of
other scorched-earth practices which would deny her the supplies of
raw materials she so much needed. Even when she knew she would
have to fight for Java her first plan had been to by-pass the Dutch
East Indies and occupy Australia. Apparently it was the stubbornness
with which the Dutch prepared to defend their empire that caused
her to change her plan.
The Indonesians had no desire to exchange Dutch for Japanese
rule. The excessive demands made by Yoshizava in his talks with van
Mook showed them the hollowness of the co-prosperity proposals. He
asked for nothing less than unlimited Japanese immigration into all
the islands outside Java, and complete freedom of action in the
commerce and industrial development of Indonesia. Even the leftwing Gerindo group of the old Partai Indonesia proclaimed that the
Greater East India idea had the one aim of depriving other peoples of
their freedom through the same forms of domination as the Japanese
had used in Manchuria, China and Indo-China. When the Dutch
asked for 18,000 volunteers for Home and City Guards, 100,000
presented themselves.
Nowhere were the invading Japanese materially assisted by national
movements. In Malaya there was no fifth column and no authenticated
case of Malays firing on British troops. The stories to that effect arose
from the fact that in their infiltration tactics the Japanese dressed as
Malays. Only one battalion of the Malay Regiment was equipped and
trained, and it fought with the utmost gallantry. Over a thousand
Chinese helped in the defence of Singapore, but there was no equipment with which to arm them. As in Burma, the defence of the
country was the responsibility of the British army, and very Uttle had
been done to recruit and train native forces.
T h e Burmese as a whole gave no support to the Japanese invasion.
Some rebellious groups, organized by student nationalists of the

774

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

Thakin Party trained in Japan, provided the Japanese with guides and
topographical intelHgence. The criminal classes from the gaols ran
wild, looted their own people and murdered Indian refugees. But the
mass of the people looked on with dismay. The Burma Defence
Force was loyal, but it contained only 472 jBurmese against 3,197
Karens, Chins and Kachins. The non-Burmese peoples gave every
assistance to the retreating British, and the Karens in particular
suffered horribly for their loyalty.
The amazing Japanese success and the rapidity with which it was
achieved did irreparable harm to Western prestige. 'Asia for the
Asians' was the general theme of Japanese propaganda, and she
sought the complete eradication of Western influence and culture. To
the Buddhist countries of the mainland her propaganda made much
play with the fact that she also was a Buddhist country, although the
differences between their Theravada and her Zen Buddhism of the
Northern school were irreconcilable. Her relations with the Mahommedan peoples were less easy. In Indonesia she loudly proclaimed a
' Three A Movement' with three slogans: 'Japan the Leader of Asia',
'Japan the Protector of Asia', and 'Japan the Light of Asia', but it
had to be abandoned for lack of support. The Japanese in Asia, like
the Germans in Europe, showed a genius for alienating any people
over whom they established control. In Malaya they relied on
stirring up Malay hostility against the Chinese, and with some success, '
but they failed to arouse Malay hatred against the British, notwithstanding the extent to which their defeat had shattered their prestige.
In Burma's case practically the whole British element in the administration, and much of the Indian, escaped to India. The Burmese
members, together with those belonging to the non-Burmese indigenous races, remained behind at their posts, as indeed they had been
expected to do. The Japanese retained the administration in operation
with few changes. Their method of ensuring that their requirements
were fulfilled was to appoint political commissars to work along with
the civil administrators. Muc}i of the work had to be carried on in
English, since Burmese and Japanese were for the most part ignorant
of each other's languages.
,
Much the same thing, mutatis mutandis, happened 'to the'British"
administration in Malaya and the Dutch in Indonesia, save that in
both cases the European members of the administrative corps were
interned in prison camps. In all three cases the Europeans had to be
replaced by generally inadequately trained, and often hostile, Burmese,,
Malays and Indonesians. And as the military dominated every form of

CH. 46

THE JAPANESE IMPACT

775

activity and knew little or nothing of civil administration, misery and

confusion resulted and an inevitable deterioration of economic conditions. Everywhere the Japanese attacked those parts of the administration where the European tradition was strongest.
The police came under the direction of the Kempeitai, and probably
no one will ever know the full extent of the terrorism carried on
against the native populations. Thousands of Chinese were massacred
soon after the surrender of Singapore, especially those who had anything to do with the China Relief Fund. Rape was a real scourge in
occupied Malaya. The Japanese, writes Victor Purcell, 'conducted
rape on the grand scale'. The requisitions for forced labour were
perhaps the worst form of tyranny. Thousands were used on the
construction of the infamous 'death railway' cqjinecting southern
Burma with Bangkok through Kanburi. Thousands of Indonesians
also were shipped to work for the Japanese forces in New Guinea
and the northern Moluccas. The European and Eurasian prisoners
of war were treated with unparalleled harshness. The immense
European cemeteries situated near the Burma-Thailand railway are
today grim reminders of the inefficiency and callous brutality which
caused so many to be worked or starved to death.
There were resistance groups everywhere, for the dense jungle and
mountainous areas lent themselves to this form of activity. They were
often led by European officers, left behind by the retreating armies
or parachuted in. In Malaya the Chinese Communists were the mainspring of the underground movement; though Kuomintang Chinese
and Malays also played a part. As time went on they came to number
nearly 7,000 men and women together with about 300 British, most of
whom were dropped by parachute. The epic story of their struggle
has been told by Lieutenant-Colonel Spencer Chapman, the T. E.
Lawrence of the Malayan jungle.^ They gradually disrupted rail
traffic, and in 1945 were ready to paralyse the Japanese system of
cominunications when the British army attacked.
In Burma a Karen resistance movement led by British officers was
stamped out with appalling atrocities. But a large part of the Burmese
Thakin Party, disgusted by the behaviour of the Japanese, also went
. underground, and by the end of 1943 were leading a small but wellorganized resistance movement. In their case also the Communists
were the leading spirits. In French Indo-China the Viet Minh
League, under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh, became the spearhead
of the resistance after the collapse of a number of nationalist risings.
The Jungle is Neutral..

77^

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

In the last stage of the conflict they received, American weapons and
technical aid which enabled them to clear the Japanese out of several
provinces of northern Tongking. In Cochin] China Ho Chi Minh's
guerrillas assisted the Resistance Committee which maintained touch
with the Allies.
\
In Indonesia at the outset the nationalist leaders had, apparently by
agreement, divided into two groups. One, headed by Sukarno and
Hatta, co-operated with the Japanese as a means of furthering the
nationalist cause. The other, headed by Sjahrir and Sjarifuddin, went
underground to organize a resistance movement, in which they kept
in touch with their comrades on the Japanese side.
In Thailand Pridi, who resigned his position as Minister of Finance
when P'ibun capitulated to the Japanese, tried unsuccessfully to
establish an independent government in the north. He was then made
regent, and under cover of his privileged position organized an underground movement in secret touch with the Free Thai Movement in
the United States and Britain. Allied forces working through his
underground prepared airfields and imported arms ready for an attack
on the Japanese, which never came off owing to the suddenness of their
collapse in 1945. Members of the underground movement did much
to help European prisoners of war working on the 'death railway'.
The Japanese success in overrunning territories had been greater
than even they had bargained for. Tokyo therefore revised its plans
to include the conquest of further territories than had originally been
envisaged. In the central Pacific more island groups were added to
the list, in the hope of preventing the American navy from establishing
bases near to Asia. In Burma the Japanese began to build up their
strength for an attack on India. The original plan for a movement by
sea had to be abandonedpartly because of trouble with the Indian
National Army, which had been recruited in Malaya and refused to
move without clear assurances that India's future independence
would be guaranteed.
* ,^
To meet this the Allies had at first no co-ordinated"plan. In the
dry weather of 1942-3 a British attempt to seize northern Arakan
failed disastrously. The Americans, anxious to relieve the pressure
on Chungking, were all for reopening the land route to China and
a drive to secure Myitkyina. The British were at first sceptical of the
wisdom of a north Burma offensive, but finally agreed to the plan.
The Americans thereupon began feverishly to construct the Ledo
Road, and at the same time to supply Chungking with Lend-Lease
materials by air over the Himalayan ' Hump'.

CH. 4 6

THE JAPANESE IMPACT

777

Meanwhile in the Pacific the Japanese rashness in over-extending

their line of advance brought them into difficulties. At the Battle of
Midway in June 1942 the American fleet sank the four aircraft-carriers
accompanying a superior Japanese fleet and forced it to flee. This
action has been taken as the turning of the tide in the Pacific war.*
It was followed by a limited counter-offensive against northern New
Guinea and the Solomons. In 1943 the Allies were preparing for a
widespread offensive in the Pacific, with Japan itself as the ultimate
goal. A co-ordinated plan also emerged for a campaign in Burma
envisaging a drive by Stilwell's force for Myitkyina and a push across
the Chindwin from Manipur by the main Allied army that was being
built up in India.
In face of this threat the Japanese began to lose their confidence.
They decided that everything must be done to win over the peoples
of the occupied countries and enlist them to resist Allied attacks.
Their method was to set up puppet regimes with the semblance of
independence. On i August 1943 Burma became 'independent'
under the presidency of the former premier Dr. Ba Maw, who took
the title of 'Adipadi', the Pali equivalent of Fiihrer. There was no
talk of reviving the Constitution of 1937, and in any case real control
was in the hands of Dr. Gotara Ogawa, formerly a Cabinet minister in
Tokyo, who became 'Supreme Adviser' to the Burmese government.
A similar regime was established in the Philippines on 15 October
1943 under Jose P. Laurel.
As Indonesia seemed unlikely to be threatened by an early Allied
attack, the Japanese moved more slowly there. But the Indonesians
were promised a share in their government, and in September 1943.
a Central Advisory Council was established in Java under Sukarno,
with Mohammed Hatta as his deputy. Advisory councils were also
set up in the various residencies and cities. Sukarno's position,
however, was less that of an adviser than of a mouthpiece for the
interpretation and recommendation of Japanese policy to the general
public.^ At Singapore a Malayan Consultative Council was brought
into being.
But these were all mere play-acting and failed to disguise the
hoUowness of Japanese promises and propaganda. Of all the occupied
1 On this subject see The Campaigns of the Pacific War, Washington, 1946, Battle
Report, Pacific War, published by the U.S. Navy, and the detailed operational histories
under the direction of S. E. Morison.
* Dr. H . J. van Mook, The Stakes of Democracy in South-East Asia, London, 1950,
p. 151. T h e book contains an illuminating chapter on the Japanese treatment of
Indonesia.

778

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

countries Burma suffered worst at the hands of the Japanese. Many

of her towns had been reduced to ashes by Japanese air-raids during
the invasion. Her oil-wells, mines equipment and river transport
were destroyed by the retreating British so as to be useless to the
enemy. Allied air-raids kept her railways out of action. The Japanese
systematically looted the country of machinery, scientific apparatus
and even furniture. All her normal external markets were lost. The
complete stoppage of her rice export through the failure of the
Japanese to take it led to mere subsistence farming. The south
suffered from a glut of rice while the north starved. Lower Burma
was almost completely deprived of the cooking oil which only the
dry zone could supply.
The inability of the Japanese to export Burma rice and import
urgently needed consumer goods caused the greatest distress, which
was further aggravated by the chaos and uncontrollable inflation caused
by the Japanese currency policy. The peasantry lost a large proportion
of their indispensable cattle through military requisition for food and an
epidemic of rinderpest. Malaria control measures ceased and the people
suffered heavily from the disease. There were epidemics of smallpox,
cholera and bubonic plague, against which the Japanese had to take
drastic preventive measures. Hence in 1944 the extremists, who had
assisted the Japanese invasion and were in positions of political
control, were secretly engaged in organizing a nation-wide Anti-'
Fascist People's Freedom League, which only awaited a favourable
opportunity to come out openly against the oppressor.
In Malaya there was the same neglect of health measures with
a consequent increase in malaria and other diseases, accompanied by
a sharp rise in the death-rate. All this was particularly noticeable
because the public health administration of Singapore and Malaya
had been unsurpassed anywhere in Asia. The Japanese looted the
hospitals of their modern up-to-date equipment and stores. The
schools also were thoroughly looted and some of the native teachers
executed. Famine and malnutrition in the towns wer^even worse
than in Burma, since pre-war Malaya had imported two-thirds of its
rice, and the Japanese failed to import enough from the rice-producing
areas they controlled. There was also the same appjilling shortage"
of consumer goods, and the same inflation through the uncontrolled
issue of paper money. The great dredges in the European-fun tin
mines had been destroyed or put out of action during the British
retreat in 1941-2, and there had been widespread destruction of,
buildings and machinery on the rubber estates.

CH. 46

THE JAPANESE IMPACT

779

Dr. van Mook has summed up the effects of Japanese misrule in

Indonesia in a statement which for vigour and conciseness cannot
be improved upon: 'Those who suffered most were the common
people. Japanese economy was frightful, Japanese administration a
farce. The country had been subdivided from the beginning into three
almost watertight compartments: two, Java and Sumatra, under army
commanders, and a third, the rest, under the navy. But as food and
other commodities became scarce even the traffic between districts
and islands was prohibited in order to facilitate pillaging by the
military. The system of finance consisted of a number of printing
presses, turning out crude government notes; inflation acquired disastrous proportions. Trade and export production were dead, because
Indonesia was cut off from the world markets and Japan, her shipping
going under the blows of allied submarines and aircraft, preferred to
fetch the products she needed from Indo-China, a thousand miles
nearer home. She remained interested only in oil, nickel and bauxite.
Estates and factories rusted and decayed; plantations were uprooted
to increase the food acreage; means of communication that broke
down were no longer repaired; the import goods were gone or hoarded;
clothing became almost unobtainable. This meant unemployment for
hundreds of thousands; it meant poverty, poverty, poverty, for all
but a few henchmen of the Japanese and a number of black
marketeers.'^
So far as the war was concerned, the year 1943 was mainly one of
Allied build-up, planning and try-outs. In the Pacific theatre plans
were made for two lines of attack converging upon the Japanese homeland. They envisaged by-passing Japanese island bases where air
control could be achieved. One route was via New Guinea to the
Philippines and thence to the southern islands of Japan. The other
was through the island groups of the central Pacific, the Gilberts and
Marshalls to the Japanese strongholds in the Marianas. These in
American hands were'to be utilized as bases for widespread B-20
bombing attacks, which would include the Japanese cities in their
scope.
In Burma Wingate's small ' Chindit' force of British, Burmese and
. Gurkhas marched across from Tonhe on the Chindwin to carry out a
campaign of sabotage and destruction on the Mandalay-Myitkyina
railway in co-operation with a planned push in that direction from the
north by Stilwell's forces. Unfortunately this operation had to be
cancelled, and the Chindit effort lost much of its purpose save as a
Op. cit., pp. i54-5>

780

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PTi IV

magnificent demonstration of heroism. At the Quebec Conference

in August 1943 a big step forward was taken by the formation of the
South-East Asia Command, with Mountbatten as Supreme Commander and Stilwell as Deputy Chief. Operation Capital for the
recovery of Burma from the north was then worked out. At the end
of the year a second British attempt on northern Arakan was made,
but was stopped by a Japanese counter-attack early in 1944.
China as a theatre of war was mainly inactive in 1943. America
made great efforts, by diplomacy and military aid, to keep Chinese
resistance alive. As the Burma Road was closed, supplies had to be
flown in from India 'over the H u m p ' . The American airmen responsible for this perilous undertaking showed a gallantry beyond praise,
although the trickle of supplies they managed to take to Chungking
was inadequate to stimulate offensive action against the Japanese by
Chiang Kai-shek. He was far more concerned with his struggle with
the Communists in Yenan than with an energetic anti-Japanese policy.
One rather overdue act of diplomatic 'encouragement' was the
abandonment by Britain and the/ United States of their extraterritorial rights in China. Their example was followed in due course
by other European states possessing such rights.
By the beginning of 1944 the Japanese had begun to realize something of the magnitude of the Allied preparations for a counteroffensive. In the central Pacific and New Guinea during that yearthey were fully extended trying unsuccessfully to stem the Allied
advance. But in two other spheres they undertook major offensive
operations in efforts to disrupt their opponents' plans. In both north
' a n d south China they struck hard to prevent the offensive that Stilwell
was doing his utmost to persuade Chiang Kai-shek to launch, and to
secure complete control over the main arterial Peiping-HankowCanton railway, which was their land link between Korea and Singapore.
Their offensive caused a quarrel between Stilwell and Chiang Kaishek over the military reforms which the former urged^were necessary
in order to meet the threat and oppose the Japanese more effectively.
Chiang protested to Washington, and in the middle of the Burma
campaign 'Vinegar Joe' was relieved of his commands As^the year^
progressed it became only too obvious that the Allies must ignore
China in their strategic arrangements for crushing Japan. In November, however, Hurley, the United States ambassador at Chungking,
made a somewhat gauche and completely abortive attempt to bring
about a compromise between Chiang Kai-shek anrf the Communists.

CH. 4 6

THE JAPANESE IMPACT

781

The other sphere in which the Japanese launched a major offensive

in 1944 was the Burma-India border. In March they began a very
formidable movement into Manipur and Assam. It was not an allout effort to conquer India. It came two years too late for that,
when the Allies were gathering strength and Japan herself was fully
extended in the Pacific. Her great gamble had depended for its
ultimate success on Germany winning the war. But in 1944 Germany
was losing the war. The Japanese movement against India therefore
was undertaken merely to cause the postponement of the inevitable
counter-attack from that quarter.
The first objective of the invaders was Imphal, the capture of which
would afford them a stepping-off ground for a push into Bengal. They
hoped also to isolate Stilwell when he was poised in the north for his
drive southwards towards Myitkyina, and again render fruitless a
further operation by Wingate's Chindits. When the attack began
Stilwell's forces were moving towards the Hukawng valley, and a
far more powerful Chindit force than the earlier one, this time airborne, was attempting to soften up Japanese resistance to their
advance.
For some months the situation on the Indian frontier was critical,
with the Japanese besieging Imphal and striking at Kohiina in a
desperate attempt to reach Dimapur Junction on the Assam Railway,
along which most of Stilwell's supplies had to pass; It was a veritable
bloodbath, but by the end of June the Japanese were firmly held and
the road between Kohima and Imphal had been cleared.
This was the turn of the tide. Inside northern Burma Stilwell's
group, with the co-operation of the Chindits, was relentlessly pressing
towards Myitkyina, which fell at the end of August. But Wingate had
been killed in an air accident at the beginning of the campaign, and
after the capture of Myitkyina Stilwell was relieved of his command.
By this time the Japanese defeat at Imphal had become a disaster and
they were in disorderly flight, closely pursued by the Allied forces.
Then, as the cold season drew on with the end of the wet monsoon in
October, a third Arakan campaign began which cleared the Japanese
from the Kaladan valley and the Mayu peninsula. This was followed
in January 1945 by landings from.the sea at Akyab and other places on
the coast so that the essential forward airfields could be prepared in
readiness for co-operation with the land invasion of Lower Burma.
Meanwhile equally decisive operations had been taking place in the
two Pacific sectors. The Americans began an attack on Saipan in the
Marianas on June 15, and in three weeks were in complete possession

782

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

of the island. This was followed by the liberation of Guam and the
conquest of Tinian. And in November the Japanese began to feel the
impact of long-range bomber attacks fromlthe Marianas. Moreover,
the completion of the Allied conquest pi New Guinea enabled
American troops on 17 October to land in the PhiHppines. Their
attack in this quarter began in the Gulf of Leyte in the central Philippines and had disastrous consequences for Japanese naval power. For
they had to risk their battle fleet in a desperate attempt to break up
the attack. Its repulse in a great naval battle was decisive.* This
action was the last stand of the Japanese navy as an organized force.
On 31 January 1945 the first convoy from Ledo across northern
Burma arrived at Wanting, on the Burma-China border, and passed on
its way along the Burma Road towards Chungking. The land route
to China was open. After their defeat at Myitkyina the Japanese
re-formed at Bhamo and for some weeks held off attacks until Americanled, Chinese-manned tanks stormed the town. Then more American
reinforcements poured into what had become known as the Northern
Combat Area Command. A British division moved down the railway
corridor, and the American Mars Task Force took the difficult route
down the east of the Irrawaddy. Other forces began to comb out the
Northern Shan States, and finally reached Lashio. The Japanese
were retreating fast towards central Burma, where the decisive battle
of 1945 was to be fought.
It was, however, from the Manipur hills and the Chindwin; region
that the real blow came. General Slim's Fourteenth Army carried out
a masterly advance down the Chindwin to Mandalay and Meiktila in
the early part of the year. Mandalay fell in March. At the beginning
of April, when the Americans made their landing at Okinawa in the
Liuchiu Islands and brought about the fall of the Koiso Cabinet at
Tokyo, the Japanese main army in Burma was so heavily defeated
at Meiktila that it began to disintegrate. Some melted into the Shan
hills eastward. Others tried to get away southward across the Sittang.
Their Twenty-eighth Army in Arakan began hurriedly moving out
by the An and Taungup passes.
At this juncture the Burma National Army, organized and trained
by the Japanese, and under the command of Aung San, went over to
the Allies. Its Burmese leaders had carried on lengthy clandestine
negotiations with Mountbatten, and its changeover, as the Allied army
pushed rapidly down the Irrawaddy and Sittang valleys, was a carefully
concerted move skilfully carried out.
The advance now became a race. Mountbatten's aim had all along

CH. 46

THE JAPANESE IMPACT

783

been to capture Rangoon before the onset of the wet monsoon. And
he achieved it. Prome was occupied before the Japanese Arakan army
had extricated itself from the passes across the Yoma; its main escape
route was thus sealed. Pegu was reached on i May, and on the following day Rangoon. The advance had been so swift that the plan for
a sea-borne assault on Rangoon was rendered unnecessary. When
the British advanced units arrived the Japanese had already evacuated
the city.
One more major operation only had to be fought, the ' Battle of the
Break-through', against 10,000 Japanese, whom General Koba
collected in the Pegu Yoma from the remnants of the army moving
out of Arakan and other forces on the west of the Prome-Rangoon
road. It took place during the latter part of July, when the principal
Allied powers were in session at Potsdam drafting their final answer
to the requests for peace that Admiral Suzuki Kantaro, the new
Japanese premier, had been proffering since the previous May.
Thereafter it was only a matter of stamping out the resistance of outlying Japanese garrisons and chasing their forces through the mountains towards Siam.
The great gamble had failed. In May Germany had surrendered.
The Americans were preparing to invade Japan. In Manchuria a
million Japanese troops were awaiting a Russian declaration of war.
Mountbatten's forces were preparing to land in Malaya and Sumatra.
On 26 July the Allies at Potsdam published their terms for the
Japanese surrender. When no answer was received the first atom
bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August. Two days later
Russia declared war on Japan. On 9 August an atom bomb was
dropped on Nagasaki. On the following day Japan intimated her
acceptance of the surrender terms.

CHAPTER 4 7

A F T E R T H E WAR, 1945-50
SOUTH-EAST ASIA before the Second World War was a little-known
region to the majority of people in the West. It was completely overshadowed by India and China. The use of such terms as Further
India or Indo-China to describe its mainland, and even of Indonesia
or the Indian Archipelago for its island world, obscured its identity
and minimized its importance. Now for a short time all that was
changed. The limelight was focused upon the unfamiliar scene and
broadcast announcers tried to master the strange, musical names.
Burma, where the largest single land campaign was fought against
the Japanese, became front-page news and figured in countless letters
home. Thousands of Australian, British and Dutch families lost
relatives in the labour gangs which slaved on the Burma-Thailand
' death railway'; still more over a far wider area of the world, including
America and Africa, suffered bereavement through battle casualties.
The post-war world, therefore, had become aware of Soiith^East
Asia as never before. And if this generalization is scarcely fair to
Holland, a large proportion of whose national savings was invested in
Indonesia, or to France, who regarded her Indo-Chinese empire as
essential to the maintenance of her position in the world, the fact
remains that their attention was concentrated solely on the countries
they held.

So far as the peoples of the occupied territories were concerned,

their experience of Japanese rule gave immense stimulus to their
national movements. Moreover, they had, witnessed a defeat of
European forces by Asians which was so rapid, apd-at first so overwhelming, as to be almost incredible. And although the Asian
victory had brought a vile tyranny such as the European hadJDever
practised, with plunder and famine instead of thg* much-advertised'co-prosperity', nevertheless, with the possible exception of Malaya,
it did not make them anxious for the restoration of white rule. In
Indonesia, Burma and Vietnam it strengthened the desire for independence. In these countries, indeed, political passions ran so high
that the hard facts of the economic situation \yere barely recognized.
784-

CH. 47

AFTER THE WAR, I945-5O

785

For although their pUght was desperate and measures to promote

economic recovery should have been given priority over everything
else, Indonesians, Burmese and Vietnamese were at one in their
determination that European trade with their countries should never
again be on the old footing, and in their belief that only through
political independence could such an object be achieved.
(a) Malaya
Malaya's case was in many ways, but not all, exceptional. Before
the war the Malays had been the least politically minded of all the
peoples of South-East Asia. The British bureaucracy had been just
and enlightened, and most of its members had tended to develop
strong pro-Malay sympathies. During the occupation period, however, Malay national sentiment had become a reality; it was strongly
anti-Chinese, and its rallying cry, 'Malaya for the Malays', transcended the particularism of the individual states. It showed itself in a
most unpleasant form at the moment of Malaya's release from Japanese
thraldom, whe'n in many places Malays began to kill any Chinese
on whom they could lay hands. The British military administration,
which at first took over the management of the country, had to adopt
stern measures to repress these outbreaks of fanaticism.
But these were not the only problems of law and order. Under the
Japanese the Malay police force, which had been used against the
guerrillas, had declined sadly in morale and efficiency. Firearms were
easy to obtain, the Chinese secret societies had flourished, and for
some time after the restoration of British rule there was an unparalleled
outbreak of violent crime. Behind the scenes also the leaders of the
Malayan People's Anti-Japanese Army,'^the M.P.A.J.A., most of whom
were Communists, were making a determined bid for power. And
although in December 1945 the British disbanded and disarmed them,
giving each man a war gratuity, of 350 dollars, their leaders resorted to
the strike weapon; which they used with great effect in 1946, cashing
in on the general discontent at high prices and the shortage of
food.
The food problem was acute. Malaya was dependent upon supplies
of imported rice, which at first were not available owing to the fall
in production in Burma and the other rice-exporting countries. The
government did what it could to stimulate local cultivation by means
of subsidies, guaranteed prices and extensions of the irrigated areas.
. Rationing was imposed, and rice on the ration was sold at a price

786

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

much lower than its cost. But the amount per person was much
lower than had been consumed before the war. Native production,
however, increased, and by 1948 was above the pre-war level.
Immense efforts were put into reconstruction. The public health
services were quickly revived, hospitals were re-equipped, sanitation
improved and anti-malarial measures reintroduced. They brought
immediate results. In 1947, for instance, the infant mortality rate
was the lowest on record. Schools were reopened. They were so
overcrowded that they had to work by shifts, with one school occupying the buildings in the morning and another in the afternoon. The
shortage of teachers and equipment was truly formidable, and in
1946 the number of children attending school was twice what it had
been before the war.
In both Kuala Lumpur and Singapore the Education Departments
went ahead with a vigorous policy of expansion which aimed at
ultimately providing free primary education for all children. The
creation of a common Malayan citizenship from among the diverse
racial groups in the country, without which political advance towards
self-government was recognized to be impossible, was the most urgent
problem of the new era, and special attention was directed to the
framing of an education policy which should contribute towards its
solution. This involved finding some means of integrating the Chinese
schools, the breeding-ground alike of Chinese nationalism and of
Communism, into the general system of education. Another interesting step taken was that of making English the second language in all
vernacular schools. A scheme was also worked out for combining
Raffles College and the King Edward VII College of Medicine to form
a university, and in October 1949 the University of Malaya commenced
its first session.
Equal energy was directed to the furtherance of economic recovery.
A vast programme of renovation was undertaken to put the railways,
roads and harbours again into working order., The revival of the tin
and rubber industries was of vital importance. The-Ghinese mines,
dependent mainly on hand labour, got away to a quick start. But the
British-owned mines, which accounted for two-thirds of the normal
production, were up against serious^ problems. Their dredges had
been destroyed or put out of action early in the war. Now a dredge
cost nearly four times its pre-war price and took two years, to build.
Government compensation for war damage helped to the tune of
75 million dollars, but there was long delay in obtaining materials for,
repairs. Against a pre-war production of 80,651/tons only 8,432 tons

CH. 47

AFTER THE WAR, 1945-50

787

were mined in 1946. But in the following year 36,079 tons were produced, and by 1950 the pre-war figure had been surpassed.
Rubber made a quicker recovery. The Japanese had cut down the
trees on only 2 | per cent of the total of 3,302,000 acres under cultivation. The Malays, who owned 40 per cent of the acreage, were able
to start production at once. On the big European estates, however,
an immense outlay on buildings and machinery was entailed, and there
was an acute labour shortage. Nevertheless by 1948 the industry had
recovered its pre-war status and was going ahead with trees giving a
much higher yield. The Government of Britain made a large grant
towards war compensation, and by 1950 rubber exports were three
times their pre-war value. The total acreage under rubber was
3,359,251 and the production had risen to 692,585 tons against
372,000 tons in 1938. As tin and rubber together accounted for 86
per cent of Malaya's exports, their rapid increase was the most
significant feature of her economic recovery. Moreover, she had
become more important to Britain than ever before on account of her
American dollar earnings. They rose from 519 millions in 1948 to
1,195 millions in 1950. But much of this increase, it must be remembered, was due to the enhanced prices of these two commodities
resulting from the American rearmament programme.
During the reconstruction period much was also done to expand
the production of palm-oil, copra, pineapples and tea. The forests
too played their part in aiding recovery. There was a big local demand for timber for new building and repairs, while Britain's postwar housing programme caused her to make heavy purchases of
Malayan light hardwoods as a substitute for softwoods from hardcurrency areas.
Long before the Second World War responsible officials had been
exercised in their minds concerning the constitutional development
of Malaya. As early as 1880 Governor Sir Frederick Weld had made
the pertinent remark that we were teaching the people of Malaya to
govern under our guidance, but not to govern themselves. The experience of trying to repel the Japanese invasion with ten separate
administrations in so small a country had demonstrated the inefficiency of such an arrangement at a time of crisis. The hope that
other states which had accepted British protection would join the
Federation had proved an illusion. In the Federation itself the problem of safeguarding the sovereignty of the sultans while developing
a strong central government at Kuala Lumpur had caused strange
anomalies between theory and practice.

788

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

After the First World War attempts were made to solve this intractable problem by 'decentralization'. But these were vitiated by
the plain fact that from an administrative' point of view what was
needed was a form of union which would reduce the friction and
expense of dealing with so large a number ofj separate administrations.
Such an arrangement, however, was outside the range of practical
politics. The particularism of the individual states was too strong.
After interminable discussions of every aspect of the question throughout Sir Laurence Guillemard's term of office as Governor and High
Commissioner, 1920-7, the Federal Council was reconstituted in
1927. The Malay rulers, who had never taken part in its discussions,
withdrew from it. Their places were taken by the Principal Medical
Officer, the Controller of Labour, the Director of Public Works and
the Director of Education. Further unofficial members were added,
and the new Council had a membership of thirteen officials and eleven
unofficials. In future every Bill passed by the Council had to be
signed by each of the four rulers before coming into force.
But this was not decentralization in any sense. With Guillemard 's
departure, says Rupert Emerson,'^ it was 'tucked away in a cubby
hole'. 'There was so much money', writes Sir Richard Winstedt,
' that the Rulers felt lio inclination to criticize. '^ The great depression,
however, caused decentralization to become a living issue once more.
After further interminable discussions it was decided in 1936 that the
post of Chief Secretary to the government was the greatest obstacle
in the way, and it was accordingly abolished. The office of Federal
Secretary was substituted, with precedence after that of the four
Residents. His duties were those of liaison and co-ordination, while
the machinery of the Federation, was in future to be used merely to
facilitate the transaction of business common to all four states. It
was not a good arrangement, for instead of uniting the country, while
safeguarding legitimate local interests, its tendency was to stimulate
particularism at ,the expense of the common: good. Moreover, it
disregarded the feelings and interests of the 'immigrant races'.
Victor Purcell's complaint, that the matter was dealt"with as if 'the
only political realities were the states,, their Sultans, and the treaties
with the King', has much justification, as also his cTiarge'that 'the
ruHng caste was emphatically "Malay-minded"'.*
'
It is against this background that the MacMichael plan for a postwar Malayan Union must be seen. During the war it seemed obvious
' Malaysia, p. 173.
' Malaya and its History, p. 90.
' The Chinese in Southeastjisia', p. 382.

CH. 47

AFTER THE WAR, I945-5O

789

to the planners of reconstruction that the great need was to promote

a sense of security and common citizenship as a preparation for selfgovernment within the British Commonwealth. The intention was
excellent, but the" way it was carried out caused an explosion of Malay
national feeling as, sudden and unexpected as the one with which a
quarter of a century earlier Burma had .greeted the announcement that
she was to be excluded from the scope of the Indian constitutional
reforms of 1921.
In the new Union all nine Malay states, together with Penang and
Malacca, were to be combined to form one protectorate. Singapore
was to remain a separate Crown colony. The sultan in each state
would retain his throne and little else. He was to preside over a Malay
Advisory Council, which would deal mainly with matters affecting
the Mahommedan religion. Apart from that all power was to be
concentrated in the central government at Kuala Lumpur, the State
Councils would deal otvly with suck raatters as were delegated to thev,
and would be presided over in each case by a British Resident Councillor. MacMichael, who went to Malaya armed with special powers to
investigate each sultan's conduct during the Japanese occupation and
decide on his suitability to occupy his throne, was consequently able
to negotiate treaties with all nine rulers, whereby they transferred
their complete rights of legal sovereignty to Britain.
The other main provision of the plan related to citizenship of the
Union. It was to be granted to (a) all persons born in the territory
of the Union or in Singapore, and (b) immigrants who had lived
there for ten out of the preceding fifteen years. Future immigrants
could qualify for it after only five years' residence. Citizenship
was to involve full equality of rights, including admission to the
administrative services. There was to be no discrimination of race
or creed.
The publication in January 1946 of a White Paper setting forth
these proposals caused the storm to burst. Under the Prime Minister
of Johore, Dato Onn bin Jaafar, the United Malay National Organization, U.M.N.O., sprang into being with branches everywhere.
It was pledged to the task of 'warding off the devastating ignominy
. of race extinction'.^ Malays wore mourning for a week and a mass
non-co-operation movement was threatened. These efforts, however,
had less practical effect than those of a group of ex-Malayan civil
servants, including the nonagenarian Sir Frank Swettenhara, who
brought their influence to bear on the British government and stirred
' Dato Onn Bin Jaafar's words quoted by Purcell, op. cit., p. 387.

790

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

up public opinion on behalf of the Malays^ to such effect that the

treaties and the scheme for a Malayan Union were alike dropped.
The British government then committedi the mistake of going too
far in the opposite direction. In April 1946 a Working Committee
composed of representatives of the administration and U.M.N.O. was
set up to draft new proposals. Later, another composed of Chinese
and Indians was also set up, but 0J1I7 after the British government had
given conditional approval of the Working Committee's proposals.
In 1947 a revised constitution was drawn up on the basis of the recommendations of the two bodies. Legal sovereignty was handed
back to the sultans, but they were to govern in accordance with
British advice as pteviously. Singapore was to retain its separate
status. Instead of a Union, all nine states, together with Penang and
Malacca, were to form a Federation under a High Commissioner and
Executive and Legislative Councils, In addition to the usual official
members the Executive Council was to have unofficial members
chosen from the various races in the country. The Legislative Council
was to be composed of fifteen officials and sixty-one unofficial members, of whom thirty-one were to be Malays and the rest Europeans,
Chinese, Indians and Eurasians. They were to be nominated by the
High Commissioner at first, but as soon as possible election was to^be
introduced. The federal government was given very extensive
powers, while those of the states were correspondingly limited.
The qualifications for Malayan citizenship were stiffened up
appreciably. The people who automatically qualified for it in addition
to Malays were Indians and Chinese British subjects of the second
generation born in federal territory- Immigrants couJd become
naturalized when they had lived in the Federation for at least fifteen
years, if they intended to make it their permanent home.
The Malays were opposed even to this concession, since there was
nothing to prevent the immigrants from retaining their original
nationality while becoming citizens of Malaya. -Chinese law, in fact,
makes it impossible for a Chinese to divest hiimelf of Chinese
nationality. But the British government was convinced that a law
permitting dual nationality was essential if the three races were to-be
welded together into a political unit. The main difficulty-was that
the Second World War had intensified national feeling. But the three
races lived so closely intermingled that their co-operation .must be
assured if the ordinary amenities of life were to be preserved. Yet
* Winstedt in Malaya and its History, pp. 140-7, may be Compared with Purcell,'
op. cit., pp. 383 ff., on this subject.
C -

CH. 47

AFTER THE WAR, 1945-50

791

one of those races was placed in a specially privileged position, for the
new constitution, which came into effect on i February 1948, charged
the High Commissioner with the responsibility of safeguarding the
special position of the Malays. And in view of all the circumstances it
is difficult to see what other arrangement could have been made.
The year in which the new Federation was inaugurated saw the
outbreak of the Communist revolt. The Communists, who were
comparatively few in numbers and almost exclusively Chinese, had
received a setback to their attempt to paralyse economic recovery
and discredit the government when in February 1946 firm measures
were taken by the military. They thereupon went underground.
Besides fomenting strikes they watched political developments with
special interest, seeking to exploit any popular dissatisfaction.
The Chinese campaign against the proposals for federation in 1947
gave them a good oportunity for increasing their influence. For some
months there were warnings of impending trouble. Then in June 1948
widespread outbreaks of violence occurred. European planters and tin
miners and Chinese members of the Kuomintang party were murdered.
This form of terrorism was intended to pave the way for revolt. The
initial plan was to get a region under terrorist control and declare it an
independent Communist area, then gradually to extend this over the
whole country. Captured documents indicated that the declaration
of a Communist Republic of Malaya was timed for 3 August 1948.
Once the government had recovered from its initial surprise its
measures to deal with the threat showed the greatest energy and
determination. But the Communists had laid their plans well. They
had hidden large quantities of arms and their intelligence system was
excellent. They split up into small groups making hit-and-run attacks
and could make rings round the troops who were new to jungle warfare and were unable to speak the vernaculars of the countryside. And
the anti-Communist Chinese were in such fear of the terrorists that
they paid large sums of protection money.
The recruitment of 26,000 Malay armed police and the systematic
training of the troops in jungle warfare were among the measures that
gradually brought the situation more or less under control by the
middle of 1949. But the revolt was by no means broken, and the
rapid collapse of the Kuomintang in northern China in 1948, and
throughout the remainder of the country in 1949, put new heart into
the Communist movement in Malaya.
Nevertheless it was a case of the revolt of a very few, never more
than 7,000; and captured documents showed that the rebels had
26*

792

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

failed to win voluntary popular support and had been forced on to the
defensive. On the other hand, the government's hope of victory
within one year proved illusory. The Gofnmunists abandoned the
more settled areas and went deeper into the jungle, whence at the
time of writing they had still not been completely cleared, notwithstanding the introduction of the comprehensive Briggs Plan and the
inspiring leadership of the High Commissioner, General Sir Gerald
Templer.
(b)

Burma

The Burmese had at first allowed themselves to hope that the

nominal independence accorded them by the Japanese in 1943 might
turn out to be the genuine article. They were soon disillusioned.
Hence the return of the British was hailed with joy. But while they
welcomed liberation from the Japanese tyranny, their experiences
during the occupation period made them impatient of any form of
foreign rule. At the end of the war Aung San, the commander of the
Burma National Army, became the focus of nationalist aspirations,
which found expression in the broad-based political organization
known as the Anti-Fascist Peoples Freedom League, the A.F.P.F.L.
Aung San had sprung to fame as the organizer of a students'
strike in the University of Rangoon in ,1936. Thereafter he became
the leader of the Dobama Asiayone (' We Burmans' Association), the
extremist wing of the Burma Student Movement. The members of
the association adopted the title Thakin ('lord'), the Burmese equivalent of the Indian ' Sahib', used as a term of respect for Europeans.
Some of them were in contact with the Indian Communist Party and
propagated Marxist doctrines in a small way. In 1940 some thirty
of the Thakins, including Aung San, went to Japan at the invitation
of the Japanese consul in Rangoon and received instruction in the
role they were to play when the Japanese invaded Burma. They returned with the Japanese armies; and when Dt^. Ba Maw became
Adipadi, Aung San was appointed Minister of IDefence, and his
brother-in-law Than Tun Minister of Transport and Supply, in, the
Burmese Cabinet. There they were in an excellent position =,to
organize the anti-Japanese swing of the Burma National Army. The^.
movement was kept secret even from the;Adipadi himself, who had
planned for the army to detach itself from the Japanese as the''British
advanced down the Irrawaddy valley, but thereafter to maintain a
neutral role, in the optimistic belief that he might somehow use it as a
bargaining counter.

CH. 47

AFTER THE WAR, I945-50

793

Ba Maw fled with the Japanese into Siam, leaving Aung San and
the A.F.P.F.L. the most potent poHtical force with which the'British
military government had to deal when it took over. The function of
the military government, in which members of the administrative
services who had been evacuated to India were incorporated, was to
rally the personnel of the services that had remained in Burma
during the occupation and re-establish administration on the old
footing as soon as possible. This was carried out with such apparent
success that in October 1945 civil government was officially restored.
The changeover was made before effective measures to disarm the
population had been taken. How unwise this was later events were
amply to demonstrate.
British policy for Burma had been announced in a statement issued
on 17 May 1945. This reaffirmed the intention to grant full selfgovernment within the British Commonwealth. It envisaged a
relatively short period of direct British rule in co-operation with the
Burmese so that rehabilitation measures might be carried out which
would in due course permit a general election to be held. Then the
Constitution of 1937 would be re-established and the Burmese could
begin to draw up a constitution on the basis of self-government. This
would be embodied in legislation by the Imperial Parliament, and at
the same time a treaty would be negotiated dealing with matters which
would remain the responsibility of the British government after the
grant of self-government.
Right from the start, however, the professed aim of Aung San and
his party was complete independence. Dominion status did not
appeal to them, for they had a deep distrust of British motives and
feared that once British business interests regained their position in
the nation's economy, self-government would prove illusory. They
were by no means unaware of their need for British assistance, capital
and expert knowledge, but they wanted to be in a position to keep it
under firm control. When, therefore, the governor began to form his
first ministry and offered the leaders of the A.F.P.F.L. places in it they
demanded a majority of seats and the right for their representatives
to accept guidance from the supreme council of the party. This was
rejected, and they thereupon threw themselves into opposition.
Meanwhile Burma's progress towards recovery was held up by
various difficulties. Much was done to restore road and rail transport
and recondition the docks. But the much-needed relief supplies were
very hard to obtain, and when the government cancelled the Japaneseissued currency the cultivators were everywhere without funds. The

794

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

police were hampered by need of arms and adequate transport, and

disorderly conditions militated against the revival of agriculture and
local trade. The Communists were becoming active, and before long
the government, instead of concentrating all its attention on the
recovery programme, was forced to deal with the political issues. And
Governor Dorman-Smith's manoeuvres in encouraging the development of rival parties to the A.F.P.F.L. did not improve the situation.
In August 1946 General Sir Hubert Ranee, who as military governor
had earned the trust and goodwill of most of the Burmese, succeeded
Dorman-Smith and came prepared to pursue the policy of conciliation, which was already beginning to yield good results in India.
And although Aung San and his friends worked up a serious strike
threat which affected the police and government officials, they were
willing to enter into friendly negotiations with Sir Hubert. The
result of these was that he accepted the demand for an A.F.P.F.L.dominated Council of Ministers, and in October 1946 Aung San
became its leader.
The first act of the A.F.P.F.L. on coming into power was to exclude
Communists from their ranks. The maintenance of law and order,
the achievement of economic stability, and the establishment of public
confidence were now Aung San's responsibility, and he found that
the sole aim of the Communists was revolution. This made it possible
for Britain to view his demands with greater sympathy, and when in
January 1947 he led a delegation to London to confer with Attlee's
Labour Cabinet agreement was easily reached. There was to be a
general election in the following April, and the British government
bound itself to accept the verdict of the Burma electorate regarding the
form of self-government. Meanwhile the ministers in the Burma Cabinet
were to be given control over the armed forces and the budget.
This was a fair and reasonable agreement, honestly negotiated.
It fell far short of the extravagant demands that Aung San had made
as a revolutionary leader. But responsibility had caused his own
understanding of the situation to develop rapidly, and he was immensely impressed with the British government's sincerity. Hence,
although two of the members of his delegationU Saw, a past premier
with great ambitions, and Ba Sein, a mere demagoguerefused to be
associated in the agreement, Aung San returned to Burma determined
to carry it out.
The task before him was far from easy. The disorderly elements
had got out of control, and the non-Burmese peoplesthe Karens,
Shans, Kachins, and Chinswere ready to fight rather than come

CH. 47

AFTER THE WAR, I945-5O

795

under Burmese control. Britain had written into the agreement a

proviso safeguarding their rights, but they were by no means reassured. At the April general election the A.F.P.F.L. won a resounding
victory, and Aung San, who more than any other Burmese leader had
come to realize the need for a positive policy of conciliation towards
the hill peoples, allowed them practically to write their own terms
into the new constitution. The Karens alone, with the memory still

GENERAL AUNG SAN

fresh of their cruel treatment at the hands of the Burma Independence

Army, remained unsatisfied. They stood out for a state of their own,
disregarding the fact that with the majority of them living in the
Irrawaddy and Tenasserim divisions, inextricably mixed with the
Burmese, such a solution presented almost insuperable difficulties
and was in any case of doubtful wisdom.
Aung San did his utmost to meet their more reasonable claims with
statesmanlike patience and understanding, and had he lived would

796

THE-CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

undoubtedly have succeeded in solving the problem. But on 19 July

1947 he and six of his colleagues in the Cabinet were murdered by
hired assassins in the pay of the ambitious U Saw. It was a staggering
blow which well explains the scepticism of many well-informed
British regarding the efficacy of the method chosen for dealing with
Burmese nationalist aspirations. No Burman at the time commanded
such personal support or showed such gifts of leadership as Aung San,
and what Burma needed more than anything else was effective leadership. The idea of a sovereign people making its will effective was
entirely foreign to the political outlook of the country. Moreover,
there is reason to believe that Aung San had determined to work out
a settlement which would enable Burma to remain within the British
Commonwealth. With him removed there was no leader left with
sufficient influence to carry the country with him on such an issue.
A.F.P.F.L. propaganda had always asserted with the utmost vehemence
that nothing less than complete independence would satisfy Burma.
Sir Hubert Ranee at once nominated Thakin Nu, vice-president of
the A.F.P.F.L., as Aung San's successor. A deeply religious man who
had never aspired to the position he was now called upon to occupy,
he assumed the difficult task of holding his party together and saving
the country from confusion. Under his leadership the Burma Constituent Assembly completed its work and on 24 September 1947
unanimously passed the new constitution. Its decision was for complete independence, and in mid-October Thakin Nu came to London
to negotiate Burma's secession from the Commonwealth. The outcome was the signature on 17 October 1947 of a treaty recognizing the
Republic of the Union of Burma as a fully independent state on a date
to be fixed by parliament. A Burma Independence Bill was accordingly passed through parliament, and on 4 January 1948 Sir Hubert
Ranee formally handed over charge to the republic's first president,
a Shan chieftain, the Sawbwa of Yawnghwe, Sao Shwe Thaik.
Britain made a generous financial settlement with the new state and
provided a naval, military and air mission for training its armed forces.
Thakin Nu on his part concluded a defence agreement whereby
British forces were to have right of access to ports and airfields in_
Burma should she need their assistance. With an undemarcated
Yunnan border, many Burmese felt it was running an unnecessary
risk to assume full responsibility for defence before building up
adequate armed forces.
The Nu-Attlee Agreement was violently opposed by the Communists as well as by the more irresponsible political elements which

INDEPENDENCE MONUMENT, RANGOON

798

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

the revolutionary movement had brought to birth. The A.F.P.F.L.

had stirred up an agitation stronger than it could check. Disorder
developed into rebellion, and the government lost control over much
of the country. Rangoon itself was threatened, and when a number of
Burmese battalions went over to the rebels its defence depended upon
the Karen, Kachin and Chin contingents in the army. To make
matters worse, in September 1948 U Tin Tut, by far the ablest and
most experienced man in the government, was n^rdered, and with
his removal the direction of affairs was left mainly in the hands of
politicians whose training had been as agitators, with few gifts of
statesmanship and great ignorance of administration.

PANDIT ^fEHRU AND U NU

The worst blow came through mismanagement of the Karen

question. An attempt to disarm them caused them to rebel, and their
revolt became far more dangerous than any other rebel movement.
The year 1949, therefore, was a bad one. The government had
effective control only in Rangoon and a few widely-scattered parts of
the country. Road, rail and river communications were cut. The
export of rice was less than half its pre-war amount, and national
bankruptcy seemed inevitable.
The usual escape from such a state of affairs through a military
dictatorship was not Burma's fate for the simple reason that her
military forces were inadequate for such a purpose. Intervention by

CH. 47

AFTER THE WAR, I945-56

799

the Chinese Communists was feared, but they were too busy with
their own problems; and effective Chinese mihtary operations in
Burma are not such an easy proposition as the alarmists are inclined
to suggest. Burma therefore was left to work out her own salvation
in her own way. Thakin Nu, through his transparent honesty and
devotion to his task, gradually established confidence in the government. And as his team of young men gained experience and began to
adopt a firmer front, so, little by little, their rule became more effective.
By 1950 the critical corner had been turned. Since then, though
serious difficulties remain, there have been indications of hopeful
progress in a number of fields.
(c) French Indo-China
When in 1945 the defeat of Japan came within measurable distance
many French officers in Indo-China hoped to be in a position to cooperate with Allied forces in liberating the country. The Japanese,
however, forestalled such a move by staging a coup d'etat on 10 March
and taking over control from the French. They broadcast a statement
that the colonial status of Indo-China had ended. Thereupon the
Emperor of Annam, Bao Dai, and the Kings of Cambodia and Laos
issued declarations of independence. Ho Chi Minh, the leader of the
Viet Minh League, refused to recognize the emperor's declaration, and
with seven provinces of Tongking under his control and an active
resistance movement in Cochin China he was able to seize Hanoi as
soon as the Japanese surrender was announced in August, while a
national committee assumed power in Saigon.
In the previous month the Potsdam Conference had made quite
different arrangements for the take-over from the Japanese. Chinese
troops were to occupy the north down to the sixteenth parallel of
latitude, and British troops the remainder. General Gracey, in command of the British contingent, arrived in Saigon on 13 September,
and with his help the French authorities resumed control over that
city and a number of others. But their writ ran no further, for the
whole countryside was in the hands of nationalist guerrillas. Early in
1946 Admiral d'Argenlieu arrived as High Commissioner with General
Leclerc as military commander, and the British forces were withdrawn.
In the Chinese sector above the sixteenth parallel it was quite a
different story. The Chinese left Ho Chi Minh in control of the
administration and refused admission to French troops. This situation
continued until 28 February 1946, when a Franco-Chinese agreement

80O

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION,

PT. IV

was signed under which, in return for concessions on the YunnanHanoi Railway and recognition of the special position of their nationals
in Indo-China, the Chinese agreed to withdraw their troops. Meanwhile in the previous month the French had come to terms with the
King of Cambodia whereby his kingdom was to exercise a degree of
autonomy, subject to the control of the French governor. Shortly
afterwards a similar arrangement was made with the King of Laos.
Early in March an agreement was concluded with the Vietnam government at Hanoi. France recognized the RepubUc of Vietnam as a free
state forming part of the Indo-Chinese Federation, which it was proposed to create, and of the French Union: a referendum was to be held
in Cochin China to decide whether it should join the republic. It was
also arranged that a further conference should be held to decide such
matters as the diplomatic relations of the republic, the future status of
Indo-China, and French cultural and economic interests in Vietnam.
This was held in April at Dalat in Cochin China, and it was at once
evident that the French interpretation of Vietnam's 'independence'
was markedly different from that of the nationalist government.
On I June Admiral d'Argenlieu announced the creation of an
autonomous republic of Cochin China as a provisional measure. This
evoked a storm of protest as constituting an infringement of the
agreement whereby Cochin China was to be free to decide its future
status by referendum. Thereafter things went from bad to worse.
In July a conference opened between France and Vietnam at Fontainebleau, and while it was in progress d'Argenlieu held a second
Dalat conference with representatives of Cambodia, Cochin China,
Laos and southern Annam. Vietnam was not invited to be represented.
The Vietnam delegates walked out of the Fontainebleau conference
in protest without any decision being taken, save for an agreement,
signed on 14 September, providing for a cessation of hostiHties and
the settlement of a number of cultural and economic questions.
The agreement to cease hostilities was soon broken. There was
violent agitation. The Vietnamese leaders would consider nothing
less than full sovereignty and refused to budge an inch on the Cochin
China question. In November Dr. Nguyen Van Thinh committed
suicide as a protest against the 'unpatriotic' role he had found himself
forced to play as the French puppet ruler of Cochin China. Armed
uprisings brought French reprisals, and on 23 November they bombed
Haiphong, causing frightful casualties. On 19 December the Vietnamese staged a surprise attack on French garrisons in Tongking and
Annam, and full-scale war began.

