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The country was invaded by the Burman people who gave it the modern name and the first Burman kingdom was established in 1054. This was Pagan and the architecture of its numerous wats and stupas remains as one of the great wonders of the world. The Pagan throne contended with other ethnic groups to extend their territory, particularly with the Mons to the south of Pagan, which is located in the north of the country close to Mandalay. Alaungpaya, who initiated the last Burmese dynasty, defeated the Mons in 1752 as part of continued Burmese expansion that had also seen a number of bloody struggles with Siam to the east. The Burmese had succeeded in seizing vast swathes of Siamese territory but had been unable to hold it through lack of manpower for a permanent occupying force. Although a Burmese army burned the Siamese capital of Ayutthaya in 1767 and carried off thousands of slaves, this too was effectively only a raid and not a conquest. However, by this period, a far more dangerous enemy had begun to enter into Southeast Asian affairs. The British, in common with other Europeans, had been active in the region for hundreds of years. But their interests had previously been mostly confined to piracy, the search for spice islands and the establishment of small scale trading posts. Yet the success of the British, through the agency of the East India Company, in dominating India emboldened the British into believing that territorial conquest in the region was possible. The third son and successor of Alaungpaya was Bodawpaya, although he ruled under a variety of names. Bodawpaya's first actions were to eliminate any possible rivals to the throne in a succession of bloodbaths and the extermination of rebels to the extent of killing every living person, animal or plant in a region suspected of harbouring rebels. He moved the royal seat to a new and supposedly more auspicious site at Aramapura and embarked on a hugely ambitious programme of public works and overseas conquests. This resulted, among other things, in the seizing of Arakan, a coastal region bordering what is now Bangladesh and what was then part of British India. Arakan had been suffering a period of anarchy since the murder of previous rulers and the British might otherwise have favoured the restoration of order to it. However, Bodawpaya's ambitions had continued to expand and he appears to have not just referred to himself as the Forebear of Buddha on earth but also believed he was destined to become a Chakravarthid - the ruler of the world. Consequently, his demands for forced labour to build works glorifying his reign intensified. The Arakanese, on whom the burden fell particularly heavily, rebelled and disorder again possessed the region. |
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