BAO DAI AT THE HUfe PALACE

02

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

France's plan for Indo-China was decided upon in a series of

larliamentary debates in the summer of 1946, when Georges Bidault
vas prime minister. The Left proposed that a federation should
jradually be formed by free negotiations with the representatives
jf the various states. They should be given equality of status and the
right of secession. Bidault, however, insisted on the maintenance of

HO CHI MINK

French sovereignty; he argued that the recognition of dominion status

after the model of the British Commonwealth would start a dangerous
precedent for North Africa and Madagascar. The form of federation
therefore, that was finally accepted by the French parliament provided
for federal bodies with purely advisory functions. The French parliament was to retain legislative power over all important matters.

CH. 47

AFTER THE WAR, 1945-50

803

On 24 March 1947 Ho Chi Minh made a firm statement of Vietnamese policy. If France would do to Vietnam, he said, what the
United States had done to the Philippines and Britain to India the
Vietnamese people would bring to France friendly co-operation. If
not, they would continue to resist. To this the reply of d'Argenlieu's
successor, fimile BoUaert, was: ' W e shall remain. . . . The Constitution makes the French Union, of which Indo-China is an integral
part, an institution of the Republic.'
The fact that Ho Chi Minh was a Communist was naturally a major
obstacle to a settlement. Only ten of the 300 members of the Vietnamese National Assembly were known to be Communists, though the
key positions in the administration were thought to be Communistheld. The movement, however, was primarily nationalist and depended for its main support on non-Communist nationalists. It has
been the tragedy of VietnaA that its nationalist movement came under
Communist direction. The suggestion has been made that in his
anxiety to reach an agreement with France Ho Chi Minh was willing
to forswear his Communism. But France would not enter into
negotiations with him.
On 10 September 1947 France made a 'last appeal' to the rebels in
Indo-China. She offered what she called a large degree of native
control over native affairs, subject to Indo-China remaining in the
French Union, with French control over military installations and the
direction of foreign policy. An amnesty was to be proclaimed and
prisoners exchanged. The appeal significantly made no reference to
the question of recognizing Ho Chi Minh's government, or even of
negotiating with it. Naturally, therefore, the Vietnam government
rejected it. At the same time it appealed to the United Nations with
the offer of peace on the basis of the unification of the three Vietnamese-speakmg regions of Tongking, Annam and Cochin China into
an independent state within the Indo-Chinese Federation and the
French Union. France, however, successfully blocked the appeal.
The French made repeated overtures to Bao Dai to head a proFrench government in Vietnam. At first he refused to commit himself, but they went ahead with their preparations and on 20 May 1948
proclaimed the 'Central Provisional Vietnam Government' with
Nguyen Van Xuan, the head of the French-sponsored state of Cochin
China, as its president. Finally on 8 March 1949 Bao Dai was persuaded to become the head of a new French 'dominion' composed
of Cochin China, Annam and Tongking, and officially took over on
30 December. It was, of course, yet another bogus version of

8o4

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

'independence'. Ho Chi Minh's position was in no way weakened, in

spite of the fact that he had well over 100,000 of France's best troops
fighting against him. He still held most of Tongking; elsewhere
French troops occupied the cities and maintained some lines of
communication. The economic life of the country was dislocated, and
the strain on France herself was more than she could bear.
One of the first acts of the Communist government of China in the
sphere of foreign affairs was, on 19 January 1950, to recognize the
Viet Minh government of Ho Chi Minh as the sovereign power in
Vietnam. Russia and her European satellites quickly followed suit.
So the tragedy of Vietnam took a new turn, becoming merged into the
' cold war' between the American-led states and the Soviet bloc.
On 6 February 1950 Britain and the United States accorded formal
recognition to Bao Dai. Both had at the outset sympathized with the
Vietnam nationalist movement. Now France was to receive more and
more American aid to continue the struggle, and Indo-China to become
a vital outpost in the strategy of the Pentagon. Thus the general
direction of policy slipped out of Frerich hands into those of the State
Department at Washington.
[d) Indonesia
Japan announced her willingness to accept the Potsdam terms on
10 August 1945. Two days earlier, at the invitation of Marshal
Terauchi, the commander-in-chief of the Japanese armies in the
southern regions, Sukarno, Hatta and a third Indonesian leader,
Wediodiningrat, arrived in Saigon to discuss a declaration of Indonesian independence. It was arranged that a Commission for the
Preparation of Independence should meet on 19 August in Batavia.
The delegates returned to Java on 14 August. On the next day there
Were rumours that Japan had capitulated. The commission therefore
got hurriedly to work, and on the 17th the proclamation of independence was issued. Not till five days later was Japan's capitulation
officially announced by the Japanese commander in Java.
The original Allied arrangement had been for the American forces
to occupy Indonesia. But this had to be abandoned, and instead the
task was assigned to the British. The sudden collapse of Japan came
so soon after this change of plan that it caught the British unprepared.
So severe was the shortage of transport that no troops could be moved
in until 29 September. Their task, when they began to arrive, was to
disarm and repatriate 283,000 Japanese and protect 200,000 Dutch

PRESIDENT SUKARNO (WITH HADJI AGUS SALIM IN THE BACKGROUND)

and Allied prisoners of war and internees. To carry it out properly

their numbers were at first far too few. It is not to be wondered at,
therefore, that the British commander, General Christison, finding
Sukarno's republican government in apparent control, requested its
co-operation. And although his colleague, Vice-Admiral Patterson,
stated clearly that the British did not recognize the Sukarno regime,
his action was taken as tantamount to de facto recognition and many
waverers of the pre-war administration decided to throw in their lot
with the republic.
A few days later Dr. van Mook arrived in Batavia. He was prepared
to open negotiations on the basis of Queen Wilhelmina's 1942 broadcast, but he announced that he would on no account parley with
Sukarno as a collaborationist. On 14 November Sukarno was replaced as the head of the republican government by Sutan Sjahrir, a
moderate, an intellectual, and one who had 'gone to the mountains'
during the Japanese period. Informal discussions, therefore, were
able to begin. A week before the change of government The Hague
had announced its basic programme in vague terms that were already
half a century out of date. Indonesia was to be a partner in a kingdom

gQ5

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

of the Netherlands so constructed that the national self-respect of ail

its participating peoples would be assured. Sukarno had summarily
rejected this. Sjahrir in his turn announced oh 4 December 1945 that
his government's basic demand was for Dutch recognition of the
Indonesian Republic.
Meanwhile the British and Dutch forces went steadily and carefully ahead with the occupation of the islands, while the republic on
its side expanded its forces. There were frequent ugly scenes and
clashes. Heavy fighting took place when the British landed at Surabaya, and shortly after taking over General Mallaby was murdered.
Such was the state of disorder that Dutch women and children could
not be evacuated from many of the inland concentration camps where
the Japanese had herded them.
On 10 February 1946 the Dutch government made a detailed statement of its policy and offered to discuss it with authorized representatives of the republic. It proposed to set up a Commonwealth of
Indonesia, composed of territories with varying degrees of selfgovernment, and to create an Indonesian citizenship for all persons
"born there. Internal affairs were to be dealt with by a democratically
elected parliament, in which Indonesians would have a substantial
majority. The ministry would be in political harmony with parliament
but would have a representative of the Crown at its head. The
different regions of Indonesia would be linked together in a federal
structure and the Commonwealth would^ become a partner in the
Dutch Kingdom. The Netherlands would support Indonesia's
application for membersj^ip of the United Nations Organization.
Soon afterwards Sjahrir headed a small Indonesian delegation which
went to confer with the Dutch government at The Hague. Again he
made it clear that the starting-point for negotiations must be the recognition of the republic as a sovereign state. On that basis Indonesia
would be willing to enter into close relations with, the Netherlands and
would Co-operate in all fields. Thereupon the J>utch government
offered a compromise: it was willing to recognize the^republic as a
unit of the federative state to be created in conformity with the declaration of 10 February. In addition it offered to recognize the d&
facto rule of the republic over those parts of Java and' Madura not
already under the protection of Allied troops. As Sjahrir was unable to
accept these terms, tlje conference broke up and he and his colleagues
returned home.
In June 1946 a crisis occurred in the government of the republic.
The Communists, under Tan.Malaka, made an attempt to overthrow

CH. 47

AFTER THE WAR, I945-50

807

the Cabinet by kidnapping Sjahrir and several of his colleagues.

The move, however, was defeated by the prompt action of Sukarno as
president of the republic. He proclaimed a state of emergency and
for some weeks exercised dictatorial powers. In the meantime, while
negotiations were at a standstill, the Dutch had assumed control over
Borneo and the Great East. In July a conference of representatives
of these territories met at Malino, in Celebes, under Dr. van Mook and
recommended the organization of the whole of Indonesia into a
federation with four parts: Java, Sumatra, Borneo, and the Great
East.
In August the Dutch government made another attempt to break
the impasse by appointing three commis-'ioners-general to go to
Java and assist van Mook in new discussions with representatives of
the republic. A conference between the two sides was held in October
and November under the neutral presidency of the British special
commissioner. Lord Killearn, at the hill station of Linggadjati, near
Cheribon. After considerable pressurenotably Britishfrom abroad,
an agreement was reached on 15 November. The Dutch government
recognized the government of the republic as exercising de facto
authority over Java, Madura, and Sumatra. The two governments
were to co-operate in establishing a sovereign democratic state on a
federal basis to be called the United States of Indonesia. Of this
Borneo and the Great East would form component parts. A constituent assembly was to come into being, composed of democratically
elected representatives of the republic and the other component parts.
The United States of Indonesia was in turn to form part of a Netherlands-Indonesian Union together with the Netherlands, Surinam and
Cura9ao. This would promote joint interests in foreign relations,
defence, finance, and economic and cultural matters. The United
States of Indonesia would apply for membership of U N O . Finally any
dispute arising from the agreement was to be settled by arbitration.
There was considerable opposition to the agreement in both the
Dutch parliament and the Central Indonesian National Committee,
but in December 1946 it was passed by both, and on 25 March 1947
was signed at Batavia. It had been difficult enough to reach an agreement, but under the troubled conditions prevailing, and with frequent
outbreaks of violence, it was supremely difficult to put it into practice.
The Dutch were sincere in their intention to carry it out, but they did
not believe that the republic seriously intended to do so. The important Masjumi Party, representing Moslem religious interests, was
opposed to it and the republican government could not accept the

8o8

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

Dutch assumption that until the projected United States was actually
established the Netherlands government was the sovereign power
throughout Indonesia.
The Dutch accused the republic of not keeping its word, and on 27
May 1947 sent their demands in the form of an ultimatum. When a
satisfactory reply was not forthcoming they proceeded to 'restore
order' by 'police action'. Their troops occupied important areas of
Java, Madura and Sumatra and cut off the republican forces into
small isolated segments. While fighting was still in progress the United
Nations Security Council, at the instance of India and Australia,
issued a cease-fire order on i August, and shortly afterwards set up a
Committee of Good Offices, composed of representatives of Australia,
Belgium and the United States, to arbitrate in the dispute.
A conference took place in the United States warship Renville and
resulted in another agreement, accepted by the disputants on 17
January 1948. There was to be a truce which provided for the establishment of a demilitarized zone. The United States of Indonesia
was to be set up, but on different lines from the Linggadjati arrangements, for plebiscites were to be conducted to determine whether the
various groups in the main islands wished to join the republic or
some other part of the projected federation. Dutch sovereignty was
to remain over Indonesia until it was transferred to the United States
of Indonesia.
The Renville agreement, however, was no more successful than the
one negotiated at Linggadjati. Both sides accused each other of
violations of the truce, and the Indonesians accused the Dutch of.
establishing a blockade with the intention of forcing them to surrender.
In July 1948 the Good Offices Committee, which had remained on
the spot to supervise the implementation of the agreement, reported
that the Indonesian complaints were substantially true. The Dutch
then raised the Communist bogey. They asserted that the republic
was in Communist hands. This led to an immediate purge by the
republic of its Communist elements. Still the Dutch were not
satisfied. In December 1948 negotiations broke down completely and
they again resorted to ' police action'. They occupied the remainderof
republican territory and clapped the leaders of its governmerit'in gaol."
This action caused serious agitation not only in the tanks .of the
United Nations but also throughout Asia. The Asian Conference,
which met at NeW Delhi, asked the Security Council to intervene
once more. In view of the pressure from many quarters the Security,
Council again took action. It ordered a cease-fire and called upon

CH. 47

AFTER THE WAR, 1945-50

809

the Dutch to return the republican capital of Jogjakarta in central

Java. The Dutch obeyed the order, and once again the seemingly
interminable discussions began with the republican leaders. In
May they agreed to permit the republic to be reconstituted as a
part of the United States of Indonesia, and in July Jogjakarta was
handed over.
By this time trouble had arisen in a new direction: the nonrepublican territories had begun to press for the establishment of the
interim government provided for in the Linggadjati agreement. The
state of East Indonesia took the lead, and the agitation showed that
there was widespread suspicion of the republic, in which Javanese
interests predominated. The suggestion was made that the federation
should be completed, with or without the republic. This did not
mean that these territories wanted the continuance of Dutch rule.
It showed that the Indonesian question was not to be solved by dealing
with the republic in the expectation that the rest of Indonesia would
toe the line.
The attempt at a solution by force had failed. The Dutch felt
deeply aggrieved at the extent to which their actions had turned world
opinion against them. There was a strong revulsion of feeling in
Holland in favour of a round-table settlement which would satisfy
the aspirations of the Indonesian peoples. A conference accordingly
opened at The Hague on 23 August 1949 to arrange for the transfer of
sovereignty. The Netherlands government, the republic, and the
member states outside the republic were all represented and had the
assistance of the United Nations Committee for Indonesia. Dutch
policy now was to grant independence, not grudgingly but, as Dr. van
Mook puts it, 'with good grace and liberality'.
On 2 November agreement was reached; on 27 December the
provisional government of the new national state was constituted.
Mr. Sukarno became its president, with Mr. Mohammed Hatta as its
prime minister. The United States of Indonesia was constituted as
a sovereign federal republic of sixteen states enjoying equal partnership with Holland under the Netherlands Crown. A system of cooperation with Holland by consultation was worked out and embodied
in the agreement, and the Netherlands government made generous,
offers of assistance to its new partner.
Judged in the best light, the Dutch plan was ' to achieve a sufficient
measure of internal security and economic reconstruction before the
United States of Indonesia was to be declared independent',^ But
' Van Mook, op. cit., p. 262.

8lO

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

nationalist sentiment takes little heed of such things when they are
dictated by an external authority, and uAder post-war conditions in
South-East Asia few people believed that once European authority
was re-established its promises of future independence would be
honoured.
{e) Siam
Siam, although Japan's ally and technically at war with the Allies,
found her position little better than that of a conquered country. Her
trade ceased, the Japanese confiscated whatever they required for their
war effort, and completely failed to supply her with either the textiles
or the machinery that she so badly needed. These facts, together
with P'ibun's harsh treatment of officials who refused co-operation,
aroused so much opposition to his regime that as soon as it became
obvious that the Japanese were losing the war his government collapsed, in July 1944.
Pridi now became the real head of the government, but exercised
his power through his friend Khuang Aphaiwong, who was prime
minister until August 1945. At the end of the war the most urgent
problem was that of the readjustment of relations with the victorious
Allies. Khuang Aphaiwong fell foul of Pridi by attempting an independent line of his own. In. September, therefore, he was dismissed
and his place given to Seni Pr^moj, who had been leader of the Free
Thai Movement in the United States during the war and was now
considered the most accentable man for bringing about reconciliatiftn
with the Allies.
Pridi had already been paving the way towards the re-establishment
of good relations. He had denounced Siam's declarations of war on
the Allies, offered to return the territories annexed by P'ibun from
French Indo-China, and suggested that disputed boundary questions
should be referred to the United Nations. British commercial interests
had suffered heavy losses in Siam, and there was naturally a demand
for compensation. But unofficial American pressure was brought to
bear, which caused her to relax her demands. The United States had
never recognized the Siamese declaration of war and v/is consequently
i^i a good position to advance her interests at the expense of Britain,
who had done so. Britain's interests in Siam were much greater than
America's but her claims for war damage brought constant Americari
intervention in order to assure most-favoured-nation treatment to
American trade. The*post-warvperiod therefore saw an immense
growth of American influence in Siam.- -America had dollars to offer

CH. 4 7

AFTER THE WAR, I 9 4 5 - 5 0

81I

and wished to act the part of rich uncle. Britain, impoverished by

her war efforts, was in no position to compete.
France would not resume friendly reIations"on any other terms than
the retrocession of the territories yielded by Vichy in May 104.1 The
United States again acted as mediator. The matter was also discussed in the United Nations before final settlement was reached at
Washington on 17 November 1946. In the following month the muchdisputed territories were returned to Indo-China and a conciliation
commission was appointed to examine the ethnic, geographic and
economic questions involved. Its report showed clearly that Siam
had no real claim to the territories, but recommended that suitable
arrangements should be made for her to receive her due share of the
superabundant supplies of fish from the Great Lake.
The signing of the Franco-Siamese agreement removed one great
obstacle in the way of Siam's membership of the United Nations.
France agreed to sponsor her application. But Russia now threatened
to obstruct her election unless she annulled her law against Communism
and resumed diplomatic relations. Siam's opportunism was again
equal to the emergency: she accepted Russia's terms. Russia therefore held her hand and Siam was received into membership by the
General Assembly of 1947.
Siam's chief internal post-war problem was the instability of her
governments. Seni's government lasted until only just after the
British-Siamese agreement of i January 1946. He had little administrative experience and no idea how to handle the various political
forces in the country. Pridi therefore tried Khuang Aphaiwong again
as prime minister. But he lasted only until the following March,
when Pridi himself took over the post.
During his premiership the young King Ananda was found dead
on 9 June 1946 with a bullet-wound in his forehead. His death was
a mystery that has never been satisfactorily cleared up. The commission of enquiry could not decide as between suicide, accident or
murder. He was succeeded by his younger broljier, the present King
Phumiphon Adundet, then being educated in Switzerland.
In the following August Pridi handed over the premiership to a
former colleague, Thamrong Nawasawat, who held office until 8
November 1947, when a military coup d^etat swept away Pridi's
authority and placed P'ibun once more in power. At the end of the
war he and a number of his colleagues had been arrested as war
criminals. The court, however, decided that there was no law under
which they could be tried, and they were accordingly released. P'ibun

8l2

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

then began patiently and warily to build up his strength. The army
was behind him, and he was regarded as the strong man who could
give political stability. On both sides of Siaiii, in Burma on the one
hand and Vietnam on the other, the Communist challenge to established authority was causing paralysis. Down in Malaya also the
Communist threat was clearly to be seen.
When P'ibun decided that he could act without risk of serious
external repercussions his one-day revolution was bloodless. He
issued a new constitution, promised a general election in the near
future, and installed Khuang Aphaiwong as interim prime minister.
The election, held in January 1948, gave him the mandate he required
for going ahead. He showed respect for world opinion by hiding his
military dictatorship with the utmost care behind a ministry of all the
talents. The chief difficulty was Pridi, who, it was suggested, might
call in Chinese Communist or Viet Minh help in order to regain
political power. But Siam became too hot for him. The new government decided that King Ananda had been murdered. Among others
Pridi was accused of complicity and his arrest was ordered. He disappeared, however, and so eflFectively that in August 1948 no one
knew his whereabouts.
P'ibun managed successfully to hold on to power. Shortly after
winning the general election he took over the premiership himself.
He revived his previous policy of modernism and launched a comprehensive scheme for the improvement of secondary education.
But his chief efforts went towards strengthening Siam's military
forces and building a new military city just outside the old town of
Lopburi, where one may still see the ruins of King Narai's palace
and Constant Phaulkon's mansion in close proximity to Mon-Khmer
teqjples reminiscent of a time before the T'ai had set foot in that
region.
In 1950, where this survey ends, he had survived several attempts
to unseat him, and, compared with Burma, Vietnam and Malaya,
Siam appeared like an oasis of calm, contentment and prosperity.
Pridi was still in exile, and his sole chance of returning, it was thought,
would be through a revolution supported by the Chinese minority or
by an invasion from Communist China. Beneath the Surface'all was'
not so calm and contented. The large Chinese community, with its
immense share in the country's commerce, had been deeply/affected
by the Communist victory in China, and to many Siamese it appeared
to be more than ever a threat to the nation's security.

CH. 47

AFTER THE WAR, 1945-50

813

(/) The Philippines

In the Philippines, when the Japanese surrendered, the ruin and
destruction everywhere were appalling, and famine and epidemics
rampant. A vast amount of physical capital had been destroyed, and the
leaping inflation caused by the ' mickey-mouse money' put into circulation by the Japanese had raised the cost of living to 800 per cent of the
pre-war level. The American army did much to alleviate the immediate
distress, re-establish order and reopen schools and communications.
In the American plans for the invasion of Japan, that the atomic bomb
rendered unnecessary, Luzon was a staging-base, and this meant that
eyfi'rything possible was done to restore its transport facilities, electric
power, water supplies and sanitation, and to provide for the supply and
accorhmodation of the troops. This itself made a substantial contribution towards rehabilitation. The army through its Civil Affairs Program provided food, clothing, housing and medical care where they
were needed.
When the Commonwealth Government was re-established on
27 February 1945, this army relief work was rapidly cut down and the
responsibility shifted to the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation
Administration (UNRRA). But UNRRA's emergency operations were
inadequate to meet the full requirements of relief, and its policy was
against using its resources to help an area whose government commanded enough foreign exchange to be able to pay for what it needed.
The monetary policy of the Commonwealth, however, was controlled
by the United States, who therefore had to come to its aid. This it did
to the extent of 72 million dollars, a sum made up of remissions of
certain taxes on Philippine imports into America, which were being held
for future use in helping the Philippines to adjust their economy to the
loss of American trade preferences. One of the most pressing problems
was that of the Huks. MacArthur had dispersed them and gaoled
Luis Taruc and Casto Alejandrino. The United States military police
also had helped the Filipino constabulary and the landlords' private
armiesknown as ' civilian guards' and ' temporary police'to restore
order. But a well-armed group of Hues had gone to the mountains, and
with the departure of the American army they returned to central Luzon,
'the rice-bowl of the Philippines', and began to regain control.
At the first post-war general election, held on 23 April 1946, the
peasantry of central Luzon supported the Democratic Alliance Party,
and among those elected from the area were the Huk leaders Luis Taruc,
who had been released, and Jesus Lava. They and five other successful

8l4

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

Democratic Alliance candidates were, however, refused admission to

the House of Representatives on the grounds that they had used
fraud and violence to secure election. Actually this was merely a
specious excuse, as will be seen below. Xhe consequence of this
arbitrary act was serious: the Huk, movement received an entirely
new lease of life and was able to defy all attempts by government troops
to suppress it.
The election saw the split of the old Nacionalista Party, with President
Osmefia leading one wing and Manuel Roxas the other. Roxas had the
support of MacArthur and a number of important Americans. He
declared himself a liberal, and built up a party machine that was
successful in carrying him and his followers to victory after an election
campaign notable for its bitterness. He himself won the presidency
by a very narrow margin of votes. His party, however, had a comfortable majority in both houses of Congress. His close associate-Elpidio
Quirino was elected vice-president, so that on 4 July 1946, when the
independent Republic of the Philippines was inaugurated, they were
the first heads of its administration.
Roxas's first ciAcern after his election was with the economic arrange-,
ments for the new state. The American Congress had embodied these
in two acts, both passed in 1946, the Philippine Trade Act, that caftie
to be known as the 'Bell Act', and the Philippine Rehabilitation Act,
subsequently known as the 'Tydings Act'. The Bell Act laid down
that from 1946 to 1954 the Philippines were to have eight years of
duty-free imports into America, subject to certain quotas. Then from
1954 to 1974 Philippine products entering America were to pay a
graduated amount of duty beginning at 5 per cent of the American tariff
and rising subsequently by 5 per cent annually until it reached the full
amount of the American tariff in 1974. The quotas were as follows:
raw sugar 952,000 tons, refined sugar 58,000 tons, hemp 6 million lb,
rice 1,040,000 lb, cigars 200 million, tobacco 6 million lb, copra oil
200,000 tons and mother-of-pearl buttons 850,000 gross. From 1954
they were to be reduced by 5 per cent annually. There was to be no
restriction upon the entry of American products into the Philippines.
The Philippines were to pledge themselves not to levy export duties.
They were to retain the exchange value of the peso at the rate of 2 pesos'
to one dollar, and not to suspend convertibility without the agreement
of the United States President. They were also to accept a 'parity
clause' providing that Americans in the Philippines w^ere to have equal
civil rights with Filipinos, i.e. in the exploitation of the natural resources
of the country. Professor Frank Golay h^s dubbed these last three

CH.'47

AFTER THE WAR, I 9 4 5 - 5 O

815

provisions 'obnoxious infringements of Philippine sovereignty'.^

They caused much heart-burning in the PhiHppines.
The Tydings Act deah with compensation for war damage. The
United States War Damage Corporation had estimated the total
damage in the Philippines, in terms of 1939 values, at 800 million dollars.
The Tydings Law, which was before Congress at the time of the
Philippine general election, provided for an outlay of 620 million dollars
by the United States Treasury, of which 400 million dollars was earmarked for private compensation and 120 million dollars for the
restoration of public property and essential services. The remaining
100 million dollars represented the value of the United States surplus
property (excluding military wveapons and munitions) that was to be
transferred to the Philippine government. In addition, the act provided
for extensive United States technical assistance to the Philippines. It
made the stipulation, however, that war-damage payments in excess of
500 dollars were to be paid only after acceptance of the Bell Act by the
Philippine Congress. It was a bitter pill for the Filipinos to swallow,
though heavily sugar-coated. 'Diabolical' was the epithet applied by
one Filipino speaker to the Bell Act. The free entry of American
products seemed calculated to prevent the creation of national industries.
Worse still, Filipino pride was hurt by the need to amend Article X I I I
of their constitution, which reserved the utilization of the natural
. resources of their country to Filipino citizens.
But the Filipino sugar interests were determined to secure the
acceptance of the Bell Act; in their view the rehabilitation of the sugar
industry depended upon their sugar having a tariff-free market in
the United States. The amendment had to be passed by a threequarters majority of their Congress, and Roxas's Liberal Party were only
able to command enough votes by the ruse of refusing to allow ten of
their opponents to take their seats, three Nacionalista Senators and the
seven members of the Democratic Alliance, whose exclusion from the
House of Representatives has already been mentioned. At the national
plebiscite, held in March 1947 to confirm the amendment, only just
over 40 per cent of the electorate voted; those who did, voted in its
favour by an overwhelming majority.
Independence, it has been said, fell like a ripe fruit into the lap
of the Filipinos; but their relief at the American departure was mixed
with some regret, for the Americans left them unpleasant tasks to
perform. The repression of the Huks was one of these. In the summer
' Frank H . Golay, The Philippines, Public Policy and National Economic Development,
Ithaca, N.Y., 1961, p. 64.
27

8l6

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

of 1946 Luis Taruc attempted to negotiate a cease-fire with President

Roxas. But the" negotiations failed over the question of the surrender
of arms by the rebels. Roxas then adopted a 'mailed-fist' policy far
more ruthless than anything the Americans could have carried out.
It was unsuccessful, as was also the attempt! made at the same time to
reduce the landlords' exactions from their tenants. In an earlier chapter
we have seen that in the great majority of cases the tenant had to hand
over more than half his crop to the landlord. He borrowed at rates
varying from 200 to 500 per cent per annum. In 1946 the law of 70-30
was passed raising the tenant's share of his crop to 70 per cent and
reducing the landlord's to 30 per cent. It was, however, utterly ineffective, for it was everywhere violated. The only effective law, it has been
said, was the goodwill of the landlord. Besides, nothing was done to
curb usury, and the tenant had no capital with which to purchase
manure or up-to-date implements. Seventy-eight per cent of the
cultivators used no manure. Until problems such as these were
tackled honestly and intelligently, the Hukbalahap movement and
communism could never be defeated. But while the Liberal Party was
in power the appalling decline in public morality, which had become
so marked under the Japanese, >vent farther than ever. The ill-health
within the Filipino society caused by the open sore of peasant grievances
was a major factor in building up a crisis, that became so acute by the
middle of the year 1950, that, in Professor Golay's words, 'the continuity of the Philippine state was in question'.1
The independence accorded by the United States to the Philippines
was in its early days Quite unreal. The Americans retained missions
of every sort in the country, missions for the distribution of wardarnage compensation, for the working out of development plans, for
the provisional upkeep of the information and security services, for the
reform of education, and so on. What caused the greatest heart-burning
to the Filipinos, however, was the Military Bases Agreement of March
1947, whereby America received a 99-year lease-of twenty-three bases
in the Philippines, with full legal jurisdiction over themT^This included
jurisdiction over Filipinos in the case of a large number of offences,
and gave rise to controversy within a very short time.
=As early as 1948 it was realized that the situation in the newrepublicwas far from satisfactory. There were serious doubts' about three
matters of vital importance, the Philippine government's ability to deal
with the Huks, its ability to build an economy capable of subsistence
when American aid ceased, and its ability to purge itself of corruption.
1 Ibid., p. 59. ,

CH. 47

AFTER THE WAR, 1945-5O

817

At the moment when they were being voiced in the American press
Roxas suddenly died on 15 April and was succeeded by Vice-President
Quirino. His early acts seemed to indicate a new determination to
tackle the big problems. He set up a council of action for social progress,
a council of labour, a bank of credit for agricultural co-operatives, and
rural banks. He called off Roxas's unsuccessful campaign against the
Huks and tried a new approach. He offered Taruc an amnesty if his
troops would lay down their arms. Taruc accepted, and an accord was
signed at Manila. Taruc himself then took the seat in the House of
Representatives, which he had not been allowed to occupy in 1946. But
once more things went wrong, and it was over the arms question. Taruc
suddenly left Manila accusing the government of duplicity, and the
struggle began again in a far more terrible form. Taruc announced his
membership of the Communist Party, and Quirino began an all-out
drive against the Huks. He appointed Ramon Magsaysay Minister of
Defence and placed him in charge of the operations. Magsaysay's
efforts met with remarkable success. In October 1950 the capture of
practically all the central direction of the movement brought disaster
-to a big Huk operation with heavy casualties. The movement was
disorganized, and for the time being had to go underground.
But the economic situation continued to deteriorate, prices of basic
exports such as hemp and copra went down, there was an adverse
balance of trade which constantly mounted, deficit budgets were the
order of the day, the cost of living went up, and there Was unemployment. Professor Golay, in examining the crises of the period from 1946
to 1950, strongly criticizes the administration's irresponsible policy.^
He describes the period as one of 'economic and emotional binge'. 'By
the end of 1949,' he writes, 'the government seemed willing to let the
military go unpaid and the educational system wither for want of funds,
and even to succumb to the Huk rebellion, rather than face up to
minimum responsibility for governmental functions.'^ The position of
the Philippines in July 1946 for rehabilitation was favourable, he
declares. The United States was committed to heavy war-damage payments, and the country's external security was guaranteed, so that there
was no need for heavy expenditure on defence. Moreover, the economy
was expanding. In 1949 production, which in 1946 had been only 40 per
cent of the 1937 level, had recovered to 91 per cent, and the national
income was rising. Why then this series of crises?
Much of the explanation lay in the refusal of the government to levy
adequate taxes, he claims, and in its failure to collect even existing
1 Ibid., pp. 68-71.

2 lUd., p. 71.

8l8

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

taxes. Against a revenue of loo million dollars in 1940, the 1945-6

figure was only 53 million, one-third of which came from cigarettes;
and there was a six-fold inflation co1ljpared| with 1940. The weakness
of the administration is shown by the fact that the estimates for the warprofits tax assessed some 30,000 individuals,and corporations as liable,
whereas three months after the date for the ,receipt of the returns only
1,920 had come in, and of these 1,440 claimed no liability. The average
government revenue for the five post-war years was 294 million pesos,
the average expenditure 376 million. Government expenditure was
only 6-8 per cent of the national income, but the tax revenue no more
than 4-5 per cent. Among other causes of the crisis Professor Golay
would include the restoration of the pre-war agricultural tenures and of
the export economy of primary products, which bred a sense of frustration, the deterioration in public morality shown in the scandals in the
handling of the disposal of surplus property, in the visas for Chinese
immigrants and in corruption in import licensing, and the disastrous
decline in faith in the integrity of the government.
So serious was the situation in'1950 that President Truman sent
out an Economic Survey Mission under Daniel W. Bell. This reported
that although something like 4 billion pesos had been invested in equipment, stocks and construction, this had involved no more than the
necessary restoration and reconstruction. Production in 1950, it
pointed out, was about the same as in 1937, but the population was
25 per cent larger, and there was a dangerous import surplus which was
being financed by considerable drawing upon foreign exchange reserves.
The mission formulated a new economic policy for the Philippine
Government, and recommended the grant of United States aid to the
tune of 250 million dollars to finance it.
The crisis in external payments was brought to an end by the imposition of exchange and import controls recommended by the Bell
Mission. But the solution of that problem intensified the trouble in
another quarter, for a traffic in import licences grew up which brought
windfalls to the operators, while at the same time iinports cost more
though reduced in amount. And there were further scandals in the administration of exchange control. The changes, however, that were
introduced into fiscal adminstration at the recommendation of the Bell
Mission, did indeed go some way towards, solving the problems which
they were designed to combat; a new period of greater legislative and
administrative responsibility dawned. But Filipino disillusionment
increased.
The scandals in the administration brought a serious crisis in the

CH. 4 7

AFTER THE WAR, 1 9 4 5 - 5 0

819

Liberal Party at the Presidential election of November 1949. Avelino,

the president of the Senate, had been deposed for trafficking in American
stocks.. He tried to turn the tables on President Quirino by instituting
impeachment procedure against him for abuse of power, violation of the
constitution and malversation of funds. When the House of Representatives threw out the measure, Avelino created his own party and
became a candidate for 4:he presidency. The Nacionalista Party put up
Jose P. Laurel as its candidate, and there was a three-cornered fight of
unexampled spitefulness. Quirino won; his party machine decided the
issue 'with armed men, money and few scruples', writes David Wurfel.^
One-fifth of his votes came from fraudulent registration, fraudulent
counting, and intimidation of voters.^
' D a v i d Wurfel, ' T h e Philippines' in G. M c T . Kahin (ed.), Governments and
Politics of Southeast Asia, 1959', p. 443.
^ Ibid., loc. cit.

CHAPTER 48

INDEPENDENCE
(a) General questions
T H E nineteen-fifties saw greater political changes in South-East Asia
than any other previous decade in its history. When they dawned, the
Philippines, Burma and Indonesia had just achieved independence.
The states forming French Indo-China followed in 1954, when the
kingdoms of Cambodia and Laos became independent in fact, and not
merely in name, and Vietnam was divided at the 17th parallel of latitude
into two independent states, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in
the north, and South Vietnam, initially under the one-time emperor of
Annam, Bao Dai. In 1957 the Federation of Malaya achieved independence in the British Commonwealth by agreement with Britain, and in
June 1959 Singapore, which had been excluded from the Federation,
was granted internal self-government. Thus, whereas Thailand up to
the Japanese invasion had been the only independent state, with the
rest of South-East Asia under four Western imperial powers, now save
for the British parts of Borneo, Portuguese Timor and Dutch Western
New Guinea the imperial regimes had disappeared, and theirj places
had been taken by independent states.
This new world of South-East Asia, created through the triumph of
nationalism against foreign domination, was itself in a new setting.
North-westwards of it were the newly independent states of India,
Pakistan and Ceylon. Northwards of it lay Communist China, with a
strength and an awareness of the outside world such as it had not shown
since the early Ming period. In South-East Asia the Chinese questionmark .was beginning to overshadow every other issue and complicate
the iriternal affairs of the newly-independent states. With the coming
of independence to India Mr. Nehru began to bid for the leadership
of the emerging nations in South-East Asia, and much was said of their
cultural ties with India. Nehru called an Asian Relations Conference,
in 1947 at New Delhi, a second one in January 1949 in support of
Indonesian resistance to the Dutch, and a third early in. 1954 to demand
a cease-fire in French Indo-China. But the sentiment of independence
was too strong for him, and the plans for a permanent organization,
discussed at the first conference, came to nothing.
820

"" -

CH. 4 8

INDEPENDENCE

85l

But if the South-East Asians did jiot.want-Indian domination, however peaceful, still less did they want to bow the knee to China. Before
World War I I she had been separated from them by a screen of European governments ;^nd she was weak, and harried by Japan. With the
coming of independence, however, a new China came into direct contact with them, exploiting the prestige that her progressive domestic
policy gave her, and conducting a trade drive to impress them. At
first their anti-colonial sentiment clouded their judgment of her intentions; and when Premier Chou En-lai in 1954 at a meeting with
Nehru pledged himself to maintain the five principles of co-existence,
showed sweet reasonableness at Bandung in 1955, and urged the overseas Chinese to abide by the laws of the countries in which they lived
and refrain from political activities, South-East Asian uneasiness regarding Chinese policy was considerably reduced.
South-East Asian fears of China arose largely from three sources;
(a) China's traditional claims to overlordship and her more recent
claims to frontier territories, (b) communism and (c) the potential
threat to independence of the ten million Chinese living in South-East
Asian countries. From very early days, as we hfive seen, South-East
Asian rulers have been encouraged to send missions to Peking and to
seek recognition of the emperor. The Chinese records showed this
relationship as one of overlord-vassal, but such was not the view of the
rulers themselves, one of whose aims was the establishment of profitable
trade with China. In modern times Chinese overlordship was really a
myth which China of the Ch'ing period cultivated, along with her
excessive cultural pride, in response to the great changes brought by
the Western impact upon Asia. It may have influenced the outlook of
the early Kuomintang leaders, but Communist China does not seem to
have paid much attention to it so far. On the other hand China's
historic concern has been over the security of her frontiers and the maintenance of stable conditions beyond. Hence the possibility of her
military intervention has caused acute apprehension in South-East
Asia. There were at one time indications that she was toying with the
idea of pressing the fantastic Kuomintang claims to territories beyond
the Yunnan frontiers, 1 but actually realism was the prevailing note in
carrying out the frontier settlement with Burma.
At the turn of the half-century conimunism was one of the most
pressing questions in South-East Asia. Malaya was in the throes of a
communist rebellion. In Burma a communist rebellion, small in itself,
On this subject see J. Siguret, Territoires et Populations des Confins du Yunnan,
2 vols., Peking, 1937, 1940.

822

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT, IV

complicated a situation made dangerous by a far more serious Karen

rebellion and an incursion of Kuomintang forces from Yunnan under the
defeated General Li Mi. In French Indo-China the communist Viet
Minh was leading the national resistance to the French. In Indonesia
a communist outbreak at Madiun in September 1948 had been bloodily
suppressed, but with the coming of independence communism had
increased its influence in Java. In the Philippines the Huk leader L u i s '
Taruc had declared himself a communist and was in control of large
areas of Luzon's 'rice-bowl'. This'upsurge of communist activity was
inspired and encouraged by the Cominform, founded in October 1947.
It was heralded by the Second Conference of the Communist Party of
India, which met in Calcutta in February 1948, and was attended by
representatives from Burma, Malaya, Indonesia, Indo-China and the
Philippines.
Without massive aid all these revolts were bound ultimately to fail.
Only in northern Vietnam did the communists gain control, with
Chinese aid. Elsewhere their revolts failed. In March 1953 Stalin died,
and a change came over communist strategy in Asia. In South-East
Asia both Moscow and Peking switched over to a policy of outward
acceptance of non-communist, national regimes and of the illegality of
the communist parties in Burma, Thailand and the Republic of South
Vietnam. A new technique was devised, using embassies, peace movements, barter-trade-aid agreements, border problems and agitation for
self-determination for the many discontented minority peoples, to
further communist aims. South-East Asia was a key theatre of the cold
war, and Communist China's aim was by subversion to secure governments willing to pursue policies which she approved. One noteworthy
change in her tactics was to drop her propaganda line of concern for the
welfare of the overseas Chinese, and to all appearances to throw their
interests overboard in seeking to allay the fears of the local governments
regarding her intentions.
The numbers of overseas Chinese in each country in the middle
fifties in relation to its own population are shown in the t"able on p. 823.
The figures themselves are significant, but less so than the fact that
the Chinese occupiedand still dokey positions in the economies-of
these countries, with a measure of control over internal trade and in- dustry quite disproportionate to their numbers. They had all along
lived as a community apart, especially in the Islamic countries where
interrnarriage was rare, but also in the Buddhist countries, where
religion imposed no bar to assimilation, and even in Vietnam with its
Chinese-type civilization. Their economic importance and cultural

INDEPENDENCE

CH. 48

Total population
(in millions)
Burma
Thailand
Cambodia
North Vietnam
South Vietnam
Laos
Malaya
Singapore
Indonesia
Philippines *
British Borneo
and Sarawak
(Totals)
3)

i8

19-5
4-5
II-5

9-5
2

57
I-I20
80
21
0-950
(173-77)

82;

Chinese
Chinese percen(in millions)
tage of total1
0-310

3
0-3
0-050
0-950
0-005
2-150
0-860
2-0
0-300
0-240
(10-165)

1-75
15-0
7-0

o-S
10*0
0-25

38-0
77-0
2-5
1-5
25-0

unassimilability had led King Vajiravudh of Siam to call them 'the Jews
of the East'. Their contempt for the culture of t h e ' southern barbarians'
was increased by the Chinese Revolution of 1911; and when, after the
Communist victory of 1949, China's position in the world became
incornparably stronger than it had been previously, their national pride
was deeply stirred. This upsurge of national sentiment among the
overseas Chinese coincided with an equally strong nationalistic phase in
the history of the South-East Asians, and at the endvjf World War II
the conflict of nationalisms was extremely bitter. Hence, with the
Communist victory in China every country of South-East Asia became
uneasily aware of the presence of a potential Chinese ' fifth column' in
its midst.
The international tension, which arose at the end of March 1954,
when Mr. Dulles the American Secretary of State called for united
action over Dien Bien Phu, only partially subsided when the Geneva
Conference succeeded in bringing about a cease-fire in Vietnam. Mr.
Dulles and Mr. (later Sir Anthony) Eden issued a statement on 13 April
declaring that their respective governments were ready to examine,
with other countries principally concerned, the possibility of establishing a system of collective defence ' to assure the peace, security and freedom of South-East Asia and the Western Pacific'. On the following
day a similar communique was issued by Mr. Dulles and M. Bidault, the
French Foreign Minister. So began the diplomatic negotiations which
led to the signature, on 8 September 1954 at Manila, of the South-East
27*

824

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

Asia Collective Defence Treaty. Its signatories were the United States,
Britain, France, Australia, Nevs^ Zealand, Pakistan, Thailand and thePhilippines, and in accordance with its terms they joined together to
form the South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) for common
action in defence of peace, and for economic co-operation and the development of the ability of its members to resist armed attack and
counter subversion directed from outside.
When the Manila Treaty came officially into force on 19 February
1955, it was equipped with a Council of Foreign Ministers of its
member states, which was to meet annually to decide on general policy.
Council Representatives to carry on the day-to-day business of the
Organization, and Military Advisers responsible for drafting plans to
resist aggression in the area covered by the treaty. Bangkok was chosen
as the Organization's headquarters, Prince Wan Waithayakon, the T'ai
foreign minister, was the first chairman of its Council, and Nai Pote
Sarasin, a former foreign minister and T'ai ambassador to the United
States, became its first Secretary-General in July 1957. The Siamese
wanted a permanent military force/to be stationed in the treaty area.
The Filipinos criticized the treaty for having no teeth, and would have
liked SEATO to have military provisions similar to those of the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization. But Mr. Dulles was opposed to both
proposals on strategic grounds, believing that the most effective defence
against aggression by China would lie in a highly mobile and very
powerful strategic force, able to strike swiftly wherever necessary.
No other South-East Asian states would join the Organization.
India, Burma and Indonesia expressed strong opposition to the
scheme. Ceylon refused to attend the Manila conference, but announced
the intention to keep an open mind on the subject. Moreover, while the
United States with Britain and France had taken the initiative in the
way described above, the prime ministers of Burma, Ceylon; India,
Indonesia and Pakistan had got together at Colombo to discuss the
situation. Of the so-named 'Colombo Powers^only Pakistan joined
S E A T O . The others believed that a military pact increased insecurity
in South-East Asia, and that the best guarantee of peace lay in the
pursuit of Nehru's policy of 'neutralism'. This was defined in-the
famous 'five principles of co-existence', which India'and China h a d .
publicly agreed to on 29 April 1954 in the/following terms:
/
1. Mutual respect for each other's territorial integrity and
sovereignty;
2. mutual non-aggression;

CH. 4 8

INDEPENDENCE

825

3. mutual non-interference in each other's internal affairs;

4. equality and mutual benefit; and
5. peaceful co-existence.
The upshot of the Colombo meeting was a communique issued on
2 May 1954, in which a plan to hold a conference of Asian and African
nations was outlined. At a further meeting at Bogor~in Jav late in
December 1954 the Colombo Powers agreed to sponsor the plan, and
twenty-five countries were invited to join the five sponsors in a conference on r8 April 1955 at Bandung.
Nothing like the Bandung Conference of Afro-Asian nations had
ever previously happened in world history. It demonstrated to the
world,in no uncertain terms the desire of these countries to be heard
in matters of international affairs, and especially on the subject of the
vital questions of peace and co-operation. But, having said that, one
is left asking what exactly was achieved. The plan wastto hold further
meetings, but none has been held, and no permanent organization was
set up. The discussions had an air of unreality: the delegates have been
described as talking loudly about questions for which they had no
responsibility, and in more subdued tones about those, such as Kashmir,
Vietnam and Korea, for which they bore some responsibility. ^ On
such questions as co-operation with the West and communism they
were sharply divided. No bloc, Afro-Asian, Asian or even South-East
Asian, emerged from the meeting.
A spirit of goodwill did indeed manifest itself. In particular Premier
Chou En-lai's conciliatory gestures, notably his signature of a general
agreement with Indonesia regarding the citizenship of her overseas
Chinese, and his bland assurances to the South-East Asian governments
that- they had no cause for alarm regarding China's intentions towards
them, led to a noticeable reduction of tension. Many delegates expressed
greater fear of 'colonialism' than of communism. Thus the terms
'Bandung policy' and 'Bandung spirit' came into use meaning nonaggression and the peaceful solution of disputes between members of
the conference. And even Mr. Nehru thought that after Bandung it
would be awkward for Peking to flout the Five Principles. China, of
course, was playing her own game. She wanted to, encourage neutralist
sentiment, weaken pro-Western influences, gain support in the United
Nations, and encourage the formation of governments likely to prepare
the way for communist take-overs. Moreover, Chou En-lai had been
' A. Vandenbosch and Richard A. Butwell, Southeast Asia among the World Powers,
p. 262.

826

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

genuinely surprised at "the extent of the, fear of China among the

delegates at Bandung.
The 'Bandung spirit', however, soon began to evaporate. In any
case South Vietnam, Thailand, Malaya and the Philippines were no
more in favour of recognizing Peking after 'Bandung than before. And
the Chinese conquest of Tibet and violations of the Indian frontier
caused a thrill of dismay to run through South-East Asia. And,
although a reasonable settlement of the Sino-Burman frontier was
ultimately achieved, it took a long time, and Burmese-suspicions were
never satisfactorily removed.
The newly-independent states were faced with urgent problems arising
from underdevelopment and poverty, lack of capital and technical skill,
and the dependence of their key products upon world markets. The
most immediate was the unresolved problem of agricultural indebtedness and underproduction, at its worst in the Philippines, but with
parts of Vietnam a close second. Capital expenditure on a vast scale
was called for, but the rate of domestic saving was far from adequate to
provide for the necessary capital formation. Low per capita productivity
and income were the greatest obstacle, but non-productive expenditure
on such things as ornaments arid festivities also played its part. Longterm investment was alien to most South-East Asians, but there was
much hostility to foreign private investment for they felt that economic
self-sufTiciency was essential for the maintenance of independence.
There is an interesting contrast in this connection between Burma and
Malaya. Malaya's economic progress since the Japanese defeat has
been much faster than Burma's, and her standard of living altogether
higher. She has welcomed foreign investment, whereas Burmese governmental policy has severely restricted ;foreign interests and deterred the
foreign investor.
There were of course certain basic development needs, such as
transportation, irrigation, power, coriimunications and public utilities,
which could not'be supplied by private investment.-A^modest approach
to this problem was inaugurated at the meeting of* British Commonwealth prime ministers at Colombo in January 1950. The 'Colombo
Plan', as it was called, was a co-operative undertaking, with each member
as a donor as well as a recipient, and it was open to no'n-mefnbers of the"
Commonwealth. In 1947 the United Nations Econorriic Commission
for Asia and the Far East was founded. Its activities were similar to
those of the Colombo Plan, but on a far greater scale. It dealt with
agriculture, industrial development, flood control and water resources,
trade and finance, technical trainina and assisranre. research

and

CH. 48

INDEPENDENCE

827

Statistics and inland transport. But its financial resources were limited
by the amoui/j: of menibers' voluntary contributions, and the United
States, by far the richest member of UNO, preferred bi-lateral government-to-government arrangements to multilateral ones through the
United Nations.
The bilateral commitments of the United States were many times the
amount of its contributions through the United Nations. They were
an instrument of national policy, particularly with the cold war against
the communist bloc. The conditions of American aid included specific
political, economic or strategic quid pro quo commitments on the part
of the beneficiary state, and the South-East Asia governments saw these
as a possible source of American interference in their domestic affairs.
The United States Congress indeed preferred to give military rather
than economic aid: its policy was to build up a military bulwark against
international communist aggression. The South-East Asians therefore
would much have preferred bigger multilateral schemes to finance their
economic and social development rather than American aid. Actually
for projects suitable for financing by loans there was the International
Bank for Reconstruction and Development. But its powers were limited,
and so great were the capital needs of the underdeveloped countries
that in 1955 the International Finance Corporation was established in
affiliation with the Bank to make direct loans to private enterprises
in such countries. Finally in 1958, after several years of hesitation,
SUNFED, the Special United Nations Fund for Economic Development, came into being to make grants-in-aid and long-term low-interest
loans for essential development projects such as hospitals, schools and
roads, which were not capable of showing a commercial profit.
Help was also to come from another source. For when the period
of unprecedented prosperity caused by the demand for tin, rubber and
rice during the Korean War came to an end, the South-East Asian
governments came under increasing pressure to trade with the communist bloc. At the same time that bloc repudiated Stalinism, played
down the use of force, and adopted the policy of competing with the
West in the provision of economic aid to backward countries.
ib) Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos
The recognition by the United States of Vietnam, Cambodia and
Laos as 'independent states within the French Union' in February 1950
led to America shouldering more and more of the burden of carrying
on the struggle with the Viet Minh. But, although France publicly

828

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

declared that no powers Miere left in the hands of the French administration, there had in fact been no real transfer of power. ^ The French
indeed insisted that American aid should nqt go direct to the associated
states. The United States thus found herself in the uncomfortable
position of subsidizing a French colonial war, and indeed of backing a
certain loser, for Bao Dai, who had been brought back with the express
purpose of rallying nationalist sentiment, was quite unable to compete
with Ho Chi Minh. The nationalists preferred an independent government, even if communist-led, to one whose independence was a sham.
As a result of the Pau Conference, which sat from 27 June to 29 November 1950, the Associate States made agreements with France which on
paper provided them with the 'appurtenances of sovereignty',^ but lack
of trained personnel and technicians left them still in French hands.
And the central organs of the Union, its Presidency, High Cou^ncil and
Assembly, remained in France and functioned in such a way as to
prevent any power passing out of French control.
While the conference was in session, France sustained the greatest
defeat she had ever suffered in ,colonial warfare. The communist
victory in China enabled the Viet Minh to pass from guerrilla activities
to a war of movement and to a series of attacks upon French garrisons
in Tongking, which caused the French high command to make the
disastrous decision to concentrate upon the defence of the Red River
Delta and withdraw from the mountainous region to the north. On
3-7 October 1950, while carrying out the order to retreat southwards
on Langson, the Cao Bang garrison was overwhelmed by the Viet Minh.
It was a decisive-defeat. Langson itself, commanding the main route
into China, was next evacuated, and in such a hurry that vast stocks of
food and war material were left behind. Then came a whole chain of
further withdrawals which gave the Viet Minh possession of the
Chinese frontier zone from the coastal town of Mong Cay to the Laotian
frontier. Preparations were even made to evacuate Hanoi, but General
Juin's arrival there checked the panic.
-^ ^_
Morale revived still more with the appointment Jrr'December of
General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny as High Commissioner. He had
won glory in command of the French First Army which had liberated
eastern France from the Germans. In the new year \he French Ex=_
peditionary Corps won the battles of Vinh Yen and Dong Trieu, and
pushed General Giap's forces back to their bases in Viet ^ a c . But
French strategy remained defensive, and a new defence line to protect
' Donald Lancaster, The Emancipation of French Indo-China, 1961, pp. 205-6.
' Ibid., p. 213.
/^~

'

CH. 4 8

INDEPENDENCE

829

the delta region was constructed from the B&y of Along to Vinh Yen
covering the invasion route from China. But the loss of control over
the China frontier meant that deliveries of arms and material from
China were speeded up. Thus, while the Frencll were dispersing their
effectives in hundreds of scattered concrete strong points, the Viet
Minh were building up a regular army capable of extended operations.
For the time being, however, their attacks were beaten off, and in
November 1951 ' L e Roi Jean' took the first step in a new offensive
plan by seizing Hoa Binh on the Black River, a communication centre
vital to the Viet Minh. But this did not mean any real change in the
strategy of static defence, which tied down vast numbers of men
ineffectually, and left the China frontier open for the passage of aid on
a huge scale to the Viet Minh as soon as armistice negotiations opened
in the Korean war. Hence de Lattre's premature: death in a Paris
nursing-home in January 1952 had little effect upon French fortunes
in the Tongking struggle. The forced evacuation pf Hoa Binh, which
followed soon after, would probably have happened in any case. On
the other hand de Lattre had done much to help the formation of a
Vietnamese national army, which had begun to take shape before his
arrival, but was in urgent need of equipment. The increased aid that
he secured from Washington for it, was not the least of his services to
the anti-Viet Minh cause. Pressure from Washington during 1952
caused a rapid increase in its numbers, if not in its efficiency, for its
conscripted, hastily-trained units were ineffective in operating against
the Viet Minh in the south, still more as a means of relieving the French
forces in Tongking.
During 1952 the Viet Minh forces under General Vo Nguyen Giap's
direction were preparing for a winter offensive. It began in October
with a sudden thrust to Lai Chau on the Black River. Then in November
they occupied Dien Bien Phu and went on to cross the border of Laos.
In March 1953 they launched an attack on Luang Prabang; it failed,
but it was obvious that they intended to repeat the attempt later. Other
forces threatened Annam, while progress was made with the encirclement of the delta region of Tongking. Through their command of the
air French forces were able to check these moves, but the disputed
territories usually remained under effective Viet Minh control, for the
French Union forces were confined to camps and fortified positions.
There seemed no hope whatever of a French victory. In France,
indeed, public opinion had turned against the bloody and expensive
struggle, and in the highest quarters the possibility of 'an honourable
way out' by negotiation was mooted. On the other hand by 1953 the

830

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

United States was paying*8o per cent of the cost of the French military
eft'ort, and there was growing American impatience at the defensive
nature of French strategy. Such was the background to the ' Navarre
Plan', which the French cabinet adopted on 24 July 1953. Its author,
General Henri Navarre, had been appointed commander-in-chief in
Indo-China in the previous. May and commissioned to find the 'way
out' so urgently desired by France and the United States.
The plan was for a build-up of military superiority, based upon
massive deliveries of American aid, and aimed at containing the Viet
Minh by defensive strategy until the offensive could be takenin 1955
with enough success to force the Viet Minh to negotiate. The
military operations, which wrecked the scheme, arose out of France's
engagement late in October 1953 to defend Laos against all attacks.
General Giap took up the challenge and concentrated all the strength
he could muster upon surrounding and destroying the powerful ' aeroterrestrial' base established by Navarre at Dien Bien Phu, close to the
border of the Laotian province of Phong Saly. This he finally accomplished on 7 May 1954 after a dramatic struggle of some months watched
intently by the whole world. He outgeneralled Navarre, causing him
to disperse troops that could have rescued the beleaguered force, and
using a huge army of coolies to bring up supplies in defiance of the
intensive attacks of the French aviation.
There were divided counsels in France from cabinet-level downwards,
and increasing pressure for an armistice. It was this fact and the
decision on 25 January 1954 of the foreign ministers of the United
States, Russia, Britain and France to invite Communist China to a
conference on the Far East in the following April that led Giap to stake
everything upon a spectacular victory.
The danger now became intense with massive American forces
arriving off the coast of Indo-China, and Mr. Dulles hinting at the
possible use of atomic bombs. Happily Britain's firm stand against
allied intervention, and in favour of a negotiated "settlement carried the
day. The Geneva Conference, which had assembled on"23 April, was
able to conclude armistice agreements on 21 July covering Vietnam,
Laos and Cambodia, and arranging for a cease-fire and the appointment
of an International Armistice Control Commission com'posed of representatives of India, Canada and Poland. Vietnam was to be partitioned
along the Ben Hai River at the 17th parallel of latitude close to the
Dong. Hoi wall, built in 1631 to defend the Nguyen domains from the
'lords of the North'. The north was to be under the 'Democratic
Republic of Vietnam', i.e. the Viet Minh; tlie south was to be under the

CH. 4 8

INDEPENDENCE

831

Saigon government of which the ex-emperor was the head. It was only
a provisional arrangement for general elections to unify Vietnam were
to be held in both sectors in July 1956 under international control.
Viet Minh forces were to withdraw from south and central Vietnam,
Cambodia and Laos according to an agreed timetable; similarly French
Union forces were to withdraw from north Vietnam, Cambodia and
Laos, but France might maintain a limited number of instructors in
Laos to train the national army, and retain the use of two military bases
there.^
The Geneva Agreements provided a basis for the independence of
what still continued to be called the 'associate states', South Vietnam,
Cambodia and Laos. Subsequent negotiations held in Paris aimed at
completing their economic and financial independence. France had
never been willing to grant real independence: she had always kept
her 'foot in the doorway', hoping for a resurgence of her domination.^
Late in 1953, after Premier Laniel had made his offer to 'perfect' the
independence of the Associated States, King Norodom Sihanouk of
Cambodia had negotiated independence agreements, and the Kingdom
of Laos had concluded a treaty of 'amity and association' by which
France recognized her as a' fully independent and sovereign state'. Moreover, on 28 April 1954, after the start of the Geneva Conference, France
and Bao Dai had made a joint declaration of Vietnam's 'total independence'. But all such agreements and declarations could have easily been
evaded had the situation turned in France's favour. The effect of her
policy upon Vietnam was to drive the non-communist moderates from
positions of influence in the national movement so that it became communist-dominated in the north, while in the south it sought independence outside the French Union. Laos, the most pro-French of the
associated states, amended its constitution after the Geneva Conference
to omit any reference to the French Union, although continuing to send
representatives to the Assembly. Cambodia, on the other hand, under
the strong nationalist leadership of Norodom, formally ended its
association with France on 25 September 1955 by a constitutional
amendment substituting 'Cambodia, an independent and sovereign
state', for 'Cambodia, a self-governing state belonging to the French
Union as an Associated State'.
The Geneva settlement was made over the heads of the Saigon
authorities, who were strongly against partition. They were therefore
able to evade the clause providing for general elections in July 1956.
' Lancaster, op. cit.i pp. 338-41, gives details of the armistice arrangements.
^ A. Vandenbosch and R. Butwell, op. cit., 1957, p. 118.

832

'

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

The systematic steps the^ took to free South Vietnam from French
control cannot be treated in detail here. They entailed changing the
title of the French commissioner-general to 'ambassador', denouncing
the monetary and financial agreement with France and bringing the
Vietnamese piastre into the dollar bloc, arrangements for the withdrawal of the French Expeditionary Corps and for channelling American
aid directly to Saigon instead of through Paris, and finally the rejection
of Bao Dai's authority and the proclamation on 26 October 1955 of the
Republic of Vietnam after a referendum in which ' the final results surpassed even the most sanguine expectations, as the votes in some cases
exceeded the number of names on the electoral roll'.^
Bao Dai had been ineffective as a national leader; in his place President Ngo Dinh Diem was built up as the saviour of the nation. He had
been chosen as prime minister of the Saigon regime by Bao Dai because
of his firm insistence on independence. But he was a Catholic and more
French than Vietnamese in education and outlook. He had no support
in the country, lacked administrative experience and showed little
capacity as a leader. It was American support that kept him in power;
the Americans saw him as an honest man and one whose anti-communism
could be absolutely relied on. Thus he was able to defeat his rivals and
establish a dictatorship. His rivals were formidable. The army under
Major General Nguyen Van Hinh was independent, and Hinh himself
had the backing of Bao Dai. Another general, Le Van Vien, was the
head of the Binh Xuyen, a gangsterish organization controlling the
police and the vice-rackets of Saigon. Then there were the two politicoreligious sects, the syncretist Cao Dai and the reformed Buddhist Hoa
Hao, with their private armies, controlling large areas of the country.
To complete the picture, the Viet Mirih in evacuating their forces to
the north of the 17th parallel left behind large numbers of political
cadres secretly working for the communist cause, while from Tongking
hundreds of thousands of refugees poured southwards.
Thestory of Diem's struggle for control cannot lietold here. Whether
he or any other leader could have dammed up the communist southwards flow without the all-out support of the United States is an idle
speculation. The dominance of political and military considerations,
however, severely hampered the work of economic and social recon- struction. The bulk of the population lived near starvation level, and
the allied problems of landlordism and agrarian reform could not be
seriously tackled by a government fearful lest its wealthy elite would turn
against it. American economic aid could, and did, cover the annual
' Lancaster, op. cit., pprjQS-g.

CH. 4 8

INDEPENDENCE

833

budget deficits occasioned by refugee resettlement, a very large military

establishment and the heavy cost of reconstructing the badly-disrupted
communications system. But it was on a year-to-year basis, and the
government had to look for ways of reducing its dependence upon foreign
aid and of obtaining investment capital. A five-year plan of economic
development was announced in 1957, but local industries did not
receive prompt encouragement, and imports were too largely of consumer goods. Nevertheless there was economic development shown by
a large increase in textile output, the development of coal-mining and
a healthy programme of resettlement in the highland regions as well as
of regrouping villages in 'agrovilles' to protect peasants from attack.
Rural health measures, the provision of more schools and the establishment of a new university at Hue were further signs of progress.
A constitution for South Vietnam was promulgated on 26 October
1956, but on account of security conditions it remained largely inoperative and presidential rule by executive decree remained the order
of the day. Autocratic government was accompanied by nepotism,
favouritism, lack of delegation of authority, and graft. The administration remained inefficient and the morale of the civil service low.
Viet Cong activity aimed at making things impossible for Diem, what
with attacks on local leaders, intimidation of peasants and propaganda
against 'the American imperialist regime of south Vietnam'. But by
the later 1950s it was obvious that the government could not be overthrown by peaceful means. Hence in December i960 the ' Front for the
Liberation of the South' was formed in Hanoi, and preparations set on
foot for military action 'when the time is proper'.^
The Viet Minh government in the north was in a much stronger
position. It had been in control of its own house years before the
Geneva Conference gave it legal status. It had fought a successful war,
and as the real spearhead to the national resistance to alien domination
it had much popular support, and could enforce a much stricter disciplinee.g. in rationing and land distributionthan could Ngo Dinh
Diem. Nevertheless, it had its difficulties, and they were serious. The
overpopulated Red River delta was now cut off from the rice-fields of
Cochin-China, upon, which it had relied for the additional food supplies
to the tune of over 100,000 tons of rice annually, to make up for the
deficiency in its own production. Much of its irrigation system had
been ruined by the ravages of war. Vast damage had been done to
mines and industrial plant, and there was a crippling shortage of trained
^ Recent developments are examined by Ellen J. Hammer in ' South Viet N a m :
T h e Limits of PoUtical Action', Pacific Affairs, XXXV, no. i, Spring 1962, pp. 24-36.

834

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

personnel for industry. As in the south, the transport system had broken
down almost completely. On the deficiency of rice alone Ho Chi Minh's
government could have fallen had it not beeri for a timely loan from
Soviet Russia enabling it to buy rice purchased by Moscow in Burma.
Its early plans had therefore perforce to be directed to increasing rice
production. But it also aimed at progressive industrialization, and its
close relations with Russia and China brought it long-term industrial
credits.
The efforts of the Viet Minh to rescue North Vietnam from economic
disaster made them very unpopular. The mass of the people were not
communists and resented deeply the eiforts to collectivize agriculture
and the levy of forced labour for reconstruction. For the heavy hand
of the government fell not only on the large landlords but also on the
smallholders. An uprising in November 1956 in Nghe An showed how
strong was the discontent, and the disturbances spread to other provinces. Repression, however, was swift and effective. Nevertheless,
it was admitted that mistakes had been made, and civil rights and
additional powers for the Assembly were written into the constitution.
By mrd-1956 two million acres had been redistributed among
2,200,000 families. In the next year it was claimed that self-sufficiency
in rice production had been achieved. Thereafter collectivization
became the main objective, and a three-year programme to achieve it
was launched in 1958. Along with this the State Planning Board
announced a comprehensive programme of industrial expansion 'to
transform the economy along Socialist lines'. There was of course the
same lack of capital and of technicians as in the south, and foreign
aid was essential. In 1955 China promised $326 million and Russia
$100 million to build factories, and supply technicians and equipment.
French economic interests were liquidated, and North Vietnam's
economy became firmly tied to the communist bloc.
Cambodia had become a constitutional kingdom under a constitution
promulgated on 6 May 1947 by King Norodom Sihanouk. The central
government consisted of a monarch with a Council of the^'Kingdom, a
prime minister and cabinet, and a National Assembly elected every
four years by direct suffrage. King Norodom's dramatic moves to free
his country from French control brought him criticism as well-as s u c - " .
cess. His self-imposed exile, his resignation of the crown in 1955 in
favour of his father in order to fight a general election, and his'subsequent changes of mind about his own position, looked to some like the
exhibitionism of a politically immature young man. But as king he
could not give the country the leadershipj^^it needed, and although

CH. 48

INDEPENDENCE

835

undoubtedly erratic, he had a clear conceptioil of his country's needs and

especially of the realities of its precarious position in a world divided
by the cold war. In external affairs he adopted the neutralist policy
expounded by India's Mr. Nehru, and played off one side against the
other in order to obtain economic help for Cambodia. With Communist China in 1956 he negotiated an agreement whereby China invested capital in Cambodian commercial undertakings. Next he secured
an agreement with Russia for the supply of industrial equipment and
technician-instructors. From the United States he received aid for
irrigation, education, health and road-making projects, and towards the
upkeep of his army, not to mention an emergency supply of rice when
the Cambodian harvest failed.
In internal politics a socialist and genuine democrat, he was able to
defeat the hopes of the local communists of gaining control. The
'Khmer Issaraks', who were closely linked with the Viet Minh and
Pathet Lao movements, were reduced to impotence by the Geneva
Agreements. At the subsequent general election the ex-king's Popular
Socialist Community party won all the seats in the national assembly,
and when the Issarak leader Son Ngoc Thanh resorted to revolt, he was
decisively defeated. The International Commission for Supervision
and Control, set up under the Geneva Agreement, saw Cambodia's
post-settlement history as a 'success story', but Norodom himself was
less happy about things, and was anxious for more to be done to safeguard his country's neutrality both from the expansive energies of the
Vietnamese, and from Thailand, with whom there were boundary disputes. The Vietnamese were regarded as the greater threat: 300,000 of
them lived in Cambodia, and 400,000 Cambodians in South Vietnam.
North Vietnam at the Bandung Conference in 1955 gave bland assurances of readiness to establish relations on the basis of 'the five
principles of co-existence', but Cambodian nationalism remained hostile
to both Vietnamese states, and the Control Commission had to deal with
constant disputes. Norodom's neutralism reflected the intense desire
of his people for independence, and their remembrance of the long
Thai-Vietnamese contest for control over his country.
The Kingdom of Laos, as we have seen in an earlier chapter, ^ had
lost its identity long before the French acquired it in the eighteennineties. Vientiane, which had separated from Luang Prabang in 1707,
' had been conquered by Siam, and Luang Prabang had become a vassal
of the Bangkok regime. France established a protectorate over Luang
Prabang in 1893 and next proceeded successfully to claim the territories
1 Chap. 23.

836

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

of Middle and Lower LaoS from Siam. In April 1945, while still under
the Japanese, King Sisavang Vong of Luang Prabang proclaimed his
independence of France. After the Japanese collapse all the former
Laotian territories were united by agreement with France, and the name
of the kingdom was changed to Laos (27 August 1947). Luang Prabang
remained the royal capital, but Vientiane, in a more central position,
became the administrative capital. Both were quite small towns.
Nearly all the Laotians lived in villages and supported themselves by
subsistence agriculture. There were no railways, the roads were in a
very bad state, and the navigation facilities on the river Mekong
mediocre. Entirely land-locked, the kingdom was too far away from
available sea-ports such-as Saigon and Bangkok to have any appreciable
foreign trade.
Like Cambodia, Laos received a constitution from its king on becoming an 'independent' member of the French Union. It was promulgated on II May 1947. On paper it introduced responsible
government with a prime minister and cabinet responsible to a national
assembly elected by universal suffrage every four years. The king
himself was too old and infirm to carry out all his state duties; the Crown
Prince Savang Vat'ana therefore'acted on his behalf.
After the Geneva Agreement trouble at once arose over the position
of the pro-communist Pathet Lao forces, which had co-operated closely
with the Viet Minh in the anti-French struggle. They seized the provinces of Phong Saly and Sam Neua on the North Vietnam frontier,
and in spite of the attempts of the Control Commission to negotiate a
settlement, they refused to accept the authority of the Laotian government. They wanted the alignment of their country with its neighbours
Communist China and North Vietnam.; Their political wing, known as
Neo Lao Haksat (Patriotic Party of Laos), was led by Prince Souphanou
Vong, who had received communist indoctrination in China. There
was much fighting until in 1956 a new prime minister. Prince Souvanna
Phounia, negotiated a settlement with his half-brother-by which Phong
Saly and Sam Neua were to come under the jurisdiction of the central
government and the Pathet Lao forces be integrated in the royal army.
The agreement was, however, extremely complex, and its implem'eh-^
tation painfully slow because of the hostility and suspicions of both ~
sides. There was also the fact that Laos had willy nilly become the
battleground of forces beyond her control. On one side were the communist states China and North Vietnam, on the other anti-communist
Thailand with the central organization of SEATO in Bangkok. Moreover, notwithstanding the neutral status laid-Hown for Laos at Geneva,

CH. 48

INDEPENDENCE

837

American policy was seeking to build her >ap as an anti-communist

bastion. American aid per head of the population was higher than to
any other country in the world, and four-fifths of it went to the army
and the police.
In May 1957 another crisis blew up when the Pathet Lao forces
were reported to be getting outside aid. But in the following November
things looked better when the National Assembly approved a new
cabinet under Souvanna Phouma which included Souphanou Vong and
one other Neo Lao Haksat representative. In May 1958 elections for
new seats in an enlarged National Assembly resulted in greatly increased
Neo Lao Haksat representation. This alarmed the right wing parties
so much that a new group calling itself the Committee for the Defence
of National Interests came forward demanding a cabinet able to check
the increasing influence of the left wing. In July Souvanna Phouma
resigned and the situation once more deteriorated. To cut short a very
detailed story, a much worse crisis arose in 1959 involving an appeal
to the United Nations by the Laotian cabinet, which alleged acts of
aggression by North Vietnam. A subcommittee sent to the spot by the
United Nations could find no evidence of violations of the frontier by
North Vietnamese troops, and Secretary-General Dag Hammerskjold,
who went on a personal visit to Laos in November, urged the adoption of a
more neutral foreign policy and a reduction in military aid from the West.
In August i960 a junior officer in the army carried out a coup
against the right-wing American-dominated government which led to
Prince Souvanna Phouma again becoming premier with a mandate to
come to terms with the Pathet Lao movement and pursue a strictly
neutral foreign policy. But the country was now plunged into civil war,
in the course of which the right-wing General Phoumi Nosavan, a close
connection of Field Marshal Sarit Thanarat, the military dictator of
Thailand, with American moral support, captured Vientiane, drove out
Souvanna Phouma and placed Prince Boun Oum, the extreme rightwing leader, in power. Neither side, however, could win an outright
victory. The situation looked to be dangerous to world peace. Action
was, however, taken jointly by Britain and Russia as co-chairmen of the
original Geneva Conference, and eventually, after further crises, a
settlement was arrived at in 1962 much along the lines of the original
plan.
(c) Malaya and Singapore
The Federation of Malaya's progress to independence, not to mention
its subsequent economic progress, was the most rapid of any of the

838

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

dependent territories of^the post-war world. Its first real general

election was held in 1955, when its legislative council was accorded an
elected majority. On 31 August 1957 it became fully independent.
When in January 1952, with the appointment of Sir Gerald Templer as
both commander-in-chief and high commissioner, the country came for
all practical purposes under military rule, so serious was the ' emergency'
that few people could have foreseen that in a little over three years a
general election could be held, with independence so to speak just round
the corner.
Actually, the real beginnings of improvement in the situation can
be traced back to June 1950, when under the 'Briggs Plan' the halfmillion or so Chinese 'squatters', upon whom the guerrillas had depended for food, supplies and information, began to be resettled in new
fenced villages provided with schools and community centres, piped
water and electricity. Each householder was given a thirty-year lease
of a small farm together with agricultural assistance. The evertightening pressure of the army upon the bandits was, of course, a
factor of equal importance in their ultimate defeat, for the resettlement
took several years to complete. By the end of 1953 there were 150 of
these villages, each protected by its own home guards and with an
elected village council. The total number finally built was 550.
As they lost support the communists became more selective in their
targets, and it was the murder of the high commissioner, Sir Henry
Gurney, in October 1951, together with an increase in planned outrages, that led to Templer's appointment. Opinion has been divided
concerning the efl^ectiveness of the measures he took to combat the
rebellion. They included the creation of a Federal Regiment as a
preliminary to the creation of a Malayan Army, compulsory service
(which, incidentally, caused the disappearance abroad of many young
Chinese), jungle forts to protect the aborigines, psychological warfare
andmost disputed of allthe collective punishment of villages
helping the rebels.^ There can, however, be no dojibt that his regime
was a turning-point in the struggle; indeed, conditi^s-'improved so
much by 1954 that Sir Donald MacGillivray, a civilian, succeeded him
as high commissioner.
_^
Two measures of some importance to the political future of-Malaya^
were taken under Templer. The federal citizenship law was modified
to enable more Chinese to qualify and the system of governmentappointments was changed to provide for the intake of one non-Malay for
' Victor Purcell, Malaya, Communist or Free, 1954, and The Revolution in Southeast
Asia, 1962, pp. 101-2; Lennox A. Mills, Malaya, a Political and Economic Appraisal,'
1958, pp. 62-7. Saul Rose, Britain and South-East Asia, 1962, p. 131.

CH. 48

INDEPENDENCE

839

every four Malays. But the biggest step forward was taken by the two
major poHtical parties themselves. In 1952 the United Malays National
Organization (UMNO) and the Malayan Chinese Association (MCA)
formed an 'Alliance' to contest the Kuala Lumpur municipal elections.
Success encouraged it to aim higher. In 1954 under the leadership of
Tungku Abdul Rahman, son of the Sultan of Kedah, a graduate of
Cambridge University, who had served as a district officer in the
Malayan Civil Service, the Alliance came forward with a demand for an
elected majority in the legislative council. In London its deputation
was rebuffed by the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Oliver Lyttleton.
Their determined stand on their return to Malaya caused the British
government to change its mind. An elected majority and a general
election were conceded in 1955, and the high commissioner announced
that the 'emergency' was no longer an obstacle to Malaya's advance
towards self-government. In the general election the Alliance won 51
out of the 52 elected seats in the legislature and Tungku Abdul Rahman
became chief minister. His demand for independence by 31 August
1957 was sympathetically received in London, where the policy of the
govei-nment had now become that of making the transition to independence as smooth as possible. The victory of the Alliance also had its
effect upon the 'emergency', for the communist leader Chin Peng made
overtures for peace, and in December 1955 had a conference with the
federal ministers together with representatives of Singapore. His terms
were totally rejected; then for a time there was a position of stalemate.
This was to be radically changed with the coming of independence in
1957. The new government, confident that the great mass of the people
were with it, increased the penalties for helping communist guerrillas,
and proposed to crush them within one year.
In 1951 the federal executive had been reorganized so as to include
six of the unoffic^l members of the legislative council. Each member
of the executive was to have charge of a department, and, although
responsible to the high commissioner, was to be the spokesman for his
department in the .legislature. After the general election of 1955 the
executive was composed of five officials and ten Malayan ministers, all
members of the legislature. The ministers; of whom six were Malays,
three Chinese and one Indian, were appointed by the high commissioner
on the advice of the chief minister, and were responsible to the legislature. When in January 1956 at the Anglo-Malayan conference in
London the British government accepted the demand for independence,
interim arrangements were made pending its fulfilment. The high
commissioner was instructed to accept the advice given him by the

840

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

federal executive, except'in case of special emergency, and arrangements were made for the Malayan, ministers to take over additional
functions from the official members.
'
The new constitution was drafted by a cornmission under Lord Reid,
a Lord of Appeal in Ordinary, composed of two British members, an
Australian, an Indian and a Pakistani. Thcj draft, after some amendments, was adopted by the Malayan legislature, and on 31 August 1957
Malaya's independence was proclaimed. The new federal state had an
elective monarchy, a conference of rulers, a cabinet responsible to a
bicameral legislature and a judiciary independent of the executive as in
Britain. The monarchYang di-Pertuan Agongwas to be chosen by
the conference of rulers on the basis of seniority for a five-year term of
office. He must act in accordance with the advice of the cabinet, and
must also safeguard the special position of the Malays. The legislature
consisted of a senate and a house of representatives. The senate contained- thirty-eight members, twenty-two of whom were elected by the
eleven state legislatures and sixteen were appointed by the Yang diPertuan Agong. Its members held office for six years, half of them
retiring every three years. The house of representatives was composed
of one hundred members elected by single-member constituencies. Its
powers were similar to those of the British House of Commons. A
chief justice and supreme court formed the judiciary together with such
subordinate courts as parliament might establish. The supreme court's
powers included those of interpreting the constitution and dealing with
inter-state disputes. At the head of each state was its hereditary ruler,
or, as in the cases of Penang and Malacca, its governor. The state had
a democratically elected legislative assembly and an executive council
appointed by the head of state on the advice of the chief minister and
collectively responsible to the state legislature. In the division of powers
between the federal and state governments the former was given predominance, and, where state law was inconsistent with federal law, the
latter took precedence.
^ - ._^
A recent commentator has posed the question why-Malaya achieved
independence so rapidly.^ The British experience in Tndia, Pakistan,
Ceylon and Burma, he suggests, provided Britain with precedents "and
encouragement. The strength and solidarity of the Alliance'showed
that Malaya herself could best solve her communal problems., Moreover, mere military means could not remove the communist threat;
Malayan nationalism was calculated to become a more effective weapon
if its demands were granted. Less decisive but quite real factors were
' Saul Rose, op. cit., pgt-i33-4.

CH. 4 8

INDEPENDENCE

841

the Alliance's willingness for Malaya to remaih in the British Commonwealth and to conclude a defence agreement permitting Britain to maintain military bases, including a Commonwealth strategic reserve, in the
country. One may add that the personality of Tungku Abdul Rahman
inspired confidence.
Britain gave military and economic assistance to independent Malaya,
both directly and under the Colombo Plan. Membership of the
Commonwealth also brought positive advantages. On the other hand,
as an earner of surplus dollars through her exports of tin and rubber
to the United States Malaya makes a useful contribution to the sterling
area. Her decision to remain in it after independence was taken with
eyes wide o p e n t p economic realities. She has been equally realistic
regarding British economic predominance, which was restored when
the Japanese departed. In consequence, the post-war development of
Malaya's economy has been exceptionally rapid, and her standard of
living is as high as anywhere else in Asia, much higher than anywhere
else in South-East Asia of comparative size. Her economic revival
has been in striking contrast to that of Burma, where foreign economic
interests were jealously cut down to the absolute minimum.^ The
post-war period has also seen the forging of very close cultural links
with Britain and the Commonwealth. For instance many hundreds of
Malayan students and teachers have come to Britain for higher education and professional training, and even more have gone to Australia.
But Malayan independence was real. It was shown in her refusal to
become a member of SEATO, and in the initiative Tungku Abdul Rahman has taken in seeking to organize better regional co-operation in
South-East Asia, although his proposals, first, in 1959, for a South-East
Asian Economic and Friendship Treaty, and next, in i960, for an
Association of South-East Asian states, have not received the support
they deserved. Qn the other hand, his 'Malaysia' plan for expanding
the Federation to include Singapore and the Bornean territories of
North Borneo, Brunei and Sarawak received British official support in
November 1961. . I t aimed at solving the Singapore problem, and at
the same time maintaining the political ascendancy of the Malays.
When the proposals for a Malayan Union were drawn up in 1946,
Singapore with its preponderatingly Chinese population would have
tipped the scale against the Malays, had it been included. The 1947
census showed the Chinese as45 per cent of the population of Malaya
with Singapore and the Malays as only 43-3 per cent. Without Singapore the positions were reversed, with the Malays 49-5 per cent of the
^ Ibid., pp. 135-6.

842

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

population and the Chinese 38-4 per cent.^ Another reason for Singapore's non-inclusion in the Unionand subsequent Federationwas
that while Malaya depended on custom duties for three-fifths of her
revenue, Singapore had grown up as a free port, and her success depended upon her free trade policy.
'
Singapore was accordingly given its own constitution with a governor,
nominated executive council, and a legislative council with a majority
of unofficial members, most of whom were elected. The Chinese
electorate, however, were dissatisfied and boycotted the elections.
Accordingly, the British government appointed a commission under
Sir George Rendel in 1953 to make fresh constitutional proposals. Its
recommendations came into effect in 1955. There was now a legislative
assembly with 25 elected members out of a total of 32, and a council of
ministers composed of three ex officio ministers responsible to the
governor and six responsible to the assembly. The leader of the largest
party became Chief Minister, but the government was a dyarchy, with
the ex officio ministers responsible for finance, external affairs, defence
and internal security.
This time more than fifty per cent of the electorate voted at the first
general election under the new scheme, but no party was strong enough
to form a government. Mr. David Marshall, the leader of the Labour
Front, composed of the Socialist Party and a part of the Labour Party,
managed with the help of the representatives of the UMNO-MCA
Alliance to scrape up enough support to become Chief Minister. But
he had a difficult task trying to hold his party together, and resigned in
1956 because in negotiations with the British government over his demand for internal self-government the latter laid down security arrangements which he would not accept. His successor, Lim Yew Hock,
however, reached agreement with Britain in the following year over the
security question, and Singapore received yet another constitution, this
time conferring full self-government upon her. The governor was
replaced by a Malayan Yang di-Pertuan Negara, orHead of State. There
was to be an elected legislature of 51 members to which'the Council of
Ministers was to be collectively responsible. Citizenship was to go automatically to all born in Singapore. Others might register after a period
of residence. The vexed question of security was solved by placing it.
in the hands of an Internal Security Council composed' of the Chief
Minister, two other ministers, the British Commissioner, two British
representatives and one cabinet minister from Malaya. The first general
^ T h e 1947 census gave the total population of Singapore as 930,000, of whom
75 per cent were Chinese. T h e 1957 census gave the total population as 1,445,929.
Chinese accounted for 1,090,595, Malaysians 197,060^ Indians and Pakistanis 124,084.

CH. 48

INDEPENDENCE

843

election took place in May 1959, and at midnight on 2-3 June 1959 the
new state came officially into existence.
In the general election the People's Action Party won 43 out of the
51 seats, and its leader, Mr. Lee Kuan-yew became premier. The
party was decidedly left-wing and contained a communist element. Lee
himself was a moderate, and found himself increasingly doing battle
with the communists. His aim was to bring to an end the separation
of Singapore from Malaya, for it looked as if Singapore alone would
never achieve real independence. He and the moderates in his party
were quick to realize the responsibilities imposed upon them by the
economic and strategic situation of Singapore, with its entrepot trade
shrinking and its population rising, its need for foreign investment, and
its dependence upon the British naval base and the Harbour Board in
order to earn the money to pay^for the excellent social services to which
its people had grown accustomed. If the British naval, military and
air force installations were withdrawn from the island, the effect upon
its economy and standard of lif^ would be appreciable. For one thing
it would put out of work some 40,000 well-paid workers. The PAP
government, however, for all their anti-colonial ardour, did not challenge
the British use of the island. It may well be that when the time comes,
as come it must, for Singapore to join the Federation, Britain will be
called upon to abandon the base. In any case, opinions differ as to
its precise strategic value.

(d) Indonesia
Indonesia began her career as an independent state with power in the
hands of the leaders of the republic formed in 1945 at the time of the
Japanese defeat. Under the constitutional arrangements then made
there was to be a Consultative Assembly, a presidency and an elected
Chamber of Representatives; but, as it was impossible to hold elections,
the Independence Preparatory Committee laid down that all the powers
were to be exercised by the president assisted by a Central National
Committee. This consisted of 135 appointed members, and came to be
referred to as KNIP from the initial letters of its Indonesian name.
Its legislative powers, which were shared with the president, were in
practice delegated to its Working Committee, which sat continuously.
And it was to this body that the cabinet was responsible.
Until the coming of independence in 1949 there was close co-operation
between, the cabinet and the Working Committee, as also between
President Sukarno and the vice-president, Mohammed Hatta. After

844

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

independence, however, "differences began to appear. Cabinets were

unstable, there were seven between 1949 and 1958, and the president,
taking advantage of the vagueness of the constitution regarding his
position, tended to assume a role beyotid the intentions of the constitution-makers, and in pubHc speeches,to appeal to the people above
the heads of both cabinet and legislature^ Moreover, relations between
him and Hatta, whose work and political wisdom were invaluable,
gradually deteriorated until breaking-point came in December 1956, and
the vice-president resigned.
This sort of thing did not make for efficiency, and the welfare of the
country suffered. Professor Kahin, a highly sympathetic student of
Indonesian affairs, stresses Sukarno's view of himself as a revolutionary
nationalist leader rather than a constitutional president, and makes
penetrating comments upon his weaknesses as a head of state. He failed
to understand regional sentiments, was unwilling to heed the advice of
qualified leaders once his friends, and had little sense of economic
realities, writes Kahin. ^ His attitude towards communism was also
unsound, he says, for he was willing to use the support of the Indonesian
Communist Party in order to combat the major Islamic party, the
Masjumi, and he developed^a tremendous admiration for Communist
China. Incidentally, it was his hostility towards the Masjumi that
brought the final rift with Hatta. Kahin also comments that in making
the West Irian question one of personal prestige Sukarno neglected far
more pressing matters, and tended to judge people and states by their
attitude towards Indonesia's case.
Before the Round Table Conference met at the Hague to arrange for
the transfer of sovereignty, the Dutch had organized the parts of
Indonesia which they controlled into fifteen states, and the agreement
was for the creation of a federal Republic of the United States of Indonesia, in which the Indonesian Republic would be onethough the
most importantof sixteen component units. This arrangement lasted
onjy a matter of months. By August 1950 it-had been replaced by a
unitary form of government. The argument was that for an archipelago
nation the maintenance of unity was of supreme importance. But, as
time went on, anti-Javanese sentiment and Jakarta's inadequacy
in dealing with regional welfare and local autonomy^caused" the
ever-present centrifugal tendencies to rise to dangerous heights.
Java produced relatively little for foreign export, while some of
the other regions contributed heavily to Indonesia's vital' earnings
of foreign exchange. There was also no little alarm in the rest of
* George McT. Kahin in Major Governments of Asia, pp. 539-40.

CH. 4 8

'

INDEPENDENCE

845

Indonesia at the increasing strength of the jommunist movement in

Java.
From 1956 to 1958 crisis after crisis developed. Bloodless coups
late in 1956 led to the establishment of army-led regional councils in
Central, North and South Sumatra. In March 1957 similar things
happened in East Indonesia and Kalimantan. The rebels maintained
their power by diverting to their own use some of the export revenues
of their respective areas. In suppressing the risings the central government surrendered much of its power to the army chief-of-staff and the
regional military commanders, and as a result lost both prestige and
authority. But the big showdown with the ' Revolutionary Government
of the Republic of Indonesia', established at Padang in Central Sumatra
in February 1958, showed that there was little support for a breakaway
policy": national sentiment was against separation. Military measures,
however, were no real solution: the problem of regional autonomy
remained, and in bold terms it meant that the regions outside Java
should have both>more money and more power over its spending. ^ To
deal satisfactorily with such a situation nothing less than a fundamental
revision of the relations between the central government and the regions
was called for. But, having declared itself so firmly against the Dutchsponsored federation a few years earlier, Sukarno's government would
not listen to any suggestions for a solution along federal lines.
Regionalism, however, was far from being the most urgent problem
facing independent Indonesia. Economic conditions, resulting from the
stresses of the Japanese occupation and the subsequent struggle against
the Dutch, could not have been worse. The scorched-earth policy
pursued against the Dutch had entailed a vast destruction of transport
facilities, oil installations, plantation equipment and sugar centrals.
Population increase and peasant poverty went hand in hand. In Java
population pressure on the land caused peasant plots to decrease in
size, and with the percentage of forest land already below the erosion
danger-level only emigration on a large scale could prevent dire poverty.
Elsewhere population growth was even faster than in Java, but, although
there was plenty of land, there was severe lack of capital and, consequently, underemployment of labour. One result was that Indonesia
did not produce enough food for her population: she had to import
large quantities of rice, which took up foreign exchange she could
better have used for purchasing industrial raw materials and capital
goods. But so intense was national sentiment that measures seriously
* Herbert Feith, 'Indonesia' in G. M c T . Kahin (ed.), Governments and Politics of
Southeast Asia, p. 226.

846

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

affecting her export-orieKted economy were deliberately taken in order

to displace Western, particularly Dutch, economic enterprise. She
suffered from the start from a grave shortage of trained, and experienced
personnel. But this did not prevent her in December 1957 from taking
over, for purely political reasons, Dutch assets and causing the departure of the Dutch technical and administrative staffs still in the
country. The effect was disastrous. Production declined, her exports
suffered, her foreign reserves were hit, and the government's revenue,
which depended largely upon export-import duties, was reduced. And
the situation was made even worse by the smuggling which developed
to Singapore, British Borneo and the Philippines on a scale large enough
to affect the official volume of exports.
One of Indonesia's worst disabilities in her early days of independence
sprang from the fact that under Dutch rule few Indonesians had served
in positions of responsibility in the civil service or business. The dismissal or resignation of the great bulk of Dutch and Eurasian civil
servants in, or soon after, 1950 meant that most of the Indonesians,
who were promoted into the middle or upper ranks of the civil service,
had had no training for the posts they came to occupy, while the lower
grades came to be grossly overstaffed owing to various forms of political
pressure. And, although salaries in all the services were much lower
than they had been under the Dutch, the pay of the civil service and the
army together accounted for some fifty per cent of governmental expenditure. Indonesia in Kahin's view had the weakest civil service of
any contemporary major state. ^
The West Irian question, which was used by Indonesia as a convenient excuse to get rid of the Dutch and Dutch interests, has been a
dismal example of the way in which the real issues of national welfare
are forgotten under the stress of artificially worked-up emotion. The
Dutch argued that the recognition of Indonesian independence did not
necessarily involve handing over all the territories of the former Netherlands Indies, that, West New Guinea was not a part of Indonesia either
geographically or racially, and with supreme tactlessness they pointed
out that when the Indonesians could not keep order in their own house,
they were unfit to take over the administration of a primitive people
and an underdeveloped country. The Indonesians on the other hand saw
Dutch New Guinea as a European colonial outpost on their doorstep,
and asked the pertinent question why the Dutch were pressing the need
for their experience and resources in the territory when in the past
they had bothered so little about it. They also pointed out that the
' Kahin, Major Governments of^Asia, p. 522.

CH. 48

INDEPENDENCE

847

people of the Moluccas were of Papuan stoqji, and that their government's record for dealing with its own aborigines was not a bad one.
The agitation began in 1952 when Holland refused further negotiations
on the subject. It was worked up to such proportions by Sukarno that
he has been accused of exploiting the grievance in order to distract
attention from internal troubles and the shortcomings of his own
administration. The losses both sides suffered from the affair were
enormous, both in terms of economic recovery and for the bitterness it
engendered. In October 1961 the Dutch offer to place West Irian under
the supervision of the United Nations, and to pay an annual, subsidy
for its maintenance, was scornfully rejected. Nationalistic ardour was
whipped up to the point of instituting operations to 'recover' it by
force of arms, regardless of the serious dangers Indonesia herself would
run, should they not achieve speedy and complete success. Following
appeals by U Thant, the Acting Secretary-General of the United
Nations, however, discussions began in America, and came to a successful conclusion on 15 August 1962, when both sides agreed that after
a short period of United Nations administration, from i October 1962
to I May 1963, West New Guinea was to pass under Indonesian
administration. Then later, in 1969, a Papuan self-determination
plebiscite was to be held, and Indonesia and the Netherlands pledged
themselves to abide by its results.
In 1949 the largest political parties were the Partai Nasional Indonesia
(PNI) and the Madjelis Sjuro Muslimin Indonesia (Masjumi). The
P N I was % continuation of the party founded in 1927 by Sukarno. It
had two diametrically opposed wings, one composed of Sukarno's old
associates, the 'old guard', extremely anti-Western and fiercely opposed
to Sjahrir's policy of moderation, and the other made up of younger
men willing to co-operate with the socialist leader and to pursue a
positive policy of progress. The Masjumi was a federation of Muslim
organizations, the 'Consultative Council of Indonesian Muslims', as
its name indicates. It also was a combination of conservative and
progressive elements. It dominated the first two cabinets. After the
secession of the traditionalist Nahdat'ul Ulama in 1952, its leadership
came into the hands of progressives, who, while pressing for Indonesia
to become an Islamic state, were not opposed to co-operation with the
West. It differed sharply with Sukarno on the subject of co-operation
with communism. Of the smaller parties Sjahrir's Socialist Party at
first exercised a good deal, of influence, but he had little popular support;
he believed firmly in a parliamentary executive, wanted to substitute
serious work for revolutionary ardour, and to come to an agreement
28

848

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

with the Dutch. It was gijeatly to the detriment of his country's interests
that at the first general election, which was not held until September
1955, his group of able and holiest men '^ost influence.
Four main parties emerged from the polls, the P N I and the Masjumi
with equal representation, the: Nadat'ul lllama next and the Communist
Party not far behind. The communist success was the most striking
result, and a foreboding of possible danger ahead. The parties advocating the creation of a Muslim state held only forty per cent of the total
seats of the Constituent Assembly. Unfortunately the way was not
paved for better government or even for stability: cabinets were still
too weak to deal resolutely with the great pressing problems. So there
was disillusionment with the parliamentary system and a period of
crisis, to which reference has been made above, set in. When the leadership of AH Sastroamidjojo of the PNI, a coalition of the anti-comrnunist
parties, failed to come to grips with the situation, Sukarno offered
'guided democracy' in March 1957 as the solution. There was to be a
new advisory National Council under his chairmanship, and an allparty cabinet including communists.
These proposals brought on a long dispute with the political parties,
and were ultimately rejected in 1959 by the Constituent Assembly
through the opposition of the Muslim parties. Whereupon by presidential decree of 5 July he dissolved the Constituent Assembly, abolished
the Provisional Constitution, and restored the constitution of 1945,
under which parliament could not overthrow the government. He then
personally undertook the dual role of head of state and prime minister.
He formed an inner cabinet of ten, and under it grouped twenty-five
deputy ministers. Members of the armed forces formed one quarter
of the membership of his government; all political activities were banned.
In March i960 he took two further steps by suspending parliament
for opposition to his budget proposals and substituting for it a ' Mutual
Co-operation' parliament composed of 130 members of political parties
and 131 of the armed forces and certain functional groups. At its
opening meeting on 16 August he announced the severance of relations
with the Netherlands because of that country's ' persistent refusal' to
transfer West Irian, and the dissolution of the Masjumi and Socialist
parties.
"
?
._.- If during the period reviewed in this section Indonesia's success in
coping with her political and economic problems since independence
has been somewhat doubtful, in the field of culture great progress has
been made. A vast programme of popular education has been set in
motion aiming at school attendance for all children between 8 and 14

CH. 48

INDEPENDENCE

849

by the year 1961 and at expanding secondaryaand university education

correspondingly. Her achievement in this field has been unparalleled
elsewhere in the world. And while obviously quality has been "sacrificed
to quantity, the overall advance has been tremendous; all the more so
when it is borne in mind that this has included the imposition of Indonesian as the universal language of instruction, and that through the
national languageunknown in many areas in 1950real progress has
been made in the great task of furthering national unity.
(e) The Union of Burma
The tide would have turned much faster in favour of the Burma
government had it not been for the invasion of General Li Mi's defeated
Kuornintang troops from Yunnan following upon the Communist
victory in China. During 1950 they were infiltrating in civilian clothes
into the Shan state of Kengtung. The Burma army drove them out
but they returned in force, regrouped at Monghsat and in April 1951
launched an abortive offensive into Yunnan. When again attacked by
the Burmese they took refuge in the frontier mountains. The diversion
of Burrriese troops against these invaders enabled the Communists,
Karens and other rebels to regain lost ground.
During 1952 Li Mi was receiving considerable aid from Formosa
through an American agency in Bangkok, and was building up his
strength around the Monghsat airstrip. He was also in alliance with the
Karen National Defence Organization. In January 1953 he attempted
an ofltensive across the Salween, but it was repulsed, and the Burmese
also captured some KNDO strongholds. At the same time the Burma
arrfiy was keeping up its pressure upon the Communists and the
rebellious elements of the People's Volunteer Army. But it did little
more than hold its own. In April of that year Burma renounced further
American aid and took the Kuomintang affair to the United Nations
General Assembly. The upshot was an agreement by the Taiwan
government to negotiate. At the end of the year, after long prevarication,
a bogus evacuation was staged. The Burmese followed it up by carrying
out 'Operation Bayinnaung', a major offensive, which resulted in the
capture of the K M T headquarters early in 1954. A further evacuation
was then ordered, but thousands of Li Mi's forces evaded it, and during
the year more reinforcements from Formosa were flown in. In April and
May 1955 the Burmese carried out another big military operation
against them, but even then many remained at large operating, under
central direction, along the Kengtung frontier, maintaining themselves

850

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

by opium smuggling, passing counterfeit currency and levying blackmail on the hill villages.
The constitution of the Union of BurAna contained three main
features, the creation of a parliamentary democracy embodying the
cabinet system and the rule of law; special treatment for certain nonBurman peoples involving separate constituent states for Shans,
Kachins and Karens and a special division for the Chins; and provision
for the establishment of a socialist welfare-state. As we have seen in an
earlier chapter, however, the outbreak of nation-wide rebellion on the
part of the Communists, of Aung San's People's Volunteer Organization,
defying disbandment, and of the Karens, severely handicapped the
efforts of U Nu and the AFPFL to get the new state on to its legs. In
June 1951 the internal situation had improved to the extent of making
it possible to hold, region by region, its first general election. By that
time also American aid had begun to flow in, and the outlines of a welfare programme were laid before the electorate by the AFPFL. It was
based upon an economic survey prepared by the Knappen-TippettsAbbet Engineering Company of New York which turned out to be
utterly unrealistic. The Korean war had stimulated a phenomenal rise
in the prices of raw materials - and foodstuffs, and Burma's foreign
exchange reserves had soared. The KTA's preliminary report, presented
in May 1952, created an atmosphere of false optimism, and at the
Pyidawtha Conference held in the following August to usher in the welfare state hopes ran so high that its report makes sad reading in the
light of subsequent events. Before the end of the year new Development
Corporations for Rural, Industrial and Mineral Resources had begun to
function, and were soon followed by a whole hierarchy of planning
commissions.
Then in 1953 came the beginnings of disillusionment. With the
Korean armistice the price of rice began to drop, and when in August
the full KTA report was presented it had slumped. The plan, based
upon the idea that rice exports would bring in an-ade^uate revenue to
finance a big industrialization programme, was seen to be unworkable.
American economic aid also had stopped on account of the K M T
trouble. Burrna's foreign-exchange reserves began to dwindle. There
was extravagance and corruption, while at the same time'the coiitinuanc"e
of insurgency held up the rehabilitation of mines, oil industry and timber
trade. Even as late as 1957 the insurgents held half the total'working
force of 3,000 elephants belonging to the Department of Forests. But
so strong was the belief that industrialization was the key to better
living standards and an independent ecooomy that revenues, which

CH. 48

INDEPENDENCE

851

should have been applied to agriculture for t^e improvement of crops,

methods of production and marketing, were spent on industrial schemes,
often fantastic. Burma had to learn her lesson in economics the hard
way. The most successful undertakings were the joint ventures in
mining and oil established between the government and the former
British companies; but civil disorder severely restricted their operations.
With seventy per cent of the labour force in agriculture the fortunes
of the country were bound up with the land situation. Two and a half
million acres of paddy land had gone out of cultivation under the
Japanese, but the subsidy offered by the returning British administration on every acre brought back under cultivation had been immediately
effective in raising output. The high price of rice in the world market
and the insatiable demand for it were further incentives. Indian
chettyar landlords, who had fled when the Japanese invaded, did not
return, so the problem of financing the farmers, who had assumed
possession of the lands they had previously held as tenants, had to be
faced. Under the various nationalization schemes, which the Union
government attempted to carry out after independence, there was
actually little redistribution of land, and although the aim was to build
up a system of co-operative farming, little progress was made in that
direction, while the distribution of loans through government agency
quickly led to bad debts on a huge scale.
All paddy for the market had to be sold at a fixed price to the State
Agricultural Marketing Board, which in the boom years up to 1953,
made huge profits on its rice exports. But when the slump began, and
the SAMB was left with unsold rice on its hands, its inefficient handling
of the rice, and bad storage in particular, gave Burma rice a bad name.
Assistance was forthcoming from the Ford Foundation in the training
of supervisors, and from the United Nations Food and Agriculture
Organization in the impro'vement of mechanical equipment, milling,
grading, storage and marketing. But the unsold, and unsaleable, rice
was ultimately disposed of in barter deals with Japan, China, the Soviet
Union and some of the communist countries of eastern Europe, and not
altogether to Burma's advantage, so far as what she received in exchange
was concerned.
The problem of the maintenance of national unity assumed increasing
urgency as time went on. In his negotiations with the non-Burman
' peoples Aung San had yielded to practically all their demands for constitutional rights. The constitution even went so far as to allow the
right of secession after ten years to the Shan and Karenni states. The
Karens failed in their attempt to withdraw by force from the Union and

852

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

establish an autonomous state, but guerrilla KNDO forces continued

to hold out. The Shan sawbwas favoured secession, but realized its
impracticability. Karenni insurgents demslnded independence. The
Arakanese in Arakan and the Mons in Tenasserim agitated for separate
statehood within the Union, and in 1958 JU Nu, having previously
refused their demands, expressed a willingness to create Arakanese and
Mon states, and invited three Arakanese to join his cabinet. The
Kachins could put a formidable army in the field, and became alarmed
and despondent late in 1956 when U Nu agreed to hand over to China
three Kachin villages, over which Britain had never claimed sovereignty,
in return for China's recognition of the Kachin boundary drawn by the
British in 1914.
In 1956 the AFPFL, which since the end of the Japanese war had
completely dominated the Burmese political stage, won the general
election with a reduced majority because of the strong opposition of
the ultra-left National Unity Front. U Nu accordingly resigned the
premiership in favour of his vice-premier U Ba Swe, and announced
that as president of the AFPFL he would devote the next few months
to the task of purging his party of corruption. In February 1957 he
returned to office, having appareptly been unable to achieve the purpose
for which he had resigned. Then it became obvious that a rift was
developing between him and his two deputies, Ba Swe and Kyaw Nyein.
In June 1958 they and thirteen other ministers resigned, and the party
split into two groups calling themselves respectively the ' Clean' and the
'Stable' AFPFL. U Nu at the head of the 'Clean' faction was kept
in power only by the votes of the representatives of the minority peoples
and of the National Unity Front. Surviving a vote of no confidence
in parliament by a mere eight votes, he promised to hold a general
election. Late in September of that year, however, he announced his
resignation and said he had requested the commander-in-chief of the
army. General Ne Win, to take over the government and pacify the country
so that a general election might be held before the, end of April 1959.
The split is explainable in terms of personal rivalries, but there was
also real discontent with Nu's government for lack of firmness and
administrative inefficiency. Army rule, on the other hand, showed
standards of efficiency and integrity that Burma had rfot known sincethe coming of independence. There was a remarkable clean-up of crime
and insurgency, as well as of much else. It was found to be impossible,
however, to hold elections as early as April 1959; parliament, therefore,
prolonged Ne Win's term of office. Presumably he could have taken
matters into his own hands without resort to-constitutional means, but

CH. 4 8

INDEPENDENCE

853

the significant fact is that at this stage of his career he showed the greatest
respect for the constitution.
As a result of his salvage operation a genuinely free and honest
general election was held in February i960. Its result was a walk-over
for Nu's ' Clean' AFPFL, and in the following April he resumed office.
This was not the sort of result the army leaders either expected or
desired. It was the support of the Buddhist Church and the dislike of
the average Burman for the vigorous methods of the army that won Nu
his victory, but it spelt the failure of democratic political institutions
in Burma. For the inefficiency and weakness, that had characterized
the latter part of Nu's previous administration, soon showed themselves
again, and national unity was once more in peril. As an observer on
the spot put it: 'the country was beginning to seethe, with the Karen
troubles still going on, and fresh outbreaks among Kachins and Shans'.^
It is against that background that the army coup d'etat of 2 March 1962
has to be seen.
Recognizing that world peace was vital to Burma's security, U Nu
based his foreign policy upon support for the United Nations. He
believed also that in face of the growing hostility between the two great
power blocs, headed by Washington and-Moscow respectively, the
path of safety lay in Nehru's neutralism and in the active cultivation
of good relations with Burma's neighbours. Hence his recognition of
the Chinese Republic in December 1949 and subsequent treaties of
friendship with Indonesia, India and Pakistan, and his goodwill visit
to Bangkok in December 1954 when he apologized for Burmese aggression against Siam in, earlier centuries. Hence also his co-operation with
India, Pakistan, Ceylon and Indonesia at the Colombo meeting of their
prim'e ministers in April-May 1954 when together they sponsored the
historic Afro-Asian Bandung Conference, which met in April 1955.
In all this, and in the gathering together in Burma in 1954 of the
Sixth Buddhist Council, Nu's idealism played its part, but he also displayed ample realism in his relations with China, which from Chou
En-lai's visit to Burma in June 1954 onwards assumed increasing importance in Burma's foreign policy. Burma's 1,500 miles of boundary
with China, and the presence in the country of a large Chinese community constantly on the increase through infiltration, were potential
sources of danger no one could ignore. Peking, however, made no
trouble out of the K M T question so long as Burma took adequate,
steps to deal with it, showed no interest in the Burmese communists,
and gave public assurances that China had no territorial ambitions. At
' Bernard Fergussen, Return to Burma, p- 249-

854

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

the Rangoon meeting in June 1954 Chou Eh-lai and Nu issued a joint
communique reaffirming their adherence to the Five Principles of Coexistence.
1
There were, nevertheless, two disputed areas on the Sino-Burmese
frontier, in the Wa States in the north-east of the Shan State and in the
Kachin State north of Myitkyina, and the Chinese maps of the Kuomintang period showed large parts of the Union as belonging to China.
There was a long history of attempts to delimit the frontier after the
British annexation of Upper Burma in 1886. In the Wa States region
joint efforts at agreement had broken down in 1900 leaving two hundred
miles of unmarked boundary. In 1934-5 an attempt on the part of the
Burma Corporation to prospect in the area led to a local war and the
consequent appointment of a new boundary commission under a neutral
chairman. Colonel Iselin, which reached agreement in 1937. China,
however, was at the time involved with the Japanese, and the final
settlement made only in 1941 by exchange of notes. This Communist
China refused to accept, and in 195,1 circulated the Kuomintang map
with its fantastic claims.
The Kachin area had been uncontrolled by either China or Burma. In
1906 Britain defined the border- as the watershed between the N'mai
Kha and Salween rivers, but the Chinese refused to accept this definition. In 1914, however, Britain despatched the MacMahon Mission to
draw the boundary unilaterally. In 1932 the Kuomintang propaganda
chief in Yunnan published a pamphlet agitating for the 'recovery' of
the 'Triangle', the northern Kachin area between Iridia and Yunnan.^
To this the British government replied in 1934 by a formal announcement of its control over the area.
M
In their 1954 conversations Nu and Chou En-lai agreed to settle
these boundary questions; but the niatter dragged on, and in 1956
China caused no little concern in Burma by using the technique of
intrusions by her troops in both areas. So in October of that year Nu
went to Peking and as a result it was announced-that China was prepared to accept the Iselin and MacMahon lines in returiTfor the cession
of the Kachin village tracts of Hpimaw, Gawhim and Kangfang, and a
small readjustment of the frontier between Bhamo and Namkhan.
There was very strong opposition from the Kachins,'and the matteragain hung fire. Finally in i960 a treaty was signed in Peking., It was
very much along the lines indicated by China in 1956.^ It left the frontier for the most part following the identical line handed over to Burma
' Yunnan Pien-ti Wen-ti Yan-chin, translated by J. Siguret in Territoires et Populations des Confins du Yunnan, Peiping, 1937.
* Keesing's Contemporary Archives, p. i728-D._, ^

CH. 48

INDEPENDENCE

855

by Britain in 1948. To obtain this result Burma neither joined the

Communist bloc nor abandoned her policy of suppressing communist
rebels. Moreover, she continued to watch the frontier situation
anxiously.
(/) Thailand
Political instability during the post-war period, as we have seen in
the previous chapter, had landed Thailand with a military dictatorship.
Field Marshal P'ibun was maintained in control by an army group
against the antagonism of the navy and marines, and while various
political groups and leaders were struggling among themselves he was
solidly building up his own power. It nearly toppled over in June 1951
when' the navy and marines kidnapped him, but after three days of
fighting the army and air force quelled the revolt. P'ibun's closest
associates in running the government were General P'ao Sriyanon, the
director-general of police and General Sarit Thanarat, commander of
the Bangkok army. The triumvirate, however, had very shaky foundations, for both P'ao and Sarit were candidates for the succession and
headed opposing cliques. To add to P'ibun's troubles, his opponents,
the Democrat Party, led by Khuang Aphaiwong, whom he had supplanted in 1948, had while in office appointed a committee to draft a
new 'permanent' constitution, which had begun to function in January
1949. Under it there was a bicameral parliament, the lower house of
which was elected by universal adult suffrage, and the upper appointed
by the king. This meant that P'ibun's group had no direct control over
the composition of parliament, while the Democrat Party with a number
of seats in both houses was in a position to embarrass the government,
though unable to exert any real power. So in November 1951 P'ibun
carried out another coup d'etat, abolished the 1949 constitution, and
announced the revival of the original constitution of 1932. This provided for a unicameral parliament in which half of the seats were filled
by executive appointment. Of the 123 appointed members of the new
house nearly all were army officers.
P'ibun's strongest card was his intense opposition to communism
both at home and abroad, and his tough nationalistic line in dealing
with the large Chinese community in Thailand. The Chinese in Thailand welcomed with immense enthusiasm the victory of the ' People's
Liberation Army' in China in 1949. The Chinese Communist Party of
Thailand became a power in the land, while communist influence
increased in the Chinese labour unions, schools and press. Long before
28*

856

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN POMINATION

PT. IV

this Thai national sentiment had been aroused against the Chinese, but
now severe decrees were issued ^excluding them from a long list of
occupations, closing many of their schools land taking action against
their newspapers. The annual registration fee for aliens, which in 1939
had been four baht, was by a law passed in 1952 raised to four hundred
baht. Under the nationality law of Thailand anyone born in the country
became a Thai national unless registered at birth with the consular
representative of his father's nationality. In 1953, however, this was
amended to exclude children whose parents were Chinese.
In November 1952 the police claimed the existence of a communist
plot to overthrow the government, and carried out a long series of raids
in Bangkok, arresting hundreds of Chinese, temporarily paralysing the
activities of their associations and closing their schools. A sweeping
Un-Thai-Activities Act was pushed through parliament forbidding
communist activities under heavy penalties, and General P'ao asserted
that if all the Chinese who had transgressed the act were to be arrested,
their number would run to 100,000 or even 200,000. The antiChinese campaign, which continued with great acerbity throughout
1953, was partly inspired by the communist revolts that were taking
place in Vietnam, Laos, Burma and Malaya, which had given the rulers
of Thailand a real sense of insecurity. It may be suggested, however,
that more enlightened measures could have been, but were not, adopted
because anti-communism and anti-Sinicism were tools admirably
suited for suppressing political opposition and useful arguments in
justification of military dictatorship.
In foreign affairs P'ibun's anti-communist policy took the form of
refusing to recognize the Peking regime, opposing China's enjjiji into
the United Nations, and without hesitation espousing the United
Nations' cause in Korea in 1950. As the counterpart of this policy he.
built up ever closer co-operation with the United States, particularly in
its antagonism towards Communist China. In 1954, when Dien Bien
Phu was besieged,and Mr. Dulles called for 'united.action' to meet the
communist threat in South-East Asia, Thailand -responded with
enthusiasm. She became an active participant in the formation of the
South-East Asia Treaty Organization ,(SEATO) at Manila, and welcomed the decision to locate its headquarters at B^ngkok:^ P'ibun..
wanted stronger military guarantees than were incorporated in the pact,
and in 1955 offered SEATO bases in his country.^
/
' Collective Defence in South East Asia, Chatham House Report, London, 1956, p. 2.
' Russell H. Fifield, The Diplomacy of Southeast Asia, 1945-58, New York, 1958,
pp. 271-2.
,C^

CH. 4 8

INDEPENDENCE

857

Close diplomatic relations between America and Thailand had begun

in 1950 with a conference of senior American diplomats in the Far East
at Bangkok and visits to Thailand by American economic and military
survey missions. Agreements for economic and technical co-operation
and for military assistance were signed between the two countries. In
1951 America decided to grant Thailand military aid under the Mutual
Security Act. Substantial American aid thus began to be allocated to
Thailand: by 31 March 1955 the figure amounted to nearly 64 million
dollars. Much of it was in military aid, but also through the Special
Technical and Economic Mission in Bangkok, which undertook to
examine the economic needs of the country: assistance was given to
irrigation works, railway rehabilitation and extension, port improvements, road construction, electricity generation and many other projects.
American technicians went to work in Thailand and to train various
types of specialists there. Special help was given in malaria control and
in improving rice culture. The list is impressive, but the programme
has been criticized. It was said to be lacking in real co-ordination, and,
worse still, to be a means whereby certain Thai politicians were enabled
to divert other funds to their own uses.^ Whatever be the truth of this,
it can be 'fairly said that American aid benefited Thailand herself. It
also helped to maintain her military dictatorship in power.
In.1955 P'ibun went on a tour of the United States and Britain.
His return home ushered in a change of policy as dramatic as it was
inexplicable. Political repression was lifted, democracy was to be
allowed to bloom, political parties might be registered, politics might
be freely discussed in the central park in Bangkok as in London's Hyde
Park, the prime minister would give regular press conferences, there was
to be' a devolution of power from the centre to the local authorities, the
Chinese were to have rights approaching as near as possible to those
of Thai citizens, and naturalization was to be encouraged. What were
P'ibun's motives? He may have been playing for popular support to
strengthen his position vis-d-vis generals P'ao and Sarit. On the other
hand, having seen democracy at work in the United States and Britain,
he may have genuinely wanted to create the same sort of political conditions in his own country; and, so far as the Chinese were concerned,
the Bandung Conference had convinced him that while Communist
China did not contemplate military adventures in South-East Asia,
she was likely to be a strong competitor for the loyalty of the
Chinese in Thailand. The Thai delegation left Bandung with the
distinct impression that general diplomatic recognition of the Peking
' James C. Ingram, Economic Change in Thailand since 1850, 1955, p. 223.

858

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

regime and China's admission to the United Nations must soon

come.
As soon as controls were relaxed no less than twenty-five political
parties sprang into existence. Much the largest was the official Seri
Manangkhasila, which included all the government's parliamentary
supporters. The leftist parties formed a Socialist Front and attacked
the government's foreign policy. The 'Hyde Park' orators and the
press attacked the government with tremendous aplomb. And although
General P'ao spent many millions of baht upon Seri Manangkhasila
Party propaganda, the government won only a bare majority at the
general election of February 1957. Even then it was publicly accused
of falsification of ballot papers. So strong were the expressions of public
dissatisfaction that the government declared a national emergency, and
the experiment in democracy came to a sorry end.
The new government formed by P'ibun after the election was weak
from internal faction struggles, with antagonism between P'ao and Sarit
gradually approaching breaking-point. Sarit had avoided playing any
overt part in the general election, and afterwards managed to dissociate
himself from the Seri Manangkhasila Party. When the state of national
emergency was declared, he was appointed commander-in-chief of the
army. He and his group held a stronger position in the cabinet than
P'ao. In August 1957 they resigned as a body, and on the night of 16-17
September Sarit and the army carried out a bloodless coup which overthrew the government. P'ibun fled the country; P'ao was allowed to
go into exile; parliament was dissolved and the constitution suspended.
Nai Pote Sarasin, the Secretary-General of SEATO, was then placed
in charge of a caretaker government. On 15 December a general
election was held, but no party achieved an overall majority. Accordingly
a coalition, known as the National Socialist Party, was formed out of the
123 nominated members, the 45 members of the Unionist Party, a
centre party, and 40 of the members of the Seri Manangkhasila, who
had been elected as independents. A new prime'minister, General
Thanom Kittikachorn, then took office and Nai Pote returned to his
SEATO post.
A few months laters, on 20 October 1958, yet another bloodless coup
d'etat took place, when Marshal Sarit, who had been for several months
in the United States and England undergoing medical treatment,
secretly returned home, sacked the prime minister and cabinet, and
assumed power at the head of a military junta calling itself the ' Revolutionary Party'. All political parties were again abolished, and a large'
number of arrests made for alleged breaches of the Anti-Communism

CH. 4 8

INDEPENDENCE

859

Law. Foreign observers on the spot, however, reported that there was
no evidence of any communist danger, but that the real reason for the
coup was that the government was faced with bankruptcy owing to the
shrinkage of its foreign exchange reserves and a cut of nearly 24 million
dollars in American aid for 1958. The impasse, it was suggested, had
arisen because of the, revival of anti-Chinese discrimination which had
caused the Chinese community to lose confidence in the government.
It controlled over 80 per cent of the country's non-agrarian capital.^
The 'Revolutionary Party' proceeded to impose an 'interim' constitution providing for the appointment of a Constituent Assembly, which
would both draft a permanent constitution and exercise legislative
powers. Moreover, the prime minister might govern by decree and
take any necessary emergency action. Marshal Sarit himself took over
as prime minister on 9 February 1959.
The story of Thailand's attempts to achieve political stability makes
disappointing reading. So far, constitutional democracy has failed there,
public control over the government has proved ineffective, and politics
have been dominated by the competition of various bureaucratic cliques
for the spoils of government and for personal enrichment through
corruption.
When, however, one turns to the social scene, the picture is brighter.
The expansion of education since the war has been very rapid, and
compulsory primary education was almost universal. The standards
at all levels, however, tended to remain low. Population has grown
rapidly, yet standards of living have been maintained. The economy
remained based upon agriculture, but the evils of landlordism and
agricultural indebtedness never developed in Thailand to the pitch
found elsewhere among her neighbours, and with the high degree of
internal peace, which had existed for well over a century, there was
contentment verging upon spiritual lethargy. As an American observer
put it: 'Thailand is a relatively well-to-do country. If much of its
wealth consists in the opportunities provided by nature for the enjoyment of leisure and a good life, it is not out of harmony with the temperament of the people.'^
{g) The Philippines
The year 1950 saw the nadir of post-independence Filipino public
administration after the corrupt elections of the previous year. It began
^Manchester Guardian, 3 November 1958.
^ Thailand, Economic Survey Group, Report on Economic Development Plans,
Bangkok, 1957, p. 11, quoted in 'Thailand' by David A. Wilson, in Governments and
Politics of Southeast Asia (ed. Kahin), p. 62.

86o

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

with SO grave a fiscal aqd balance-of-payments crisis that President

Truman sent an Economic Survey Mission under Senator Daniel Bell,
and emergency measures had to be taken to I enable the government to
meet its day-to-day monetary obligations. Xet it was estimated that
from V-J Day up to January 1950 some two billion dollars' worth of
American aid had been given to the Philippines. The Hukbalahap threat
also assumed new proportions in that year when the party changed its
name to Hukbong Mapagpalaya ng Bayan (People's Liberation Army)
and called for the total overthrow of the government.
President Quirino, however, displayed statesmanship and vigour in
meeting the situation. He appointed Ramon Magsaysay Secretary of
National Defence, and gave him full support in a campaign against the
Huks, which achieved rapid success and transformed the internal
situation. He also began at once to carry out the measures of reform
recommended in the Bell Mission's report of October 1950, and there
was a sharp reaction from the financial irresponsibility of the earlier
post-war administrations. American policy played its part in the change,
for the United States undertook an economic aid programme of 250
million dollars spread over five years, but 'strictly conditioned' by the
Philippines carrying out the Bell Mission's recommendations. Accordingly a series of fiscal measures was passed which made the tax
revenue of 1951-2 double that of 1949-50. A Central Bank was established with strict control over credit. An Agricultural Credit and Cooperative Financing Administration was created together with Farmers'
Co-operative Marketing Associations. A minimum wage law was passed,
and what was magniloquently termed a 'Magna Carta of Labour'
permitting collective bargaining. And further American support in the
form of a definitive defence commitment resulted from the collapse of
the Kuomintang government in China; in August 1951 a Mutual
Security Treaty was signed between the Philippines and the United
States in Washington.
The effects of, Quirino's economic measures -myst not be overestimated. There was not the same drive to implementtKem as to pass
them, and the graft and corruption remained unpurged. T i t t l e was done
to tackle the problems of land reform and agricultural poverty, and-the
country's foreign exchange earnings continued to be inadequateT More-over, Quirino's economic policy alienated the sugar planters, thereby
weakening the Liberal Party. The elections of 1951 revealed how little
support it had in the country. Magsaysay's security .measures and the
activities of the new National Movement for Free Elections ensured
that they were honestly conducted; they^resulfed in heavy Liberal

CH. 4 8

INDEPENDENCE

861

losses to the Nacionalista Party. When two ye^rs later Magsaysay broke
with Quirino and was adopted as Nacionalista candidate for the
presidency, he and the party won a complete victory all along the line.
Magsaysay took over amid a wave of enthusiasm for cleaning up the
administration and raising its efficiency. He cleaned up the Bureau of
Customs and greatly jeduced corruption in the allocation of foreign
exchange. But without an adequate supply of capable lieutenants
imbued with his zeal for reform there were limits to what he could
effectively accomplish, and he soon began to run into difficulties on
this score. He infused much more vigour into the enforcement of the
measures passed by the Quirino government, but his own special
efforts were in the field of agricultural reform. He established a
National Rehabilitation and Resettlement Administration to encourage
internal migration and land settlement, created a Court of Agrarian
Relations, and appointed an Agricultural Tenancy Commission. But
the landowners in his party were opposed to any measures likely to
interfere too harshly with their own property rights, and the act which
he promoted in the legislature for the distribution of agricultural estates
to the cultivators was emasculated through their influence.
His policy was to stimulate expansion at the cost of unbalancing the
budget, and his efforts to extend the agricultural co-operative movement and the system of rural banks resulted in a vast increase of
agricultural credit. But the rapid expansion of credit to the government
by the Central Bank led to price inflation and the deterioration of the
balance of payments position. On the other hand there was considerable
expansion, and it was rapid. During the years 1954-7 the index of
production rose by 25 per cent. Magsaysay's own party with intense
nationalistic ardour promoted a law to exclude all aliens, save United
States citizens, from the retail trades, and the import and export controls were used to increase Filipino participation in the import trade
and to protect domestic industries. There was growing anti-Americanism, and in the political controversy, which became acute in 1956 when
the administration's honeymoon period was over, the opposition made
political capital out of Magsaysay's good relations with the United
States. There was great annoyance over the American bases in the
Philippines, and it became bitter when the United States Attorney
General expressed the view that his country held them in absolute
ownership. Even a joint statement by Magsaysay and Vice-President
Nixon recognizing Philippine sovereignty over them did little to allay
the feelings aroused. Among other things it was claimed that American
aid was a subtle form of colonialism aimed at prolonging Philippine

862

THE CHALLENGE TO EUROPEAN DOMINATION

PT. IV

economic dependence upsn the United States and blocking industrial

development.
The sudden death of Magsaysay in an aeroplane crash in March 1957
was a disaster for the Philippines. He left a yery difficult economic
situation for his successor, Vice-President Garcia, to cope with.
Garcia's method was to introduce an austerity programme of credit
restriction and stringent exchange controls. When he had to relax it
before a storm of protest, he went cap in hand first to Washington and
later to Tokyo. In both cases credits were made available, but they
were tied to specific projects: they were not available to ease the general
exchange position of the Philippines. So once again the Philippines had
resorted to the policy described by Professor Frank Golay as ' mendicancy and erratic belt-tightening'.^ Nevertheless, there had been useful
expansion in the Philippine economy, and evidence was not wanting
that the Philippine policy makers were profiting by experience and gaining in competence.
Magsaysay had been a popular leader. Garcia, like Quirino before
him, was comparatively unknown, and achieved and maintained power
through his manipulation of the party organization and of patronage.
But whereas Quirino and Garcia dealt with the political bosses, Magsaysay deliberately appealed to the masses. He felt himself called upon,
as he put it, 'to restore the people's faith in the government'. And
although an increase of corruption and political irresponsibility followed his death, he had demonstrated new political techniques to the
electorate, and set a useful example.
One very interesting new departure under Magsaysay arose from the
establishment of the South-East Asia Treaty Organization through the
signature of the Manila Pact in 1954. Till then the Philippines had
looked eastwards to America rather than westwards to Asia. Now its
membership of the Organization made it more aware of its Asian setting.
In the following year it participated in the Bandung Conference. Thus
it began to build up significant contacts with Asia7 and-tq_show signs
of a desire to pursue a policy in the field of international relations free
of the guiding-strings of Washington.
* Op. cit., p. 98.^

APPENDIX

APPENDIX
DYNASTIC LISTS, WITH GOVERNORS AND
GOVERNORS-GENERAL
Burma and Arakan:
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
F.
G.
H.
I.
Cambodia:
A.
B.
C.
D.

Rulers of Pagan before 1044

The Pagan dynasty, 1044-1287
Myinsaing and Pinya, 1298-1364
Sagaing, 1315-64
Ava, 1364-1555
The Toungoo dynasty, 1486-1752
The Alaungpaya or Konbaung dynasty, 1752
1885
Men rulers of''Hanthawaddy (Pegu)
Arakan
/
Funan
Chenla
The Angkor monarchy
The post-Angkor period

Champa:
A. Linyi
B. Champa
Indonesia and Malaya:
A.
B.
C.
'
D.
E.
J

Java, Pre-Muslim period

Java, Muslim period
Malacca
Acheh (Achin)
Governors-General of the Netherlands East In

Tai Dynasties:

A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
F.
G.

Sukhot'ai
Ayut'ia
Bangkok
Muong Swa
Lang Chang
Vien Chang (Vientiane)
Luang Prabang
/^~
864

APPENDIX

865

Vietnam:
A.
B.
C
D.
E.
F.
G.
H.
L
J.
K.
L.
M.
N.
O.
P.
Q.

The Hong-Bang, 2879-258 B.C.

T h e T h u c , 257-208 B.C.
T h e Trieu, 207-111 B.C.
T h e Earlier Li, A.D. 544-602
T h e Ngo, 939-54
T h e Dinh, 968-79
The Earlier Le, 980-1009
The Later Li, 1009-1225
The Tran, 1225-1400
T h e Ho, 1400-1407
T h e restored T r a n , 1407-18
T h e Later Le, 1418-1804
T h e Mac, 1527-1677
The Trinh, 1539-1787
The Tay-Son, 1778-1802
The Nguyen
Governors and governors-general of French IndoChina

APPENDIX
DYNASTIC LISTS
BURMA
A.

AND

ARAKAN

RULERS OF PAGAN BEFORE

1044

(According to the Burmese chronicles)

I.

date of
accession
. 167
242
299
324
344
387

Pyusawti

2. Timinyi, son of i

34S6.
7-

Yimminpaik, son of 2
Paikthili, son of 3 .
Thinlikyaung, son of 4
Kyaungdurit, son of 5
Thihtan, son of 6

412

(439-97 usurpers)

8. Tharamunhpya, grandson of 7
9- Thaiktaing, son of 8
Thinlikyaungnge, son of 9

10.
Thinlipaik, brother of 10
II.
Hkanlaung, brother of 10
12.

13-

Hkanlat, brother of 10

H- Htuntaik, son of 13
ISi6.
I?i8.
19.
20.
21.
22.
2324.

2526.
27.
28.

Htunpyit, son of 14
Htunchit, son of 15
Popa Sawrahan, usurping priest
Shyfe Onthi, son-in-law of 17
Peitthon, brother of 18
Ngahkwe, son of 19
Myinkywe, usurper
Theinhka, of blood royal
Theinsun, son of 22
Shwelaung, son of 23
Htunhtwin, son of 24
Shwemauk, son of 25
Munlat, brother of 26
Sawhkinhnit, son of 27

866

494
516
523
532
547
557
569
582
598
613
640
652
710
716
726
734
744
753
762
78s
802

APPENDIX

867
>

29.
30313233343536.

date of
accession

Hkelu, son of 28
. ,
.
Pyinbya, brother of 29 (founder of Pagan, 849)
Tannet, son of 30 .
Sale Ngahkwe, usurper
,
Nyaung-u Sawrahan, usurper
Kunhsaw Kyaunghpyu, son of 31 .
Kyiso, son of 33
.
Sokka-te, brother of 35
.

829
846
878
906
931
964
986
992

B. T H E PAGAN DYNASTY, 1044-1287

List compiled from the chronicles:

5.
6.
7.
8.

9
10,
II.
12

13
14

Anawrahta
Sawlu, son of i
Kyanzittha, son of i
Alaungsithu, grandson of 3
Narathu, son of 4 .
Naratheinhka, son of 5
Narapatisithu, brother of 6
Nantaungmya (Htilominlo), son of 7
Kyaswa, son of 8
Uzana, son of 9
Narathihapate (Tarokpyemin), son of 10
Kyawswa, son of 11
Sawhnit, son of 12 .
Uzana, son of 13

1044
1077
1084
1112
1167
1170

"73
1210

1234
1250
1254
1287
1298
1325

List compiled from the inscriptions by Professor G. H. Luce

Kings of Pukam,
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.

1044-1287

Aniruddha (Anawrahta)
Mart Lulan (Sawlu)
Thiluin Man (Kyanzittha)
Caiisu I (Alaungsithu)
Tmtaw Syah (Narathu)
Cafisii I I (Narapatisithu)
Natonmya, (Nantaungmya) son of 6
Narasingha Uccana, (Naratheinhka) son of 7
Klacwa (Kyaswa), brother of 8
Uccana, (Uzana) son of 8 .
Man Yan, son of 10
Tariikpliy (Narathihapate), brother of 11
.

1044?- 1077?
1077?- 1084
1084- 1113
1113- 1165?
1165?- 1174
" 7 4 - 1211
1211- 1231?
1231?- 1235
1235- 1249?
1249?- 1256?
1256
1256: 1287

868

APPENDIX

C. RULERS OF MYINSAING AND PINYA, 1298-1364

1

I.
2.

Athinhkaya
"j
Yazathinkyan r T h e Three Shan Brothers

33456.

Thihathu

dale of
accession
1298

Thihathu, at Pinya
Uzana, son of Kyawswa of Pag an
^Ngashishin, half-brother of 4
Kyawswange, son of 5
7- Narathu, brother of 6
8. Uzana Pyaung, brother of 6
9- Thadominbya, descendant of 3 (founder of Ava)
D . RULERS OF SAGAING,
I.
2.
3456.
7-

I.
2.
3456.
78.
910.
II.
12.
13141516.
1718.
19.

Thadominbya (of Pinya)

Nga Nu, usurper
Minkyiswasawke
Tarabya, son of 3
Nga Nauk Hsan, usurper
Minhkaung, son of 3
Thihathu, son of 6
Minhlange, son of 7
Kalekyetaungnyo, son of 4
Mohnyinthado
Minrekyawswa, son of 10
Narapati, brother of 11
Thihathura, son of 12
Minhkaung, son of 13
Shwenankyawshin, son of i^
Thohanbwa, usurper
Hkonmaing, usurper
Mobye Narapati, son of 17
Sithukyawhtin, usurper

1324
1343
1350
1359
1364
1364

1315-64

Sawyun, son of Thihathu

Tarabyagyi, stepbrother of i
Shwetaungtet, son of 2
/
Kyaswa, son of i .
Nawrahtaminye, brother of 4
/
Tarabyange, brother of 4
Minbyauk Thihapate, brother- in-law of 6
E. RULERS OF

1312

131S
1323
1336
1340
1350
1350
1352

AVA, 1364-1555

.
.

1364
1368
1368
I401
1401
1401
1422
1426
1426

""---.

1427
1440

' .

'

1443
1469
I481

/ ' 1502

/ .

J^-.

1527
1543
1546
1552

869

APPENDIX

F. T H E TOUNGOO DYNASTY, 1486-1752

date of
accession

Minkyinyo
Tabinshwehti, son of i
.
.
3- Bayinnaung, brother-in-law of 2
4- Nandabayin, son of 3
nnterregnum 1599-1605^
I.
2.

S6.
78.
910.
II.
12.

1314.

i486
1531
1551
1581

Anaukpetlun, grandson of 3
Minredeippa, son of 5
Thalun, brother of 5
Pindale, son of 7
.
Pye, brother of 8
. _
Narawara, son of 9
Minrekyawdin, nephew of 9
Sane, son of 11
Taninganwe, son of 12
Mahadammayaza Dipati, son of 13
G:

1605
1628
1629
1648
1661
1672
1673
1698
1714
1733-52

T H E ALAUNGPAYA OR KONBAUNG DYNASTY, 1752-1885

Capitals at Shwebo (1752-65), Ava (1765-83), Amarapura (1783-1823),

Ava (1823-37), Amarapura (1837-57) ^"d Mandalay (1857-85)
I.
2.

34S6.
78.
90.
1.

Alaungpaya of Shwebo
Naungdawgyi, son of i
.
Hsinbyushin, brother of 2 .
Singu Min, son of 3
Maung Maung, son of 4
.
(Reigned only seven days)
Bodawpaya, son of i
Bagyidaw, grandson of 6
.
Tharrawaddy, brother of 7 .
Pagan Min, son of 8
Mindon Min, brother of 9 .
Thibaw, son of 10 .
H.

MoN

1752
1760
1763
1776
1781
1781
1819
1838
1846
1853
1878

RULERS OF HANTHAWADD^i (PEGU)

Thamala, legendary founder of Pegu

Wimala, brother of i
3- Atha, nephew of 2 .
.
.
' .
4- Areindama
.
'
.
5- A monk
I.

2.

825
837
854
861
88s

870

APPENDIX
date of
accession
902
917
932
942
954
967
982
994
1004
IO16
1028
1043

6.
78.
9lO.

Geinda
.
Migadeippagyi
Geissadiya .
Karawika
Pyinzala
Attatha
Anuyama .
Migadeippange
Ekkathamanta

11.
12.
1314.
15- Uppala
16. Pontarika
17- Tissa

,.
f
i
1

(N.B. up to this point the list is purely traditional)

18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
2324.
2526.
27.
28.
29.
303132.
333435-

Wareru, son-in-law of Rama Khamheng of Sukhot'ai

Hkun Law, brother of 18 .
Saw 0 , nephew of 19
Saw Zein, brother of 20
Zein Pun, usurper .
Saw E Gan Gaung, nephew of 21
Binnya E Law, son of 19
Binnya U, son of 24
Razadarit, son of 25
Binnya Dammayaza, son of 26
Binnya Ran, brother of 27
Binnya Waru, nephew of 28
Binnya Kyan, cousin of 29 .
^
Mawdaw, cousin of 30
Shin Sawbu, daughter of 26
.1
Dammazedi, son-in-law of 32
Binnya Ran, son of 33
Takayutpi, son of 34
(Burmese rule 1539-1550) ' ^

36. Smim Sawhtut, usurper

37- Smim Htaw, son of 34

-^

(Burmese rule 1551-1740)

.
38- Smim Htaw Buddhaketi
39- Binnya Dala, father -in-law (>f38

1287
1306?
13IO
1324
1331
1331
1331
1353
1385
1423
1426
1446
1450
1453
1453
1472
1492
1526

'
.

(Mon independence extinguished 1757)

.
y

155c
1451
^

; . ' 1740
^1747

871

APPENDIX
1. RULERS OF ARAKAJJ

The chronicles list fifty-four kings of the Dinnyawadi first dynasty

(2666 B.c.^825 B.C., and fifty-three kings of the second dynasty (825 B.cA.D. 746). These must be regarded as purely mythical. Then follow:
Vesali dynasty, 12 kings, 878-1018
First Pyinsa dynasty, 15 kings, 10181103
Parin dynasty, 8 kings, 1103-67
Krit dynasty, 4 kings, 1167-80
Second Pyinsa dynasty, 16 kings, 1180-1237
Launggyet dynasty, 17 kings, 1237-1433
Mrohaung (Mrauk-u) dynasty, 1433-1785
The complete list is in A. P. Phayre, History of Burma, pp. 289-304.
G. E. Harvey, op cit., pp. 369-72, gives it from A.D. 146.
From the Sanskrit inscriptions of Arakan the late Professor E. H.
Johnston^ put together two lists of rulers. The historicity of the first cannot
be checked, but it is probably a little nearer to fact than the lists of early
rulers in the chronicles. It runs:
duration
of reign

I.
3456.
78.
910.
11.
12.
1314.

Bahubalin
Raghupati
Candrodaya
The Annaveta kinigs
Rimbhyappa (?)
Kuverami or Kuvera, a queen
Umavirya (?), husband "of 11
Jugna (?)
Lanki

. 1 2 0 years
120
120
120
120
120

27

5
77
23

5
20

7
2

The second list is of a Candra dymsty. The coins of six of these rulers
have been found. Johnson suggests that the dynasty began between A.D.
330 and 360. The chronicles show a Candra dynasty reigning between 788
and 1018. But save for its name and length, 230 years, it bears no resemblance to the other. Johnson's comment is:' It would seem that the Chronicles
derived ultimately from an authentic list, which has survived in a form
corrupted beyond hope of restoration.'^
^ ' Some Sanskrit Inscriptions of Arakan', BSOAS, xi, 2, pp. 357-85.
" loc. cit., p. 369.

872

APPENDIX

The Candra Dynasty {Johnson's list)

i
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.

Dven Candra
Rajacandra
Kalacandra
Devacandra
Yajnacandra
Candrabandhu
Bhumicandra
Bhuticandra
Niticandra
Viryacandra
Priticandra
Prthvicandra
Dhrticandra

duration
of reign

55 years
20
1

9
22

7
6
7
24

55
3
12

7
3
TAe Mrohaung Dynasty
date of
accesnon

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
g.
io.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.

Narameikhla, son of King Rajathu

Ali Khan, brother of i
Basawpyu, son of 2
Dawlya, son of 3 .
Basawnyo, uncle of 4
Yanaung, son of 4
Salingathu, uncle of 6 on mother's side
Minyaza, son of 7 .
Kasabadi, son of 8 .
Minsaw O, brother of 7
Thatasa, son of 4
Minbin, son of 8
Dikha, son of, 12.
Sawhia, son of 13
Minsetya, brother of 14
Minpalaung, son of 12
Minyazagyi, son of 16
Minhkamaung, son of 17
Thirithudamma, son of iS
Minsani, son of 19 .
Narapatigyi, great-grandson of 11
Thado, nephew of 21
Sandathudamma, son of 22

1404
1434
1459
1482
1492
1494
1494
1501

1523
1525
1525
1531
1553
1555
1564
ii7i
iS93_
1612
1622
1638
1638
1645
1652

APPENDIX

24. Thirithuriya, son of 23

25. Waradhammaraza, brother of 24
26. Munithudhammaraza, brother of 25
27. Sandathuriyadhamma, brother of 26
28. Nawrahtazaw, son of 27
29. Mayokpiya, usurper
30. Kalamandat, usurper
31. Naradipati, son of 27
32. Sandawimala, grandson of 22
33. Sandathuriya, grandson of 23
34. Sandawizaya, usurper
35. Sandathuriya, son-in-law of 34
36. Naradipati, son of 35
37.'Narapawara, usurper
38. Sandawizaya, cousin of 37
39. Katya, usurper
40. Madarit, brother of 38
41. Nara-apaya, uncle of 40
42. Thirithu, son of 41 .
43. Sandapavama, brother of 42
44. Apaya, brother-in-law of 43
45. Sandathumana, brother-in-law of 44
46. Sandawinala, usurper
, 47. Sandathaditha
48. Thamada .

873
date of
accession

1684
1685
1692
1694
1696
1696
1697
1698
1700
1706
1710
1734
1735
1737
1737
1737
1742
I761
I761
1764
1773
1777
1777
1782

CAMBODIA
A . FUNAN

Kaundinya (Hun-t'ien)

latter part of first century A. D.

2. Hun P'an-h'uang
3. P'an-p'an, son of 2 .
(reigned three years)
4. Fan Shih-man, general
5. Fan Chin-sheng, son of 4
6. Fan Chan, usurper
7. Fan Ch'ang, son of 4
8. Fan Hsun, usurper .

second half of second century

early third century

Chu Chan-t'an

c. 205-c. 225

came to throne c. 240

reigning in 287
reigning in 357

APPENDIX

874

died before 434

embassies to China 434-5

10. Kaundinya I I
11. Che-li-pa-mo
12.

(Kaundinya) Jayavarman

13- Rudravarman

reigning in
died
succeeded to throne
reigning in

484
514
514
539

B. CHENLA

I.
2.

3456.

date of
accession
c. 550
c. 600

Bhavavarman I, grandson of Rudravarman of Funan

Mahendravarman (Chitrasena), brother of i
Isanavarman I, son of 2
.
Bhavavarman II, relationship unknown
Jayavarman I, son of 4( ?) .
Jayadevi, widow of 5

c. 611

63S(?)
. c. 650
reigning in 713

{a) Aninditapura
Baladitya
Nripatindravarm^n, grandson of Baladitya, latter half of seventh
century
Pushkaraksha, son of above, marries heiress of Sambhupura
(6) Sambhupura
Sambhuvarman, son of Pushkaraksha, first half eighth century
Rajendravarman, son of above, died in last quarter of eighth century
Mahipativarman, son of above
C. T H E ANGKOR MONARCHY

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.

Jayavarman I I
Jayavarman I I I , son of i
Indravarman I, cousin of 2 .
Yasovarman I, son of 3
Harshavarman I, son of 4
Isanavarman II, brother of 5
Jayavarman IV, usurper
v
Harshavarman II, son of 7 .
Rajendravarman II, grandson of 3
Jayavarman V, son of 9
Udayadityavarman I, maternal nephew
w of 10
[Jayaviravarman, ioo2(?)-ioii(?)]
Suryavarman I, usurper

"

"

date of
accession
802(?)
850
877
889
900
c. 922
928
'
942
944
/
968
lOOI

1002

APPENDIX

875
date of

)
14.
IS16.
1718.
19.
20.
21.
22.

2324.
2526.
2728.
29.
30.
3132.
333435-

Udayadityavarman I I , son of 13
.
.
.
Harshavarman I I I , brother of 14
.
Jayavarman VI, usurper
.
.
.
.
Dharanindravarman I, brother of 16
Suryavarman I I , maternal great-nephew of 17
Dharanindravarman I I , cousin of 18
Yasovarman II, son of 19 .
.
.
Tribhuvanadityavarman, usurper
Jayavarman V I I , son of 19 .
Indravarman II, son of 22 .
Jayavarman VIII, grandson( ?) of 23 .
Indravarman I I I , son-in-law of 24 .
Indrajayavarman, a relative of 25
Jayavarman Paramesvara, a relative of 26
L. P. Briggs's list of the remaining kings of Angkor:
Hou-eul-na
.
.
.
.
Samtac Preah Phaya
Samtac Chao Phaya Phing-ya, Nippean Bat .
Lampong, or Lampang Paramaraja .
Sorijovong, Sorijong, or Lambang .
Barom Racha, or Gamkhat Ramadhipati
Phommo-Soccorach, or Dharmasoka
Ponha Yat, or Gam Yat

accession

1050
1066
1080
I107
II13
1150
I160
1166
I181
c. 1219
1243
129s
1308
i327-S3(?)

reigning in 1371
died 1404 or 1405
1405-9
1409-16
1416-25
1425-29
1429-31
1432-

D . T H E POST-ANGKOR PERIOD
I.
2.

3456.
78.
910.
11.
12.

1314.
IS16.
1718.

Ponhea Yat .
.
.
Preah Noreay, son of i
Preah Srei, son of i .
Thommo Reachea, son of i
Chau Pnhea Damkhat, son of ^i
Kan, brother-in-law of 5
Ang Chan, son of 4 .
Barom Reachea I, son of 7
Satha (Chettha I), son of 8
Reamea Ghung Prei, usurper
Barom Reachea I I , son of 9
Barom Reachea I I I , son of 8
Chau Pnhea Nhom, son of 9
Barom Reachea IV, son of 8
Chettha II, son of 14 .
Ponhea T o , son of 15
Ponhea Nu, son of 15
Ang Non I, son of 14

1432
1467
1472
1476
1494
187s
1505 (or 1516)
1556 ( o n 566)
1576
IS94
1596
IS99
1600
1603
1618
1628
1630
1640

876

APPENDIX

date of
accession
1642
1659
1672
1673
1674
167s
1695
1695
1699

Chan, son of 15
.
. '
. ,
Batom Reachea, grandson of 15
. '
Chettha III, son-in-law and nephew of 20
Ang Chei, son of 20 .
.
. 1
Ang
Non,
usurper
.
.
. .
2324. Chettha IV, son of 20 .
25- Outey I, nephew of 24, reigned six months
26. Chettha IV (second reign)
27. Ang Em, son-in-law of Chettha IV
1701
28. Chettha IV (third reign)
1702
29. Thommo Reachea, son of Chettha IV
1703
so- Chettha IV (fourth reign)
Thommo Reachea (second reign)
1706
32.
Ang Em (second reign)
1710
33Satha II, son of 32 .
1722
34Thommo Reachea (third reign)
1738
35- Ang Ton, son of 34 .
1747
36. Chettha V, nephew of 35, grandson of 34
1749
37- Ang Ton (second reign)
1755
38- Preah Outey II, grandson of, 37
1758
39- Ang Non II, brother of 37
.
!77S
1779
40. Ang ng, son of 37 .
(Interregnum 1796-1806)
1806
41. Ang Chan II, son of 40
42. Ang Mey, daughter of 41
1834
.
.
.
.
184 or 1845
43- Ang Duong, son of 41
44. Norodom, son of 43 .
1859
1904
.
45- Sisovath, son of 43
.
. .
1927
46. Monivong, son of 45 .
1941
47- Norodom Sihanouk, nephew of 46,' great-grandson of 44
.
48. Norodom Suramarit, father of 47
. 1955
N.B.Norodom Suramarit died in April i960 and Norodom Sihanouk (No. 47)
was appointed Chief of State.
19.
20.
21.
22.

CHAMPA

'

A . LlNYI

.
K'iu-lien
Son
Fan Hsiung .
Fan Yi
Wen (previously chief minister)
Fan Fo embassies to China
Fan Hu-ta, son r f Fan Fo

192

?
'
.

/
.-

-/"

^'

.
.

270
c. 284

336
.372, 377
?

877

APPENDIX
B. CHAMPA

According to G. Maspero, Le Royaume de Champa.

First Dynasty, A.D. 192-336
date of accession
unless
otherwise indicated
192

Sri Mara
X, son of Sri Mara
Son and grandson of X
Fan Hioiig
FanYi .

reigning in 270
end of reign 336
Second Dynasty, 336-42o( ?)

Fan Wen
Fan Fo .
Bhadravarman I .
Gangaraja
Manorathavarman
Wen Ti

336
349
reigning in 377

Third Dynasty, 42o( ?)-S29( ?)

.

42o(?)-5io(?)
reigning in 510
reigning in 526-7

Seven rulers with title Fan

Devararman
Vijayavarman
Fourth Dynasty,

S29(?)-757(?)

Rudravarman I .
Sambuvarman .
Kandharpadharma
Bhasadharma
Bhadresvaravarman
Daughter of Kandharpadharma
Prakasadharma Vikrantavarman I
Vikrantavarman I I
Rudravarman II
Fifth Dynasty
Prithindravarman
Satyavarman

S29(?)
reigning in 605
. 629(?)
end of reign 645
645

653
686(?)-73i(?)
reigning in 749

-JsK'^)-'^S9{'^)
7S8(?)
between 774 and 784

878

APPENDIX
date of accession
unless
othervjise indicated

Indravarman I .
Harivarman I
Vikrantavarman III

I . between 787 and 801

between 8o3(?) and 8i7(?)
*.
reigning in 854
Sixth Dynasty, 87s(?)-99i(?)

Indravarman II .
Jaya Sinhavarman I
Jaya Saktivarman
Bhadravarman II
Indravarman III
Jaya Indravarman I
Paramesvaravarman I
Indravarman IV
Lieou Ki-Tsong

between 875 and 889

between 898 and 903
reigning in
end of reign
between 960 and
end of reign

910
959
965
982
982

. 986(?)
Seventh Dynasty, 99i(?)-io44(?)

Harivarman II .
Yan Pu Ku Vijaya
Harivarman III
Paramesvaravarman II
Vikrantavarman IV
Jayasinhavarman II

99i(?)

between 999 and

reigning in
reigning in
end of reign

1007
loio
1018
1030
1044

Eighth Dynasty, 1044-74 (?)

Jaya Paramesvaravarman I
Bhadravarman III
Rudravarman III

.
1044
reigning in 1061
1061

, Ninth Dynast', 1074 (?)-ii39-(?,)

Harivarman IV .
Jaya Indravarman II (first reign) .
Paramabhodisatva
Jaya Indravarman II (second reign)
Harivarman V .
.

'.

1074 (?)
1080
1081
'-.
1086

between 1114 and 1129

Tenth Dynasty, 1139 (?)-45 (?)

Jaya Indravarman III

"39(?)

879

APPENDIX

Eleventh Dynasty, 1145 (?)-i3i8

date of accession
unless
othenoise indicated

Rudravarman IV
Jaya Harivarman I
Jaya Harivarman II
Jaya Indravarman IV

reigning in 1145 (?)

1147

'ii67(?)

(Division into two kingdoms)

A. KINGDOM OF VIJAYA

Suryajayavarman
Jaya Indravarman V .

1190
1191

B. KINGDOM OF PANRANG

Suryavarman

1190

(Kingdom reunited)
Suryavarman (of Panrang)
(A Khmer province 1203-20)
Jaya Paramesvaravarman I I
Jaya Indravarman VI
.
Indravarman V
.
Jaya Sinhavarman I I
.
Jaya Sinhavarman I I I
.
Che Nang
.
.

1x92-1203

1220

.
.

.
.

Twelfth Dynasty,

reigning in 1254
1265 (?)
end of reign 1307
1307
1312-1318

1318-90

Che Anan
T r a Hoa
Che Bong Nga .

1318
.
1342
end of reign 1390
Thirteenth Dynasty, 13 90-145 8
1390

Ko Cheng
Jaya Sinhavarman V
Maha Vijaya
Moho Kouei-lai
Moho Kouei-yeou

1400

1446
1449
Fourteenth Dynasty,

Moho P'an-lo-yue
P'an-lo T'ou-ts'iuan
29

1458-71
-

1458
1460

APPENDTX

88o

INDONESIA

AND

MALAYA

A. JAVA, PRE-MUSLIM PERIOD

(Compiled from Krom, Hindoe-Javaansche Geschiedenis)

(N.B.^The blanks indicate that no, date is known).
I. West Java
reigmng
in A.D.

Devavarman (?)
Purnavarman
P'o-to-kia
Dvaravarman (?)

132
c. 400
424
435

Jayabhupati

1030

Niskalavastu
Deva Niskala
Ratu Devata
Sanghyang

1333-57
1552

/ / . Middle Java
Sinio(?)
.
.
Sanjaya, Raka Mataram .
Pancapana, Raka Fanangkaran
Raka Panunggalan
Raka Varak
Raka Ganing
Raka Pikatan
Raka Kayuvangi
Raka Vatu Humalang
Balitung, Raka Vatukura
Daksa, Raka Hino
Tulodong, Raka Layang
Vava, Raka Pangkaya

"'^~~--, - ^
*

III.
Devasimha
Gajayaiia
A . . . nana (?) .
Sindok, Raka of Hino

East Java

829 or 839
864 (?)
. 879-82
886
898-910

915
. 919-21
. 924-28

/
/.'
. '

674
732
778

760

929-47

APPENDIX

rngmng
in A.D.
Sri Isanatunggavijaya, daughter of Sindok (married to Lokapala) . 947 (?)
Makutavamsavardhana, son of above
.
Dharmavamsa Anantavikrama
991-1007
Airlangga
1019-49
Juru (? Janggala)
1060
Jayavarsa of Kediri
1104
Kamesvara I
II15-30
Jayabhaya
"35-57
1160
Sarwesvara
Aryyesvara
1171
Kroncaryyadipa, Gandra
1181
Kamesvara I I .

1185
Sarwesvara I I , Srngga .
1190-1200
Kertajaya
1216-22
j

IV. Singosari and Majapahit,

I.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
II.
12.
13.

1222-1451
date of
accession
1222
1227
1248
1248
1268
1292

Rajasa (Ken Angrok)

.
.
.
.
Anusapati, stepson of i
Tohjaya, son of i
Vishnuvardhana, son of i
. Kertanagara, son of 4
Jayakatwang of Kediri, usurper
.
Kertarajasa Jayavardhana (Vijaya), nephew and son-in -law
ofs
.

1293
Jayanagara, son of 7

1309
Tribhuvana, daughter of 7 .

1329
Rajasanagara (Hayam Wuruk), son of 9

1350
Vikramavardhana, nephew and son-in-law 0: ' 10

1389
Suhita, daughter of 11

1429
Kertavijaya (Bhre Tumapel] , son of 11
1447-51

V. East Java Kings after 1451

Rajasavardhana, Bhre Pamotan .

1451

(Interregnum 1453-6)
Hyang Purvavisesa, Bhre Vengker
Singhavikramavardhana, Bhre Pandan Solar
Ranavijaya
.
.'
.
Pateudra
.
.
.
.

1456
1466-78 (.')
reigning in i486
reigning in 1516

882

APPENDIX
B.'^JAVA, MUSLIM PERIOD

/. Bantam

'

1. Susuhunan Gunung Jati (Faletahan)

2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

' .
\
Maulana Hasanuddin (Pangeran Sebakinking) son of i
Maulana Yusup (Pg. Pasarean), son of 2
Maulana Muhamjad (Pg. Sedangrana), son of 3
Sultan Abdul Kadir, son of 4
Abdul Fatah, Sultan Agung, son of 5
Abdul Kahar, Sultan Haji, son of 6 .

date of
accession
1526
(died c. 1570)
C. 1550

1570
1580

1596
1651
1682-7

II. Demak
Raden Patah Senapati Jimbun, son of 'Bravijaya', last king of
Majapahit
.
.
.
.
.
.
(?)
Adipati Yunus, son of i
.
.
.
.
.1518
Pg. Sultan Tranggana, brother of 2 .
.
.
1521-46
Pg. Sultan Prawata, son of 3
.
.
.
.
(})
Aria Pangiri (Adipati?), son of 4
.
.
.
.
(?)
Pangeran Mas ('king of Java'), son of 5
.
.
.
(?)
/ / / . Rulers of Mataratn
Sutavijaya Senopati
.
.
.
.
.
.
Mas Djolang
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Tjakrakusuma Ngabdurrahman, Sultan Agung {1625 takes title of
Susuhunan)
.
.
.
.
.
.
Prabu Amangkurat I, Sunan Tegalwangi
.
.
.
Amangkurat 11 .
.
.
,
.
.
.
Amangkurat III, Sunan Mas
.
.
.
.
.
Pakubuwana I, Sunan Puger
.
.
.
.
.
Amangkurat IV
.
.
.
. ^^ .
.
Pakubuwana II
.
.
.
.
/"~^ '
Pakubuwana III
.
.
.
.
.
.
(Division of Mataram into Surkarta and Jogjakarta, 1755)

1582
1601
1613
1645
1677
1703
1705
1719
^V^S
1749
,^

IV. Rulers of Surakarta

Pakubuwana
Pakubuwana
Pakubuwana
Pakubuwana

III (of Mataram)

IV
V
VI

1788
1820
1823

. v-

APPENDIX

date of
t

Pakubuwana
Pakubuwana
Pakubuwana
Pakubuwana
Pakubuwana
Pakubuwana

VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII

'

accession

1830

1858

1861

1893
1939
1944

V. Sultans of Jogjakarta
Abdurrahman
Abdurrahman
Abdurrahman
Abdurrahman
Abdurrahman
Abdurrahman
Abdurrahman
Abdurrahman
Abdurrahman

Amangkubuwana I, Mangkubumi
Amangkubuwana II, Sultan Sepuh
Amangkubuwana III, Raja
Amangkubuwana IV, Seda Pesijar
Amangkubuwana V, Menol
Amangkubuwana VI Mangkubumi
Amangkubuwana VII
Amangkubuwana VIII
Amangkubuwana IX
C.

175s
1792
1810
1814
1822
1855
1877
1921
1939

MALACCA

Paramesvara (Megat Iskandar Shah)

Sri Maharaja, son of above
Raja Ibrahim, son of above
Raja Kasim (Muzaffar Shah), half-brother of above
Mansur Shah, son of above
Ala'ud-din Riayat Shah, son of above
Mahmud, younger brother of above

1403
1424
1444
1446
1459
1477
1488-1511

D. AcHEH (ACHIN)

Ali Mughayat Shah

. ' .
Salah ud-din ibn Ali
Ala'ud-din al-Qahhar ibn Ali
Husain
Sultan Muda (a few days)
Sultan Sri Alam
Zainal Abidin
Ala'ud-din of Perak (Mansur Shah)
Sultan Boyong .
.
.
Ala'udrdin Riayat Shah .
Ali Riayat Shah

1496
1528
1537
1568
1575
1575
1576
1577
1589 (?)
1596
1604

884

APPENDIX
*

date of
accession

Iskandar Muda (Meukiita Alam)

.
1 .
.
1607
1636
Iskandar Thani
.
.
.
.
Safiyat ud-din Taj al-Alam bint Iskandar Muda 'widow (jf Iskan
1641
dar Thani) .
.
.
.
i
Naqiyat ud-din Nur al-Alam
.
1
167s
1678
Zaqiyat ud-din Inayat Shah
1688
Kamalat Shah Zinat ud-din
1699
Badr al-Alam Sharif Hashim Jamal ud-din
1702
Perkara Alam Sharif Lamtui
Jamal al-Alam Badr al-Munir
1703
1726
Jauhar al-Alam Amin ud-din (a few days)
1726
Shams al-Alam (a few days)
Ala'ud-din Ahmad Shah
'I727
Ala'ud-din Shah Jahan .
1735
1760
Mahmud Shah (until 1781)
B t d i \id-dKv ^wtA\l 1^*5^5^

^1^\

Sulaiman Shah
.
.
^ .
Ala'ud-din Muhammad .
.
.
Ala'ud-din Jauhar al-Alam I (under regent until 1802)
Sharif Saif al-Alam
.
_ . ''
Jauhar al-Alam II
.
.
.
Muhammad Shah ibn Jauhar al-Alam I
Mansur Shah
.
.
.
.

^ns
1781

(Dutch occupation 1874)

E. GOVERNORS-GENERAL OF THE NETHERLANDS EAST INDIES

1609 Pieter Both

1614 Gerard Reynst
1616 Laurens Reaal
1618 Jan Pieterzoon Coen
1623 ! Pieter de Carpentier
1627 , Jan Pieterzoon Coen
1629 Jacques Specz (acting)
1632 Hendrik Brouwer
1636 Anthony van Diemen
1645 Cornells van de Lijn
1650 Carel Reyniersz
1653 Joan Maetsuycker
1678 - Rijklof van Goens
1681 Cornells Speelman
1684 Johannes Camphuijs

1795
1815
1818
1824
1838

APPENDIX

885

1691 Willem van Outhoorn

1704 Johan van Hoorn
*
Abraham
van
Riebeeck
1709
I7I3 ChristofFel van Swoll
1718 Henricus Zwaardecroon
1725 Matheus de Haan
1729 Dirk Durven
1732 Dirk van Cioon
1735 Abraham Patras
1737 Adriaan Valckenier
I74I Johannes Thedens
1743 Gustaaf W. van ImhofF
1750 Jacob Mossel
1761 P. A. van der Parra
1775 Jeremias van Riemsdijk
1777 Reinier de Klerk
1780 William A. Alting
1796 Pieter van Overstraten
1801 Johannes Siberg
1805 Albert H. Wiese
1808 Herman W. Daendals
1811 Jan Willem Janssens
1811 Thomas Stamford Raffles (Lieut.-Gov. of t h e English East India
Company)
1816 John Fendall (Lieut.-Gov. of the English East India Company)
1816 Commissaries-General of William I of the Netherlands
i 8 i 8 G. A. Baron van der Capellen
1826 L. P. J. Viscount du Bus de Ghisignies (Commissary-General)
1830 J. Count van den Bosch
1833 J. C. Baud
1836 D. J. de Eerens
1840 P. Merkus

1844 J. C. Reynst
1845 J. J. Rochussen
1851 A. J. Duymaer van Twist
1856 C. F . Pahud
1861 L. A. J. W. Baron Sloet van den Beele
1866 P. Mijer
1872 J. Loudon
1875 -J- W. van Lansberge
1881 F. 's Jacob
1888 C. Pijnacker Hordijk
1893 C. H. J. van der Wijk
1899 W. Rooseboom

886
1904
1909
I9I6
I92I
1926
I93I
1936
1942

APPENDIX

J. B. van Heutsz
A. F. van Idenburg'
J. P. Count of Limburg-Stirum
1
D. Fock
A. C. D. de Graeff
1
B. C. de Jonge
'
A. W. L. Tjarda van Starkenborgh-Stachpuwer
H. J. van Mook (to 1948) (Lieut-.Gov.-Gen.)
TAI

DYNASTIES

A. SUKHOT'AI

date of
accetsion

1. Sri Int'arat'itya
.
.
.
.
.
.
2. Ban Miiang, son of i
.
.
.
.
3. Rama Khamheng, brother of 2
.
.
4. L6 T'ai, son of 3 .
.
.
.
.
.
5. T'ammaraja Liit'ai, son of 4
.
.
.
.
6. T'ammaraja II, son of 5
.
.
.
7. T'ammaraja III, son of 6 .
.
.
.
8. T'ammaraja IV, brother of 7 ^
.
. '
.
(T'ammaraja IV and subsequent rulers were merely hereditary
under Ayut'ia.)

.1238
.
(?)
. c. 1275
c. 1317
1347
1370 (?)
.
1406
.
1419
governors

B. AYUT'IA

date of
accession
I.
2.

342.

56.
78.
910.
II.
12.

1314.
1516.

Rama T'ibodi
Ramesuen, son of i
Boromoraja I, uncle of 2
T'ong Lan, son of 3
Ramesuen (second reign)
Ram Raja, son of 2 .
Int'araja, nephew of 3
Boromoraja II7 son of 6
Boromo Trailokanat, son of 7
Boromoraja III, son of 8
Rama T'ibodi II, brother of 9
Boromoraja IV, son of 10 .
Ratsada, son of 11 .
P'rajai, half-brother of 11
Keo Fa, son of 13 .
Khun Worawongsa, usurper
Maha Chakrap'at, brother of 13

1350
1369
1370
1388
1383
1395
1408
1424
1448
1488

14911529
1534
IS34
1546
1548
1S49

APPENDIX

887
date of
accession

17.
18.
ig.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.

Mahin, son of 16 .
Maha T'ammaraja, Chief of Sukhot'ai
Naresuen, son of 18
Ekat'otsarot, brother of 19
Int'araja I I (Songt'am), son of 20
Jett'a, son of 21 , .
At'ityawong, brother of 22
Prasat T'ong, usurper
Chao Fa Jai, son of 24
Sri Sutlammaraja, brother of 24
Narai, brother of 25
P'ra P'etraja, usurper
P'rachao Sua, son of 28
T'ai Sra, son of 29
Maha T'ammaraja II (Boromokot), brother of 30
Ut'ump'on, son of 31
Boromoraja V (Ekat'at), brother of 32
C.

1.
2.
3.
. 4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

1569
15(19
1590
1605
1610
1628
1630
1630
1656
1656
1657
1688
1703
1709
1733
1758
1758-67

BANGKOK

P'ya Taksin, Chinese general in Siamese service

Rama I (P'ra P'utt'a Yot Fa Chulalok), Siamese general
Rama II, son of 2 .
Rama I I I (P'ra Nang Klao), son of 3
Rama IV (Maha Mongkut), brother of 4
Rama V (Chulalongkorn), son of 5 .
Rama Y l (Maha Vajiravudh), son of 6
Prajadhipok, brother of 7 .
Ananda Mahidol, nephew of 8
Bumipol Adulet, brother of 9

1767
1782
1809
1824
1851
-1868
1910
1925
193s
1946

D. MUONG SWA
List of thirty-five rulers, undated, u p to the year 1316, the date of the
birth of Fa-Ngoun, founder of the kingdom of Lang Chang, taken from
local chronicles (Le Boulanger, Histoire du Laos Franpais, pp. 39-40).
1.
2.
3.
4;
5.
6.

Phaya-Nan-Tha (of Ceylon ?)

Phaya-Inthapatha (of Cambodia), who married his predecessor's widow
Thao-Phou-Tha-Saine, son of 2
Phaya-Ngou-Lueum, son of 3.
Thao-Phe-Si, son of 4
Ay-Saleukheuk, son of 5
29*

APPENDIX

7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
19.
20.
21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33.
34.
35.

Ay-Tjet-Hai, son of 6
Thao-Tiantha-Phanit, a betel-nut, merchant who came from Vientiane
Khoun-Swa, a Kha chief
1
Khoun-Ngiba, son of 9
Khoun-Viligna, son of 10
I
Khoun-Kan-Hang, son of 11
Khoun-Lo, eldest son of a Tai prince
Khoun-Swa-Lao, son of 13
Khoun-Soung
Khoun-Khet
Khoun-Khoum
Khoun-Khip
Khoun-Khap
Khoun-Khoa
Khoun-Khane
Khoun-Pheng
^
Khoun-Pheng
Khoun-Pheung
Khoun-Phi
,
Khoun-Kham
Khoun-Houng
Thao-Thene, son of 27
Thao-Nhoung
Thao-Nheuk
Thao-Phin
Thao-Phat
;
Thao-Vang
Phaya-Lang-Thirat
Phaya-Souvanna-Kham-Phong, son of 34, father of Thao-Phi-Fa and
grandfather of Fa-Ngoun
E. LANG CHANG

(List compiled from Le Boulanger, op cil.)

'

' - ,1

date of

, ~"~'

I.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9,

Fa Ngoun .
.
.
Sam Sene T'ai, son of i
Lan Kham Deng, son of 2 .
P'ommat'at, son of 3
Pak Houei Luong, son of 2
T'ao Sai, brother of 5
"P'aya Khai, son of 3
Chieng Sai, son of 2
Son of 3, name unknown

.
?

:Ar

accession

-1353
-=,1373
_.
1416
1428"
1429
/ '
1430
H30
1433
1434

889

APPENDIX

date of
accession

10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
'17.
18.
19.
18.
20.

Kam Kheut, son of a palace slave

Sai Tiakap'at, son of 2
T'ene Kham, son of 11
La Sene T'ai, brother of 12
Som P'ou, son of 13
Visoun, son of 11
P'ot'isarat, son of 15
Sett'at'irat, son of 16
Sene Soulint'a (regent)
Maha Oupahat, relationship uncertain
Sene Soulint'a (king)
Nakhone Noi, son of 18
(Interregnum 1583-91)

1435
1438
1479
i486
1496

21.
22.
23.
24.
25.
26.
27.
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.

Nokeo Koumane, son of 17

T'ammikarat, cousin by marriage of 21
Oupagnouvarat, son of 22 .
P'ot'isarat I I , son of 18
Mone Keo, brother of 24 .
Oupagriaovarat,, son of 25 '\
Tone Kham, son of 26
1 dates unknown
Visai, brother of 27
)
Souligna Vongsa, son of 27 .
T i a n T ' a l a , son-in-law of 29
Nan T'arat, usurper
.
.
.
Sai Ong Hue, grandson of 29

1591.
1596
1622
1623
1627

1501
1520

i54
1571
1575
1580
1582

.
.

1637
1694
1700

1700

In 1707 the kingdom was split up into two independent states with
capitals at Vien Chang (Vientiane) and Luang Prabang.
F . VIEN CHANG (VIENTIANF.)

1. Sai Ong Hu^, of Lang Chang

2. Ong Long, son of i
,3. Ong Boun, son of 2

(1700)
1735
1760

(Interregnum 1778-82)
4. Chao Nan, son of 3
5. Chao In, brother of 4
6. Chao Anou, brother of 5

1782
1792
1805-28

G. LUANG PRABANG

King Kitsarat, son of 29 of Lang Chang

Khamone Noi, cousin and son in law of i

1707
1726

Sgo

APPENDIX
date of
accession

3. Int'a Som, brother of i

4. Sotika Koumane, son of 3 .
5. I'iao-Vong, brother of 4
(Interregnum 1787-91)
6. Anourout, son of 3
7. Mant'a T'ourat, son of 6
S. Souka Seum, son of 7
9. Tiantha, brother of 8
10. Oun Kham, brother of 9
(Interregnum 1887-94)
11. Zakarine, son of 10 .
12. Sisavang Vong, son of 11

1727
1776
1781
1791
1817
1836
1851
1872

1894
1904

VIETNAM
A.

T.v.F XjfiEv.p.*.vy X>xv.i?7y A" TJJS JJiwr-.^^^^?, sSfq-s^^

B.C.

Kingdom called Van-Taiig

Capital at Phong-chau
B. T H E T H U C DYNASTY

Kingdom called Au-lac

Capital at Loa-thanh
date of
accession

T h u c An-Duong Vuong

2 5 7 - 2 0 8 B.C,

C. T H E TRIEU DYNASTY

Trieu
Trieu
Trieu
Trieu
Trieu

Kingdom called Nam-vi^t

Capital at Phien-ngu (Fan-yu)
Vo-Vuong (or Vo-De)
.
.
.
Van-Vuong,
.
.
.
' .^
Minh-Vuong
.
.
.
.
Ai-Vuong
Vuong Kien-Duc
.
.
.

.
"^;
.

207 B.C.
136
124
112
III

(Kingdom incorporated in China) >

D . T H E EARLIER L I DYNASTY

Capital at Song-bien
Li Nam-Viet De Bon (Li Bi)
Trieu Viet-Vuong Quang-Phuc, usurper

A.D. 544
549-71

APPENDIX

891
date of
accession

Li Dao-Lang Vuong Thien-Bao

Li Hau-De Phat-Tu

549-55
571-602

(602 Vietnam again under Chinese domination)

E. T H E N G O DYNASTY

Kingdom called Dai-co-viet

Ngo Vuong Quyen
Duong-Binh Vuong Tam-kha, usurper
Ngo Nam-Tan Vuong Xuong-Van
Ngo Thien-Sach Vuong Xuong-Ngap

939
945
951-65
951-4

(965-8 period of anarchy)

F. T H E D I N H DYNASTY

Dinh Tien-Hoang De
Dinh De-Toan .

968
979

G. T H E EARLIER L E DYNASTY

Le Dai-Hanh Hoang-De
Le T r u n g - T o n Hoang-De

980
1005

H. T H E LATER L I DYNASTY

Li
Li
Li
Li
Li
Li
Li
Li
Li

Thai-To (Cong- Uan)

Thai-Ton (Phat Ma)
Thanh-Ton .
Nhon-Ton .
Than-Ton
Anh-Ton
Cao-Ton
Hue-Ton
Chieu-Hoang

1009
1028
1054
1072
II27
II38
II75
I2I0
1224
L T H E TRAN DYNASTY

Tran
Tran
Tran
Tran

Thai-Ton
Thanh-Ton
Nhon-Ton
Anh-Ton

1225
1258
K78
1293

892

APPENDIX
date of
accession

Tran Minh-Ton
Tran Hien-Ton
Tran Du-Ton
Duong Nhut-Le
Tran Nghe-Ton
Tran Due-Ton
Tran De-Hien {or Phe-De)
Tran Thuan-Ton
Tran Thieu-De

1314
1329

11

1341
1369
1370

1372

1377
1388
1398

J. THE Ho

DYNASTY

Ho Qui-Li
Ho Han-Thuong

1400
1400-7

K.

THE RESTORED TRAN

I r a n Ue-Uui or I r a n Gian-Uinh De
Tran De Qui-Khoang .
.

DYNASTY

1407
1409-13

L. T H E LATER L E DYNASTY

Le Loi or Binh-Dinh Vuong

Le Nga, usurper
Tran Cao, usurper
Le Thai-To or Cao Hoang-De .
Le Thai-Ton or Van Hoang-De
Le Nhon-Ton or Tuyen Hoang-De
Le Nghi-Dan, usurper .
Le Thanh-Ton or Thuan Hoang-De
Le Hien-Ton or Due Hoang-De
Le T u c - T o n or Kham Hoang-De
Le Ui-Muc De ,
Le Tuong-Duc De
Tran Cao
Tran T h a n e 1
Le Bang
| "'"''P^*''
Le Du
Le Chieu-Ton or Than Hoang-De
Le Hoang-De-Xuan {or Thung) or Cung Hoang-De

1418
1420
1426
1428
1433
1442
1459
1460
1497
1504
1504
1509
I516

-^-

I516
?

.
y'

(Interregnum of the Mac:

Mac-Dang-Dung
Mac Dang-Doanh

.
.

r~~
r

1527
1530)

1518
iSi"8~
1516-26
1522-7

\PPENDIX

893
date of
accession

ij

Le Trang-Ton or Du Hoang-De
Le Trung-Ton or Vo Hoang-De
Le Anh-Ton or Tuan Hoang-De
Le The-Ton or Nghi Hoang-De
Nguyen Duong-Minh, usurper .
Nguyen Minh-Tri, usurper
Le Kinh-Ton or Hue Hoang-De
Le Thanh-Ton or Uyen Hoang-De
Le Chan-Ton or Thuan Hoang-De
Le Than-Ton or Ugen Hoang-De
Le Huyen-Ton or Muc Hoang-De
Le Gia-Ton or Mi Hoang-De .
Le Hi-Ton or Chuorig Hoang-De
Le Du-Ton or Hoa Hoang-De .
Le De Duy-Phuong
Le Thuan-Ton or Gian Hoang-De
Le I-Ton or Huy Hoang-De
Le Hien-Ton or Vinh Hoang-De
Le Man Hoang-De
.
.

1533

1548
1556
1573
1597
1597
1599
1619
1643
1649
1662
1671
1671

1705
1729

1732
1735
1740
1786-1804

M. THE MAC DYNASTY

Mac
Mae
Mac
Mac
Mac
Mac
Mac
Mac
Mac
Mac

Dang-Dung
Dang-Doanh
Phuc-Hai .
Phuc-Nguyen
Mau-Hop .
Toan
Kinh-Chi .
Kinh-Cung
Kinh-Khoan
Kinh-Hoan

1527
1530
1540
1546
1562
1592
1592
IS93
1623
1638-77

N. THE TRINH FAMILY OF TONGKING

Trinh
Trinh
Trinh
Trinh
Trinh
Trinh
Trinh
Trinh

Kiem
Coi
Tong
Trang
Tac
Con
Cuong
Giang

1539
1569
1570
1623
1657
1682
1709
1729

894

APPENDIX
date of
accession

Trinh
Trinh
Trinh
Trinh
Trinh

Dinh
Sam
Can
Khai
Phung

1740
1767
1782
1782
1786-7

O. THE TAY-SON RULERS

Nguyen Van Nhac, eldest of the three brothers .

Nguyen Van-Hue, younger brother
Nguyen Quang-Toan, son of Van-Hue .

P. THE NGUYEN OF

1778-93'
1788-92
1792-1802

Hue

Nguyen Duc-Trung
.
.
.
(?)
died 1513
Nguyen Van-Lang
died 1518
Nyuyen Hoang-Du
Nguyen Kim
.
.
. -^
.
died 1545
1558-1613
Nguyen Hoang
Nguyen Phuc-Nguyen .
. succeeded 1613
1635
Nguyen Phuc-Lan
A 1648
Nguyen Phuc-Tan
1687
Nguyen Phuc-Tran
1691
Nguyen Phuc-Chu
Nguyen Phuc-Chu
1725
Nguyen Phuc-Khoat
1738
Nguyen Phuc-Thuan
.
.
,
1765
1778
Nguyen (Phuc)-Anh (becomes Emperor'(jia-long of Annam)
1802
Gia-Long
1820
Minh-Mang
1841
Thieu'-Tri
1848
Tu-Duc
-7~"
1883
Nguyen Due Due
.1883
Nguyen Hiep-Hoa
.
. '
^
1884
Kien-Phuc
-
1885
Ham-Nghi
1886
Dong-Khanh
1889
Thanh-Thai
1907
Duy-Tan
/
1916
Khai-Dinh
Bao Dai

1925
^

^ ^

APPENDIX
Q.

GOVERNORS AND GOVERNORS-GENERAL OF FRENCH INDO-CHINA

Civil Governors
M. Le Myre de Vilers, July 1879-November 1882
M. Thomson, January 1883-July 1885
General Begin, July 1885-June 1886
M. Filippini,, June i886-October 1887
Noel Pardon, 23 October-2 November 1887, Lieut.-Gov. interimaire
Piquet, 3 November-15 November 1887, Lieut.-Gov. interimaire

Governors-General
Con^tans, November 1887-April 1888
Richaud, April 1888-May 1889
Piquet, May 1889-April 1891
Bideau (interimaire)
De Lanessan, April 1891-October 1894
Rodier (interimaire)
Rousseau, December 1894-March 1895
Foures (interimaire)
Paul Doumer, February 1897-March 1902
Paul Beau, October 1902-February 1907
Bonhoure (interimaire)
Klobukowsky, September 1908-January 1910
Picquie (interimaire)
Luce, FebruaryNovember 1911
Albert Sarraut (ist term), November 1911-January 1914
Van Vollenhoven (interimaire)
Roume, March 1915-May 1916
Charles (interimaire)
Albert Sarraut (2nd term), January 1917-May 1919
Montguillot (interimaire)
Maurice Long, February 1920-April 1922
Baudoin (interimaire)
Merlin, August 1922-April 1925
Montguillot (interimaire, second term)
Alexandre Varenne, November 1925-January 1928
Montguillot (interimaire, third term)
Pierre Pasquier, August 1928
Rene Robin, February 1934
Jules Brevie, September 1936
General Georges Albert Julien Catroux, August 1939
Admiral Jean Decoux, July 1940

895

896

APPENDIX
High Commissioners

Admiral Georges Thierry d'Argenlieu, 6 September 1945

Emile Bollaert, 27 March 1947
Leon Pignon, 20 October 1948
1
General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, 6 DecembeT 1950
Jean Letourneau, i April 1952 (also Minister for the Associated States)
Commissioners General

Jean Letourneau, 22 April 1953 (also Minister for the Associated States)
Maurice Dejean, 28 July 1953
General Paul Ely, 10 June 1954

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
VIII.
, IX.
X.
XI.
XII.

Bibliographies
Local Chronicles
Contemporary Accounts (Collections of Documents, Memoirs)
Early and Mediaeval Periods
Burma
Indo-China (Annam, Cambodia, Cochin China, Laos, Tongking)
Malaya and Indonesia
Thailand
The Philippines
Biography
General Works
Recent contributions to South-East Asian history

SELECT
I.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BIBLIOGRAPHIES

Brebion, A.: Bibliographic des voyages dans I'Indochine fran9aise du IX^

au XIX siecle. Saigon, 1910.
Cordier, Henri: Bibliotheca Indosinica: Dictionnaire Bibliographique des
ouvrages relatifs a la Peninsula Indochinoise. 4 vols in 2. Paris, 1932.
Embree, J.-F., and Dotson, L. O.: Bibliography of the Peoples and Cultures
of Mainland South-East Asia. Yale Univ., 1950.
Hobbs, Cecil C : South-East Asia: an annotated bibliography of selected
.reference sources. Washington, 1952.
Hobbs, Cecil C , and assocs.: Indochina: a bibliography pf land and people.
Washington, 1950.
II.

LOCAL CHRONICLES

Annales du Laos (Luang Prabang, Vientiane, Tran Ninh et Bassac).

Hanoi, 1926.
Annales du Siam (traduction de Camille Notton). 4 vols. Vols, i-iii,
, Paris, 1926-32; Vol. iv, Bangkok, 1939.
Babad Tanah Djawi (in Javanese prose; original edition with notes by
J. J. Meinsma). 's-Gravenhage, 1874 (many reprints).
Brown, C. C. (tr.): Sejarah Melayu or Malay Annals: a translation of
Raffles M S . 18, JRASMB, xxv, pts. 2 and 3. Singapore, 1953.
)amrong. Prince (ed.): T h e Pongsawadan [Royal Autograph Edition
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T h e Hmannan Yazawin (in Burmese). Mandalay, 1908.
T h e Konbaungset Chronicle (in Burmese). Mandalay, 1905.
Leyden, John: Translations of Malay Annals (with introd. by Sir Stamford
Raffles). London, 1821.
Michels, Abel des (tr.): Les Annales Imperiales de I'Annam. Paris, 1889.
T h e Nagarakrtagama (trans, into Dutch by H. Kern, with notes by
N. J. Krom). 's-Gravenhage, 1919.
Notton, C. (tr.): Chronique de Xieng-Mai. Paris, 1932.
Olthof, W. L. (tr.): Babad Tanah Djawi in proza Javaansche Geschiedenis.
's-Gravenhage, 1941.
Pararaton: the Book of the Kings of Tumapel and Majapahit (ed. by
N. J. Krom). Batavia, 1920.
Pe Maung Tin and Luce, G. H.: T h e Glass Palace Chronicle of the Kings
of Burma: a translation of the earlier parts of the Hmannan Yazawin.
London, 1923.
899

900

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

III. CONTEMPORARY AcctpuNTS

(COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTS, MEMOIRS)

Aitchison, C. U. (ed).: A Collection of Treaties! Engagements and Sanads

relating to India and Neighbouring Countries. 14 vols. Calcutta,
i86a to 1939. Revised ed. 13 vols 1909; one further vol 1939.
Albuquerque, Braz de: The Commentaries of the Great Afonso Dalboquerque. 4 vols. Hakluyt Soc. London, 1875-84.
* Anderson, John: Practical and Commercial Considerations Relative to the
Malayan Peninsula and the British Settlements in the . Straits of
Malacca. Prince of Wales Island, 1824.
jAnderson, John; A Report on the Expedition to Western Yunnan, via
Bhamo. Calcutta, 1871.
Mandalay to Momein: A Narrative of the Two Expeditions to Western
China of 1868 and 1875 under Colonel Edward B. Sladen and Colonel
Horace Browne. London, 1876.
Argensola, B. L. de: Conquista de las Islas Malucas. Madrid, 1609.
Baird, J. G. A. (ed.): Private Letters of the Marquess of Dalhousie. London,
1910.

Beeckman, Daniel: A Voyage to^and from the Island of Borneo in the

East Indies. London, 1718.
Birdwood, G., and Foster, W.: The First Letter Book of the East India
Company, 1600-1619. London, 1893.
Blanc, R. P. le: Histoire de la Revolution de Siam. Lyon, 1692
Bort, Balthasar: 'Report on Malacca', JRASMB, Aug. 1937, Singapore.
Bouchot, Jean: Documents pour servir a l^histoire de Saigon, 1859 a 1868.
Saigon, 1927.
Bourges, de: Relation du Voyage de Monseigneur L'Eveque de Beryte . . .
jusqu'au Royaume de Siam. Paris, 1666.
Bowring, Sir John: The Kingdom and People of Siam, with a Narrative
of the Mission to that Country in 1855. 2 vols. London, 1857.
Browne, Lieut.-Col. E. C.: The Coming of the Great Queen: A Narrative
of the Acquisition of Burma. London. i888. - ^
Burma: Report of the Burma Provincial Banking Enquiry Committee.
, 2 vols. Rangoon, 1930.
Report of the Committee of Enquiry into the Rice Trade. Rangoon,
1934^
?
._
_^
Report of the Provincial Enquiry Committee on Vernacular and Voca-~
tional Education. Rangoon, 1936.
'
Report of Land and Agriculture Committee, Parts I, II and 111.-'Rangoon,
1938.
* Agent to the Government of Prince of Wales Island,
t Superintendent of the Indian Mi^eum, Calcutta.

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9OI

Report of the Bribery and Corruption Enquiry Committee. Rangoon,

1940.
Report of the Committee of Enquiry into the Village System. Rangoon,
1941.
Burnell, A. C , and Tiele, P. A. (eds.): T h e Voyage of John Huyghen van
Linschoten to the East Indies. 2 vols. Hakluyt S o c , nos. 70 and 71.
London, 1885.
Burney, Henry: T h e Burney Papers (reprinted from the originals in the
India Office). 15 vols. Bangkok, 1910-14.
Cabaton, Antoine (tr.): Breve et Veridique Relation des fivenements du
Cambodge par le P. Gabriel Quiroga de San Antonio. Paris, 1914.
Cadiere, L*.: 'Documents Relatifs a I'Epoque de Gia-Long', BEFEO, xii
(1912), no. 7, pp. 1-82. Hanoi.
Cavenagh, General Sir Orfeur: Reminiscences of an Indian Official.
London, 1884.
Chapman, F. Spencer: The Jungle is Neutral. London, 1949.
Chaumont, de: Relation de I'Ambassade de Mgr. Le Chevalier de Chaumont a la Cour du Roi de Siam. Paris, 1687.
Choisy, F. T . de: Journal du Voyage de Siam fait en 1685 et 1686. Paris,
1687.
Coast, John: Railroad of Death. London, 1946.
Ccedes, G. (ed.): 'Documents sur L'Histoire Politique et Religieuse du
Laos Occidental', BEFEO, xxv (1925), nos. 1-2, pp. 1-205. Hanoi.
Colenbrander, H. T . : Jan Petersen Coen: Bescheiden Omtrent Zijn BedrifF
in Indie. 5 vols. T h e Hague, 1919-23.
Colesworthy, Grant: Rough Pencillings of a Rough Trip to Rangoon in
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Colquhoun, Archibald R.: Across Chryse: being the Narrative of a Journey
of Exploration through the South China Border Lands from Canton
to Mandalay. 2 vols. London, 1883.
Amongst the Shans. London, 1885.
Cook, James: Voyages. 2 vols. London, 1842.
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Documents', T'oung Pao I (1890), II (1891). Leiden.
Correspondence: Correspondence of the Commissioner, Tenasserim
Division, 1825-6 to 1842-3. Rangoon, 1915.
Cx, Capt. Hiram: Journal of a Residence in the Burmhan Empire. London, 1821.
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Hakluyt S o c , London, 1944.
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Crawfurd, John: Journal of an Embassy . . . to the Court of Ava in the

year 1827. London, 1S29.
T h e Crawfurd Papers: A collection of official records relating to the
mission of Dr. John Crawfurd sent to Siam by the Government of
India in the year 1821. Bangkok, 1915.
'
Journal of an Embassy from the Governor-General of India to the Courts
of Siam and Cochin China. London, 1828,
Daendels, G. G. H. W.: Staat der Nederlandsche Oostindische Bezittingen
onder het Bestuur van den G. G. H. W. Daendels. 3 vols. T h e Hague,
1814.
Dagh-Register: Dagh-Register Gehouden int Casteel Batavia vant Passerende Daer ter Plaetse als over Geheel Nederlandts India, 1624-82.
Batavia, 1887, etc.
Dalrymple, Alexander: Oriental Repertory. 2 vols. London, 1793, 1808.
Oriental Repertory: A reprint of papers relating to Burma. Rangoon,
1926.
Danvers, F . C , and Foster, W . : Letters received by the East India Company from its servants in the East, 1602-17. 6 vols. London, 18961902.
Davies, H. R.: Report on the Burma-China Boundary between the Taiping
and the Shweli. Indian Army Intelligence Branch Report. Rangoon,
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Report on the Part of Yunnan between the Bhamo Frontier and the
Salween. Indian Army Intelligence Branch Report. Rangoon, 1895.
Decoux, J.: A la barre de I'lndochihe (1940-45). Paris, 1949.
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Deventer, M . L. van: Daendels-Raffles (tr. C. C. Batten). London, 1894.
Het Nederlandsch Gezag over Java Sedert 1811 (vol. i, 1811-20). T h e
Hague, 1891.
Deventer, S. van: Bijdragen tot de Kennis van het Landelijk Stelsel op
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Douglas, W. O.: North from Malaya: Adventure on Five Fronts. New
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de Zwaan, J. P. Kleiweg: De Oudste Mensheid van de Indische Archipel.
1943Vo^er, E. B.: De Monsterkop in de Hindoe-Javaanse Bouwkunst. Leiden,
1949.
V. BURMA

Andrus, J. R.: Burmese Economic Life. Stanford, U.S.A., London, 1947.

Anstey, Vera: T h e Economic Development of India (includes Burma up
to 1937). New York, 1936.
Appleton, G.: Buddhism in Burma. Calcutta, 1943.
Banerjee, A. C : British Relations with Burma, 1826-1886. Bombay, 1947.
30 .

912

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Bayfield, G. T . : Historical Review of the Political Relations between the

British Government in India and the Empire of Ava . . . to the end of
the year 1834. Revised by Lieut.-Col. iBumey, British Resident.
Calcutta, 1835.
'
Bigandet, P . : An Outline of the History of the Catholic Burmese Missions
from 1720-1887. Rangoon, 1887.
,
T h e Life or Legend of Gaudama, T h e Buddha of the Burmese. 2 vols,
in 1. London, 1911-12.
Bourdounais, M . le Comte A M a h e de la: Un Fran^ais en Birmanie.
Paris, 1891.
Christian, J. L.: Modern Burma: A survey of political and economic
developments. California, 1942.
Burma and the Japanese Invader (revised ed. of Modern Burma).
Bombay, 1945.
Cochrane, W . : T h e Shans. Rangoon, 1915.
Collis, Maurice: The Land of the G r e a t l m a g e . London, 1943.
Cordier, Henri: Historique abrege des relations de la Grande-Bretagne
avec la Birmanie. Paris, 1894.
' L e s Fran9ais en Birmanie', T'oung Pao, 1891.
' L a France et I'Angleterre en Indochine et en Chine sous-le Premier
Empire', T'oung Pao, series 2 (1903), pp. 201-27.
Crosthwaite, Sir C : T h e Pacification of Burpna. London, 1912.
Desai, W. S.: History of the British Residency in Burma 1826-1840.
Rangoon, 1939.
Donnison, F. S. V.; Public Administration in Burma. London, 1953.
Ferrars, Max and Bertha: Burma. London, 1901.
Furnivall, J. S.: Introduction to the Political Economy of Burma. 2nd
ed. Rangoon, 1938.
' T h e Fashioning of Leviathan: T h e Beginnings of British Rule in
Burma', JBRS, xxix (1939).
Colonial Policy and Practice, a comparative study of Burma and Netherlands India. Cambridge, 1948.
Gazetteers: British Burma Gazetteer. 2 vols. Rangoon, i88o.
J. G. Scott and J. P. Hardiman: Gazetteer of Upper Burma and the
Shan States. 5 vols. Rangoon, 1900.
'' -^.^
Hall, D. G. E.: Early English Intercourse with Burma 1587-1743. London,
1928.
Europe and Burma: a study of European relations with Burma from-the
earliest times to the annexation of Thibaw's Kingdom. London, 1945.,
' T h e Tragedy of Negrais', JBRS, xxi (1931), pp. 59-133-'
' T h e Dagh Register of Batavia and Dutch Trade with Burma in the
Seventeenth Century', JBRS, xxix (1939), pp. 139-56.
' Studies in Dutch Relations with Arakan in the Seventeenth Century',
JBRS, xxvi (1936).
Burma. London, 1950.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

913

Hall, H . Fielding: T h e Soul of a People. London, 1899.

Harvey, G. E.: History of Burma. London, 1925.
British Rule in Burma 1824-1942. London, 1946.
Huber, E d o u a r d : ' Une Ambassade Chinoise en Birmanie en 1406', BEFEO,
iv (1904), pp. 429-32.
' L a Fin de la Dynastie de Pagan', BEFEO, ix,(i909), pp. 633-80.
Ireland, Alleyne: The Province of Burma. 2 vols. Boston and New York,
1907.
Laurie, "W. F . B . : Our Burmese Wars and Relations with Burma. London,
1880,
Leach, E. R. :^ Political Systems of Highland Burma. London, 1954.
Low, James: 'History of Tenasserim', JRAS, iv (1837), pp. 304-32;
V (1839), pp. 245-63.
Luce, G. H . : 'Chinese Invasions of Burma in the Eighteenth Century',
JBRS, XV (1925), pp. 115-28.
' A Century of Progress in Burmese History and Archaeology', JBRS,
xxxii (1948).
' T h e Economic Life of the Early Burman', JBRS, xxx (1940).
' T h e Ancient Pyu', JBRS, xxvii (1937).
'Early Chinese Texts about Burma', JBRS, xiv (1924).
Luce, G. H., and Pe Maung T i n : 'Burma "down to the Fall of Pagan:
an Outline' (pt. i). JBRS, xxix (1939), p p . 264-82.
Marshall, H. I.: T h e Karen People of Burma. Columbus, U.S.A., 1922.
, Mason, Rev. F . : Burma, its People and National Products. Rangoon,
London, New York, i860. 2 vols. ed. enlarged by W. Theobald
Hertford, 1882-1883.
Maung Maung Pye: Burma in the Crucible. Rangoon, 1952.
McKelvie, Roy: T h e War in Burma. London, 1948.
Nai Thein: 'Intercourse Between Siam and Burma as recorded in the
"Royal Autograph Edition" of the History of Siam', JBRS, xxv( 193 5),
p p . 49-108; xxviii (1938), pp. 1Q9-76.
Milne, Mrs. L., and Cochrane, Rev. W. W.: Shans at Home. London,
1910.
Mitton, G. E. (Lady Scott): Scott of the Shan Hills. London, 1936.
Nisbet, John: Burma under British Ruleand Before. 2 vols. London,
1901.
Parlier, E. H . : Burma with special reference to her relations with China.
Rangoon, 1893.
Precis of Chinese Imperial and Provincial Annals Relating to Burma.
Rangoon, 1893.
Pearn, B. R.: A History of Rangoon. Rangoon, 1939.
' K i n g Bering', JBRS, xxiii (1933), pp. 55-85.
'Felix Carey and the English Baptist Mission in Burma', JBRS, xxviii
(1938), pp. 1-91.
Phayre, A. P.: History of Burma. London, 1&83.

914

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ray, N. R.: An Introduction to the Study of Theravada Buddhism in

Burma. Calcutta, 1946.
Ritchie, Anna J.: Lord Amherst and the British Advance Eastward to
Burma. Oxford, 1894.
Scott, Sir J. G.: Burma: A Handbook of Practical Information. London,
1921.

^^

Burma, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day. London, 1924.
Scott, J. G., and Hardiman, J. P.: Gazetteer of Upper Burma and the Shan
States. 5 vols. Rangoon, 1900-1.
Sein, Daw Mya: The Administration of Burma: Sir Charles Crosthwaite
and the Consolidation of Burma. Rangoon, [938.
Sen, N. C : A Peep into Burma Politics, 1917-42. Allahabad, 1945.
Shakespear, Col. L. W.: History of Upper Assam, Upper Burmah and
North-Eastern Frontier. London, 1914.
Smeaton, D. M.: The Loyal Karens of Burma. London, 1887 and 1920.
Smith, Nicol: Burma Road. New York, 1940.
Snodgrass, Major J. J.: Narrative of the Burmese War. London, 1827.
Stewart, J. A.: 'Kyaukse Irrigation: a sidelight on Burmese History',
JBRS, xi (1921), pp. 1-4.
Tan Pei-Ying: The Building of the Burma Road. New York, 1945.
Tinker, Hugh: The Foundations of Local Self-Government in India,
Pakistan and Burma. London, 1954.
Trant, T. A.: Two Years in Ava, from May 1824 to May 1826. London,
1827.
Wayland, Francis: A Memoir of the Life and Labours of the Reverend
Adoniram Judson. 2 vols. London, 1853.
White, Sir H. T.: A Civil Servant in Burma. London, 1913.
Burma. London, 1923.
White, Capt. W.: A Political History of the Extraordinary Events which
led to the Burmese War. London, 1827.
Wilson, H. H.: Narrative of the Burmese War in 1824-26 as originally
compiled from official documents. London, 1852.
VI.

INDO-CHINA

^ '

-^

(ANNAM, CAMBODIA, COCHIN CHINA, LAOS, T O N G K I N G )

Anonymous: Relation des Missions des Eveques Franfais aux Royaumes

de Siam, de la Cochinchine, de Cambodge et du Tonkin.-Paris, 1674,;
Aubaret, G. (tr.): Histoire et Description de la Basse Cochinchine (Pays de
Gia-Dinh) . . . d'apres le Texte Original. Paris, 1863.
Aurousseau, Leonard: 'La Premiere Conquete Chinoise des Pays Annamites; Origine du Peuple Annamite', BEFEO, xxiii (1923) pp. 137264.
, .
'
Aymonier, E. T.: Le Cambodge. 3 voky Paris, 1900-4.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHy

915

Blet, Henri: L'Histoire de la colonisation frangaise. 3 vols. Grenoble and

Paris, 1946, 1948, 1950.
"
Bazancourt, C. L. de: Les Expeditions de Chine et de Cochinchine d'apres
les Documents Officiels. 2 vols. Paris, 1861-2.
Bouchot, Jean: Documents pour Servir a I'Histoire de Saigon, 1859 a
1865. Saigon, 1927.
Buch, Wilhelm J. M . : De Oost-Indische Compagnie en Quinam; de
Betrekkingen der Nederlanders met Annam in de XVII Eeuw.
Amsterdam, 1929.
' L a Compagnie des Indes Neerlandaiscs <;t L'lndochine', BEFEO,
xxxvi (1936), pp. 97-196; xxxvii (1937), pp. 121-237.
Cadiere, L.i 'Tableau Chronologique des Dynasties Annamites', BEFEO,
V (1905), pp. 77-145.
' L e Mur de Dong-Hoi; fitudc sur TEtablissenient des Nguyen en
Cochinchine', BEFEO, vi (1906), pp. 86-254.
Resume de I'Histoire d'Annam. Quihnon, 1911.
Les Europeens au Service .de Gia-Long. Bui. Amis t l u e , 1920-2225-26.
Croyances et Pratiques Religieuses des Annamites. Hanoi, 1944.
Chailley, J.: Paul Bert au Tonkin. Paris, 1887.
Chaigneau, J. B.: Le Memoire sur la Cochinchine de Jean-Baptiste
~ Chaigneau. Hanoi-Haiphong, 1923.
Chapman: 'Relation d'un" Voyage eh Cochin-Chine en 1778' Bui, de la
,Soc. des fitudes Indochinoises de Saigon (new series), xxiii (1948),
no. 2, pp. 15-75.
Cheneau, H . : Du Protectorat Fran(;ais en Annam, au Tonkin et au Cambodge. Paris, 1904.
Cunningham, A.: The French in Tonkin and South China. Hong Kong,
1902.

Degeorge, J. B.: A La Conquete de Chau Laos. Hong Kong, 1932.

Deschanel, P . : La Question du Tonkin. Paris, 1883.
Deveria, G.: Histoire des Relations de la Chine avec L'Annam-Vietnam
du XVI aiu X I X siecle; d'apres des Documents Chinois Traduits
pour la Premiere Fois. Paris, 1880.
Devillers, P . : Histoire du Viet-Nam de 1940 a 1952. Paris, 1952.
Diguet, E.: Annam et Indo-Chine Fran9aise. Paris, 1908.
DijJj, L. C. D . van: Neerland's Vroegste Betrekkingen met Borneo,
den Solo-Archipel, Cambodja, Siam en Cochin-China. Amsterdam,
1862.
Dupuis, Jean: Les.Origines de la Question du Tong-Kin. Paris, 1896.
Le Tonkin de 1872 a 1886; Histoire et Politique. Paris, 1910.
Ennis, T . E.: French Policy and Developments in Indo-China. Chicago,
1936.
Ferry, Jules: Le Tonkin et la Mere Patrie; T^moinages et Documents.
Paris, 1890.

9^6

SELECT BIBLIOGRAI'HY

Gaudel, A.: L'Indochine Franfaise en Face du Japon. Paris, 1947.

Gautier, A. H.: Les Fran^ais au Tonkin, 1787-1883. Paris, 1884.
Gosselin, C.: L'Empire d'Annam. Paris, iQolf.
Gourou, P.: The Future of Indochina. Paris, 1947.
Grandjean, G.; L'Epopee Jaune, Missionaire's et Marins en Indo-Chine,
1765-1885. Ed. Maifere, 1938.
[
Lanessan, L. de: La Colonisation Fran9aise en Indo-Chine. Paris, 1895.
Launay, A.: Histoire Ancienne et Moderne de I'Annam, Tong-King et
Cochinchine. Paris, 1884.
Le Boulanger, Paul: Histoire du Laos Fran9ais. Paris, 1931.
Leclere, A.: Histoire du Cambodge. Paris, 1914.
Lehault, P.: La France et L'Angleterre en Asie. Tome I: Indochine, les
Derniers Jours de la Dynastie des Rois d'Ava. Paris, 1892.
Lemire, C : foablissement du Protectorat Franfais au Cambodge; Expose
Chronologique des Relations du Cambodge avec le Siam, I'Annam et
la France. Paris, 1879.
Le-Van-Dinh: Le Culte des Ancetres en Droit Annamite. Paris, 1934.
Levy, Paul: 'Le Voyage de Van Wuysthoff au Laos (1641-1642) d'apr^s
son Journal (Inedit en Franfais)', CEFEO, no. 38 (1944).
'Les Royaumes Lao du Mekong', CEFEO, no. 25 (1940), pp. 11-17.
Levy, Roger: L'Indochine et ses Traites, 1946. Paris, 1947.
Madrolle, C : Indochine du Nord. Paris, 1932.
Indochine du Sud. Paris, 1936.
Malleret, L.: ' Une tentative ignoree d'^tablissement fran9ais en Indochine
au XVIII siecle; les vues de I'Amiral d'Estaing', CEFEO, no. 29
(1941), pp. 10-16.

Maspero, G. (ed.): Un Empire Colonial Fran9ais: L'Indochine. 2 vols.

Paris, 1929-30.
Maspero, H.: 'Etudes d'Histoire d'Annam" BEFEO, xvi (1916), no. i,
pp. i-ss, and xviii (1918), no. 3, pp. 1-36.
Masson, A.: Histoire de I'lndochine. Paris, 1950.
Maybon, C. B.: Histoire Moderne du Pays d'Annam (1592-1820). Paris,
1920.

Les Marchands Europeens en Cochinchine et au Tonkin (1600-1775).

Hanoi, 1916.
^ -^ ^
Maybon, C. B., and Russier, H.: Notions d'Histoire~"d'Annam. 2 vols.
Hanoi-Haiphong, 1909.
,
Meyniard, C : Le Second Empire;, en Indo-Chine (Siam, Cambodge,
Annam). Paris, 1891.
?
_
^ ^
Michels, A. des: Les Annates Imperiales de I'Annam Traduites entier .'. .
du texte Chinois. 2 vols. Paris, 1889-92.
Monet, P.: Fran9ais et Annamites. Paris, 1925.
Mus, P.: Le Vietnam Chez Lui. Paris, 1947.
Naville, P.: La Guerre du Viet-Nam. Paris, 1949.
Newman, B.: Report on Indo-China._.,IkSdon, 1953.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

917

Nguyen-Ai-Quoc (Ho Chi Minh): Le Proces de la Colonisation Fran^aise.

Paris, 1926.
.)
Nguyen-van-Huyen: La Civilisation Annamite. Hanoi, 1944.
Noir, L. S.: Les Fran9ais au Siam et au Cambodge. Paris, 1894.
Norman, C. B.: Tonkin, or France in the East. London, 1884.
Parmentier, H.: La Religion Ancienne de I'Annam. 'Paris, 1906.
Patris, C : Essai d'Histoire d'Annam: Premiere Partie, I'Antiquite et le
Haut Moyen Age. Hue, 1923.
Pavie,A.: A La Conquete des Coeurs. Paris, 1921.
Petit, R.: La Monarchic Annamite. Paris, 1931.
Priestley, H. L: France Overseas, A Study of Modern Imperialism. New
York,. 1938.
Robequain, C.: The Economic Development of French Indo-China.
London, 1944:
Roberts, S. H.: History of French Colonial Policy 1870-1925. 2 vols.
London, 1929.
Rouger, C. E.: Histoire Militaire et Politique de L'Annam et du Tonkin
depuis 1799. Paris, 1906.
Sasorith, Katay D.: Le Laos. Paris, 1953.
Schreiner, A. : Abrege de I'Histoire d'Annam. 2nd ed. Saigon, 1906.
Thompson, V.: French Indochina. London, 1937.
"Tran-yanrGiap: 'Le Bouddhisme en Annam, des Origines au XIII
siecle', BEFEO, xxxii (1932), pp. 191-272.
Tegton, E., and Percheron, M.: L'Indochine Moderne. Paris, 1932.
Scott, J. G.: France and Tongking. London, 1885.
Villemerevil, A. B. de: 'Les Voyages des Europeens des C6tes d'Annam
a la Vallee du Mekong', Bui. Soc. Geog. Rochefort, ii (1880-1), pp.
117-29.
VII.

MALAYA AND INDONESIA

Alting, J. H. Carpentier: Grondslagen der Rechtsbedeeling in Nederlandsch Indie. The Hague, 1926.
Baring-Gould, S., and Bampfylde, C. A.: A History of Sarawak under its
Two White Rajahs. London, 1909.
Batten, C. C : Translation of: Daendels-Raffles (by M. L. Deventer).
London, 1894.
Bggbie, Capt. P. J.: The Malayan Peninsula, embracing its History,
Manners, Customs of the Inhabitants, Politics, Natural History,
etc., etc., from its Earliest Times. Madras, 1834.
Bijllaardt, A. C. van den: Onstaan en Ontwikkeling der Staatkundige
Partijen in Nederlandsch Indie. Batavia, 1933.
Blumberger, J. Th. P.: De Nationalistische Beweging in Nederlandsch
Indie. Th.e Hague, 1931.
Bousquet, G. H.: Dutch Colonial Policy Through French Eyes. New
York, 1940.

918

SELECT BIBLIOORAPHY

Boxer, C. R.: 'The Thir^ Dutch War in the East', The Mariner's Mirror,
xvi (1930).

>

Braddell, Sir Roland: The law of the Straits Settletnents : a Commentary.

Singapore, 1915. New ed. 1931.
Braddell, T.: Statistics of the British Possessions in the Straits of
Malacca. Penang, 1861.
Broek, J. O. M.: The Economic Development df the Netherlands Indies.
New York, 1942.
Brugmans, J.: Geschiedenis van het Onderwijs in Nederlandsch-^Indie.
Groningen-Batavia, 1938.
Buckley, C. G.: An Anecdotal History of Old Times in Singapore. London,
1903.

Cator, W. J.: The Economic Position of the Chinese in the Netherlands

Indies. Oxford, 1936.
Chijs, J. A. van der: De Vestiging van het Nederigndsch Gezag Over de
Banda-Eilanden. BataviaThe Hague, 1886.
Colenbrander, H. T.: Koloniale Geschiedenis. 3 vols. 's-Gravenhage,
Crawfurd, John: History of the Indian Archipelago. 3 vols. Edinburgh,
1820.

A Descriptive Dictionary of the Indian Islands aiid Adjacent Countries.

2 vols. London, 1856.
Crofton, R. H.: A Pageant of the Spice Islands. Lr,ndon, 1936.
Day, Clive: The Policy and the Administration of the Dutch in Java.
New York, 1904.
Deventer, M. L. van: Geschiedenis der Nederlanders op Java. 2 vols.
Haarlem, 1886-7.
Het Nederlandsch Gezag over Java sedert 1811, The Hague, 1891.
Djajadiningrat, Pangeran A. A. Hoesein: The Netheriands East Indies.
New York, 1941.
Dobby, E. H. G.: Agricultural Questions of Malaya. Cambridge, 1949.
Emerson, Rupert: Malaysia: a study in Direct and Indirect Rule. New
York, 1937.
Firth, Raymond: Malay Fishermen: their Peasant Economy. London, 1946.
Furnivall, J. S.: Netherlands India: a Study of Plural'Economy. Cambridge,
1939. 1944.
^^^
Colonial Policy and Practice, a Comparative Study of Burma znd
Netherlands India. Cambridge, 1948.
^
Gonggrijp, G.: Schets Eener Economische Geschiedenis van-Nederlandsch Indie. Haarlem, 1949.
Graaf, H. J. de: Geschiedenis van Indoriesie. 's-Cjravenhage, 1949.
Haan, F. de: Priangan. 4 vols. Batavia, 1910-11.
Oud Batavia./ Bandung, 1935.
Hall, D. G. E.': 'From Mergui to Singapore, 1686-1819', JSS, xli, no. i
(July 1953). pp- 1-18.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

'

919

Helsdingen,W. H. van, and others: Mission Interrupted (English translation by J. J. L. Duyvendak). Amsterdam', Elsevier, 1945.
Hurgronje, C. S.: Da Atjehers. 2 vols. Leiden, 1893-4. (English ed..
The Achinese. 2 vols. London, 1906).
Kaberry, Phyllis: The Development of Self-Government in Malaya. Royal
Inst, of Int. Affairs, London, 1946.
Kat Angelino, A. D. A. de: Colonial Policy: abridged trans, of Staatskundig
Beleid en Bestuurszorg in Ned. Indie by G. J. Renier. 2 vols. The
Hague, 1931.
Kats, J.: Het Javaansch Tooneel: I Wajan'g Poerwa. Weltevreden, 1923.
Kennedy, R.: The Ageless Indies. New York, 1942.
Kern, J. H.'C.: Verspreide Geschriften. 15 vols. The Hague, 1913-28.
Klerck, E. S. de: History of the Netherlands East Indies. 2 vols. Rotterdam, 1938.
Do Atjeh Oorlog. The Hague, 1912.
Leeuw, W. J. A. de: Het Painansch Contract. Amsterdam, 1926.
Louw, P. F. J., and de Klerk, E. S.: De Java Oorlog van 1825 t 1830.
6 vols. BataviaThe Hague, 1894-6.
Makepiece, W., Brooke, G. E., and Braddell, R. St. J.: One Hundred Years
of Singapore. London, 1921.
Mansvelt, W. M.: Rechtsvorm en Geldelijk Beheer Bij de Oostindische
Compagnie. Amstardam, 1922.
A Brief History of the Netherland Trading Society 1824-1924. The
'Hague, 1924.
Marsden, W.: History of Sumatra. London, 1811.
Mills, L. A.: British Rule in Eastern Asia. London, 1942.
British Malaya, 1824-1867. Singapore, 1925.
MoUema, J. C : De Eerst Schipvaart der Hollanders Naar Oost Indie,
1595-1597- The Hague, 1935.
Molsbergen, E. C. Godee: Geschiedkundige Atlas van Nederland. 'sGravenhage, 1938.
Mook, H. J. van: De Organizatie van de Indische Regeering. Batavia, 1932.
The Stakes of Democracy in South-East Asia. London, 1950.
Mooy, J.: Geschiedenis der Protestantsche Kerk in Nederlandsch Indie.
Batavia, 1923-31.
Morrison, Ian: Malayan Postscript. London, 1942.
Mifndy, Capt. Rodney, R.N.: Narrative of Events in Borneo and the
- Celebes down to the occupation of Labuan, from the Journals of
James Brooke Esq., together with the operations of H.M.S. 'Iris'.
2 vols. London, 1848.
Newbold, Capt. T. J.: Political and Statistical Account of the British
Settlements in the Straits of Malacca, etc. 2 vols. London, 1839.
Norman, H. D. Levyssohn: De Britische Heerschappij over Java en Onderhoorigheden (1811-1816). The Hague, 1857.
Peet, G. L.: Political Questions in Malaya. London, 1949.

920

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Percival, Lieut.-Gen.: The War in Malaya, London, 1949.

Pierson, N. G.: Het Cultilurstelsel. Amsterdam, 1868.
Purcell, Victor: The Chinese in Malaya. London, 1948.
Raffles, Sir Stamford: History of Java. 3 vols.) London, 1817, 1830.
Reus, G. C. Klerk de; Geschichtlichef Ueberblick der Administrativen,
Rechtlichen und Finanziellen Entwicklung der Niederlandischen
Ostindischen Compagnie. Batavia, 1894.
Rutter, Owen: British North Borneo. London, 1922.
Schrieke, B. J. (ed.): The Effect of Western Influence on Native Civili- .
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Smith, T . E.: Population Growth in Malaya: A survey of recent trends.
London, 1951.
Soest, G. H. van: Geschiedenis van het Kultuurstelsel. 3 vols. Rotterdam,
1869-71.
Somer, J. M.: De Korte Verklaring. Breda, 1934.
Song Ong Siang: One Hundred Years History of the Chinese in Singapore. London, 1923.
Stapel, F. W. (ed.): Geschiedenis van Nederlandsch-Indie. 5 vols.
Amsterdam, 1939.
(author): Geschiedenis van Nederlandsch-Indie. Amsterdam, 1930,1943.
St. John, H. R.: The Indian Archipelago. Its history and present state.
2 vols. London, 1853.
Swettenham, Sir F.: British Malaya. London, 1948.
TerHaar, B.: Adat Law in Indonesia. New York, 1948.
Terpstra, H.: 'De Factorij der Oostindische Compagnie te Patani',
Verhandelingen van het Kon. Inst., i. 's-Gravenhage, 1938.
'De Nederlandsche Yoorcompagnieen', in Stapel, F. W., Geschiedenis
van Nederlandsch Indie, Deel II, D. Amsterdam, 1938.
'Franschen en Engelschen', ibid., Deel II, c. Amsterdam, 1938.
Thompson, V.: Postmortem on Malaya. New York, 1943.
Valentijn, F.: Oud en Nieuw Oost Indieh. Dordrecht-Amsterdam, 1724-6.
Vandenbosch, A.: The Dutch East Indies. California, 1944.
Verboeket, K.: 'Geschiedenis van de Chineezen in Nederland-Indie',
Kolonial Studien, nos. 5 and 6 (1936).
^ ^
Vermeulen, J. Th.: De Chineezen te Batavia en den Troebelen van 1740.
Leiden, 1938.
Vlekke, B. H. M.: Nusantara: A History of the East Indian Archipejago.
Cambridge, Mass., 1943.
"
' f
."* ^
Wilde, de Neytzell, and Moll, J. Th.: The Netherlands Indies during theDepression. Amsterdam, 1936.
^
Wilkinson, R. J.: History of the Peninsular Malays. 3rd ed.' Singapore,
1923.

'The Malacca Sultanate', JRASMB, xiii, pt. 2 (^935).

Winstedt, Sir Richard: 'A History of Johore', JRASMB, x, pt. 3 (Dec.
1932)-

""'

'

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

921

The Malays: A Cultural History. London, 1950.

History of Malaya. Singapore, 1935.
'
Malaya and its History. London, 1948.
Wolf, C : The Indonesian Story: the Birth, GrowtJi and Structure of the
Indonesian Republic. New York, 1948.
Wormser, C. W. (ed.): Wat Indie Ontving en Schortk. Wereldbibliotheek,
Amsterdam, 1946.
Yao Tung: History of Overseas Chinese in Malaya (in Chinese).
Chungking, 1943.
Wehl, David: The Birth of Indonesia. London, 1948.
Blumberger, J. Th. P.: De Communistische Bew^ging in Nederlandsch
Indie. Haarlem, 1928.
VIII.

THAILAND

Anderson, J.: English Intercourse with Siam in the Seventeenth Century.

London, 1890.
Briggs, L, P.: 'Treaty of March. 23, 1907, between France and Siam and
the Return of Battambang and Angkor to Cambodia', FEQ, v (1946),
PP- 439-54'Dvaravatii Most Ancient Kingdom of Siam', J- Am. O. Soc. (1945),
pp. 98-107.
'Aubaret and the Treaty of July 15, 1867, between France and Siam ,
.FEQ, vi (1947), pp. 212-38.
Campbell, J. G. D.: Siam in the Twentieth Century. London, 1902.
Cartwright, B. O.: English trans, of Turpin's History of Siam. Bangkok,
1909.
Christian, J. L., and Nobutake Ike: 'Thailand in Japan's Foreign Relations',
Pacific Affairs, xv (1942), pp. 195-221.
Collis, 1)A.: Siamese White. London, 1936.
Crosby, Sir J.: Siam: the Crossroads. London, 1945Damrong, Prince: 'Siamese History prior to the Founding of Ayuddhya",
JSS, xiii, pt. 2 (1919), pp. r-66.
Deslandes, M.: Histoire de Monsieur Constance. Amsterdam, 1756.
Drans, J., and Bernard, S. (eds.): Memoire du Pere de Beze sur la vie de
Constance Phaulkon, premier ministre du roi de Siam, Phra Narai,
,j et sa triste fin. Tokyo, 1947.
Gervaise, N.: Histoire Naturelle et Pdlitique du Royaume de Siam. Paris,
1688". (English tr. by H. S. O'Neil, Bangkok, 1929)
Graham, W. A.: Siam. 2 vols. London, 1924.
Guehler, U.: 'The Travels of Ludovico di Vartbema, and his Visit to
Siam, Banghella and Pegu A.D. 1505', JSS, xxxvi, pt. 2 (1947), pp.
"3-49, ^
Hutchinson, E. W.: Adventures in Siam in the Seventeenth Century.
London, 1940.

922

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Landon, K. P.: The Chinese in Thailand. New York, 1941.

Siam in Transition. Shsnghai, 1939.
i
(Pirated ed. Tliailand in Transition, Bangkok, 1945).
Lanier, L . : fitude Historique sur les Relations de la France et du Royaume
de Siam de 1662 a 1703 d'apres les Documents Inedits des Archives
du Ministere de la Marine et des Colonies. Versailles, 1883.
Launay, A.: Histoire de la Mission du Siam, 1662-1811. 2 vols. Paris,
1920.
Le May, R.: A Concise History of Buddhist Art in Siam. Cambridge,
1938.

LeMire, C : La France et le Siam, nos Relations de 1662 a 1903. Angers

and Paris, 1903.
Expose Chronologique des Relations du Cambodge avec le Siam,
L'Annam et la France. Paris, 1879.
Leonowens, A.: T h e English Governess at the Siamese Court. Boston,
Mass., 1870; London, 1954.
Luang Nathabanga: Extraterritoriality in Siam. Bangkok, 1924.
Notton, C. Annales de Siam, 4 vols. Paris, 1926-32, Vol. IV Bangkok,
1939Reeve, W. D . : Public Administration in Siam. London, 1952.
Robert-Martigan, L . : La Monarchic Absolue Siamoise de 1350-1926.
Paris, 1939.
Sayre, F . : T h e Passing of Extraterritoriality in Siam. New York, 1929.
Smith, M . : A Physician at the Court of Siam. London, 1946.
Smith, Samuel: History of Siam 1657-1767. Bangkok, 1880-1.
Thompson, V.: Thailand, the New Siam. New York, 1941.
Wales, H . G. Quaritch: Ancient Siamese Government and Administration.
London, 1934.
Siamese State Ceremonies: their History and Function. London, 1931.
Wells, K. E.: Thai Buddhism: Its Rites and Activities. Bangkok, 1939.
Wood, W. A. R.: History of Siam. London, 1926.
Zimmerman, C. C : Siam, Rural Economic Survey. Bangkok, 1931.

IX. T H E PHILIPPINES

(a) Spanish works

Aduarte, Diego: Historia de la provincia del Sancto Rosario de la Orderi"de
Predicarores, en Philippinas, lapon, y China. Manila, 1640.
--_ Chirino, Pedro: Relation de las islas Filipinas. Rome, 1604.
Combes, F . : Historia de Mindanao y J0I6 (ed. W. E. Retana). Madrid, 1897.
Delgado, Juan J.: Historia general sacro-profana, politica y natural de las
islas del poniente llamadas Filipinas. Manila, 1892.
Diaz, Casimiro: Parrocho de Indies instruido.. Manila, 1745.
Hanke, L., and Carlo, A. Millares: Cuerpo de documentos del siglo XVI
sobre los derechos de Espana en las Indias y las Filipinas. Mexico, 1943.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

^23

Juan de la C.oncepci<Sl: Historia general de Filipinas. 14 vols. Sampaloc,

1788-92.
Morga, Antonia de: Sucesos de las Islas Filipinas, Mexico, 16139; ^d. W. E.
Retana,. Madrid, 1909.,
Pastells, Pablo: Labor Evangelica de los obreros de la Compania de Jesiis en
las islas Filipinas por el Padre Francisco Colin de la misma compaiiia.
3 vols. Barcelona, 1900-3.
Retana, W. E.: Archive del Bibliofilo Filipino. 5 vols. Madrid, 1895-1905.
Aparato bibliografico de la Historia .general de Filipinas. 3 vols. Madrid,
1906.
Retana, W. E.: Vida y escritos del Dr. Jose Rizal. Madrid, 1907.
San Agustin', Caspar de: Conquistas de las Islas Filipinas. Madrid, 1616.
Vidal, D. Jose Montero y: Historia general de Filipinas desde el discubrimiento hasta nuestros dias. 3 vols. Madrid,' 1887-95.
Historia de la pirateria malaya-mahometano en Mindanao, J0I6 y Borneo.
Madrid, 1888.
Zufiiga, J. Martinez de: Historia de las islas Filipinas. Sampaloc, 1803.
(b) Works in English
Selected bibliography of the Philippines, prepared by the Philippine Studies
Program, University of Chicago, Human Relations Area Files, New
Haven, Conn., 1958.
Benitez, Conrado: History of the Philippines, Social, Political. Boston, 1940.
Bernsteip, David: The PhiUppine Story. New York, 1947.
Blair, E. H., and Robertson, J. A. (eds.): The PhiUppine Islands, 1493-1898.
55 vols. Cleveland, U.S.A., 1905.
Boxer, C. R.: ' Some aspects of Spanish historical writing in the Philippines'
in D . G. "E. Hall (ed.). Historians of South-East Asia. London, 1961.
Costa, H. de la: The Jesuits in the Philippines, 1581-1768. Cambridge,
Mass., 1961.
Cunningham, Charles H . : The Audiencia in the Spanish Colonies, as
illustrated by the Audiencia of Manila. Berkeley, Calif., 1919.
Golay, Frank H . : T h e Philippines: Public Policy and National Economic
Development. Cornell Univ. Press, Ithaca, N.Y., 1961.
Grunder, Garel A., artd Livezey, William: T h e Philippines and the United
States. Norman, Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1951.
Ha;^lden, J. Ralston: The Philippyies: A Study in National Development.
New York, 1947.
Kalaw, Teodoro M . : The Philippine Revolution. Manila, 1925.
Liang, Dapen: The Development of Philippine Political Parties. Hong Kong,
1939Palma, Rafael: The Pride of the Malay Race. New York, 1949.
Phelan, John Leddy: T h e Hispanization of the Philippines; Spanish aims
and Filipino Responses, 1565-1700. Madison, U.S.A., 1959.
Quirino, Carlos: Magsaysay of the Philippines. Quezon City, 1958,

924

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Rizal, Jose: Noli Me Tangere (English version). Manila, 1956.,

Schurz, W. L.: The Manila Galleon. New York, 1939.
Smith, Robert A.: Philippine Freedom. New York, 1958.
Worcester, Dean C : The Philippines, Past and Present. New York, 1930.
Zaide, Gregorio F . : Philippine Political and Cultural History. 2 vols. Manila,
Revised Edition, 1957.
I
Aguinaldo, E., and Pads, V. A.: A Second Look at America. New York, 1957.
Buenafe, Manuel: Wartime PhiKppines. Manila, 1950.
Eggan, Fred., and others: Area Handbook on the Philippines. 4 vofs..New
Haven: Human Relations Area Files, 1956.
Forbes, W. Cameron: The Philippine Islands. Cambridge, Mass., 1945.
Majul, C. A.: The Political and Constitutional Ideas of the Philippine
Revolution. Quezon City, Philippines, 1957.

X. BIOGRAPHY

Boudet, P . : Un Voyageur Philosophe, Pierre Poivre en Annam (1749-50).

Hanoi, 1941.
Boulger, D . C : Sir Stamford RafHes. London, 1897.
Cheng Hao Sheng: Cheng Ho I Shih Hui Pien (Life of Cheng Ho). Shanghai, 1948.
Collis, M . ; Siamese White. London, 1936, 1940.
T h e Grand Peregrination: being the Life and Adventures of Fernao
Mendes Pinto. London, 1949.
Coupldnd, R.: Raffles of Singapore. London, 1946.
Dupont de Nemours: 'Notice sur la vie de M . Poivre (avec une introduction et des notes par Louis Malleret)', BSEI (1932), no. 3, pp.
13-62.
Duyvendak, J. J. L . : Ma Huan Re-examined. Amsterdam, 1933.
Egerton, H. E.: Sir Stamford Raffles. London, 1900.
Faure, A.: Les Fran^ais en Cochinchine au X V I I I siecle: Mgr. Pigneau
de Behaine, eveque d'Adran. Paris, 1891.
Freitas, J. A. de: Subsidies para . . . a biographia de FernSo Mendes Pinto.
Coimbra, 1905.
"''>-,-^
Fernao. Mendes Pinto, sua ultima viagem a China, 1554-1555 etc.
Lisbon, 1905.
Gaultier, M . : Gia-Long. Saigon, 1933:
Minh-Mang. Paris, 1935.
Gobius, J. F . : Nieuw Nederlandsch Biographisch Woordehboek., 10 vols.
Leiden, 1910.
,
/

Gruyter, J. de: Het Leven en Werken van Ed. Douwes Dekker (Multatuli).
2 vols. Amsterdam, 1920.
Hahn, Emily: James Brooke of Sarawak. London, 1953.
Raffles of Singapore. London, I948.- '^ - -

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

925

Judson, E.; Adoniram Judson, D.D., His Life and Labours. London,
1883.
Knowles, J. D . : Memoir of Mrs. Ann H. Judson . . . including a History
of the American Baptist Mission in the Burman Empire. London,
1829.
Lee-Warner, Sir W . : T h e Life of the Marquis of Dalhousie, K . T . 2 vols.
London, 1904.
Louvet, L. E . : Monseigneur d'Adran, Notice Biographique. Saigon,
1896.
Lucena, J.; Historia da Vida do Padre Francisco de Xavier. Lisbon, 1600.
Lyall, Sir A.: Life of the Marquis of DufFerin and Ava. 2 vols. London,
1905.
Maung Maung T i n : Life of Kinwun Mingyi. Rangoon, 1936.
Munier, P . : Gia-Long. Hanoi, 1932.
D'Orleans, Pere: Histoire de M. Constance. Paris, 1692.
Petit, E.: Francis Gamier, sa Vie, ses Voyages, ses Oeuvres. Paris, 1885.
-Raffles, Lady: Memoir of the Life and Public Services of Sir T . S. Raflles.
London, 1830.
Ritchie, A. I . : Lord Amherst and the British Advance Eastwards to Burma.
Oxford, 1909.
Riley, J. H . : Ralph Fitch, England's Pioneer to India. London, 1899.
St. John, Sir Spenser: T h e Life of Sir James Brooke, Rajah of Sarawak.
Edinburgh and London, 1879.
Saks", J.: Ed. Douwes Dekker: Zijn Jeugd en Indische Jaren. Rotterdam,
1937Stephens, H. M . : Albuquerque. Oxford, 1912.
Vietnam Information Service: Vietnam's President, Ho-Chi-Minh. Paris,
1947- ,
Winstedt, Sir Richard: ' T h e Malay Founder of Mediaeval Malacca',
BSOAS, Univ. of London, xii (1948), pts. 3 and 4.

XI.

GENERAL WORKS

Barros, J. de, and Couto, D. de: De^adas da Asia. 24 vols. Lisbon, 171888;
Bei^ley, Sir C. R.: The Dawn of Modern Geography. 3 vols. London,
1897-1906.
Clifford, Sir Hugh:.Further India. London, 1904.
Couto, D. d e : Da Asia. 9 vols. Lisbon, 1778-88.
Danvers, F..C.: T h e Portuguese in India. 2 vols. London, 1894.
Dobby, D. H. G.: Southeast Asia. London, 1950.
Eckel, Paul E.: The Far East since 1500. London, 1948.
Emerson, R., Mills, L. A., and Thompson, V.: Government and Nationalism
in Southeast Asia. New York, 1942.

926

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Faria Y. Sousa: Asia Portugueza. 3 vols. Lisbon, 1666-75..

Ferrand, G.: Instructions' Nautiques et Routiers Arabes et Portugais des
XV et XVI Siecles. 3 vols. Paris, 1921-1028.
Foster, Sir W.: England's Quest of Eastern Trade. London, 1933.
Furnivall, J. S.: Educational Progress in Southeast Asia. New York,
1943'
Progress and Welfare in South-East Asia. New York, 1941.
Grousset, R.: Histoire de I'Extreme Orient. 2 vols. Paris, 1929.
Grousset, R., Auboyer, J., and Buhot, J.: L'Asie Orientale des Origines au
XV Siecle. Paris, 1941.
Hall, D. G. E.: 'South-East Asia and the Archipelago', in C. H. Philips
(ed.), A Handbook of Oriental History. London, 1951.
Harrison, Brian: Southeast Asia, a short history. London, 1954.
Jayne, K. G.: Vasco da Gama and his Successors. London, 1910.
Landon, K. P.: Southeast Asia, Crossroad of Religions. Chicago, 1947.
Lasker, B.: Peoples of Southeast Asia. Nevr York, 1944.
Launay, A.: Memorial de la Societe des Missions Etrangeres. 2 vols.
Paris, 1912-16.

Le May, R.: The Culture of South-East Asia: The Heritage of India.

London, 1954.
Leroy-Beaulieu, P.: De la Colonisation Chez les Peuples Modernes.
6th ed. Paris, 1908.
Mills, L. A. (ed.): The New World of Southeast Asia. Minneapolis and
London, 1949.
Prestage, E.: The Portuguese Pioneers. London, 1933.
Purcell, V. W. W. S.: The Chinese in Southeast Asia. London, 1951.
Ribadeneyra, M. de: Historia de las Islas del Archipelago y Reynos de la
Gran China, Tartaria, Cochin-China, Malacca, Siam, Camboxa y
Japon. Barcelona, 1591
Sottas, J.: Histoire de la Compagnie royale des Indes Orientales. Paris,
1905.

Thayer, P. W.: Southeast Asia in the Coming World. Baltimore, 1953.

Thomson, J. O.: History of Ancient Geography^ Cambridge, 1948.
Thompson, V.: Labour in Southeast Asia. Oxford, 1947^
Thompson, V., and Adloff, R.: The Left Wing in South East Asia. New
York, 1950.

Cultural Institutions and Educational Policy in Southeast Asiff: ' A

Report. New York, 1948.
""
~" - '
Vogel, J. Ph.: The Contribution of the University of Leiden to Oriental
Research. Leiden, 1954.
Wales, H. G. Quaritch: Ancient South-East Asian Warfare. London,
1952-

Wickizer, V. D., and Bennett, M. K.: Rice. Economy of Monsoon Asia.

San Francisco, 1941.
-^ T
Williamson, J. A.: The Ocean in English History. Oxford, 1941.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

927

Wong Shion-Fi: General History of Southeast Asia (in Chinese).

Shanghai, 1920.

'

Wyatt, Woodrow: Southwards from China, a survey of Southeast Asia

since 1945. London, 1952.
Yule and Burnell: Hobson-Jobson. London, 1903.

XIJ,.

RECENT CONTRIBUTIONS TO SOUTH-EAST ASIAN HISTORY

Allen, G. C , and Donnithorne, A. G.: Western Enterprise in Indonesia and

Malaya. London, 1957.
Benda, Harry J.: The Crescent and the Rising Sun. The Hague, 1958.
Bosch, F. D. K.: Selected Studies in Indonesian Archaeology. The Hague,
1961.

Brugmans, I.J. (ed.): Nederlandsch-Indie onder Japanse bezetting. Franeker,

1962.

Buttinger, Joseph: The Smaller Dragon, A Political History of Vietnam.

New York, 1958.
Cady, John F.: A History of Modern Burma. Ithaca, N.Y., 1958.
Casparis, J. G. de: Prasasti Indonesia II, Selected Inscriptions from the
Seventh to the Ninth Century A.D. Bandung, 1956.
Chakrabonse, Prince Chula, Lords of Life. London, i960.
Collis, Maurice S.: Last and First in Burma. London, 1956.
Cooihaas, W. Ph.: A Critical Survey of Studies on Dutch Colonial History.
.'s-Gravenhage, i960,
(ed.): Generale Missiven van Gouverneurs-Generaal en Raden aan Heren
XVII der Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie, Deel I, 1610-38.
's-Gravenhage, i960.
Cowan, C. D.: Nineteenth Century Malaya. London, 1961.
Dauphin-Meunier, A.: Historic du Cambodge. Paris, 1961.
Feith, Herbert: The Decline of Constitutional Democracy in Indonesia.
Ithaca, N.Y., 1962.
Fifield, Russell H.: The Diplomacy of Southeast Asia: 1945-58. New York,
1958.
Glamann, Kristof: Dutch Asiatic Trade, 1620-1740. Copenhagen and The
Hague, 1958.
GoL'ee, E. en Adriaanse, C. (eds.): Ambtelijke Adviezen van C. Snouck
HurgronjeV 1889-1936. 2 vols. 's-Gravenhage, 1957, 1959.
Graaf, H. J. de: De Regering van Panembahan Senapati Ingalaga. 's-Gravenhage, 1954.
De Regering van Sultan Agung, Vorst van Mataram, 1613-45, en die van
zijn voorganger Panembahan Seda-ing-Krapjak, 1601-13. 's-Gravenhage, 1958.
De Regering van Sunan Mangku-Rat I Tegal-Wangi, Vorst van Mataram,
1646-77. 's-Gravenhage, 1961.
31

928

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

Groslier, Bernard P.: Angkor, Art and Civilization. London, 1957.

Angkor et le Cambodg^au XVF siecle dlapres les sources portugaises et
espagnoles. Paris, 1958.
GuUick, J. M.: Indigenous Political Systems of Western Malaya. London,
1958.
;
Hall, D, G. E.: 'Looking at Southeast Asian History', Journal of Asian ,
Studies. Ann Arbor, Mich., May i960.
' On the Study of Southeast Asian History', Pacific Affairs. Richmond, Va.,
September i960.

' .
.
(ed.): R. B. Pemberton's Journey from Munipoor to Ava, and from thence
across the Yooma Mountains to Arracan (14 July-i October 1830).
JBRS, Dec. 1960, pp. 1-96.
(ed.): Historians of South-East Asia (Historical Writing on the Peoples of
Asia, Vol. H). London, 1961.
(ed.): Michael Symes, Journal of his Second Embassy to Ava ini8o2.
London, 1955.
Hay, S. N., and Case, M. H.: Southeast Asian History. A Bibliographical
Guide. New York, 1962. /
Heekeren, H. R. van: The Stone Age of Indonesia. 's-Gravenhage, 1957.
Herz, Marten P.: A Short History of Cambodia. New York, 1958.
Ingram, James C.: Economic Change in Thailand since 1850. Stanford, 1955.
Irwin, Graham: Nineteenth-century Borneo, a Study in Diplomatic Rivalry.
's-Gravenhage, 1955.
Johns, A. H.: Malay Sufism, JMBRAS. Singapore, 1957.
Kahin, G. McT. (ed.): Governments and Politics of Southeast Asia. Ithaca,
1959Major Governments of Asia. Ithaca, 1958. .
Kempers, A. J. Bernet: Ancient Indonesian Art. Cambridge, Mass., 1959.
Kennedy, J.; A History of Malaya. London, 1962.
Lancaster, Donald: The Emancipation of French Indo-China. London,
1961.
Le Thanh Khoi: Le Viet-Nam, Histoire et Civilisation. Paris, 1955.
Leur, J. C. van: Indonesian Trade and Society, Essays .in Asian Social and
Economic History. The Hague, 1955. ^ "^ -^
Macdonald, Malcolm: Angkor. London, 1958.
Macfadyen, Sir Eric (ed.): The History of Rubber Regulation, 1934-43.
London, 1944.
^

Marks, Harry J.: The First Contest for Singapore, 1819-24;-'s-Gravenhage,

1959Masson, Andre: Histoire du Vietnam. Paris, i960.
y'
Maung Maung: Burma in the Family of Nations. Amsterdam, 1956.
Meilink-Roelofsz, M. A. P.: Asian Trade and European Influence in the
Indonesian Archipelago between 1500 and about 1630. The Hague, 1962.
Mills, Lennox A.: Malaya, a Politk'kl and Economic Appraisal. London
and Minneapolis, 1958.

SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

929

Moffat, Abbot Low: Mongkut, the King of Siam. Ithaca, N.Y., 1961,
Moorhead, F. J.: A History of Malaya and her Neighbours, Vol. I. London,
1957Nu, Thakin: Burma under the Japanese. New York, 1954.
Palmier, L.: Indonesia and the Dutch. London, 1961.
Parkinson, C. Northcote: British Intervention in Malaya, 1867-77. Singapore,
i960.
Pearn, B. R.: Judson of Burma. London, 1962.
PurcelljjVictor: The Revolution in Southeast Asia. London, 1962.
Pye, Lucian W.: Politics, Personality and Nation Building; Burma's Search
for Identity. New Haven and London, 1962.
Robequain,-.Charles: Malaya, Indonesia, Borneo and the Phihppines.
London, 1954.
Rose, Saul: Socialism in Southern Asia. London, 1959.
Britain and South-East Asia. London, 1962.
^
Runciman, The Hon. Sir Steven: The White Rajas, a History of Sarawak
from 1841 to 1946. Cambridge Univ. Press, i960.
Ryan, N. J.:^ Malaya through four centuries: An Anthology, 1500-1900.
London, 1959.
Schrieke, B.: Indonesian Sociological Studies: selected writings, Part One.
The Hague, 1955.
Indonesian Sociological Studies: selected writings. Part Two. Ruler and
Realm in Early Java. The Hague, 1957.
Sein,Win: The Split Story. Rangoon, 1959.
Siguret, J.: Territoires et Populations des Confins du Yunnan. 2 vols. Peking,
1937, 1940.
Skinner, G. WiUiam: Chinese Society in Thailand: An Analytical History.
Ithaca, N.Y., 1957.
Slim, Sir William: Defeat into Victory. London, 1956.
Stutterheim, W. F.: Studies in Indonesian Archaeology. The Hague, 1956.
Tarling, Nicholas: British Policy in the Malay Peninsula and Archipelago,
1824-71, JMBRAS. Singapore, 1957.
Tinker, Hugh: The Union of Burma. London, 1957.
Trager, Frank N. (ed.): Marxism in Southeast Asia. Stanford, Calif., 1958.
Tregonning, K. G.: Under Chartered Company Rule, North Borneo 18811946. Singapore, 1958.
Vel'jp, Walter F.: Siam under Rama III. New York, 1957.
Vlekke, B. H. M.: Nusantara. Fourth edition, 1959.
Wheatley, Paul: The Golden Khersonese: Studies in the Historical Geography
of the Malay Peninsula before A.D. 1500. Kuala Lumpur, Malaya, 1961.
Willoquet, Gaston: Histoire des Philippines. Paris, 1961.
Wilson, David A.: Politics in Thailand. Ithaca, N.Y., 1962.
Woodman, Dorothy: The Making of Burma. London, 1962.

INDEX
Atling, 319
Alves, Captain Walter, 389
Abdullah of Perak, 523, 52^
Amangku Buwono I, 389
Abdul Muis, 709
Amangku Buwono I I of Jogjkarta, 314,
Abhidammapitaka, 589
448
Abreu, Antoojo d', 118
Amangku Buwono III, 453, 514
Abubakar, 536
.
zo 1.
Amangku Buwono IV, 514
Abulfatah Agung of Bantam (bultan
Amangku Buwono V, 514
Agung), 302
Amangkurat I (Sunan Tegalwangi), 298,
Acapulco, 228, 677
301, 302
Ache' Comte d', 461
Amangkurat I I (Adipat Anom), 302, 304
Acheh, Achinese, 59, 1961 20i-2) 204,
Amangkurat I I I (Sunan Mas), 307
219, 272, 278, 295, 467
Amangkurat IV, 307
Acuna, governor, 227
Amarapura, 149, 388, 554, 560, 588
Adam's Peak, 164
Amaravati, Buddhist images, 20, 28
Adat, adatrecht, 201, 446
Amaravati (Quang-nam), 28, 33, 173-4,
Adhirajas, 94, 96
182, 393, 401
Adityavarman, 84-5
Amarendrapura, 98
Afghan War, Afghanistan, 576-7, 601
Amboina, 218, 222-3, 257, 270, 272, 275,
A.F.P.F.L., 792-8, 850, s^-i
285, 287, 316, 515. 668
Africa (East), 88
American Independence, War of, 466,
Agastya, 46, 50, 63
SS7, 689
Agra, 596
American, United States of, 438, 539,
Agrarian Law, De Waal's, M'*721-32, 754, 757, 761, 810, 815, 824,
Aguinaldo, 685, 721
860
Ahmed Najam, 454
Amherst, Lord, 567
Ahmed Shah, 367
Amoghapasa, Bodhisattva, 70, 73, 83
Ahom dynasty, kingdom 0^ Assam, 159, Amoghapasalokeswara, 72
565
Ai-lao, 132, 158
Amoy, 228
Airlangga, v, 51, 59, 67, (><)i 7i
Amsterdam, 271
Akbar, the emperor, 249
Ananda Mahidol, 766, 811
Aksobhya, 71, 82
Ananda temple. Pagan, 140-1
,Akui route, 590
Ananta, 141
'Akyab, 136, 586,781
Anaokpetlun, King, 277, 337, 354-5
Alas, 550
Anawrahta, 106, 136-40, 143, 145, 155,
Ala'uddin (Johore), 321
367, 69s
Ala'ud-din Riayat of Achel^. 196, 219, 322
Anda, 675, 682
Alaungpaya, 156,381, 384-9, 417-18, 422,
Andaman Islands, 467, 567
426-7, 467, 571
Anderson, John, 485, 595
Als\ingsithu, 141, 143
Anderson, Sir John, 473, 534
Albuquerque, Don AflEonse de, 89, 157, Ang Chan, 126, 128-9, ' S ' , 399, 4 i i , 438
196-7, 207, 218, 225
Ang-Duong, 438
Alejandrino, Casto, 733
Ang Em, 400
Alexander of Rhodes, 395
Ang En, 435
Algrains, Coutenceau de, 47
Ang Eng, 405
Alimud Din, 464, 670
Angkor, 4, 26, 77, 90-131, 138, 144, 159,
Ali Mughayat Shah of Actieh, 322
165-8, 174, 177-9, 224, 238. See al^Q
Siemreap
-^
Ali SastroamidjojOj 848
Angkor Thorn, l o i , 113-14, 123, 126,
Allanmyo, 772
130-1, 178
Almeida, Francisco de, 21^
931ABDUL XALIL of Johore,.32;f"

932

INDEX

Angkor Wat, 108-9, 113, 130-1. 158, 163

Ang Mey, 438

Ang Non, 399-400, 430

Ang Nou (Rama T'ibodi), 438
Ang Snguon, 412
Ang Sor, 399, 615
Ang Tong, 400, 428, 430
Ang Votey, 430
Aninditapura (Baladityapura), 92, 95-7
Anjer, 445
An Lok, 129
Annam, 4, 6, tS, 24, 108, 112, 158, 174,
176-9, 181-9, 238-9, 293, 393-413.
421, 688, 715, 718, 799, 800, 803
Anourout, 423, 611, 626, 628
An Pass, 366, 782
Antheunis, Lucas, 277, 355
Antwerp, Truce of, 272, 285, 287
Anu Sapati, 70
Ap'ai, Prince, 426
Aiabs, 56, 88, 135, 219, 292-3, 296, 458,
670
Aragani, 72
Arakan, vii, 12, 24, 36, 61, 132-57, 210,
224, 242, 249, 292-4, 353, 366-80, 557,
567. 571. 588, 590, 735. 781-3, 852
Argenlieu, Admiral G. Thierry d', 799
Arghun, 205
^
Argyre, 14, 133
Ari, 138
Aria Penangsang, 258
Arimittiya, 555
Arjunavivaha, 67, 261
Armenians, 360, 361, 584
Aru Palakka of Boni, 300, 328, 387, 546
Assahan, 547
Assam, 23, 160, 391, 436, 500, 560, 567
Ati^a, 58
Athinkaya, 147-8
Attlee, Clement, 794
Auckland, Lord, 576
Augustinians, 672-3
Aung San, 782, 792, 850
Aungzeya, 371
Aurungzeb (Mughal), 203, 225, 360, 376
Australia, 297, 732, 773, 824, 841
Ava, 147, 157, 210, 241-Z, 244, 382, 389,
576, 601
Avalokitesvara (Lokesvara), 68, 113, 134.
See also Lokesvara
Avelino, 819
Ayut'ia, 121-3, 126, 128-9, 155-6, 15871, 195, 2i8, 224, 238, 244-6, 249, 277,
293. 335-52, 354-5. 338-9. 395, 400,
414, 424-8, 436, 640, 687, 690
BAABULLAH, Sultan of Ternate, 223
Babor, 128
Bachay, 163

Bade, 626'
Bac-ninh,li86, 626
Bac-thanh, 409
Bactria, 17, 23, 132
Badami, ^'4.
Badander,18o
Bagelen, 515
Baguio, 734
Bagyidaw, 566, 574
Baker, Captain George, 385
Bakong, l o i
Bakr Id (Muslim festival), 247
Baksei Chamrong, l o i
Baladitya, 92, 95
Baladityapura, 93, 95
Balambangan, island in Salu Sea, 255,
463
Balambangan (Java), 200, 290, 292, 469
Balaputra, 21, 49, 50, 56, 57
Balaputradeva, King, 45, 46, 50-3
Balat, 613
Balbi, Gasparo, 250
Bali, Balinese, 10, 19, 65, 74, 82-4, 104,
^
201,292,315,546,551,772
Balikpapan 748
Balitung, 46--7, 49, 63
Ballestier, 439
Ball, George, '279
Ba Maw, 700-1, 777
Banda Islands, 82, 197, 212, 218, 222,
270, 272, 275, 279, 285, 316, 372
Bandula, Maha, 580
Bandung, 49, 821, 825, 862'
Bangeri, 326
Bangkok, 135, 345. 4 " . 4^7. 433. 614,
633. 638, 763. 775. 855-7
Bangyi, 243
Banjermasin (Borneo), 204, 262, 315, 448,
451.491.546,553
Banjumas, 515
Banka, 42-3, ^54, 509
Bankibazar, 364
Ban Naphao, 618, 644
Bannerman, Colonel, 470
Bantam, 200, 202, 204, 222-3, 265, 269,
27s. 278-9:^281^4, 287-8, 302-5. 31415, 317, 341, 395.. ^48) 451-3. 462
Banteay Chhmar, 108, i i i
Banteay Srei, 104
Bantila, 464, 670
Bao Dai, 799, 820, 827
Ba Pe, U, 699
Ba Phnom, 98, 616 ^
Baphuon, 25, 106
Baray, 101-2
Barbek Shah, 368
Barom Rachsa, 122, 129, 131, 236
Basan, 123, 12^
Basawpyu, 368
Ba-Seih,,794

INDEX
Bassak, 29, 95, 130. 4
Bassein, 143, 146, 156, 241, 251, 354, 382,
554, 570
Bataan, 732
Batak, 546, 551
Batangas, 682
Batang, River, 72
Batavia (Sunda Kalapa, Jacatra, Jakarta),
221-2, 284, 286-7, 290,^293, 309, 339,
372, 546-53, 705, 773, S64^5,~So7
Batik work, 9, 708
Ba Tranh, 399
Battambang, I J I , 130, 411, 428, 613, 634,
65o, 770
Batu Pahat, 170
Batu Sawar, ;327
Batu Tinagat; 539
Bawdwim, 739
Bayinnaung, J28-9, 154, 2284., 243-5,
247-8, 337, 356, 388-9, 414, 417, 427,
849
.
Bayon temple, l o i , i n , 113-14
Bazin, 719
Beau, Paul,- 714
Behaine, Pigneau de. Bishop oi Adran,
401, 404, 608
Belawan; 553
Belcher, Sir Edward, 505
~Bell, Daniel, 8t8, 860
Bencoolen, 303, 314, 462, 479, 546
Bengal, 71, 85, 151, 197, 204, 210, 218,
249, 317, 375, 560, 589
Bengal, Bay of, 11, 224, 277, 292, 347,
459
Bengkalis, 196, 325
Ben, Mandarin, 411, 435
Benson, Colonel Richard, 576
Bernam, 321, 485
Bernard, Sir Charles, 602, 607, 693
Best, Captain Thomas, 278
Bhadravarman, 33~4
Bhadresvara, 90
Bhagadatta of Lankasuka^ 37
Bhairava-Buddha, 73, 77-8, 81, 84
Bhamo, 145, 146, ^59, 205, 34, 35*, 5*9,
594, 663, 740
Bhanu, 49
Bharada, 71
Bharatayuddha, 69
Bhavavarman, 33, 92
Bltavavarman II, 93
Bhiksus, 20
Bhre Daha, 8g
Bhre Pamaton, 89
Bhre Pandan, 89
Bhre Tumapel, 89
Biacnabato, 686
Bidault, Georges, 802
Bien-hoa, 399, 6i2
Billiton, 454, 546, 553

933

Binh-Thuan, 625
Binnya Dala, last king of Pegu, 248, 337,
381, 39
Binnyakyan,156
Binnyaran 1, 156
Binnyaran II, 157
Binnya U, 150-1, 156
Bintang Island, 196, 207, 219, 321, 465
Bin-thuan, 628
Birch, J. W. W., 523
Biu-nam, 24
Black) Flags, 621, 624, 627, 649
Black River of Tongking, 183, 626, 646
Blundell, 577
Bochinh, 393
Bodawpaya, 380, 392, 408, 433, 554-7
Bodhisattva, 102, 113, 134
Bogor, 200, 255, 313
Bohol, 681-2
Bombay, 460-j
Bombay Burmah Trading Corporation,
604, 606, 633
Bonaparte, Louis, 443-4
Bondjol, 545
Boni, 300, 316, 546
Bonifacio, 685
Bonnard, Admiral, 612
Borneo, 75, 82, 197, 201, 208, 212, 257,
262, 270, 315, 329, 471-97, 521-41,
538, 551, 820, 841
Borobudur, 46-8, 50, 53, 55, 63, 458
Boromokot (Maha T'ammairaja II), 426,
428
Boromoraja of Ayut'ia, 426-7
Borbmoraja of Cambodia, 249
Boromoraja I, 166-7
Boromoraja-II, 123, 168
Boromoraja III, 172
Boromoraja IV, 172
Bosch, Johannes van den, 516
Bosh, Pieter, 273
Bouet, General, 624
Bougainville, Louis Antoine de, 608
BouUay, Claude Ceberet de, 345
Bourbon, 563
Boureau-Delandes, 343
Bovaradej, 762
Boves, 353
Bowring, Sir John, 630
Bowyear, Thomas, 361, 397
Boxer Rising, 689, 707
Braam, J. P. van, 318, 331, 467
Bracciolini, Poggio, 2 i o
Bradley, 630
Braganza, Dom Constantino de, 247
Brahman, 14, 19, 96, 98, 117, 139-40, 149,
171, 303
Brahmaputra, 567
Brantas river, 65, 68, 76, 261
Bra Vijaya, 199

934

INDEX

B r i e r e d e Lisle, 626
B r i g g s p l a n , 792, 838
Britain, British, 334, 540, 596, 6 o i - 3 ' ,
6 0 5 - 6 , 6 0 9 , 6 1 1 , 6 3 3 , 6 4 3 - 6 4 , 6 7 1 , 678,
697, 769. 7 7 3 , 787. 824, 841
British C o m m o n w e a l t h , 841
B r i t o , P h i l i p de, 89, 224, 2 3 5 , 254, 353
B r o a c h , 14
B r o o k e , C h a r l e s J o h n s o n , 537
B r o o k e , H e n r y , 384
B r o o k e , Sir J a m e s , 439, 4 9 7 - 5 0 7
B r o u w e r , H e n d r i k , 292, 294
B r o w n e , C o l o n e l H o r a c e , 600
B r u a s , 321
B r u n e i , 198, 2 1 9 , 540, 841
B r u n o , Sieur de, 382-3
'Bubat bloodbath', 84-5
' B h u d d h a Emerald', 418
Buddhagaya, 143-4
B u d d h a g h o s a , 36, 139
B u d d h a r a j a , 113, 116
B u d d h i s m , M a h a y a n a , 37, 44, 55, 62, 68,
1 1 2 - 1 3 , 138, 144, 174, 1 8 4 - 5
B u d d h i s m , T a n t r a y a n a , 12, 7 1 , 84
B u d d h i s m , T h e r a v a d a or H i n a y a n a , 12,
44, 6 1 , 9 8 , 112, 1 1 9 - 2 1 , 134, 1 3 7 - 9 ,
1 4 3 - 4 , 153, 157, 238, 687, 774
B u d d h i s t , 37, l o i , 104, 106, n o , 1 1 3 - 1 4 ,
117, 120, 123, 128, 132, 134, 588, 5 9 5 ,
608, 853
B u d d h p a d a , 164
B u d i U t o m o , 708
Buffer S t a t e C o m m i s s i o n , 6 6 1 - 3
Bugis, B u g i n e s e , 3 2 9 - 3 1 , 333
B u i Q u a n g - c h i e u , 719
B u i t e n z o r g (Bogor), 37, 313, 4 5 0 , 552
B u k i t M e r i a m , 36
B u l a c a n , 682
B u l u n g a n , 505, 538
Bunga Mas, 473-4, 483, 486-7
B u r d e t t - C o u t t s , M i s s A n g e l a , 507
B u r g o s , J o s e , 676, 684
B u r h a G o h a i n , 566
S u r i n a m , 92
B u r m a , B u r m e s e , 12, 3 5 , 8 5 , l o i , 106,
112, 119, 129, 1 3 2 - 5 8 , 161, 165, 169,
172, 218, 224, 2 3 8 - 5 4 , 292, 2 9 4 , 340,
3 5 3 - 6 5 , 3 8 1 - 9 2 , 4 2 7 , 567, 5 7 1 - 8 7 ,
607, 637, 688, 6 9 2 - 7 0 4 , 7 3 5 - 4 0 , 772,
792-9
B u r m a R o a d , 589, 770, 772, 780
' B u r m e s e E r a ' b e g i n n i n g A.D. 638, 133,
246
B u r n a b y , R i c h a r d , 342
B u r n e y , H e n r y , 4 1 9 , 4 3 7 , 484, 574
B u s o m i , F r a n c e s c o , 394
Bussy, C h a r l e s C a s t e l n a u d e , 3 8 3 , 557
B u t o n , 2 9 5 , 300
B u t t e r w o r t h , G o v e r n o r , 609
B u y s k e s , A. A., 509

C A B O T , J o h n , 262
C a b r a l , F a t h e r , 373
Cachar, 566-7
C a e n , ' A n t h o n y , 372
C a i l a n d r a , 50, 55
C a k r a n k a p u r a , 92
C a l c u t t a , 387, 4 4 9 , 4 6 7 , S ' o , 5 6 1 , 598, 823
C a m a c h o , 675
C a m b a y , 69,^191, 197
C a m b o d i a ( n ) , - ' 7 , 10, 12, 14, 3 1 , 4 6 , 8 5 ,
9 0 - 1 3 1 , 1 4 3 - 4 , 156, 161, 1 6 6 - 8 , 1 7 3 - 4 ,
1 7 7 - 8 0 , 182, 224, 2 3 3 - 7 , 2 5 3 , 3^7, 616,
6 2 7 - 8 , 634, 820, 8 2 6 - 3 6
'i"-^ .
C a m k e u t , 650
C a m m o n , 650
C a m O u n , 649
C a m p b e l l , Sir A r c h i b a l d , 568
C a m p b e l l , J. G . D . , 637, 6 4 0
Camphuys, Johannes, 304-5
C a m r a n h Bay, 26, 29
C a m - S i n h , 647

C a m u n d a , 82
Candradaya, 36
C a n d r a d y n a s t y ( A r a k a n ) , 134, 367
C a n h , son of N g u y e n A n h , 4 0 6
C a n n i n g , J o h n , 5 6 3 , 569
C a n t o n , 9, 42, 56, 184, 190, 228, 270, 4 0 2 ,
4 6 3 , 612, 6 2 1 , 719, 769
C a o - b a n g , 189, 644, 827
C a p e C o l o n y , 4 4 9 , 509
C a p e l l e n , G. A. G . P . , B a r o n v a n der,
509
C a p e V e r d e I s l a n d s , 221
C a p Varella, 173, 182
C a r d o s o , L o p o , 233
C a r i m o n I s l a n d s , 196, 4 7 0
C a r n a r v o n , L o r d , 524
C a r o l i n e I s l a n d s , 540
C a r p e n t a r i a , gulf of, 297
C a r w a r d e n , W a l t e r , 396
Castlereagh, Lord, 457, 496
C a s t l e t o n , S a m u e l , 280
C a t h o l i c , C a t h o l i c i s m , 2 2 2 , 2 2 6 - 8 , 247,
3 4 1 , 344, 3 7 3 , 609, 6 1 3 , 618
C a v a g n a r i , Sir L o u i s , 60 r
C a v a n a g h , 489
C a v e n d i s h - B e n t i n c k , L o r d , 585
Cavendish, Thornas,,223, 264
C a w n p o r e , 562
C e b u , 226, 2 3 3 , 680
Cecile, A d m i r a l , 609
<5)
- C e l e b e s , 6, 7, 2 0 1 , 2 2 1 , 278, 2 9 5 , 300,
3 2 8 - 9 , 513, 5 I 5 , ' S 4 6 , 552; 709
-""--""
C e r a m , 2 7 8 - 9 , 286, 294, 2 9 8
C e t e w a y o , 601
C e y l o n , 13, 39, 6 1 , 88, i 4 3 ; ' i s o , 161, 2 0 4 ,
295, 300, 307, 319, 4 4 4 , 509, 7 5 5 , 820
C h a i g n e a u , J e a n - B a p t i s t e , 412
C h a i s e , P e r e de la, 344
C h a i y a , 24, 4 5 , 61

INfDEX
C h a k r a p a t , 2 4 4 , 246
C h a k r a v a r t i n , 9 8 - 9 , 242
C h a k r i d y n a s t y , 334, 758
C h a k r i , G e n e r a l ( R a m a I), 4 1 1 . 4 1 9 . 432
C h ' a - l i , 90
C h a m , l o , 34, 78, 8 1 , 9 1 - 2 , 99, 104, 106,
n o , 113, 116, 122, 137, 1 7 3 - 8 1 , 185,
C h a m p a , 4, 7, 24, 26, 27, 28, 32, 63, 7 3 ,
7 5 - 6 , 8 8 , 90, 92, ^96, 1 0 1 - 2 , 104, 106,
108, 1 1 0 - 1 2 , I i 6 - I 7 > 158, 1 7 3 - 8 1 ,
1 8 5 - 8 , 190, 206, 23879
C h a m p a p u r a , 174
C h a m p e n o i s , 656
C h a n d a n , 31
C h a n d e r n a g p r e , 403
C h a n d i D j a g o , 70, 71
C h a n d i J a g o , 84
C h a n d i Javi, 82, 8 4 - 5
C h a n d i K a l a s a n , 46
C h a n d i M e n d u t , 4 8 , 53, 55
C h a n d i M l e r i , 70
C h a n d i P a w o n , 55
C h a n d i P l a o s a n , 4 8 , 51
C h a n d i S a r i , 58
C h a n d i S e v u , 48
C h a n d i S i n g o s a r i , 85
C h a n d r a b h a n u , 163
C h a n d r a k a n t a S i n g h , 566
C h a n g - a n , 35
C h a n g - c h e n g , 174
C h a n g - c h i e n , 132
Chajiggal, 4 6
C h a n t a b u n , 92, 1 2 2 - 3 , 40^> 4 ^ 8 , 4 3 0 , 66b,
662
Chao-Anou, 419
C h a o F a R u a , 155
C h a o I n , 419
C h a o M u n V a i V o r o n a t , 647
C h a o - N a n , 4-19, 423
Chao-Ngo, 419-21
C h a o N o i , 421
C h a o P h o , 645
C h a o P ' y a Y o m a r e j , 761
Chaos, 159
C h a o - S o i - S i s a m o u t , 417
Chao T ' o , General, 183-4
C h a p a t a , i i 2 , 144
C h a p m a n , C h a r l e s , 403
C h a r l e s I I , 288, 303, 344
C l u r n e r , A d m i r a l , 612
C h a s s e l o u p - L a u b a t , C o m t e de, 613
C h a u Ba, 1 2 6 - 7
C h a u d o c , 438
C h a u m o n t , Chevalier, 344
C h a u Pnhea Ang, 128-9
C h a u P n h e a D a m k h a t , 127
C h e A n a n , 181, 187
C h e B o n g N g a , 1 8 1 - 2 , 187
C h e C h e , 181
31*

935

C h e K i a n g , 183
C h e K u n g , 181
Che-Ian, ^ 4 9
C h ' e n d y n a s t y , 184
C h e n g - h o , A d m i r a l , 87, 1 9 4 - 5
C h e n g t u , 158
C h e n l a , 29, 3 3 , 9 0 - 1 , 9 3 - 5 , 108, 121
Che-li, 56
C h e r i b o n , 2 5 5 - 6 , 262, 302, 4 4 4
C h e i o k T e k u n , 36
C h e - t o - s s e u - n a , 90
C h e T s i n g - k ' i n g , 88
Chevalier, 403
C h i a n g , 136
C h i a n g K a i - s h e k , 753, 780
C h i a o - c h o u , 95
C h i e n g K a n g , 645
C h i e n g K h a n e , 417
C h i e n g K h o u a n g , 414, 416
C h i e n g m a i , 105, 117, 1 2 9 - 3 0 , 156, 160,
1 6 5 - 9 , 1 7 1 - 2 , 2 3 8 - 9 , 2 4 3 - 5 , 2 5 3 , 337,
392, 556
C h i e n g - M i e n , 147-8
C h i e n g r a i , 160, 167, 418, 556
C h i e n g R u n g , 159
C h i e n g s e n , 105, 159, 165, 4 1 9 , 556
C h i e u , G i l b e r t , 718
C h i - h o a , 612
C h ' i h - t ' u , 36, 91
C h i n (tribes), 136, 385, 588
C h i n a , c o n f e r m e n t of titles o n S o u t h - E a s t
A s i a n rulers, 3 1 , 1 5 2 - 3 , 196
C h i n a , m i s s i o n s to S o u t h - E a s t Asia, 2 5 - 8 ,
38, 42, 88, 119, 163. See C h e n g - h o ,
K'ang T'ai, Kublai Khan
C h i n a , missions from S o u t h - E a s t Asia t o ,
30, 3 3 , 3 6 - 8 , 4 1 - 2 , 58, 9 1 , 108, 134,
1 4 0 - 1 , 157, 1 6 1 , 165, 1 7 3 , 176, 1 7 8 - 9 ,
194-6
C h i n a , m o d e m , 594, 609, ^Tz, 626, 7 3 2 ,
7 6 7 , 8 2 0 - 1 , 844, 8 5 3 , 856
C h i n a t r a d e , 218, 223, 228, 2 5 6 , 322, 325,
335, 359, 396, 4 0 3 , 465, 4 6 9 , 477, 4 8 0 ,
5 7 , 722
C h i n a , V i e t n a m e s e struggles for i n d e p e n d e n c e of, 184, 6 2 5 - 6 , 718
C h i n a w a r of 1861, 612
Chin Byan ('Kingbering'), 564-6
C h i n d w i n , 134, 137, 147, 150, 354, 569
C h i n d w i n river, 739, 770, 782
C h i n d y n a s t y , 34
C h ' i n d y n a s t y , 184
C h i n e s e in I n d o n e s i a , 3 1 0 - 1 2 , 482, 825
C h i n e s e in M a l a y a a n d B o r n e o , 490, 492,
841
C h i n e s e in S a m b a s (Borneo), 491
C h i n e s e invasions of S o u t h - E a s t Asia, 7 3 ,
1 5 3 - 4 , 160, 182, 186-7, 2 3 9 , 259, 290,
296, 312, 3 4 0 - 1 , 358
C h i n e s e piracy, 4 6 5 , 503

936

INDEX

Chinese recognition of South-East Asian

rulers, 85, 153-4, 157, 159, 163, 174,
176, 182
o
Chinese suzerainty, 153, 159,180, 188, 197
Ching-Sung, 121
Chin-Jin, 35
Ch'in Lun, 132
Chin Peng, 839
Chit Hlaing, U, 699
Chitrasena (Mahendravarman), 33, 90-2
Chittagong, 224-5, 366, 368, 556
Choiseul, Due de, 403
Chela, 55, 59, 62, 139-41
Chom-P'on, 418 .
Chou En-lai, 821, 825
Chou Ta-kuan, 105-6, 117, 119-20, 163
Christian, Christianity, 207, 222-3, 226-9,
233, 341, 354. 395. 608, 611, 622,
670-1, 680
Christison, General, 805
Chryse, 14, 15, 133
Chulalok, General, 418
Chulaiongkorn, j66, 246, 630-42, 75S
Chulamanivarmadeva, 57-8
Chula Sakarat. See 'Burmese Era'
Chulavamsa, 143
Chung Prei, 235
Chusan, 609
Cinnamon, 295, 311, 317. 520, 543, 678
Clarke, Sir Andrew, 523
Clement X I I , 396
Clifford, Sir Hugh, 530, 618
Clive, 317
Cloves, 197, 206, 218-19, 263, 271, 27s,
278-9, 298, 316.474, 543
Cochin China, 4, 7, 26, 90, 183, 292, 394,
404-13, 509, 608, 613, 617, 622, 628,
643, 741
Cochius, General, 545
Cocks, Richard, 396
Coen, Jan Peterszoon, 278, 282, 285, 290,
668
Coffee, production and trade, 309, 444,
455. 512. 518, 520, 543, 552, 678, 735,
742
Cok^yne, George, 279
Col des Nuages, 29, 173, 181, 185, 188
Collier, Admiral, 504
Colombo, 248, 295, 299, 824, 841
Communism, Communists, 691, 709-10,
720, 750, 775, 794. 803, 812, 817,
821-3, 82s, 827-8, 830-2, 834-9, 843.
845, 848-9, 853. 855-7
Confucianism, 184, 608, 610
Cong Thuong Vuong, 393
Conjeveram, 25, 26, 133, 139, 143
Conti, Nicole de, 209
Conway, de, 407
Cook, Captain James, 464
Co-operative movement, 738

Corciiera, Hurtado de, 673

Cornish, 464
Cornwallis, Lord, 459
Coromandel Coast, 23, 56, 197, 204, 207,
277. 295. 347, 460
Corregidor, 669, 732
Cortenhoof, Jacob Dirckszoon, 371
Cortez, 221

Cossigny, de, 407, 412

Cotton, cultivation and trade, 309, 462,
589, 598, 678
Council of India, or the Indies, i ' '
Council of Trent, 672, 674
Couper, Sir George, 583
Courbet, Admiral, 624
Courthope, Nathaniel, 281, 283, 286
Cox, Captain Hiram, 559, 561-2
'Coxinga' (Kuo Hsing Yeh), 296
Cranganore, 14
Cranssen, W. J., 451
Crawfurd, John, 212, 437, 4 5 3 , ' 4 5 8 ,
478-9, 483-4, 486, 571, 572-3, 589
Crimean War, 584
Cri Raja, 126-7
Cri Sodaiya, 126
Crosthwaite, Sir Charles, 693
Cruz, Gaspar de, 233
Cuestra, 675
Culture system in Java, 509-20, 543, 705,
747
Curzon, Lord, 660, 663
DAALEN, Lieutenant-Colonel van, 550

Dacca, 370, 372

Daendels, Marshal Herman, Willem,
444-5, 446-9, 451. 453. 456, 509-10,
516
Dagon, 156
Dai-co-viet, 175
Daing Chelak, 329
Daing Kemboja, 330
Daing Mangika, 327
Daing Merewah, 329
Daing Parani, 328
Daingri-pet, 373
Dai-Viet, 108, 111
Daksa, 63, 64Dalat, 800
^~^'
Dale, Sir Thomas^ 283-3
Dalhousie, Marquis of, 578-84, 590, 598
Dalrymple, Alexander, 463-4
_^
Dam, Johan van, 300
Dammazedi, 157
Damrong, Prince, 636, 638
Dangkrek, 108, 435
Danubyu, 382, 568
/
Dapitan, 485
Dara Jingga, 84
Dara Petak, 78-9, 84
Dasmarinas, Governor, 227, 234

INDEX
937
Davidson, J. G., 525 .
Do Tharih-Nhon, 405
Davies, Major H. R., 665
Doumer, Paul, 714
D'Azevedo, Sylvestre, 234
Drake, Sjf Francis, 223, 227, 263
Dekker, Edward Douwes, 'Multatuli', 543
Draper, 464
De La Torre, 684
D u J ^ a n t , 346, 349
Deli, 322, 547, 747
Du Bus de Gisignies, 513, 516
Demak, 199, 2or, 255
Dufferin, Lord, 605
Demmeni, Governor, 549
Dugeune, Colonel, 626
Dent, Alfred, 538
Dulles, 823, 829
Desfarges, Marshal, 345
Dupleix, Joseph, 362, 382
Deshima, 296
Dupre, Admiral, 620
Despiau, 412
Dupuis, Jean, 620
Desvoetix, 466
Durven, Diederik, 308
Devapala, 45
Dutch, 261-89, 294, 296, 341, 352, 359,
Deva-raja cult, 98-9, 102, 113, 121, 125,
444. 509-20, 542-53. 668-9, 705-13.
173
747, 806, 845
DevawongseV Prince, 636, 657, 761
Dutch Fundamental Law (1814), 509
Develle, 658
Dutch Liberals, 543-4
Deventer, C. T h . van, 705
Duyshart, 644
Dewey, 685, 721
Dvaravati, kingdom of, 912, 105-6, 135,
Deykerhoff, Colonel, 549
161
Dhammapala, 139
Dvaravati Sri Ayudhya, 165
Dhammathat (Burmese rendering of
Dyaks, 491, 503, 508
Dharmashastra), 246-7
Dyarchy, 698-700, 703, 715
Dharanindravarman I, 107-8
Dharanindravarman II, n o , 113
EAST INDIA COMPANY, 265, 267, 270-1,
Dharmakirti, 58
273, 276, 281, 285, 288-90, 316, 331-2,
Dharmapala, 247
337, 340-2, 348, 384. 436, 449. 556
Dharmaraja, 126-7, '64
Eden, Sir Anthony, 823
Dharmashastras, 18
Ekat'otsarat, the 'White King', 335; 355
Dharmasoka, 122-3
Elout Cornells Theodorus, 509
Dharmasraya, 71, 72
Elphinstone, Mountstuart, 585
Dharmatunga, 49
Emmahaven, 553
Dharmavamsa, 57, 59, 65-7
Engku Muda, 332
Dharmivajaya, 134
England, English, 262, 264, 284, 288, 338,
Dhonburi, 418
341. 357. 386, 641
Dianga, 224, 369-75. 378-9
Entente Cordiale of 1904, 663
Diaz, Monsignor, 6 i i
.Erberfelt, Pieter, 288, 310
Dickens, John, 475
Erbinger, Captain, 627
Diemen, Antonie van, 292, 294, 296-8,
Erskine, Colonel, 557
375.415
Esquilat, 656
Dinaya, 63
Europe, European, 205-12, 304, 341, 520,
Dindings, 329, 332
602, 642, 735-57, 769
Dinh-binh-phu, 646, 829, 856
F A - H S I E N , 21, 38
Dinh dynasty, 175, 185
Fai FO, 236, 394
Dinh-tuong, 400
Fan Chan (Funan), 27
Dipo Negoro, 574, 691
Fan Fo (Lin-yi), 29, 33
Diu, 299
Fa Ngum, 121, 165, 238
Djaka Dolog, 71
Fan Hsiung (Lin-yi), 28, 29
Djakarta, 37, 256
Fan Hsun (Funan), 28
Dji-Ba, 171
Fan Man or Fan Shih-man, 26, 27, 30,
Dominicans, 394-5, 672
Dom Muang Airport, 765
133
Dompo, 82
Fan Yi (Lin-yi), 29
Dong-duong, 28, 174
Farquhar, R. J., 469
Dong-Khanh, 627
Federal Council (Malaya), 533
Dong-son culture, 8-9, 183
Federation of 1896 (Malaya), 531, 640
Donnison, 702
Federation of 1948 (Malaya), 790, 837-8
Donwun, 155-6
Federation of 1957 (Malaya), 840, 842
Fendall, John, 458, 493, 509
Dorman-Smith, 794

938

INDEX

Ferdinand VII, 683

Feringhi of Arakan, 224, 368
Fernandez, Duarte, 172, 218 a
Ferry, Jules, 540, 603, 624
Figueroa, Esteban Rodriguez de, 233
Fitch, Ralph, 24s, 251, 262
Fitzherbert, Captain Humphrey, 286
Fleetwood, Edward, 361, 397
Floris, Pieter WilJemszoon, 277
Foochow, 626
Formosa, 233, 296, 463, 626-7, 668-9,
732, 849
Forrest, Henry, 355, 467
Forsans, de, 412
Forsyth, Sir Douglas, 598
Fort Nassau, 272
Fort St. George (Madras), 341, 386, 466
Fort William, 567
Fournier, Commandant, 626
Fra Jordanus, 205
France, French, 294, 334, 339, 341, 344,
476, 596, 602, 604-5, 608, 610-12,
614-15, 620-9, 622, 625-7, 634, 643-64,
687, 689, 714-20, 769-70, 803, 824
Francklin, William, 561
Fredericke, Caesar, 245, 247
Frederick, Henry, Prince, 293, 338
'
Freycinet, de, 624
Friel, 402
Fukien, 183
^
Fullerton, Robert, 473, 484-7
Funan, 22, 24, 27, 31, 35, 90, 124, 133,

Gayo, 550
G . C . B : A . , 699

Genouilly, Rigault de, 612

.George II, 387
George III, 519
Gerini, Major, 634
Germany, 702, 722, 760, 769, 781
Gerretsen, Martin, 669
Gerritsz, Jan, 371
,
Gharib Newaz, 362
Ghi Hins, 521
Gia-dinh, 400, 405, 409, 608, 612
Gia-Long, 409, 411, 419, 435, 008. See
also Nguyen Anh
Giap, 828
Gillespie, Sir R. R., 451, 454,
Gilmore, Eugene A., 725
Globe, the, 277, 337, 459
Goa, 218-19, 223-4, 247, 269, 295, 299,
369
Gobi Desert, 136

Go-Cong, 612, 617

Godwin, General Sir Henry Thomas, 580
Goens, Rijkloff van, 298, 302
Goessens, Joan, 376
Golconda, Kingdom of, 349
Gomez, 684
Good Hope, Cape of, 298, 307, 319
Gotra, 55
Government of Burma Act, 1935, 700-1
Government of India Act, 1935, 697-8,
700-1

Gracey, 799
Graff, de, 706
Furnivall, J. S., 694
Grahi, 108
Fytche, Albert, 593-4, 617, 695
'Great East', 316
'Greater India', 16
GAJA MADA, 80-6, 89
Gresik, 190, 198, 221, 255
Gajayana, 46, 63
Grosgurin, 657
Gallinato, Juan de, 227
Gallizia, first Catholic bishop of Burma, Guam, 771, 782
Guerrero, Hernando, 673
364
Guillemard, Sir Laurence, 788
Galvao, Antonio, 222
Gujeratis, Gujerat, 16, 69, 190, 197, 322
Gambhir Singh, 573
' Gunavarman, 32, 33
Gamelan (orchestra), 9
Gunavarman of Kashmir, 38
Gam Kat, 126
Gunong Tabur, 505
Gam Yat, 122
Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand, 689, Guntung, 330
708, 711
Gupta style in art, 21, 33, 37, 48, 134
Ganges, river, delta, 191, 224, 367
Gurney, Sir Henryp838
Ganter, 70
Gurun, 82
Garcia, 862
Gurung, 49
Gyfford, William, 396
Garnham, Captain, 494
Gamier, Francis, 594, 618-22, 624, 645,
647-8
HAAS, Frederic, 604
""
Gaung Gyi, 578, 582
Hadji Agus Salim, 709
Gaur, 367-8
Hague, The, 276, 319, 327, 335, 339, 496,
Gaurinath Singh, 565
539,705.805
Gawdawpalin, 143
Hainan, 769
Gawhim, 854
Haiphong, 621, 800
Gayatri, 78, 8i
Hai Sans, 52^1
160

INDEX
Haiti, 444
Haji Saman, 502
Halin, 133-4
Halmahera, 218, 222, 317
Hamja, Sultan of Ternate, 2g4
Hammarskjold, Dag, 837
Ham-Nghi, 627
Hamsavati, 135, 163
Hamzah, 203
Han dynasty, 2, 28, 184
Hankow, 595, 619-20
Hannax, Captain, 590
Hanoi, 34, 180, 185-9, 29^. 395. 4o8,
620-1, 656, 717, 833
Hanthawaddy, 563
Han Ti Ko, .447
Hare, Alexander, 493
Hare-Hawes-Cutting Act, 72^
Harihara, 32, 33, 93, 98, 162
Hariharalaya, 98-9
Haripunjaya (Lamp'un), io8> 'I7> I35)
160
Harivamsa, 69
Harivarman I, 174, 177-8
Harivarman II, 175
Harivarman IV (Champa), i f " " ?
Harivikrama, 133
Harmand, Dr., 624
Harrison, Francis Burton, 724
Harshavarman II (Angkor), <4. " 2
Harshavarman III, 106-8
Hartsinck, Pieter, 444
Hassan Udin, 299
Hassan Udin of Macassar, 25
Hastings, Warren, 403-4, 459. 4^6-7
Ha-tien, 400, 404, 425, 617
Ha-tinh, 185, 189, 393
Hatta, MahOmmed, 776, 809, 843
Hawke, Lord, 464
Hayam Wuruk (Rajasanagaf^)) ' ' 4.
86-7, 170
Hayes, Robert, 285
Heeren XVII, 271, 282
Helm, Arent Jansen van denj 375
Henzada, 382
Herbert, Captain John, 465
Heron, Captain George, 361
Heutsz, Johannes BenedictiJS ^^n, 549,
551
Heyden, General Karel van
der, 548
Ht%'n, Paulus Cramer, 372
Hien-nam, 396-7
Hien Vuong, 395, 398
Hiep-Hoa, 625, 627
Higginson, Nathaniel, 361,'3^7
Hill, Captain Thomas, 561
Hindoe-Javaanshe
Geschiedenis, 71, 83
Hiroshima, 783
Hitu, 278
Hlutdaw, 144-5, 168, 574

939

Hmannan Yazawin, 'Glass Palace Chronicle', 138, 143, 153

Hmawza^Old Prome), 132, 134
Ho, 646-7, 649
Hoa Binh, 828
Hoa Chu, 181
Hoa Lu, 17s
Ho Chi Minh, 719, 775, 799, 828, 834
Hoevell, W. R., Baron van, 520, 542
Hogendorp, Dirk van, 443, 509
Ylo"hendorS, van, 313
'Ho-ling', 46
Homalin, 740
Homo australicus, 6
Homo soloensis, 6
Hong-Dat, 625
Hongitocht, 298, 316
Hong Kong, 501, 538, 609, 633, 679, 769,
771
Hoorn, Joan van, 3078
Hoover, Herbert, 726
Hope, Lieutenant, 387
Horsfield, Thomas, 458
Housa P'an, 419
House, 630
Houten, Cornells van, 372
Houtman, Cornelis de, 264, 267, 323
Hpimaw, 854
Hsenwi, 152, 357, 390
Hsinbyushin, 152, 389-91
Hsipaw, 152, 243
Hsuan-tsang, 133
Htilominlo, 143-4
Huan-Wang, 173
Hue (Thu'a-thien), 24, 28, 33, 183, 185,
187, 396, 611, 624, 648
Hughes, Sir Edward, 467
Hugli, 373, 467
Hukawng valley, 781
Hukbalahap, 733, 860
Hull, Cordell, 773
Hunter, John, 437
Hunt, Richard, 280
Hurdt, Anthony, 302
Hurgronje, Snouck, 204, 549-50
. Hurley, 780
Hussein, Sultan of Johore, 471
IBN BATUTA, 84, 191, 193,

205

Ibn Iskander, 304

lemitsu, Shogun, 228
leyasu, Shogun, 228
Illanos of Sulu (Moros, Balanini), 317,
498
Iloilo, 233, 667
Ilokos, 681-2
Imhoff, Gustaaf Willem, Baron van, 312,
330
I-mou-hsiin, 134, 158
Imphal, 781

INDEX
Imtaw Syan, 143
Japara, 219, 255, 278, 283
Indaw, 739
Jatakas,i3, 70, I32-3
India, 12, 88, 98, 133, 156, 223,'^62, 287, Jatiningirat, 51
Java, Javanese, lo, 12, 31, 37, 63-77, 79,
293, 325, 609, 697, 747, 820
Indian immigration to S.E. Asia, 14, ^ 81-9,(96-9/ 104, n o , 135, 175, 180,
190, 197, 199-200, 203, 206, 2o8, 255,
535. 688, 737, 749-50, 752-3, 790
261, 272, 286, 290, 304, 307, 315, 443,
Indian influence, 4-5, 12-24
448, 707, 743, 772, 844
Indian Mutiny, 584, 736
Jayabhaya, 69
Indian National Congress, 689, 709
Jayadevi, 93, 95
Indian Ocean, 200
Indo-China (French), 608-29, 637, 643, Jaya Indravarman I, 175

653, 662, 7IJ, 714-20, 740-4, 768, Jaya Indravarman II, 108, 177
Jaya Indravarman III, 177
770-1, 799-804, 820
Indonesia(n), 7-10, 12, 69, 71, 144, 183, Jaya Indravarman IV, 178-9
Jaya Indravarman IV (Champa), 111
1 9 0 - 1 , 2 0 1 , 203, 218, 2 5 5 - 3 0 0 , 310,
443-58, 542-53, 705-13, 747, 804-10, Jaya Indravarman V, 178-g. ..
Jayakatwang, 76-7
820
Jayanagara, 78-81, 84
Indra (Sailendra king), 49, 53
Jayanasa (Jayanaga), 42-3
Indragiri, 170, 196, 198, 327
Indrapura (Banteay Prei Nokor), 98, 174, Jaya Paramesvaravarrnan I, 176
Jayarajadir, 178
176, 182, 185-6
Jaya Simhavarm^n I, 175
Indravarman I, 103, 105
Jaya Simhavarman II, 176
Indravarman II (Champa), 102, 174-5
Jaya Simhavamnan III (Champa), 78,
Indravarman III (Angkor), 119-20, 175
Jj3dray3jmaj3 JV, j ' ^ ^
^
1S0-1
Indravarman V, 180
Jaya Simhavarman IV, 181
In P'itok, 433
Jaya Simhavarman V, 182
Inquisition, 247
^
Jayavarman,%3a3
Int'araja, 167, 335, 355
Jayavarman I, 93-5
Int'a-Som, 416
Jayavarman I bis^ 96
Jayavarman II, 63, 97-9, 108, 174
Irrawaddy delta, 139, 157, 241, 736
<
Irrawaddy river, lo, 134-7, 143, 145-9, Jayavarman III, 99
Jayavarman IV, 104
153, 158, 740
Jayavarman V, I045
Isanapura, 92
Jayavarman VI, 107, 180
Isanavarman I, 91-5
Jayavarman VII^ l o i , 110-14, 116-17,
Iselin, 854
iit)-20, 126, 7^4, f59, lyS >
Iskander Muda 0/ Acheh, 299, 324, 547
Jayavarman V I H , 114, 120'
Iskander Shah, 194
Islam, 22, 62, 84, 88, 144, 190-204, 218, Jayavarman Paramesvara, 106, 119-21
- , '
256, 315, 536, 550-1, 687, 691, 708, 847 Jayaviravaiman, 105
Jehangir, Mughal emperor, 277
Israel, 671
Jenan,184
.
<
Isvara, 95
Itsarate Rangsen, 631
Jervois, Sir William, 525
I-tsing, 9,23,42, 133, 184
Jesuits, 228, 233, 236, 335, 338, 340, 344,
394, (>7o, 676
JACATRA, 269, 273, 278, 283
Jett'a (Rama T'ibodi II), 171-2
Jacinto, Emilia, 685
Jipang, 257
- ^
Jaena, Graciano Lopez, 684
Jitendra, 48
Jogjakarta, 46, 4S, 314, 453, 512, 809
Jafna, 247
Johnson, W. G., 641
Jaintia, 567
Johore, 196, 212, 271-2, 295, 317-T8, 32?,
Jaka Tingkir, 257
Jambi (Djambi), 42, 273, 278, 327-8, 331.
327,537,750
'
-
-r^^Jolburi, 122-3
See also Malayu.
Jolo; 233
'
James I, 277, 324, 337, 396
Jones Law (1916), 724
y'
James II (Duke of York), 348, 359
Jorhat, 566
Janggala, 69-70, 86
Jourdain,
John,
578,
337
Janssens, General Jan Willem, 449
Japan, Japanese, 75, 227-8, 270, 296, 335, Juin, 827
/
396, 684, 689, 702, 707, 732-3, 747, Jumel,^S0
Jump'orn, 436
759, 769-83

94

INDEX
941
Junk Ceylon (Puket), 326, 434, 2^36, 466, Kedu, 46
SS6
,
'K
Keeling, William, 276
Kelantanj 198, 536-7, 556, 664
Keling Kahuripan, 89
KABAW valley, 359, 362, 573, 601
Kelung, 626
Kabul, 601
Kelurak, 53
Kachin (people), 588, 602, 853
Kemmendine, 568
Kadaram, 58, 60
Kempeitai, 775
Kadu, 145
Ken Angrok (Rajasa), 69, 70, 76
Kahuripan, 80
Ken Dedes, 70
Kaingsa's Manusarashtaemin, 356
Keng Cheng, 655, 661
r
Kalachakri, 59
Kenghung, 390, 589
Kalagy'a, 143
Kengtung, 390, 434, 588, 653, 849
Kale, 150, 152-3
Keo Fa, 425
Kalekyetaungnyo, 152
Keppel, Captain, 502
Kalima, 368
Kergaradec Comte de, 647
Kalimas rivfer; 261
Kergariou de, 608
Kalinga, 16, 17
Kertajaya, 61, 70
Kambelu, 279
Kertanagara, 61-2, 71-9, 81-4, 206-8
Kambu-Merah dynastic legend, 90
Kertarajasa Jayavarddhana (Vijaya), 76,
Kaipesvara, 69
7'7-9. 84
Kannpar, 61, 170, 196, 198, 321, 325
Kertavarddhana, 81
Kampengpet, 156, 163, 166, 170, 172
Kertavijaya, 89
Kampot, 400, 614, 648
Kesang, river, 481
Kamvau, 106
'Kew Letters', 319, 332, 468
Kan, 128
Khamone-Noi, 417, 421
Kanaung, the prince, 581
Khao Luung, 167
Kanburi river, town, 24, 340, 358, 775
Khmer, 24, 26, 29, 31, 90-131, 138,
Kandy, ,154
. 158-61, 163, 174, 177, 179, 183
Kandy tooth of Buddha, Ceylon, 61, 139
Khone, 657
Kang Fang, 854
Khuang Aphaiwong, 810, 855
K'ang T'ai, 25, 27, 28, 30
Khumbayoni, 51-2
K'ang Y u W e i , 718
Kia-k'ing, 409
Kanishka (Kushana emperor), 31
Kiang Hung, 653, 655,,661
Kansu, 136
Kien-Phuc, 627
'Kan-t'o-li', 40, 41
Ki Hadjar Dewantoro,, 7 "
Kapuas, river, 505
Killeam, Lord, 807
Karen, 150, 702, 774, 853
Kimanis, 538
Karenni, 698
Kimberley, Lord, 522
Kartasura, 302, 305, 307, 311-12
Kin, 177
Kartini, Raden Adjeng, 707-8
Kindat, 590
Katha, 150
King-Kitsarat, 416-17, 421
Katipunan, 685
Kinloch, 467
Kaundinya, 267, 37, Qo-i, 95
Kinwun Mingyi, 596, 599
Kaundinya II, 31
Kirana, 69
Kaungai, 146
Ki-Yen, 46
Kaunghmudaw Pagoda, 363
Kjahi Tapa, 314
Kaungton, 390
Kjai Cede Pamanaha, 258
Kaungzin, 145-7, 205
Klang (Selangor), 321, 330, 333, 521
Kaurava, 69
528
I^utilya's Arthasastra, 13
Koba, General, 783
Kaveripatnam, 14
Kock, Mercus de, 514
Kawit, 721
Koh Ker, 104
Kayuwani, 49-51
Koh-rong, 406
Kebo-Tengah, 72
Kokine, 568
Ke-cho, 396-7
Kolandia, 15
Kedah, 24, 36, 43, 59, 140, 191, 196, 198,
Ko-lo-feng, 23, 95, 134, 158
318, 324, 436, 536-7, 556, 664
Kompong Cham, 98
Kediri, 60, 69-70, 73, 76, 79-80, 86, n o , Kompong-chhnang, 438
Kompong-thom, 12, 565
259, 301-2. 515

942

INDEX

Konbpung dynasty, 281-92, 588-607

Lan Chang, 121, 165, 238-9. See also
Koninklijk Paketvaart Maatschappij, 553
Luang Prabang
Korat, 24, 99, 122-3, 127, 149, ^ o
Landak, 491
Kordofan, 550
Laneau, Bishop, 350
Langkat, 547
Korea, 769, 850, 856
Lang-son,i 186, 644, 827
Kosa Pan, 345
Lang-ya-hsui, 91
Kota Gede, 258
Laniel, 831
Kota Tinggi, 325, 328
Lankasulfa, 30, 37
Kotmont'ien Ban, 169
Lan-Khan-Deng, 239
Kra, Isthmus of, 24, 56
Lansberge, General, 551
Kratie, 92, 95-6, 616
Lanun, 498-7502
Krusenperk, 71
Laos, 90, 93, 121, 129, 147, 160^1,. 165,
Kshatriya, 90
Kuala Kangsar, 532
167, 205, 236, 238, 246, 277, 293, 389,
Kuala Langat, 521
414-23; 643, 770, 820, 826-36
Kuala Lumpur, 521, 528, 531, 789, 839
Lapierre, Commandant, 610
Kuala Selangor, 522
Laplace, Admiral, 608
Kuala Selinsing, 36
Lara Djonggrang, 63
Kuang-An, 613
Larut (Perak), 490, 521
Lashio, 663, 740, 782
Kublai Khan, 62, 73-7, 117, 120, 146,
Laurel, Jose P., 733, 777
i53> 159, 165. 180, 265
Lavo, 161, 165
Kuching, 505, 537
Lawrence, Lord, 594
Kukachin, 205
League of Nations, 689
Kundunga, 37
Leang-Taoming, 85
Kunjarakunja, 76
, Ledo, 716
K'un-lun, 9, 39, 135
Le dynasty, 185, 188-9, 398, 408
Kuomintang, 719, 750, 849
Lee Kuan-yew, 842
Kurile Islands, 296
Lefevre, Mgr., 451, 609, 623
Kutaraja, 70, 547-8
Legaspi, Miguel Lopez de, 226, 232-40
Kutaramanava, 86
Le Hoan, 175, 185-6
Kutei, 37, 491, 505, 545
Le Hoang De Yuan, 188
Kuthodaw Pagoda, 588
Le Loi, 182, 187-8
Kuti, 79-81
Leonowens, Anna, 631, 635
Kuyper, Dr. Abraham, 709
Le Qui-Li, 187
Kwangsi, 183-4, 611, 770
Leran, 190
Kwangtong, 29, 183, 184
Kyanzittha, 108, 134, 140-1
Leria, Father Giovanni-Maria, 415
Kyaukmyaung, 882
Lester, Ensign Thomas, 386
Le Thanh-Ton, 188, 239, 398
Kyaukse, 135-7, I47. I49. 152. 154. 35^
Le Van Duyet, 608
Kyaw Nyein, 832
Le Van Vien, 832
Kyawswa, 147-8
Leveque, Commandant, 609
Kyazwa, 144
Lewis, 578
Kyi Wungyi, 568
Leyden, Dr. John, 449
Leyte, 226, 233, 681, 734
LABOURDONNAIS, Bertrand-Fran(;ois Mahe Li Anh-Ton, 177
Li Bon, 35-6,i84
de, 460
Li dynasty, 179, 185-6^
Labuan Island, 465, 501, 545
Lieu Fang, 184
Lagrandiere, Rear-Admiral, 613
Light, Francis, 318, 331-2, 465, 472, 483,
Lagree, Doudart de, 594, 614
Laguna, 682
498
e
Lai Chau, 829
Ligor, 30, 44, 46, 62, 105, 163, 197, 483
Laksamana, 237
Li Hung Chang, 626-^7

Lakshmi, 90, 102

Li Mi, 823, 849
Lally, Comte de, 386, 461
Lim Yew Hock, 842
Lam, Jan Dirkszoon, 280
L'Inde exteriere, 4
Lambert, Commodore, 578
Lingaparvata, 90
Lampongs, 122, 256, 315, 546
Lingayen, 673, 732
Lampun, 160
Lingga, 332, 479^
Lancaster, Sir James, 264-6, 357
Linggadjati Agreement, 807

INDEX
Linggi, 525
Linschoten, Jan Huygen van, 265, 267
Lin-yang, 133
Lin-yi, 24, 29, 31, 34, 90, 173. See also
Champa, Chams
Li-phat-Tu, 184
Lisbon, 217, 264, 267
Li Thanh-Ton, 176, 186
Liu-Sung-shu, 39
Loi\em, 772
Lokesvara, 11314, 116
Loley, l o i
Lombot, 257, 315. 551
Long-can, 179
. r^
Long-ho, 400
Long Jafar, ^21
Lonthor, 270', i 8 i , 286
Lopburi (Lavo)j 105-6, 108, 135, 138,
166, 424, 640, 812
Lo T'ai, 164
' Loubere, Simon de la, 345
Louis XIV, 294, 303-4, 339-4. 4S9. 687
Lovek, 126, 128-31, 233-5, ^51. 34O1 40
Low, James, 484, 487
Low, Sir Hugh, 501, 526
Luang Pibun Songgram, 765
Luang Prabang, 6, 106, 130, 150, 163,
165, 170, 172, 238, 244, 253, 337. 414,
643
Luch'uan, 153
Luhu, 278
Lu Lei, 132
Lunj (Lomsak), 163
Lunar dynasty, 91, 95
Lunhse (Myanaung), 382
Luu Ky-Tong, 175
Luzon, 226, 228, 231, 233, 463, 669
Lyttleton, Oliver, 839
Lytton, Lord, 601
MACAO, 236, 290,

394

MacArthur, 732-4
Macassar (Celebes), 201-2, 272, 278, 294,
328,448,451,515,553
Mac Cuu, 400
Mac Dang-doanh, 188
Mac Dang Dung, 188
Mace, 212, 218, 27s, 298
Mackenzie, Colin, 458
MftfMichael, 788-9
Macpherson, Sir John, 467, 472
Mac Thien Tu, 362, 400, 430
Madeira, Joao, 233
Madiun, 259, 515, 822
Madras, 331, 347, 356, 359-65, 383-4,
386, 397, 461-6, 586
Madura, Madurese, 10, 73, 74, 7^-7, 83,
262, 312,451
Maetsuycker, Joan, 299-303.

943

Magellan, 221, 226, 264, 271

Magsaysay, Ramon, 817, 860
Magwe INJingyi, 581
Maha Bandula, 566
Mahabharata, 18, 65, 67, 69, 94
Mahabodi temple, Buddhagaya, 140, 144,
157
Maha Chakrap'at, King, 241
Mahadammayaza Dipati, 362, 382
Maha Danda Bo, 379
Mahamuni image, 366, 555
Mahanippean, 120
Maha Sakarat, beginning A.D. 78, 246
Maha Tewi, Princess, 240, 245, 253
Maha Thihathura, 392, 432, 554
Maha Uparat, 172, 337
Maha Vajiravudh, 758
Mahavellipur, 94
Mahavihara, 144
Mahazedi Pagoda, 248
Mahendraparvata, 99
Mahendravarman, 41
Mahin, 246
Mahipativarman, 96-7'
Mahmud of Malacca, 196-7
Mahmud II of Johore, 71, 97, 328, 471
Mahommedan, Muslim, Moor, 84, 88, 89,
190, 202, 217, 292, 304, 366, 499, 550,
847
Ma Huan, 88-9
Maingy, A. D., 585
Majapahit, 62, 76, 77-89, 191, 193
Makabulos, Francisco, 686
Makam Tauhid, 325
Makassar, 80
Makuta, 138, 140
Malabar, 210, 218
Malacca (city), 88-9, 157, 170, 172, 190204, 211-12, 218, 225, 255, 293, 295,
321-33, 339, 669, 789
Malacca (straits), 23, 43, 62, 264, 331, 402,
462, 480, 500, 503, 537, 687
Malalos, 722
Malang, 69, 257, 552
Malay, Malaya, 10, 12, 69, 75, 82, 91, 96,
l o i , 108, 112, 143-4, 156, l6o, 163,
165, 170, 172, 191, 203, 224, 234, 265,
298, 321-33, 459-71, 521-41, 671,
748-57, 773. 785-92, 820, 841
Malayu (Jambi), 42, 59, 71, 74, 77, 83-4,
88, 193
Maldive Islands, 58
Malik al Saleh, 191
Ma-li-yu-eul, 62, 163
Mallaby, 806
Malun, 380, 569
Malyang, 111
Manava Dharmashastra, 18
Manchu dynasty, 189, 296, 357
Manchuria, 769

944

INDEX

Mandalay, 134, 136, 149, 367, 588-607,

699, 782
Mandar Shah, 298

Mandere, Adam van der, 375

Mang Hao, 620
Mangku Bumi, 313, 514
Mangrai, 117, 160, 164
Manila, 221, 226-8, 231, 234, 270, 272,
287, 290, 464, 468, 669, 671, 721
Manipur, 34, 359, 362,^385, 387, 566-7
Manjusri, Bodhisattva, 84
Manrique, Fra Sebastiao, 372
Mansur Shah (Raja Abdullah), 196, 323
Mant'a-T'ourat, 423
Manu, Laws of, 86, 104, 155, 166, 246,
636
Manwyine, 595
Mapatih, 8i
Marathas, 359, 561
Maravijayottungavarma, 58
Margary, Augustus, 595, 623V
Marignolli, John, 208-9, 623
Marks, Dr., 602
Marshall, David, 842
Martaban, 133, ' S ^ . ^5S-7, 162, 241, 243,^
253, 337, 355, 568, 57, 579
Martin, Frangois, 343
Masjumi Party, 807, 844, 898
Master, Sir Streynsham, 359
^
Mas'udi, 56
Masulipatam, 272, 277, 284, 342, 371
Matalief, Cornelis, 667
Mataram, 46, 63, 86, 200, 250, 255-89,
290-303, 306-12,314
Ma Tuan-lin, 94
Mauban, 732
Maulivarmadeva, 83-4
Maung Baing Zat, 577
Maung Bhein, 577
Maungdaw, 565
Maung Gyi, 699
Maung Ok, 578
Maurice of Nassau, 269, 282, 327, 335
Mauritius, 269, 297, 460, 467, 563
Mawchi, 740
Mawdon, 152
Mawke, 152
'
Maw Shans, 149-50, 152-3
Maymyo, 152
Mayo, Lord, 594
M'Carthy, James, 645
McLeod, Captain, 576, 589, 658
McRae, Dr., 564
Mecca, 197, 200, 203, 292, 550
Meerdervoort, Pompe van, 249
Meester-Cornelis, 445, 450
Megat Iskander Shah, 194-5. See also
Paramesvara
Meiktila, 782
Mekkaya, 147

Mekong river, 10, 23-6, 29, 33, 90, 92-3,

96, 98, l o i , 105, 112, 122-3, 126, 132,
158-61J, 163, 165, 177-8,'183, 206, 235,
238, 293. 398, 588, 612, 648, 650-7, 740
Mekut'i, (King, 244-5
Mello D'iogo Soarez de, 224
Menado, 515
Menam.river, 10, 24, 36, 91, 99, l o i , 105,
108, 112, 117, 119, 135, 158, 160-6,
170, 250, 662
Mendawi, 82
Meng Ki, 75
Menglien, 390
*
Mep'ing river, 117, 135, 158, 163, 165
Mergui, 155, 172, 224, 340, 427, 459, 556,
568;
Merini, Father, 416
Meru, Mount, 316
Mesquita, Caspar de, 375
Mewang, 158, 172
Mi-chen, 135
,
Middleton, David, 275-6
Middleton, Sir Henry, 275, 278
Mien, 137
Mienchung, 147-8
Mijer, Governor-General P., 706
Milard, Pierre, 4.61
Millot, 626
Mimjam, 321
Minangkabau, 209, 299, 327, 328-33, 490,
521, 525
Minbin, 368
Minbu, 137, 242, 366
Mindanao, 226, 232-3, 498, 670, 68f
Mindon Min, 392, 581-4, 588-99
Mines: Bauxite, 748; Coal, 739; Lead,
739; Silver, 740; Tungsten, 740; Zinc,
743
Mingalazedi Pagoda, 145
Ming dynasty, 40, 85, 121, 150, 153, 165,
182', 189, 209, 296, 321, 357
Ming Jui, 390, 427
Ming Shih, 153
Mingun Pagoda, 556
Mingyi Swasawke, 149-50
Minhkamaung, 370
Minhkaung7 I5i,_i52, 154
Minhkaung Nawrahta, 389
Minh-Mang, 413, 421, 438, 608
Minhti of Arakan, 367
Minkhari, 368
Minkyinyo, 154
j
Min Razagyi, 353, 369
Minrekyawdin, King,^359, 362
Minrekyawswa, 1523
Minthagyi, 554, 575, 577 / '
Minto (Gilbert Elliott), Lord, 448-51,
456-7.-469, 476. 563-4
Minto-Morley reforms, 697
Mir.-Jumla, 376

INDEX
945
Muar river, 219, 321, 481
Muda Hashinfl, 5i
Mughal, 3'7i-2
Mulavarman, 37
Munda, 10
Mundy, Captiiin, 502
Muni Thudhamma Raza, 379
Mun river, 29, 92. 94~5. 122
Munro, Sir Thomas, 585
Muntinghe, H- W., 451, 510
Muong Chavii, 163
Muong Chot, 163
Muong Kassy, 422
Muong Lai, 649-5
Muong-man, 163
Muong Nai, i59
Muong P'le, {63
Muong P'lua, 163
Muong Swa, 238
Murphy, Frank, 726
Murundas, 27, 30
Musica, 428, 43
Muzaffar, Sultan of Perak, 170, 195-6,
322
Myat T u n , 582
Myaungmya, 156, 382
Myazedi inscription, 135
Myazedi Pagoda, 141
Myede, 581
Myedu, 137, J5. 152. 243
Myingun Prince, the, 602
Myingyan, 242
Myinkaba, 139
Myinsaing, 147-8
Myitkyina, 39, 77^
Myitnge, 149
Myittha, 136
Myothugyi, 156, 693-4
Mysore, 21

Mirma, 137
Mison, 26, 28; 34, 173-4
Mitchell, Sir Charles, 530
Mi-tho, 399-400, 408, 612
Mlou Prey, 435
Moamarias, 565
Mogado, 155
Mogaung, 159, 164, 390
Mogok, 596
Mohnyin, 151-4, 164, 390
Mohnyinthado, 152-3, 381
Moira, ivOrd (Marquis of Hastings), 457,
47<i, 494-6
Mojokerto, 259
Moksobomyo (Shwebo), 365, 381
Moluccas, 655,69, 82, 8g, 194, 197, 201,
212, 218, 222, 272, 278, 285, 287, 292,
299, 448, 667
Mon, 10, II, 22, 36, 62, 91-2, l o i , 105-6,
108, 112, 117, 119, 122, 132, 134-5,
1.37-41, 143-4, 146, 149-5. 152, 154-8,
160-1, 163, 197, 241, 243, 245, 340,
356. See also T a k i n g
Monckton, Hon. Edward, 466
Mone, 159, 243
Mong Cay, 828
Monghsat, 849
Mongkolbaurey, 435
Mongkut, King Maha, 352, 436, 584, 593,
615, 630-40, 688
Mong Lem, 661
Mongmit, 390
Mohgol, 73-8, 83, 117, 137, 145. 147-57.
160, 165, 180, 183, 186
Mong Sing, 661
Montagu-Chelmsford reforms, 697
Monte Corvino, John of, 207
Montigny, M. de, 611
Mook, Dr. H. J. van, 773. 779. 804-5,
807, 809
Morant, Sir Robert, 635, 641
Morones, Juan, 227
Moros, 226, 232, 669, 671, 681
Mossel, Jacob, 314
Mo-ti-po, 13s
Motte, Lambert de la, 340-1, 395
Mouhot, Henri, 416, 618, 644
Moukhalinga, 173
Moulmein, 24, 133. 156, 241, 253, 337,
574. 581
Mountbatten, Lord, 780, 782-3
Mount Merapi, 258
Mount Turan, 137
Mpu Kanwa, 69
Mranma, 137
Mrohaung, 61, 152, 224, 242, 294, 366-80,
561, 568
Mu, 137, 405
Muang, Kesa, King, 239
Muang, Swa, 121
'

NAAF river, 379. 557

Naga peoples, 6, 26, 134

Nagara Jayasri, 113
Nagarakertagama, 62, 70-3, 75, 77-8, 80,
82-4, 191, J93
Nagasaki, 783
Nahdat ul ulama, 847
Nailaka, 281, 285-6
Nakhone Noi, 248
Nakhon Lampang, 172
Nakhon Savan, 163
Nakhon Srit'iimmarat, 174, 224, 424, 428
Nakorn Pat'om, i3S. i37
Nalanda (Bengal), 20, 42, 48, 56
Nambi, 79-80
Nam-dinh, 6zi
Nam-viet, 184
Nan, 163
Nanchao, 93, 95, " 7 , '34-6, 140, 153,
158, 160, 166, 185

94^
INDEX
Nanda Bayin, 248-9, 250, 252, 254, 335, Nguyen Kim, 188-9
414
Nguyen Man, 406
Namng, 333, 537, 77
Nguyen of Hue, 183, 188, 293, 393, 401
Nanking, 166
Nguyen Van-Hue of Tay-son, 401
ISan Muang, 166
Nguyen "^an-Lu, 401
Nappaya, 139
Nguyen Van-Nhac, 401
Nan Tarat, 416
Nguyen Van Thinh, 800
Nan-tien, 153
Nguyen Van Xuan, 803
Nan U, 159
Nha-trang, 27, 173-4
Nan-yue (Nam-viet), 184
Nicobar Islands, 59, 208, 463, 467
Napoleon III, 507, 613, 617, 634
Niddo^a, 24
Naquodah, 610
Nieuwenhuis, A. W., 551
,
Narai, King of Siam, 294, 339-40, 424,
Ningpo, 228
Ningyan, 605
633
Ninh Binh, 189, 621
Naramikhla, 151, 367
Nippean Bat (Nirvanapada), 121-2
Narapathi, 153-4
Ntrapatigyi, 375
N'Mai Hka, 136, 854
Narapatisithu, 112, 141, 143-5
Nokeo Koumane, 249, 253, 414
N^ratjjeinka, 144
\
Nong Kai, 646
"Nrahu, 140, 149
Nong Sa Rai, 252
Nafynuiagara, 53
Noort, Oliver van, 667
'
Narifana Raxnadhipati, 126
Norodom (ace. 1S60), 613, 627, 643 ^
Nareuen, King, 130, 234, 247, 252, 335,
Norodom (Ang Votey), 439
Norodom Sihanouk, 834-5
414
Nasr-ed-Din, 205
/ North-East Coast Province (Java), 313Nasruddin, 146
14, 444. 446
Natonmya, 144-5
Novales, 683
Nat worship, 140, 381
^
Nripatindravarman, 95-7
Naungdawgyi, King, 247, 46:
Nueva Segovia, 673
Navarre, Henri, 830
Nusantara, 77-8, 81-2, 316
Nawrahta, 152
Nyaung-u, 144
Na2ir Shah, 368
Neck, Jacob van, 265, 269
Nedertjurgh, S. C , 319, 443
Negapatam, S7i 58, 318
Oc Eo in Funan, 25, 95
Negrais, 247, 348, 360, 383-8, 460-1
Odoric of Pordenone, 181, 193, 207
Negrier, General de, 626
Okinawa, 782
Negri Sembilan, 333, 521, 530, 537
Okpo, 363
Nehru, 820, 825, 853
Okpo-madaya, 390
Neira, 279-80
Omar Said Tjokro Aminoto, 708
Nepal, 71, 565
Onbaung, 152
Netherlands Steam Navigation Co., 545, Ong Ansaraja, i i 2
Ong Boun, 418
Ong Dhamapatigrama, 112
'New Course', Dutch, 688, 696
Ong Kham-Mang, 438
New;Guinea, 297, 397, 463, 540, 705-13,
Ong-Lorig, 417
777
Opium, 203, 277, 312, 462, 538, 544, 678
Ne Win, 852
Ord, Sir Harry, 521, 634
Newton, Sir Thomas, 386
Orissa, 141
New Zealand, 297, 824
Ortez, Luiz, 237
Ney Eiias Commission, 595, 650
Osmena, Sergio, 724
Ngam Muong, 160
Ostend Company, 364-5
Nga Myat Pon, 554
Ottoman, 217
Ngandong, 6 ^
Oudene, 656
Ngasaunggyan, 145-6, 205
Oudong, 438, 614
Nghe-an, ro8, 185, i88-g, 401, 834
Oudri, Commandant, 650 '
Ngo Dinh Diem, 832
Oun Kham, 646, 649-50
Ngo dynasty, 185
Oupnagnouvarat, 414
Ngo Quyen, 185
Nguyen Anh (Nguyen Phuc-Anh), Em- Overbeck, Baron von, 538
O^erstraten, van, 444
peror Gia-Long, 401-12

INDEX

947

Parakkama Bahu I, 143

Paramesvara, founder of Malacca, 1935771
See alsoMegat Iskandar Shah
Padang, 510, 552, 84s
Paramesvaravarman, 175, 179
PadjaraUan, 80
Padri wars, 545, 551
Pararaton, 69, 70-1, 76, 78-9, 258
Pagan (Burma), 106, 108, 112, 134, Pardo, Archbishop, 673
Parvati, 102
135-40, 144-57. 160, 242-4, 367
Pasai, 197, 200, 202, 255, 322
Pagan Min, 577-81
Page, Admiral, 612
Pase, 194
Pahang, 75, 82, 193, 196-8, 321, 324, 471,
Pasir, 505
Pasquier, 719
529, 537
Pataliputra, 132
Pai-i, 147
P'at'alung, 132
Painan Contract, 290, 327
Patani, 30, 170, 172, 196, 198, 224, 272-3,
Pajajaram, 200-1, 255
Pajang, 258, 261
277. 293, 335. 337. 459, 556
Pakistan, 820,
Patapan, 49
Pakkokku,151
Patenotre, M., 627
Paklay, 649
Pateudra, 89
Paknam, 339, 439, 638, 6 5 8 - ^
Paungga, 554
Pakuan, 256
Pavie, Auguste, 643, 648-51, 655-62
'Pakubuwono I (Pangeran Puger), 307
P'ayao, 158, 160, 167
Pakiibuwono II, Susuhunan, 311-13
P'aya Sai Tiakap'at, 239
Pakubuwono I I I , 313-14
P'aya Sam Sene T'ai (Oun Hueun), 239
Pakubuwono VII, 5x5
Pay a Tak, 392
Pala dynasty, 71
Pearl Harbour, 732, 771
Palapa, 81
P'echaburi, 163
Palaung, 137
Pedir, 212, 322
Palembang, I'l, 43, 82-4, 88, 135, 193,
Pegu, 12, 135, 138, 150-2, 154-7, 163,
210-11, 224, 241, 243, 24s, 247, 251,
194-5. 197. 204, 299, 451, 513, 546,
553. 748- "See also Srivijaya
253-4, 353, 356, 367-8, 382, 386, 571,
Pali, 36, 121, 133-4, 138, 140-4. 247
586, 739, 772
Palikat, 132
Pei river, 600
, Pallava, 22, 25-6, 31, 36, 94, 133, 135, Peking, 75, 146, 148, 150, 152, 187, 194,
390, 6i2, 823
341, 395
Pelaez, Pedro, 676
Pallegoix, Bishop, 630
Pellew, Sir Edward, Lord Exmouth, 444
Pallen, 625
Pemberton, Lieutenant R. B., 573, 590
Pallu, Bishop of Heliopolis, 341, 395
Penang, 36, 264, 318, 332, 334, 449, 459,
Palmerston, Lord, 439, 503, 507
467-8, 472, 789
Pamalayu, 71-75, 78, 84
Pengging, 257
Panarukan, 200, 255, 445
Pepper, 202, 206, 210, 256, 266, 272,
Panay, 226
284-5, 299, 322, 327, 474, 491, 493,
Pancapana of Panangkaran, 49, 83-4
Pandava, 69
543, 552, 678
Pandasan (in Borneo), 538
Perak, 53, 195, 321-2, 324, 329, 523
Panduranga (Phan-rang), 29, 106, 117-18 Periplus of the Erythran Sea, 14-15
Pane, 59
Perlac, 62, 190
Panembahan Senapati, 2006
Perils, 536-7, 664
Pangeran Ahmed, 451
Pernot, Colonel, 650
Pangeran Gusti, 314, 315
Perserikatan Kommunist Indie (P.K.I.),
Pangeran Jayaraga, 259
709
Panferari Pekik, 262
Perserikatan National Indonesia (P.N.I.),
Pangeran Puger (Pakubuwono I), 259, 307
710
Pangeran Sabrang Lor, 255
Persian (people), 69, 293
Pangkor Engagement, 487, 524-5
Pescadores, 626-7, 668
Panglima Polem, 550
Petapoli, 272, 371
Panjalu, 69
Petchaburi, 427, 640
Petroleum, 739
P'an-p'an (person), 26; (state), 37, 91, loi
Pham Quynh, 719
Panthagu, 143
Phan-rang, 113-14
Panthay, 594, 620
Pao Sriyanon, 855
" Phan Thanh-Gian, 613, 617
PACIFIC OCEAN, 594,

669,

677,

722,

769,

948

INDEX

Phaulkon, Constant, 294, 342-52, 812

Phayre, Sir Arthur Purves, 366, 377, 58P,
Phi-Fa, 121
Philastre, M., 6a i
Philip II of Spain, 226, 263, 275, 677
Philip V of Spain, 670, 678
Philippines, 197, 228, 264, 290, 537,
667-86, 721-34, 771, 812-19
Phillips, Governor, 437,
Phimeanakas, 105, i i i , 116
Phing-ya, 121-2
Phnom Bakheng, loi
Phnom Kulen, 99
Phnom Penh, 24, 123, 126-7, 167, 235,
400, 412, 430, 435, 438, 614, 648
Phong Saly, 830, 836
Phu-quoc, 406
Phu-yen, 33, 628
P'iao, 133
P'ibun Songgram, 765-6, 7^8, 770-1,
776, 810-12, 855-8
Pichegru, General, 319
Pickering, W. A., 524
Pigneau, Pierre-Joseph-Georges, 404
Pijai, 250, 430
Pikatan, 49, 51
Pilar, Marcelo del, 684
Pimento, 353
^
Pindale, King, 537
Pinle, 147
Pinto, Fernao Mendes, 225, 240
Pinya, 149-50
Piracy, 468, 487, 495, 497-506, 521-2,
546. S51
Pires, Tome, 170, 193, 195, 321
Pithecanthropus erectus, 6
P'itsanulok, 166, 168, 171-2, 246, 250, 428
Pitt, Mr., 386
Plaine des Jones, 32, 617
Plaosan, 53
Pnhea An, 237
Poblete, Miguel, 673-4
Pocock, Admiral Sir George, 461
Poivre, Pierre, 402, 407
Po Kombo, 615
P'o-li, 40
Polo, Marco, 146, 180, igo, 193, 205
Polovieja, 686
Po Nagar, 104, 174
Pondaung, 136
Pondicherry, 14, 343. 349-5. 383-6, 402,
406-7, 602
P'ongsaivardan, 167
P'ong Tuk, 24, 26, 31
Ponha Yat, J23, 126-7
Pontianak (Borneo), 470, 492
Popa, Mount, 247
Popta, Wiert Jansen, 357
Porakad, 14

Porte d'Annam, 29, 33, 185, 547

Portuguese, Portugal, 217-25, 363-4, 267,
271, 34,6. 394, 669
P'ot'isarat, 239-40
P'o-to-li, .90
Potsdam Conference, 709
'Prabalingga Paper', 447
Prabang image, 238, 244, 646
Prachim, 138-30
Prajadhipok, 761
P'rajai, King, 240
Prakasadharma, 173
P'ra Khap'ung, 164
^
Pramadavardhani, 49, 50
Prambanan, 20, 63, 259
Pra Nang Klao, 630
Pra Naret(King Nafesuen),'129-30, 234,
248, 250, 427
Prapanca, 70, 74-5, 77, 83-6, 193
P'ra Pathom, 24, 27, 36
Pra P'etraja, 350, 424
,
Prasat T'ong, King, 293, 338
P're, 163
Preah Ko, l o i ,
Preah Noreay, Reamea Thupdei, 127
Preah Srei, 127
Preah Theat Kvan Pir, 96
Preanger, 305.455. 5^2
Prea-pateny, 400
Prek, 163
Prendergast, General, 606
Priaman, 178, 326
Pridi Banomyong, 763-6, 776, 810-12
Prie Veng, 25
Pring, Martin, 283
^
Prohm-Tep, 435
Prome, 3, 250, 354, 366, 380, 568, 772
Province Wellesley, 436, 468, 474, 529,
537
Pryor, W. B., 539
Ptolomy, Claudius, 15, 24, 26, 30, J32,
; 366
E'u. 133
Puket (Junk Ceylon), 350, 436
Pulicat, 357
Pulo Chan, 396
Pulo Condore,, 96, 206, 402, 407, 463,
f)I2

Pulo Galang, 499

Pulo Pisang, 197
Purachatra, 763
Puranas, 18, 94
Purandar Singh, 566'
Purnavarman, 32, 33, 37, 46
Pursat, 126, 128, 130 '
Pushkara, 96
y
Pushkaraksha, 95-6
Pushkaresa, 96
Putte, Isaac Fransen van de, 543
Puymanel, Olivier du, 408

948

INDEX

Phaulkon, Constant, 294, 342-52, 812

Phayre, Sir Arthur Purves, 366, 377, 58P,
69s

Phi-Fa, 121
Philastre, M., 6a i
Philip II of Spain, 226, 263, 275, 677
Philip V of Spain, 670, 678
Philippines, 197, 228, 264, 290, 537,
667-86, 721-34, 771, 812-19
Phillips, Governor, 437,
Phimeanakas, 105, i i i , 116
Phing-ya, 121-2
Phnom Bakheng, loi
Phnom Kulen, 99
Phnom Penh, 24, 123, 126-7, 167, 235,
400, 412, 430, 435, 438, 614, 648
Phong Saly, 830, 836
Phu-quoc, 406
Phu-yen, 33, 628
P'iao, 133
P'ibun Songgram, 765-6, 7^8, 770-1,
776, 810-12, 855-8
Pichegru, General, 319
Pickering, W. A., 524
Pigneau, Pierre-Joseph-Georges, 404
Pijai, 250, 430
Pikatan, 49, 51
Pilar, Marcelo del, 684
Pimento, 353
^
Pindale, King, 537
Pinle, 147
Pinto, Fernao Mendes, 225, 240
Pinya, 149-50
Piracy, 468, 487, 495, 497-506, 521-2,
546. S51
Pires, Tome, 170, 193, 195, 321
Pithecanthropus erectus, 6
P'itsanulok, 166, 168, 171-2, 246, 250, 428

Pitt, Mr., 386

Plaine des Jones, 32, 617
Plaosan, 53
Pnhea An, 237
Poblete, Miguel, 673-4
Pocock, Admiral Sir George, 461
Poivre, Pierre, 402, 407
Po Kombo, 615
P'o-li, 40
Polo, Marco, 146, 180, igo, 193, 205
Polovieja, 686
Po Nagar, 104, 174
Pondaung, 136
Pondicherry, 14, 343. 349-5. 383-6, 402.
406-7, 602
P'ongsaivardan, 167
P'ong Tuk, 24, 26, 31
Ponha Yat, J23, 126-7
Pontianak (Borneo), 470, 492
Popa, Mount, 247
Popta, Wiert Jansen, 357
Porakad, 14

Porte d'Annam, 29, 33, 185, 547

Portuguese, Portugal, 217-25, 363-4, 267,
271, 34,6. 394, 669
P'ot'isarat, 239-40
P'o-to-li, .90
Potsdam Conference, 709
'Prabalingga Paper', 447
Prabang image, 238, 244, 646
Prachim, 138-30
Prajadhipok, 761
P'rajai, King, 240
Prakasadharma, 173
P'ra Khap'ung, 164
* _
Pramadavardhani, 49, 50
Prambanan, 20, 63, 259
Pra Nang Klao, 630
Pra Naret(King Nafesuen),'129-30, 234,
248, 250, 427
Prapanca, 70, 74-5, 77, 83-6, 193
P'ra Pathom, 24, 27, 36
Pra P'etraja, 350, 424
,
Prasat T'ong, King, 293, 338
P're, 163
Preah Ko, l o i ,
Preah Noreay, Reamea Thupdei, 127
Preah Srei, 127
Preah Theat Kvan Pir, 96
Preanger, 305.455. 5^2
Prea-pateny, 400
Prek, 163
Prendergast, General, 606
Priaman, 178, 326
Pridi Banomyong, 763-6, 776, 810-12
Prie Veng, 25
Pring, Martin, 283
Prohm-Tep, 435
Prome, 3, 250, 354, 366, 380, 568, 772
Province Wellesley, 436, 468, 474, 529,
537
Pryor, W. B., 539
Ptolomy, Claudius, 15, 24, 26, 30, J32,
; 366
E'u. 133
Puket (Junk Ceylon), 350, 436
Pulicat, 357
Pulo Chan, 396
Pulo Condore,, 96, 206, 402, 407, 463,
6r2
_,
Pulo Galang, 499
Pulo Pisang, 197
Purachatra, 763
Puranas, 18, 94
Purandar Singh, 566'
Purnavarman, 32, 33, 37, 46
Pursat, 126, 128, 130 '
Pushkara, 96
y
Pushkaraksha, 95-6
Pushkaresa, 96
Putte, Isaac Fransen van de, 543
Puymanel, Olivier du, 408

INDEX
949
Rakryan Panangkaran, 46
P'ya Bahol, 764
Rama I (Chakri), 408, 419, 434
P'ya Bodin, 430, 438, 643
P'ya Kosa T'ibodi, 342
Rama II, ^12, 419, 435, 437> 630
P'ya Manupachom, 763
Rama III, 437, 440, 630, 636
Pyanchi, 150-1
Rama IV, 634. See Mongkut
Pyapon, 738
Raftia V, 635. See also Chulalongkorn
P'ya San K'aburi, 433
Ramadhipati, 166
P'ya Sri Worawong, 338
Rama Khamheng, 62, 117, 155, 160-1,
P'ya Suriya, 433
163, 181
P'ya Surrissak, 649
Ramaiiiiadesa, 135
P'ya Taksin (Paya Tak), 390, 400, 404,
Rama T'ibodi I, Ramadhipati, 121, 165,
410, ^,18, 690
433
Pyatton, 157

Rama T'ibodi II, 428

Pye, King, 340, 358, 427
Ramayana, 13, 18, 63, 94
Pyi Min, 254
Ramesuen, King, 166-8
Pyinmana, 772
Rama Raja, 167
Pyinpya, 136
Ramree Island, 379
Pyu people, language, 10, 23, 1336, 141,
Ramu, 369, 567
Ranamanggala, 287
Ranavijaya, 8 9 ^
Ranee, Sir Hubert, 794
'QUAI'D'ORSAV, 625, 648, 650, 654
Rangga-Lawe, 78-9
Quang-binh, 176, 184-5, 4^
Rangoon, 132, 156, 382, 392, 467, 554,
Quang-nam, 28, 33, 173-4, 182, 393, 401
Quang-Toan, 408
567, 57. 579. 697, 772
Quang-tri, 176, 184-5, '87, 189, 408
Rangpuf, 500, 566
Quezon, Manuel, 724
Rangsang, 260
Qui-nam, 293, 396
Ratburi, 11, 28, 163, 432
Qui-nam, 293, 396
Rati, 69
Qui-nhon, 461, 408, 622
Ratu Fatima of Bantam, 314
Quirino, E., 814
Raymond, George, 164
Quiroga, Pedro de, 677
Rayong, 428
Quoc-ngu, 395
Razadarit, 151-2, 156
Razagri, 369
RABI, Prince, 638
Reael, Laurens, 281, 290
Raden Patah, 199, 255
Reamea Chung Prei, 130
Raffles, Sir Thomas Stamford, 308, 332,
Recollects, The, 672, 676
449.451,468-71, 585
'Red Flags', 622, 646
Raganatha, 72
Red Karens, 598
Raheng pass, 24, 158
Red River of Tongking (Songkoi), 183,
Rahus, 110
620, 622-3
Raja Abdullah, 196
Red Sea, 190
Rajagriha, 20
Reid, Lord, 840
Raja Haji, 330
Rembang, 311
Raja Ibrahim, 195
Rembau, 330, 333, 490
Raja Ja'far, 471
Rendel, Sir George, 842
Raja Kasim (Mudhafar or Muzaffar Shah
Renville (ship, agreement), 808
of Malacca), 170-1, 195
Resident, British, in Burma, 361-4, 507,
Raja Kechil, 328-9
569. 571-6, 595, 599-601
Raja Luma, 329
Resident, French (Indo-China), 627
Raja Melewar, 333
Resident-General (Malaya), 469-70, 524,
Rapi Muda, 328, 471
527. 531
Rajaraja (Chola king), 57, 58
Residential system in Malaya, 524, 526,
Raiasanagara, 86
529, 531
Rajasavarddhana, 8g
Resident, Residency (Java), 454-5, 511
Raja Singa of Ceylon, 295, 298-9
Reynst, Gerard, 286
Raja Tua, 330
Riau, 325, 327, 332, 467
Rajendra (Chola king), 58
Ribeyro, 358
Rajendravarman (Lower Chenla), 96-7
Rice, 293, 295-6, 298, 372, 375, 454, 474,
Rajendravarman II, 104
493. 518, 520, 586-7, 591, 729, 735-6,
Rakhaing (-pyi), 366
"
740-1, 851

95

[NDEX

Richardson, Dr. David, 589

Richelieu, Due de, 413
Riebeek, Jan van, 298
Ripon, Lord, 602
Rishi, 68
Riviere, Captain Henri, 624, 647
Rmen, 135
Roberts, Sir Frederick (Lord), 695
Rochechouart, Comte de, 596
Rochussen, 505, 520
Roe, Sir Thomas, 225
Rokiui, 198
Rolin-jaequemins, M., 634, 638
Roluos, 98
Ronde de Krijn, 304
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 771
Roosevelt, Theodore, 722
Rosebery, Earl of, 658
Rosengijn, 281
^
Rosetta Stone, 141
Rotterdam Lloyd, 545
Roxas, 725, 816-17
Ruan, 428
Ruang, 428
Rubber, S34-5> 744, 746. 748, 787
'
Rudravarman (Champa), 33, 34
Rudravarman (Funan), 91
Rudravarrnan III (Champa), 176, 186
Run, Pulo, 281, 283, 286
Russia, 496, 548, 708-10, 759, 769, 771,
783.804,811,830,835,837

Sambor, 177, 616

Sampang, 262
Sam Roi 'Yot, 634
Samtac Preah Phaya, l a i
Samudraj 72, 84, 190-1, 194
Samudragupta, 17, 31, 590
Samuel, Thomas, ^78, 35s
Sanda Kan, 539
Sanda Surya, 36
Sandathudamma, 376
Sandawizaya, 379
Sandikan, 538
,
Sandoway, 382
Sandwip Island (Sundiva), 224, 235, 369,
380
Sane, 367
Sangkaret Bawaraniwate, 630
Sangrama, 106
Sangramadhanavijaya, 49
Sanjaya, 46, 48, 73, 96
San Lazaro, 226
*
*
Sanskrit, language, literature, inscriptions, 13-15, 19, 25, 44, 65, 90, 94,
116, 119-20, 123, 134
Santo Stefano, Hieronomo de', 157, 211
Saraburi, 420, 424
Saraluang, 163
Sarasin, P. & F., 7, 552
Sarawak, 439, 494, 501-7, 541, 545
Sarekat Islam, 691, 708, 714
Saris, John, 396
Sarvabhauma, 91
Sasaks, 551
Satha, King, 129-31, 233
SABANG, 553, 759, 769, 771
Satt'a of Cambodia, 234-5, 256
Sabara, 133
Saugar Island, 373
'Sadeng' (Bali), 82
Saundtrs, Thomas, 383
Sagaing, 149-51, i53, 363, 388, 554
Savanna Kat, 128
Sagu, 149
Saw, U, 640
Saigon, 399, 612-13, 620
Sawankhalok, 163-4, 169, 250, 640
^ i l e n d r a dynasty, 40, 44, 55, 98
Saw Lu, 140
Sailodbhava, 45
Saw Rahan, 137
Saii-Ong-Hue, 416
Saya San, 738
Sai Vuong's reforms, 169
Say Fong, 112
St. Barbe, Mr., 601
Schomburgk, Sir R., 489
Sakdi Na, 169
Schouten, Joost, 293, 338
Sahii, 78
Scott, David, 567' Salazar, Bishop Domingo de, 229, 674
Scott, Sir James George, 647-8, 653,
Salccdo, Diego de, 673
661-2
Salido, 326
Seignelay, 345
Salin-Sagu, 137
Sejardk Mflayu (Malay Annals), 070,
Salisbury, Lord, 276, 595, 653
195, a i 8
'
' -^
--'^
Salween river, 23, 132, 136, 147, 154, 158,
Sekarran, 502
653, 772
Selangor, 321, 327. 329-3, 333, 466,
Samar, 233
483-5, 487, 521-2, 526, 528, 537
Samaratunga, 49, 50
Semarang, 302, 307, 311-12, 445, 450,
Samarionda, 748
Sambeliung, 505
453, 552
Sambas, 316, 491
Semaun, 78-;^9
Sambhupura, Sambor, 95-6, 106
Sena,,i6o
Sambhuvarman (Champa), 35, 96, 184
. Sen'Spati, 258-61

INDEX
Sene Soulint'a, 248
Seni Pramoj,'8io
Senmuang Ma, 166-7
Sen Sanuk, i6t
Sequeira, Diogo Lopez de, 218
Seran, 82
Serebas and Sekarran tribes (Sea-Dyaks),
502
Seringapatatn, 561
Serrano, 674
Sertot, 515
Sett'at'Jrat, 246, 244-6, 248
Sgaw-Karens, 137
Shadwell, Sir Charles, 524
Shafi'i, igi
Shah Jahan37o, 373
Shahpuri Island, 567
Shah Shuja, 376-8
Shams al-din, 203
Shan, 129, 132, 137, 146-60, 241, 243-4,

340, 577, 588, 653, 693, 853

Sh'an Brothers, the Three, 147-9, '55
Shanghai, 594
Shangtu, 205

Shaw, 600
Shayista Khan, 224, 378
Sheppard, 578
Shih Huang Ti, 183
Shin Arahan,,t38, 141, 143
Shinsawbu, Queen, 156-7
'Shoe Questioh', 598
Shore, Sir Johri; 557, 559^60
Shwebo, 133, 137, 150, 381, 385, 389,
S8i
Shwe Dagon Pagoda, 132, 150, 242, 252,
382, 595
. Shwegu Pagoda, 141
Shwehsandaw Pagoda, 140
Shwenankyawshin, 154
Shwenyaung, 740
Shwezigon Pagoda, 139
Siak, 198, 325. 327-8, 470
Siam, Siamese, 62, 85, 117, 126, 129-30,
137, 147, 156, 161, 164-6, i68, 170,
172, 194, 197, 218, 224, 250, 270, 277,
292-4 335-52, 388, 424;-40, 615, 63064,"758-68, 810-12
Siantan, 332
Siao Tseu, 184
Siemreap, 98, 102, 130, 411, 430, 616,
*34, 660, 770
Sien, 164

Sihavikrama, 133
Silang, Diego de, 682
Silebar, 256
Silpasastras, 20
Silva, de, 667
Simon Commission, 700
Sinanthropus, 5
Sindok, 65, 67

951

Singa Mangaraja, 551

Singapore, 194. 321, 332, 334, 459-71,
537. 5^2, 633, 679, 772-3, 789, 820,
841
Singaung, 391
Singkep Company (tin), 553
Singhavikramavarddhana, 89
Singora, 24, 339, 345
Singosari, 62-3, 69-73, 77, 81
Singu, 392, 432, 739
Sinhalese Buddhism, 112, 119, 139, 143S, 161, 164, 426
Sintang, 505
Sip-Song Chu-Thai, 646
Sip-Song-Panas, 417, 651
Sisavang Vong, 836
Sisophon, 435
Si T'ep, 24, 36
Si Thammarat, 163
Sittang river, 149, 154, 245
Sittaung, 156
Siva, Saivite, Saivism, 21, 34, 45, 46, 47,
50, 51, 52, 63, 64, 65, 68, 70, 71, 84, 90,
93, 98, 101-2, 104, 106, 112-14, 120,
138, 173
Siva-Buddha, cult of, 63, 76, 144
Sivakaivalya, 98
Si Vattha, 628
Si Votha, 673
Sjahrir, 847
'
Sladen, Sir Edward, 593-4, 695
Slaves, slave-trade, slavery, 370-8, 408,
455-6, 5 " . 526, 528, 546, 598, 636
Slim, General, 782
Smaradahana, 69
Smart, Jonathan, 364
Smim Htaw Buddhaketi, 243, 363, 426
Smim Sawhtut, 243
Smith, Sir Cecil Clementi, 530
Sneevliet, Hendrik, 708
Societe des Missions Etrangeres, 340, 344
Sogatu, Marhal, 117, 180, 186
Solar dynasty, 95
Solok, 59, 332
Soma, Nagi princess, 26, 91-2, 95
Sona, 132
Song K'we, 163
Songt'am (Int'araja), 335
Son Ngoc Thanh, 835
Son-tay, 625-6
Sora, 79
Soryopor, 130, 237
Soryotei, 127
Sotika-Koumane, 422
Souka-Seum, 423, 644
Souligna-Vongsa, 414, 416
South East Asia Treaty Organization,
SEATO, 824
Spain, Spanish, 217-37, 265, 275, 340,
667-86, 721

95.2

INDEX ,

Spears, Thomas, 582, 589, 591

Specx, Jaques, 292, 294
Speedy, Captain T. C. S., 528
Speelman, Cornells Janszoon, 300, 304
Speilbergen, Joris van, 668
Speult, Herman van, 288
Spice Islands, 190, 202, 218, 221, 272,
283, 288-90
Sprye, Captain, 58990 *"
Srei Santhor, 123, 126-8, 130, 235
Sribuza, 56
Sri Chulamanivarmadeva Vihara, 57
Sri Deva (Sailendra king), 59
Sri Indraditya, 160
Srishetra (Hmawza), 42, 133-4
Sri Maharaja, ig$
Sri Mara, 27
.Srisup'anma, 130
Sri T'ammaraja, 425
Sri Vidyananda, i i i , 178
Srivijaya, 24, 38, 55, 62, 72-3, 84, 88, 140,
163, 185, 194, 289, 333
Ssu-jen-fa, 153
Staiin, 823
State Council, Malaya, 527, 532-4
Staveley, John, 355
Steur, Dirk, 357
Stilwell, General Joseph, 772, 777
Stimson, Henry L., 726
Straits Settlements, 472-508, 52^1, 537,
634, 692
Strangh, William, 343
Strover, Captain, 599
Studer, Mr., 548
Stung Treng, 29, 90, 92, 436, 651,
6SS
Succadana (Borneo), 278
Sue T'ai, 167
Suez Canal, 522, 545, 552, 594, 736
Suffren, the Bailli de, 467, 557
Sufism,202

Sumatra, 13, 15, 38, 71-3, 82-4, 88, 96,

170, 1 9 0 - 1 , 207, 2 1 1 , A18, 270, 299,

546, 772
Sun^bawa, 82
Sunan Agung of Mataram (Susuhunan),
283, 291
Sunandalaya, 641
Sunan Gunung Jati, 255
Sunda (kingdom), 62, 73, 82, 84-5, 89
Sunda (straits), 23, 43, 62, 284, 288, 297,
405
Sunda Kalapa, 256
^
Sunderbunds, 370
Sung^dynasty, 56, 108, 175, 177, 180
Sungei Jugra, 321
SuiTgei Ujong, 333, 490, 521.
Suri-Yat-Sen, 689
Supayalat, 577, 600
Supit Urang, 257
Suprenaphum, 163
Surabaya, 42, 67, 71, 258, 261, 291,* 307,'
445. 552, 709
Surakarta, 257, 261, 448, 453, 552
Surapati, 305, 307
Surat, 272, 278, 283, 325, 343
Surin, 92
Suryavarman I, 1056, 138, 161
Suryavarman H, 107-8, 110-13, " 6 ,
177-8,, 186
Suryivikrama, 133
Sutan Sjahrir, 805
Sutomo, 711
Suvamabhumi, 13, 18
Swaraj, 689
Swettenham, Sir Frank, 470, 524, 531,
789
Swieten, General van, 548
Symes, Michael, 554, 559-60, 562-3, 572,
589
Syriam, 156, 224, 235, 254, 337, 353, 386,
568, 739
Szechwan, 23, 132
Szumao, 590

Sugar Law (1870), De Waal's, 543

Sugar production, trade, 296, 439, 512,
517, 520, 522, 543, 678, 726, 729, 735,
TABAYIN, 137
" 742, 744
.^Tabinshweti, 155-7, 172, 224, 241-3, 356,
Suhita, 89
*
368 ,
Sukadana, 262, 491
Tachard, Pere, 344
Sukadaya, 161 '
Tack, Major, 305
Sukarno, President, 771, 776
Sukhot'ai, 61-2, 117, 122, 155-6, 159-61, Taft, W. H., 723
Tagaung, 145, 147-9. i53, 205
163-72, 181, 193, 238
Tagore, Rabindranath, 708
feulamani, 143
T'ai administration, 158-71
Sulayman, 96, 143
Taikkala, 156, 388
Sultan Agung, 200, 203, 258
Sultan Hairun, 223
Taikthugyi, 156, 693
Sultan Mahmud, 219
Taipeng, 528
Sultan Sepuh (Jogjakarta), 453, 515
Tai P'ing, 620
Sultan Zaide, 227, 667
Taingda Mingyi, 600
Sulu Archipelago, 223, 232, 317, 463, 497, T'ai Sal Kham, 240
T'ai Sra, 425
538. 670

INDEX
T'ai, Thai, 10-12, 61-2, 95, 106, 108, 117,
119, 122, l i s , 129. 134. 136, 144, 147.
158-71, 179, 183, 185, 193, 238-54, 650
Takayutpi, 157, 241
Ta Keo, 105
Takola (? T'iu-ku-Ii), 30, 59
Taku forts, 669
Talaban, 365, 381
Talaing, 35, 135, 156
Tali, 117, 146
Talifu, 619
Talokm^o, 382
Tamalinda, 144
Tambralinga, 59, 61, J05, 116, 163. See
also Ligor
Tamil, 13, 22'; 141, 195, 199
T'ammaraja, 166-7
T'ammaraja of Ayut'ia, 35, 94, loz, 134,
'73, 17s
L , ^
.T'anynaraja III of Sukhot ai, 167
T'fng dynasty, 185, 246, 252
Tanis, 132
Tanjong Priok, 553
Tanjungpuri, 75, 77, 82
T'an Ho-ch'u, 34
Tan Malaka, 709, 806
Tantric ^Buddhism, 70, 138
Tao-Nong, 417
T'ao Sri Suda Chan, 240
Tjipanuli, 51
Tapasi, 78
Taping, 141
Tapusa, 132
Tara, 46, 49
Tarabya, 146, 155
Tarok Kan Mingyi, 149
Tarokpyemin (Narathihapate), 145-6
Tartar, 146, 205, 321
Taruk, Luis, 733
Taruma, 37-8, 43
Tasman, Abel Janszoon, 296
Tasmania, 297
Tatham, Captain, 525
Taungdwingyi, 137
Taungup Pass, 366, 782
Tavo3', 135, 165, 242, 253, 337, 388, 428,
556, 568
Tay-do, 189
Taylor, Thomas,.383
Tai-son, 401
Teijn, van, 549
Tek Naaf, 567 .^
Telingana, 35, 135
' Templer, Sir Gerald, 792, 838
Tenasserim, 132, 143, 156-7, 165, 172,
210-11, 224, 253, 292, 388, 427, 556,
567, 589. 772, 852
T'ene Kham, 239
Tengku Abdur-Rahman, 471
Tengku Hussein, 332

953

Tengyueh (Momein), 154, 594

T'ep P'ip'it, 428
Temate, 218-1^, 223, 227, 263, 270, 272,
274-5, 294> 298-300, 316, 319, 448,
667
Thado, 376
Thadominbya, 149
Thadon\insano, 250
Thailand, 117, i 6 i , 166, 767, 771, 855-9
Thai-nguyen, 626
Thakin Party, 774, 792
Thalun, King, 356. 555
Thamada, last king of Arakan, 386, 555
Thamrong Nawasat, 811
Thang (Harivaflnan IV), 176
Thanh-hoa, 160, i77> 183-5. 187-9, 393
Than Tun, 143-5. 792
Tharrawaddy Min, 253, 575, 738
Thathanabaing, 695
That Luong, 2^4. 4>S
Thaton (Sudh*mmavati), 36, l o i , io6,
138, 143-4, 155,722
Thatpinnyu tendple, 141
Thayetmyo, 590, 601
Thein, 157
Thein To, 168
Thibaw, King, 577. 595, 606, 654
Thieu-Tri, 609
Thihathu, Hsinbyushin, 147
Thihathura, 149. 153-4
Tliilawa, 151
Thinhkaba, 150
Thirithudamm*, 372
Thirithuriya, 379
Thohanbwa, 154
Thomson, 627
Thommo Reachea, 127
Thonba Wungyi, 568
Thonganbwa, J53
Thorbecke, 543 '
Thoreux, Captain Maurice, 657
Three Pagodas Pass, 250, 340, 358, 392,
556
Thuan-chau, 181
Thu-dau-mot, 612
Tian-T'ala, 415-16
Tiantha Koumane, 618, 644
Tibao, Sebastiiin Gonzales, 224, 369
Tibet, 71, 95, i34, 136, 617
Tidore, 218-19. 223, 275, 280, 298, 316
Tien-Hoang, 185
Tieraraja, 126-7
Tiku, 284, 326
Timor, 451, 820
Timur Khan, j2o
Tin, 298, 321, 324-6, 328, 330, 454, 474,
483. 59, 534-5, 546, 553, 740, 787
Tipperah, 369, 379
Tipu Sultan, 561
Tjokro Aminato, 708-9

954
INDEX
Tobacco, 538, 543, 552, 678, 742, 744, 746
Trinh Tac, 393
Togan, 180, 186
Trinh Tipng, 189
Trinh Trang, 393
Tohjaya, 70

"^
Tokyo, 733, 862
Tripitaka, Pali canon, 138, 588
Truman,i8i8, 860
Tong-doc-Tran-Ba-Loo, 628, 714
Tongking, 4, 6, 8, 9, 28, 34, 75, 95-6, 110,
Trunojoyo (Trunadjaya), 301
132, 158, 160, 175-6, 180, 183-9, 293-4, Truong Due, 393
393-413, 54, 620, 628, 646, 688
T'sin, 136
Tuan-phu, 714
Tonhe, 779
Tuban, 67, 73, 76, 198, 259, 261
Tonle-Repou, 435
T u Due, 610, 620, 645
Tonle Sap, 26, 92-3, 124
Tuku Uma, 549

Torrey, Joseph, 538

Tulodong, 64
Toungoo, 150-1, 154-S. 157. 224, 241,
Tumapel, 70
243, 250, 254, 335, 353-65, 605
Tumasik (Singapore), 39, 82, 193
Tourane, 187, 399, 609, 622
T u n Ali, 195
Towerson, Gabriel, 288
Tungku Abdul Rahman, 839, 841
Trailok (Boromo Trailokanat), 168-71
Tun-hsun, 30, 38
Traiphum P'a Ruang, 164
T u n Ibrahim, 481
Tra-kieu, 28, 173
Tun-Jen-i, 132
Tran Anh-ton, 180-1
T u n Perak, 195-6
Tran Due-Ton, 187
Tuntang, 451
Tran dynasty, 179, 182, 186-7
Tupayon Pagoda, 153
Trang, 30, 484
Turkey, Turks, 203, 219, 309, 322, 544
Tranggana, 255, 257
Tuwan Besar Guntur, 448
Tran Nho'n-Ton, 187
Tuyen-quang, 626
Tran Ninh, 414, 416-17, 421
Tydings-McDuffie Act, 726
Trat, 430
Treaties, etc., Amiens (1802), 412, 443,
476, 509; Anglo-Dutch (1619), 284,
U BA S W E , 852
286, 288, 356; Anglo-Dutch (1766),
317; Anglo-Dutch (1824), 478-9,496-7; Ubon, 419
Udayadityavarman I, 105
Anglo-French (1896), 664; Anglo-Siamese (1855), 631; Anti-Comintern Pact Udayadityavarman II, 106
Udayagiri, 141
(1667), 300; Bongais (1667), 329; Breda,
289; Dutch-Javanese (i7S5), 314; Udong, 128, 425, 435
Ung Chan, 624
Dutch-Siamese (1664), 326; DutchSiamese (i860), 623; Franco-Siamese Union of Burma, 796
(1893), 661; Harmand, 627; Javanese- Union of Malaya, 789
Dutch (1705), 307; Kaungton (1770), United States of Indonesia, 808
U.N.O., 807, 811, 826
418; London Convention (1814), 457,
U Nu, 852
479> 509; Manila (1955), 824; Munster
(1648), 230;
Netherlands-Portugal Upali, 426
Uparat, 425
(1661), 299; Paris (1784), 318; Saragossa (1529), 226; Spanish-American
Urdaneta, Andres de, 226
(1898),721; Sumatra(1871), 523;Thai- Usada, Dr.,^708
Japanese (1940), '768; Tientsin (1858), . Usop, Pangeran, 502
612, 623; Tordesillas (1494), 221; Ver- Utaradit, 640
"^
sailles (1783), 467; Vichy-Tokyo, 770; Utene, 655
Vienna, 509; Wanghsia (1844), 609; U Thant, 847
Whampoa (1844), 609
U T'ong, 165
Trengganu, 170, 191, 196, 198, 321, 332, Uttara, 132
Uttarajiva, 143
536-7, 556, 664
Ut'ump'on, 426
Tribhuvana, 81
Trincomalee (Ceylon), 467
Trinh Can, 394
VACHET, Pere, 343
Trinh Cuong, reforms of, 397
Vaisali, 36, 134, 367
Trinh family, 189, 293, 393
Vajiravudh, 761
Trinh Giang, reforms of, 397
Valkenier, 311
Trinh Khai, 408
VahTHue, 408
Trinh, Kiem, 189

INDEX

955

. W A , 854
Vannier, Philippe, 412
Waddington, M., 653
Vargas, 678
Wadjak, ^
Varman dynasty, 133
Wagaru Dhamtnathat, 155
Varthema, Ludovico di, 211
Waingmaso, 390
Vasconcellos, 223
Wai,
Pulo, 275, 280
Vayu Purana, 13
Wake, 771
Veloso, Diogo, 234
Wali Shah, 368
Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie
Wampoa Academy, 719
(V.O.C), 271-320, 443-58
W a n Ahmad, 489
Vergennes, Charles Gravier, 403
Wang Chi, 753
Versailles, 341-3, 4o6, 557. ^^< ^^9
Wanting, 782
Vesungi, 133
Waradhammaraza, 319
Vetter, General, 550
Warak, 49
Victoria, Queen, 439, 596, 632
Wareru, Mogado, 146, 155, 157, 163
Vidyanandana, 112
Vien Chang (Vientiane), i i 2 , 244-5, 293. Warwijck, Wybrand van, 269
Washington (U.S.A.), 721-2, 770, 811,
425, 428, 430, 618, 644
829, 853, 860
Vieng Kham
Wat Visoun, 239
Vienna, Congress of, 457, 509
Vientiane, 236, 239, 293, 389, 414, 438, Wawa, 64
Wayang (shadow drama), 9, 67
836-7
Wediodiningrat, 804
Viet Bac, 828
Welch, Captain, 566
Vietcong, 833
Weld, Sir Frederick, 529, 787
Vietminh, 720, 823, 827
Vietnam, Vietnamese, 85, 4 " . 608-19, Wellesley, Arthur, Duke of Wellington,
468
623, 804, 820, 826-36
Wellesley Province, 36
Vigan, 673
Wellesley, Richard, Lord Momington,
Vijava Bahu, 139
Marquis, 469, 560-2
Vijaya (Binh Dinh), 76-8, I7S-7. i79.
Weltden, Anthony, 348, 360
182, 186-7
Weltevreden, 44s
Vikrama dynasty, 133
Wen (Chinese emperor), 31
Vikraniavarddhana, 87-g, i<)J
Wen Tan, 95
Vikrantavarman, 173
Wesick, van, 371
Vikrantavarman II, 173
Westerrode, Wolff van, 745
Village Act, Burma, 706
Westerwolt, Adam, 295, 339
Village Regulation, Upper Burma, 706
Westgarth, Robert, 583
Villalobos, Ruy Lopez de, 226
Wetwin, 152, 358
Vinaya, 438, 588, 617
White, George, 342
Vinh-long, 87-8, 193
White, Samuel, 342
Vinh Van, 828
Whyte, Sir Frederick, 698
Virabumi, 87-8, 193
Wilde vaart, the, 270
Viraraja, 76, 79-80
Willemsz, Pieter, 371
Virapura, I74
William V of Orange, 319, 476
Vira-Saba, 261
William VI of Orange (King William I)",
Viravarman, 90
509
Visay^s, 231, 233
WillianM, Dr, Clement, 590
Vishnu (Sailendta king), 49
Wilson, Commodore, 463, 546
Vishnu, Vaisnavite, 32-3, 68, 93, 101-2
Wilson, Woodrow, 724
104, n o , 112-13, 134. J44. 173
Wingate, Ord, 779, 781
Vishnuvardhana, 702
Winter, Sir Edward, 341
^H^arupakumara, 84
Wise, Henry, 504
Vittoni, Pere, 383
Wittert, Admiral, 667
Vliet, Jeremias van, 293, 338
Wonogiri, 67
Vo Canh, 27
Wood-Forbes Commission, 725
Volksraad, 711
Wungyis, 144, 152, 593
Vongsa (T'ammikarat), 414
Wu-ti, Emperor, 184
Voorburg, Gerrit van, 377
Wuysthoff, van, 293, 415, 617
Vo Vuong, 4012
Vries, Maarten Gerritsz de, 296
XAVIER, St, Francis, 222, 247, 340
Vyadhapura, 25, 91, 94-6

956

INDEX

YADANABON, 589

Yamada, 337
Yamashita, Marshal, 734
Yamethin, 151, 153
Yam-tuan Muda, 328
Yandabo, Treaty of, 569, 571-2, 574, 576
Yang di-Pertuan Agong, 840
Yang Ma (Lin-yi), 341
Yang Pu Ku Vijaya Sri, 176
Yang Tse, 183, 6ig
Yang-tse-kiang, 158
Yang-ying-chu, 390
Yaiodharapura (Angkor), l o i , 104, i i i ,
113
Yasovarman I, 74, l o i
YaSovarman II, i i o - i i
Yavadvipa, 13
Yavana, 85
Yawnghwe, 152, 796
Yazathinkyan, 147
Ve, 355, 568
Yedo, 228
Yeh-Ming-shen, 6 i i
'Yellow Flags', 622, 646-7
Yenan,780

Yenangyaung, 739
Yenbay Mutiny, 719
Ye-p'o-t'i, 3;S
Ye-su Timur, 146
Yi-k'o-mu-su, 76
Ying-yai-Sh^eng-lan, 89
Yin-k-'ing, 194
Yogini, 78 I
Yan-shih, 147
Yule, Sir Henry, 209, 366, 583, 590
Yung-ch'ang, 23, 132-3, 205
Yung Li (Ming), 340, 357
.
Yung-lo, 88, 187, 194-5
Yunnan, 95, 136, 140, 14&-7, I54, 158-9,
171. 358, 38s, 588-9, 620
Yunnanfu, 135, 589, 620
Yuvaraja, 112, 381-2
'ZABAG', 56, 59, 60, 96. See also Srivijaya
Zamboanga, 233, 669-70

Zimmerman, Dr. CarJ, 762

Zinoviev, 710
Zulu, 601
Zwaardekroon, Henricus, 308-9